How many times did you guys accuse me of being a conspiracy theorist. And here you go doing exactly what you chastised me for (not) doing.

There's so much going on here, that there's very little a lone person like me could do to handle these posts. But I'll do what I can anyway. As I'm sure you're all glad to hear.

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i am sorry but i dont think you got my points right.

the cross was the standard punishment method for slaves and low level criminals (stoning and beheading where absolutely not popular public punishments for the romans).



Ok, but Jesus was nearly stoned Himself. Someone was almost stoned in front of Him. It was very common. Remember too, that the Jews lived among the Romans, but they weren't completely integrated into society. They were allowed their own establishments.

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all of this has happened years and years before jesus was born. a lot of prophets or messias where killed on the cross before him and a lot after him.



Sources? Specifics?

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predicting that he would die by the cross is like predicting today that somone who robbs a bank will get punished by arresting.



Yes, but I'm talking about Psalm 22 specifically, which actually was written about 1000 years before Jesus. Check that out. The earliest reference to known crucifixion I could find was 700 B.C. The psalm doesn't talk about 'crucifixion' it talks about some form of piercing damage to the hands and feet. Predicting that, along with the gambling for the clothes, and numerous other fulfilled references, Jesus' death is pretty unlikely.

http://www.aboutbibleprophecy.com/psalm_22_1.htm

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the resurrection point is not somthing to argue about subernatural things or the bible its simply the observation that the only way to keep your "religion" alive



It is much more important than that. Jesus didn't have a religion. He didn't show up on the scene to overturn the Torah.

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(usualy religions die after the messias and his prophets died) is to make something subernatural that is big enough to leave a mark.



Someone who was ignored by the establishment, who lived with the dredges of society, and died like a common criminal would somehow be completely celebrated just because a few people claimed He rose from the dead. Right....

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knowing the standard punishment leaves only two options: not to die by the cross or to get resurrected. only these two icons will show the people that you are god sent.



Apparently not, the religious 'higher ups' covered up the resurrection, and just as Jesus predicted, most people don't really believe. So you're thinking isn't really following reality here.

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the scientific approach to this is not accepting that jesus is the son of god and to find evidence for that



No its not. The scientific approach would be to try and falsify it by finding evidence of Jesus' body to prove He didn't rise from the dead. You can't scientifically touch the claim that Jesus is the Son of God. Nothing can or cannot prove that scientifically, but we can prove or disprove certain claims about Him, or whats left of the evidence after all this time.

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i am amazed what people like copperfield can do. and you will agree with me that he is probably not the son of god but a good magician.



His tricks aren't in any way similar to what Jesus did.

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if you keep the same distance to the supernatural when talking about jesus as you would do when you think about david copperfield you can investigate how much of the written is true.



No you can't, we can investigate Copperfield in person, we can't do that with Jesus.

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keeping an emotional distance to the topic can help a lot




Which I'm sure not many people could do, pro or con. Jesus has a lot of implications on a lot of people in society.

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i have heared a lot about predictions so far but either they are so vague that you can interprete god and the world into every sentence or they simply need to be bent so much to fit that they lose all context.



Have you actually read the bible and not just looked at specific claims from athiest websites? Some prophets detailed certain historical events with extreme accuracy.

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and if we are sceptical with all the stories above, why cant we be as sceptical and questioning when it comes to religion.



Well, I could remain skeptical about whether or not atoms really exist for the rest of my life, but eventually there's enough evidence to call it a day.

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do we have to accept everything said or written just because its said or written?!



Nope. I haven't claimed to accept all written things, nor do I claim to accept the bible just because its written. So I don't get what you're even talking about here.

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the bottom line of religion is that you want to believe. for e variety of reasons and nothing said could change that.



I could say that you don't want to believe, because you're threatened by the idea of a creator who can hold you accountable, but what does my claim matter?

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but again, not understanding something is not reason engough to say its supernatural.



I agree. But if an event is supernatural, then its not understandable. I understand how life could have come into existence naturally, but that doesn't mean I should automatically accept that over the not-understandable supernatural explanation. If I did, someone could rightly say I have a bias against any other alternative (for better or worse).

