Open Challenge to the Faithfully Religious

I don't follow the literal interpretation of the Bible. I am more interested in the mystical side of Christianity personally. I see it all in symbolic terms, but I strongly believe in something I call God, and I have my own inner experience as all the 'proof' I need.
I believe in the absolute supremacy of LOVE.

I too dislike blind faith. I have little time for those who say one has only to 'believe' - as some do, and not to strive to follow the teachings of Christ,
and to aim for the highest possible standard of life.
It's all too easy unfortunately to twist religion - as as happened over and again in history. I am not at all surprised by the fact that Dawkins 'The God Delusion' has become a best seller. (I actaully like Dawkins - He's a very acute critic of all that is wrong with religion - but maybe he's throwing the baby out with the bathwater?)

Neither am I surprised that 'Autobiography of a Saint' by Therese of Lisieux has actually sold several millions more copies. Because the message is a simple one of love and hope. And that is what the world is rather short of.

Call Her my 'leader' if you like - although I'm hardly a model follower.

 

OK - personally I agree that the ban on gays is insane.(I'm straight BTW, and a believer in family values - but I know and fully accept gay people).
I can believe in Catholic doctrine just so far as my own conscience will allow.
One has to see that both liberal and conservative forces are necesary in this world - but generally myself I tend towards a liberal view. I do not believe that the God of love will burn anyone for eternity - perhaps for a while!!! But not because of their sexuality or lack of belief, but because of their lack of love and their falsity.

 

Is it me, or have we digressed somewhat from the original topic, which was the challenge.

*the story of Christmas is purely astronomical, as the star Sirius (the star in the East) aligns with Orions Belt (three Kings) on Dec. 25th. and point to the sun rise (savior).
I think we've already disposed of the December 25th idea. Christians have never believed that was Jesus' birthday. Can we scratch that without further discussion?

 

Okay NorCaliGreenFiend,

I can see that you’re busy with answering the other posters so it’s difficult to answer my question. So I’ll try to answer your challenge without proper ground rules.

First; is Jesus real or fiction?

Evidence suggests an early date for the writing of Matthew, Mark, and Luke. Subscripts in some manuscript copies of Matthew indicate that the original writing took place as early as 41 C.E. Luke was probably written between 56 and 58 C.E., for the book of Acts (likely completed by 61 C.E.) indicates that the writer, Luke, had already composed his “first account,” the Gospel. (Acts 1:1) Mark’s Gospel is considered to have been composed in Rome during either the first or the second imprisonment of the apostle Paul—probably between 60 and 65 C.E.

The accounts presented in the Christian Greek Scriptures were accepted without question by thousands living in the first century. Even the enemies of Christianity did not deny the truthfulness of what Jesus was reported to have said and done.

Noted historian H. G. Wells did not claim to be a Christian, he acknowledged: “All four [Gospel writers] agree in giving us a picture of a very definite personality; they carry the . . . conviction of reality.”

In his book Caesar and Christ, historian Will Durant writes: “That a few simple men should . . . have invented so powerful and appealing a personality, so lofty an ethic and so inspiring a vision of human brotherhood, would be a miracle far more incredible than any recorded in the Gospels. After two centuries of Higher Criticism the outlines of the life, character, and teaching of Christ, remain reasonably clear, and constitute the most fascinating feature in the history of Western man.”

What about non-Biblical references to Jesus Christ? How are they assessed? The works of Tacitus, Suetonius, Josephus, Pliny the Younger, and a few other classical writers include numerous references to Jesus. Of them, The New Encyclopædia Britannica (1995) says: “These independent accounts prove that in ancient times even the opponents of Christianity never doubted the historicity of Jesus, which was disputed for the first time and on inadequate grounds at the end of the 18th, during the 19th, and at the beginning of the 20th centuries.”

 

I think there is definatly some confusion among the churches nowadays...It seems like they are so involved with "religion" that they have totally forgotten the sprituality of it all. As for gays, I think it's ridiculous that they would be cast into hell for geniune feelings of love.....Is our God not a God of love?

