Religions > Atheism > ~~ Scientist creates first Artificial Life Form ! <= god IS dead ! ~~
| Topic: |
Religions > Atheism |
| User: |
"¥ UltraMan ¥" |
| Date: |
07 Oct 2007 02:16:11 AM |
| Object: |
~~ Scientist creates first Artificial Life Form ! <= god IS dead ! ~~ |
I am creating artificial life, declares US gene pioneer
· Scientist has made synthetic chromosome
· Breakthrough could combat global warming
a.. Ed Pilkington in New York
b.. The Guardian
c.. Saturday October 6 2007
Craig Venter, the controversial DNA researcher involved in the race to decipher
the human genetic code, has built a synthetic chromosome out of laboratory
chemicals and is poised to announce the creation of the first new artificial
life form on Earth.
The announcement, which is expected within weeks and could come as early as
Monday at the annual meeting of his scientific institute in San Diego,
California, will herald a giant leap forward in the development of designer
genomes. It is certain to provoke heated debate about the ethics of creating new
species and could unlock the door to new energy sources and techniques to combat
global warming.
Mr Venter told the Guardian he thought this landmark would be "a very important
philosophical step in the history of our species. We are going from reading our
genetic code to the ability to write it. That gives us the hypothetical ability
to do things never contemplated before".
The Guardian can reveal that a team of 20 top scientists assembled by Mr Venter,
led by the Nobel laureate Hamilton Smith, has already constructed a synthetic
chromosome, a feat of virtuoso bio-engineering never previously achieved. Using
lab-made chemicals, they have painstakingly stitched together a chromosome that
is 381 genes long and contains 580,000 base pairs of genetic code.
The DNA sequence is based on the bacterium Mycoplasma genitalium which the team
pared down to the bare essentials needed to support life, removing a fifth of
its genetic make-up. The wholly synthetically reconstructed chromosome, which
the team have christened Mycoplasma laboratorium, has been watermarked with inks
for easy recognition.
It is then transplanted into a living bacterial cell and in the final stage of
the process it is expected to take control of the cell and in effect become a
new life form. The team of scientists has already successfully transplanted the
genome of one type of bacterium into the cell of another, effectively changing
the cell's species. Mr Venter said he was "100% confident" the same technique
would work for the artificially created chromosome.
The new life form will depend for its ability to replicate itself and metabolise
on the molecular machinery of the cell into which it has been injected, and in
that sense it will not be a wholly synthetic life form. However, its DNA will be
artificial, and it is the DNA that controls the cell and is credited with being
the building block of life.
Mr Venter said he had carried out an ethical review before completing the
experiment. "We feel that this is good science," he said. He has further
heightened the controversy surrounding his potential breakthrough by applying
for a patent for the synthetic bacterium.
Pat Mooney, director of a Canadian bioethics organisation, ETC group, said the
move was an enormous challenge to society to debate the risks involved.
"Governments, and society in general, is way behind the ball. This is a wake-up
call - what does it mean to create new life forms in a test-tube?"
He said Mr Venter was creating a "chassis on which you could build almost
anything. It could be a contribution to humanity such as new drugs or a huge
threat to humanity such as bio-weapons".
Mr Venter believes designer genomes have enormous positive potential if properly
regulated. In the long-term, he hopes they could lead to alternative energy
sources previously unthinkable. Bacteria could be created, he speculates, that
could help mop up excessive carbon dioxide, thus contributing to the solution to
global warming, or produce fuels such as butane or propane made entirely from
sugar.
"We are not afraid to take on things that are important just because they
stimulate thinking," he said. "We are dealing in big ideas. We are trying to
create a new value system for life. When dealing at this scale, you can't expect
everybody to be happy."
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| User: "duke" |
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| Title: Re: ~~ Scientist creates first Artificial Life Form ! <= god IS dead ! ~~ |
09 Oct 2007 05:26:48 AM |
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On Mon, 8 Oct 2007 23:34:15 +0000 (UTC), (Cary
Kittrell) wrote:
Only God can create life.
Why?
Historical.
Hysterical.
Nope, wrong again. God allocated the essentials for human procreation 50% in
male (sperm) and 50% in female (egg). All man does is mix the two.
Why, when the subject is a the possible creation of something
far simpler even than a bacteriophage, do you think we're talking
about human life?
The subject is human beings. You may be a bacteriophage, but I'm a human being.
duke, American-American
*****
"The Mass is the most perfect form of Prayer."
Pope Paul VI
*****
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| User: "Cary Kittrell" |
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| Title: Re: ~~ Scientist creates first Artificial Life Form ! <= god IS dead ! ~~ |
09 Oct 2007 11:26:24 AM |
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In article <3olmg3dlh4s595oq3l567ne7g6noqit3lv@4ax.com> duke <duckgumbo32@cox.net> writes:
On Mon, 8 Oct 2007 23:34:15 +0000 (UTC), (Cary
Kittrell) wrote:
Only God can create life.
Why?
Historical.
Hysterical.
Nope, wrong again. God allocated the essentials for human procreation 50% in
male (sperm) and 50% in female (egg). All man does is mix the two.
Why, when the subject is a the possible creation of something
far simpler even than a bacteriophage, do you think we're talking
about human life?
The subject is human beings. You may be a bacteriophage, but I'm a human being.
The subject, if you would care to raise your eyes a few lines,
was the soi-dissant "first Artificial Life Form", which was not even a
phage, it was a single chromosome.
You, and only you, brought in humans.
-- cary
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| User: "duke" |
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| Title: Re: ~~ Scientist creates first Artificial Life Form ! <= god IS dead ! ~~ |
09 Oct 2007 01:07:09 PM |
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On Tue, 9 Oct 2007 16:26:24 +0000 (UTC), (Cary
Kittrell) wrote:
Why, when the subject is a the possible creation of something
far simpler even than a bacteriophage, do you think we're talking
about human life?
The subject is human beings. You may be a bacteriophage, but I'm a human being.
The subject, if you would care to raise your eyes a few lines,
was the soi-dissant "first Artificial Life Form", which was not even a
phage, it was a single chromosome.
Not to worry. When you mix any two or more things, something happens because
God created it that way.
You, and only you, brought in humans.
Well, you might be a rat, or an amoeba, but I'm a human being created in the
likeness and image of God.
I'll discuss humans, you can discuss your cousins, the rats.
duke, American-American
*****
"The Mass is the most perfect form of Prayer."
Pope Paul VI
*****
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| User: "Uncle Vic" |
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| Title: Re: ~~ Scientist creates first Artificial Life Form ! <= god IS dead ! ~~ |
11 Oct 2007 09:59:26 PM |
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One fine day in alt.atheism, duke <duckgumbo32@cox.net> bloodied us up
with this:
Well, you might be a rat, or an amoeba, but I'm a human being created
in the likeness and image of God.
That's got to be one UGLY god.
--
Uncle Vic
aa Atheist #2011
Supervisor, EAC Department of little adhesive-backed "L" shaped
chrome-plastic doo-dads to add feet to Jesus fish department.
Convicted by Earthquack.
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| User: "Martin Phipps" |
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| Title: Re: ~~ Scientist creates first Artificial Life Form ! <= god IS dead ! ~~ |
08 Oct 2007 06:17:29 PM |
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On Oct 9, 2:10 am, duke <duckgumb...@cox.net> wrote:
On Mon, 08 Oct 2007 04:10:19 -0700, Martin Phipps <martinphip...@yahoo.com>
wrote:
Only God can create life.
Why?
Historical.
Hysterical.
Nope, wrong again. God allocated the essentials for human procreation 50% in
male (sperm) and 50% in female (egg). All man does is mix the two.
The first cell had no sex. Sex evolved later as a process by wish
genes from different individuals could be mixed.
Martin
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| User: "duke" |
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| Title: Re: ~~ Scientist creates first Artificial Life Form ! <= god IS dead ! ~~ |
09 Oct 2007 05:24:58 AM |
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On Mon, 08 Oct 2007 16:17:29 -0700, Martin Phipps <martinphipps2@yahoo.com>
wrote:
Only God can create life.
Why?
Historical.
Hysterical.
Nope, wrong again. God allocated the essentials for human procreation 50% in
male (sperm) and 50% in female (egg). All man does is mix the two.
The first cell had no sex. Sex evolved later as a process by wish
genes from different individuals could be mixed.
Evolution is God's way. Please start with your proof that God doesn't exist.
duke, American-American
*****
"The Mass is the most perfect form of Prayer."
Pope Paul VI
*****
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| User: "Martin Phipps" |
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| Title: Re: ~~ Scientist creates first Artificial Life Form ! <= god IS dead ! ~~ |
09 Oct 2007 11:52:38 AM |
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On Oct 9, 6:24 pm, duke <duckgumb...@cox.net> wrote:
On Mon, 08 Oct 2007 16:17:29 -0700, Martin Phipps <martinphip...@yahoo.com>
wrote:
Only God can create life.
Why?
Historical.
Hysterical.
Nope, wrong again. God allocated the essentials for human procreation 50% in
male (sperm) and 50% in female (egg). All man does is mix the two.
The first cell had no sex. Sex evolved later as a process by wish
genes from different individuals could be mixed.
Evolution is God's way. Please start with your proof that God doesn't exist.
It's your turn to provide evidence that your god actually DOES exist.
Got any?
Don't forget, it is usually the onus of the person making the
outlandish, mindblowingly stupid claim to actually try to back up his
nonsense with any evidence at all. In this case, that person would be
you.
Martin
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| User: "duke" |
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| Title: Re: ~~ Scientist creates first Artificial Life Form ! <= god IS dead ! ~~ |
09 Oct 2007 01:05:03 PM |
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On Tue, 09 Oct 2007 09:52:38 -0700, Martin Phipps <phippsmartin@hotmail.com>
wrote:
Evolution is God's way. Please start with your proof that God doesn't exist.
