Post Any Evidence For God Here

[jonesthecurl]

So which secular historians wrote the stuff which your doctor claims as evidence for his claim that the bible has this real prophecy in it?

[tzor]

Well yeah, that makes sense since anyone who claimed to be a Christian was put to death at the time. So would the works of anyone who wrote about it be burned as well most likely.

Not at that time. Rome generally treated the Christians as a Jewish Cult at first; it was only when the cult started converting non Romans in Rome that the Romans started to persecute them for their Atheism (Note that to the Romans an atheist was one who did not worship the Roman gods; you could worship anyone you liked as long as you worshiped their gods also). Israel was the only part of the empire that did not have the mandate to worship the Roman Gods and it also applied to all Jews in the Empire.

But the real reason may be somewhat more dull; most early Christians thought the second coming was practically any day now so they didn't bother to write things. It was only when they realized that this wasn't going to be the case and the Apostles were dying off did they think of writing things. So the first few decades of the "followers of the way" were kept orally.

In any event, it's important to note that the number of historians at the time could be expressed as a binary number; there was either one or there was none at any given time. There was no press of any kind whatsoever.

[PLAYER57832]

P.S. whihc secular historians record the price for which Judas sold Jesus?

Why would they have even bothered? Jesus was not considered a great figure except to his followers... still few in number until some time after his death.

As Jesus said, "A prophet in his own land....". Might as well add "in his own time" as well...

[PLAYER57832]

They (the Catholic Church) thought that slavery was perfectly fine, absolutely OK, and then they didn't, and what is the point of the Catholic Church if they say "well we couldn't know any better because nobody else did." Then what are they for?!?!

Actually they did not do any such thing. The first papal letter on slavery was, ironically, a few years before the New World was discovered and it was about the treatment of the natives of the Canary Islands.

Granted, the Catholic Church was not exceptionally vocal about slavery in the Americas and it didn't help that most of the letters by the Pope to the bishops in the Untied States were generally ignored, but it is wrong to say that the Catholic Church was ever a supporter of the racial generational slavery (wherein you owned not only the person but the children of said person) as practiced in the United States.

Tzor... there was also serious question as to whether non-Europeans were truly human, or "as human" as whites. Its easy to justify bad treatment of people who are not considered your equal, perhaps not really and truly people in the full sense.
(not saying ALL thought that, but it was a serious discussion).

[PLAYER57832]

It just a false question. You want to set up demands that just don't exist. Religion is not science. Religious texts were not set up with the same fact standards as science. This doesn't mean fiction versus fact, it means that the people reading and viewing these texts have a very different way of viewing the world, perceiving things than modern science does.

I would disagree with one point; religious texts were written with the science of the day in the minds of the writers. The writings were not a "science" textbook, however. They were not strict history books as we generally consider history books today. The truth of the Bible does not imply that everything is scientifically correct. (Let's face it, a hundred years from now people will laugh at some of the things we believed were scientific "facts.") The books of the Bible need to be considered in the context they were written in and the purpose for the writing of the book in the first place.

I believe I was saying just that...

"The Bible tells us how to go to heaven; not how the heavens go."

Not understanding the purpose of a book of the Bible is the surest way of totally missing the point of the book of the Bible.

Like I said....

[PLAYER57832]

Hmmm, wikipedia or the global catholic network, which is more likely to give a full account? I read the whole ETWN articla and it doesn't even mention the change in law about claiming freedom or the approval of mulim slaves.

So I went looking, and rejecting any sources that were worded with only as much detail and in a very similar way to wikipedia (becuase I know a lot of sites will quote it without credit). How about the London School of Economics, where I found this paper:

http://www2.lse.ac.uk/economicHistory/R ... eSmith.pdf

Starts on the catholic section towards the bottom of page 7, I'm not going to quote it in here but it's pretty clear that the early catholic church through until after the time of Paul III, while not all endorsing slavery, often failed to condemn it. Others outright allowed it as long as the slave was a heretic.

