₦airaland Forum

@ experts

That crap you've posted was written over 900 years after the supposed life of Jesus and yet you claim it has precedence.
In Christianity, there's a thing called Diabolical Mimicry. It's basically a way to describe how earlier, authentic work is only fit for the trash can. It's totally illogical.
Islam works much the same way - "anything that came before is wrong except for what we decide to keep and use for ourselves". That's known as "plagiarism" in the real world. To make matters worse, Islam took the Christ figure and demoted him. That's simply known as "Being assholes".


@ olabowale

So you acknowledge being a fawning, slobbering slave over the shoes of your god and by the looks of it, you're proud of it. Good luck. You'll probably need it.
You should note that being a slave and being a servant are two different things.
Servants get rewarded or punished. Slaves are merely used and then discarded. The man with a brain does neither - he freely chooses to follow his god.
I know which of the three I would rather be.

the Biblical manuscripts have been heavily influenced by Egyptian mythology and Greek philosophy.

Actually, you could probably add well over a dozen other belief systems and religions to that list.

Its a common fact that no single religion on earth is "pure". Every religion borrows from those before it and around it.

You addressed me, but you're not really telling me anything I don't already know. Suprising then that I consider myself a Christian isn't it?  

or is he different from the god of the old testament? lol

Which god of the Old Testament?
There are so many, one gets easily lost.

You've got to remember, the early Jews were not monotheistic. This idea of them worshipping just one god is not born out by the archeological evidence. It's a much later evolution of their religion. Back at the time of the Exodus they worshipped dozens of different deities. Monotheism didn't come in until much, much later. The Old Testament authors decried polytheism but they left enough evidence in there to for even the Bible to show that polytheism was the norm.

In my opinion, the New Testament god is not the Old Testament god. Logically, he can't be. The Old Testament god is for Jews only. The New Testament god is for Christians. Claiming that they are one and the same is contradictory to all evidence and logic that we possess.

The Old Testament was used to sell the new religion of Christianity (or possibly to sell a reversion back to an even older one). Other than that it contains very little that is relevant to Christianity.

One would have thought that Islam would have learnt from this and picked a different set of scriptures to base their god upon. As it is, they're now stuck with the same god as the Jews and only differentiating by calling him Allah. It's no wonder the two sides are at each other's throats. The sad thing is, Islam had a chance to develop the tribal god into something more palatable. Instead, they chose to regress him to the base Hebrew god from the beginning of the OT.

@KunleOshob

I stated that there is no record of Christ outside of scripture. I'm well aware of the list that you have posted but that does nothing to defeat my argument at all as they are all considered scripture, even if they aren't included in the Bible. The fact remains that most of those books were actually considered for inclusion into the New Testament.
What independent verification do you have?

Fact - there is none. Zero. Nothing. Nil. Nada. Zilch.


By the way. The Gospel of Thomas is not considered "heretical". It's considered "heterodox". Eusebius may have viewed it as heretical but the Catholic Church and most other denominations do not consider it to be so. It should be noted that Eusebius and his fore-runner Origen were the founding fathers of dogma and fundamentalism. Take anything that those two imbeciles wrote with a pinch of salt.

Like AKO says - "On what basis?"

There is nothing in Christianity that condemns organ transplants. In fact, it's actively encouraged.
Even Jehovah's Witnesses authorise organ donorship with the only stipulation being that the organ be drained of blood before transplant. Although this isn't always practical, it doesn't amount to a ban on transplants. Whatever the mother's religious convictions, there is nothing in Christianity that says she is forbidden to donate.

To my knowledge there are only one or two religions that have banned organ donation - Japanese Shinto being one of them, but even their attitude is changing.

Why should I keep having to hunt for links? You have Google don't you?

Anyway. I found this one:

http://www.religioustolerance.org/chr_10cl.htm

You can find the Book of the Dead at:

http://www.sacred-texts.com/egy/ebod/index.htm

the commandments were from God abi?

The Commandments were probably originally plagiarised from the Egyptian Book of the Dead before being given a Hebrew twist:

'Not have I despised god, Not have I killed, Not have I fornicated, Not have I despoiled the thing of the god, not have I defiled the wife of a man, Not have I cursed god, Not have I borne false witness'.

As part of the Egyptian (Hyskos) royalty, the Hebrews (and Moses in particular) would have been well aware of this book and would have studied it many times. It would have quite literally been their Bible before the exodus.

Jesus is a prophet of allah.

This has to be one of the biggest jokes that there is - a universal god prophesising for a tribal god.
Only the Muslims could be so illogical.