It's your turn to provide evidence that your god actually DOES exist.
Got any?
No, no, no. You opened your big mouth and proudly showed your ***** by
guaranteeing proof that God does not exist.
Go for it.
Don't forget, it is usually the onus of the person
It's you ***** that's in the crack. Now produce.
duke, American-American
*****
"The Mass is the most perfect form of Prayer."
Pope Paul VI
*****
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| User: "Martin Phipps" |
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| Title: Re: ~~ Scientist creates first Artificial Life Form ! <= god IS dead ! ~~ |
09 Oct 2007 11:12:25 PM |
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On Oct 10, 2:05 am, duke <duckgumb...@cox.net> wrote:
On Tue, 09 Oct 2007 09:52:38 -0700, Martin Phipps <phippsmar...@hotmail.com>
wrote:
Evolution is God's way. Please start with your proof that God doesn't exist.
It's your turn to provide evidence that your god actually DOES exist.
Got any?
No, no, no. You opened your big mouth and proudly showed your ***** by
guaranteeing proof that God does not exist.
Go for it.
As I've already said "As I've said already, your god is one of
thousands of gods that people believed in thousands of years ago.
Nowadays most people believe in one god and have not yet come to terms
with the fact that it is no different than the thousands of gods that
people already realize do not actually exist. QED."
Don't forget, it is usually the onus of the person
It's you ***** that's in the crack. Now produce.
Hardly. Do you believe in Zeus? In Odin? No? Explain why you think
your god is any different than these gods. The onus is on you,
*****!
Martin
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| User: "duke" |
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| Title: Re: ~~ Scientist creates first Artificial Life Form ! <= god IS dead ! ~~ |
10 Oct 2007 01:27:25 PM |
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On Tue, 09 Oct 2007 21:12:25 -0700, Martin Phipps <phippsmartin@hotmail.com>
wrote:
No, no, no. You opened your big mouth and proudly showed your ***** by
guaranteeing proof that God does not exist.
Go for it.
As I've already said "As I've said already, your god is one of
thousands of gods that people believed in thousands of years ago.
Sorry, but that's just a wild statement you pulled out your *****. You said you
could prove that God almighty does not exist.
I am waiting.
Nowadays most people believe in one god and have not yet come to terms
with the fact that it is no different than the thousands of gods that
people already realize do not actually exist. QED."
Don't forget, it is usually the onus of the person
It's you ***** that's in the crack. Now produce.
Hardly. Do you believe in Zeus? In Odin?
Hey, hey, hey, can your mouth overload your *****? It does since you make your
big stupid statement. Now produce.
duke, American-American
*****
"The Mass is the most perfect form of Prayer."
Pope Paul VI
*****
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| User: "Martin Phipps" |
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| Title: Re: ~~ Scientist creates first Artificial Life Form ! <= god IS dead ! ~~ |
10 Oct 2007 07:05:04 PM |
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On Oct 11, 2:27 am, duke <duckgumb...@cox.net> wrote:
On Tue, 09 Oct 2007 21:12:25 -0700, Martin Phipps <phippsmar...@hotmail.com>
wrote:
No, no, no. You opened your big mouth and proudly showed your ***** by
guaranteeing proof that God does not exist.
Go for it.
As I've already said "As I've said already, your god is one of
thousands of gods that people believed in thousands of years ago.
Sorry, but that's just a wild statement you pulled out your *****. You said you
could prove that God almighty does not exist.
I am waiting.
So you want the long version, do you? Well if you asked for it then I
expect you to read it.
Thousands of years ago the Christian
god was just a god amongst many. (See http://www.crystalinks.com/sumergods.html
or http://www.usfca.edu/westciv/Sumerian.html or
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Sumerian_gods or
http://www.geocities.com/garyweb65/sumgods.html or
http://home.comcast.net/~chris.s/sumer-faq.html#A1.3.1 or
look up the word "Elohim" on wikipedia.) Thousands
of years ago, God was known as "Anu" or the "Sky God" of Sumerian
mythology. We know this because the Bible claims Abraham came from Ur
which was located in Sumer. (See http://www.earthhistory.org.uk/ )
According to http://www.stevesdinner.plus.com/swd17.htm ,
"Orthodox tradition represents Abraham as a member of a Semitic tribe
from Ur. He probably spoke Akkadian, and the Akkadian counterparts of
the Sumerian gods Enki, An, Enlil, Utu, Nanna, and Inanna would have
been known to Abraham as Ea, Anu, Bel, Shamash, Sin, and Ishtar.
Abraham's tribe left Ur and travelled to Harran in southeastern
Turkey."
[Note: "Bel" is a Sumerian word meaning "Lord" which in this case
refers to Ea's brother.]
There's also the similarity between Sumerian mythology and the Bible:
in Sumerian mythology, the first man was named Adapa!
(See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adapa ) Later the world was
destroyed by Anu in a great flood from which there was only one
survivor who survived by building a boat that carried him, his family
and all their animals! (See http://www.flood-myth.com/ )
These similarities are pointed out on http://www.historel.net/english/orient/03mesop.htm
which is a theist site that doesn't seem to mind admitting the
similarity between the Bible and other mythology! Yet it still
refers
to "God" as if he actually existed!
The Bible also makes reference to the ancient Hebrew goddess Astarte
and refers to her as the "Queen of Heaven":
"The children gather wood, and the fathers kindle the fire, and the
women knead their dough, to make cakes to the queen of heaven, and to
pour out drink offerings unto other gods, that they may provoke me to
anger." - Jeremiah 7:18
"But we will certainly do whatsoever thing goeth forth out of our own
mouth, to burn incense unto the queen of heaven, and to pour out
drink
offerings unto her, as we have done, we, and our fathers, our kings,
and our princes, in the cities of Judah, and in the streets of
Jerusalem: for then had we plenty of victuals, and were well, and saw
no evil. But since we left off to burn incense to the queen of
heaven, and to pour out drink offerings unto her, we have wanted all
things, and have been consumed by the sword and by the famine. And
when we burned incense to the queen of heaven, and poured out drink
offerings unto her, did we make her cakes to worship her, and pour
out
drink offerings unto her, without our men?" - Jeremiah 44:17-19
"We will surely perform our vows that we have vowed, to burn incense
to the queen of heaven, and to pour out drink offerings unto her: ye
will surely accomplish your vows, and surely perform your vows." -
Jeremiah 44:25
The name Astarte is easily associated with that of the Sumerian
goddess Ishtar who was also known as the "Queen of Heaven". (See
http://www.dhushara.com/book/orsin/origsin.htm
http://www.cmy.on.ca/newletters/aug2004.htm, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ishtar
and http://www.christiananswers.net/dictionary/ishtar.html )
Besides mentioning that Abraham came from Ur in Sumer, the Bible also
mentions the city of Babylon and the "Tower of Babel" that was
supposedly built there. The Babylonians were hated by the Hebrews and
to this day "to babble" means to speak nonsense. The Garden of Eden
was also located in Sumer according to Genesis 2:10-14:
"And a river went out of Eden to water the garden; and from thence it
was parted, and became into four heads. The name of the first is
Pison: that is it which compasseth the whole land of Havilah, where
there is gold; And the gold of that land is good: there is bdellium
and the onyx stone. And the name of the second river is Gihon: the
same is it that compasseth the whole land of Ethiopia. And the name of
the third river is Hiddekel: that is it which goeth toward the east
of
Assyria. And the fourth river is Euphrates."
The Euphrates river ran through Sumer, which is now Iraq.
It is worth noting that http://www.earthhistory.org.uk/
is actually a theist site! They refer to Anu as " the one God" but
claim that "Ea" and "Bel" were just other names for the same god.
This contradicts the fact that Anu, Ea and Bel were worshipped
separately in Sumer as three distinct Gods. (Anu was the god of the
sky, Bel was the god of wind and Ea was the god of water. Sumerian
mythology claimed that humans were created by Ea.)
According to http://www.crystalinks.com/sumergods.html
"Enki unraveled the secrets of life and death. His emblem was two
serpents ... entwined on a staff - the basis for the winged caduceus
symbol used by modern Western medicine." As Ea was the god of
knowledge, was the guardian of the "Tree of Life" in Sumerian
mythology and he was symbolized by a snake, it stands to reason that
the snake in the myth of the garden of Eden represented Ea. The
Hebrew word "Baal" meant "Lord" and thus "Baal" could have refered to
any god who was known as "Bel" kn the Sumerian panthenon. The Hebrews
were presumably told by their god to kill all followers of "Baal":
"While the Israelites were camped at Acacia, some of the men defiled
themselves by sleeping with the local Moabite women. These women
invited them to attend sacrifices to their gods, and soon the
Israelites were feasting with them and worshiping the gods of Moab.
Before long Israel was joining in the worship of Baal of Peor,
causing
the LORD's anger to blaze against his people. The LORD issued the
following command to Moses: "Seize all the ringleaders and execute
them before the LORD in broad daylight, so his fierce anger will turn
away from the people of Israel." So Moses ordered Israel's judges to
execute everyone who had joined in worshiping Baal of Peor. Just
then
one of the Israelite men brought a Midianite woman into the camp,
right before the eyes of Moses and all the people, as they were
weeping at the entrance of the Tabernacle. When Phinehas son of
Eleazar and grandson of Aaron the priest saw this, he jumped up and
left the assembly. Then he took a spear and rushed after the man
into
his tent. Phinehas thrust the spear all the way through the man's
body
and into the woman's stomach. So the plague against the Israelites
was stopped, but not before 24,000 people had died." - Numbers 25:1-9
Incidentally, the myth of Moses was probably inspired by the legend
of
the historical pharoah Ahmose. (See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ahmose_I
).
