Atheists and the soul

Discussion in 'Religion' started by DaveC426913, Sep 11, 2014.

?

Do you sign?

  1. Yes

    5 vote(s)
    33.3%
  2. No.

    10 vote(s)
    66.7%
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  1. Arne Saknussemm trying to figure it all out Valued Senior Member

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    It's a bit complex, but I think you know the story. Jesus (the man) literally sweated blood the night He prayed in the garden Gethsemane because being omniscient, He knew what He as in for commencing in just a few hours and over the next day. He concluded His prayer session with words to the effect,"Father, Your will be done." I think you know that Christians believe that Jesus was fully human and at the same time fully divine. He was and is His Father in Heaven while at the same time He was and is the so-called 'Son'. He knew and understood His self-appointed mission to sacrifice Himself in the place of sinful mankind. (You know your John 3:16 too, right?)

    God, The Father, chose to call his human incarnation (his avatar - this is the original meaning of the word - a human incarnation of a god) His 'Son' not because Jesus was His Son in the literal, human sense of the word, but because He wanted us to understand the close and loving relationship between that Man Jesus and Himself - how much Jesus meant to Him...

    So yes, He freely made the sacrifice, but as a human being just like you or me, He could not help being terribly frightened. To his day has anyone dies a more horrific death?

    I refer you also to John 15:13 - such was Jesus' selflessness. You also will recall that when the soldiers came to arrest Him, and they asked if he were Jesus of Nazareth, He answered, "I am he." and bowled them right over (twice). He could have easily escaped as He had escaped angry mobs many times in the past, but this was His self-appointed hour to redeem humanity.
     
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  3. cluelusshusbund + Public Dilemma + Valued Senior Member

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    What sacrifice???... im perty sure Jesus/God got exactly what he wanted sinse he intentionally created the whole mess to turn out the way it did.!!!
     
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  5. FOLZONI Registered Senior Member

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    Greetings, cluelusshusbund and Arne Saknussemm!
    Now we have the Gospel of Judas people argue over whether Judas was actually helping Jesus by betraying him - and other evidence in John's Gospel shows that the beloved disciple can only be Judas Iscariot himself (I'll give you these references if you need 'em)!

    We are dealing here with heavily embellished tales, not reportage of actual historical events!

    FOLZONI
     
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  7. Arne Saknussemm trying to figure it all out Valued Senior Member

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    If you've made up your mind already and have worked out God's master plan and intentions, understand free will, God and the devil, what are you even asking questions for?
     
  8. Arne Saknussemm trying to figure it all out Valued Senior Member

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    :huh: The events reported in The Gospels have more reliable eyewitnesses and more accurate preserved copies than any other ancient historical event. Do you doubt any other early Roman events? There are far fewer historical records that have endured chronicling those, than the story of Jesus If you choose to doubt the historicity of the Gospels just because it suits you, there's not much else to discuss. Bye.
     
  9. Trooper Secular Sanity Valued Senior Member

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    Not everyone agrees on the historical reliability of the gospels but who gives a shit? The gospels can say whatever the hell they want. Can we use them for a moral guide? Are they logical? No, no, they are not. The logical contradictions in the bible are astounding. Take Deuteronomy 5:17 for instance, Thou shalt not kill, but a short time later your god demands it, why? Well, the justification goes something like this. Deuteronomy 7:6—For thou art an holy people unto the Lord thy God: the Lord thy God hath chosen thee to be a special people unto himself, above all people that are upon the face of the earth.

    Killing is not a crime, if you’re the chosen ones, if you're special.

    Do you believe in genocide? Are you a racist? Are you homophobic? Are you a misogynist, a psychopath, a murderer, a megalomaniac? Your god is.

    You see, when we cease to approach these historical figures and their writings as being sanctified, we lose the illusion that they are holy.

    Historical reliability of the Gospels
     
  10. Arne Saknussemm trying to figure it all out Valued Senior Member

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    You attempt to refute the new testament by quoting the old. Is that logical?
     
  11. Trooper Secular Sanity Valued Senior Member

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    Is it a different god? Did he change? Did he repent?
     
  12. Arne Saknussemm trying to figure it all out Valued Senior Member

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    Sorry. I'm not taking the bait. If you don't know about or particularly believe in something, why not just keep quiet instead of making a fool of yourself? I am not interested in debating with cranks.
     
  13. Trooper Secular Sanity Valued Senior Member

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    He has repented a few times, hasn't he, Arne? Just imagine a god that needs to repent.
     
  14. cluelusshusbund + Public Dilemma + Valued Senior Member

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    I dont know of anybody who has a more open mind than i do an you'r answrs might change my curent thankin... so... do you agree or disagree wit what i said:::

    "Jesus/God got exactly what he wanted sinse he intentionally created the whole mess to turn out the way it did.!!!"

    Hi FOLZONI... welcome to Sciforums

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    Whether i thank ther true or not... i just discuss the stories people tell.!!!
     
  15. sculptor Valued Senior Member

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    8,466
    is evolution evidence that GOD is trying again and again to "get it right"?
     
  16. gmilam Valued Senior Member

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    3,522
    Since the new testament falls apart without the old - yes.
     
  17. iceaura Valued Senior Member

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    30,994
    Where did you get the notion that no atheists recognize the existence of souls?

    Probably the majority of the atheists who have ever lived recognized the importance of souls, the spiritual aspect or level of human life, and so forth. This is fundamental to most atheistic religions, obvious in the artistic and literary work of atheistic societies, unavoidably central in modern as well as traditional spiritual endeavors (music may be the clearest example), and so forth.
     
