RELIGION

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Mighty potentates have raged against this book, and sought to destroy and uproot it-
Alexander the Great and princes of Egypt and Babylon, the monarchs of Persia, of Greece and of Rome, the Emperors Julius and Agustus-but they prevailed nothing.

They are gone while the book remains, and it will remain forever and ever, perfect and entire as it was declared at first.
Who has thus helped it-who has protecetd it against such mighty forces? No one, surely, but God Himself, who is master of all things. -Martin Luther:

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"The probabilities of the auto-creation of the first biomolecules are actually quite high, taking in account the auto-replicating capabilities of a lot of them, RNA,biomembranes ( those capabilities being built-in by the laws of physics, meaning that they don’t really have a choice but to be that way, like salt crystals (NaCl) have to be cubic…) hell, high school students in a small lab can create some of those molecules with simple tools and some of the gasses and electrical currents found on a primitive Earth.”

Sure, people can Use a of glass flask, to simulate the early atmospheric conditions. You can pass a mixture of boiling water, ammonia, methane and hydrogen through an electrical spark discharge. At the bottom of the apparatus a trap can capture any molecules made by the reaction. This trap prevents the newly-formed chemicals from being destroyed by the next spark. You can produce a mixture containing very simple amino acids. The remaining products, we find a number of simple amino acids, but in yields so low that their concentrations would be insignificant in a body of water.
And simple chemicals are a far cry from the incredible complexity of a living cell.
Then you assume the primordial atmosphere was “different” then it is today. You should know that oxygen destroys the chemical building blocks of life, so that’s why you speculate that the early earth had an oxygen-free atmosphere.
The ozone layer consists of a thin but critical blanket of oxygen gas in the upper atmosphere. This layer of oxygen gas blocks deadly levels of ultraviolet radiation from the sun. Without oxygen in the early atmosphere, there could have been no ozone layer over the early earth. Without an ozone layer, all life on the surface of planet earth would face certain death from exposure to intense ultraviolet radiation. Furthermore, the chemical building blocks of proteins, RNA and DNA, would be quickly annihilated because ultraviolet radiation destroys their chemical bonds. It doesn’t matter if these newly formed building blocks are in the atmosphere, on dry ground, or under water. But I won’t go into more details.
Secondly, a no oxygen early atmosphere is not borne out by the geologic evidence. Geologists have discovered evidence of abundant oxygen content in the oldest known rocks on earth.

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Also Alexander—you seem to base a large part of your atheism on the fact that you don’t think a loving God would have a hell. When I get to heaven I don’t want to see Charles Manson, Hitler, and Timothy McVeigh next door. It’s called justice. Only a loving God would make a place called “hell”. How else would you right all the injustices in this world. You reap what you sow. People can reject God and not repent—or even deny His existence…He gives you the choice to go to hell or not He doesn’t just send people there.

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jason- I already conceded that I would procede with one argument, despite my disbelief of burdon of proof so why persist on it. My resoning behind it was there was a post very early on that stated flately that God does not exist, way before any stated flately that God exists. Based on the temporal aspect of the statement, I decerned the need for a burdon of proof. I.E. if we are in a room and flately declare there is no monster in there, with out me having said there was first, I believe it is you who must explain first, if I actually believed there to be a monster.
Its a crime that sciences do not study their own history. All sciences came from philosophy in that the scientific questions were first asked by philosophers mainly because prior to somebody asking the question, there was no knowledge of the science. The study of sciences first takes a phlisophical question and answers ‘yes’. It is upon that answer that the science is born. Physics, for instance, is based on three basic philosphical questions: Does time exist? ‘yes’, do physical object move or change? ‘yes’ , Can the change and movement of physical objects be measured? ‘yes’. These quesions were in philosophy long before any sciences existed. Xeno, Aristotle, and a bunch of old dead guys asked these questions long ago. Einstein consider himself a philosopher first and scientist second. Liebinez(sp?) was the co-founder of calculus, but he was not a mathematician (he used it to explain his wako theories, some of which aren’t as crazy as they sound), etc. (I could go on, but I won’t).
I will make an even broader statement, the study of anything is based in philosphy, because at some point in the study logical questions have to be answered.
Third, what I meant by saying you have to provide conclusive irrefutable evidence that God does not exist for me to believe it is simply this; for every belief, there is a point in which that belief can be proven incorrect causing the believer to believe otherwise. For me to believe there is no God, somebody has to put forth a conclusive, deductive and uterly true argument with no holes. It can not be weak in any way. That would make me atheist. I suppose if God came to you, proved himself to be God and told you to believe, you probably would. Now quit asking me to justify my points and argue with me , Damn it!

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Well Well, How nice. I really enjoy a good round for round on religion. Lovely subject. However the origional post should have stated religions he is familiar with because as another stated I seen nothing in here from islam, budism, taoist, confusionism, or a number of other religions. In other words the ALL religions here is Christianity. Hey you gotta admit it does get blasted about. However so does every philosophy any human has every come up with. Believes are simply pilosophies that one understands as true. If that is the case then proof one might wish to have. Funny thing is I hear lots of name calling and such but no real facts. Myself included as I am not at all offended by what is said in fact I am laughing as I write this. Good luck all however in the future you may want to learn about ALL world religions instead of the ethnocentric ones you are aware of before you being a “debate”? I wonder if this is a “debate” so much as maybe a rant. I crack myself up.

