I suppose I should spend a little more time with this sort of thing, but I find that those it would help the most are usually too busy worrying about saving the souls that they wish they had from the 4th Christian God to listen to reason. So I tend to fight fire with fire. Namely, emotion.
Besides, it would cut into my very important Invisible Pink Unicorn debunking time.
Where did the story that Jesus was crucified come from? It appears to have resulted from a number of sources. Firstly there were three historical characters during the Roman period who people thought were Messiahs and who were crucified by the Romans, namely Yehuda of Galilee (6 C.E.), Theudas (44 C.E.), and Benjamin the Egyptian (60 C.E.). Since these three people were all thought to be the Messiah, they were naturally confused with Yeishu and ben Stada. Yehuda of Galilee had preached in Galilee and had collected many followers before being crucified by the Romans. The story of Jesus's ministry in Galilee appears to be based on the life of Yehuda of Galilee. This story and the belief that Jesus lived in Nazareth in Galilee, reinforced each other. The belief that some of Jesus's disciples were killed in c. 44 C.E. by Agrippa appears to be based the fate of Theudas's disciples. Since ben Stada had come from Egypt it is natural that he would have been confused with Benjamin the Egyptian. They were probably also contemporaries. Even some modern authors have suggested that they were the same person, although this is not possible since the stories of their deaths are completely different. In the New Testament book of Acts, which uses Josephus's book Jewish Antiquities (93 - 94 C.E.) as a reference, it is made clear that the author considered Jesus, Yehuda of Galilee, Theudas and Benjamin the Egyptian, to be four different people. However, by that time it was too late to undo the confusions which had already taken place before the New Testament was written, and the idea of Jesus's crucifixion had become an integral part of the myth.
fascinates me. There is so much history that was suppressed by the early church so that their mythology would not have to explain itself.
Something is wrong here. War, disease, death, destruction, hunger, filth, poverty, torture, crime, corruption, and the Ice Capades. Something is definitely wrong. This is not good work. If this is the best God can do, I am not impressed.
I find an interesting analogue in the spread of instant myth via email and the web in our modern world. With the speed that information travels on the internet, it doesn't require centuries any longer for a flat-out fabrication to become 'truth' among the pathetically credulous. Happily, it doesn't take as long to unwind the puzzle and undo the ill effects either.
Happily, it doesn't take as long to unwind the puzzle and undo the ill effects either.
I disagree. Believers never learn.
Something is wrong here. War, disease, death, destruction, hunger, filth, poverty, torture, crime, corruption, and the Ice Capades. Something is definitely wrong. This is not good work. If this is the best God can do, I am not impressed.
There is a great website called the Urban Legends Reference Pages which seeks to verify web based myths. Whenever someone sends me a
"Hillary Disses Gold Star Mothers" e-mail I immediately run it through the ULRP to see what the truth might be.
Something is wrong here. War, disease, death, destruction, hunger, filth, poverty, torture, crime, corruption, and the Ice Capades. Something is definitely wrong. This is not good work. If this is the best God can do, I am not impressed.
It seems like some people have a problem with the pace of evolution during
the cambrian ?I guess part of theanswer would reside in the fact that a chronological timescale is perhaps not the best way to measure evolution ,rather the reproduction cycle of the organisms involved is responsible for the primary timeframe ..If you include as well the possibility of a higher amount of UV-rays penetrating the earth's atmosphere during that period (a personal hypothesis just for the sake of argumenting ) as well the type of reproduction( spores instead of eggs),accounting for millions of possible offsprings per parent pair ,you have a very different speedof evolution ,especially if these conditions correlate .I guess it would be possible to build a mathematical model taking into account all these mutating factors and run it through a computer . Using just common sense untill then it is not impossible to imagine an exponential or logaritmically accelerated pace of evolution for this timeframe .Creationist might have enough trouble opposing Darwin to the bible already ,but I am convinced there is absolutely no refutal of hard mathematical facts .Perhaps we can even convince the creationists to finance this project as for them it would be the ultimate proof evolution is just a modern myth .For myself I have no doubts concerning the results .Wouldn't it be fun if we can have the creationists finance their own demise ?Archy ,do you have a piggybank to slaughter and are you willing to take the risk?
Last edited by ReneDescartes on Tue Jul 04, 2006 12:00 pm, edited 1 time in total.
If you make it too hard for creationists, Rene, they just run back to their bible and hide behind its metaphors and misinformation
Something is wrong here. War, disease, death, destruction, hunger, filth, poverty, torture, crime, corruption, and the Ice Capades. Something is definitely wrong. This is not good work. If this is the best God can do, I am not impressed.
The oldest fossilised fish trails ever recorded have been found in red sandstone in a Welsh quarry. These marks preserved in stone give tantalising insights into how the landscape must have looked 400 m years ago, and how some of the earliest life-forms may have moved from water to land.
Something is wrong here. War, disease, death, destruction, hunger, filth, poverty, torture, crime, corruption, and the Ice Capades. Something is definitely wrong. This is not good work. If this is the best God can do, I am not impressed.
Creationist might have enough trouble opposing Darwin to the bible already ,but I am convinced there is absolutely no refutal of hard mathematical facts
again you are elevating mathmatics to an absolute when it is as fallible as any other science.
I guess it would be possible to build a mathematical model taking into account all these mutating factors and run it through a computer
why don't you guest star on that show 'numbers' where they try to convince people that only math can solve problems...what a joke.
Archy ,do you have a piggybank to slaughter and are you willing to take the risk?
Maths fallible ?In every science ,including quantum physics,astropysics,models involving more than 4 dimensions for the universe we live in maths prove infallible .It is the keystone to the universe .Even chaos is ruled by mathematics .Maths are my god ,oops
Their discovery, detailed in the July 7 issue of the journal Science, is one of the first to demonstrate how a small change in a single nucleotide—the smallest subunit of a gene—can affect the survival and evolutionary fitness of an organism in the wild.
Something is wrong here. War, disease, death, destruction, hunger, filth, poverty, torture, crime, corruption, and the Ice Capades. Something is definitely wrong. This is not good work. If this is the best God can do, I am not impressed.
Creationist might have enough trouble opposing Darwin to the bible already ,but I am convinced there is absolutely no refutal of hard mathematical facts
again you are elevating mathmatics to an absolute when it is as fallible as any other science.
You're a funny one.
It appears that if there is a creator, mathematics is the language she speaks.
Now, what's the difference between an invisible, incorporeal floating dragon that spits heatless fire and no dragon at all? - Sagan
Something is wrong here. War, disease, death, destruction, hunger, filth, poverty, torture, crime, corruption, and the Ice Capades. Something is definitely wrong. This is not good work. If this is the best God can do, I am not impressed.
One such scientist is the microbiologist Malcolm Dixon:
Every minute the enzyme system does what chemists working a full shift cannot. Could anyone believe that naturally occurring enzymes became aware of themselves and hundreds of their counterparts as the result of chance? Enzymes and enzyme systems are touchstones of the same genetic mechanism. The more advanced research is carried out, the more detailed a design emerges.
Enzymes’ structure is too complex to have emerged by chance—a fact that is expressed in the famous biochemist Michael Pitman’s probability calculations:
As we know, there are some 10^80 atoms in the universe and 10^17 seconds have gone by since the Big Bang. Two thousand basic enzymes are essential if life is to survive. The chances of a single enzyme coming into being by chance are greater than 10^20. The chances of them all emerging as the result of chance is 10^40000. Even if we think of the whole universe as an organic soup it is still impossible for such a minute probability to come about.
