AW! Epistles
From Alan C
Abstract
Sunday, 16 June 2002
I have the following comments on: Year Jesus Born. Mark’s Gospel Analysed: The Mystery of Jesus Pages, particularly the year of Jesus’ birth page. I’m one of those religious people who is trying not to be apologetic as you put it! This is a biggie! Skip to the bottom for the important bit but I did read all of your page so fair’s fair. Haven’t got a clue about what you said on the most part after you went on to the Essenes, I don’t have the background knowledge. I’ve known the dates were wrong for ages, I go with the 4 or 7 year theories but then I haven’t heard them so I can’t judge! Just a point on that last bit about Jesus in the temple. Jesus was 12 according to the text, therefore an adult by Jewish tradition. The word parents refers to Mary being mother and Joseph being her husband, acting the role of father for Jesus.
You will find that 13 years and 1 day is the age of adulthood for a male Jew. Jesus was still a child. What you say about parents is your rationalization. The passage clearly says “parents” not mother and step-father or anything like the excuse you find. I suggest it was written before the idea of the nativity was invented, and that seems the sensible explanation. Until then, Joseph was the father, and the genealogies were written to establish that Jesus was a son of David thus also saying his father was human. How could Jesus have been a son of David when his father was a spirit? Do not say it was through Mary, because lineages did not go through mothers. They were through the male. It is males not females who beget.
The way you phrase the sentence saying that the nativity is a circus could be seen as offensive and I do not agree with your reasoning. I assume you have come to that conclusion because the parents did not realise where Jesus would be, therefore they did not know who He was, therefore the nativity was farce. Please correct me if I’m wrong, it happens a lot! If that is it then I would say you’ve overlooked a huge whopping great clue! Jesus was surprised that they had not realised where He would be… because they knew who He was! They did know but they had not put the two together as I doubt I would have done. I’m not gonna argue about the dates and times coz they don’t matter, but on that point of character and doctrine you are wrong.
You are asking a lot to expect us to believe that this man and woman who had met angels and had a miraculous son with shepherds and kings visiting to admire him, angels singing in the heavens and all the rest of what I call a circus forgot for the minute who their son was! Again the better explanation is that it preceded the nativity which was clumsily tacked on to suit gentile expectations and get rid of the accusation that Jesus was really illegitimate.
The Bible is the word of God, He is all powerful, He could have used people throughout the ages to write down exactly what He wanted and to translate it the way He wanted, I believe He did.
You contradict yourself in two sentences, or so it seems to me. Why should an all-powerful god pick such a crude and clumsy way of passing on His salvific message? It really does not wash as the work of an all-powerful being, but looks very much like the crude work of a lot of ancient used-car dealers.
The big mistake so many people including some in the church and the Pharisees that Jesus was so fond of slating make is to look at the Bible as individual verses with a set mathematical and scientific meaning. If you were to take all the facts together as they really are it would hold up. But the Bible is not given to us for us to take single facts and verses to support theories from. It is a whole book, to be read as a complete work, not broken up.
It contains the story of Jesus Christ, not the political saviour of the Jews, but the Saviour of all of mankind. What He did in His life was to constrain Himself to human limitations and live a life as a human being. He did that and fulfilled all parts of the law that we are demanded to keep. We have all failed in that task and are deserving of Hell. He did not fall but willingly went to Hell there on the cross: God’s wrath was poured out on Him as a sin offering. He did the swap with us once and for all.
Unfortunately it is impossible to read any such work all at once, it has to be read a sentence at a time, and when the sentences do not hold together no one other than the utterly gullible will accept what they say. You begin by believing the book is miraculous and that is why you accept it flaws and contradictions and all. You then use the book as proof of God. Your argument is circular. I have a lot of pages that examine the Jewish scriptures and show them to be historically impossible, or historically something different from what Jews and Christians accept. A believer by definition will believe, but rational people will not believe unless something makes sense.