  18. Captain Kremmen All aboard, me Hearties! Valued Senior Member

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    Are you sure that you mean omniscient?
    That Jesus knew everything that it is possible to know.
     
  19. FOLZONI Registered Senior Member

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    Greetings, cluelusshusband.

    How true! And very important that you do discuss it too - especially as religion continues to have powerful effects on our societies!

    Discussing the stories people tell can be scientific too - historical sciences trying to explain the origins of legends (including religious ones, along with the origins of these religions).

    They can be very exciting too. What are the actual historical events that occurred at the beginning of Christianity? E.g. we see in I Corinthians chapter 1 that Paul is addressing people who are only semi-Christian, people still strongly connected to the John Baptist sect (i.e. Apollo).

    It is of course very hard to extract scientifically what the underlying answers might be though!!!

    FOLZONI
     
  20. Aqueous Id flat Earth skeptic Valued Senior Member

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    6,152
    Dearly beloved: using the evolved trait of inferring cause and effect, let us construct ice cream castles in the air so that we can for all eternity enjoy these wonderful afternoon sundaes. Since, as we know, man does not live by bread alone and woman does like her whipped cream with a cherry on top.

    If rationality were more than a superficial program it might hold up to religious programming. But tell the vulnerable mind it will live forever and all bets are off. The self preservation instinct is fully engaged, clamped to the jugular, never to let go until the sheep are wrestled to the ground, eviscerated, with nothing but scraps left for the scavengers.
    My power to exorcise demons peaked last week with the full moon, but perhaps energized by your clairvoyant detection of this . . . this plaintive cry . . . I may succeed, Oh Great Zen Master. :worship:

    Notice how this thread began as bait for atheists, then all the Bible thumpers rolled into town? Of course it's probably no more than 1 or 2 people and their Sock Puppet Army of Zealots (SPAZ), trolling for Jesus. I think they get an extra virgin thrown in after the Rapture if they can make you holler "uncle".

    There are no eyewitnesses. Just the irrational belief in legend as historical narrative. Events are not "reported" in the Gospel, they are woven out of oral tradition--legend.

    Apologetics are useless here. Inaccuracies occur at all levels in the process of building the legend of Jesus. A few examples of some of the worst kind of inaccuracies:

    (1) The link from Jesus to David is seriously flawed. Two lineages are given, which purport to trace descent from David to Joseph, who is not even Jesus' biological father. And yet the lineages do not even agree. They can't even agree on who the father of Joseph was, by which it's plainly evident that both versions are elaborate hoaxes, designed to scam naive and vulnerable minds.

    (2) The legend contrives the death of Judas as an afterthought, probably to reinforce the pretense of justice for the wicked. But it's another botched invention. In one case Judas hangs himself and in the other he stumbles on a tract of land he bought with the blood money, breaking his neck in the fall.

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    All the more elaborate.

    (3) The legend contrives the most phenomenal kind of magic, the reanimation of Lazarus four days after death. That way vulnerable readers are left to infer he was not just sleeping or fainted. Yet, as shocking as this news would be to anyone who heard it, it is only fabricated in the Gospel of John. It appears nowhere in the synoptic gospels.

    (4) The Gnostic versions corroborate little or nothing of the Christian versions. They forego the legendary approach altogether, presenting Jesus as a featureless mythical archetype, wooden, as he is depicted in the Book of Revelation.

    Of course we could build this list like some folks do, into "100 top flaws in the Bible", "1000 Biblical errors", etc. Personally, I prefer the way Isaac Asimov laid this out in his Guide to the Bible nearly 50 years ago, when Bible thumping was generally regarded as a display of shameful ignorance.

    Nonsense. The preferred medium for centuries was papyrus, which survives from the first few centuries as fragments. The lack of preservation makes it impossible to know where the legend of Jesus originated, what source material was used to produce which texts, whether it was entirely oral tradition or whether a corruption of some other


    Code:
    ca. A.D.		200	250		300	350	450
    
    Matthew				P45		B	Sin.       
    Mark				P45		B	Sin.	A
    Luke				P4,P45,P75	B	Sin.	A
    John			P66	P45,P75		B	Sin.	A
    Acts				P45		B	Sin.	A
    Romans-Hebrews		P46			B	Sin.	A
    James-Jude					P72,B	Sin.	A
    Apocalypse			P47			Sin.	A
    More Nonsense. The Gospels are legends left as ruined fragments of papyrus centuries after the events they purport to relate. By contrast there are thousands of tablets thousands of years older, recovered from Mesopotamia alone.

    Of course people wrote things for all kinds or reasons, and more than to record history. Consider this Babylonian tablet predating Pythagoras by a thousand years or so:

    4 is the length and 5 the diagonal. What is the breadth? Its size is not known. 4 times 4 is 16. 5 times 5 is 25. You take 16 from 25 and there remains 9. What times what shall I take in order to get 9? 3 times 3 is 9. 3 is the breadth.​


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  21. DaveC426913 Valued Senior Member

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    No need to speak of me in the third person. I'm right here. Ask me instead of guessing my thoughts.
     
  22. DaveC426913 Valued Senior Member

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    And I am not interested in countenancing ad hominems in this thread.

    Don't be calling anybody a fool or a crank.

    Address the argument, not the arguer.
     
  23. DaveC426913 Valued Senior Member

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    Back on topic please.

    This thread has nothing to do with Jesus or the old testament or the new testament. And it only has to do with god inasmuch as the supposition of an eternal soul co-supposes that god exists.

    Subsequent off-topic posts will be reported.
     
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