There is a HUGE difference between what the Roman Catholic church said and says and wha the Bible says. Roman Catholics sometimes like to pretend they are the only Bible followers, the only Christians and certainly the only "true" church, but there are several million Christians who disagree.

So, are you discussing the Bible or the Roman Catholic Church?

[jonesthecurl]

P.S. whihc secular historians record the price for which Judas sold Jesus?

Why would they have even bothered? Jesus was not considered a great figure except to his followers... still few in number until some time after his death.

As Jesus said, "A prophet in his own land....". Might as well add "in his own time" as well...

PLAYER and others, please stay out of this bit.
All I am doing is picking one of Viceroy's miraculously accurate predictions in the bible, at random, and questioning it.
Here is what he said, or rather quoted... (It was in one of his walls of text which I know people akip over - that's why I'm trying to keep my bit of the conversation down to one bite-size, readable bit)

In the fifth century B.C. a prophet named Zechariah declared that the Messiah would be betrayed for the price of a slave—thirty pieces of silver, according to Jewish law-and also that this money would be used to buy a burial ground for Jerusalem's poor foreigners (Zechariah 11:12-13). Bible writers and secular historians both record thirty pieces of silver as the sum paid to Judas Iscariot for betraying Jesus, and they indicate that the money went to purchase a "potter's field," used—just as predicted—for the burial of poor aliens (Matthew 27:3-10).

(Probability of chance fulfillment = 1 in 1011.)

[crispybits]

Hmmm, wikipedia or the global catholic network, which is more likely to give a full account? I read the whole ETWN articla and it doesn't even mention the change in law about claiming freedom or the approval of mulim slaves.

So I went looking, and rejecting any sources that were worded with only as much detail and in a very similar way to wikipedia (becuase I know a lot of sites will quote it without credit). How about the London School of Economics, where I found this paper:

http://www2.lse.ac.uk/economicHistory/R ... eSmith.pdf

Starts on the catholic section towards the bottom of page 7, I'm not going to quote it in here but it's pretty clear that the early catholic church through until after the time of Paul III, while not all endorsing slavery, often failed to condemn it. Others outright allowed it as long as the slave was a heretic.

There is a HUGE difference between what the Roman Catholic church said and says and wha the Bible says. Roman Catholics sometimes like to pretend they are the only Bible followers, the only Christians and certainly the only "true" church, but there are several million Christians who disagree.

So, are you discussing the Bible or the Roman Catholic Church?

The quote Tzor responded to that got the response that you responded to was quite clearly and specifically about the catholic church...

[tzor]

There is a HUGE difference between what the Roman Catholic church said and says and what the Bible says.

Technically speaking the Bible says nothing on racial slavery. Slavery in the time of the Old Testament and in the time of Rome was so vastly different from the African Slave trade that anything written about it in the Bible simply cannot apply to the later invention of racial slavery. No southern slave owner ever followed the "Biblical" laws on the treatment of slaves.

[jonesthecurl]

All I am doing is picking one of Viceroy's miraculously accurate predictions in the bible, at random, and questioning it.
Here is what he said, or rather quoted... (It was in one of his walls of text which I know people akip over - that's why I'm trying to keep my bit of the conversation down to one bite-size, readable bit)

In the fifth century B.C. a prophet named Zechariah declared that the Messiah would be betrayed for the price of a slave—thirty pieces of silver, according to Jewish law-and also that this money would be used to buy a burial ground for Jerusalem's poor foreigners (Zechariah 11:12-13). Bible writers and secular historians both record thirty pieces of silver as the sum paid to Judas Iscariot for betraying Jesus, and they indicate that the money went to purchase a "potter's field," used—just as predicted—for the burial of poor aliens (Matthew 27:3-10).

(Probability of chance fulfillment = 1 in 1011.)

So the list of the secular historians is the same as the list of scientists who confirm your claim that the universe is made up of three elements:
i.e. none.

Your impeccable authorities are looking sparse on the ground.

[PLAYER57832]

There is a HUGE difference between what the Roman Catholic church said and says and what the Bible says.

