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Does God exist? (6 Viewers)

do you believe in god?


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davin

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Having four different versions adds to the credability. Having one version, one could say it was just made up by a few people who wanted to invent a story. But because 4 different people with different backgrounds have written pretty much the same things, then it highlights a standard belief. It's not just four friends who got together and wrote their own versions.
Considering there are theories that one was very much a source for the others, it really doesn't add all that much credibility in that sense. Also, it could still have been made up by a handful of people still....no verification there WERE 4 authors, and really, the deciples could've been 4 friends that decided to get together and write their own versions of the whole thing.
 

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volition said:
It looks an awful lot like you're trying to make it look like Jesus is 'better' than these so called 'perfect imams'.

See, I don't have to actually accept that Jesus WAS the son of God, even if I accept that Jesus existed. So, really, to me, Jesus could just be 'any other guy claiming to be guided by god', which brings me back to what I was saying earlier. Why believe Jesus and not the 12 imams? They still act based from the 'same authority' (at least from our perspective, even if one of them is 'better' than the other, we have no way of knowing)
In that case, i'd say I couldnt tell you why you should believe Jesus over the Imams. It is not in my ability to get you to a point where you can accept Jesus is the Son of God. As i said at the beginning of this thread, I cannot convince you of God's existance because only he can do that.

Ultimately, I'd have to say look at the teachings of both Jesus and Mohummed. Both are supposedly representing a perfect God. Which of these men's teachings are consistant with God's perfection? How does God deal justly with all people? How are their disciples called to live?

For the teachings of Jesus, The Gospel of Mark is a good place to start (it's pretty short). If you've already read that and want something meatier, then Romans is a good book to see how Christianity is supposed to work. I'm not saying reading these books will change your life. But they're good for understanding what we believe.

volition said:
My point here might not be as strong, but in at least some branches of Christianity, we go to priests for guidance don't we? Priests are human just like us, and yet they are able to 'forgive us' for our sins through confession.
I think it's a valid point, and a good one too, but I can't argue that because it is not Christianity. The christian belief is that there is one God and one mediator between man and God, Jesus. Therefore the priest are not able to forgive our sins because they are not God's mediators. Again, I don't see why you would go to someone who is just as sinful as yourself for guidance on how not to sin.

The only other way i can think of how your point could work is that lots of christians ask their ministers for advice on issues they have. In that sense they seek guidance from people. But really they are seeking God's guidance through someone they consider is more godly then themselves (which is not really true).

BUT one of the gifts of the Spirit for pastors and teachers is that they can speak God's words. Their advice that they give is not their own, but God ministering to the other persons heart. In the end, this advice can really boil down to God saying to the person "Seek me in this matter. Come to me and I will give you rest"

volition said:
What do you mean when you say 'we can go to God himself' for guidance? Have you ever heard God himself speak to you? What made you sure it was God?
I mean that there is no other person we have to go to to have God hear us, or to tell us what God has to say. Because of what Jesus has done, you can have a one on one relationship with God because the sin that seperated you from him has been dealt with. His Spirit is his guide for Christians.

By being able to go to God for guidance I mean that there is no barrier in the way of being able to understand God's will for your life. No hurdle you must jump and no special thing you have to do. All the resources necessary for God to guide you are at your disposal.

You have the bible, the Word of God (or in other words: What God has to say to you). You have God's Spirit to interpret his Word. And you have prayer, so you can interact in your relationship with God. That is all you need!

So in answer to your question, no I have not "heard" God speak, but he does speak through his word. And his Spirit convicts me of what he says and my response to that conviction is to talk to him.

davin said:
Considering there are theories that one was very much a source for the others, it really doesn't add all that much credibility in that sense. Also, it could still have been made up by a handful of people still....no verification there WERE 4 authors, and really, the deciples could've been 4 friends that decided to get together and write their own versions of the whole thing.
Well, considering the "theory" that Mark is the book that the others copied... it wouldnt make much sense. Especially since Mark most likely wrote his gospel from what Peter had taught in the church at his house. That is not the silly thing though. The silly thing is that Matthew and John are believed to have been written by Jesus disciples.