What is interesting is that theists today are willing to accept that
their god was the god An of Sumer but they don't see why this should
be a challenge to faith. ( http://www.christianblog.com/blog/thomas/abram-was-from-sumer-after-all/
) An was the most powerful god in Sumerian mythology and hence it is
understandable that Abraham would choose him as the "one true god" and
dismiss all the others but then the question would be if Anu (God)
exists then what about all the other gods.
So God is just a myth created by man to explain the world around him
and give him comfort. If that's not good enough for you, consider
the
fact that God had been used in the past to explain everything from
storms to floods to earthquakes to volcanic eruptions but that we now
have scientific explanations for all of these calamities and thus
don't need to use any gods (let alone God) to explain them. The fact
is that scientists can perform measurements today that agree with the
predictions of quantum theory to ten digit precision and accuracy.
The so called "God of the gaps" has become so infinitessimally small
that we can feel confident that it doesn't exist at all.
Martin
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| User: "duke" |
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| Title: Re: ~~ Scientist creates first Artificial Life Form ! <= god IS dead ! ~~ |
11 Oct 2007 06:11:45 AM |
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On Wed, 10 Oct 2007 17:05:04 -0700, Martin Phipps <phippsmartin@hotmail.com>
wrote:
On Oct 11, 2:27 am, duke <duckgumb...@cox.net> wrote:
On Tue, 09 Oct 2007 21:12:25 -0700, Martin Phipps <phippsmar...@hotmail.com>
wrote:
No, no, no. You opened your big mouth and proudly showed your ***** by
guaranteeing proof that God does not exist.
Go for it.
As I've already said "As I've said already, your god is one of
thousands of gods that people believed in thousands of years ago.
Sorry, but that's just a wild statement you pulled out your *****. You said you
could prove that God almighty does not exist.
I am waiting.
So you want the long version, do you? Well if you asked for it then I
expect you to read it.
Thousands of years ago the Christian
god was just a god amongst many. (See http://www.crystalinks.com/sumergods.html
Not a one except almighty God was anything more than an inanimate object at
best. There is only one God, all-mighty God.
or http://www.usfca.edu/westciv/Sumerian.html or
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Sumerian_gods or
http://www.geocities.com/garyweb65/sumgods.html or
http://home.comcast.net/~chris.s/sumer-faq.html#A1.3.1 or
look up the word "Elohim" on wikipedia.) Thousands
of years ago, God was known as "Anu" or the "Sky God" of Sumerian
mythology. We know this because the Bible claims Abraham came from Ur
which was located in Sumer. (See http://www.earthhistory.org.uk/ )
On wiki - the encyclopedia written by readers??????
According to http://www.stevesdinner.plus.com/swd17.htm ,
"Orthodox tradition represents Abraham as a member of a Semitic tribe
from Ur. He probably spoke Akkadian, and the Akkadian counterparts of
the Sumerian gods Enki, An, Enlil, Utu, Nanna, and Inanna would have
been known to Abraham as Ea, Anu, Bel, Shamash, Sin, and Ishtar.
Abraham's tribe left Ur and travelled to Harran in southeastern
Turkey."
steve's dinner is an expert?
[Note: "Bel" is a Sumerian word meaning "Lord" which in this case
refers to Ea's brother.]
There's also the similarity between Sumerian mythology and the Bible:
in Sumerian mythology, the first man was named Adapa!
Meaningless statement.
The Bible also makes reference to the ancient Hebrew goddess Astarte
and refers to her as the "Queen of Heaven":
Pagan.
"The children gather wood, and the fathers kindle the fire, and the
women knead their dough, to make cakes to the queen of heaven, and to
pour out drink offerings unto other gods, that they may provoke me to
anger." - Jeremiah 7:18
Pagan.
"But we will certainly do whatsoever thing goeth forth out of our own
mouth, to burn incense unto the queen of heaven, and to pour out
drink
offerings unto her, as we have done, we, and our fathers, our kings,
and our princes, in the cities of Judah, and in the streets of
Jerusalem: for then had we plenty of victuals, and were well, and saw
no evil. But since we left off to burn incense to the queen of
heaven, and to pour out drink offerings unto her, we have wanted all
things, and have been consumed by the sword and by the famine. And
when we burned incense to the queen of heaven, and poured out drink
offerings unto her, did we make her cakes to worship her, and pour
out
drink offerings unto her, without our men?" - Jeremiah 44:17-19
"We will surely perform our vows that we have vowed, to burn incense
to the queen of heaven, and to pour out drink offerings unto her: ye
will surely accomplish your vows, and surely perform your vows." -
Jeremiah 44:25
The name Astarte is easily associated with that of the Sumerian
goddess Ishtar who was also known as the "Queen of Heaven". (See
http://www.dhushara.com/book/orsin/origsin.htm
http://www.cmy.on.ca/newletters/aug2004.htm, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ishtar
and http://www.christiananswers.net/dictionary/ishtar.html )
Besides mentioning that Abraham came from Ur in Sumer, the Bible also
mentions the city of Babylon and the "Tower of Babel" that was
supposedly built there. The Babylonians were hated by the Hebrews and
to this day "to babble" means to speak nonsense. The Garden of Eden
was also located in Sumer according to Genesis 2:10-14:
"And a river went out of Eden to water the garden; and from thence it
was parted, and became into four heads. The name of the first is
Pison: that is it which compasseth the whole land of Havilah, where
there is gold; And the gold of that land is good: there is bdellium
and the onyx stone. And the name of the second river is Gihon: the
same is it that compasseth the whole land of Ethiopia. And the name of
the third river is Hiddekel: that is it which goeth toward the east
of
Assyria. And the fourth river is Euphrates."
The Euphrates river ran through Sumer, which is now Iraq.
It is worth noting that http://www.earthhistory.org.uk/
is actually a theist site! They refer to Anu as " the one God" but
claim that "Ea" and "Bel" were just other names for the same god.
This contradicts the fact that Anu, Ea and Bel were worshipped
separately in Sumer as three distinct Gods. (Anu was the god of the
sky, Bel was the god of wind and Ea was the god of water. Sumerian
mythology claimed that humans were created by Ea.)
According to http://www.crystalinks.com/sumergods.html
"Enki unraveled the secrets of life and death. His emblem was two
serpents ... entwined on a staff - the basis for the winged caduceus
symbol used by modern Western medicine." As Ea was the god of
knowledge, was the guardian of the "Tree of Life" in Sumerian
mythology and he was symbolized by a snake, it stands to reason that
the snake in the myth of the garden of Eden represented Ea. The
Hebrew word "Baal" meant "Lord" and thus "Baal" could have refered to
any god who was known as "Bel" kn the Sumerian panthenon. The Hebrews
were presumably told by their god to kill all followers of "Baal":
"While the Israelites were camped at Acacia, some of the men defiled
themselves by sleeping with the local Moabite women. These women
invited them to attend sacrifices to their gods, and soon the
Israelites were feasting with them and worshiping the gods of Moab.
Before long Israel was joining in the worship of Baal of Peor,
causing
the LORD's anger to blaze against his people. The LORD issued the
following command to Moses: "Seize all the ringleaders and execute
them before the LORD in broad daylight, so his fierce anger will turn
away from the people of Israel." So Moses ordered Israel's judges to
execute everyone who had joined in worshiping Baal of Peor. Just
then
one of the Israelite men brought a Midianite woman into the camp,
right before the eyes of Moses and all the people, as they were
weeping at the entrance of the Tabernacle. When Phinehas son of
Eleazar and grandson of Aaron the priest saw this, he jumped up and
left the assembly. Then he took a spear and rushed after the man
into
his tent. Phinehas thrust the spear all the way through the man's
body
and into the woman's stomach. So the plague against the Israelites
was stopped, but not before 24,000 people had died." - Numbers 25:1-9
Incidentally, the myth of Moses was probably inspired by the legend
of
the historical pharoah Ahmose. (See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ahmose_I
).
What is interesting is that theists today are willing to accept that
their god was the god An of Sumer but they don't see why this should
be a challenge to faith. ( http://www.christianblog.com/blog/thomas/abram-was-from-sumer-after-all/
) An was the most powerful god in Sumerian mythology and hence it is
understandable that Abraham would choose him as the "one true god" and
dismiss all the others but then the question would be if Anu (God)
exists then what about all the other gods.
So God is just a myth created by man to explain the world around him
and give him comfort.
Christ walked out of his tomb about being dead for the better part of 3 days to
walk and talk and eat and drink with 500+ of his disciples for the next 40 days.
So far, you have made up your own story to support your own beliefs.
I'm am ready for your proof that there is no God. Please start now.
duke, American-American
*****
"The Mass is the most perfect form of Prayer."
Pope Paul VI
*****
.
|
|
|
| User: "Martin Phipps" |
|
| Title: Re: ~~ Scientist creates first Artificial Life Form ! <= god IS dead ! ~~ |
11 Oct 2007 06:27:32 AM |
|
|
On Oct 11, 7:11 pm, duke <duckgumb...@cox.net> wrote:
On Wed, 10 Oct 2007 17:05:04 -0700, Martin Phipps <phippsmar...@hotmail.c=
om>
wrote:
On Oct 11, 2:27 am, duke <duckgumb...@cox.net> wrote:
On Tue, 09 Oct 2007 21:12:25 -0700, Martin Phipps <phippsmar...@hotmai=
l=2Ecom>
wrote:
No, no, no. You opened your big mouth and proudly showed your ***** =
by
guaranteeing proof that God does not exist.
Go for it.
As I've already said "As I've said already, your god is one of
thousands of gods that people believed in thousands of years ago.
Sorry, but that's just a wild statement you pulled out your *****. You =
said you
could prove that God almighty does not exist.
I am waiting.
So you want the long version, do you? Well if you asked for it then I
expect you to read it.
