We could in fact be Aardvarks and all of this could be a dream so we need to beware anything with four legs and a tail. . . . . . I have looked this guy up and read some of his economic theory and we are, in fact, brothers in socialism so I wish him well. However my views on all things christian come from living the life of one for thirty years and yet out of all the thousands of "christians" that I know there are very few whos' footsteps reflects their actual dosseir. I would trust very few to babysit my mothers cat and I don't even like cats.

With this knowledge and experience my head tells me that if the christian religion fails so miserably to inspire it's followers to live a moral and correct life then it must be a lie based on a set of lies. The Old Testament(Torah) is simply a quasi-fictional history of the jewish people where the new testament is a group of carefully chosen, yet still contradictory, texts that made a fictional character look good while leaving hundreds of other "gospels" out of the testament altogether and then the final product is reivsed dozens of times over the centuries and then broken into dozens of differents versions.

I am sorry but your book is no good for anyone.

amen

It is quite useless to discuss this issue with you.

I did not expect that people would believe me, but I hoped to meet more pleasant characters here.

But many atheists are as extremist as religious fanatics.

The same could be said about Ghandi. To conclude that he did not exist or that his teachings were lies because he did not inspire his fellow Indians to do good, would be incorrect.

Janimal simply argues the issues that he conjugates as being related to his experiences the same as anyone would and in order to be believed you need to have your ducks in a row (as the old saying goes).

I find that people are very pleasant here. Most of us love each other and maintain a certain understanding of each others ideas and philosophies however you are not presenting your own ideas . . . you are presenting someone elses ideas much like Ron Paul would make an argument for Von Mises.

Just my opinion here but most of the atheists that I know are former believers that woke up one day and said hey this is not worth what I am putting in it. In my opinion atheists just want to be left alone. Janimal and I have had our disagreements, he an atheist and I a pagan we could not be more opposite but we always seem to find common ground and common respect so if respect is what you want then you need to attempt to find common ground and stop thwarting these wild theories that are not even your own.

I am certain that Janimal will respond with his own post I find it insulting and bewildering that you would say what you have said.

[quote]The same could be said about Gandhi. To conclude that he did not exist or that his teachings were lies because he did not inspire his fellow Indians to do good, would be incorrect.[/quote] Gandhi was in fact a modern prophet fighting tyranny through non-violent means. Like Mother Teresa or Martin Luther King these are real people who did real things that did not claim to be the savior of the world. I question the validity of Jesus for many reasons the main one being his story was foretold in different parts of the world some centuries before the idea of Jesus’ birth. Horus, Dionysus, Attis and others share the same birth, life and fate as the savior so his journey was not even the original. I could spend all night throwing examples at you but would it really do any good? Fanatic? Is there any point to all of this? I mean we see the shape of the planet today? The Morality or lack of and Christianity won supporting capitalism the entire way which is the single most immoral practice since usury. I’m tired of this conversation which seems to be mostly one sided. Gotta go.

hey - nice solid response. you think i'm unpleasant - whatever.

i was simply offering what i felt to be a proportionate response to the baseless phantasm you proposed and your obvious misunderstanding of science and human nature.

if you want to rebut my allegation of hogwash, garbage, hokum and hogwash, do me a favour and don't be prissy about a bunch of relatively inert words and offer me some evidence, preferably referencing peer reviewed research, because if given the choice between peer reviewed research and phantasms, you can keep your scripture and virtual reality sources.

btw, the matrix was not a documentary. great movie, but fiction.

am i an extremist - i fail to see how you could possibly know enough about me to make such a sweeping statement. people who have known me for 35 years are still struggling to get inside my head.

i am no extremist, i just see that science has given us antibiotics, computers, the large hadron collider and combustion engines. religion has given us bigotry, sectarianism, judgmentalism and ignorance. no contest - stick with what works.

i'm not even a proper atheist - i strive to see the cultural value of well ordered religions (which don't really seem to exist on the whole). i am a post atheist - to me it is well proven that the concept of god is generated inside our brains. this has been researched at institutes from maryland to mymbai, is well evidenced and seems to lack significant holes in the argument. therefore i absolutely do accept the existence of god, but he is an internal reality of the human psyche, not a universal reality.

religion is one of the entropic stages of the evolution of the human psyche, and will eventually be bred out of the human race as the scientific stage progresses - (provided we don't wipe ourselves out first) this change is already easily observed in the advancement and secularisation of many societies. science and secularism go hand in hand with progress. we have had religions for millenia, science as we know it is about 250 years old. early days.

Hi Janimal

I know that this is taking the thread off topic a little, but ...

As you must know, I have always said this, and I thought that all educated people 'knew' this. Certainly the ones I have discussed the matter with have agreed, but ...

I have just read Bart Ehrman's book (I think it's called 'Did Jesus Exist?') and I was stunned to note that this agnostic Biblical expert thinks that there is about as much evidence for Jesus as for Julius Caesar.

Also, he says that every other expert agrees ~ Jesus definitely existed. And he thinks that it is really odd that anyone should question the matter.

He doesn't believe that Jesus was divine, or anything like that, but thinks that he was an apocalyptic preacher.

I really was amazed that the experts seem to have no doubts, because, though I can see that he may have been real, I cannot see how this is beyond any doubt.

It is a pleasant site, but religious debate can become a bit heated

i'll have to check out ehrmanns book - i have read several others who agree that the only references to jesus outside the bible are by the roman chroniclers josephus tacitus and plini. there is more debate about the authenticity than some experts would have you believe - the vatican has been looking after these documents for many years, and the 'sources' are 15th century editions of these texts. i suspect manipulation of evidence, as jesus is not chronicled by anyone else as far as i know.

i think there is more evidence for the existence of king arthur, and i remain to be convinced on that one.