Allah is no different from Yaweh. The former came out of the latter and the latter evolved out of the Egyptian god Set.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Set_(god)

The fact that the Christian Christ is the "arch-enemy" of Set and therefore the arch-enemy of Allah and Yaweh, always seems to slip the literalists minds of all 3 religions.

it is a historical fact that Jesus existed even pontius pillate wrote about him in his reports to rome. Such records (independent of the bible) are still available today in roman arcives

That simply isn't true.
There's only one independent mention of Jesus and that's now believed to be a hoax added onto a bit of work by the Roman historian Josephus.
Other than that, outside of scripture, there is absolutely nothing.

Kunle, I get your point but I want to be clear on something, do we really know who jesus was?

Does it really matter? Seriously?
If he were a real, historical person would that make you look upon Him differently?

Kunle just about hit the nail on the head. Jesus is Love. It doesn't matter one bit if he existed physically or not. I believe the idea is what is important - not the man. The idea is Love. Jesus is Love therefore God is Love. What can be more important than that?

^^ Only the blind take it as the perfect word of God.

The Old Testament is part of the library of the history of the Hebrew nation. The writers were inspired by their god to set down the Old Testament to record how they saw the influence of that god shaping their nation.
But tieing the god into the nation means that it is utterly and totally impossible to avoid bias and politics. Hence why it is utterly illogical to take the Bible as the "perfect word of God".

funkilicious.

Tell the pastor that you're tired of being treated like a slave.
If he doesn't like that, it's his problem and he can shove it.

My pastor told me this: "Treat a church just like you would anything else. Shop around. Find one you like. Don't just settle for the first one you come across. We don't settle for second best or something that makes us unhappy anywhere else in life so why should a church be any different?"

@KunleOshob

Although I  agree with your post, let's not kid ourselves here. One has to understand how hard it is to truly love in the context that you've given.
True love is totally selfless. That means you love without consideration of wether or not you're being loved back. You love purely for Love's sake. And that's a very difficult thing to do. In fact, the only time I can really think of such a thing coming into play is in the way that a parent loves a child.
Is it any wonder that the Catholic Church - a church which bans marriage and the fathering of children for members of it's priesthood, is so very out of touch then? It's not hypocrisy. It's just a plain healthy dose of ignorance.

Religion is single-handedly responsible for Europe being prosperous.
It was the Catholics that STOLE - math, engineering, geometry, etc.  out of Africa and called it their own during the Crusades.
After the Crusades - came the REniassiance.

Idiot.
It's precisely because they stamped religion on the head during The Renaissance that Europe became the force that it is. The Renaissance led directly to The Reformation and put the onus much more on humanism and secularism.

And the last time I looked, the Crusades were in the Middle East - not Africa. How could they have taken "math, engineering, geometry, etc from Africa during the Crusades when the Greeks and Romans were practitioners of both, thousands of years prior to the Crusades?

Judging from your comments it would seem that Atheism is the opiate of the uneducated.

@KunleOshob
Professor Richard Friedman - Who wrote the Bible.
You can get the paperback online.

@Chrisbenogor
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Documentary_hypothesis

The 10 Commandments are Hebrew and have no bearing on today in the context they were given back then.

One and Two emphasise freedom from bondage in Egypt and freedom from it's many gods.

The Third refers to not using the name of Yaweh in magical practice - not blasphemy.

The Fourth, resting on the Sabbath, is because a nomadic tribe fighting it's way around Canaan had to take a day off or it would overheat. Enforcing a day of rest meant the tribe could be kept healthy.

The Fifth. "Honor thy mother and father"  means "submit to your parent's authority". A statement calling upon the young to upkeep Hebrew tradition.

The Sixth should read "Thou shalt not murder". Not "Thou shalt not kill. It only refers to murdering another tribe member. Everyone else is fair game.

The Seventh forbidding adultery is more for the sake of tribal cohesion. It was also considered imperative that a man was able to be certain that his children were his children. The Hebrews believed that when you died, you lived on in your offspring. This is why there's always emphasis on blooodlines in the Bible.

The Eighth refers to "man-theft". Not the minor crime of theft. A common crime back then was to kidnap and sell a man into slavery.

The Ninth. "Thou shalt not bear false witness" can be taken literally. As nearly every crime resulted in ostrasisation or death, it was imperative that the truth be told at a trial. Unlike most societies today, the rule was "Guilty until proven innocent".

The Tenth. "Thou shalt not covet" refers to covetting and dispossessing a man of his property in a spiritual sense. Basically an admonishment not to deprive a man of his rightful place in the tribal community.

Just take time to think on these things, and you will find that the NT cannot be properly understood or appreciated without the OT.

I have to disagree with that. The Old Testament did it's job - it sold the new religion. It should be left to the Jews. Apart from a couple of dodgy prophecies and a few manipulated bloodlines, it has nothing to offer Christianity.