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JB, I am quite happy to see you at least, contrary to most, familiar to these experiments from Miller and Urey’s lab and know them well. But like you said, I assume that the Earth’s atmosphere was different then what it is today. And unlike to point you’re trying to make, the fact that oxygen was found implies evolution: This is the first time that anyone has been able to see a record of oxygen from the ancient atmosphere," says Mark Thiemens, a professor of chemistry and Dean of UCSD’s Physical Sciences Division, who led the study, which included UCSD postdoctoral fellow Huiming Bao. “We now know it’s possible to track the evolution on Earth of oxygen and ozone, which both coincide with the evolution of life and the build up of the conditions on the planet that led to a major shift in the atmosphere 2.2 billion years ago.” …Then you go on saying that oxygen is a very oxidative molecule wich would destroy any biological building blocks, which is true, and go on further to say that without this oxygen, there would be no ozone layer protecting the earths for intense UV rays and use these assumptions as a opposing factor to abiotic synthesis. The early reducing atmosphere, would enable the formation of complex molecules, yet a reducing atmosphere is not sufficient , the creation of organic molecules require considerable energy input. On primitive earth, this energy would come without a doubt from underwater or costal volcanic explosion or thermal sources, intense lightning and intense UV rays that penetrated the atmosphere. These conditions, high available heat, lightning and radiations, combined with a reducing atmosphere are the best conditions for abiotic systhesis of biomolecules. The reducing atmosphere coming from the volcanic eruption containing gases like CO, CO2 and N2, it is even possible (now almost certain, hence the rocks) that there was traces of O2, produced by the chemical reactions between gasses, under the action of the most powerful UV rays. Now we all know that we are able to create all the nucleotides, ATP and amino acides, we can make them form protobiontes and the rest will probably come in a couple of years or so. ‘’Geologists know from banded iron formations in 2.2 billion-year-old rocks that significant quantities of oxygen were present at the time – enough, at least, to oxidize the iron in the rocks in a process akin to rusting. Some of that oxygen was presumably generated by photosynthetic cyanobacteria, which were known to exist 3.5 billion years ago, and some came from the chemical separation of water molecules into oxygen and hydrogen.’’
Now, when you have a reducing atmosphere and wastes of chemical reactions sometimes are CO2/CO, and you have a high [CO2/CO] as time goes by, CO2/CO using bacteria are bound to emerge, producing O2 as a waste product, O2 being a toxic molecule to most non-aerobic bacteria ( in the beginning, almost all bacteria), higher and higher O2 concentration kill the non-aerobic bacteria, then eventually you get O2 using bacteria, that were able to develop from the newly protective environment form by the O3 protection layer…and then it all accelerates…just so you don’t forget, 3,5 billion years is a long time…even to evolve stuff…Now, people again, slack your use of science against science, when scientists make claims today, they don’t make them appear out of their collective asses…and also note that PhD tend to have IQ s (in average) higher then 120…which makes them usually smarter (in logic at least) then 91% of the population, that should get people thinking…well at least 91% of them.
Now it’s good to know scientific fact, but it is useless to know them without understanding their proper implications.
For your second post, I would have to say that I do not agree with you on this one either. If I understand the concept of Hell, the fact that it last forever and that it consists in intolerable amounts of pain, makes it something that could not exist in the mind of a loving God. I understand the you reap reap what you sow statement, in fact I approve it, that is why I cannot acknowledge Hell, I invest something, I wanna get a proportionate response not the You stole…Capital punishment…You lied…Capital punishment…You had premarital sex…Capital punishment…You did not believe in Me Thy Lord…Capital punishment…Hell Hitler himself didn’t go on torturing every Jew for eternity, every now and then, he put a couple out of their misery….Or Yo, hey there, all the guys that kill themselves…yeah, all of yous, guess what Capital Punishment, Hell forever…No I don’t care if I gave you neurochemistries that made everyday of your life the saddest ever, I was a test to see how you would do…and you all failed miserably…now begone. Frankly, it’s pathetic. If it turn out that way, I’d seek disownment of my Father just for the principle of it. Hitler, while an abomination of maniacal genius, who probably be ok in Heaven in a couple of thousand years in purgatory/Hell, not forever at least in my book. Anyway, you don’t seed your kids to infinite pain…especially if he has lost his way.
Alexandre-H. Dandavino

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pat, regardless which statement came first, using logical and intelligent reasoning from tangible facts, the existence of a god cannot be proven. my insistence of burden of proof on your part is necessary because i need to know what you are using as your basis to conclude that there is a god. if you want to know why i believe the way i do, it’s because i, nor anyone else (that can be credibly proven), have never seen, heard, touched or experienced anything in anyway that proved beyond any doubt that there was a god (or anything else ‘metaphysical’). now the whole ‘sciences’ thing…physics existed long before we asked that first question. physics and biology and chemistry and every other science existed long before we became aware of them. so when i said that physics (or whatever i used as an example) doesn’t always agree with philosophy, i meant the science itself, not the study of that science. and i still don’t get the connection. if every question stems from philosophy, cool. how does that substantiate the claim that there is a god. we are too ignorant of the way things work. we need to ask more questions and not give credit for everything we don’t understand to some invisible god in the sky (or wherever).
and lastly pat, how can i prove anything to you when your beliefs aren’t in anyway based on facts. they’re based on beliefs. ‘you believe this and i believe that.’ given that as a premise for the debate, how can you go anywhere? there are no actual facts (to my standards) that prove your standpoint. how can i debate with you if i am unsure what you even consider to be fact. the fact that you believe in a god screams that you and i have different standards of fact and truth. anything i say won’t have any effect on you because you believe your facts to be true. you don’t know them to be true. but, if you’re actually expecting me to begin my argument then…how about this–have you ever seen, heard, touched, or experienced anything that proved to you without any amount of doubt that god is/was there? that is the standard that this debate must adhere to. tangible facts that can be used to demostrate the existence of your god. i have seen nothing. call upon your god. have him/her show himself. have him/her come over, i’ll make cookies. show me pictures or something. you get the idea. show me something—anything. if you can’t then what exactly is there to argue with on your behalf? there it is man. there is too much reason to not believe and not one legitimate reason to believe. is there pat? what reason is there? hope to hear back soon.
jason
austin, tx

