h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Toxx
Well you brought all your skills in pyscology to that one

Don't know about that, Hass. I thought it was more of a philosophical point. Do you have an answer to it?

A Zen Proverb;

Do not seek the truth, only cease to cherish your opinions.

Alji the Magus (don't forget to record your sun sign @ A712595 ) Pastor of the Church of Spiritual Humanism.

214209 saying that we all are servents of god and we should all obey his commands. She/he who ever the researcher is saying that all animals live in harmony with there inviroment apart from us. The reason why we are different is that God has given us free will. It is every ones obligation to worship only God and is our duty while on earth.
This is my third night with out sleep, I can't relax. Sniff.

Adib

Universe, I was tempted to remark that if you think 'South Park' is a reliable teacher of theology, history or anything but scatology, then well...
But I don't want to dismiss you like that, you may well be sincere. Alji, for the benefit of Universe, you should state your prejudice, s/he may think that you're objective about all this.Shame on you! The Bible (NT especially) is much more reliable than many people would wish to believe, it's no more ancient than Caesar's 'Gallische Krieg', and those who come up with Sacred Mushroom myths and the old Paul was epileptic, John was stoned stories have an agenda! I'll do some research and come back with books and or URLs.

Adib
If you have such absolute faith, ask to go to sleep.

Hey I have absolute faith does not mean I am intitled to sleep.
Adib

Della, what else can you call Paul's expirience on the road to Damascus?
>'The Bible (NT especially) is much more reliable than many people would wish to believe.' - reliable for what?

Hass, what are you doing up at this time of night?

The secret of life is not to do what you like, but to like what you do.

Alji the Magus (don't forget to record your sun sign @ A712595 ) Pastor of the Church of Spiritual Humanism.

By reliable, Alji, I meant as a history of events in the 1st century A.D. I am talking *New* *Testament* here, folks. I don't want to get into a discussion of the old.
For instance, while people who are for various reasons invested in the unreliability of the Gospels like to claim they were written up to 100 years after events they depict. Not so.
Check out Lee Strobel 'The Case for Christ', 1998, Zondervan Publishing House, Grand Rapids Michigan, for starters. Also the writings of John A T Robinson, who in the interests of claiming the primacy of the gospel of John, looks at the historical reliability of all the gospels. I am not saying they are 100% literally reliable, you know I don't believe that - but you were telling a newb that you *knew* the NT was totally unreliable. I couldn't let that pass!
Re Paul and epilepsy. I work with special needs people, and for that and family reasons, I know a lot about epilepsy. People with it should be so lucky! Most don't have any 'visions' at all and the ones who do don't have benevolent ones!
The old visions-of-UFOs-and-religious-figures-are-caused-by-temporal-lobe-seizures story was first put forward in the 1980s by a CIA guy, who had an obvious agenda in view of claims current at the time, that the, to me, already massively untrustworthy American government wanted to stamp out!

Hi Della .

So the NT is a mostly 'reliable' history of the events of the 1st Century C.E huh? You surely didn't expect me to let you get away with that one did you ?

As a historian I find the New Testatment a series of interesting but wholly subjective and often contradictory accounts of the lives of a few dozen people in an unimportant province of the Roman Empire. They also frequently contradict objective archaeological and historical evidence. This is not a problem for subjective accounts, especially those written later in the lives of the recounters, do this. We all have 20-20 hindsight . We also tend to forget or change things in our memory that don't fit our present perspective.

Thus the writers of the Gospels got things wrong. They were bound to, after all most were writing many years after the death of Jesus (not 100 years as some say, but at least a couple of decades), and unlike us they had few other contemporary sources to check their facts against.

One must also consider the quite natural bias of the writers. They were not attempting to give an accurate and objective historical account of the events of the early 1st Century. They were attempting to sell their personal and religious beliefs. As authors they were more like David Icke than AJP Taylor.

Even when you view the Gospels in this context they are still remarkable documents, full of wisdom and insight into the human condition, and possibly the oldest truly 'human' records we have (as opposed to tax scrolls and classic myths), but they should not be viewed as historically reliable.

Blessings,
Matholwch the Apostate /|\.