 

Second; Does the parallels between Christmas and Sun Worship prove that Jesus is just an extension of sun worship?

You might be surprised to learn that Christmas was not instituted by Jesus Christ nor was it celebrated by him or his first-century disciples. In fact, there is no record of a Christmas celebration until 300 years after Christ died.

Did Jesus birth coincide with the birth or rebirth of the Sun?

Regarding the date December 25 given for the birth of Jesus, there is no evidence to indicate that this is correct. The evidence shows otherwise.

In the book Celebrations, by Robert J. Myers, we read: “The Biblical narrative of the birth of Jesus contains no indication of the date that the event occurred. However, Luke’s report [Luke 2:8] that the shepherds were ‘abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flocks by night’ suggests that Jesus may have been born in summer or early fall. Since December is cold and rainy in Judea, it is likely the shepherds would have sought shelter for their flocks at night.”

In Daily Life in the Time of Jesus, by Henri Daniel-Rops, we are similarly told: “The flocks . . . passed the winter under cover; and from this alone it may be seen that the traditional date for Christmas, in the winter, is unlikely to be right, since the Gospel says that the shepherds were in the fields.”

The Encyclopedia Americana says of December 25: “This date was not set in the West until about the middle of the 4th century and in the East until about a century later.” Thus, Jesus was not born on that date. And he did not authorize the celebration of Christmas; neither did his disciples or the Bible writers.

So where did Christmas originate?

Where, then, did Christmas originate? On this, there is general agreement. U.S. Catholic states: “It is impossible to separate Christmas from its pagan origins.” It adds: “The Romans’ favorite festival was Saturnalia, which began on December 17 and ended with the ‘birthday of the unconquered sun’ (Natalis solis invicti) on December 25. Somewhere in the second quarter of the fourth century, savvy officials of the church of Rome decided December 25 would make a dandy day to celebrate the birthday of the ‘sun of righteousness.’ Christmas was born.”

The pagan celebration of Saturnalia took place at the winter solstice. The word “solstice” comes from two Latin words: sol (the name of a sun god) and sistere (to stop). The winter solstice is the time when the daylight hours stop getting shorter and instead begin to get longer. According to the ancient Julian calendar, the day of the winter solstice was December 25.

Thus, The World Book Encyclopedia states: “This celebration [Christmas] was probably influenced by pagan (unchristian) festivals held at that time. The ancient Romans held year-end celebrations to honor Saturn, their harvest god; and Mithras [the sun god].” The New Catholic Encyclopedia says: “On Dec. 25, 274, [Roman emperor] Aurelian had proclaimed the sun-god [Mithras] principal patron of the empire . . . Christmas originated at a time when the cult of the sun was particularly strong at Rome.” The book Celebrations states: “The clergy eventually brought the . . . world of the Saturnalia into the Church itself.” And the Encyclopædia Britannica notes that December 25 was regarded “as the birth date of the . . . [sun] god Mithra.”

So, of course there are parallels between Christmas and the Pagan Birth of the Sun that’s because they are the same thing only the names have been changed!

But you can see that neither Jesus, his disciples nor the Christians of the first century established Christmas or condoned Sun worship as part of Christianity. Jesus, himself said; that in later times there would be a deviating from the truth and allowing sun worship in would certainly fit the bill.

So, No, Christmas for the reasons stated above, does not prove that true Christianity, that taught by Jesus and his disciples, is an extension of sun worship.

PS: about the wise men they probably were not sent by God to the child. The shepherds were sent by God directly to the new born Jesus in the manger but the wise men had to go to an enemy of god, King Herod, to find out where the child was thus letting Herod know of Jesus birth. Also they arrived sometime after the birth of Jesus because the account says that when they arrived he was in a house not a manger and closer to the age of 2. Because when Herod tried to kill Jesus he had all children 2 and under killed which he would not have done to the rebellious Jews if he had thought Jesus was still a newborn, In that case he would have only killed the newborns.

