You obviously have no conception of the Christian faith past some warped version of a fanantic. If you have ever bothered to read the Bible closely, you'd find that salvation is not through works of any kind, but rather through faith. Good works are taken in this world as a possible indication of that faith, but not as prima facie evidence of it. I don't know why you choose to be so obnoxious towards Christians, but your responses show you to be just as obnoxious as those you claim to be against, but from the opposite direction.

More peace, love and tolerance from a descendant of Robspierre?

Indeed. For example, when you are with us or against us?

I do like that new sig. Very swish.

Stuart

The way of a fool is right in his own eyes: but he that hearkeneth unto counsel is wise. Proverbs 12.19

Man you can spew the verbs - but lets get back to point, if someone is doing good deeds in the man of God - what difference does it make? When people go nutty, in the name of God, it stands out more so then if they have breakdown or it is drug induced. If you still think the war is about a Christianity crusade, you should lay off the psychopharms.

Goodness me, no. Its about real estate and hegemony, like every other war before it, including the Crusades. This one is merely clothed in the language of a Crusade.

“Why of course the people don’t want war. Why should some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece? Naturally, the common people don’t want war: neither in Russia, nor in England, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But after all it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship…Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger.”

I couldn't have said it better myself. If only Christians could live like Jesus did! We get so lost in the peripheral stuff that we forget the basics!

I went to a church not too long ago wearing a pair of jeans. Here's me, Sunday morning, putting on my blue-jeans, 'coz they're comfortable. The greeter at the door was an elderly man, as they often are. He was wearing a suit that Sunday morning, as the elderly greeters often do. "You don't plan on wearing those jeans in here, do you?" he inquired. I paused just for a moment, blank look on my face. "Why no, as a matter of fact, I don't," I replied, turning and walking away.

Wow, talk about missing the point! Jesus didn't come to change our clothes!! He came to change our lives!!! Aargh. My point is that you're right -- a lot of Christians have taken the name and missed the point.


Dan

Shadowfax, its one thing to ascribe to the teachings of Christ as a philosophy. In my observation, many Christians seem to forget Jesus was anti-materialist, pro-social justice and really, something of a pre Marx socialist. I rather like the idea of JC as a social radical, doing a Ghandi in Roman occupied Judea. And John the Baptist- he'd be chaining himself to trees and fire bombing Haliburton's headquarters today. He may even be in Guantanomo Bay.

Its quite another to believe that you will have eternal life, or that you will be taken up to heaven in a blaze of glory and angel's trumpets.

Stuart

Heres a nation governed by a dict that kills and tortures his people (is that a myth too?), tries to invade another country, breaks UN resolutions and tries to get away with it. But I guess you would let that continue?

In pops the US cuz, well, no other country can take the lead - there is only one world power now - and guess what Stuart, thats US, built on the pursuit of personal liberty and freedom warmly comforted in a blanket of free market capilzm. If you know of a better country, please let me know of it. And while your at it, can you help me in finding a world power that can take on the responcility of being a play maker and not sit on the side lines.

Ya, once again, thought so. I get the sense that you have bitten your share of sour grapes. Problem is, you have already commited to beleiving what you will and are vastly stubburn. Changing your mind is not going to happen becuase doing so would admit defeat. Not sure you can do that, heck you can't even show your self or take PMs.

Any credibility in your words fall short, the acid tongue don't help.

So I guess they should be happy that they have been invaded by another country who also ignores the UN and are now killed and tortured by new tormetors under the guise of 'liberation and democracy'.

:rolleyes:

BTW - Israel holds the record for broken UN resolutions, posses WMD and has attacked and invaded their neighbors numerous times. When will the US be deposing sharon?

Problem with your position is this. It wasnt about removing a ruthless dictator. It was about the imminent thread posed by Saddams WMD and his links to OBL. (Where is OBL, BTW?) Will we be marching into Burma, China, NKorea et al soon too? Or Iran. Now theres a one. Refer Goebell's position on the matter posted above.

A little reading for you, current Newsweek.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6857387/site/newsweek

But what pray, do PMs have to do with anything? Do you want to send me nasty messages? OK, I'll turn it on.

Well, I'm forced once again to agree, at least to some extent. I don't think JtB would have been firebombing anything, but I can certainly imagine mass baptisms happening under the Woodrow Wilson Bridge. :) I can also imagine Jesus denouncing the televangelists who rob old ladies of their life savings for the staged "faith healings."

You're right -- it's a huge step to go from recognizing Jesus as merely a good teacher to recognizing that he claimed to be God. You see, if you say that he was just a nice guy, you have to reconcile the facts. He was obviously not the sort of person who would support lying -- so that makes him either criminally insane or ... heaven forbid, telling the truth about who he was. That is, as you say, "quite another" thing than simply agreeing with his core philosophies.

(yawn) But it's late, and I'm tired. We'll continue this in the morning?



Dan

Or that the recorded teachings of Christ as we know them today have been somewhat embellished by a fledgling institution with a vested interest.

"Life of Brian" pretty much nailed it.

Stuart

The resolutions were/are sound, problem is the UN is a bit more dynamic in terms of being able to change their charter then they should be. The UN became ineffective - I won't pretend to know why, but it was obvious.

I also won't pretend to understand all the resons (direct and indirect) as to why we don't work other bad players though out Asia major and minor.

As far as Israel is concerned, I agree, they don't play cool at all.