Thousands of years ago the Christian
god was just a god amongst many. (Seehttp://www.crystalinks.com/sumergo=
ds.html
Not a one except almighty God was anything more than an inanimate object =
at
best. There is only one God, all-mighty God.
Prove that your god out of the thousands of gods believed in thousands
of years ago was any different than the others. You can't. That's
because your god, like all other gods was a myth.
or http://www.usfca.edu/westciv/Sumerian.html or
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Sumerian_gods or
http://www.geocities.com/garyweb65/sumgods.html or
http://home.comcast.net/~chris.s/sumer-faq.html#A1.3.1or
look up the word "Elohim" on wikipedia.) Thousands
of years ago, God was known as "Anu" or the "Sky God" of Sumerian
mythology. We know this because the Bible claims Abraham came from Ur
which was located in Sumer. (See http://www.earthhistory.org.uk/)
On wiki - the encyclopedia written by readers??????
Citing references in print on online, yes. What's your reference?
According to http://www.stevesdinner.plus.com/swd17.htm,
"Orthodox tradition represents Abraham as a member of a Semitic tribe
from Ur. He probably spoke Akkadian, and the Akkadian counterparts of
the Sumerian gods Enki, An, Enlil, Utu, Nanna, and Inanna would have
been known to Abraham as Ea, Anu, Bel, Shamash, Sin, and Ishtar.
Abraham's tribe left Ur and travelled to Harran in southeastern
Turkey."
steve's dinner is an expert?
On mythology, apparently, yes.
[Note: "Bel" is a Sumerian word meaning "Lord" which in this case
refers to Ea's brother.]
There's also the similarity between Sumerian mythology and the Bible:
in Sumerian mythology, the first man was named Adapa!
Meaningless statement. =20
Like all mythology.
The Bible also makes reference to the ancient Hebrew goddess Astarte
and refers to her as the "Queen of Heaven":
Pagan.
Biblical.
"The children gather wood, and the fathers kindle the fire, and the
women knead their dough, to make cakes to the queen of heaven, and to
pour out drink offerings unto other gods, that they may provoke me to
anger." - Jeremiah 7:18
Pagan.
Biblical.
"But we will certainly do whatsoever thing goeth forth out of our own
mouth, to burn incense unto the queen of heaven, and to pour out
drink
offerings unto her, as we have done, we, and our fathers, our kings,
and our princes, in the cities of Judah, and in the streets of
Jerusalem: for then had we plenty of victuals, and were well, and saw
no evil. But since we left off to burn incense to the queen of
heaven, and to pour out drink offerings unto her, we have wanted all
things, and have been consumed by the sword and by the famine. And
when we burned incense to the queen of heaven, and poured out drink
offerings unto her, did we make her cakes to worship her, and pour
out
drink offerings unto her, without our men?" - Jeremiah 44:17-19
"We will surely perform our vows that we have vowed, to burn incense
to the queen of heaven, and to pour out drink offerings unto her: ye
will surely accomplish your vows, and surely perform your vows." -
Jeremiah 44:25
The name Astarte is easily associated with that of the Sumerian
goddess Ishtar who was also known as the "Queen of Heaven". (See
http://www.dhushara.com/book/orsin/origsin.htm
http://www.cmy.on.ca/newletters/aug2004.htm,http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki=
/Ishtar
andhttp://www.christiananswers.net/dictionary/ishtar.html)
Besides mentioning that Abraham came from Ur in Sumer, the Bible also
mentions the city of Babylon and the "Tower of Babel" that was
supposedly built there. The Babylonians were hated by the Hebrews and
to this day "to babble" means to speak nonsense. The Garden of Eden
was also located in Sumer according to Genesis 2:10-14:
"And a river went out of Eden to water the garden; and from thence it
was parted, and became into four heads. The name of the first is
Pison: that is it which compasseth the whole land of Havilah, where
there is gold; And the gold of that land is good: there is bdellium
and the onyx stone. And the name of the second river is Gihon: the
same is it that compasseth the whole land of Ethiopia. And the name of
the third river is Hiddekel: that is it which goeth toward the east
of
Assyria. And the fourth river is Euphrates."
The Euphrates river ran through Sumer, which is now Iraq.
It is worth noting thathttp://www.earthhistory.org.uk/
is actually a theist site! They refer to Anu as " the one God" but
claim that "Ea" and "Bel" were just other names for the same god.
This contradicts the fact that Anu, Ea and Bel were worshipped
separately in Sumer as three distinct Gods. (Anu was the god of the
sky, Bel was the god of wind and Ea was the god of water. Sumerian
mythology claimed that humans were created by Ea.)
According tohttp://www.crystalinks.com/sumergods.html
"Enki unraveled the secrets of life and death. His emblem was two
serpents ... entwined on a staff - the basis for the winged caduceus
symbol used by modern Western medicine." As Ea was the god of
knowledge, was the guardian of the "Tree of Life" in Sumerian
mythology and he was symbolized by a snake, it stands to reason that
the snake in the myth of the garden of Eden represented Ea. The
Hebrew word "Baal" meant "Lord" and thus "Baal" could have refered to
any god who was known as "Bel" kn the Sumerian panthenon. The Hebrews
were presumably told by their god to kill all followers of "Baal":
"While the Israelites were camped at Acacia, some of the men defiled
themselves by sleeping with the local Moabite women. These women
invited them to attend sacrifices to their gods, and soon the
Israelites were feasting with them and worshiping the gods of Moab.
Before long Israel was joining in the worship of Baal of Peor,
causing
the LORD's anger to blaze against his people. The LORD issued the
following command to Moses: "Seize all the ringleaders and execute
them before the LORD in broad daylight, so his fierce anger will turn
away from the people of Israel." So Moses ordered Israel's judges to
execute everyone who had joined in worshiping Baal of Peor. Just
then
one of the Israelite men brought a Midianite woman into the camp,
right before the eyes of Moses and all the people, as they were
weeping at the entrance of the Tabernacle. When Phinehas son of
Eleazar and grandson of Aaron the priest saw this, he jumped up and
left the assembly. Then he took a spear and rushed after the man
into
his tent. Phinehas thrust the spear all the way through the man's
body
and into the woman's stomach. So the plague against the Israelites
was stopped, but not before 24,000 people had died." - Numbers 25:1-9
Incidentally, the myth of Moses was probably inspired by the legend
of
the historical pharoah Ahmose. (Seehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ahmose_I
).
What is interesting is that theists today are willing to accept that
their god was the god An of Sumer but they don't see why this should
be a challenge to faith. (http://www.christianblog.com/blog/thomas/abra=
m-was-from-sumer-after-all/
) An was the most powerful god in Sumerian mythology and hence it is
understandable that Abraham would choose him as the "one true god" and
dismiss all the others but then the question would be if Anu (God)
exists then what about all the other gods.
So God is just a myth created by man to explain the world around him
and give him comfort.
Christ walked out of his tomb about being dead for the better part of 3 d=
ays to
walk and talk and eat and drink with 500+ of his disciples for the next 4=
0 days.
Christ never existed.
http://www.atheists.org/christianity/didjesusexist.html
DID JESUS EXIST?
---------------------------------------------------------------------------=
-----
by Frank R. Zindler
The American Atheist, Summer 1998.
Updated from The Probing Mind series, January 1987
I have taken it for granted that Jesus of Nazareth existed. Some
writers feel a need to justify this assumption at length against
people who try from time to time to deny it. It would be easier,
frankly, to believe that Tiberius Caesar, Jesus' contemporary, was a
figment of the imagination than to believe that there never was such a
person as Jesus.
- N. T. Wright, Jesus and the Victory of God (Fortress, 1996)
For most of my life, I had taken it for granted that Jesus, although
certainly not a god, was nevertheless an historical personage -
perhaps a magician skilled in hypnosis. To be sure, I knew that some
of the world's greatest scholars had denied his existence.
Nevertheless, I had always more or less supposed that it was
improbable that so many stories could have sprung up about someone who
had never existed. Even in the case of other deities, such as Zeus,
Thor, Isis, and Osiris, I had always taken it for granted that they
were merely deified human heroes: men and women who lived in the later
stages of prehistory - persons whose reputations got better and better
the longer the time elapsed after their deaths. Gods, like fine wines,
I supposed, improved with age.
About a decade ago, however, I began to reexamine the evidence for the
historicity of Jesus. I was astounded at what I didn't find. In this
article, I would like to show how shaky the evidence is regarding the
alleged existence of a would-be messiah named Jesus. I now feel it is
more reasonable to suppose he never existed. It is easier to account
for the facts of early Christian history if Jesus were a fiction than
if he once were real.
Burden of Proof
Although what follows may fairly be interpreted to be a proof of the
non-historicity of Jesus, it must be realized that the burden of proof
does not rest upon the skeptic in this matter. As always is the case,
the burden of proof weighs upon those who assert that some thing or
some process exists. If someone claims that he never has to shave
because every morning before he can get to the bathroom he is
assaulted by a six-foot rabbit with extremely sharp teeth who trims
his whiskers better than a razor - if someone makes such a claim, no
skeptic need worry about constructing a disproof. Unless evidence for
the claim is produced, the skeptic can treat the claim as false. This
is nothing more than sane, every-day practice.
Unlike N. T. Wright, quoted at the beginning of this article, a small
number of scholars have tried over the centuries to prove that Jesus
was in fact historical. It is instructive, when examining their
"evidence," to compare it to the sort of evidence we have, say, for
the existence of Tiberius C=E6sar - to take up the challenge made by
Wright.
It may be conceded that it is not surprising that there are no coins
surviving from the first century with the image of Jesus on them.