If one has a very solid distinction between Judaism and Christianity, this idea immediately fades. You cannot understand the real essence of the Christian life if you only look to the NT.

This is a contradiction. The OT god is the god of the Jews. The NT god is the god of the Christians. They are not interchangeable.
The OT god is not relevant to Christianity unless one is studying how the Christian concept of Satan evolved. Other than that, the OT is only relevant on a historical basis, but even then, so much has been changed, lied about or doctored, that most of it has to be taken with a pinch of salt.

It does not appear that He would be warning them to search the Scriptures

My point is that it's exactly the opposite. It's a warning not to put all of one's faith in Scripture. edit Just looking back I can see one of Pastor's posts explaining why not.
Now, taking into account that the warnee is Christ and that the result of not heeding that warning is to miss Him, can that not be interpeted as a command of sorts? He's not really giving you any option in this one - it's "Ignore me and you miss me". "Get too engrossed in the fine print and you won't see the main contract". Knowing those are the consequences, does a devotee of Christ really have a choice?

So in, my opinion, this could be seen as a command. But the opposite to the one in the quotation above.

Personally, I'm not too hung up about the semantic side of things on this one and I like to stick by my original interpretation. I look at it as "I'm OK with the warning and that's enough for me to try to heed it".

edit Just looking back through this thread (I'm lazy and have to admit to even now not reading everything in it) I can see one of Pastor's posts talking about not deifying Scripture. I reckon that's another pretty good argument as to why the warning is there.

In John 5:39 did Jesus encourage us to search the scriptures or not?

I believe not. It takes it as read that one is already studying the scripture. So no.

@ pilgrim.
This has obviously descended well into the realms of semantics. But I would like to bring up a point I feel is pertinent.

A command is an order. We agree on that, yes?
But what about an admonishment or a warning? Wouldn't you say that it carries as much weight if the deliverer bears the same authority and if the purpose of the warning is to only bring about one end result?
I think that there's a claim to be made that in this particular scenario of John 5:39 a warning/admonishment is pretty indistiguishable from a command.

Let me give you an example:

I warn you not to cross a busy road blindfolded.
I order you not to cross a busy road blindfolded.

Although the first implies that you have a choice, if you are aware of the consequences of crossing the road blindfolded, do you really have any choice but to heed that warning? In this case, it's therefore no different from an order. Choice is implied but you have no option but to obey.

pilgrim.

Check cocoman4u's statement again.
He's saying that justcool did not allege. Justcool stated it as a fact. By saying that he alleged you are either being misleading or telling a lie as accused.
One doesn't need to allege when alluding to a fact.

Why didn't you take the time to go back and check instead of bursting in to scream out "Lie! Lie! Lie"? The one thing that I marvel at you guys is to pretend to ignore the facts so you can find a way of screaming what you should not. Please take it easy - the case is there just in case you might like to re-check.

Touche!!!

Reward him handsomely for trying to defend the murder of a 13 year old girl?

I try to be tolerant of all religions but whenever I come to this forum, I can't help going away thinking Islam is just a disgusting, inhumane form of slavery.

Rationalizing is a dangerous way to prove the existance of god.

An argument against free-thinking.

You truly are a slave of Allah. Not a servant. A slave.

are you sure that is exactly the way he said it and exactly the way it is or are we left to the ability of there apostles to render these things

Nobody is sure. We can only judge the words that are put before us and that's the best we can do.
Biblical study is one of assumption. We have to assume the identity of the writer and we have to assume that he speaks with authority. But no. We can never be sure.

Here's a wikipedia page that explains the alignment.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_of_Bethlehem#Astrological_event

I'm not for one moment claiming that there was a star floating about all over the place. Therefore my statement is not a farce.

I'm indicating that there was probably some sort of astronomical event that the early Christians found pertinent enough to include in the scriptural text in some way and that it explains how the idea of the Star of Bethlehem came about.
Indicators point to astronomy, the Sun and to a degree, astrology being important to early Christianity. Not really suprising when you look at the pagan religions and ideas of the time that it absorbed. The Star of Bethlehem was very probably based on that importance and there's no reason why the birth-date of Christ wasn't moved to match that occasion. It doesn't matter if an alignment was viewable or not - if they knew about it, it may explain how the star idea came to be. The fact that it has turned into the story that it has where they've got this massive star following everyone around and leading them everywhere, only reinforces the fact that they took astronomy/astrology seriously.
Also, remember that Christ was not born on the 25th of December as that date has much more to do with Mithras Day and wasn't given as Jesus' birth date until years later. From the texts, it would seem he was born September, although some scholars have put forward an argument for May if I remember rightly.

There are also some scholars who believe that the star could have been a very bright comet. Again, I read somewhere that there was one at about the same time of Christ's supposed birth which was recorded by astronomers as far away as China.