Technically speaking the Bible says nothing on racial slavery. Slavery in the time of the Old Testament and in the time of Rome was so vastly different from the African Slave trade that anything written about it in the Bible simply cannot apply to the later invention of racial slavery. No southern slave owner ever followed the "Biblical" laws on the treatment of slaves.

That is debateable. That is, I essentially agree with you, but I can point to plenty of folks (scholars, I mean) who will disagree. The whole idea of what slavery was back then and today differ. In some ways, slavery back then was not that different from wage employment today. (note, the "in some ways"...), particularly if you refer to the biblical model of slavery, with all its rules for how people should be treated, etc.

However, this was true in the ancient world, in general. Some of what is commonly believed, for example, about Egyptian slavery is not really correct, etc.

That said, in the "dark" ages and the Middle ages, many Europeans thought that "others" were inferior, perhaps not really and truly human and have used that view to justify ill treatment, including slavery. This extended even to "lower" classes of Europeans, who many considered to be designated as inferior by God. The whole "Divine right" and so forth... My point is that your claims that the Roman Catholic church was really arguing against slavery was not entirely accurate, and the responses were not fully accurate, either because what we think of as slavery and what was being discussed back then were not really the same.

[crispybits]

Can you clarify what the differences between "modern" race slavery as seen a hundred or two years ago and "ancient" slavery were player? Because it seems to me in both cases (and at the very heart of the matter) is that one human being purchased or otherwise obtained ownership of another human being. This is the fundamental moral point that eventually provided the force for slavery to be abolished around the world (as far as possible, I suspect there are still some modern slaves but on nothing like the scale of earlier eras).

Either "owning" a human being is wrong, or it is subject to cultural interpretation based on the societal values of the time. And the point is that it is a good litmus test for absolute morality itself. If any religion had access to the absolute moral truth, then they should have been outspoken against slavery since day 1. Not as in "Treat your slaves nicely" but "Do not have slaves. Period." Or they should still be saying "Slavery is OK". It can't change if it's absolute. So either there is no absolute moral standard, or religions (and by this I mean mostly the monotheistic abrahamic religions that did endorse slavery at times in history, I havent researched buddhist or hindu views on the matter) did not have access to that absolute moral truth that owning another person is wrong. Either way it looks pretty damning for these particular man-made cults.

[PLAYER57832]

Can you clarify what the differences between "modern" race slavery as seen a hundred or two years ago and "ancient" slavery were player? Because it seems to me in both cases (and at the very heart of the matter) is that one human being purchased or otherwise obtained ownership of another human being.

First, as tzor is indicating, many argue that slavery was not racial. Rather, it would be similar groups with slightly different cultures. (I am not arguing either point per se, just saying that I have heard many arguments on all sides of this).

Second, biblical slavery mostly came about in specific situations, someone owed someone money or encrued an obligation of some sort and used their body as a kind of payment. There were other cases, but to think of US slave markets with slaves auctioned on the block is not, perhaps, correct. In fact, it likely was more like someone contracted for someone else's services, in a manner we might call "employment", though employment more at the lower end of the spectrum, or perhaps bond servitude.. remember, that was something into which some people entered essentially willingly.
Some of our views are also tinged by the European ideas. Ironically, serfs were perhaps treated far worse than slaves in the ancient world. Even supposedly "free" peasants and servants were not necessarily really free in the sense we think of today. They might well have envied the treatment of slaves in ancient times.

Earlier slavery was not so much based on an idea of absolute inferiority as a matter of fulfilling some kind of obligation from one person to another -- that might be because the other group lost a war or because of something more immediate like one person somehow owing some other person money. The term of enslavement was a akin to contracted employment (though remember times were very different, so I am saying it was "equivalent" only in very relative manner)
US slavery, and the enslavement of Southern/Northern Native populations, those in some other parts of the world, to contrast, were based on the idea that these other groups really had no basic rights, they were animals who needed to be enlightened or "brought to God", or just plain not worthy of any real consideration. Given how the upper classes thought of lower classes of their own race, it is no wonder that this other, fully foreign and different group was treated so very poorly. But, even the more charitable (some priests, missionaries and the like, some adventurers of various types did come to appreciate natives, but that was looked down upon heavily... "going Native" was a very, very derisive term back then)

This is the fundamental moral point that eventually provided the force for slavery to be abolished around the world (as far as possible, I suspect there are still some modern slaves but on nothing like the scale of earlier eras).

