Merged (edited) General thoughts about Christianity and the bible

[catsmate]

They retro'd them to fit 'Prophecy', they had to make their postdictions come true...

Reminiscent of Prophecy of Saint Malachy,.

Prophecy of the Popes - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Speaking of excrement, I don't think people properly appreciate the sheer amount of faeces that 2 million people produce a day. The rear of the column will be knee deep in what the ones in front produced. Do that for 40 years in a desert? Man, that strip would be the most fertile land ever. You'd have a swathe of luxurious palm trees from the Red Sea to Israel

And what do they eat? Manna? Seriously?

 

[P.J. Denyer]

Reminiscent of Prophecy of Saint Malachy,.

Prophecy of the Popes - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Yeah if Cardinal Martini had been made Pope a couple of conclaces ago (Glorious Olivious) I'd have been a bit worried but nah...

 

[arthwollipot]

Just as a clarification, all that replacement exists only in rabinical fanfic. In the actual Bible God does no such thing.

Uh... yeah he does. It's right at the end. Job 42:

10 And the Lord turned the captivity of Job, when he prayed for his friends: also the Lord gave Job twice as much as he had before.

11 Then came there unto him all his brethren, and all his sisters, and all they that had been of his acquaintance before, and did eat bread with him in his house: and they bemoaned him, and comforted him over all the evil that the Lord had brought upon him: every man also gave him a piece of money, and every one an earring of gold.

12 So the Lord blessed the latter end of Job more than his beginning: for he had fourteen thousand sheep, and six thousand camels, and a thousand yoke of oxen, and a thousand she asses.

13 He had also seven sons and three daughters.

14 And he called the name of the first, Jemima; and the name of the second, Kezia; and the name of the third, Kerenhappuch.

15 And in all the land were no women found so fair as the daughters of Job: and their father gave them inheritance among their brethren.

16 After this lived Job an hundred and forty years, and saw his sons, and his sons' sons, even four generations.

17 So Job died, being old and full of days.

 

[Gawdzilla Sama]

You can't deny it seems to work.

I don't think it works as well as the people with the vested interests would like us to think.

 

[arthwollipot]

If you assume that miracles cannot happen.

I suppose you wanted peer-reviewed scientific papers to prove the event? - LOL

Were there miracles before peer-reviewed scientific papers? (even after)

Do you understand how historians work? How experts determine what is a historical event and what is not?

Slightly naughty word, can we say crap?

Religion is like a penis. It's okay to have one, it's even fine to be proud of it. But please don't whip it out and wave it around, and please don't try to shove it where it's not wanted.
- attribution unknown

Humans do not live to those ages.

...and there is no evidence that they ever have.

 

[P.J. Denyer]

I don't think it works as well as the people with the vested interests would like us to think.

It doesn't work for people like Rusty, but it' certainly works on them.

 

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Pity there's so little to work with.

 

[P.J. Denyer]

...and there is no evidence that they ever have.

But plenty of evidence of people that didn't.

 

[arthwollipot]

But plenty of evidence of people that didn't.

Actually, average lifespan estimates in the past are skewed because of child mortality. If a person in 1000CE lived until 20, they were just as likely to live until 70, barring injury or disease. The stories that most people rarely lived beyond 45 are quite inaccurate because so many babies died, and that brings down the mean significantly.

A human's natural lifespan hasn't changed significantly throughout recorded history.

 

[P.J. Denyer]

Actually, average lifespan estimates in the past are skewed because of child mortality. If a person in 1000CE lived until 20, they were just as likely to live until 70, barring injury or disease. The stories that most people rarely lived beyond 45 are quite inaccurate because so many babies died, and that brings down the mean significantly.

A human's natural lifespan hasn't changed significantly throughout recorded history.

70 yes, 700 no. The point wasn't comparing these people to modern life expectancy but to the ridiculous figures in the Bible.

 

[arthwollipot]

70 yes, 700 no. The point wasn't comparing these people to modern life expectancy but to the ridiculous figures in the Bible.

Agreed - I was just adding some context about an often-misunderstood side topic. Carry on.

 

[Rusty Tyler]

We have genealogies from Isuldur to Aragorn. Are these fictitious people with fictional lives?

The Bible doesn't present itself as fiction. The Lord of the Rings does.

 

[theprestige]

The Bible doesn't present itself as fiction. The Lord of the Rings does.

The Bible is a curated collection of translated and re-translated texts, of uncertain provenance, that some people present as non fiction. There is good reason to mistrust that presentation.

At least those that present LOTR as fiction are informed and honest about what they're presenting.

 

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Rusty, have you ever considered that you are a shill for the plutocrats of religion? And that they wouldn't give you car fare if you had an iwxa sticking out of your navel?

 

[Gawdzilla Sama]

The Bible doesn't present itself as fiction. The Lord of the Rings does.

The intelligent reader can easily divine the facts of the matter.

You ...

 

[Reformed Offlian]

No, you have claims of genealogies and the lists of people differ in each.

And what's more interesting is *where* they differ: they diverge exactly where the authors' likely knowledge gives out.

The lineages in Matthew and Luke agree from Abraham to David, because those lineages were recorded elsewhere. They agree on the name of Jesus' father, because, on the assumption that he was a real person, this is something his followers would likely know since patronymics were a thing. Where the lineages diverge -and diverge *completely*- is on the connection between David and Joseph.

It's almost as if the authors needed to somehow connect their Messiah to David to fit the prophecies, but didn't have anything before Jesus' father, and so they made something up.

 

[JayUtah]

The Bible doesn't present itself as fiction. The Lord of the Rings does.

The Bible presents itself as fact with no good reason.

 

[arthwollipot]

The Bible doesn't present itself as fiction. The Lord of the Rings does.

It actually doesn't. It presents itself as a historical narrative, written by Bilbo and Frodo (and a bit at the end by Sam) that Tolkien simply found and translated from Westron, the common tongue of Middle-Earth, into modern English.

Do not try your Tolkien-fu against mine. You will lose.

 

[Little 10 Toes]

The Bible doesn't present itself as fiction. The Lord of the Rings does.

A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away ...

Mr. and Mrs. Dursley, of number four, Privet Drive, were proud to say that they were perfectly normal, thank you very much.

Call me Ishmael.

It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair.

The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel.

Somewhere in la Mancha, in a place whose name I do not care to remember, a gentleman lived not long ago, one of those who has a lance and ancient shield on a shelf and keeps a skinny nag and a greyhound for racing.