Sling’s where actual weapons used in wars or by shepherds to kill of dangerous animals such as Lions and Wolves, during the time of David. So it was possible for David to sling shot a rock in between a huge man’s eyes and actually kill him. The story of Samson is not a literate story but a proverb; that’s very ignorant of you to actually use that as an example of the “fictional reality” of the bible.
Did you see the episode of Deadliest Warrior where they tested the sling theory? Those things were powerful. Think about this too, a well placed shot to the head could cause brain hemorrhaging. That’s why you’re required to wear a full facial mask when paintballing. It doesn’t take much to kill you when precision is in play. Pressure is force/area. So you’re going to get a very high amount of Pressure at the site of impact because the rock itself would be tiny so it could fit in the sling. When the rock is that small, you don’t need too much force to deliver a killing blow as long as you’re accurate.
Also, I’m surprised anyone would have difficulties accepting that David killed a giant, but not have any trouble with him killing a Lion and a Bear.
http://www.reasons.org/resurrection/if-christ-has-not-been-raised-reasoning-through-resurrection
Some of your points are taken into account in that article.
Ummmm… what?
http://mb-soft.com/believe/txs/judges.htm
Read the section on Historicity. Plus take into account that Samson is mentioned in the book of Hebrews among the faithful and is praised for his actions.
As far as the story of Samson is presented, it’s a historic event that occurred. What Soul Bushido says is actually spot on. Men don’t lose their strength depending on the length of their hair. Now that leaves us with this question: If it’s not hair that makes men strong or weak, then what is it? Could it not be that his hair was an arbitrary device used to signify Samson’s bond of servitude? I will admit though, that some of the virtue of his hair may have been exaggerated some.
“The sources from which the material for the various heroic stories was taken are in part very old, the Song of Deborah having originated as early as the time of the Judges.These old sources, however, were committed to writing a considerable time after the date of the events which they narrate. Samson certainly lived a long time before the account of his life was written down, because it has a very evident admixture of mythic elements, as, for instance, his heroic deeds and the virtue ascribed to his hair. His deeds remind one of the deeds of Hercules, and his name ( = “the sunny”) shows a resemblance in attributes to the Phenician sun-god Melkart, the prototype of the Greek Herakles. Although the story of Samson may be based on historical fact, it must be noted that Samson’s deeds differ from those of the other warrior judges in that these latter are “saviors of their tribe” while Samson fights with the Philistines on his own account. Hence the compilation of the stories of the five Great Judges must be dated soon after the division of the kingdom. Single passages, like the basis of ch. xvii. and xviii., may be much older. The editor who combined his own additions with the book containing the stories, producing thereby the earlier Book of Judges, probably wrote in the last decades of the kingdom of Israel. The Deuteronomistic edition was undertaken during the Exile, at which time the other additions were probably also incorporated. The two appendixes were added very much later, as appears not only from the date of composition of the second appendix (xix.-xxi.), but also from the fact that the Deuteronomistic revision, which may be traced throughout the Book of Judges down to ch. xvi., did not include the two appendixes. Had they been added earlier, moreover, they would have been inserted in a different place, namely, in the beginning, where they belong, according to the dates mentioned in them (xviii. 30 and xx. 28). Although these references to the time may be glosses, they can not have been added after the book was completed.”
I’m not a catholic, no disrespect either but you need to check your sources out because most of it is academically wrong. The one i put in red (a quote from that site) is the one i’ll talk about first.
The “H” doesn’t stand for Horus because the jesus H christ is of greek origin. In many Churches, the inscription for Jesus H Christ = IHC, These happen to be an abbreviation of the name Jesus, which is spelled IHSYS in Greek capital letters. In small letters it is spelled Iesus and the “Ie” is pronounced “Yay” and the last three letters are pronounced “Soos” with a long OO (Yaysoos). The Greek letter S is written in several different ways, depending on where it is in a word or whether it’s a capital or not, but the common name Jesus was abbreviated Jes (no period) and was written IHC or IHS in all-capital letters. Now, The “H” is actually a letter that is pronounced “ay.” It is not an initial “H.” “H” was not written at all in ancient Greek, but was added by editors a long time later and is written as a backwards apostrophe in front of a vowel, or over the second vowel of a diphthong. It is in no where related to what that site of yours suggests. With this, the YHWH part is also invalid. The “sun” thing is also an academic fallacious claim, and i suggest you find some of the scholar refutations against Zeitgeist to actually look at that.