This is no different than a corporate vision -
the CEO tells the VPs "1+1 = 2",
the VPs tell the Sales mgrs "1+1 will equel 2",
the Sales mgrs tell the regional mgrs that "1+1 has been known to equal 2",
the regional mgrs tell the field guys that "1+1 can equal 2"
and the field guys tell the customers "I think 1+1 can equal 2 if you need it too but let me check with corporate in order to confirm it."

Take a course in theology and see how corrupt the message can be relayed. The Bible in 2000yr old greek reads much different than the King James version. The claim that God would not let the translation become corrupt is just not true. But the original and ultimate message of the Christ is pretty clear and simple.

Yes, and from the Aramaic and Hebrew before that. But it really got worked over good and proper in the 15th century, soon after translation into English. Especially, and notably and widely acknowldged, in what became the King James version.

JC is a valuable franchise. The RC church is THE most wealthy, and arguably, the most powerful entity in the world. The good book is the marketing document. The message of Christ is indeed quite clear and simple. But is he the son of god?

Maybe in another 2000 years, our descendants will be Claptonists, having found the Church of Eric based on ancient writings found on 20th century walls.

Blessed be the Holy Stratocaster.

The message is skewed for sure - reason? speculation abounds but my guess is that the masses (and mass's) couldn't deal with the real meassge and the ruleing powers so danger in the true meaning.

The real message the Christ was trying to convey - Mercy is the hope that God is the creator tomorrow.

There's a fantastically popular myth here that needs to be dispelled.
Myth :The Bible was entirely written in Aramaic by a small group of motivated psychopaths. It was later translated into Hebrew, after having been passed around by word of mouth for thousands of years. Some time later, it was translated into Greek by a group of people known as "the disciples," followers of Jesus who claimed he had risen from the dead. Their translation was actually a modification, as they rewrote huge segments to meet their needs. Their lie was not uncovered by either the Jews (who maintained the original text) or the Romans (who could not control the spread of early Christianity) for reasons which are unclear. 1500 years later, after having been passed around and modified heavily, an English King decided to translate the Greek text for his own political purposes. Since his motivation was political and not religious, his translation suffered heavily. Our modern translations are actually taken from the text of the King James Version (KJV), which was a mediocre text to begin with.

Truth :
While some tiny segments of the Old Testament (OT) were written in Aramaic, virtually all of the rest of it was written in Hebrew. There exist both Latin and Greek translations of the Hebrew (and Aramaic) text which date to c150AD, but neither the Septuagint (Latin) or the Masoretic texts (Greek) are considered canonical because of their second-hand nature. While they cannot be counted on directly for translation to English, they do provide excellent insight into the understanding of the early church. While the myth claims that the text was passed by word of mouth, the truth is that it was written down and kept very carefully. We have copies of the text dating from thousands of years apart -- and they are virtually identical, due to the precision that the scribes used to make copies. The claim that the OT text has been modified over the years lacks any basis in reality.

The New Testament (NT) was originally written in Greek. The authors of the "gospel" books, which claim to be eyewitness accounts of the ministry, death, and resurrection of one "Jesus of Nazareth" were mostly written shortly after his death. The myth's claim that the text was later modified extensively fall apart entirely in light of the fact that we have manuscripts dating to before the fall of Jerusalem in 65AD. Any later modifications would be obviously identified as forgeries (or at least as bad copies) when compared to the early manuscripts. Further, many people would have had every opportunity to refute the wild claims that the eyewitnesses were making, as the time between the events and the writing is so short. It is clear to any scholar in this field that we have, for all practical purposes, the original Greek text of the NT.

The KJV is difficult to read, and is therefore often criticized as a poor translation. It should be understood that none of us today talk like they did when the KJV was written, which makes the task of understanding it fairly daunting. If you have an older dictionary handy and enjoy translating like that, you will likely determine that the KJV is a pretty good translation -- but not useful for most of us. The more modern translations, including the New International Version and New American Standard Version are really quite good. Between those two, any English speaker ought to be able to adequately determine the meaning of a piece of text.

While translation from one language to another is never 100% perfect, the losses from the Greek to the English are negligible. These losses can be reduced by any idiot possessing the ability to learn the Greek alphabet and look up words in a lexicon. Shiny new Greek NTs run about $30, and a cheap lexicon will be similarly priced -- which places this capability in the hands of virtually everyone. Thus, any claims of "translation errors" can readily be refuted by anyone who chooses to do the basic research. Further, our understanding of the NT Greek is based on the massive body of work produced at about the same time. In fact, there are few ancient languages so well understood as the Classical Greek used to write the NT.



(sigh) There are a number of excellent reasons for rejecting the Bible. "Biblical inaccuracies" and "translation errors" are not on the list, as these claims lack any depth. To use these reasons is to accept intellectual laziness. Reject the Bible if you will, but please do not rely on myths like this to do so.

So you are saying that all of the different languages on the earth are the result of god's wrath at the people of babble building a tower? Or that the sun circles the earth? Or that noah put two of every animal in a boat and lived to be hundreds of years old? Or that jesus was born to a virgin, made water into wine and rose from the dead?

While some of the people, people and places in the bible really existed and occured to extrapolate that into the entire fable being true is pure lunacy.

And thats why PMs arent a good idea.

Shadowfax, accepting the bible as anything other than an interesting document that includes everything from some of the most glorious prose and beautiful philosphy ever written to some of the most ridiculous assertions ever made, and has known many, many iterations and can only partially be historically verified- is just silly.

Stuart

Gentlemen, thank you for your kind words. I gladly accept the new title you have bestowed upon me: "Silly Lunatic Member."