So the theory means that the two of Jesus disciples based their gospels on what Mark said that Peter said that Jesus said. Which would make sense if they couldnt possibly skip out the two middle men and go straight to what Jesus said to them.

On top of that, Luke, a gentile doctor, would have come in no contact with a letter about Jesus from Jerusalem. He came from Colosse which is pretty much in the mid west of Turkey and a place where no jew (or jewish christian for that matter) would find themself. That is until Paul went there. And that's the only way Luke heard the Gospel.

I can understand what you are saying about there possibly being more than four authors. Sometimes people shared the dictation of the contents of a book.

But the thing i was saying about the four stories adding more credibility is what slows the theory that 4 friends wrote them. If 4 people wrote stories that were pretty much the same, then it would be a little sus. But if 4 people wrote stories that were similar but had differences, it's more likely they wrote the books by themselves.
 

Not-That-Bright

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felixcthecat

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did anyone read on sun herald about an italian man taking Jesus to court? this man says the church "invented the figure of Jesus Christ, modelling him on John of Gamala, a first-century Jew who fought against the Roman army."

hmm just a passage i read~! it's on page 50 titled "Italian man takes Jesus to court".
 
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HotShot

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Damage Inc. said:
It's "The Silmarillion". Many people consider it a holy book.

It contains just as much truth as The Bible.
lol thats the biggest BS i ever heard - truth in the bible -lol - MY ASS !
 

SashatheMan

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felixcthecat said:
did anyone read on sun herald about an italian man taking Jesus to court? this man says the church "invented the figure of Jesus Christ, modelling him on John of Gamala, a first-century Jew who fought against the Roman army."

hmm just a passage i read~! it's on page 50 titled "Italian man takes Jesus to court".

u mean this?
Priest Must Prove In Court Jesus Christ Did Exist


ROME -- Lawyers for a Roman Catholic priest have been ordered to appear in court next week after he was accused of unlawfully asserting that Jesus Christ really existed.

The Rev. Enrico Righi was named in a 2002 complaint filed by Luigi Cascioli after Righi wrote in a parish bulletin that Jesus did indeed exist, and that he was born of a couple named Mary and Joseph in Bethlehem and lived in Nazareth.

Cascioli, a lifelong atheist, claims that Righi violated an Italian law against fraudulently deceiving people. He considers the Gospels biased and other evidence of Jesus' existence scant.

Cascioli added that his ultimate goal is the European Court of Human Rights, where he intends to pursue his case against the church for what he calls "religious racism."
http://www.channel3000.com/family/6369069/detail.html
 

ur_inner_child

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Has anyone researched mythology traits or seen "The God Who Wasn't There"?

everyone, seriously, look up osiris-dionysus, a mythical hero and savior who outdates jesus.

http://www.bibleinterp.com/commentary/gandy_011701.htm

It [Christianity] was a continuation of Paganism by another name. The gospel story of Jesus is not the biography of an historical Messiah. It is a Jewish reworking of ancient Pagan myths of the dying and resurrecting Godman Osiris-Dionysus, which had been popular for centuries throughout the ancient Mediterranean.

The stories told about Osiris-Dionysus will no doubt sound familiar. He is the Son of God who is born to a virgin on the 25th of December before three shepherds. He is a prophet who offers his followers the chance to be born again through the rites of baptism. He is a wonderworker who raises the dead and miraculously turns water into wine at a marriage ceremony. He is God incarnate who dies at Easter, sometimes through crucifixion, but who resurrects on the third day. He is a savior who offers his followers redemption through partaking in a meal of bread and wine, symbolic of his body and blood. The Jesus story is a synthesis of the Jewish myth of the Messiah Joshua (in Greek Jesus) with these Pagan myths of the dying and resurrecting Godman.

It is hard for us today to imagine the Jesus story being consciously created, but this is because we have misunderstood ancient spirituality. Myths were not seen as untruths as they are now. They were understood as allegories of spiritual initiation, which encoded profound mystical teachings. Reworking old myths to create new ones was a standard practice in the ancient world.
 