Next, the doctrine of the Trinity was formally defined by the Nicene Creed, the same people who canonized the Bible we have today. I don’t think the doctrines of Mary ever came from the Nicene Creed. The trinity concept is understood just in the same way all theists understand a person. The belief is that a person is also of 3 essences: Body, Mind and Soul = 1 being of a person. In the same way we see that way with God. He is also of 3 essence: Body, mind, spirit yet one being.
I don’t agree with the Mary queen of heaven statement, but Mary the mother of God is an understandable one. Mary mother of God isn’t a statement of heirarchy but an identification of who Jesus was, God. You take away the name of Jesus and you are still left with God. So Mary mother of God is just a rendered “Mother of Jesus”.
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The problem is that the Sabbath was not always on Saturdays, there where times where Jews would have more than 1 sabbath a week, especially during their holidays. However, during the time, Saturday was seen as the 7th day of the week which is why the Jews held that as the common day of worship. Sunday became the 7th day due to Constantine, and there was nothing wrong with it.
No no no… you misunderstood, i do know that the Samson (at the background) was about something historical, however the story was not literate. The “loosing of the hair = lossing of strength” is definitely of figurative meaning, nothing literate as Bashido said. Another thing is that the OT identifies it’s people through TITLES and not names…
There is no doubt in my mind that the story of Samson is based on and symbolizes a historical account. It is just well known that some stories in the OT are blanketed in figurative languages, the Story of Samson is an example. It was based on something true yet not literate at all.
Ok, I think I’m understanding more of what you’re saying. I was just confused because you called it a proverb, and that made me curious as to what you meant. I’m glad to see that we’re still on the same page.
Ya, maybe a proverb was a wrong identification due to wrong definition… i called it a proverb because there are truths in the story however it is also symbolic in nature. I saw the story to be more of a teaching of a lesson than an actual teaching of a historical report. This doesn’t mean that the Story of Samson isn’t based on something historical though, but the details are metaphorical or symbolic and nothing literate.
I’m glad we’ve finally identified the man who is the arbiter of what is literal and what is metaphorical in the bible. Could you please maybe write your decrees in this regard down, so that we can share them with the rest of christians so there will be no more further confusion? Thanks.
Now if only he could keep proverb and parable straight.
I was talking to my old World Philosophies teacher today and he mentioned the book “There is a God,” by Anthony Flew. I think most of you guys have at least heard of him. Anyway, his book is about his recent conversion from Atheism to Deism (note: he is not a Christian.) His book establishes the reasoning he used to conclude that there is a god.
http://www.amazon.com/There-Is-a-God-ebook/dp/B000W9169S/ref=cm_cr_pr_product_top
My motives: I’m trying to get you reasoning about the existence of A god. As far as Flew was concerned, he believed that the God of Christianity was not real and that there is definitely no life after death. I’m sure most of you can relate. After his conversion, he still believed those two basic tenets, but he changed from “God does not exist,” to "God does not exist, but a god does.’ Now, I personally think it’s unfortunate that he doesn’t believe in the God of Christianity, but I do believe that if he continues his investigation he’ll reach some sort of conclusion. I also think the same goes to you guys. If I were to discuss with you the existence of God, I think it would be far easier for me to try and convince you of the existence of a god, THEN try to convince you of my God, than to skip the middle step. Then again, judging by some of your responses it’s going to be pretty tough :lol: Oh well, here’s to trying.
Flew’s book is a terrible, senile mishmash of weak discredited christian apologetics and anti-scientific, anti-philosophical nonsense.
You could no more prove to me that a god exists than a flying spaghetti monster or a teacup circling jupiter.
Well, I’m not one to PROVE that God exists. I think only God could prove His existence and if you don’t believe the Bible then you’re going to be disappointed in what other reasoning I could offer. If I could in fact PROVE God, this discussion would have ended a long time ago. All I can do is present my reasoning and talk about Jesus. Frankly that’s not going to be sufficient for everyone and I’m not naive enough to think it is. It is sufficient for me though, and I have to do my best to present that.
