Summations Only

Haven't you ever heard the saying about how History repeats itself? Or about how those who don't learn from the past are condemned to repeat it?Lets take one such example:The Love Of Money Is The Root Of All Evil.This basic observation can be tested aginst daily logic, reason, and reality. You give your spare change away, which might protect you from becoming evil. Those of us which hoard money or squander it on vain pursuits of self fulfillment are likely unhappy people.Thus the saying is a timeless truth.

I suppose you know that's a rip-off of the biblical prophets, and are simply indulging in mockery, right?

Do you actually think that's what it says?

Perhaps some do read it as yesterday's news, that would explain your take on it for instance. I read it as eternally relevant myself.

Since Islam is simply another of the Judaic religions where is the rip off? Could it be any more a ripoff than what Christianity did with the Old Testament?

That's a bad example. Are you suggesting that "primitive" societies that don't use money have no evil? That would throw a monkey wrench into the whole good-evil spiel in the Bible wouldn't it?Paul was apparently indulging in a bit of hyperbole. What he should have said, if he intended to be taken literally, was that the love of money is the root of quite a lot of evil.

So your argument that it reads like history goes out the window. It doesn't, in fact, read like history at all because history does read like yesterday's news. History is, in fact, the accumulation of yesterday's news.

Oh AREN'T you CLEVERRRRR. Wow. You are all SO clever at defeating any possibility of ever knowing the truth. I'm in awe, truly.

To prove this claim correct would require external evidence, which you've stated is unnecessary. You told us that a book that contains fulfilled prophecy must be the inerrant word of God, and that no external evidence is necessary to make this judgment. The stories of the Biblical prophets contained in the Bible are external to the Quran and hence not necessary for concluding its divine inerrancy.Of course, reasoning in this way is absurd, as absurd for the Quran as it is for the Bible. To the rest of the world outside the Faith reality-free zone, excluding evidence and reaching conclusions in the absence of evidence make no sense. Even your fellow evangelicals disagree with you that evidence from outside the Bible is unnecessary and can be ignored. That external evidence is important and significant is the entire reason evangelicals invented creation science. It's why you've argued endlessly in the geology and evolution forums.Most people would say that accepting a book as true based only on what lies between its covers and with no confirming evidence is faith. Why not just admit that you accept the Bible on faith, not evidence (I'm using the mainstream Christian definition of faith, not the evangelical one).--Percy

The problem is that people who claim to know The Truth™ clearly don't. They often can't even distinguish fantasy from reality or history from fiction. So yes, I am pretty skeptical about the possibility.

Sigh. I said it would be nice if there was external evidence but every time someone brings up Josephus or Tacitus they are told it doesn't count. My rejoinder is that it really isn't necessary anyway because the Bible is a collection of separate documents. And now you are making what kind of hash out of this? My definition of faith comes down the Protestant lineage, which IS Christianity like it or not. And I could not possibly believe in anything just because I want to believe it as you seem to think is possible. I need evidence and I have it. Sorry you don't see it.The Bible is not "a book," it's a whole library of books.The whole point of the Biblical writings was to report the evidence God had provided of His existence and His character and His plan of Redemption, and then the New Testament reported the fulfillemnt of the Messianic prophecies. The whole Bible is INTENDED as evidence and it IS evidence. With multiple witnesses yet, not the one lone character Mohammed or that sort of thing.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Ad hominem slams, totally false. After watching your performance here for some time I know I can distinguish between reality and fantasy and history and fiction a lot better than you can.

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Sigh. I said it would be nice if there was external evidence but every time someone brings up Josephus or Tacitus they are told it doesn't count

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You do realise that at most Josephus and Tacitus are evidence that there was a historical Jesus ? You'd really need much better than that for your claims.

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The whole point of the Biblical writings was to report the evidence God had provided of His existence and His character and His plan of Redemption, and then the New Testament reported the fulfillemnt of the Messianic prophecies. The whole Bible is INTENDED as evidence and it IS evidence. With multiple witnesses yet...

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So this is another case where you claim that the evidence is good mainly because you assume that you must have good evidence.But the Gospels are lousy as witness statements. The authors aren't clearly identified (the three synoptics don't identify the authors at all). Two of them copy directly from a third. Luke, which everyone agrees was not written by a witness, fails to identify the sources used, unlike the better historians of the time. Luke and Matthew disagree quite violently in places... There's plenty more I could say about the Bible's failure to be really good evidence, but that's enough for a start.

According to you, not according to orthodox theologians and believers.

Have you looked up the text of either Josephus or Tacitus?Let's first look at Josephus:

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Festus was now dead, and Albinus was but upon the road; so he assembled the sanhedrim of judges, and brought before them the brother of Jesus, who was called Christ, whose name was James, and some others, [or, some of his companions]; and when he had formed an accusation against them as breakers of the law, he delivered them to be stoned: but as for those who seemed the most equitable of the citizens, and such as were the most uneasy at the breach of the laws, they disliked what was done; they also sent to the king [Agrippa], desiring him to send to Ananus that he should act so no more, for that what he had already done was not to be justified; nay, some of them went also to meet Albinus, as he was upon his journey from Alexandria, and informed him that it was not lawful for Ananus to assemble a sanhedrim without his consent.[24] Whereupon Albinus complied with what they said, and wrote in anger to Ananus, and threatened that he would bring him to punishment for what he had done; on which king Agrippa took the high priesthood from him, when he had ruled but three months, and made Jesus, the son of Damneus, high priest.

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Now remember that this was written about sixty years after Jesus death and that there is only a passing mention that might refer to Jesus and another reference that most certainly is not Jesus Christ.The second passage from Josephus is:

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3. Now there was about this time Jesus, a wise man, if it be lawful to call him a man; for he was a doer of wonderful works, a teacher of such men as receive the truth with pleasure. He drew over to him both many of the Jews and many of the Gentiles. He was [the] Christ. And when Pilate, at the suggestion of the principal men amongst us, had condemned him to the cross,[9] those that loved him at the first did not forsake him; for he appeared to them alive again the third day;[10] as the divine prophets had foretold these and ten thousand other wonderful things concerning him. And the tribe of Christians, so named from him, are not extinct at this day.

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Again it is simply a secondhand report of what we know, that there was a group that called themselves Christians and claimed that Jesus performed miracles and that there were prophecies regarding Him.And from Tacitus, written over 75 years after Jesus death.

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Consequently, to get rid of the report, Nero fastened the guilt and inflicted the most exquisite tortures on a class hated for their abominations, called Christians by the populace. Christus, from whom the name had its origin, suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius at the hands of one of our procurators, Pontius Pilatus, and a most mischievous superstition, thus checked for the moment, again broke out not only in Judaea, the first source of the evil, but even in Rome, where all things hideous and shameful from every part of the world find their centre and become popular.

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Both sources simply repeat the same material that was current in the Christian culture but are just reports of what people believed not evidence of any facts beyond belief.