Comic Genesis Forums

Deflare wrote:Hey, I'm not above a good ol' fashioned thread ressurection.

Hehehe.

Just to point out where the discussion is headed, with the arguments from your post we have come back to the options of some level of insanity (either rationally or irrationally delusional) or a lie (sleight of hand and magic tricks) if Jesus' claims were not in fact true. At issue here is the fact that what one believes about His character and what one believes about His claims concerning Himself are inextricably linked. These claims are such that they have to be accounted for as either being true, lies, or signs of a significant disconnect with reality - ie. insanity. The question of which is actually the case is relevant, as is the question - I think more central to your argument - of what impact each of these options would have on how one treats Jesus as a source of ideas. I'm not, unfortunately, going to get to the latter in what follows (and not even fully to the former), but I wanted at least to acknowledge that these issues are still parts of the discussion.

On your comments concerning the loyalty and size of Jesus' following - are they meant to show that the followers would be easily deceived into thinking that magic tricks were miracles, or that because of the ego boost the followers would provide, it would be easy for Jesus to delude Himself into believing Himself to be God? Or something else? Those were the two applications of the point I could think of.

And in reply... I'll look at the second first. I'm not sure you've accurately portrayed Jesus' following. From the portrals in the gospels, it was actually rather fickle, and we have evidence that Jesus was fully aware of this. As a case in point, consider John 6:24-26, which comes just after the feeding of the five thousand:

Once the crowd realized that neither Jesus nor his disciples were there, the got into the boats and went to Capernaum in search of Jesus.
When they found him on the other side of the lake, they asked him, "Rabbi, when did you get here?"
Jesus answered, "I tell you the truth, you are looking for me, not because you saw miraculous signs but because you ate the loaves and had your fill. [...]"

Jesus was under no illusion that these people were seeking Him because they necessarily understood or believed what He said - they have just, through amazing means, been given food, and it was really the food they cared about. He goes on from here to try and show them this:

Then they asked him, "What must we do to do the works God requires?"
Jesus answered, "The work of God is this: to believe in the one he has sent."
So they asked him, "What miraculous sign then will you give that we may see it and believe you? What will you do? Our forefathers ate the manna in the desert; as it is written: 'He gave them bread from heaven to eat.'
Jesus said to them, "I tell you the truth, it is not Moses who has given you the bread from heaven, but it is my Father who gives you the true bread from heaven. For the bread of God is he who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world."
"Sir," they said, "from now on give us this bread."
The Jesus declared, "I am the bread of life. He who comes to me will never go hungry, and he who believes in me will never be thirsty. But as I told you, you have seen me and still you do not believe. [...]"
[...]At this the Jews began to grumble about him because he said, "I am the bread that came down from heaven." They said, "Is this not Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? How can he now say, 'I came down from heaven'?"

(John 6:28-36,41-42) At the conclusion of this discussion, many of those who had been following Him stopped doing so.
Consider also the fact that the twelve closest disciples abandoned Him when He was arrested - and He knew and told them ahead of time that they were going to do so.
So, all that to show that the following Jesus had wasn't necessarily a huge, loyal, flattering ego-builder. They were people hanging around waiting to see the next miracle, not necessarily listening to or understanding His message.

On the idea of sleight-of-hand/magic tricks, I would bring up the question of what kinds of miracles these could account for. I would say at the very least that there are a number of kinds of miracles that they couldn't cover. There were healings of people who never actually saw or came near Jesus (Matt. 8:5-13 and Matt. 15:21-28 ). There were, if I recall them all, three cases in which He brought people back from the dead, not including His resurrection (Mark 5:35-43, Luke 7:11-17, John 11:1-44). I find it difficult to think of a way a trick could account for the feeding He did of multitudes - in one of the two instances starting out with five loaves of bread and two fish, feeding over 5,000 people with them, and ending up with 12 basketfuls of broken pieces after everyone had eaten their fill (John 6:1-15).

This leaves the idea of legend. Yet consider who the first people spreading Christianity were - they were originally His disciples, who had been there and seen everything.
Now, how does this relate to the gospel accounts? This is, admittedly, an argument in itself. However, consider as one case the book of John, and these passages from it (John 19:14-15, 21:24-25):

Instead, one of the soldiers pierced Jesus' side with a spear, bringing a sudden flow of blood and water. The man who saw it has given testimonly, and his testimony is true. He knows that he tells the truth, and he testifies so that you also may believe.

This is the disciple who testifies to these things and who wrote them down. We know that his testimony is true. Jesus did many other things as well. If every one of them were written down, I suppose that even the whole world would not have room for the books that would be written.