What I am curious about is why you call it “discredited Christian apologetics,” when Flew himself doesn’t believe in Christianity and would most likely having trouble accepting the Christian aspect of them?
i linked that site to appease people who want to brush off christianity. it was a trojan horse that they could choose to lap up along with zeigeist yet if they were paying attention i refuted one of the easier claims in the site with the bolded sentence, which was a huge hint that sun worship associations dont hold up, but work on lesser studied people. zeitgeist is similiar in its objective as that site is and is a new age agenda movie, and the papacy would enjoy its existence because it moves people away from the bible.
much of the history of christianity is also wrong. heretics were often protestants. and the choice of adhereing to the bible was seen by the papacy as “going their own way”, so they would send soldiers into valleys and forests to hunt them down.
like the waldenses in gaul.
i dont know how you can excuse the papacy as not being the antichrist. anti christ means in the place of christ. which is what the pope is.
he thinks he is another jesus christ…which is blasphemy to a christian. also if you study the jesuit order you would see that people like fransisco riberia have made catholic lies involving the rapture.
manuel de lacunza a jesuit in particular wrote a book called “the coming of messiah in glory and majesty” under an alias of ben ezra a jewish rabbi. this alias of ben ezra is of a jewish rabbi who had visions that were a modification of the rapture who then becomes a protestant who writes a book about such visions. except the visions and being a rabbi were lies and were concepts expanding upon fransisco riberias false concepts of rapture which the jesuit order didnt see too much success with but lacunzas efforts caught on.
taken from “the birth of the pre-tribulation doctrine in the 1800’s”
“Lacunza wrote his manuscript in spanish, and it was published in spanish under a pseudo-name “Juan Josafa Ben Ezra”. By doing so, his book would be more easily accepted by protestantism. this proved true as it was placed on romes index of prohibited books, which only made it more sought out by the protestants.”
Also fransiscos much earlier concepts of pre-tribulation together with this book influenced David Irving, who started the pentacostal and charismatic movements, believing in a two phase rapture, the first of which is a secret rapture.
So why would the society of jesus be doing this to protestants if the papcy/Jesuits weren’t some kindof bad bunch?
It’s because he really never knew anything about the book and assumed that his assumptions would hit the point of the book, in other words pretending he knows.
The Jesuit Oath [facepalm]
Alright, my mistake…
Hmm… i don’t think he or the catholic community see it as that. The Pope is seen as the representative - the earthly leader of the Christian community, but nothing similar to God. While i do think that most of the treatment he gets is indeed way too much or just wrong, it’s doesn’t make me judge him immediately to be a big deceiver or actually posing as Jesus. The anti-christ simply means against Christ. Whether it is the twisiting of his words to destroy human morality, that is what i define anti-christ: I’ve only seen this from the cult leaders mentioned here earlier and the diverse Jesus’ in other religions.
Hmm… i think you need to find out more if that actually being true because the Jesuit oath found in the Library of Congress is different from this. Allot different. I recall a bit of what you’ve quoted and i think this is the forgery of Robert Ware (mid to late 1600?s), or so i think so.
try again.
it’s because the “arguments” he brings up in the book just happen to be the exact same ones that christian apologetics use, whether its argument from authority, like his laughable attempt to claim that hawking and einstein were god believing mono-deists, or other logical fallacies like the monkeys on typewriters churning out shakespeare nonsense. Basically stuff any rookie scientist would point and laugh at.
It’s quite telling StarvinMarvin, that you jump on my comment to someone else, while ignoring the one directed to you. Par for the course from xtians in this thread it seems.
Pope Innocent III (1198-1216) wrote: “We may according to the fullness of our power, dispose of the law and dispense above the law. Those whom the Pope of Rome doth separate, it is not a man that separates them but God. For the Pope holdeth place on earth, not simply of a man but of the true God.” (1 Book of Gregory 9 Decret. c.3)
- Speaking the name of the Pope (a rhetorical device) Cardinal Manning said: “I acknowledge no civil superior, I am the subject of no prince, and I claim more than this, I claim to be the supreme judge on earth and director of the consciences of men, I am the last supreme judge of what is right and wrong.” (Sermon in the Pro Cathedral, Kensington, Tablet Oct 9, 1864)
Many years ago, Cardinal Manning said: "The Catholic Church is either the masterpiece of Satan or the Kingdom of the Son of God."
Cardinal Newman acknowledged: “If not divinely appointed, it is doctrinally the essence of antichrist.”
These two high ranking and noted Roman clerics have stripped back the issue to the very wire. Read again and ponder the claims of the various Popes and answer the issue for yourself.