Unlike Tiberius C=E6sar and Augustus C=E6sar who adopted him, Jesus is not
thought to have had control over any mints. Even so, we must point out
that we do have coins dating from the early first century that bear
images of Tiberius that change with the age of their subject. We even
have coins minted by his predecessor, Augustus C=E6sar, that show
Augustus on one side and his adopted son on the other. 1 Would Mr.
Wright have us believe that these coins are figments of the
imagination? Can we be dealing with fig-mints?
Statues that can be dated archaeologically survive to show Tiberius as
a youth, as a young man assuming the toga, as C=E6sar, etc. 2 Engravings
and gems show him with his entire family. 3 Biographers who were his
contemporaries or nearly so quote from his letters and decrees and
recount the details of his life in minute detail. 4 There are
contemporary inscriptions all over the former empire that record his
deeds. 5 There is an ossuary of at least one member of his family, and
the Greek text of a speech made by his son Germanicus has been found
at Oxyrhynchus in Egypt. 6 And then there are the remains of his villa
on Capri. Nor should we forget that Augustus C=E6sar, in his Res Gest=E6
("Things Accomplished"), which survives both in Greek and Latin on the
so-called Monumentum Ancyranum, lists Tiberius as his son and co-
ruler. 7
Is there anything advocates of an historical Jesus can produce that
could be as compelling as this evidence for Tiberius? I think not, and
I thank N. T. Wright for making a challenge that brings this disparity
so clearly to light.
There is really only one area where evidence for Jesus is even claimed
to be of a sort similar to that adduced for Tiberius - the area of
biographies written by contemporaries or near contemporaries. a It is
sometimes claimed that the Christian Bible contains such evidence.
Sometimes it is claimed that there is extrabiblical evidence as well.
Let us then examine this would-be evidence.
Christianity
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Did Jesus Exist?
Fundamentalism
Hang 'Em All
How Jesus Got A Life
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Nativity Potpourri
Of Bones and Boners
Origins of Mormonism
Race & Religion
The Real Bible
Rehnquist & Ten Taboos
The Twelve: Further Fictions
Spiritual Guide to Gracious Living
Where Jesus Never Walked
The Old Testament "Evidence"
Let us consider the so-called biblical evidence first. Despite the
claims of Christian apologists, there is absolutely nothing in the Old
Testament (OT) that is of relevance to our question, apart from the
possible fact that some prophets may have thought that an "anointed
one" (a rescuer king or priest) would once again assume the leadership
of the Jewish world. All of the many examples of OT "predictions" of
Jesus are so silly that one need only look them up to see their
irrelevance. Thomas Paine, the great heretic of the American
Revolution, did just that, and he demonstrated their irrelevance in
his book An Examination of the Prophecies, which he intended to be
Part III of The Age of Reason. b
The New Testament "Evidence"
The elimination of the OT leaves only the New Testament (NT)
"evidence" and extrabiblical material to be considered. Essentially,
the NT is composed of two types of documents: letters and would-be
biographies (the so-called gospels). A third category of writing,
apocalyptic, c of which the Book of Revelation is an example, also
exists, but it gives no support for the historicity of Jesus. In fact,
it would appear to be an intellectual fossil of the thought-world from
which Christianity sprang - a Jewish apocalypse that was reworked for
Christian use. 8 The main character of the book (referred to 28 times)
would seem to be "the Lamb," an astral being seen in visions (no
claims to historicity here!), and the book overall is redolent of
ancient astrology. 9
The name Jesus occurs only seven times in the entire book, Christ only
four times, and Jesus Christ only twice! While Revelation may very
well derive from a very early period (contrary to the views of most
biblical scholars, who deal with the book only in its final form), the
Jesus of which it whispers obviously is not a man. He is a
supernatural being. He has not yet acquired the physiological and
metabolic properties of which we read in the gospels. The Jesus of
Revelation is a god who would later be made into a man - not a man who
would later become a god, as liberal religious scholars would have
it.
The Gospels
The notion that the four "gospels that made the cut" to be included in
the official New Testament were written by men named Matthew, Mark,
Luke, and John does not go back to early Christian times. The titles
"According to Matthew," etc., were not added until late in the second
century. Thus, although Papias ca. 140 CE ('Common Era') knows all the
gospels but has only heard of Matthew and Mark, Justin Martyr (ca. 150
CE) knows of none of the four supposed authors. It is only in 180 CE,
with Iren=E6us of Lyons, that we learn who wrote the four "canonical"
gospels and discover that there are exactly four of them because there
are four quarters of the earth and four universal winds. Thus, unless
one supposes the argument of Iren=E6us to be other than ridiculous, we
come to the conclusion that the gospels are of unknown origin and
authorship, and there is no good reason to suppose they are eye-
witness accounts of a man named Jesus of Nazareth. At a minimum, this
forces us to examine the gospels to see if their contents are even
compatible with the notion that they were written by eye-witnesses. We
cannot even assume that each of the gospels had but one author or
redactor.
It is clear that the gospels of Matthew and Luke could not possibly
have been written by an eye-witness of the tales they tell. Both
writers plagiarize d (largely word-for-word) up to 90% of the gospel
of Mark, to which they add sayings of Jesus e and would-be historical
details. Ignoring the fact that Matthew and Luke contradict each other
in such critical details as the genealogy of Jesus - and thus cannot
both be correct - we must ask why real eye-witnesses would have to
plagiarize the entire ham-hocks-and-potatoes of the story, contenting
themselves with adding merely a little gravy, salt, and pepper. A real
eye-witness would have begun with a verse reading, "Now, boys and
girls, I'm gonna tell you the story of Jesus the Messiah the way it
really happened..." The story would be a unique creation. It is
significant that it is only these two gospels that purport to tell
anything of Jesus' birth, childhood, or ancestry. Both can be
dismissed as unreliable without further cause. We can know nothing of
Jesus' childhood or origin!
Mark
But what about the gospel of Mark, the oldest surviving gospel?
Attaining essentially its final form probably as late as 90 CE but
containing core material dating possibly as early as 70 CE, it omits,
as we have seen, almost the entire traditional biography of Jesus,
beginning the story with John the Baptist giving Jesus a bath, and
ending - in the oldest manuscripts - with women running frightened
from the empty tomb. (The alleged postresurrection appearances
reported in the last twelve verses of Mark are not found in the
earliest manuscripts, even though they are still printed in most
modern bibles as though they were an "authentic" part of Mark's
gospel.) Moreover, "Mark" being a non-Palestinian non-disciple, even
the skimpy historical detail he provides is untrustworthy.
To say that Mark's account is "skimpy" is to understate the case.
There really isn't much to the gospel of Mark, the birth legends,
genealogies, and childhood wonders all being absent. Whereas the
gospel of Luke takes up 43 pages in the New English Bible, the gospel
of Mark occupies only 25 pages - a mere 58% as much material! Stories
do indeed grow with the retelling.
I have claimed that the unknown author of Mark was a non-Palestinian
non-disciple, which would make his story mere hearsay. What evidence
do we have for this assertion? First of all, Mark shows no first-hand
understanding of the social situation in Palestine. He is clearly a
foreigner, removed both in space and time from the events he alleges.
For example, in Mark 10:12, he has Jesus say that if a woman divorces
her husband and marries another, she commits adultery. As G. A. Wells,
the author of The Historical Evidence for Jesus 10 puts it,
Such an utterance would have been meaningless in Palestine, where only
men could obtain divorce. It is a ruling for the Gentile Christian
readers... which the evangelist put into Jesus' mouth in order to give
it authority. This tendency to anchor later customs and institutions
to Jesus' supposed lifetime played a considerable role in the building
up of his biography.
One further evidence of the inauthenticity of Mark is the fact that in
chapter 7, where Jesus is arguing with the Pharisees, Jesus is made to
quote the Greek Septuagint version of Isaiah in order to score his
debate point. Unfortunately, the Hebrew version says something
different from the Greek. Isaiah 29:13, in the Hebrew reads "their
fear of me is a commandment of men learned by rote," whereas the Greek
version - and the gospel of Mark - reads "in vain do they worship me,
teaching as doctrines the precepts of men" [Revised Standard Version).
Wells observes dryly [p. 13], "That a Palestinian Jesus should floor
Orthodox Jews with an argument based on a mistranslation of their
scriptures is very unlikely." Indeed!
Another powerful argument against the idea that Mark could have been
an eye-witness of the existence of Jesus is based upon the observation
that the author of Mark displays a profound lack of familiarity with
Palestinian geography. If he had actually lived in Palestine, he would
not have made the blunders to be found in his gospel. If he never
lived in Palestine, he could not have been an eye-witness of Jesus.
You get the point.
The most absurd geographical error Mark commits is when he tells the
tall tale about Jesus crossing over the Sea of Galilee and casting
demons out of a man (two men in Matthew's revised version) and making
them go into about 2,000 pigs which, as the King James version puts
it, "ran violently down a steep place into the sea... and they were
choked in the sea."
Apart from the cruelty to animals displayed by the lovable, gentle
Jesus, and his disregard for the property of others, what's wrong with
this story? If your only source of information is the King James
Bible, you might not ever know. The King James says this marvel
occurred in the land of the Gadarenes, whereas the oldest Greek
manuscripts say this miracle took place in the land of the Gerasenes.
Luke, who also knew no Palestinian geography, also passes on this bit
of absurdity. But Matthew, who had some knowledge of Palestine,
changed the name to Gadarene in his new, improved version; but this is
further improved to Gergesenes in the King James version.
By now the reader must be dizzy with all the distinctions between
Gerasenes, Gadarenes, and Gergesenes. What difference does it make? A
lot of difference, as we shall see.
Gerasa, the place mentioned in the oldest manuscripts of Mark, is
located about 31 miles from the shore of the Sea of Galilee! Those
poor pigs had to run a course five miles longer than a marathon in
order to find a place to drown! Not even lemmings have to go that far.