I may appear fundamentalist and extremist about my beliefs. Yes, I do believe that Jesus Christ is the only way to find salvation. Yes, I do believe that Christianity is the only true religion. I promote this not to swell church attendance figures, the Bible was not set up to serve Christianity, it is the other way round and people who see me as in it for the sake of Christianity being the dominant religion greatly misunderstand what true Christianity really is. If I am wrong, you can carry on just as you are. No problem. I have a good life, I will not complain if my faith is wrong, even though I am convinced it is genuine. If I am right then you need to look at the free gift Jesus is offering you. It will cost you your lifestyle, may cost you popularity and friends but it will save you from an eternal torment so great it is called Hell. And I will have glory in Heaven with God! Of that I am certain.
Christians think God will reward them just for being Christian. The presumption that Christians will be granted immortality for believing is the biggest part of the scam, and it is the part that you fall for hook, line and sinker, because you warn me to accept the free gift that you are certain you already have. So you expect a reward for being a Christian. Yet, Christian theologians will tell you that whatever reward you might expect is the gift of God. He might withhold it if you presume too much, as you seem to. Pride is a sin! I have spent a lot of time thinking about these religions and have written what I have found. They are ways that unscrupulous men have used it to avoid proper work. People pay them for explaining what God’s will is. That is the scam.
Thanks for replying, I hope I am not wasting your time and that my points are not all so basic that you feel insulted. Here goes, this one’s long: Okay, so He was not an adult, Like I said, I am often wrong!
Whether I like replying or not depends on my mood and upon the tone of the letters I get. Often they are arrogant but ignorant, then I get narky. The answers in any case are in the pages, if you cared to look.
That part about lineage not going through the mother is a good point. There are two genealogies that go through the mother’s and father’s side to show that Jesus was descended of David. Why would Luke have gone through the mother if the mother’s lineage would not be accepted? I know I’m clutching at straws with that one but it is still a point I would like answered!
The answer is simple enough. Having accepted the invention of the nativity, the author of Luke realised that the genealogies were not only superfluous but gave away the situation ante, ie that the nativity was false. So Luke tried to make his genealogy seem to come through Mary. That was possible because the gentiles it was written for did not understand that Jewish lineages were through the men only. So they were happy to accept the bishops’ false explanation. The same excuse has been given until today!
I still don’t see quite how you can disprove the nativity with that argument. I’m not saying they forgot for one second who their son was. It is still a slight leap to go from “where is He” to “He is God’s Son, where else would He be other than the temple.” They had traveled on for a day before they realised He was not in the group, you would not think “aha! He must be in the temple if He is not here!” and neither did they.
You are forgetting yourself how the author of Luke expressed it: “And he said unto them, How is it that ye sought me? wist ye not that I must be about my Father’s business? And they understood not the saying which he spake unto them.” It was not merely that they did not know where he was, although Jesus thought they should have, expressing himself rudely, but that they did not understand what he was talking about! After the events of the nativity, having found him and had his explanation, at least then they must have understood. They did not, so here is a snippet of tradition that preceded the nativity story.
The point about why God would chose to do what He does. Who are you to question God’s reasoning and methods! Forget whatever you believe for a second and pretend you believe in the God that christians believe is written about in the Bible (pardon me if you do, I do not know what you believe). How can you even pretend to understand the mind of the being who created you and absolutely everything around you? He knows everything, you, no matter how much you know, comparatively know nothing.You cannot even pretend to use ideas of what is reasonable for God to do or not do as an argument for or against anything! I claim to know God through my relationship with Jesus but I still do not understand God. This was made clear to me about 4 months ago, my life with God has grown from strength to strength since I admitted that despite my intellect and understanding I was still so far below God it was foolish to even pretend I understood Him. I suggest that is a fault you still have and that is the pride spoken of that you quoted.
This is another standard excuse of the Christian scam. I am not, incidentally a Christian. I imagine it is fairly obvious. What I do, however, from time to time is just what you suggest. I think to myself, what should I expect of a god if there is one such as Jews and Christians believe in. First, if God is a God of love, then he is not the awful unreasonable entity that Christians often like to make Him out to be when it suits them. In other words, no reasonable god will stop me from wondering about things and questioning them. Not only that, but in the Jewish and Christian view, this God made me Himself, and He made me with a brain that allows me to wonder about things. He must have done that for a purpose. Christians seem to make out it was to test them. To find out whether they would obey Him without question, even though He gave them an instrument for questioning. Christians must accept that God gave them brains but then go around saying they must not be used because it will challenge your faith and lead you to the firey place forever. It is all unreasonable for an all powerful good God, but precisely explainable by confidence tricksters. Either that or God is Satan.