**God said: “I am the LORD: that is my name: and my glory will I not give to another?” (Isaiah 42:8) **
The trinity is a complex idea and I don’t know if I can do it justice, but to try my best:
The trinity would be possible based off of some of God’s specific character traits. First, God would have to be infinite in the sense that our concept of time is irrelevant to Him. This grants Him omnipresence, the ability to be everywhere at once. God is commonly referred to as “the father.” The father is the head of the trinity model because the way the Bible is written, it makes it sound like He is the ultimate authority. Next comes Jesus, “The Son.” Jesus is typically referred to as the Son of God, but in the Bible He also refers to Himself in terms associated with God the Father. Jesus’s entire purpose was to come to earth in the flesh of a human, and to die as a sacrifice in order to make amends for the sins of mankind. The Holy Spirit is another manifestation of God that dwells inside humans. The Holy Spirit was promised by Jesus to arrive after Jesus ascended back into heaven.
This is where things get a little tricky- All three beings are components of the same God, but they are talked about like they are individuals. This would only be possible if God was infinite. If time were a factor, then God could not be manifest in all three figures at the same time. Not to mention, the Holy Spirit is said to indwell in Christians, which means that it would have to be split among a few million people.
Here is a response to the notion that Jesus and Horus are similar.
http://www.kingdavid8.com/Copycat/JesusHorus.html
Regarding “This generation shall not pass”
" This quote of Jesus in regards to the end times is found in Matthew 24:34, Mark 13:30, and Luke 21:32. Jesus said, “Truly I say to you, this generation will not pass away until all these things take place.” The key to understanding what Jesus means is understanding the context; that is, understanding the verses that are surrounding verse 34, but especially the verses prior to verse 34. In Matthew 24:4-31, Jesus is speaking of events that have not yet happened. The generation of people living when those events occur is the generation that Jesus speaks of “not passing” until He returns. Jesus had already told those living during His first time on earth that the kingdom had been taken from them (Matthew 21:43). Therefore, it is imperative that Matthew 24-25 be seen as speaking of a future time and that the word generation is referring to the people alive when the events of Matthew 24-25 are occurring."
Christians don’t pray to saints. Catholics do. Christianity is hard to define as purely monotheistic because of its triune God, but in the loosest sense, it is monotheistic. I don’t pray to saints because the dead can’t help me. Period. “The Bible nowhere instructs believers in Christ to pray to anyone other than God. The Bible nowhere encourages, or even mentions, believers asking individuals in Heaven for their prayers. Why, then, do many Catholic pray to Mary and/or the saints, or request their prayers? Catholics view Mary and saints as “intercessors” before God. They believe that a saint, who is glorified in Heaven, has more “direct access” to God than we do. Therefore, if a saint delivers a prayer to God, it is more effective than us praying to God directly. This concept is blatantly unbiblical. Hebrews 4:16 tells us that we, believers here on earth, can ‘…approach the throne of grace with confidence…’”
To answer the worldwide flood question: Imagine you’ve planted a garden with the sole purpose of growing onions to make french onion soup. Your onions are growing fine but after some time, carrots spring up. Someone must have planted some carrots in your garden. After some time, the carrots go unchecked and start eliminating all of your onions. There is only a small amount of onions left and you know that if you don’t get rid of the carrots, surely the onions will disappear forever. You know that onion bulbs can be uprooted and replanted so you uproot them, then remove all of the carrots. It’s very tough on you to start over, but you know that if the problem went left unchecked, all of the onions in the garden would have disappeared and you’d be left with a vegetable that you might like, but doesn’t serve the purpose you had for it. It was a tough decision to see your once beautiful garden uprooted like that, but you know that by saving those few onions, you’ll soon have your french onion soup. Now to give the allegory it’s meaning, Onions = Noah and his family. Carrots = the rest of society. Society had gotten to a point where it was no longer producing men and women who feared God. As you probably know, the seeds of carrots will never give you onions, just as a society that does not know God will not give you God.
This is where some people might say “God could just show Himself and make people believe. He’s so unfair and melodramatic.” To which I state that God would be omniscient: all knowing. There were instances where He knew nations would repent and He let them. He would also know when nations would not repent regardless of what He did, and those nations He destroyed.
Now the whole scenario sounds a little cruel, but I assure that God did not
That sounds a little accusatory of the entire group. While I think there are corrupt people within the papacy, there are also devout, Jesus loving, God fearing men. I think the Catholic church as a whole is not what it used to be, and I think that some of the popes that have served were in fact, acting contrary to Christ. It’s the problem that arises when you give one man so much power. The pope is not God, but so many people treat him as such. He isn’t inerrant, he’s human, and his holiness is not any greater just because he’s the pope. In fact, I think it it’s harder for him to be holy with that much authority. I wish him luck, but I don’t bow to him.
the depth of ignorance you display about even the most basic religious matters is staggering.