 

Now, I know fish are mentioned often in the Bible but I have to ask where in the Bible it says Jesus is symbolized by fish.

 

Wrong! FACT: There is no such "pattern".

No pre-Christian gods were "born of a virgin", although such claims were made about the philosopher Plato. Horus was conceived when the penis of his father, Osiris, penetrated his mother, Isis. That was remarkable, given that Osiris was dead at the time, but it was not virgin birth. The Persian Sun God Mithras was originally said to have been born from a rock,and only after Christianity was spreading in the second century A.D. was it ever claimed that Mithras was born of a virgin. As for Resurrection,
Osiris was re-animated by Isis, but stayed as living dead in the land of the dead to become judge of the dead, unlike Jesus, who returned to earth alive. The most thorough, balanced, scholarly account of alleged pre-Christian resurrections, T.N.D. Mettinger's The Riddle of Resurrection, finds only a couple of possible candidates--hardly a pattern. As for twelve disciples, that chestnut seems to have originated with the late poet turned Egyptologist, Gerald Massey, whose his allegation that the Egyptian god Horus had twelve disciples appears to be based on a picture of twelve reapers on a mural near a depiction of Horus with no other connection between them. The claims that miracles of the Christian religion were stolen from other religions got their start in Frazer's The Golden Bough in 1890, followed by scads of others. Those books, in turn, became a target for later historians, with the scholarly tide lately running against Frazer, Massey,et al. But the earlier inaccuracies are still alive on the internet, and in documentaries like Zietgeist which contains a lot of the "information" that appears in your assertions.

The principal source for Zeitgeist is Jordan Maxwell, aka Russell Pine, who has been charged by the FTC with conspiracy to defraud consumers involving marketing international driving permits over the internet, and phony credit repair and debt elimination programs. Would you buy a used car from this man? In addition to being charged with conspiracy, Maxwell is a conspiracy nut par excellence. He claims that the world has been ruled since ancient times by a secret society, the Illuminati (tied in with the international banking community and governments, of course) who practice ancient Caananite religious rites and use a "live long and prosper" Spock style gesture of recognition. Maxwell got a lot of his information from S. Archaya, aka. D.M. Murdock, who relied heavily on the work of Murdock and Massey. Those are the facts, just the facts.

Wrong! FACT:The earliest religions did not look to the stars. They involved the worship of animals, rocks, trees, and other aspects of nature, as well as ancestors. Astral religions came later, with the advent of agriculture and "civilization", but animism was well-established by then, and still influential in such ancient religions as Druidism and Shintoism.

Moses brought the tablets down from Sinai sometime in the 17th to 13th centuries BC. He supposedly smashed them because the Israelites had reverted to worshipping a golden calf, the symbol of the Caananite god El and the Apis bull, worshipped in Egypt from which they came. Bulls were a symbol of power and fertility, and gave their name to the astrolgical constellation, rather than vice versa. Applying the principal of Occam's Razor, there is no more reason to accept the elaborately speculative convoluted "astrological age" explanation than to accept Freud's psychoanalytical one, and the biblical explanation seems more plausible than either.

 

Hi NorCaliGreenFiend,
Just to let you know that there are many Christians that think that burning in Hell for all eternity is not suported by the Bible. I know one or two myself.

 

Wow, it took 71 posts for some one to take on my challenge.

 

I beg your pardon, I don't believe you are reading the posts in your thread.