Not-That-Bright

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http://www.xenutv.com/cults/hibelief1.rm
http://www.xenutv.com/cults/hibelief2.rm
http://www.xenutv.com/cults/hibelief3.rm
http://www.xenutv.com/cults/hibelief4.rm
http://www.xenutv.com/cults/hibelief5.rm
http://www.xenutv.com/cults/hibelief6.rm

It's a nice program, produced well. I wonder what some of the theists comments are on this program? Particularily the experiment in the first part with the children.
I just thought i'd quote this so that people can see the links again - for reference.

Children Experiment

I found the experiment with the children in part 1 quite interesting, it was really quite shocking yet I suppose - to be expected. They put different groups of children in a room with an empty box, they then told the children a story about a fox that lives in the box, however afterwards made sure to tell them that the fox did not exist and left the room.

After they left, some kids thought they had seen the fox, many were scared of it, and some were imagining hearing noises.

Even after they came in to explain that there was no fox in the box, and showed it to them - they still believed the fox was there and imagined that it had disappeared.

The great CARLOS!

You can click here to get a basic idea of what went on... james randi from www.randi.org trained an artist to make the appearance of being a medium. He then gave out fake flyers and mentioned fake towns/tv stations etc all to trick the australian media/public. It worked - despite how nonsensicle the claims of the great prophet 'carlos' were. He was selling 'magic crystals' which they had bought for a few dollars and people were offering to pay $10,000... Even after it came out that it was all a hoax, 'carlos' claims that people were ringing him saying 'we know what they've said about you is all a lie! we still believe in you!'.

Edit: I'm just going off on this slight tangent because to me the discussion of 'Does god exist?' should also include discussion of why we believe what we believe.
 
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ur_inner_child

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Not-That-Bright said:
I just thought i'd quote this so that people can see the links again - for reference.

Children Experiment
I found the experiment with the children in part 1 quite interesting, it was really quite shocking yet I suppose - to be expected. They put different groups of children in a room with an empty box, they then told the children a story about a fox that lives in the box, however afterwards made sure to tell them that the fox did not exist and left the room.

After they left, some kids thought they had seen the fox, many were scared of it, and some were imagining hearing noises.

Even after they came in to explain that there was no fox in the box, and showed it to them - they still believed the fox was there and imagined that it had disappeared.

The great CARLOS!
http://www.abc.net.au/science/correx/archives/randi4.htm

You can click the above link to get a basic idea of what went on... james randi from www.randi.org trained an artist to make the appearance of being a medium. He then gave out fake flyers and mentioned fake towns/tv stations etc all to trick the australian media/public. It worked - despite how nonsensicle the claims of the great prophet 'carlos' were. He was selling 'magic crystals' which they had bought for a few dollars and people were offering to pay $10,000... Even after it came out that it was all a hoax, 'carlos' claims that people were ringing him saying 'we know what they've said about you is all a lie! we still believe in you!'.
thats incredibly, incredibly interesting

furthering it, i'm curious to why people back in the day chose to filter out similar myths of a saviour eg osiris and hercules and many other heroes who all were the Son of God, of virgin birth, saved humankind, used bread and wine as symbolic representations of flesh and blood etc, whom all outdated Jesus, yet chose not to filter out Jesus and continue with it in the fashion of that experiment.

Why was there this ignorance?

Why was there such a resistance to the truth/Jesus in particular?
 

HotShot

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the children experiment, is a bit like stereotypign it hapappens all the time, for example we consider asian shit drivers. i learnt this by somone tellin me, and ever since i have been bit more careful around them.

so in that way its like how bears are believed to live in the woods and as result everyone is afraid to go into one, even when bears dont live in the woods. so its basically, a conditioning thingy.
 

Not-That-Bright

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HotShot said:
the children experiment, is a bit like stereotypign it hapappens all the time, for example we consider asian shit drivers. i learnt this by somone tellin me, and ever since i have been bit more careful around them.

so in that way its like how bears are believed to live in the woods and as result everyone is afraid to go into one, even when bears dont live in the woods. so its basically, a conditioning thingy.
It's not about stereotyping - however it has a bit to do with it... the experiment was basically about how once we have a belief, it is extremly hard for us to shake from it.. despite whatever evidence is put before us. I wonder if any psych students have done this experiment themselves (I doubt it since it involves children) or could shed more light on it.
 