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Yeah, pat, I understand what you’re saying about the Bible not being a book of fact, but being a book that inspires, whether this is truth, I do not know, I for one believes it serves as a moral compass for those who ‘’may’’ lack an innate moral/ethical conscience. On the other hand, I oppose your statement about my belief or lack thereof, as being Faith-based, firstly on a purely practical reason, using word play to change the nature of what I expressed as being a belief then Faith, which is not.Secondly, it is not Faith-based in the sense that I reason my belief, even if the reasoning process is incomplete, as it can only be, since it is impossible to prove/disprove God or it’s existence, by simple definition of God. It is more like a differential equation, going to the limit of a mathematical function, you could not trace every point of a curve or line on a graph, which represent a function, but anticipate that since every thing converges to an answer, than it is in all probability the answer…it might not be…but still. Now for you take on metaphysics, I acknowledge your statement in a way of the possibility of God’s existence/life after death, yet I prefer the use of metaphysics on grounds of thought experiments and of presocratic thinkers’ use, akin to Heidegger, taking metaphysics and using it to find the First Being, which Aristotle thought was Nature, Middle Age thinkers wanted it to be God, within our selves, (First Being not needing to be a tangible thing, but simply the fact of being (noun) being (verb)) It is a matter of reality, thought and the essence from which flows a certain conscience of what is real. Like I said, thoughts are something that can’t seem to be measured (I am not talking about action potential and chemical reactions/neurotransmitters/hormones) I am speaking of contents of thoughts, but still science as only gone this far, we have plenty of time to figure it out…So, to make it clearer, the something beyond to which you are referring does not have to be outside the mind, does not need to be an entity by itself. Now, I never intended to shake someone’s faith, since, like I said in my earlier post, it is pretty hard to do so, even more so with morons who believe out of nothing for reasons that really can’t be understood, even to the true believer. Yet people always want the atheist to shoot them some logical reasoning/equation tightly packaged, showing them in a ABC format how God is disproved, strangely, I do not know if this is to test the atheist stupidity or if theists are, unlike you said, total imbecile. Since God cannot be ousted from the world so easily…So unlike faith based belief, I tend to think, yet do not ‘’know’’(big difference), that God does not exist, out of correlation between logic and empirical facts, which aid my theories but do not prove them. Frankly if there is a God, cool I’ll live on forever, just hope I can manage a good lawyer on D-Day, if not, well I won’t know but it would scientifically orgasmic to know (and basically understand) that everything and anything came out of existence of their own, without reason, they just came into being or always were! If our pictures of the Big Bang could just be a millisecond closer to the beginning…yet like seeing a nuclear explosion on super fast tape, showing you it’s first nanosecs of existence, you can be awed, but knowledge comes much later…For you NaturalMan, I totally agree on how this is some really fruitless exercise, but what I find most entertaining is your series of questions that many atheist will ask themselves, now those questions are interesting in there essence, some represent real philosophical problems (not that the God question is not real, just that it’s to easy an answer for any philosophical dilemma. If humans are nothing but random chemical processes taking place so quickly as to make humans appear of conscious and random thought, then what value do we have? Yes, what value do we have…but does this fact change anything, God or no God, how does this affect the fact that we have value or not, it does not really. The sense of value I have for myself and my loved ones is not changed in anyway be the presence or absence of said God, I value and am valued very highly. Same thing goes for your following questions are we sophisticated CPU, nothing more then nice rocks, highly evolved bacteria? And claims to rights we can make? Well, you don’t need God for this, and if you do, then I am saddened, man is the only existing (as of yet) being (of course, the simple use of the term being should tell you this) that has as only goal to any moral/political endeavour, the search for liberty or freedom, which gives him the juridical ability to make claims to rights, those rights having only meaning when in relation to other beings. Man can then make a claim that is like is more valuable than any sort of fungi…if this is acknowledged, then it becomes a right. Why should we not lie, cheat and steal? Well, that can be found in your own conscience, after being implanted by parents, churches, texts or simply by your own experiences and life decisions, how for example, don’t I feel bad when I lie or cheat, don’t feel much when I am lied to or cheated, but can’t seem to steal and want to kill the thief that stole something from me, it can be personal, from reasoning or simply exist in you mind as something evil or wrong. Why not kill our male competitors when trying to woo a mate…well, it would be kind of counter productive since you would get your ass kicked by someone else…Why shouldn’t the strong survive? They do…but strong is a bad choice of word, fittest is much more appropriate, simply that in our world, selective pressure is different then kill or be killed, if it does not seem hard enough for you, go check in Africa, or let’s just say that we can alleviate the selective pressure in our advanced civilisation, akin to a fairness committee in a sporting event, we want to give everyone the same chances, we seem to dislike mother nature uncaring hand and have evolved through it to be able to escape it. Then why not set up population control by killing female babies, so we can curb future population induced problems (pollution, famine, etc)? Well, it is being done in China and has been done through out history for similar or dissimilar reasons. Why aren’t warriors in charges, would it not be more intoned with nature? Well most civilisations/nations throughout history have had a been warrior controlled, tribe leaders usually being war chiefs, kings and emperors, high commanders of the armies, and like in the United States where the President is the Supreme Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces, of course there are exceptions…but that is just it, they are exceptions. Do even the strictest atheist feel that there is some purposeful design to humanity’s existence. I would consider myself pretty hardcore as an atheist, and even if I don’t really like the use of purposeful, I would say that evolution brought us up to this point, what we chose to do with our existence is within us. I for one believe that an ultimate achievement for us would be to become God-like (in the presence or absence of God) but that is just me…Going against basic instincts and desires is just that going against a ‘’basic’’ instincts and desire, being illogical as it is often implied is not usually so, usually meaning something not immediately logical, self-sacrifice for almost anything usually is not illogical (family, idea, glory, king and country, God)…Then you go and ranting about how, if we are soulless, no afterlife, no God, we can do what we what, now I won’t go into this, but let’s just say that it has been covered for a long time and it as been found, like I said earlier, that it just doesn’t change anything. If someone cannot find that human beings are by themselves worthy enough of respect and love without the need of outside corroboration, ultimately from God, then again it is a sad thing. And if you question the illogical appearances of caring, loving and compassion, fervour in God, I suspect you must not know that those vague and unseen concepts are some of the reasons we are the dominant species on this planet, how it makes us able to kill without mercy, destroy without prejudice and rain fire on our enemies, while at the same time enabling us with the most noble qualities that will make us endure pain, suffering and unbearable sadness. We can create and will protect with our lives our creation, love, aspirations and dreams. I a way, those thought processes have remained with us because they work so damn well in preserving us in general (are kin, are countrymen…) The intensity derived from those concepts make us a quasi- ultimate, quasi-perfect survival being/machine…The simple fact that somethings are hardwired beneath the consciousness makes the human being such a more efficient sentient being. (By the way, the concept of a creator is not in the same class of concepts, it is completely thought out concepts, created by the human mind, while the others have a pre-existing effect on the human mind and were simply expressed, not created).And I have just one word for Ian King, someone made to feel such pain as in the twelve week Hell I am going trough, that particular someone will, of course want to inflict some pain afterwards…Alexandre-H. Dandavino

