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marfknox
SFN Die Hard
USA
3739 Posts |
Posted - 12/25/2006 : 11:42:50 [Permalink]
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Neurosis wrote: quote:
Despite what you wish to believe, the "atheist agenda" (whatever that is) many people seemed to have fabracated is not to destroy Christianity or other religion. If there were an atheist agenda it would be religious freedom. It is quite the opposite I am afraid, for it is the Christian agenda to force their religion on us not the other way around, with us forcing you to have no religion.
I'd be willing to bet that there are plenty of Atheists out there who would actively try to destroy religion if they could. To give examples of what they might try to do, I can easily imagine an attempt to ban religious schooling and places of worship. After all, those things have been done before. It is always a possibility for one group to try to supress those who are different in order to remain in power.
However, I totally agree with Neurosis in regards to the vast majority of organized Atheists, Humanists, and other types of freethinkers in the modern world. GK Paul, I have been involved in organized Humanism for 10 years now, and I assure you, our goal is indeed religious freedom, diversity, and tolerance. Any Atheists with an anti-religious agenda are a tiny minority, and if they are eventually identified, they will be scorned by mainstream culture and other godless folks as fanatics. (Sort of like how fundamentalist Christianity is scorned by progressive Christians and non-Christians.)
(Edited to add that last sentence.) |
"Too much certainty and clarity could lead to cruel intolerance" -Karen Armstrong
Check out my art store: http://www.marfknox.etsy.com
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| Edited by - marfknox on 12/25/2006 11:44:54 |
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Neurosis
SFN Regular
USA
675 Posts |
Posted - 12/25/2006 : 13:13:19 [Permalink]
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| Sure Marf, there is plenty of diversity across the bell curve in all groups, religious and otherwise, creating the extremes and the middle. |
Facts! Pssh, you can prove anything even remotely true with facts.
- Homer Simpson
[God] is an infinite nothing from nowhere with less power over our universe than the secretary of agriculture.
- Prof. Frink
Lisa: Yes, but wouldn't you rather know the truth than to delude yourself for happiness?
Marge: Well... um.... [goes outside to jump on tampoline with Homer.] |
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@tomic
Administrator
USA
4607 Posts |
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GK Paul
Skeptic Friend
USA
306 Posts |
 Posted - 01/28/2007 : 05:55:26 [Permalink]
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In my 2nd post on page 14 of the Caesar's Messiah (Part 3) religious forum, I give a passage from the book (CM)(pg,125). You can read the whole passage in that other forum. According to that passage the businessman Atwell believes that the real Messiah (Lazarus) has been eaten and this is why his tomb is empty.
I wish I had read that earlier, It might have saved everyone a lot of time.
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"Something cannot come from nothing" -- Ken Tanaka - geologist
"The existence of a Being endowed with intelligence and wisdom is a necessary inference from a study of celestial mechanics" --Sir Isaac Newton
GK Paul |
| Edited by - GK Paul on 01/28/2007 06:09:07 |
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moakley
SFN Regular
USA
1888 Posts |
Posted - 01/28/2007 : 16:11:54 [Permalink]
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quote:
Originally posted by GK Paul
In my 2nd post on page 14 of the Caesar's Messiah (Part 3) religious forum, I give a passage from the book (CM)(pg,125). You can read the whole passage in that other forum. According to that passage the businessman Atwell believes that the real Messiah (Lazarus) has been eaten and this is why his tomb is empty.
I wish I had read that earlier, It might have saved everyone a lot of time.
Still haven't read the book? Must be simple being you. Being capable of holding a firm opinion/belief without bothering to understand the facts/reality. |
Life is good
Philosophy is questions that may never be answered. Religion is answers that may never be questioned. -Anonymous |
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topos
New Member
19 Posts |
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topos
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topos
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topos
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Kil
Evil Skeptic
USA
13476 Posts |
Posted - 02/02/2009 : 23:03:57 [Permalink]
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| Thanks for the heads up! |
Uncertainty may make you uncomfortable. Certainty makes you ridiculous.
Why not question something for a change?
Genetic Literacy Project |
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topos
New Member
19 Posts |
Posted - 02/02/2009 : 23:47:53 [Permalink]
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You're very welcome, Kil!
Can you guess who MGKrebs is over there?
