Archeologly proves the Bible?

[DOC]

.As to William M. Ramsay, I've looked him up on Wikkipedia and some other sites and have yet to find any mention of him having originally been a skeptic, then having a conversion experience. Can you direct me to a religiously neutral site that supports this claim?

Are you calling Wikkipedia, a site founded by an atheist, a religiously neutral site?

ETA

For example Wiki's article on Diocletian does not mention the thousands of Christians killed by him whereas many other sites do.

 

[zooterkin]

And there you go with another ad hom.

And there you go displaying your inability to learn. Pointing out the use of a biased source is not an ad hominem. You have had the term explained to you before.

 

[zooterkin]

Are you calling Wikkipedia, a site founded by an atheist, a religiously neutral site?

He's saying nothing at all about about Wikipedia's religious bias, he's asking you to point to a religiously neutral site which supports your assertion. Please learn to read.

 

[joobz]

From the article cited in post #406:

"Norman Geisler[7] cites widespread misunderstanding among critics as to “errors” in the Biblical manuscripts. Some estimated as many as 200,000 variant readings. First, these are not “errors” but only variations, ...

My name's not John, it's Johnny.

 

[DOC]

And there you go displaying your inability to learn. Pointing out the use of a biased source is not an ad hominem. You have had the term explained to you before.

Even if a site is actually biased, they still can give truthful information. You should argue against the claim of the site and not what site it came from. Classic ad hom.

 

[Hokulele]

Even if a site is actually biased, they still can give truthful information. You should argue against the claim of the site and not what site it came from. Classic ad hom.

And yet, you accuse Wikipedia of having a bias due to the fact that it was founded by an atheist rather than addressing the content found therein.

*Snork*

 

[Akhenaten]

Are you calling Wikkipedia, a site founded by an atheist, a religiously neutral site?

ETA

For example Wiki's article on Diocletian does not mention the thousands of Christians killed by him whereas many other sites do.

That's nothing. You should see MY page. They reckon I'm dead!

You still didn't answer the question -- What punishment would you give to a slave who beat several menservants and several maidens when he knew it was wrong?

I'd read Vogon poetry to him and send him to bed without any supper, except that my religion forbids slavery, so it's a moot question.

Even if a site is actually biased, they still can give truthful information. You should argue against the claim of the site and not what site it came from. Classic ad hom.

But how do you tell the truthful from the not-truthful?

Also, you do not understand argumentum ad hominem. -100 LP for you.


Take me off ignore.

 

[eccles]

Jesus is with you

Jesus bloody Christ. I hope not. I'd hate him in bed with me. Just imagine all his stupid parables.

 

[shadron]

It's a wonder any manuscripts survived (not to mention Christianity itself) with a emperor like Diocletian around from 284-305 ad.

From Wiki on Diocletian:

On February 23, 303, Diocletian ordered that the newly built church at Nicomedia be razed. He demanded that its scriptures be burned, and seized its precious stores for the treasury.[169] The next day, Diocletian's first "Edict against the Christians" was published.[170] The edict ordered the destruction of Christian scriptures and places of worship across the Empire, and prohibited Christians from assembling for worship.[171] Before the end of February, a fire destroyed part of the imperial palace.[172] Galerius convinced Diocletian that the culprits were Christians, conspirators who had plotted with the eunuchs of the palace. An investigation was commissioned, but no responsible party was found. Executions followed anyway, and the palace eunuchs Dorotheus and Gorgonius were executed. One individual, Peter, was stripped, raised high, and scourged. Salt and vinegar were poured in his wounds, and he was slowly boiled over an open flame. The executions continued until at least April 24, 303, when six individuals, including the bishop Anthimus, were decapitated.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diocletian

Thousands of Christians were killed and tortured under Diocletian:

http://books.google.com/books?id=3k...esult&ct=result&resnum=8#v=onepage&q=&f=false

Yes, there were. But persecution has very rarely convinced any local culture to give up its way of life in preference of some other, and particularly not over the reign of any single person. As you point out above, he didn't get serious about it until the last eight years of his reign. You can just imagine the Roman governor of Alexandria or somewhere in France getting this proclamation and saying to himself, "Oh, yeah, I've got to start killing all the townspeople who support me to please this Roman fanatic", and immediately burning the scroll, just like they did his inflation control decrees. He probably managed to off several thousand, mostly from his own palace in Antioch, before he finally abdicated (the first Caesar to ever do so voluntarily).