Consider the claims being made here - one of the 12 who had walked with Jesus is saying, "Look, this is eye-witness testimony. The one who is cited, or the one who writes, actually saw this in person."
Actually, a slightly different, but still similar claim, is made in Luke 1:1-4:

Many have undertaken to draw up an account of the things that have been fulfilled among us, just as they were handed down to us by those who from the first were eyewitnesses and serveants of the word. Therefore, since I myself have carefully investigated everything from the beginning, it seemed good also to me to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus, so that you may know the certainty of the things you have been taught.

These are people saying, very near the time in which the events took place, "We're writing about things of which we either have direct experience, or which we have researched carefully." Such a scenario, if in fact true, would not be at all conducive to the events described being legend.

Now, I did add the caveat "If true." I know at least a couple of the objections made to this line of argument, namely that the accounts weren't necessarily written when and by whom it is claimed, and that later editing could have added the legendary material. At this point in my life, all the information I would have to draw upon in answering this would come from the two books mentioned earlier - The Case for Christ and Evidence that Demands a Verdict. Briefly put, they would cite early testimony to the authorship of the accounts as reasons for confidence on who wrote the gospels and when, and they would bring up the multiplicity of copies - especially earlier ones - of passages and texts as an assurance of the content of the texts. However, I have to admit that this is an area in which I have not yet done enough research to confidently weigh the arguments, and it would be better for me to piont you to peole who have either done that research or drawn from the work of people who have done it.

Somber Cat wrote:Do you think that politicians take that money, pile it in a big heap, and light it on fire to oooh and ahh warm their hands?

Quite often. After all, events like that are the meat and potatoes of your standard government scandal.

For example, they still can't figure out where some five billion dollars entrusted to the Bureau of Indian Affairs went. The Pentagon routinely overpays for goods and services by 10% - 20%, while Congressional programs have often had cost overruns breaking the 50% mark.

Here in Arizona, we voted in an Alternative Fuels program that would, with a small amount of state-paid seed capital, establish a network to support hybrid-fuel and electric vehicles.

The $10M program mushroomed to $250M inside of one week because someone had idiotically left open a loophole (which the entire Legislature AND Governor apparently missed) that allowed GOLF CARTS (street legal in Sun City) to be considered "alternative". Instantly thousands of seniors were buying new golf carts because the way the law was written they were essentially free once you got your state-paid rebate. A lot of these were tricked out with expensive doo-dads like leather upholstery, too, because the law made no distinction between a plain or fancy electric vehicle.

The Legislature and Governor then panicked and retracted the law, causing the investors for the infrastructure companies to file suit (on grounds they'd been tricked...their state support was now gone). The idiots at the Capitol took the stance "we're the State, we'll win no matter what", and LOST the case to the tune of ONE BILLION DOLLARS.

So, our government took a $10M program and wound up paying $1.25B for it --- and we STILL have no Alternative Fuels network in Arizona. It's RARE that the private sector screws up something THIS bad.

Mr Contractor makes the freeway.

Here in Arizona, we routinely end up paying twice the estimated amount for roads because our legislators have a bad habit of buying up all the land the road will go on, jacking up the price, and forcing the contractor to buy at the inflated price...then voting in another bond issue to make up the difference. This has happened several times, but under Arizona law it isn't TECHNICALLY illegal. Believe me, we've tried to prosecute.

And when Mrs Man gets sick and the hospital says "We're not going to operate because you don't have enough money, sorry that your wife has got to die."

Then Mr. Man has grounds for a massive lawsuit, because no hospital can refuse emergency medical treatment. The worst that will happen is that the hospital will keep sending bills afterwards, and Mr. Man can either pay it off slowly over time, or if unable to pay at all he simply says so. Eventually, the hospital writes off the bad debt and the hospital has to take it out of the hide of those darned rich people who can afford all the care they like.

And if you get old and you haven't been able to save up retirement

Then you can look forward to being told that Social Security, which took all the money you COULD have put into your own retirement, has gone bust and you aren't going to get a cent in return.

When the sheer interest exceeds all possible cutbacks, then you have to bring in more revenue. California has reached this point.

No it hasn't. California continues to support hundreds of programs that amount to nothing more than vote-getters. They aren't CRUCIAL to the existence of California or the support of the general populace. Of course, things would be a lot easier for California if it did not have to support a surplus population of illegal aliens which, taken together, amount to a support burden roughly equal to San Diego. It's like having a whole extra city that doesn't pay its share.

Yes, many illegals pay payroll tax, but most are engaged in jobs that pay on a cash daily basis, or contracting jobs, where they are expected to calculate and send their taxes voluntarily. Which most don't. California receives only about 15% of the actual tax value of the average illegal immigrant (according to IRS records on tax evasion).

You seem to think that every tax has to be to some one's paycheck. You can tax dividends. Imports. Exports. Registration. Services.

