Is Religion a Net Positive or Negative?

Grove, thanks for your replies. Hopefully, we can come to some kind of middle ground. If not, the discussion is still fun.

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Monahorns:

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"Where was Christ born?
a) Jerusalem
b) Nazareth
c) Bethlehem "

I anxiously await how you can twist some passage to get Jerusalem for an answer. Luke and Matthew both make it Bethlehem. John and Mark start with Jesus as an adult.

 

"Why did Joseph and Mary ..."

Why did Battleship pull for the Longhorns to beat LSU?

A. He likes Longhorn baseball
B. He really, really dislikes the LSU Tigers

Which is it A or B? Oh, now you see it is actually possible to have multiple reasons to do something? That liking the Longhorns doesn't mean I can't dislike the Tigers, in fact, the two can go hand in hand? So maybe Joseph and Mary said here's a reason to do X, but not only that, it will help us with Y as well.

 

I find it amusing that you're so gleefully condescending yet you only care to address two of the four questions. (Only really addressing 1 of them with any kind of real answer.)

Mark and John call him Jesus of Nazareth, because that's where his parents lived. He was almost certainly born there if his parents did not have some reason to leave; long-distance travelling not being the norm for poor folks at the time.

John 7:40 - Many of the people therefore, when they heard this saying, said, Of a truth this is the Prophet.
41 - Others said, This is the Christ. But some said, Shall Christ come out of Galilee?
42 - Hath not the scripture said, That Christ cometh of the seed of David, and out of the town of Bethlehem, where David was?
43 - So there was a division among the people because of him.

Apparently, some people at the time thought he was born in Galilee.

Even getting him to Nazareth is a problem, another one of those wild and circuitous attempts to fulfill a prophecy (like getting an *** and a colt to ride on at the same time). Jesus was not from Bethlehem, he was merely born there in an extremely flimsy and unlikely circumstance and then raised in another area completely.

You contend that people can do things for multiple reasons. I would not disagree. However, both the census proposition and the kill-all-the-firstborn proposition are exceedingly unlikely and have absolutely no correlating evidence in recorded history. One exceedingly unlikely thing is hard enough to accept, but tying it to yet another exceedingly unlikely thing makes the entire thing unworkable.

The point of this being that the NT is a collection of stories largely meant to make Jesus seem like a historical character that fulfilled a lot of old prophecies, and the inconsistencies within the texts point to those anecdotes as unreliable.

 

I was hoping to get an opportunity to share another contradiction I found in the NT bible. Mona and I had a respectful debate on this already, so I’m beating a dead horse with him. The point I make is the Bible as we know it was written years later by imperfect and sometimes self-interested men. Some of the NT authors were not even aware their letters would be considered holy doctrine in the future. This leads me to the conclusion the Bible cannot be seen as the infallible and accurate words of Jesus Christ or God.

For my example, the two version are in direct contradiction. The typical explanation is Judas attempted to hang himself, but the rope broke causing the Acts version. Most explanation tries to place emphases on Judas’ death, but ignores the more obvious contradiction of what happened with Judas’ money (it is impossible for both accounts to be true).

Narrative of Judas death in Mathew:

Judas get’s money for turning in Jesus.
Judas repented – felt like crap. Gave the money back – casts the silver in the Temple.
Judas hangs himself
Priest can’t take the money, but bought a potter’s field.
Field called “The Field of Blood” because it was purchased with blood money.

Narrative of Judas death in Acts:

Judas get’s money for turning in Jesus.
He uses the money to purchase a potter’s field (no mention of Judas feeling guilty).
Judas trips in the field and falls – splitting his head open and hit guts burst out.
Field called “The Field of Blood” because of the gruesome death.

Okay, before anyone starts straining your imagination to explain the discrepancy, I’ve included below an explanation that will likely surpass your own. You will choose to believe this one over your own eyes and readings of the actual words the Bible says because it contradicts what you’ve been taught your whole life. I am vehemently opposed to imaginative interpretation because we can use our imagination to deny reason and make Christ into whatever selfish objective we have (ie KKK’s use of John “son’s of Satan” quote of Jesus and Paul’s letters to justify anti-Semitism).

Obviously, Christ was gay because he didn’t ever have sex with women and associated with 12 dudes (I don’t believe this rhetorical statement).


Rebuttal to the above.

 

I forgot to point out that, while John doesn't explicitly say that Christ was born in Galilee, he doesn't argue with those who do. In 7:43 John simply says "So there was a division among the people because of him.", not "So we went ahead and told the people that Christ was actually born in Bethlehem, so there."

CrazyFoo':

I would agree that, in a conversation with most Christians, pointing out textual inconsistencies is a pointless thing, because faith tends to pick up where reason fails. It is quite a rare (American?) Christian who will flatly say that there are blatant and obvious contradictions.

Generally it seems to do with an ignorance of what scripture actually says. Biblical literacy is very low, even (or perhaps especially) among Southern Protestant Christians, and while this doesn't present any kind of problem with the "faith is all that matters" crowd, it presents a huge challenge for the "the Bible is inerrant" crowd.

 

Hello, I thanks for continuing the discussion.

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CF: There is nothing in Acts to suggest Judas tripped. Falling headlong does not suggest tripping. The Hebrew language has perfectly good words for stumbling, tripping, slipping, etc. and they weren't used. The words used suggest an inert fall, like something dropped. Some have used this to suggest suicide by falling, but how that would happen in a field would be hard to know. The usual explanation is he hung himself, maybe from a tree or ledge, and later or in the process the rope breaks and he falls to split open.

 

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Monahorns:

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Rex Kramer:

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So grover, you aren't even going to take a shot at the rationale of why you believe that, somewhere in the Bible, it indicates Jesus was born in Jerusalem? I figured you would come up with something hilarious, maybe both names start with "J" in English? Something.

 

If Jesus didn't exist, the Jewish establishment of the late 1st/early 2nd century would have made that simple point as the justification for banning Christians from the Synagogues. But they didn't. They never did, even centuries later the best that they could come up with was that he was the son of a *****. The Jewish establishment, the very people in the best position and with the best motive to makes such a claim, never made it.

 

Ah screw it. If people are that close minded then it's not worth it.

 

BattleshipTexas:

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Anastasis:

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You're welcome.

 

Goodness gracious, I have to go to work for a few days, and the thread, previously ignored, explodes along completely new tangents. I suppose it's too late now to resurrect our discussion of Romans, which I thought was fairly constructive as religious discussions on this board go. I guess it's my own fault for being gone.

Anyway, we're now on to fresh topics such as whether or not Jesus actually existed.

Grove, I have a question: do you believe Socrates existed?

 

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saying "your god doesn't exist" is different than saying that a human didn't exist.