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where did the universe come from? how did it come from nothing? what is "nothing"?

good questions, but because you fail to have an answer isnt profing god in any way.



You have failed to understand every single point I've made thus far. You see every comment I make as some kind of argument in favor of God. Actually, even if my logic is completely correct, I still can't prove God created the universe. I can just make it seem like a likely answer. For all I know there's some mystical frootrin force that created the universe, and I can never grasp the how or why. I just think that's a stupid explanation considering the details of the universe.

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science needs proof and evidence to be true, religion needs believers to be true.




Yes I agree. But then we wouldn't have many of the theories we have right now. No one has evidence that the big bang occurred, because no one was there. We just accept it as a likely explanation for what we can see. Well, some of us do.

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we do not understand the terms infinite or nothing.



Yes we do. We may not be able to visualize them, but we can know a few things about them.

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the thing we dont understand is that mater needs mater to be created. its something we asolutely cant understand that maybe just a little "white" or "black" and the infinite ammount of time are enough to "create" something.



That's why I set out to 'prove' that infinite time isn't possible.

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because if the universe was created supernatural who created the time before that? and how can there be something if there is no time?
and if god can exist without time, how come that nothing else can?
did god created "white"?



Why go on to those points before we've even established the basic facts? You fail to make state any relevant questions. If we can get to that point and agree on a few things before that point, then we can deal with that when we get there.

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You're assuming that all events are preceded by a sequence of causes. This, however, is not the case in nature. We've already discussed this some weeks ago -> Bell's theorem.

Under the assumption of infinite time you can also safely assume that there are infinite many events (if there is an event at all). But you can not assume that all these events are necessarily connected by cause-effect relations.



I mentioned events to put a friendly handle on it. But whether or not events are occuring during infinite time, or whether nothing is happening during infinite time, it really doesn't matter.

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No. It would only mean that many (in fact infinite many) universes would be dead right now.



But doesn't solve the problem of whether or not infinite time can exist before the universe.

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Your thinking seems still restricted to the assumption that our universe, and/or our time, is in some way unique or privileged. However there is no logical reason to assume that.



Its the focus of the discussion, because either there was infinite time before now, or there wasn't. So all arguments are made in reference to our universe.

Personally I do believe our universe is special, but it doesn't have any effect on the thought experiment.

In fact, let me rephrase the experiment in a visual way, and tell me if you disagree with this. Imagine a peice of paper in your mind. Now imagine that you've drawn a circle on this peice of paper. Now, place an imaginary pencil with the tip resting anywhere on this circle. This circle is the infinite time before our universe (if our universe even exists). Make the lead of the pencil follow the circle until you reach the end of the circle. When you reach the end, you may say that you've reached the universe. This is why I see it as impossible.

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What do you mean the writer wouldn't know about this? It was a common thing to do, you can hardly miss a cross with a mourning person on it, now can ya... Anyways, yes, it might be a coincident that he predicted the 'right' way of execution, yet he could have meant another 'jesus' too.



Another Jesus with all of the other details correct? Including not just the death, but the birth and life? Read the link I posted above. That's just a small sampling of the prophecies.

Many of these prophecies were made in such a way that they wouldn't seem to predict anything, until they actually happened.

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Besides, I could predict that the weather will be exactly 35' degrees celcius tomorrow, if I turn out to be right, that still would mean exactly nothing



If you predicted not only the temperature, but the exact beginning and end of a rain storm, the exact amount of water dropped, the exact area affected by the rainstorm, as well as wind speeds, etc, I might pay attention.

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but at least in those predictions by these persons with a certain power to predict. What makes you so sure it's not purely chance?



Because you can calculate reasonable chance and unreasonable chance. For anyone to deny the prophecies in the bible, is to say that it was a conspiracy, or some kind of planned deception because it couldn't happen by accident.

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I think you will reply that there are so many predictions that according to you came true, that chance is unlikely, however unless you trully believe in magic so to speak, this 'lack of chance' can only mean they have been cheating it.