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Dale I believe my questions are valid. If there is nothing more to us than chemical reactions than it is fruitless to assign value to human life. Life? Is a complex machine alive in the first place? At what point does a computer become life? I wouldn’t be so sure that morals(whose? based on what?) are so natural to humanlife. You use the word morals, but whose? Is it just based on the opinion of the individual. If so than a murderer is not immoral and no more evil than you or me, he just lives by a different set of morals. How can we justify hating him/her? Is incest immoral if between two consenting adults? Why? Is our good citizen morality only based on the fact that we ourselves don’t want “to be done that way.” That seems sad to me that we would base our compassion and kindness on that alone. I don’t. It’s part of it (the golden rule). But, I also live by the belief that there is purpose to a human’s existence. That a human’s life has value not becuase we percieve our own life to have value, but inspite of it. Otherwise our lives are valuable only because of some live and let live policy. Dale my tone is a peaceful one. So, please don’t think I am attacking your reply to me.

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Johnny Quick - Ok, so you don’t like Lucien. First, assuming that as you say he was just repeating a story not historical fact (though you offered no evidence of this) it still gives evidence that Jesus was a real person and confirms certain things about Christianity, namely that He was worshipped as God, crucified, this despite this was only 1 or 2 generations since the death of Christ also, you have failed to respond to the other early non-Christian sources I offered as you were indeed wrong in saying there was no early non-Christian evidence of Christ. Furthermore, you still have the numerous Christian writings to contend with. Namely the New Testament. A staunch Bible Critic reknowned for his role in the “Death of God” movement, John A.T. Robinson places the dating of the Gospel all pre-70 A.D. This is slightly earlier than what most conservative Christian scholars and many non-Christians scholars date them. However, even excepting the later dates, you have not only documents but many copies of those documents being circulated among witnesses to the events by a persecuted people. For some scant examples, as frankly this isn’t the best forum or format to discuss this type topic, are as follows:

1- There is no mention in Acts of the fall of Jerusalem in 70.
2- No hint of the outbreak of the Jewish war of 66, or the deterioration of Jewsih Roman relations.
3- It is silent on the death of James at the hands of the Sanhedrin.
4- The prominence and authority of the Saduccees in Acts reflects the pre 70 dating.

Those are just a scant few of many reasons to accept early dating for the Gospels. On top of that no other ancient work of literature can compare with the number of early copies of manuscripts, the accuracy of those copies, etc. Also, you will note that while there is early evidence of Christian persecution and/or disbelief in early Christianity, there is no refutation of Christian beliefs. No one in history has offered a plausible solution of what happened to Jesus’ body. No body refuted the facts presented in the Gospels which were heavily circulated as evidenced by the number of early manuscripts.

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Hey Alexandre. I kinda enjoy debating with you. I’m doing Ian’s Great Guns program right now (your right, it is quite painful). Anyways, I want to see what you have to say about equilibrium and the reversibility of biochemical reactions.

I’m sure you realize that the chemical reactions that produced the amino acids in Miller’s experiments are reversible. That is, the same energy sources that cause the formation of the building blocks of life will also destroy those same building blocks unless they are removed from the environment where they were created. In fact, the building blocks of life are destroyed even more efficiently than they are created. That is why Miller and Urey included a chemical trap to remove the newly formed chemicals before the next spark. But we both know that this luxury would not be available on the early earth.

You say that life must have arisen near a deep sea volcanic vent, safe from oxygen and UV radiation. In a watery solution containing the building blocks of life, the overwhelming majority of these building blocks would be unbonded. You say that the heat (or that energy around the vents) will somehow make long chains of amino acids or nucleotides form. The production of proteins or DNA from a solution of unbonded building blocks requires something that can keep them bonded. I find it hard to believe that inanimate matter contains “biochemical know-how” that can preserve the bonded building blocks before they break down again. I guess that’s where we disagree?

Secondly, I’m sure you are aware of chemical equilibrium. If a drop of red dye is put into a container of water the dye particles gradually disperse throughout the solution until the entire solution turns a dilute red color. This dilutional effect is irreversibly tied to the arrow of time. As time advances, the dye particles become evenly distributed until the solution reaches a state of chemical equilibrium. Consequently, the building blocks of life, if they survived the effects of oxygen and UV radiation, would constantly be combining and coming apart in the primordial soup. This combining and coming apart of chemical building blocks proceeds until a state of equilibrium is reached. In the case of amino acids and nucleotides, the building blocks of DNA and proteins will be predominantly unbonded when the solution is at equilibrium.

Since the natural tendency for the building blocks of life is to disperse and remain un-bonded, the question I have for you is how did the building blocks of life become bonded and stay bonded in a primordial soup which is steadily progressing towards equilibrium?