Della, read 'The Rest of the Story' @ http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/jeff_lowder/strobel.html
http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/jeff_lowder/empty.html

A Cross-Examination of Lee Strobel’s The Case For Christ @ http://pages.ca.inter.net/~oblio/CTVExcerptsIntro.htm

>'Re Paul and epilepsy.' - I've never said anything about epilepsy! You have taken my use of 'brainstorm' to mean 'epilepsy' but this is not the deffinition I was using;
(1) the clear (and often sudden) understanding of a complex situation [syn: insight, brainwave]
(2) A sudden clever plan or idea.
(3) A sudden, violent disturbance of the mind.


While the NT may have some very good spiritual truths it has very few historical ones.
Here's a list of Jewish messiahs from around the time of Christ;
Jesus ben-Ananias
Simon bar-Giora
Carabbas
Theudas the Galilean
Judas the Galilean
Jesus ban-Sapphia
the Egyptian
Jesus bar-Abbas
Elymas bar-Jesus
Jesus Justus
the martyred Samaritan Messiah
Simon bar-Kokhba

Alji the Magus (don't forget to record your sun sign @ A712595 ) Pastor of the Church of Spiritual Humanism.

Yes, Apostate, you more or less have it there. May I add that only a relatively small portion of the NT survives, and it seems to be that part which (surprise surprise) supports the authority of the church. The remainder, the philosophical part - the "man know thyself" part - was destroyed by order of the church. Fortunately a few monks thought otherwise and we now have that remainder, called the Gnostic Gospels. The Gospel of Thomas provides us with a much wiser and more human jesus than the mythical versions in the NT. The trouble is that we have lost the art of reading between the lines, and the NT was written by a culture well used to mythical and metaphoric abstractions. We cannot do that. We have to see everything in black and white and anybody who refuses to do so goes to the stake (well, not any more they dont - but I know plenty churchmen quite capable of using that argument if they could!) It is interesting that the Cathar culture was based on Christian Gnosticism - and see what happened to them ! Patrice

ok im messing something here WTF is NT apart from an operation system the mircosoft made?

You can not prove or disprove the existence of God.
Further, the will of God, and God him(her/its) self is ineffable. Which means that we will never understand. Perhaps what science tells us was a big bang was God, existing in all dimensions, but so beyond our comprehension that we can only see it in 4. And so theorise the Big Bang. An ameoba understands the effect caused by a human presence but can have no concept of humans.

That would be my view. For a different view, in that belief creates gods, I would suggest reading either Pratchett (how do you spell that?) - Small Gods, or Gaiman - American Gods.

a few things i would like to know

1. if our whole perpose of living here on earth is to worship god so we can go to heaven when we die then why do we have a whole mysterious universe that we could explore?

2. If satan is evil then why would he be evil to us for being bad in our lives?

Patrice .

You are indeed correct. It is interesting that you bring up the Cathars. I spent my holiday last October exploring their fortresses and other sites in the Montagne Noir. Fascinating history and one of great pathos.

Blessings,
Matholwch the Apostate /|\.

Hi Universe .

Over the 3500 postings of this forum we have begun to use various jargon, my apologies.

NT = New Testament (which has many strange similarities to a Microsoft Operating system.... )

For future reference OT = Old Testament.

Blessings,
Matholwch the Apostate /|\.

Math, you might find this forum interesting @ http://pub26.bravenet.com/forum/show.php?usernum=2194435663

Alji the Magus (don't forget to record your sun sign @ A712595 ) Pastor of the Church of Spiritual Humanism.

well, doubting salmon, if you are truly not a christian, why is your entire point of view steeped in christianity? all those notions of hell and eternal damnation are soooooo christian. tell you what...do a little research(outside the confines of your obviously christian upbringing)and then perhaps we can engage in an interesting conversation about the existance of god...which,by the way, "god" certainly does exist, providing you lose all the dogma that has muddled your thinking.

hey!! you are in mistake! according to our belief, to seek the universe is a kind of worship. to learn science is to worship if you read Quran you will see. because what is written in Quran is the religious duty for us. but unfortunately in the world a little muslim applies these duties.because to seek the universe is to explain the verses with picture of Allah.