Every tax IS paid from someone's paycheck. Dividends are money you EARN, same as any other income. Import and export taxes don't take money from companies; they just raise prices to meet their target profit margins. Registration and services also come out of paychecks.

And is your life so decimated when, gasp, you have to pay an extra twenty cents with your Mc Donalds Big Mac?

Is my life so decimated when at the end of the year, thousands of "little taxes" like the one you scoff about are piled together and, collectively, extinguish over 10% of my annual income? YES. Losing one tenth of ANYTHING is called "decimation".

Because the deficit of today may not be repaid by the elected of tomorrow. Eventually you either bite the bullet, raise revenue, and pay off the damned thing or go into bankrupsy.

Now this, I agree with. But neither major party is going to do it, and they succeeded in character-assassinating the last guy who ran for President talking about it: Ross Perot. Wanted to balance the budget, eliminate the debt, and streamline federal government to make it possible. Of course, "as we all know", Perot was a total loon. Because...um...he had big ears, that was it, yeah.

Appointed officials who squander money, or worse, spend it upon themselves are to be driven from authority with all expediency.

Agreed, but they aren't.

Kerry Skydancer wrote:Ah, but evidence -does- enter into the equation. The problem is that the Bible, and Christianity as it is presented from the Bible, is negative evidence. There are too many inconsistencies with reality, too many internal disagreements, too many similarities to all the other mythologies of the time, for it to look significantly different (from our perspective) from the stories of Osiris and Isis, or Woden and the Aesir, or Mithras, or Ahuramazda.

That's really only the case if you insist on treating the Bible as a monolithic creature. By cavalierly dismissing it, you risk throwing the baby out with the bathwater. The fact is that many lost cities and much of ancient history has been rediscovered thanks largely to the Bible. The author of "The Cartoon History of the World", an epic tome summarizing world history in comic-book format, considers the Bible (for all its flaws) to be the BEST single historical reference. Not merely because of the scope of material it covers, but because of the very real human actions and emotions that are detailed within...the Bible puts a face on people that no other such work comes close to.

That said, one must examine each Book of the Bible separately, taking into account its author(s), its subject(s), and the era in which it was written.

For example, the Book of Job does not appear to me --- and mind you, this is IMHO --- to be a book about God. It reads like an ancient Babylonian myth, and may have been adopted by the Hebrews during their time in captivity to explain to themselves the question "why has God forsaken us?". In Babylonian mythology, you worshiped the gods and paid tribute not because you hoped for an afterlife or good treatment while you lived, but because you hoped they would leave you alone, because they were almost entirely a bunch of total bastards.

What causes me mainly to question the validity of the Book of Job, however, is that his children are murdered as part of his test of faith. This is all happening with God's permission, so God becomes an accessory to the mass murder of innocent children...for what amounts to nothing more than a DARE! Not compatible with a God worthy of respect.

I also question the "holiness" of Proverbs, insofar as that the last sections of the Book aren't written by Solomon at all, but his advisors. One of these has an entire chapter devoted to advice he himself got from his mother. God himself doesn't say much throughout this Book, most of which realistically amounts to "good advice for living in a semi-nomadic society with mud dwellings, no sanitation to speak of, and very limited resources". Taken in that context, Proverbs is a brilliant read, and some of its wisdom is truly ageless...but I wouldn't treat the Book itself as "God said live this way".

I won't go into much more here, except to say why I DO think there is something to the Bible: too much of it makes perfectly good sense, and there are bits that I do not believe someone living 2,000 years+ ago would have been able to figure out.

The main thing is in Genesis. Read the order in which things are created, and you will go from gas cloud to planetary disk to ocean-covered planet to Pangaea. Evolutionarily speaking, you go from water to land to air and then humans. Both of these match our current scientific knowledge of how we think the Earth and early life formed. Genesis reads like a science primer written by someone who didn't understand any of the underlying science.

Calbeck wrote:
--snip--

I won't go into much more here, except to say why I DO think there is something to the Bible: too much of it makes perfectly good sense, and there are bits that I do not believe someone living 2,000 years+ ago would have been able to figure out.

The main thing is in Genesis. Read the order in which things are created, and you will go from gas cloud to planetary disk to ocean-covered planet to Pangaea. Evolutionarily speaking, you go from water to land to air and then humans. Both of these match our current scientific knowledge of how we think the Earth and early life formed. Genesis reads like a science primer written by someone who didn't understand any of the underlying science.

Ah, but this is acceptable to my mindset. There is some valuable advice in there, and it does have some historical information preserved that would otherwise have been lost. I'm not convinced it's unique, but it's not commonplace, either. I'll admit that I don't see the level of agreement that you do between Genesis and the current scientific theories, even in broad outline, but you're not taking it to be literally true, which is what drives me up the wall.