Moreover, if one considers a "steep" slope to be at least 45 degrees,
that would make the elevation of Gerasa at least six times higher than
Mt. Everest!
When the author of Matthew read Mark's version, he saw the
impossibility of Jesus and the gang disembarking at Gerasa (which, by
the way, was also in a different country, the so-called Decapolis).
Since the only town in the vicinity of the Sea of Galilee that he knew
of that started with G was Gadara, he changed Gerasa to Gadara. But
even Gadara was five miles from the shore - and in a different
country. Later copyists of the Greek manuscripts of all three pig-
drowning gospels (Matthew, Mark, and Luke) improved Gadara further to
Gergesa, a region now thought to have actually formed part of the
eastern shore of the Sea of Galilee. So much for the trustworthiness
of the biblical tradition.
Another example of Mark's abysmal ignorance of Palestinian geography
is found in the story he made up about Jesus traveling from Tyre on
the Mediterranean to the Sea of Galilee, 30 miles inland. According to
Mark 7:31, Jesus and the boys went by way of Sidon, 20 miles north of
Tyre on the Mediterranean coast! Since to Sidon and back would be 40
miles, this means that the wisest of all men walked 70 miles when he
could have walked only 30. Of course, one would never know all this
from the King James version which - apparently completely ignoring a
perfectly clear Greek text - says "Departing from the coasts of Tyre
and Sidon, he came unto the Sea of Galilee..." Apparently the
translators of the King James version also knew their geography. At
least they knew more than did the author of Mark!
John
The unreliability of the gospels is underscored when we learn that,
with the possible exception of John, the first three gospels bear no
internal indication of who wrote them. Can we glean anything of
significance from the fourth and latest gospel, the gospel of John?
Not likely! It is so unworldly, it can scarcely be cited for
historical evidence. In this account, Jesus is hardly a man of flesh
and blood at all - except for the purposes of divine cannibalism as
required by the celebration of the rite of "holy communion."
"In the beginning was the word, and the word was with god, and the
word was god," the gospel begins. No Star of Bethlehem, no
embarrassment of pregnant virgins, no hint that Jesus ever wore
diapers: pure spirit from the beginning. Moreover, in its present
form, the gospel of John is the latest of all the official gospels. f
The gospel of John was compiled around the year 110 CE. If its author
had been 10 years old at the time of Jesus' crucifiction in the year
30 CE, he would have been 80 years old at the time of writing. Not
only is it improbable that he would have lived so long, it is
dangerous to pay much attention to the colorful "memories" recounted
by a man in his "anecdotage." Many of us who are far younger than this
have had the unpleasant experience of discovering incontrovertible
proof that what we thought were clear memories of some event were
wildly incorrect. We also might wonder why an eye-witness of all the
wonders claimed in a gospel would wait so long to write about them!
More importantly, there is evidence that the Gospel of John, like
Matthew and Luke, also is a composite document, incorporating an
earlier "Signs Gospel" of uncertain antiquity. Again, we ask, if
"John" had been an eye-witness to Jesus, why would he need to
plagiarize a list of miracles made up by someone else? Nor is there
anything in the Signs Gospel that would lead one to suppose that it
was an eye-witness account. It could just as easily have been
referring to the wonders of Dionysus turning water into wine, or to
the healings of Asclepius.
The inauthenticity of the Gospel of John would seem to be established
beyond cavil by the discovery that the very chapter that asserts the
author of the book to have been "the disciple whom Jesus loved" [John
21:20] was a late addition to the gospel. Scholars have shown that the
gospel originally ended at verses 30-31 of Chapter 20. Chapter 21 - in
which verse 24 asserts that "This is the disciple which testifieth of
these things, and wrote these things: and we know that his testimony
is true" - is not the work of an eye-witness. Like so many other
things in the Bible, it is a fraud. The testimony is not true.
Saint Saul And His Letters
Having eliminated the OT and the gospels from the list of possible
biblical "evidences" of the existence of Jesus, we are left with the
so-called epistles.
At first blush, we might think that these epistles - some of which are
by far the oldest parts of the NT, having been composed at least 30
years before the oldest gospel - would provide us with the most
reliable information on Jesus. Well, so much for blushes. The oldest
letters are the letters of St. Saul - the man who, after losing his
mind, changed his name to Paul. Before going into details, we must
point out right away, before we forget, that St. Saul's testimony can
be ignored quite safely, if what he tells us is true, namely, that he
never met Jesus "in the flesh," but rather saw him only in a vision he
had during what appears to have been an epileptic seizure. No court of
law would accept visions as evidence, and neither should we.
The reader might object that even if Saul only had hearsay evidence,
some of it might be true. Some of it might tell us some facts about
Jesus. Well, allright. Let's look at the evidence.
According to tradition, 13 of the letters in the NT are the work of
St. Saul. Unfortunately, Bible scholars and computer experts have gone
to work on these letters, and it turns out that only four can be shown
to be substantially by the same author, putatively Saul. g These are
the letters known as Romans, 1 and 2 Corinthians, and Galatians. To
these probably we may add the brief note to Philemon, a slave-owner,
Philippians, and 1 Thessalonians. The rest of the so-called Pauline
epistles can be shown to have been written by other and later authors,
so we can throw them out right now and not worry about them.
Saul tells us in 2 Corinthians 11:32 that King Aretas of the Nabateans
tried to have him arrested because of his Christian agitation. Since
Aretas is known to have died in the year 40 CE, this means that Saul
became a Christian before that date. So what do we find out about
Jesus from a man who had become a Christian less than ten years after
the alleged crucifixion? Precious little!
Once again, G.A. Wells, in his book The Historical Evidence for Jesus
[pp. 22-23], sums things up so succinctly, that I quote him verbatim:
The...Pauline letters...are so completely silent concerning the events
that were later recorded in the gospels as to suggest that these
events were not known to Paul, who, however, could not have been
ignorant of them if they had really occurred.
These letters have no allusion to the parents of Jesus, let alone to
the virgin birth. They never refer to a place of birth (for example,
by calling him 'of Nazareth'). They give no indication of the time or
place of his earthly existence. They do not refer to his trial before
a Roman official, nor to Jerusalem as the place of execution. They
mention neither John the Baptist, nor Judas, nor Peter's denial of his
master. (They do, of course, mention Peter, but do not imply that he,
any more than Paul himself, had known Jesus while he had been alive.)
These letters also fail to mention any miracles Jesus is supposed to
have worked, a particularly striking omission, since, according to the
gospels, he worked so many...
Another striking feature of Paul's letters is that one could never
gather from them that Jesus had been an ethical teacher... on only one
occasion does he appeal to the authority of Jesus to support an
ethical teaching which the gospels also represent Jesus as having
delivered.
It turns out that Saul's appeal to the authority of Jesus involves
precisely the same error we found in the gospel of Mark. In 1 Cor.
7:10, Saul says that "not I but the Lord, [say] that the wife should
not separate from the husband." That is, a wife should not seek
divorce. If Jesus had actually said what Saul implies, and what Mark
10:12 claims he said, his audience would have thought he was nuts - as
the Bhagwan says - or perhaps had suffered a blow to the head. So much
for the testimony of Saul. His Jesus is nothing more than the thinnest
hearsay, a legendary creature which was crucified as a sacrifice, a
creature almost totally lacking a biography.
Extrabiblical "Evidence"
So far we have examined all the biblical evidences alleged to prove
the existence of Jesus as an historical figure. We have found that
they have no legitimacy as evidence. Now we must examine the last line
of would-be evidence, the notion that Jewish and pagan historians
recorded his existence.
Jewish Sources
It is sometimes claimed that Jewish writings hostile to Christianity
prove that the ancient Jews knew of Jesus and that such writings prove
the historicity of the man Jesus. But in fact, Jewish writings prove
no such thing, as L. Gordon Rylands' book Did Jesus Ever Live? pointed
out nearly seventy years ago:
..=2E.all the knowledge which the Rabbis had of Jesus was obtained by them
from the Gospels. Seeing that Jews, even in the present more critical
age, take it for granted that the figure of a real man stands behind
the Gospel narrative, one need not be surprised if, in the second
century, Jews did not think of questioning that assumption. It is
certain, however, that some did question it. For Justin, in his
Dialogue with Trypho, represents the Jew Trypho as saying, "ye follow
an empty rumour and make a Christ for yourselves." "If he was born and
lived somewhere he is entirely unknown."
That the writers of the Talmud [4th-5th centuries CE, FRZ] had no
independent knowledge of Jesus is proved by the fact that they
confounded him with two different men neither of whom can have been
he. Evidently no other Jesus with whom they could identify the Gospel
Jesus was known to them. One of these, Jesus ben Pandira, reputed a
wonder-worker, is said to have been stoned to death and then hung on a
tree on the eve of a Passover in the reign of Alexander Jann=E6us
(106-79 BC) at Jerusalem. The other, Jesus ben Stada, whose date is
uncertain, but who may have lived in the first third of the second
century CE, is also said to have been stoned and hanged on the eve of
a Passover, but at Lydda. There may be some confusion here; but it is
plain that the Rabbis had no knowledge of Jesus apart from what they
had read in the Gospels. 11
Although Christian apologists have listed a number of ancient
historians who allegedly were witnesses to the existence of Jesus, the
only two that consistently are cited are Josephus, a Pharisee, and
Tacitus, a pagan. Since Josephus was born in the year 37 CE, and
Tacitus was born in 55, neither could have been an eye-witness of
Jesus, who supposedly was crucified in 30 CE. So we could really end
our article here. But someone might claim that these historians
nevertheless had access to reliable sources, now lost, which recorded
the existence and execution of our friend JC. So it is desirable that
we take a look at these two supposed witnesses.