It's a difficult thing to pin down without knowing the exact year and time of Christ's birth. Like I said, discard the literal Biblical description, but there are plenty of theories that give quite convincing evidence that the Star of Bethlehem story was based on a real astronomical event of some sort.

I gotta admit, the theory of Human Evolution coming to a halt is a totally new one on me.
I was only reading about the subject yesterday and everywhere I went it was stating that it's actually accelerating.

Just Google "human evolution accelerating" and you'll see what I mean. Normally when you Google, you have to sift through tons of irrelevence and loads of stuff that doesn't really have that much to do with the subject. But not this time. Even if you Google "human evolution slowing" most of the hits (apart from those about Steven Jones) are about it speeding up!!! So my jury is definitely against this guy.

It's the oldest description there is. The oldest example was written 100 years before the time of Christ. Prior to that it was handed down by oral tradition. The tradition holds that only a few later additions were made.

And it's nothing like describing a white Jesus. It's like describing someone who comes from Nepal.

Apart from the blue eyes. This is commonly accepted as a mistranslation and it should have probably have read "clear". Or the other theory is that it refers to the Blue Lotus Flower. A powerful symbol in Buddhism.
Although there are also plenty of instances where Asians do have blue eyes so that can't be discounted either.

Some white people have used the blue-eye description to claim that the Buddha was an Aryan white but this is not the Buddhist view and is counter to the evidence.

Personally I just can't hold with the Aryan theory. The white man was still wiping his ass with leaves when the Aryan invasion was supposed to have taken place. Eastern and Asian culture was far more advanced both socially and technologically. Even the Roman Empire was not able to conquer Asia. Any white invader would have got their asses sorely kicked.

and if you're a practicing Buddhist or Hindu, it may be a bit more difficult for you to look at this matter in a non- personal way.

I'm not.

You may also be assuming the blacks being referred to are African blacks.

I'm not. Horus is.

They are not. The original dark skiined Asians population, arent African, or negro. They're a different race more related to Asians, than black negroes.

I'm know. I've been there. Go to Sri Lanka. Some of the population are as black as any African Negro.


I am not inferring for one second that the Buddha was a white man. I'm contesting the statement that he was an African or a Negroid in the sense that Horus is using the latter word in. Even if we take into account your website's statement about "Africoids" being present in the Indus Valley of India, it does not give the argument credence. Simply because the Buddha did not come from there. As already stated, he came from what is now modern day Nepal.

Please also refer to Buddhist scripture and the descriptions of the Buddha.

Historical Buddha as recorded in the Pali canon:

The Buddha had an elongated, lengthy body with long appendices (long arms with a span equal to body length, long fingers, long hands, elongated face, protruding and well-formed nose).
His hair was fine, black and with soft curls.
His eyes were wide and blue.
His body was golden-colored.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pali_canon

Or 666 is not the Number of the Beast and it's 616 instead.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Number_of_the_Beast

http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=44169

I don't care how much Huxley copies and pastes. I'm debating you not him.

1.  Where did the matter come from that created the fireball? In order to have a big bang, we need something (matter/energy) to go bang.

2.  Where and how did this original matter/energy originate?

There are many theories and much speculation. But I will give you my own theory.
The matter for the Big Bang came from a previous Universe. I believe that the Universe inflates and deflates, rather like a living, breathing organism. Continually expanding and then decreasing until it creates another Big Bang. We have evidence of it expanding and so I believe it is entirely logical to speculate that it will decrease at some time. Then there will be a Big Crunch and then another Big Bang. Therefore it wasn't original matter in the sense that your question means.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Crunch

But that posits another question to 2. Was there a Universe right at the beginning that took that first exhalation and then inhalation? Original matter? That question is open to belief. It's possible that there never was a first Universe, never original matter, never a first breath - just infinite breathing or it's possible that God created that first Universe. That is not a Creationist theory. Merely a statement that God may have created the Universe back in time immemorial or that he created the infinite. It is not a Creationist advocation of the Earth and everyone on it being created 4000 years ago.

For your own purpose in debating, remember that I am not an atheist. I do believe in God. I am simply not a Creationist.

edit. The Big Bounce Theory probably describes my theory better.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Bounce

As I've already pointed out, you've simply copy and pasted hundreds and hundreds of questions.

If you think that I'm answering every single one of them, you are sadly deluded. That's not the way it works in this forum or on any other.

If you decide to debate properly and post a couple, then I'm sure myself and others will try to answer them for you. Then, if you're satisfied, you can move onto others. Posting hundreds of questions and insisting that they all be answered is no way to go about conducting a debate.

There is no burying of heads in quicksand on this side. I've offered to debate. Are you up to it?