You seem to use time as an argument for spontaneous generation. Well, time does not increase the likelihood that chains of DNA or proteins will form by chance chemistry. In fact, increasing the time factor actually ensures that any primordial soup would consist of predominantly unbonded amino acids and nucleotides. If the most knowledgeable chemists using the most up to date equipment cannot create machines as complex as a single amoebae, is it credible to assert that chance could do so? I think not. I guess that’s where we disagree again. LOL.

Yes we are able to produce the ordered building blocks of proteins. You’re could be right that in the future someone may even produce nucleotides by chance chemical processes. However, without a pre-existent language convention, these chemical letters will be no more effective in transmitting information than a random sequence of letters on a page. To change an amoebae into a human being requires a million-fold increase in the information stored in the DNA of each cell. As time advances, DNA molecules collect informational errors (mutations)

Oh, and one more thing. You had a take about the toxicity of the primordial soup. Organic acids, such as those produced by Miller, can damage DNA, causing cancer and other diseases. They also poison our enzymes by irreversibly binding to them. Any primordial soup would be filled with these toxic products and would quickly and efficiently prevent the functioning of DNA, RNA, and proteins. I find it hard to believe that O2 using bacteria could ever come about. It would be killed off before it could develop into an “O2 using bacteria”. And I guess we’ll have to agree to disagree about the “hell” issue. Take care bud

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Yo Naturalman, I understand your questions and the point your trying to make. I was just trying in a very-ultra short space to put down the equivalent of a couple of ours of logical and philosophical reasoning on each question you shot…Some of them have been proven inconsequential, but others you asked, well kinda remind me of the ones found in my bioethics classes and philosophy classes. These are very real questions, they are hard and have to be explored, and posed as a problem, each question developping in a multitude of different question, that is why you will usually find books on only one question and basically, about each question you ask usually needs a minimum of a thousand five hundred words (according to one of my ol’ college teachers…) anything less would show that you have a less then probing intellect…how’s that for the guy beside me who couldn’t break the 1000…anyways, like I said in my post…there are some of these questions that sometime still bother me sometimes. I don’t mind cheating the world, I just don’t want to cheat myself, taking the easy way out, BECAUSE GOD, THE ALMIGHTY WILLED IT SO…for me there is no easy way out…especially out of a 1X6/1X1/1X6/1X1/1X6eccentric…THE PAIN…
I’m a thief, I’m a lie…There’s my church I sing in the choir…
Alexandre-H. Dandavino

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Brother Bible Guy, let’s take it one issue at a time. As far as the authenticity and dating of the gospels, I have one word for you - pseudepigraphic. This term refers to works of writing whose authors conceal their true identities behind the names of legendary characters from the past. Pseudepigraphic writing was particularly popular among the Jews during Hashmonean and Roman periods and this style of writing was adopted by the early Christians. The Gospel of Mark is written in the name of Mark, the disciple of the mythical Peter. (Peter is largely based on the pagan god Petra, who was door-keeper of heaven and the afterlife in Egyptian religion.) Even in Christian mythology, Mark was not a disciple of Jesus, but a friend of Paul and Luke. Mark was written before Matthew and Luke (c. 100 C.E.) but after the destruction of the Temple in 70 C.E., which it mentions. Most Christians believe it was written in c. 75 C.E. This date is not based on history but on the belief that an historical Mark wrote the gospel in his old age. This is not possible since the style of language used in Mark shows that it was written (probably in Rome) by a Roman convert to Christianity whose first language was Latin and not Greek, Hebrew or Aramaic. Indeed, since all the other gospels are written in the name of legendary characters from the past, Mark was probably written long after any historical Mark (if there was one) had died. The content of Mark is a collection of myths and legends put together to form a continuous narrative. There is no evidence that it was based on any reliable historical sources. Mark was altered and edited many times and the modern version probably dates to about 150 C.E. Clement of Alexandria (c. 150 C.E. - c. 215 C.E.) complained about the alternative versions of this gospel which were still circulating in his lifetime. (The Carpocratians, an early Christian sect, considered pederasty to be a virtue and Clement complained about their versions of Mark which told of Jesus’s homosexual exploits with young boys!)

The Gospel of Matthew was certainly not written by the apostle Matthew. The character of Matthew is based on the historical person named Mattai who was a disciple of Yeishu ben Pandeira. (Yeishu, who lived in Hashmonean times, was one of several historical people upon whom the character Jesus is based.) The Gospel of Matthew was originally anonymous and was only assigned the name Matthew some time during the first half of the second century C.E. The earliest form was probably written at more or less the same time as the Gospel of Luke (c. 100 C.E.), since neither seems to know of the other. It was altered and edited until about 150 C.E. The first two chapters, dealing with the virgin birth, were not in the original version and the Christians in Israel of Jewish descent preferred this earlier version. For its sources it used Mark and a collection of teachings referred to as the Second Source (or the Q Document). The Second Source has not survived as a separate document, but its full contents are found in Matthew and Luke. All the teachings contained in it can be found in Judaism. The more reasonable teachings can be found in mainstream Judaism, while the less reasonable ones can be found in sectarian Judaism. There is nothing in it which would require us to suppose the existence of a real historical Jesus. Although Matthew and Luke attribute the teachings in it to Jesus, the Epistle of James attributes them to James. Thus Matthew provides no historical evidence for Jesus.

The Gospel of Luke and the book of Acts (which were two parts of a single work) were written in the name of the Christian mythological character Luke the healer (who was probably not an historical person but a Christian adaptation of the Greek healer god Lykos). Even in Christian mythology, Luke was not a disciple of Jesus but a friend of Paul. Luke and Acts use Josephus’s Jewish Antiquities as a reference, and so they could not have been written before 93 C.E. At this time, any friend of Paul would be either dead or well into senility. Indeed, both Christian and non-Christian scholars agree that the earliest versions of the two books were written by an anonymous Christian in c. 100 C.E and were altered and edited until c. 150 - 175 C.E. Besides Josephus’s book, Luke and Acts also use the Gospel of Mark and the Second Source as references. Although Josephus is considered to be more or less reliable, the anonymous author often misread and misunderstood Josephus and moreover, none of the information about Jesus in Luke and Acts comes from Josephus. Thus Luke and Acts are of no historical value.