DOC, you stopped quoting from wikipedia just at the interesting part:

Although further persecutionary edicts followed, compelling the arrest of the Christian clergy and universal acts of sacrifice,[174] the persecutionary edicts were ultimately unsuccessful; most Christians escaped punishment, and even pagans were generally unsympathetic to the persecution. The martyrs' sufferings strengthened the resolve of their fellow Christians.[175] Constantius and Maximian did not apply the later persecutionary edicts, and left the Christians of the West unharmed.[176] Galerius rescinded the edict in 311, announcing that the persecution had failed to bring Christians back to traditional religion.[177] The temporary apostasy of some Christians, and the surrendering of scriptures, during the persecution played a major role in the subsequent Donatist controversy.[178] Within twenty-five years of the persecution's inauguration, the Christian emperor Constantine would rule the empire alone. He would reverse the consequences of the edicts, and return all confiscated property to Christians.[179] Under Constantine's rule, Christianity would become the empire's preferred religion.[180] Diocletian was demonized by his Christian successors: Lactantius intimated that Diocletian's ascendancy heralded the apocalypse,[181] and in Serbian mythology, Diocletian is remembered as Dukljan, the adversary of God.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diocletian#cite_note-190

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diocletian#cite_note-190

Wow, even an apocalyptic prophecy that doesn't seem to have come to anything. Personally, I'll attest to the latter sentences there - the Catholic church and their educational system marks Diocletian's persecution as THE persecution of all time, worse then the Thirty Years War, England's persecution after Henry VIII including Ireland or anything else in history.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diocletian#cite_note-190

 

[paximperium]

This post is so absurd that I am going to have to reconsider if you are a troll. How can anyone with as much familiarity with the Bible as you not understand that the characters in a parable represent other people?

Surely you don't believe that the parable of the mustard seed is advice on how to grow a garden.

DOC is the classic cafeteria Christian. He picks and chooses which part of the Bible is literal or parable based on his own criteria. In other words, he writes his own Bible.

 

[pakeha]

Sorry to interrupt, but I've jusst found this:

According to modern scholars, the prototype of the novel probably was developed in Greece sometime before the 2nd century ad. The most important extant fragments of an early Greek novel, those of the so-called Ninos Romance, dealing with the love of Ninos, legendary founder of Nineveh, are thought to be of the 1st century bc. Five extant complete Greek novels were written after ad 100 and before ad 300: Chaereas and Callirhoe, by Chariton, considered the earliest of the five works; Aethiopica, or Theagenes and Charicleia, by the skillful writer Heliodorus of Emesa; Daphnis and Chloe, by Longus, the most famous and probably the best of these novelists; Ephesiaca, or Anthia and Habrocomes, by Xenophon, possibly of Ephesus, the least skillful of the novelists; and Leucippe and Clitophon, by Achilles Tatius, thought to be the latest of the five extant novels. All of the works are romantic stories of love and adventure in which virtuous lovers or spouses are separated and made to endure many perils, but are reunited in the end.

I wanted to get an idea of the Greek language literary climate in the Roman 1st century. It seemed interesting to get an overview comparing the NT with other contemporary works in Greek.
So, romantic novels. Classics are classics.
On to find more.

 

[boloboffin]

So in your mind justice is served by firing a servant and letting him walk for beating several menservants and several maidens?

So in your mind chasing this topic instead of talking about archeology proving the Bible is proving your point?

 

[George 152]

Basically any religious group have to lie and squink to avoid the fact that religions are based upon physically unsupportable claims.
Bring archaeology into the picture and theistic claims fly out the window

 

[temporalillusion]

From the article cited in post #406:

"Norman Geisler[7] cites widespread misunderstanding among critics as to “errors” in the Biblical manuscripts. Some estimated as many as 200,000 variant readings. First, these are not “errors” but only variations, the vast majority of which are strictly grammatical. Second, these readings are spread over more than 5,300 manuscripts, so that a variant spelling of one letter of one word in one verse in 2,000 manuscripts is counted as 2,000 “errors.” Textual scholars Westcott and Hort estimated only one in 60 of these variants has significance. This would leave the text 98.33% pure. Philip Schaff calculated that, of the 150,000 variants known in his day, only 400 altered the meaning of the passage, only 50 were of real significance, and not even one affected “an article of faith or a precept of duty which is not abundantly sustained by other and undoubted passages, or by the whole tenor of Scripture teaching.”

http://www.windmillministries.org/frames/CH11A.htm

"First, these are not “errors” but only variations"

So when I got an answer on my exam in school wrong it wasn't an error, only a variation...

You freely admit the errors in copying, that's good! From that we can tell that scripture is not inerrant (because there are places where the changes actually change the meaning), so then it's a question of the degree and nature of the changes.

Error/variation is a subjective judgment on the actual result of the difference. And since we do not have the autographs, it is unknown how much else was changed. So all that we can say is how accurate a given manuscript is with relation to another manuscript. And try and trace the differences and commonalities between manuscripts in relation to who copied them, who commissioned them, when they were copied, etc.. to try and come up with what the earlier ones looked like, how they came to be changed, and why.