In the case of Josephus, whose Antiquities of the Jews was written in
93 CE, about the same time as the gospels, we find him saying some
things quite impossible for a good Pharisee to have said:
About this time, there lived Jesus, a wise man, if indeed one ought to
call him a man. For he was one who wrought surprising feats and was a
teacher of such people as accept the truth gladly. He won over many
Jews and many of the Greeks. He was the Messiah. When Pilate, upon
hearing him accused by men of the highest standing amongst us, had
condemned him to be crucified, those who had in the first place come
to love him did not give up their affection for him. On the third day
he appeared to them restored to life, for the prophets of God had
prophesied these and countless other marvelous things about him. And
the tribe of the Christians, so called after him, has still to this
day not disappeared. 12
Now no loyal Pharisee would say Jesus had been the Messiah. That
Josephus could report that Jesus had been restored to life "on the
third day" and not be convinced by this astonishing bit of information
is beyond belief. Worse yet is the fact that the story of Jesus is
intrusive in Josephus' narrative and can be seen to be an
interpolation even in an English translation of the Greek text. Right
after the wondrous passage quoted above, Josephus goes on to say,
"About the same time also another sad calamity put the Jews into
disorder..." Josephus had previously been talking about awful things
Pilate had done to the Jews in general, and one can easily understand
why an interpolator would have chosen this particular spot. But his
ineptitude in not changing the wording of the bordering text left a
"literary seam" (what rhetoricians might term aporia) that sticks out
like a pimpled nose.
The fact that Josephus was not convinced by this or any other
Christian claim is clear from the statement of the church father
Origen (ca. 185-ca. 154 CE) - who dealt extensively with Josephus -
that Josephus did not believe in Jesus as the Messiah, i.e., as "the
Christ." Moreover, the disputed passage was never cited by early
Christian apologists such as Clement of Alexandria (ca.150-ca. 215
CE), who certainly would have made use of such ammunition had he had
it!
The first person to make mention of this obviously forged
interpolation into the text of Josephus' history was the church father
Eusebius, in 324 CE. It is quite likely that Eusebius himself did some
of the forging. As late as 891, Photius in his Bibliotheca, which
devoted three "Codices" to the works of Josephus, shows no awareness
of the passage whatsoever even though he reviews the sections of the
Antiquities in which one would expect the disputed passage to be
found. Clearly, the testimonial was absent from his copy of
Antiquities of the Jews. 13 The question can probably be laid to rest
by noting that as late as the sixteenth century, according to Rylands,
14 a scholar named Vossius had a manuscript of Josephus from which the
passage was wanting.
Apologists, as they grasp for ever more slender straws with which to
support their historical Jesus, point out that the passage quoted
above is not the only mention of Jesus made by Josephus. In Bk. 20,
Ch. 9, =A71 of Antiquities of the Jews one also finds the following
statement in surviving manuscripts:
Ananus... convened the judges of the Sanhedrin and brought before them a
man named James, the brother of Jesus who was called the Christ, and
certain others. He accused them of having transgressed the law and
delivered them up to be stoned.
It must be admitted that this passage does not intrude into the text
as does the one previously quoted. In fact, it is very well integrated
into Josephus' story. That it has been modified from whatever
Josephus' source may have said (remember, here too, Josephus could not
have been an eye-witness) is nevertheless extremely probable. The
crucial word in this passage is the name James (Jacob in Greek and
Hebrew). It is very possible that this very common name was in
Josephus' source material. It might even have been a reference to
James the Just, a first-century character we have good reason to
believe indeed existed. Because he appears to have born the title
Brother of the Lord, h it would have been natural to relate him to the
Jesus character. It is quite possible that Josephus actually referred
to a James "the Brother of the Lord," and this was changed by
Christian copyists (remember that although Josephus was a Jew, his
text was preserved only by Christians!) to "Brother of Jesus" - adding
then for good measure "who was called Christ."
According to William Benjamin Smith's skeptical classic Ecce Deus, 15
there are still some manuscripts of Josephus which contain the quoted
passages, but the passages are absent in other manuscripts - showing
that such interpolation had already been taking place before the time
of Origen but did not ever succeed in supplanting the original text
universally.
Pagan Authors Before considering the alleged witness of Pagan authors,
it is worth noting some of the things that we should find recorded in
their histories if the biblical stories are in fact true. One passage
from Matthew should suffice to point out the significance of the
silence of secular writers:
Matt. 27:45. Now from the sixth hour there was darkness over all the
land unto the ninth hour... Jesus, when he had cried again with a loud
voice, yielded up the ghost. 51. And, behold, the veil of the temple
was rent in twain from the top to the bottom; and the earth did quake,
and the rocks rent; 52 And the graves were opened; and many bodies of
the saints which slept arose, 53 And came out of the graves after his
resurrection [exposed for 3 days?], and went into the holy city, and
appeared unto many.
Wouldn't the Greeks and Romans have noticed - and recorded - such
darkness occurring at a time of the month when a solar eclipse was
impossible? Wouldn't someone have remembered - and recorded - the name
of at least one of those "saints" who climbed out of the grave and
went wandering downtown in the mall? If Jesus did anything of
significance at all, wouldn't someone have noticed? If he didn't do
anything significant, how could he have stimulated the formation of a
new religion?
Considering now the supposed evidence of Tacitus, we find that this
Roman historian is alleged in 120 CE to have written a passage in his
Annals (Bk 15, Ch 44, containing the wild tale of Nero's persecution
of Christians) saying "Therefore, to scotch the rumour, Nero
substituted as culprits, and punished with the utmost refinements of
cruelty, a class of men, loathed for their vices, whom the crowd
styled Christians. Christus, the founder of the name, had undergone
the death penalty in the reign of Tiberius, by sentence of the
procurator Pontius Pilatus..." G.A. Wells [p. 16] says of this
passage:
[Tacitus wrote] at a time when Christians themselves had come to
believe that Jesus had suffered under Pilate. There are three reasons
for holding that Tacitus is here simply repeating what Christians had
told him. First, he gives Pilate a title, procurator [without saying
procurator of what! FRZ], which was current only from the second half
of the first century. Had he consulted archives which recorded earlier
events, he would surely have found Pilate there designated by his
correct title, prefect. Second, Tacitus does not name the executed man
Jesus, but uses the title Christ (Messiah) as if it were a proper
name. But he could hardly have found in archives a statement such as
"the Messiah was executed this morning." Third, hostile to
Christianity as he was, he was surely glad to accept from Christians
their own view that Christianity was of recent origin, since the Roman
authorities were prepared to tolerate only ancient cults. (The
Historical Evidence for Jesus; p.16).
There are further problems with the Tacitus story. Tacitus himself
never again alludes to the Neronian persecution of Christians in any
of his voluminous writings, and no other Pagan authors know anything
of the outrage either. Most significant, however, is that ancient
Christian apologists made no use of the story in their propaganda - an
unthinkable omission by motivated partisans who were well-read in the
works of Tacitus. Clement of Alexandria, who made a profession of
collecting just such types of quotations, is ignorant of any Neronian
persecution, and even Tertullian, who quotes a great deal from
Tacitus, knows nothing of the story. According to Robert Taylor, the
author of another freethought classic, the Diegesis (1834), the
passage was not known before the fifteenth century, when Tacitus was
first published at Venice by Johannes de Spire. Taylor believed de
Spire himself to have been the forger. i
So much for the evidence purporting to prove that Jesus was an
historical figure. We have not, of course, proved that Jesus did not
exist. We have only showed that all evidence alleged to support such a
claim is without substance. But of course, that is all we need to
show. The burden of proof is always on the one who claims that
something exists or that something once happened. We have no
obligation to try to prove a universal negative. j
It will be argued by die-hard believers that all my arguments "from
silence" prove nothing and they will quote the aphorism, "Absence of
evidence is not evidence of absence." But is the negative evidence I
have referred to the same as absence of evidence? It might be
instructive to consider how a hypothetical but similar problem might
be dealt with in the physical sciences.
Imagine that someone has claimed that the USA had carried out atomic
weapons tests on a particular Caribbean island in 1943. Would the lack
of reports of mushroom-cloud sightings at the time be evidence of
absence, or absence of evidence? (Remember, the Caribbean during the
war years was under intense surveillance by many different factions.)
Would it be necessary to go to the island today to scan its surface
for the radioactive contamination that would have to be there if
nuclear explosions had taken place there? If indeed, we went there
with our Geiger-counters and found no trace of radioactive
contamination, would that be evidence of absence, or absence of
evidence? In this case, what superficially looks like absence of
evidence is really negative evidence, and thus legitimately could be
construed as evidence of absence. Can the negative evidence adduced
above concerning Jesus be very much less compelling?
It would be intellectually satisfying to learn just how it was that
the Jesus character condensed out of the religious atmosphere of the
first century. But scholars are at work on the problem. The
publication of many examples of so-called wisdom literature, along
with the materials from the Essene community at Qumran by the Dead Sea
and the Gnostic literature from the Nag Hammadi library in Egypt, has
given us a much more detailed picture of the communal
psychopathologies which infested the Eastern Mediterranean world at
the turn of the era. It is not unrealistic to expect that we will be
able, before long, to reconstruct in reasonable detail the stages by
which Jesus came to have a biography.