The Gospel of John was written in the name of the apostle John the brother of James, son of Zebedee. The author of Luke used as many sources as he could get hold of but he was unaware of John. Thus John more than likely could not have been written before Luke (c. 100 C.E.) Consequently John could not have been written by the semi-mythical character John the Apostle who was supposed to have been killed by Herod Agrippa shortly before his own death in 44 C.E. (John the Apostle is apparently based on an historical disciple of the false Messiah Theudas who was crucified by the Romans in 44 C.E. and whose disciples were murdered.) The real author of the Gospel of John was in fact an anonymous Christian from Ephesus in Asia Minor. The oldest surviving fragment of John dates to c. 125 C.E. and so we can date the gospel to c. 100 - 125 C.E. Based on stylistic considerations many scholars narrow down the date to c. 110 - 120 C.E. The earliest version of John did not contain the last chapter which deals with Jesus appearing to his disciples. Like the other gospels, John probably only attained its present form around 150 - 175 C.E. The author of John used Mark sparingly and so one suspects that he did not trust it. He either had not read Matthew and Luke or he did not trust them since he does not use any information from them which was not found in Mark. Most of John consists of legends with obvious underlying allegorical interpretations and one suspects that the author never intended them to be history. John does not contain any information from reliable historical sources.

As far as the accuracy of the gospels, the New Testament story confuses so many historical periods that there is no way of reconciling it with history. The traditional year of Jesus’s birth is 1 C.E. Jesus was supposed to be not more than two years old when Herod ordered the slaughter of the innocents. However, Herod died before April 12, 4 B.C.E. This has led some Christians to redate the birth of Jesus in 6 - 4 B.C.E. However, Jesus was also supposed have been born during the census of Quirinius. This census took place after Archelaus was deposed in 6 C.E., ten years after Herod’s death. Jesus was supposed to have been baptized by John soon after John had started baptizing and preaching in the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberias, i.e. 28-29 C.E., when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judaea i.e. 26-36 C.E. According to the New Testament, this also happened when Lysanias was tetrarch of Abilene and Annas and Caiaphas were high priests. But Lysanias ruled Abilene from c. 40 B.C.E until he was executed in 36 B.C.E by Mark Antony, about 60 years before the date for Tiberias and about 30 years before the supposed birth of Jesus! Also, there were never two joint high priests, in particular, Annas was not a joint high priest with Caiaphas. Annas was removed from the office of high priest in 15 C.E after holding office for some nine years. Caiaphas only became high priest in c. 18 C.E, about three years after Annas. (He held this office for about eighteen years, so his dates are consistent with Tiberias and Pontius Pilate, but not with Annas or Lysanias.) Although the book of Acts presents Yehuda of Galilee, Theudas and Jesus as three different people, it incorrectly places Theudas (crucified 44 C.E.) before Yehuda who it correctly mentions as being crucified during the census (6 C.E.). Many of these chronological absurdities seem to be based on misreadings and misunderstandings of Josephus’s book Jewish Antiquities, which was used as reference by the author of Luke and Acts.