[...unWARP!!!]

Good evening.


One of the problems with the book of Job is that it was written some 200+ years before Moses wrote Genesis-Deuteronomy. Job was the son of Issachar son of Jacob/Israel (Genesis 46), thus many of the phrasings are difficult to understand.

As to why it SEEMS that God is being unjust to him and giving permission to the Devil to beat him to a pulp, Job wasn't exactly 100% guilt free:

Parental neglect:

Job 1 wrote:His sons used to take turn holding parties in their homes, and they would invite their three sisters to eat and drink with them. When a period of feasting had run its course, Job would send and have them purified. Early in the morning he would sacrifice a burtn offering for each of them, thinking, "Perhaps my children have sinned and cursed God in their hearts." This was Job's regular habit.

Okay, if you think your kids are doing wrong, you do NOT stand by and wait till Sunday to pray for their forgiveness. You go to their party and you keep your eye on them and if they're doing something wrong you yank their ears and you tell them so!


Fear, in and of itself, is actively doubting God's protection, and by itself brings its own punishment:

Job 3 wrote:That which I feared has come upon me, what I dreaded has happened to me. I have no peace, no quietness, I have no rest, only turmoil.

And naturally, he lashed out.

Job 3 wrote:After this, Job opened his mouth and cursed the day of his birth.

Not cursing God directly, but cursing His work. He gave God an indirect insult, which is still a no-no.


If you keep on reading the conversations with his friends, you'll note that all the time, Job is saying "Why me? Why me?" instead of saying, "God, what do You want me to do?" He insisted on doing his own will, DEMANDING an audience to justify HIMSELF.

After the 3 older friends can't seem to reason with him, Elihu speaks up:

Job 34 wrote:Should God reward you on your terms when you refuse to repent?....Job speaks without knowledge, his words lack insight. Oh, that Job might be tested to the utmost for answering like a wicked man! To his sin he adds rebellion, scornfully he claps his hands among us and multiplies his words against God!

Elihu is saying, "Job, you may have been beaten to a pulp, but you should be smeared on the sidewalk!!"


God takes over the conversation, and later reprimands the first three friends, but not Elihu.
After God intervenes, Job is finally conviced of his own wrongdoing. In fact, his last recorded words are:

Job 42 wrote:My ears had heard of You, but now my eyes have seen You. Therefore, I despise myself and repent in dust and ashes.

You cannot repent of something unless the Spirit of God brings you the conviction of sin. And that can't happen if you haven't done anything wrong in the first place.


Some of the Proverbs were actually written by David and Bathsheba and later given to Solomon, and quite a few talk about the character of God, even though God Himself isn't speaking in first person.

Also submitted that the people at the time of the writing of Psalms were not exactly "Mud hut dwelling nomads." Solomon's reign was one of the most prosperous in history, and he was also regarded as a man of great wisdom to whom people from all over the ancient world came for advice. The temple built under his reign is listed as one of the seven ancient wonders of the world... it was crafted of marble, beaten gold, engravings and carvings of the highest quality, and decorated within with the finest materials to be had or made. The doors alone were worth a kings' ransom. Solomon's palaces were also described as utterly breathtaking, on a par with the construction that went into the temple....Not exactly the work of a bunch of ignorant goat herders.

I'm curious about another thing. By inference you seem to be saying "the wisdom in Proverbs was good for a bunch of ignorant primitives, but it's outdated for a <I>modern, complicated and sophisticated world.</i>"
Just for the sake of argument, what wisdom in Proverbs <I>specifically</i> do you regard as "outdated?"

Modernist elitism leads people to labor under the fantastic delusion that they are somehow more "evolved" than their forefathers--- who literally started with nothing and hammered out a human civilization in a raw and savage world. It's rather easy to feel superior sitting down to a 21st century morning, and easy to forget you're living in a world where most of the work has already been done for you. We may have 21st century cars and streetlights and penicillin and skyscrapers--- but it took a hell of a lot of banging on bits of bronze to get there.

Who is more sophisticated and intelligent.... the man who sits down to a computer, or the ten thousand men before him who got to the computer by starting with a stick and a pair of rocks?

And why do you think that, in spite of the fact that food goes in one end of you and crap comes out the other just like them, that sitting down to the end result of THEIR hard work makes you somehow "evolved beyond" all their hard-won wisdom?

You haven't grown your third eye YET. So it's safe to say that under all the vinyl and polyester blends you're still the same kind of naked savage that ran around the plains of the ancient world bopping wild animals on the head with a stick.

There is nothing new under the sun, and the vital moral questions of today are nothing more and nothing less than the same vital moral questions of 10,000 years ago.