That's called textual criticism. You love appeal to authority, there are many Christians in the field who will tell you their views on why Luke was changed after it was written with respect to the nature of Christ, or how scriptures were changed to support or combat changing fundamental views of the Church.

 

[Maia]

Why, Amb, and here I was thinking your icon was an accurate pic of you. Tsk, tsk.

Anyway. Eccles, you must not remember Exodus 33:18-23...

Then Moses said, "Now show me your glory."

19 And the LORD said, "I will cause all my goodness to pass in front of you, and I will proclaim my name, the LORD, in your presence. I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion. 20 But," he said, "you cannot see my face, for no one may see me and live."

21 Then the LORD said, "There is a place near me where you may stand on a rock. 22 When my glory passes by, I will put you in a cleft in the rock and cover you with my hand until I have passed by. 23 Then I will remove my hand and you will see my back; but my face must not be seen."

While the word is rather discreetly translated as "back" here, what the verse is actually talking about is God's behind. Yep, Moses all alone with God's butt. Need we say more??

 

[Simon39759]

I can't wait for the next time DOC links to the "Parade of Martyrs" or the "Best Selling Books of All Time!!!!!!" lists on Wikipedia.

Ha!
But, if even the evil atheists are Wikipedia admit that it is true, that only means that it is full of extra-truthiness!

 

[joobz]

Ha!
But, if even the evil atheists are Wikipedia admit that it is true, that only means that it is full of extra-truthiness!

Yeah, but it seems that DOC doesn't extend that logic for father Murphy-O'Connor's statement that the Luke census story is complete nonsense.

 

[eccles]

Why, Amb, and here I was thinking your icon was an accurate pic of you. Tsk, tsk.

Anyway. Eccles, you must not remember Exodus 33:18-23...

Then Moses said, "Now show me your glory."

19 And the LORD said, "I will cause all my goodness to pass in front of you, and I will proclaim my name, the LORD, in your presence. I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion. 20 But," he said, "you cannot see my face, for no one may see me and live."

21 Then the LORD said, "There is a place near me where you may stand on a rock. 22 When my glory passes by, I will put you in a cleft in the rock and cover you with my hand until I have passed by. 23 Then I will remove my hand and you will see my back; but my face must not be seen."

While the word is rather discreetly translated as "back" here, what the verse is actually talking about is God's behind. Yep, Moses all alone with God's butt. Need we say more??

Ha, Ha,. It did take a couple of minutes for the penny to drop.

And Moses spake unto the Lord saying: "Oh, LORD, Thou hast such a lovely tush"

 

[eccles]

Ok, so you guys are having fun. Good. But do you realize you are arguing over a set of 2000 year old documents, authorship unknown containing quotes from a man, Jeshua bar Josef aka Jesus Christ who probably lived but about whom all these fables were written, like the fables about a more recent person: Davey Crocket.

How do we know whence commeth the "sayings of Jesus. Were they written down by those who actually heard Jesus say them I think not. If we accept that the fist Gospel was the one 'attributed to Mark, was written about 40 years after the alleged crucifixion of Jesus, the writer had a bloody good memory, or a tape recorder

( I'd just written this and I saw that my phone line went dead taking of course my ADSL connection with it and doing wierd things to my Modem. Well I caused it all to rise from the dead, but more quickly than 3 days and I am now back in business)

 

[eccles]

NASA Researchers Make First Discovery of Life's Building Block in Comet

NASA scientists have discovered glycine, a fundamental building block of life, in samples of comet Wild 2 returned by NASA's Stardust spacecraft.

"Glycine is an amino acid used by living organisms to make proteins, and this is the first time an amino acid has been found in a comet," said Dr. Jamie Elsila of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. "Our discovery supports the theory that some of life's ingredients formed in space and were delivered to Earth long ago by meteorite and comet impacts."

Elsila is the lead author of a paper on this research accepted for publication in the journal Meteoritics and Planetary Science. The research will be presented during the meeting of the American Chemical Society at the Marriott Metro Center in Washington, DC, August 16.

"The discovery of glycine in a comet supports the idea that the fundamental building blocks of life are prevalent in space, and strengthens the argument that life in the universe may be common rather than rare," said Dr. Carl Pilcher, Director of the NASA Astrobiology Institute which co-funded the research.

Proteins are the workhorse molecules of life, used in everything from structures like hair to enzymes, the catalysts that speed up or regulate chemical reactions. Just as the 26 letters of the alphabet are arranged in limitless combinations to make words, life uses 20 different amino acids in a huge variety of arrangements to build millions of different proteins.

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/stardust/news/stardust_amino_acid.html

OK, You can tear up those bibles now.