I personally started answering your challenge at post 9. Then in posts 16, 21 & 47 I tried to get you to define your terms because your challenge is a little vague. Something you never really did. So in posts 67, 69 I continued to answer your challenge without any more info from you about the challenge. I also added a comment at post 70. Those are the facts of the matter. Now you say it took someone 71 posts to take up your challenge. I beg to differ. I now know why it's so hard for you to define the word fact and no longer trust you to know what a fact is. It seems that facts to you are only what you believe facts to be and don't have to have any basis in reality

 

Here is another one, myself.
The simple question is:"How can The God , who "is love", burn folks in hell forever for some 60-80 years of life, which is, according to the Bible itself, full of misery and frustration for themselves -- both for sinners and for righteous?"
The answer is as simple: "No, He doesn't" . The book of Ecclesiastes states in Ch.9, that "in hades" there is "no work, no knowledge, no understanding". Obviously, then, there can be NO suffering there.

 

The churches really ARE in confusion! In their efforts to please everyone's tastes, so they might not lose their donors and the money these donate.
On the other hand, they had been teaching the "church doctrines" instead of the Bible for so long, that they have no clear answer to any question -- including that of God's attitude towards sin and sinners.

The God of love wants us to be happy -- firstly and lastly. Then he knows, as our Maker, that such happiness is only possible, if we live according to his original purpose, for which he also created our bodies.
So: while he understands the circumstances, which make us go the wrong way, he still cannot call wrong things right.
You, personally, what would you expect from "the God of love": to call wrong thins right, or to help one correct his ways and be happy?

I just tried to explain briefly the biblical view of the matter, you see. However, this is going off topic here; for more explanation you can send me a PM, if you want. Here, it is just enough to state, that the God of the Bible doesn't cast anyone into "hell" -- to suffer forever as a compensation for some 60-80 years of life here, which is, even according to the Bible itself, full of distress and misery. God of Love is also the God of justice, you know. His love is full of justice, but there is also mercy in it.

 

I believe there is a god but these revealed religions are a sham.

 

Yeah, I believed the same at the age of 17.
But then I figured, maybe people have something interesting to say. Obviously, I'm not the most righteous (thought I) or the brightest one ever. So maybe some folks already had some interesting results, which I could use and develop. This made me change my opinion later on.
Clearly, this serious matter needs a good study, and this, in turn, will take time.

 

yo aguest i tottally creamed you in the other thread! everyone should go check it out its called Why the Christian/Judeo/Islamic God?

 

You totally creamed yourself by this remark here. What a pity! The discussion with you was interesting, why did you have to spoil it?
And besides, you can get reported the next time you post something like this.

 

Because I believe the consensus of experts is more likely to be right than wrong, I believe in the big bang theory also. However, the big bang theory has theological implications. A finite beginning of the universe seems to imply an infinite Beginner. Also, the big bang theory in some respects violates known laws of science. It asserts that at the beginning of time (about fourteen billions years ago) all the mass in the universe was in a point of infinite density. A point has no dimensions. How can it contain anything?

Also, what caused the big bang? Scientists spend a lot of time speculating what happened one nanosecond after the big bang. When one asks what happened one nanosecond before the big bang one is told that the question is somehow inappropriate.

 

a finit beginning of the universe seems to imply an infinite beginner??

no it doesnt! why does it imply an infinite beginner?? why not infinite beginners?? maybe it was a group of aliens.

this is one of the most illogical excuses for religion.
"a watch implies a watch maker?"
no it doesnt! maybe it implies a watch factory!

how about a cloud. does it imply a cloud maker? nope, these kind of arguments just dont make sense.

 

Funny thing about them clouds, you know.

It seems, the forming of clouds into the diverse masses and shapes so familiar to our eyes, directly depends on the complex composition of our atmosphere. The scientists say, that, should the balance of certain elements in the earth atmosphere change as slightly as 1-2 percent (or even less), they vapors would NEVER form such "clouds". They would just form a kind of haze of indifferent shape.
So, those, who are tending to see the Creator's hand in every beautiful thing, are also tending to see His hand in the creation of such atomsphere, as would make a beautiful blue sky with always varying clouds to make it still more beautiful.

So, this time they come up with God being a tasteful artist, in addition to a wise designer. They also think God was motivated by love for his creations, when he gave them a beautiful world to live in.