I think the effort put into ridiculing Caesar's Messiah by Christians such as Pherguvsel shows how frightened they are of it. |
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Simon
SFN Regular
USA
1992 Posts |
Posted - 02/03/2009 : 08:43:25 [Permalink]
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I have not read the book. I may get around to it (especially if I am to organize the 'Atheist Bible study I have in the back of my mind') but, I already have an ever increasing stack of books to go through...
Quick remarks though.
Atwill seems to me to make the same mistake as fundies are. Viewing the gospels as the same thing that the one we can read nowadays.
He omits that they were, in reality, a large number of contradicting gospels. The four ones we now have were selected hundred of years after the facts on unknown basis (but at least partly because they were the most widely distributed in the region of Constantinople).
So, either all Gospels were written as part of the same conspiracy (not credible considering how widely they differ) or the conspiracy was still active at the time of the council of Nycaea, in the 4th century, which would not be credible either in my opinion. |
Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there – on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.
Carl Sagan - 1996 |
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topos
New Member
19 Posts |
Posted - 02/03/2009 : 14:28:22 [Permalink]
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Thanks for the reply Simon, and I hope you will download the file soon before they pull it back. (And then forward it to all your friends.)
Atwill does seem to accept that the four canonical gospels are basically intact and that they at least are the or part of the original set. I think he believes that at Nicea they still knew which ones were original and chose those. He believes Constantine was a Flavian (his name was Flavius Constantine at least is generally known) and would have known which ones were the right ones.
So anyhow I think you make a good point, but that it's gotten around by the assumption that the right gospels are the ones we have today.
It's very interesting, and it's only a small part of the whole thesis, but Atwill argues that the contradictions in the different gospels are intentional and are meant to show that the Jesuses that are born at different times and so forth in the different gospels are intended to be different people. Also the Mary Magdalenes in the different gospels are different people. Taking the times of birth as stated as "gospel" then the logical person must conclude that different people are being referred to. Also, taking the time cues around the empty tomb story as true, the groups that go to the tomb in the different gospels are different groups and mistake each other for angels, and so forth. The fact that the story when interpreted this was actually hangs together and makes perfect, though alternative, sense cannot be accidental, Atwill argues and I agree.
With the CM thesis a lot of conventional wisdom has to be left behind, and in particular that the Pauline literature is from prior to the first Jewsh rebellion. But, I looked this up on wikipedia, and sure enough, it says right there that there is no dating of the letters of Paul (even the undisputed ones) other than contextually with the rest of the NT and known history. If they were deliberately fabricated, they could have been done later as the CM thesis would require. Atwill argues on his web site and in a future book (not in CM) that this is part of a "back story", basically, added by Titus's brother Domitian. According to Atwill, Vespasian is God, Titus is Jesus, and Domitian signs on as the Holy Ghost. I don't know if you find that amusing as I do but actually Atwill's decoding of that literature is once again very convincing. Unfortunately know you have to get registered and approved to read his forum, I have no idea why, and I never got a reply in three tries.
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Simon
SFN Regular
USA
1992 Posts |
Posted - 02/03/2009 : 15:22:55 [Permalink]
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So,
For little particular reasons but an obscure practical joke, the Roman Emperor manage to keep a conspiracy alive for hundred of years? Without leaving any indications of any sort outside of the text themselves?
Wouldn't it be more reasonable, and make more sense, to assume that the inconsistencies between the texts are simply due to them being written, and re-written by small isolated churches desperate for information about their saviour? People that communicated between each other using Latin, a language that was their second (or third) language? People very likely indeed to make mistake or incorporate traditions or myth that were not originally Christians such as that of Mystra...
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Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there – on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.
Carl Sagan - 1996 |
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topos
New Member
19 Posts |
Posted - 02/03/2009 : 16:52:09 [Permalink]
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"For little particular reasons but an obscure practical joke, the Roman Emperor manage to keep a conspiracy alive for hundred of years? Without leaving any indications of any sort outside of the text themselves?"
I think it was a somewhat serious attempt at supercession by people who had experience doing it, but basically yes a practical joke. But Josephus is the decoder ring for much of it. That is Atwill's first discovery, I believe. Do you know, Titus makes the dedication on the War of the Jews. It is official propaganda of the Flavian dynasty.
It might be more reasonable to believe the conventional view, except that what is in there I agree with Atwill cannot be an accident. Seems to me anyhow the conventional view seems unlikely to me to lead to such a successful religion against a backdrop of a lot of competition. But anyhow, it's proven or not by how it works quantitatively, and to judge that you will have to read at least some of it.
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Caesar's Messiah by Joseph Atwill