They Should Have Noticed
John E. Remsburg, in his classic book The Christ: A Critical Review
and Analysis of the Evidence of His Existence (The Truth Seeker
Company, NY, no date, pp. 24-25), lists the following writers who
lived during the time, or within a century after the time, that Jesus
is supposed to have lived:
Josephus
Philo-Jud=E6us
Seneca
Pliny Elder
Arrian
Petronius
Dion Pruseus
Paterculus
Suetonius
Juvenal
Martial
Persius
Plutarch
Pliny Younger
Tacitus
Justus of Tiberius
Apollonius
Quintilian
Lucanus
Epictetus
Hermogones Silius Italicus
Statius
Ptolemy
Appian
Phlegon
Ph=E6drus
Valerius Maximus
Lucian
Pausanias
Florus Lucius
Quintius Curtius
Aulus Gellius
Dio Chrysostom
Columella
Valerius Flaccus
Damis
Favorinus
Lysias
Pomponius Mela
Appion of Alexandria
Theon of Smyrna
According to Remsburg, "Enough of the writings of the authors named in
the foregoing list remains to form a library. Yet in this mass of
Jewish and Pagan literature, aside from two forged passages in the
works of a Jewish author, and two disputed passages in the works of
Roman writers, there is to be found no mention of Jesus Christ." Nor,
we may add, do any of these authors make note of the Disciples or
Apostles - increasing the embarrassment from the silence of history
concerning the foundation of Christianity.
NOTES:
a It is sometimes claimed that the "miraculous" spread of Christianity
in the early Roman Empire is evidence of an historical Jesus - that
such a movement could not have gone so far so fast had there not been
a real person at its inception. A similar argument could be made,
however, in the case of the earlier rapid spread of Mithraism. I am
unaware of any Christian apologists who would argue that this supports
the idea of an historical Mithra!
b A profusely annotated paperback edition of Paine's book is available
from American Atheist Press for twelve dollars. (Order No. 5575, click
here)
c An apocalypse is a pseudonymous piece of writing characterized by
exaggerated symbolic imagery, usually dealing with the expectation of
an imminent cosmic cataclysm wherein the deity destroys the wicked and
rewards the righteous. Apocalyptic writing abounds in hidden meanings
and numerological puzzles. Parts of a number of Jud=E6o-Christian
apocalypses other than Revelation have been preserved, but only the
latter (if one does not consider the Book of Daniel to be entirely
apocalyptic) was accepted into the Christian canon - and it almost
didn't make it, having been rejected by several early Church Fathers
and Church Councils.
d The opposite theory, often referred to as "Griesbach's hypothesis,"
that the author of Mark had "epitomized" the two longer gospels,
keeping only the "essential" details, is today almost entirely
rejected by bible scholars. While the arguments to support this nearly
universal rejection are too involved to even summarize here, it may be
noted that shortening of miracle stories is completely out of keeping
with the principles of religious development seen everywhere today.
Stories invariably get "better" (i.e., longer) with the retelling,
never shorter!
e There is compelling evidence indicating that these alleged sayings
of Jesus were taken from another early document known as Q (German,
for Quelle, 'source'). Like the so-called Gospel of Thomas found at
Nag Hammadi in Egypt, Q appears to have been a list of wisdom sayings
that at some point became attributed to Jesus. We know that at least
one of these sayings ("We have piped unto you, and ye have not
danced..." Matt. 17:11; Luke 7:32) derives from =C6sop's Fables, not from
a sage of Galilee!
f I say "official gospels" because there are, in fact, many other
gospels known. Once people started making them up, they sort of got
stuck in over-drive. Only later on in Christian history did the number
get pared back to four.
g Even the letters supposed to contain authentic writings of Saul/Paul
have been shown by a number of scholars to be as composite as the
gospels (e.g., L. Gordon Rylands, A Critical Analysis of the Four
Chief Pauline Epistles: Romans, First and Second Corinthians, and
Galatians, Watts & Co., London, 1929). According to such analyses, the
core Pauline material in these letters is what might be termed a pre-
Christian Gnostic product. This material is surrounded by often
contradictory material added by proto-Catholic interpolators and
redactors who succeeded thus in claiming a popular proto-Gnostic
authority for the Church of Rome. In any case, the Greek text of these
letters is heavy with terms such as Archon, =C6on, etc. - jargon terms
popular in the more astrologically conscious forms of Gnosticism. It
would appear that the Christ of Paul is as astral a being as the Lamb
of Revelation. Like the god of Revelation, the god of Paul
communicates via visions, not physically, face-to-face.
h Originally, this would have been the title born by a member of a
religious fraternity associated with the worship of Yahweh, who in
Greek was always referred to as kurios ('Lord'). This was carried over
into primitive Christianity, where we know from I Cor. 9:5 that there
existed a governing class coordinate with apostles that was called
"Brothers of the Lord." Misunderstanding of the original meaning of
the title led to the belief that Jesus had siblings - an error that
can be found already in the earliest of the canonical gospels.
Interestingly, the embarrassing passages in the gospels where Jesus is
rude to his mother and brethren would seem to derive from a period
where a political struggle had developed between apostolically
governed sects and those governed by "Brethren of the Lord," who
claimed authority now by virtue of an alleged blood relationship to
Jesus - who had by then supplanted Yahweh as "Lord." The apostolic
politics of the gospel writers could not resist putting down the
Brethren Party by having Jesus disregard his own family. If Jesus
didn't pay serious attention to his own family, the argument would go,
why should anyone pay attention to their descendants? This is the only
plausible explanation for the presence of such passages as John 2:4
("Woman, what have I to do with thee?") or Mark 3:33 ("Who is my
mother, or my brethren?).
i Latinists often dispute the possibility of the passage being a
forgery on the grounds that Tacitus' distinctive Latin style so
perfectly permeates the entire passage. But it should be noted that
the more distinctive a style might be, the easier it can be imitated.
Then too, there is a lapse from normal Tacitean usage elsewhere in the
disputed passage. In describing the early Christians as being haters
"of the human race" (humani generis), the passage reverses the word
order of normal Tacitean usage. In all other cases, Tacitus has
generis humani.
j Curiously, in the present case, it would seem that such proof is in
fact possible. Since Jesus is frequently referred to as "Jesus of
Nazareth," it is interesting to learn that the town now called
Nazareth did not exist in the first centuries BCE and CE. Exhaustive
archaeological studies have been done by Franciscans to prove the cave
they possess was once the home of Jesus' family. But actually they
have shown the site to have been a necropolis - a city of the dead -
during the first century CE. (Naturally, the Franciscans cannot
agree!) With no Nazareth other than a cemetery existing at the time,
how could there have been a Jesus of Nazareth? Without an Oz, could
there have been a Wizard of Oz?
REFERENCES
1=2E Illustrated in Robin Seager, Tiberius, Eyre Methuen, London, 1972.
For more detailed numismatic documentation of Tiberius, see also C. H.
V=2E Sutherland, Roman History and Coinage 44 BC-AD 69, Clarendon Press,
Oxford, 1987; by the same author, Coinage in Roman Imperial Policy 31
B=2EC.-A.D. 68, Sanford J. Durst Numismatic Publications, NY, 1978.
2=2E Illustrated in Seager, op. cit.
3=2E Illustrated in Seager, op. cit.
4=2E Examined in Sutherland, 1987, op. cit. See also Victor Ehrenberg
and A. H. M. Jones, Documents Illustrating the Reigns of Augustus &
Tiberius, 2nd Edition, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1955.
5=2E See Inscriptiones Latin=E6 Select=E6, edidit Hermannus Dessau,
reprinted in 4 vols. by Ares Publishers Inc., Chicago, 1979.
6=2E Illustrated in Seager, op. cit.
7=2E See Acta Divi Augusti, Regia Academia Italica, Rome, 1945.
8=2E In her Anchor Bible Volume 38, Revelation (Doubleday, Garden City,
NJ, 1975), J. Massyngberde Ford proposed that the core of Revelation
was material written by Jewish followers of John the Baptist. Even if
the Baptist had been an historical figure (which is extremely
doubtful), this still would make Revelation in essence a pre-
Christian, Jewish apocalypse.
9=2E For more astrological aspects of Revelation, see Bruce J. Malina,
On The Genre And Message Of Revelation: Star Visions and Sky Journeys,
Hendrickson, Peabody, MA, 1995.
10. George A. Wells, The Historical Evidence for Jesus, Prometheus
Books, Buffalo, NY, 1982, p. 13.
11. L. Gordon Rylands, Did Jesus Ever Live?, Watts & Co., London,
1929, p. 20.
12. This so-called Testimonium Flavianum appears in Bk 18 Ch 3 =A73 of
Josephus: Jewish Antiquities Books XVIII-XIX, IX, translated by L. H.
Feldman, Loeb Classical Library, Harvard University Press, Cambridge,
MA, 1981, pp. 48-51.
13. J. P. Migne, Patrologiae Cursus Completus, Series Gr=E6ca, Tomus
CIII. Photius Constantinopolitanus Patriarcha, Garnier Fratres, Paris,
1900, Cod. 47, 76, and 238.
14. Rylands, op. cit., p. 14.
15. William Benjamin Smith, Ecce Deus: Studies Of Primitive
Christianity, Watts & Co., London, 1912, p. 235.
Copyright =A9 2006 American Atheists, Inc. All rights reserved.
Martin
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| User: "Roger Pearse" |
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| Title: Re: ~~ Scientist creates first Artificial Life Form ! <= god IS dead ! ~~ |
13 Oct 2007 06:28:23 PM |
|
|
On 11 Oct, 12:27, Martin Phipps <phippsmar...@hotmail.com> wrote:
On Oct 11, 7:11 pm, duke <duckgumb...@cox.net> wrote:
On Wed, 10 Oct 2007 17:05:04 -0700, Martin Phipps <phippsmar...@hotmail.com>
wrote:
On Oct 11, 2:27 am, duke <duckgumb...@cox.net> wrote:
On Tue, 09 Oct 2007 21:12:25 -0700, Martin Phipps <phippsmar...@hotmail.com>
wrote:
No, no, no. You opened your big mouth and proudly showed your ***** by
guaranteeing proof that God does not exist.
Go for it.
As I've already said "As I've said already, your god is one of
thousands of gods that people believed in thousands of years ago.
</ | | | | | | | | | | |