Case and point. Nothing will ever be good enough to prove it to you. So I guess it really doesn't matter.

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It's like in a casino, if a guy get's a bit too lucky and wins too much, he becomes suspicious and they will observe and investigate it. Now explain to me why this doesn't or shouldn't apply to the biblical predictions .



That's an ok metaphor, but it puts it in a negative light. Now let's imagine we come up with a theory of evolution, and it consistently makes predictions that come true. Do we go, "Hmm, let's be suspicious because its almost TOO true."? Perhaps not. Perhaps that's a bad metaphor. But you seem to think that prophecy automatically means 'lie'. If it comes true. So for you, ancients are religious nuts for believing prophecy, and if they come true (thus vindicating the ancients), anyone is a nut for not believing its some kind of conspiracy or trick. Maybe not in those harsh of terms....but you get the point.

That said, I might believe it was a trick if the circumstances were different.

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Even today there are quite some 'prophet'-like people, claiming to be able to perform all sorts of holy miracle stuff, from talking to dead people's ghosts to healing others by performing some sort of ritual. Well, not one of them has been proven to be something other than a simple fraud, still large amounts of people believe them.



Yes, of course. People have a fascination with the supernatural. But the things modern day 'mystics' claim to do, and the things Jesus did really aren't comparable. And Jesus hardly did it to get famous. In fact, He predicted that He would be killed. What mystic would keep doing what their doing knowing it would lead to their death?

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In my opinion, if there really was a jesus like in the bible stated, then he most likely must have been a fraud to, we have no logical reason to believe a human to be able to perform the miracles claimed.



Logic would assume that you could eliminate all possibilities by sorting through what makes the most sense, or what's true. Does it make sense that people would risk their lives (and actually did die as historically verified) just to perpetuate the lie for a man who lived with prostitutes, fishermen, and the lowest of society? And furthermore died like a nobody? I don't think I would risk being stapled to a tree, unless I thought Jesus was the real deal (speaking of His disciples who would have seen many of these miracles).

To claim this is some kind of mass fraud would be comparable to saying some bum could somehow orchestrate so many false miracles (getting people to go in on it), that entire cities would cheer when he arrived, and people would risk their lives to tell his story. I don't think its logical to conclude that that is possible. Jesus had a curious impact on people.

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Its not about going arround and fake people to believe. i think he knew exactly what the people wanted to hear/get/have at this period of time.



Again, they wanted someone who lived with the lowest of society? Who basically died as a nothing? Who questioned the religious establishement? He did anything except give the majority what they wanted.

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during his time religion was more or less a work or law. you have to obey, obey, obey.



You need to stop making historically false claims, especially when you absolutely refuse to back them up.

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But people are forgetting that there is no evidence anyone like Jesus actually existed.



There are several people who wrote about Him. This includes what are considered the four reliable sources. The best the "Jesus Myth" people can do is say there are a dozen writers who didn't write about Him. I like the analogy, "The criminal in court had four witnesses who saw him commit the crime. The defense brought 13 witnesses who didn't see him do it. He went to jail."

Considering who He was, and the relative amount of information we have on any historical figure of that time, its pretty impressive that we have as much as we do.

http://www.tektonics.org/jesusexist/jesusexisthub.html

I almost hesitate to quote this link because there's something in it that will probably alienate atheists, but.....considering your guys' worldview and suppositions, I don't think its going to matter.

I can't prove He did what He did. Its impossible. Furthermore, you guys have a presupposition that limits anything I say. You have to fit any miracles into a naturalistic worldview, without any further reasoning.

However, logically...

Based on His life, death, and evident existence. Its fair to say that it would be illogical to believe that people lied about His life, to gain absolutely nothing (except certain, gruesome death). It may not be 'scientific' to believe in miracles without evidence. But it certainly isn't logical to believe these miracles were simple parlor tricks.

"The task force finds that...the unborn child is a whole human being from the moment of fertilization, that all abortions terminate the life of a human being, and that the unborn child is a separate human patient under the care of modern medicine."