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No prob JB, you’re not bad yourself…I acknoledge the fact that those a.a. can easily be destroyed, and like you said in a dissolved environment (water, ocean…lake, whatever) those a.a. would probably be unbounded…(probably being an almost certainty before the evolution of chaperon enzymes) but actually, it is thought that the a.a. were bonded on heated clay (don’t remember the exact T°, but I think it was in the hundreds of degrees C. This clay was necessary to fix the a.a near each other.) Now we know that polymerisation occurs following condensation of monomers. Now on primitive earth, abiotic synthesis would have needed to go about without preexisting enzymes and low concentration of monomers dissolve in an too much solvant (water) would not favour dehydration reaction, wich would produce more water. Now, in the lab, we can effectively obtain polymerization when we put a dissolved solution of monomers on clay, rock or very hot sand (basically anything that covers the ground and is not water, now very hot is not something hard to find on early earth). This process will vaporise water and concentrate the monomers on the surface. Now, the proteinoids created by this reaction needed only be covered by rain, or the always moving ocean to be brought back in the ocean to meet back with other existing proteins.Now clay could have worked also, even cold, since clay particles can be charged on certain sites, concentrating the a.a or other organic monomers from diluted solution. On certain bonding sites, metal atoms, like iron or zinc, platinum comport themselves like catalysts and make dehydration processes happen. Once done some will even auto-replicate like RNA… On clay you can find many of these binding spots…(other scientist think it might have been idiot’s gold that was the best catalyzing unit…but this is quite irrelevant (just putting this in, I found my notes on evolutive biology…) Now mixed with fresh water, protobiontes will spontaneously form themselves by the formation of (I think it’s name is ) microspheres which come from the merging of a lipide membrane which is selectively permeable…don’t phospholipides kick ass?...Now, you will have a membrane, that will only let certain materials in or out, around a package of polymers, some of wich are replicating, some of those protobiontes will even, if I remember correctly, create electrical potential trough ion selection (based only on the size of the ion…a type will get through, but not the other…) creating an excitable protobiontes, like (a bit) like a neuron. There are other forms of protobiontes, like liposomes that assemble in coacervats. When these protobiontes are mixed in nucleic acid or polysaccharide or polypeptide solution, they incorporate them and become a bit like chemical plants, taking reactants in spitting products out. Realize that the catalyzing power to do this doesn’t need to be even close to what today’s enzymes can do, even if you primary molecule as the lousiest catalyzing power around…it’s still kicking ass to the molecule next to it that can’t do shit.) You become the 2 to the nth power…exponential power is achieved, the first badass molecule in the ‘hood. Now from there, it becomes a bit more complicated and to damn long for me to write down, suffice to say that this badass molecule and it’s brother would mean nothing without some type of heredity, which is where RNA, ribozymes and the rest come in. So you can’t really say that we can’t create anything near an amoeba…we’re getting near, but making millions of year of trial and error in your lab without getting a : Yeah, but you put a fully developed and fuctionning ribozyme in there, your experiment don’t mean shit…and there 200 000 dollars of funding down the drain. BTW, amoebae RULE, that is until you forget to put the polarizing lens on the microscope’s light. BTW we can produce almost all the basic biomolecules quite easily, and the transmission of the code letters is nothing near random, it is extreamely structured and the lousiest( read earliest) replicating mecanism, as a less than 1% error margin.Here you are talking about the toxicity of the primordial soup…the primordial soup is not toxic, I said that O2 producing bacteria ( now pretty evolved compared to protobiontes/coacervats) would make this soup/atmosphere toxic to other bacteria, since they would be producing O2, wich is oxydating to the other bacteria, not to the one producing it. By the way, the organic acids produces by ones metabolism is usually countered by some opposing enzyme. That is why you can kill anaerobic bacteria by putting them in an non-deoxygenated environment…they suck and got their asses kicks by our ancestors. It seems to be the same story every where…someone is born….develops…then a mishap…something a bit different is born from the pack…it’s waste is a killing poison to the First Ones (by oxydating their enzymes, messing up their DNA/RNA processes) they almost become extinct…now a fat amoebae eat a small cyanobacteria/aerobic heterotroph (or you can dish the endosymbiotic theoric for the autogenic one…but I don’t)…first Eucarya is born, starts to kick ass and take names…then would get the plants…the animals…US The ultimate killing machine. In a grossly reduced, insultingly so format, you get the first million years of life/evolution. You seem to possess working knowledge of chemistry and biology, maybe Campbell’s Biology could show you a more detailed picture, (it is still a High School General Biology book, so it is fairly an easy read, other than that, an Evolutive Biology book could probably show you a step by step approach, now after reading the first ‘’evolution : From squat to the living cell ‘’chapter, you’ll find it difficult to think you once thought otherwise, it never requires any leap of thought from the reader, evolution has been made through such small steps that the human mind will go…alright already, I get it so let’s get it over with… type of reaction. But once you understand the marvels of it, you kinda get bored cause new info will only be out in 100$ university books…otherwise pocket books are good for the American population, you know the one where only 20 % of them know what a molecule is and just a bit more know what a DNA is…70% taught that we lived with the dinosaurs…and all that crap…and then they ask me why I have a superior attitude and a condescending tone…why you dipshit…let’s just say a meet so many people these days that are an inspiration to birth control. Yet it is refreshing to find people who have little knowledge of what chemical reactant means. Peace or whatever. For the Hell, thing, it is just something that is view differently, pretty strangly I am on the love thy children side…me the guy who got the: H, you speak of ethics and morals, but hardly seem to have any emotions at all, probably end up lonely and unloved…(Ok, I was not totally like that, more like : You go on pilosophying, but your a heartless dweeb, and I hope you die alone and hated…(loosely translated from French, but I seem to prefer my interpretation, it’s more poetic, and I come out better…you see I take pride in myself and am a bit the narcissic…But who cares, she’s going to Nepal to save the orphans…probably get raped or something, what are you gonna do with a blue-eyed, naïve, bombshell…Anyways…I’m ahead…I’m advanced.I’m the first mammal to wear pants.I am at peace with my lust.I can kill ‘cause in God I trust.It’s evolution baby! Alexandre-H. Dandavino

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jason, you are asking me to provide some empirical proof of God’s existance before you engage in a debate? I could provide some physical oddities that have occured over the years, but I am afraid you would simply debate me on the validity of the events. So what I can gather is that you are atheist because don’t feel as if you have seen evidence to the contrary. I then suppose seeing physical evidence to the contrary would be sufficient enough for you to believe ther is in fact a God. If thats your argument, fine.
Alexandere - I apologise if I misspelled your name. You generally have pretty well established logic, but I must debate you on the one issue which is faith. Here is my logic. The definition of faith as I see it is this: Any belief that is establish with out the support of concrete deductive argument(i.e. irrefutable facts) then that is established by faith. LEt me get an official dictionary deffinition, hang on…alright here is the Webster’s definition of faith: (1) : firm belief in something for which there is no proof. So yes, you have faith. You have faith in the fact that there is no God. The fact that you cannot prove that God does not exist makes your belief that there is no God a belief based in faith. You can’t prove it, you just believe it to be true. I am not saying you don’t have good reasons for being atheist, you just can’t prove it beyond the shadow of a doubt just as I can not prove there is a God beyond a shadow of a doubt. Really most things in life a a matter of faith. For instance, I can’t prove the sun will come up tommorow, but based on the fact its been doing it consistantly for billions of year’s i think its a pretty safe bet.

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Hi pat…
I get the logic of your dictionnary shoving in my face ( I am usually the one doing so…) but, what I was trying to point out on the subject, was that I myself tend to differientiate faith from Faith…faith being what you describe from the Webster, while Faith is a deep rooted belief in God, so even if existing wording does not acknoledge my perception of it, I make a very clear distinction between the two, so it’s a bit irrelevant in the discussion of ours (arguing on a discussion of word instead of the meaning of the word, semantics a bitch…) when I discuss faith, I want it to represent the usually accepted meaning of religious faith or Faith, otherwise, I will use the word believe…As a side not, when going deep in a subject like this, using a simple dictionnary is a pretty crude tool to establish the meaning/essence of a word, try to encyclopedia type (volume or tome based)on philosophical term…usually each term (important ones, like faith) will contain a couple of page of definition /argumentation. Using a simple dictionnary for the purpose of our probing debate is like using a blunted and rusty edged knife to cutan overly cooked piece of steak.
Besides, the defintion of the webster is very loose, making about allthing in life faith-based, wich they are not…I am typing text right now, but I might be dreaming/hallucinating/not existing or not even writting text…so to make something of it, conventional logic is out the window and fuzzy logic becomes (and usually is) our frame of refereance in our daily life deductions.
In a way, I cannot expect people to truly understand the need for specific wording, since the number of words know by the brain is its way to conceptualize the world, the less you initially know, the less you will see the need for the specific use of the right word. Faith is not simple belief, there is a difference, they might be synonymes for poetic purposes, but for philosophical discussion, that will not cut it.
But still, it is cool some people will at least try to get a reference source,
Arrogantly yours,
H

