There isn't much evidence for the life of Jesus either.
Harry Potter mentions Kings Cross train station, since I was in King's Cross train station earlier this year does that mean that Hogwarts is real?
Atheism = self defeating.
by towerwatchman 315 Replies latest watchtower beliefs
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Caedes
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towerwatchman
To Unsure.
Nobody is disputing that the universe had a beginning. I am not disputing that the universe had a beginning. I only asked that you do not use it as an argument because it is not proof that God created the universe.
But it is the proof that the universe came from a timeless cognitive cause.
You've repeated this a few times in response to me. Each time I ask what what cognition has to do with it but you repeat the same thing that caused the confusion in the first place. I'll ask you again; How does the cause being personal explain how a timeless cause can bring about a temporal effect? How does cognition make a difference as opposed to a non-cognitive parallel universe (which may have spawned ours)? PLEASE do not copy and paste the same response, please rephrase.
It is a bit confusing in the beginning. Look around, everything you see is temporal. Everything you see owes its existence to something prior. Every cause and effect from the beginning of the universe till now is temporal. Temporal causes bring about temporal effects. Same logic applies to timeless cause, they bring about timeless effects. [Everything mention up to now is non cognitive].
For a timeless cause to bring about a temporal effect, it had to be a choice made by the timeless cause. If the timeless cause was non cognitive the effect will be timeless also.
Since we are re-pasting: Scientists have as much proof of parallel universes (please google it) as creationists have of the existence of God if we are being fair. Yes some may argue against it, just like many argue against the existence of God.
If you have a good link, post it, I will read it.
In a previous post you described parallel universes as all speculation and metaphysics when others use this same argument against the existence of a God. God is described as being beyond our universe, therefor metaphysical, and belief in him/her is "speculation" (plus even further speculation of which God is the right one). Faith is speculation. Do you not see the irony in YOU arguing against parallel universes describing them as "speculation" and "metaphysics" when belief in God is described in the EXACT same way?
The historical evidence for the life, death and resurrection of Jesus is overwhelming. We have Biblical and external evidence that Jesus lived, died, was buried and resurrected in Jerusalem. Note, it is one thing to start a religion based on the resurrection of someone in a faraway land a long time ago; and it is another thing for a new faith, anchored in the resurrection of a man, takes off in the very city that man was crucified and buried, in less than a year. Jesus had many enemies. All they had to do was produce a body, anybody, after several days it would have been unrecognizable. But nobody did. No one produced a body. Why? Because the tomb was empty.
The prophetic element in the Old Testament that is fulfilled in the New Testament, we see the miraculous. We have 66 books, written by over 40 authors, over 1500 years, books on prophecy, philosophy, and history. After 2000 years of textural scrutiny, the hardest skeptic will tell you there is no document in early history that has the internal collaboration, documentation- historical and archaeological that the Bible has.
f I were to agree with all your arguments and agree that there is an intelligent designer, what evidence is there to say that this is God? What evidence is there to say that it is God that created the universe and not a group of advanced, cognitive inter-dimensional beings who reside in another universe who had the power to create our universe? Who's to say our universe is not a simulation created by some other advanced alien being? Please google simulation theory and please do not respond saying it is all "speculation" and "metaphysics" without agreeing that belief in God is all "speculation" and "metaphysics".
All you are doing is moving the goal post back. Unless these being are eternal, they have a cause also.
Why are there so many religions?
Because when someone wants to affirm a truth, there will always be someone wanting to affirm the opposite. Truth by definition is exclusive, so it excludes all other systems. Every world view is exclusive.
Why are there so many denominations within each?
Unity is not uniformity.
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towerwatchman
Extra Biblical Evidence supporting the life. death, and Resurrection of Jesus.
Josephus 1 century Jewish historian and servant of Titus and his father Vespasian, wrote the following while discussing the period in which the Jews of Judaea were governed by the Roman procurator Pontius Pilate:
About this time there lived Jesus, a wise man, if indeed one ought to call him a man. For he was one who performed surprising deeds and was a teacher of such people as accept the truth gladly. He won over many Jews and many of the Greeks. He was the Messiah. And when, upon the accusation of the principal men among us, Pilate had condemned him to a cross, those who had first come to love him did not cease. He appeared to them spending a third day restored to life, for the prophets of God had foretold these things and a thousand other marvels about him. And the tribe of the Christians, so called after him, has still to this day not disappeared.
- Jewish Antiquities, 18.3.3 §63
Cornelius Tactitus {54 AD -117AD] Annals 15.44 [Some words adjusted to modern English for clarity].
But all human efforts, all the lavish gifts of the emperor, and the propitiation of the gods, did not banish the sinister belief that the conflagration was the result of an order. Consequently, to get rid of the report, Nero fastened the guilt and inflicted the most exquisite tortures on a class hated for their abominations, called Chrestians by the populace. Christ, from whom the name had its origin, suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius at the hands of one of our procurators, Pontius Pilate, and a most destructive superstition, thus checked for the moment, again broke out not only in Judea, the first source of the evil, but even in the capital, where all things hideous and shameful from every part of the world find their center and become popular. Accordingly, an arrest was first made of all who pleaded guilty; then, upon their information, an immense multitude was convicted, not so much of the crime of setting fire to the city, as of hatred against mankind. Mockery of every sort was added to their deaths. Covered with the skins of beasts, they were torn by dogs and perished, or were nailed to crosses, or were doomed to the flames and burnt, to serve as a nightly illumination, when daylight had expired. Nero offered his gardens for the spectacle, and was exhibiting a show in the circus, while he mingled with the people in the dress of a charioteer or stood aloft on a car. Hence, even for criminals who deserved extreme and exemplary punishment, there arose a feeling of compassion; for it was not, as it seemed, for the public good, but to glut one man's cruelty, that they were being destroyed.