Either "owning" a human being is wrong, or it is subject to cultural interpretation based on the societal values of the time. And the point is that it is a good litmus test for absolute morality itself. If any religion had access to the absolute moral truth, then they should have been outspoken against slavery since day 1. Not as in "Treat your slaves nicely" but "Do not have slaves. Period." So either there is no absolute moral standard, or religions (and by this I mean mostly the monotheistic abrahamic religions that did endorse slavery at times in history, I havent researched buddhist or hindu views on the matter) did not have access to that absolute moral truth that owning another person is wrong. Either way it looks pretty damning for these particular man-made cults.[/quote]

Part of this is why I said its important to distinguish between the Bible and what Roman Catholics do or have said about the Bible. The Bible does not endorse slavery in the sense of saying "slavery is a good thing... go ahead and do it". Rather, slavery was a part of humanity at the time. Slavery evolved, came about, not really as an alternative to freedom, rather as an alternative to death. This is why its important to see both parts of the Old Testament and the New Testament as progressions, and to understand more than just a few bits and pieces. At the time you are saying humans are being sold, it was very common, for example for women to be "given" or "sold" into marriage. Certainly, there is no doubt there was a lot of nastiness happening, but there was also marriage, there was family and children and people living happily.

Saying that because money is exchanged these people were sold like goods, like blacks put on the auction block beside cattle (sometimes given less value than cattle or horses!) is like saying that today's sports figures, who get traded, etc.. are being sold on an auction block in slavery. (seriously, in many cases, that is a far better comparison than auctioning off a goat or some such).

As for how the New Testament and Christ dealt with slavery and women's rights, note that he often used similar language and instruction. The giist is that when he was talking to the weak, the enslaved or women, the powerless in that society, he told them to endure, to hold their head up high and show they are basically "the better person", shaming the abuser. In that society, there was little other choice. The only people who really had freedom as we think of it were the wealthy and powerful, most everyone else lived very dictated lives, though men had more freedom than women.

On the other hand, when he talked to the powerful, it was a different message.. it was treat those under you with kindness, be fair, etc, etc, etc.

Overriding all of this were some other concepts, like foregiveness and "judge not".

The fault of Christianity is probably best put by by what may be truth or a fable regarding Ghandi-- someone asked him why he was not a Christian, he replied "I have never met one". he was not saying he had never met anyone who claimed to be a Christian, but that being a"true Christian" is such a high standard he had never met anyone who lived up to the standard. Except.. Christians say that only one man met that model. The rest of us only try, but are forgiven, none-the-less.

Virtually all of your criticisms are about people and people's ideas, not the Bible itself. People are inherently faulty. That is why Christians believe we need Christ.

[crispybits]

I'm going to put my response to the slavery section in a hidden box, because while it's an interesting debate I think it's actually a distraction from the main point.

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The main point is who has access to the actual absolute moral standard? And by what mechanism? Lets assume (and we know better but for the sake of argument) that I wish to bow down to god and worship him and carry out his will for the rest of my life, who should I go to to receive his message?

(and if the answer is simply "read the bible and follow your heart" then I've already done that, and my heart told me to reject christianity and all other organised religion, and therefore all well formed god concepts entirely)

[tzor]

The main point is who has access to the actual absolute moral standard? And by what mechanism? Lets assume (and we know better but for the sake of argument) that I wish to bow down to god and worship him and carry out his will for the rest of my life, who should I go to to receive his message?

Yes, but for the sake of argument ... someone will come to you.

Mind you, that's just for the sake of argument.

You know there is an entire Old Testament passage about this.

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Who would have thought?