I agree about your criticism of those who follow blindly and do not use their God given brain to question doubts they have. Paul tells us in his letters to question everything. The gospel I believe claims to be a true one. That means there is no fault in it. If I find a fault I cannot believe it anymore as it is wrong so if something appears to be a fault I investigate and find out more.
The point of not reading the Bible as individual verses, you can read it as a whole! It is too big for you? You have a small mind! God has promised to send His Spirit to explain the scriptures to those who seek understanding. My tiny mind has been expanded by it and I claim to read the Bible as more than individual verses. I claim you are wrong not from other’s words or written down words but from my own experience.
Well, if the Holy Ghost is letting you read the whole book at once perhaps you are right, but Holy Ghost or no Holy Ghost, I have never met anyone other than you who has been able to read anything in any other way than by the sentences that constitute the composition. If that means my mind is tiny, I shall have to put up with it, but, frankly, the tiny minded ones seem to me to be those who convince themselves that a manifestly human work is the work of a supernatural being.
I do not claim to have some supernatural power, I do read it verse by verse but I do not leave it at that. I go further and put the verses together, I find the theme of the chapter, I find the ideas within the chapter, I find what legalistic readers do not from the chapter. Then I move on to the next one, put them together, and so on.
On contradictions, can you see any? I have not found any. The two I can think you would throw at me are the turning of tables in the temple being in two different places chronologically and the different lineages in Matthew and Luke. I have explained the Matt and Luke one and the table turnings are so obviously different events! Jesus did it twice! I do not doubt you have others, I would like to know them if you could tell me them. I do not want to die and find out I’m following the wrong religion! And if they are not contradictions it will only strengthen my faith.
I am not going to repeat what many people have pointed out and what is there on our Adelphiasophism site for people to read. I promise you this page has only a few of the many contradictions in the bible. Christians will use any trick they can think of including what you have done here to explain them, but it will not wash unless your brain already is—by Christian lies.
Finally, you clearly misunderstand the whole gospel message! That is what comes from not being able to look at the whole picture. I am not presuming anything that I do not have the right to presume. And I do not understand how you can say that by presuming I have eternal life through Jesus’ sacrifice I am guilty of pride! That shows that you clearly do not have the first clue what I claim to have!
Well, perhaps so, but then you are all claiming to have something different. I go only on what I can read in Christian works. If they are wrong, I cannot see how it is my fault.
Christians do not think that God will reward them for ’being christian’ and by saying that you show again your ignorance of what christianity is. I suppose I must be awful at explaining myself because I covered this post when I said about christianity being the name for the mechanism which serves the Bible. Either that or you have not understood the Bible. I do not think God will reward me for anything I have ever done or will ever do. Does the phrase “Jesus’ free offer of salvation” mean nothing? It is free, it is not dependent on anything I can ever do. I have no right to be proud of anything save the cross and that is not pride but humility! In fact, we will not be rewarded at all! It is not a reward we will get in heaven! If we were to get the reward for our lives we would all go to hell. We claim Christ’s reward. You say God might withhold the gift, He could as all powerful God, He has no obligation to give it to us… But He does! He has promised it to those who trust Him. There is more to it than believing, you need to act on it and surrender your life to Him. If God makes a promise, by His very nature He must keep it. That is the presumption I make and in making it I worship Him for who He is! Pride is no part of it.
You ramble on a bit here, but it ends up no clearer to me. Is the offer of salvation free or is it conditional? You seem to want it both ways. My understanding is that it is God’s gift and no one can presume it! But Christian evangelists go about telling us that we are saved as long as we believe in Christ. In the epistle of James, the gift comes through works, not belief. Such contradictions do not surprise me in the least because I have found Christians to be dishonest mentally and in practice, when it comes to their religion. Like your double act explanation above, they find excuses after excuses, whether they are consistent or not being of no consequence to them. Yet, if they are right, then God is a liar or He is satan. I prefer to think the liars are the Christians.