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SashatheMan

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ur_inner_child said:
Has anyone researched mythology traits or seen "The God Who Wasn't There"?

everyone, seriously, look up osiris-dionysus, a mythical hero and savior who outdates jesus.

http://www.bibleinterp.com/commentary/gandy_011701.htm

It [Christianity] was a continuation of Paganism by another name. The gospel story of Jesus is not the biography of an historical Messiah. It is a Jewish reworking of ancient Pagan myths of the dying and resurrecting Godman Osiris-Dionysus, which had been popular for centuries throughout the ancient Mediterranean.

The stories told about Osiris-Dionysus will no doubt sound familiar. He is the Son of God who is born to a virgin on the 25th of December before three shepherds. He is a prophet who offers his followers the chance to be born again through the rites of baptism. He is a wonderworker who raises the dead and miraculously turns water into wine at a marriage ceremony. He is God incarnate who dies at Easter, sometimes through crucifixion, but who resurrects on the third day. He is a savior who offers his followers redemption through partaking in a meal of bread and wine, symbolic of his body and blood. The Jesus story is a synthesis of the Jewish myth of the Messiah Joshua (in Greek Jesus) with these Pagan myths of the dying and resurrecting Godman.

It is hard for us today to imagine the Jesus story being consciously created, but this is because we have misunderstood ancient spirituality. Myths were not seen as untruths as they are now. They were understood as allegories of spiritual initiation, which encoded profound mystical teachings. Reworking old myths to create new ones was a standard practice in the ancient world.

yeh after watching "the god who wasnt there" i read up about the similurities between jesus and ancient pagan gods. That guy in the video that was talking about that, makes more good points in the bonus footage. There was another story of apollonius of tyana that was basicly another guy like jesus who did miracles ect ect , but it was just burried in books.
 

SashatheMan

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Have you guys heard of a cosmological constant. That really makes me think and lean more towards being agnostic.
Its accepted by scientists that the universe is defined by a set of numbers.
Recreation of the universe has been done in a super computer simulation of the big bang, differnt values are set for things like gravity etc, to make the simulation of our current universe. But the values have to be quite precise. Tiniest adjustment for example to gravity in the simulation, will not form the universe that we live in right now. that goes for all other values. But the adjustment of gravity for example can be within 1% to what it is now, for the universe to still form to something very similar to what it is now.
All the other laws are also equaly fine tuned.
For awhile it was believed that these laws could randomly be set, to what they are, even though the chance was large, it was still possible.
But then a new fundemental prperty of the universe was discovered, but it was so precise , it seemed no rational law can explain it. It was an unti-gravity force, which is called the cosmological constant. And when cosmologists calculated its effect on the evolution of the universe, they realised it was VERY finely tuned.
It is fine tuned to One part in 10^120. this is equal to
1 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000.
If it was anything else, the universe would be so drasticly differnt it would be impossible for us to ever exist.
no scientist/mathematicion would bother to claim it was by chance, the odds were just to great.
But there was an alternate explanation that didnt go down the path of god, or it being a creation from god.
We know that our planet, is part of many, orbiting in a solar system , part a galaxy that has many solar systems, which is part of a universe with trillions of galaxies, it could be possible that our universe was just part of a unthinkable number of random other universes. Kinda like that scene in "men in Black" where the aliens play with a marbols which are really universes.
This theory is called multiverse theory , it basicly allows the probability of this cosmological constant to exist. Because it would not seem so amazing for such a precise number to be fine tuned so that our universe could be formed.


Watch the Documentary "What we still don't know" available at some T. sites , which explains this better then i did. Its really interesting
 

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ur_inner_child said:
thats incredibly, incredibly interesting

furthering it, i'm curious to why people back in the day chose to filter out similar myths of a saviour eg osiris and hercules and many other heroes who all were the Son of God, of virgin birth, saved humankind, used bread and wine as symbolic representations of flesh and blood etc, whom all outdated Jesus, yet chose not to filter out Jesus and continue with it in the fashion of that experiment.

Why was there this ignorance?

Why was there such a resistance to the truth/Jesus in particular?
Because the Roman empire's culture spread further than that of greece and egypt.
 

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The problem with this topic is that there has been no solid evidence to convincingly prove that God does or does not exist.
 

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