Pliny the Younger was a lawyer, author, and magistrate of Ancient Rome 61-113 AD
In a letter he wrote a letter to Emperor Trajan around 112 AD.
“They asserted, however, that the sum and substance of their fault or error had been that they were accustomed to meet on a fixed day before dawn and sing responsively a hymn to Christ as to a god,”
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towerwatchman
Is the Bible a reliable document?
What is considered credible ancient text?
Caesar written 1 century BC, earliest copy 900 AD, number of copies 10
Tacitus written 1 century AD, earliest copy 1100 AD, number of copies 20
Thucydides written 5 century BC, earliest copy 900AD, number of copies 8
Demosthenes written 4 century BC, earliest copy 1100 AD, number of copies 200
Homer written 9 century BC, 643 copies 95% accurate.
All considered credible by scholars.
New Testament 1 century AD [50-100], earliest copy 2 century AD [100-130] number of copies from antiquity 5000, accuracy 99%, partial manuscripts 19000, quotations by the early church fathers 86000.
And people still question the Bible's credibility.
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Caedes
What you failed to mention of course is the problems with the handful of references to christ (and even more rarely Jesus).
The fact that some lived long after Jesus supposedly lived, some were only to found in christian translations written long after the author had died. some were blatantly added to the original text.
So I have some serious doubts as to whether Jesus even existed, I have no doubt that even if he were real there is not a single shred of corroborating evidence that he resurrected and flew up to heaven.
The credibility of an ancient text depends entirely how many supernatural stories it tells.
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StephenMyers
Care to show where professor Dawkins stated that? I have a feeling that the mistake was yours alone and that professor Dawkins didn't make any such claim.
I have just re-read it and it's clearly misleading and he is not clear they are still foxes, the paragraph makes it sound like they are now dogs.
The Greatest show on earth, top of page 76.
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Caedes
I have just re-read it and it's clearly misleading and he is not clear they are still foxes, the paragraph makes it sound like they are now dogs.
The nearest he gets is the statement that they have dog-like features, how on earth do you read that as misleading? So just to be clear Dawkins does not make the claim that they became dogs and wolves, as I correctly surmised the problem was your mistake.
Animals can't go back up the evolutionary tree and then pop down an adjacent branch, the tree is metaphorical but it is also historical. What can happen is that populations of animals adapt over time as clearly happened in the example given and that there is possibly a link between some morphological features and tameness in some closely related animal species.
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Brainfloss
TWM cites
Extra Biblical Evidence supporting the life. death, and Resurrection of Jesus.
come on lets not insult one another these very references have been long ago and widely discredited. A veteran debater such as you,I have tracked your work going back nearly 10 years and suspect much more,can do much better than this. I have used these references myself when arguing your side of the matter and I at the time was a babe in the woods. This forum is made up of primarily x jehovahs witnesses who have been shunned by their families,lost their homes, had their lives completely turned upside down by their doubts about religion. We in large part have done the research .
You say--
The historical evidence for the life, death and resurrection of Jesus is overwhelming.The evidence you pose is hardly overwhelming. The evidence you pose is flimsy at best.
Please overwhelm us with the evidence
Brainfloss
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Brainfloss
TWM asks
Allow me to ask this question. The wrong that you experienced, was that a logical outworking of what Jesus taught, or was it contrary to Jesus’ teachings? Judge a movement by its originator, not its followers. Some followers will always abuse in order to control. That is human nature, especially in religious matters gone wrong. I have been burned once also. I believe ‘fool me one shame on you’, “fool me twice shame on me.’ Wake up one morning and realized everything I was taught was a lie. I did not give up on God, I gave up on the WTS.
What exactly are Jesus teachings?
love?
I love my wife and children I have the ability to house and feed them all of them in fact I die so that they will never need to worry about food or housing again then I am resurected an made king I can feed and house the whole world keep them from getting sick the whole spiel you know what Jesus claims to be able to do.
But instead of doing anything immediatly I let over 2000 years go by still human kind is suffering. My followers are abusing children hiding behind my name. Wars are being fought both sides say it is in my name that they fight. Oh yeah before I was Jesus I did the same thing that my followers are doing now using my chosen people. Killing women and children enslaving foriegners making later generations pay for the sins of their ancestors. That's right grandparents won't see their grand kids because their 18 year old son had sex or smoked a cigarette and never repented. I have the power to stop all of this but nobody knows the day or the hour that I will. But I will have faith I will. Oh yeah you better have faith that I will do what I say or in 50 trillion years you won't be one second closer to the end of your punishment then you are right now.
now I'm not sure if it because of Jesus teachings or his followers but I suspect it is his followers because if anyone had the power to do the things he says he has why the hell would he wait so long and let so many suffer. I sincerely doubt there is any such entity with his claimed powers
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Finkelstein
Towerwatchman says ......
And people still question the Bible's credibility.
It isn't question of the writings themselves but what was the inherent intent of those writings by the people who firstly created this arrived god savior for all mankind, which has gotten unrealized and unaccepted by mankind over the centuries.
For one to honestly realize what were these ancient people's original intent to create Jesus Christ, one has to read between the lines of the NT and research ancient history of the surrounding civilizations of ancient Israel and their own worshiping practices, for they too had taught and worshiped a returning savior god.