The teaching in James is often misunderstood. It is clear the context in which it is to be read from the greetings but most overlook them. James is talking to a church. He is saying that faith produces works. The illustration of a tree producing fruit depending on what tree it is is perhaps overused, perhaps not. If someone claims to be a true christian but does not act like Jesus commands, he shows that his faith is false by his behaivior. You have read the passage out of context and have read the faith to works relationship backwards.The whole “faith is nothing without works” argument is a concrete example of the tree/fruit cause/effect illustration.
All I can say to your comment on theologians using religion as a money maker, praying on the weak willed is that I am one of those taken in. I have an IQ of 132 according to the national IQ test that was done. I got 65 out of 70. It was a test obviously designed for those with an IQ between 80 and 120. Half the questions were based at least in part on knowledge and one even had two answers, I would think my IQ would be at least 140 measured in a proper and targeted test. I have 9 GCSEs, 3 A levels and have a first class and a 2:1 in the two areas of my degree at present. Argue with me for a while! I do not knowingly follow anything blindly. I have a more than competent mind and would not have the wool pulled over my eyes quite as easily as most. I do not fit the requirements for someone who falls for scams.
I am afraid you have fallen already. You have an advantage over many in being intelligent. Intellect is partly a barrier against religious trickery but not entirely, and especially not for those who want to be one of the professional tricksters. Plainly when it is the done thing to be religious, especially if burning at the stake is the punishment for not so-doing, then eveyone, or most people are. When there is a choice, fewer people opt for it as they get more and more confident that the burning is only notional and post mortem! That is what has been happening over the last few hundred years. Now at last some people have the boldness to question the supposed sacred histories on rational grounds. That is what I try to show on my pages, but there are plenty of people who are not rational. Religious belief is not rational, so why should believers be expected to be rational. They are not.
You have got the burning at the stake part the wrong way round. I have not come across it at all the way round you put it, it may have happened. It definately happened the way I have heard it. People dying because of their belief in God’s gift, not because of their lack of it. It has happened time and time again that way round, there is too much evidence for you to say it is faked as I could a fair few of your single source points. There are too many cases to say that they are all misguided. The worldly saying “that many people can’t be wrong” testifies to that. Before you say there are more against than for christianity, it is not a phrase I would use, that was an ironic point. (was that patronising? Sorry.)
I have a knowledge that what I do, labeled as christianity, will lead me to heaven. I have that place there. It is more than being convinced by all reasonable argument, it is a kind of knowledge that can only be found form seeing something happen with your own eyes yet I have it from reading a dodgy car salesman’s book and from a God who has to invent stories to cover Himself despite the fact that He is outside of time.
There you go, proving my point. The basis of religious belief, in modern terms, is psychological. Mainly it is guilt. Most believers want to atone for some deep seated feeling of guilt before a supernatural Father. Women are more inclined to feel this guilt so more women are more religious, yet women never control religions, even though they are for them above all. Read this.
You are wrong. I am right. I am not better than you in any way whatsoever. Therefore, it is not anything to do with me that makes me right where you are wrong. Therefore you too can be right. I guess you have heard this all before. My duty is to tell the gospel. I believe I have done that. Only God can speak to you now, I for one pray that He will.
You are rambling.
Yes, I ramble! In trying to cover all possible misunderstandings I lose the point and cloud the water. The offer of salvation is only conditional on your decision whether to submit your life or not. Calling it unconditional and following it with the condition of sumition may have confused you. I assumed you would put 1 and 1 together. It is not dependant on any works we can do. It does not matter who we are, how much we need saving from or any issues that most would associate with elligability for salvation, all that matters is whether we have commited our lives to Jesus or not.
I am led to believe by Christians that God acts through us all whether we like it or not. If so, He is telling me to warn you that you are being tricked. God clearly said repeatedly in Isaiah that only he was the saviour. Furthermore, false prophets are judged by their prophecies. Your prophet’s have not come true in 2000 years. How long was God giving us to judge this one?
I urge you to think, how certain are you that you are infallible?