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People, I would just like to point out that GOD’s existence CANNOT, I repeat CANNOT be proven nor disproved. So everyone on this board talking about the question wheter you or him or her or anybody can prove without the shadow of a doubt the existence of GOD, then the will stop believe…(I don’t point this specifically at you pat…just using your shadow of a doubt phrase) It is incredebly dumd…and this goes for the atheists also…If you can’t prove GOD…then I will not believe…Those are not arguments, they do not qualify, therefore should be excused from our discussion, arguments on this metaphysical question must be hypothetical. Abstract subjects like these will not be dealt with absolutes. I mean, I don’t really want to be insulting here, but God damn, kick it into gear people, nobody wants to convert anybody, we are simply discussing concepts that are not dealt simply with physics and math, there will not be any God’s Proof Theorem. Besides what the point of this Prove me wrong attitude…I don’t give a shit, I’ m in it for the discussion, the sharpening of my argumentative skills, the fun of the battle…and this one’s top notch…there will be no victory nor defeat…the battle will go on forever or until Judgement Day (maybe the believers will have won on that day, but if the metaphysical questions are answered, the ethicals ones will still be up for grasps…
“Faith is often the boast of the man who is too lazy to investigate.”
– F. M. Knowles
H

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Johnny Quick, that’s an interesting story, but the evidence to your assertions are non-existent. When there are fragments of text that predate the dates that you assert Gospels were written, why believe they were written after their are copies of them? Also, as for Peter being an Egyptian God etc. again, not a scrap of evidence. There is no evidence that NT writers used pseudonyms. How about you research the historical evidence for the gospel rather than simply believe assertions and frankly made up stories by Bible critics that are unfounded. For example even the Q theory has come under much fire by scholars in resent years as further research and evidence in the areas of archeology and history have revealed evidences that are clearly contradictory.

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If there is a God, please put an end to this thread.

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Brother Bible Guy, my assertions are based on impartial scholastic evidence, which is more than you can say for yours. I’m my previous post I addressed the “historical evidence” starting with Jesus’alleged birthday and clearly showed the inconsistencies, inaccuracies and errors therein. They are to be expected, since Jesus is a myth. He never existed. To use the gospels to validate his existence is equivalent to using DC Comics to validate Superman’s existence. And again, I repeat, outside of the gospels, there is no other contemporary or subsequent corraborating evidence of Jesus’ existence.

As for recent claims that fragments of Matthew can be dated to the mid first century, or that Mark has been found at Qumran, these have been thoroughly discredited by reliable critical scholars. The claims are those of Carston Thiede, who published a book a few years ago called Eyewitness to Jesus. In it, Thiede announced that he had examined fragments of Matthew which had lain in an Oxford College library since 1901, the so-called Magdalen Papyrus, and decided that instead of the late second century dating scholars had previously given them, they were likely from a decade or two after Jesus’ death. This also indicated to Thiede that they were written by an eyewitness. The book, together with Thiede’s press interviews, were seized on by the popular media, but fairly quickly shot down by more responsible scholarly voices.

Thiede’s earlier cause celebre was his championing of a theory put forward by the papyrologist Jose O’Callaghan that a fragment found at Qumran among the Dead Sea Scrolls was in fact a tiny piece of the Gospel of Mark. This would place the composition of Mark’s Gospel earlier than is generally proposed, and linked the evangelist’s circle much more closely with the Essenes.

An article in the December 1995 issue of Bible Review dealt with both these contentions, written by Graham Stanton, who also addressed the ‘Mark at Qumran’ issue in his book Gospel Truth? around the same time. And in the January-April 1996 issue of The Fourth R, a Jesus Seminar publication, Daryl D. Schmidt similarly addressed both the Magdalen Papyrus and Qumran Mark controversies. In these articles, Stanton and Schmidt both demonstrated that most of Thiede’s statements about the fragments are “utterly unfounded”, and that Thiede himself, with ties to conservative Christian circles, had already advanced some fanciful notions about the evidence for Christian origins.

Dating based on scribal characteristics can only establish a range of possible dates, which must be given a fair leeway, since even the possession of dated ones with the same sort of characteristics cannot and does not rule out the survival of those characteristics in other, unattested circles for even decades longer, since “styles of writing do not change suddenly or uniformly” (Schmidt). Thiede, in fact, in more scholarly articles for an audience of his peers (as opposed to the popular press and his bestselling book), never claimed a firm date for the Magdalen Papyrus earlier than the end of the first century, which completely removes it from any contention for likely eyewitness, or even for an earlier date than that accorded by standard scholarship.

As for the ‘Markan’ fragment, Schmidt has this to say: “The fragment is so small that its only unambiguous Greek word is kai, the conjunction “and”. . . Surrounding the kai are half a dozen other recognizable letters and another near dozen partial ones. If one of the letters is modified, and if it is assumed that at least one word was misspelled and one whole phrase left out, it can be seen to match a piece of Mark 6:52-53.” Stanton, in his book and Bible Review article, brings similar observations to bear. Both reject Thiede’s contentions.

It is clear that one must always take dramatic ‘discoveries’ and declarations in the field of New Testament research with a healthy dose of skepticism, and only after careful inquiry into the investigator’s own agenda.