This is the pot calling the kettle black. Christians like you are the infallible ones. It shows what utter liars and tricksters you are. You are beneath contempt. I reason. You know. Those who ’know’ are the infallible ones and have infallible books and infallible prophets and saviours and so on. Frankly, you are the fool, like all Christians and you are deceitful too—like all Christians.
How sure are you that the conclusions you have reached are true? Have you considered absolutely all the evidence? Is your mind big enough to fathom the universe as you claim it has?
Are you taking the piss? You believe what you are told on no evidence at all and have a brain that you could cauterize to your advantage because you treat it as if it were a cancerous growth that should be removed. You are ashamed of the IQ you mentioned, so why are you bragging about it. What I do with my mind is use it. You want to try using yours, or dispose of it as a useless instrument of the devil.
Jesus died to save you. Admit you contributed to His sufferings in hell by your sin and submit your life to Him. He has promised He will forgive you when judgment comes as it surely will. We can be presumptuous on that!
You are not only a cracked pot, you are broken into smithereens. The historical evidence is that Jesus was an Essene and wanted to get rid of the Romans from Judaea. He was hung for his crimes, just as the gospels say. You have as much chance of being saved by believing in Che Guevara.
I notice that you initial pretence of sincere inquiry disappeared in a puff of certainty, tinged with an odour of sulphur, I thought. You are utterly dishonest, my friend.
It is still there. I assure you that I am ignorant of my dishonesty, I cannot persuade you of that, I can merely state it. I was laying out what I believe at the present. It is how I feel having examined much evidence already. Your evidence may change it. I doubt it will but I hope that that doubt will not cloud my judgement.
Okay, sorry for any of my questions that are from my misreading or just plain misunderstanding. The reasons you give I agree are eminently plausable, so is the thought that you may not have all the sources, some of them may be wrong or some may be falsified to put doubt to christianity, a shocking notion I know but some people do hate it enough. I can’t see any point of arguing because you have convinced me as far as you can, I agree it is a valid theory but that there is no way of knowing either way. It is faith and opinion. My decision is based on experiences that I cannot convince you of. I assure you that I have felt God move in me, I know Christ with me, there’s not even a good way to phrase it! I can’t convince you of that, I just tell you and leave it.
Yes, I may be guilty of what I am accusing you of, I guess you have had many years to get rid of any hypocrisy in yourself.
I pray that even though I have no hope whatsoever that this will change your view that God will use it. He is there, He is active today. He can open your eyes to what you are blind to, I pray He would. Sorry for annoying you and wasting your time. Thanks for your time, sorry it probably won’t have the effect you hope on my opinions. I know it’s mutual!
Thanks for the link. I hope you will find my arguments interesting and not repetitive and old. [Here follows an item by item supposed refutation of biblical contradictions—explaining them away!]
You wrote a long post which I do not propose to go through. The reason is that I read your first answer and you are blatantly dishonest as usual in answering it. There is no point in my going through a load of dishonest replies. Your first answer is this [citing the Adelphiasophism page above]:
“1. In Genesis 2:17 God condemns Adam to a sure death if he were to eat the fruit of the tree of life.” This is rubbish! That is not a contradiction, the disproof given contains the proof! The Bible tells us how long he lived, meaning that he died. Before eating the fruit he would have lived eternally! The image given of heaven in Revelation is of a new heaven and earth, the way it was before the fall when only those who will have the choice but follow God anyway will be there - to live forever! That proof assumes that Adam would have died anyway and that eating the fruit would bring it on instantly which is a false assumption and makes this a pathetic attempt. And all the days that Adam lived were nine hundred and thirty years, AND HE DIED.
Genesis 2:17 says: “But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.” The verse, as clearly as can be, says that Adam would die on the day that he ate of the tree, not 930 years later. You have your head in the sand. Pull it out before your brain gets choked up with supernatural grit.
The Genesis thing, read the verse properly, not word for word and bear in mind the fact that it is a translation. I will spare you my dishonesty and say goodbye.
Perhaps you will, but you still cannot see that you are dishonest. That is what is remarkable about Christianity. “…in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die. ” The Holy Ghost is not doing its job properly again. This Holy Ghost must work for Enron! The verse is crystal clear and yet Adam lived until he was 930. I do not expect ancient myths to be self-consistent. You and your ilk do that. It is part of your delusion. Anyway, thanks for your interest.
The verse says that the fruit will bring death. That day they were condemned to death, they would not have tasted it at all otherwise. It was not that day that they actually died but it was that day that they were doomed to face death. That explains it for me, bearing in mind that individual verses must be taken in context and it is a translation of the Hebrew.
I cited the relevant passage to you and it plainly does not say what you think. You are proving that Christians even lie to themselves. Psychiatrists call it denial. Here is is again: “…in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die. (KJV)” It says that eating the fruit brings death “in the day that thou eatest thereof!” It does not say that in that day they were merely “condemned” to death, but that they “shall surely die!” You can find all the excuses you like, but any excuse is proof that the Holy Ghost, supposedly the guardian of the sacred words should be sacked for being useless. Even the strictest Rabbis did not consider the law perfect because nothing was perfect outside of heaven, but cracked pots calling themselves Christians think the whole of the bible is perfect, despite the mass of contrary evidence.
Wake up, Alan! You can drop your futile fundamentalism and still be a Christian. You will still be a cracked pot, but not quite so cracked. More important is that you might find then that God allows you to use your brain.
Thanks for writing! Just one point about how “even the strictest Rabbis did not consider the law perfect because nothing was perfect outside of heaven.” The law is to point out imperfection and convict us of our need for a saviour—Romans 7:7-13(-21). In what way do they consider the law imperfect?
You cannot appreciate the beauty of a gem stone when you see it in murky water. The Torah is perfect in heaven where it was made but on earth, its perfection cannot be properly appreciated because of the corruption of earth itself. It means that different authorities will interpret it in different ways, and no one knows which is the right interpretation. Apply this notion to your own fundamentalism, and you might learn something.
I know this is a pretty vague and huge question but what exactly do you believe? What are the major points of your beliefs? Like where do we go after death, why are we here, who exactly was Jesus and what did He do? What about His claims to be God? If He was not then they would invalidate everything He ever did as they were key to His motivation in everything He did. And what do we have to do to obtain heaven (assuming it is not ours by default…)?
You have access to the answers to all these questions on the askwhy and adelphiasophism websites. Christians are intellectual babies. The always need a nanny to spoonfeed them. They are called evangelists.
I know God allows me to use my brain, why else would He have given it to me! That is why I have such a faith in the book you call a used car salesman’s manual. It makes sense to my mind, it has no contradictions that hold out when I examine them, and it all fits perfectly with the way I lve and what I see happening in life today making it relevent to me and something special given that it is still relevent some 1,930 years after the last part of it was written. In a way, my fundamentalism has been brought on because of my thinking about it and using my brain, and, obviously, I do not see it as futile!
Well, the inerrancy of the bible for anyone not in denial simply does not add up. You can take a horse to water, but you cannot make it drink. A large part of my argument is that Christians believe despite the evidence to the contrary. Theirs is an irrational, psychological need. It is also hugely damaging because it makes people value fantasies and figments like life after death and heaven instead of what is real, like actually living and the natural world, which is not immune to human damage.
And a point to leave you with, (I said one didn’t I! I meant one on that subject… . :P) I can do whatever I like and still be a christian! What I do does not make any difference to my eternal situaltion, I only have an assurance of heaven through what Christ has done for me, anything I do can only get in the way of that. True christianity is not a set of rules and a lifestyle to obtain eternal life through. It is the lifestyle that you choose and the rules you want to follow after the life has been obtained. Obtained is the wrong word too, it makes it sound like we actively do something towards it.
There you go again proving my point. You believe your figments are more real than reality. It means reality is inferior and ultimately takes second place to your delusions. This is a consequence of patriarchal religions replacing natural ones, and it seems to have such a stranglehold on human thinking now, in the western and middle eastern worlds, that it is hard to see humanity surviving for too many more centuries. If they do not destroy each other, they will destroy the world that sustains them. Christians will not mind. They have their delusion of heaven, and they will never know that it is a delusion. They will be dead.
