//It is sad Tony Lavis, that you can not be honest with your views of Jesus.//

Oh, but I have been.

//You say He is a good guy, but don't believe in His miracles, then quote scripture that is not scripture to show your distaste for him.//

Congratulations! You've completely missed the point.

But I suspect that may have deliberate. Apparently thou shalt bear false witness when it suits thee.

But maybe I'm being unfair, and it just went straight over your head. Maybe if it wasn't so devoutly bowed all the time, things wouldn't go over it as easily.

The point - in case you haven't already worked it out and were just being disingenuous - is that people are highly selective when it comes to stories, and that's OK. Here we have a story dated to the 2nd century, about Jesus, written by somebody who for all we know could have been the Apostle Thomas, and I think you'd be far from the only Christian to reject it out of hand simply because you dislike it. Which is fine. If you read to the end then it does have some valuable things to say about repentance, but given how it starts I can entirely understand why Christians would not approve and just ignore that particular story about Jesus. They're being selective, and that's OK.

The extremely large Catholic family bible that my parents got for a wedding present contains books that I don't have in my copy of the Bible such as the Book of Tobit and the Book of Judith. I'm missing these books because I have a Protestant Bible. There are a whole group of books known collectively as the Apocrypha that Catholics consider canonical and Protestants do not, although they don't necessarily consider them heretical (e.g. Anglicans accept 'the Apocrypha for instruction in life and manners, but not for the establishment of doctrine'). They're being selective, and that's OK.

Even if we set a strictly defined canon as a boundary condition - we'll use the Catholic canon because I'm most familiar with Catholic doctrine - there is a huge amount of selectivity when it comes to the way Catholics read their Bibles. Which is entirely understandable, given the considerable diversity within the Church. My parents are still faithful Catholics, go to mass every sunday, very involved in their parish. Most of the Bishops etc. who've offered public opinions on the gay marriage debate have urged a 'no' vote, because that's how they read their Bibles. My parents voted 'yes', because that's how they read theirs. They're being selective, and that's OK.

And I've been known to selectively read the Bible too, despite being pantheist, and that's OK. I can reject the Infancy Gospel of Thomas as a load of crap because of the miracles, and all the miracles in canonical gospels because they are equally a load of crap, and just pick out the bits I like, i.e. the philosophy. It's not a package deal.

//Quoting hateful miracles from a false gospel.//

It's only false if you choose to believe it's false. If you choose to believe it's true, then it's true. That's how religion works.

//You say He is a good ethical philosophies and when asked to talk about His teaching//

Yes, did it occur to you that that might have had anything to do with your persistent efforts to attempt to rail-road a lively discussion into a non-discussion? I don't get it, dude. If you're not interested in the back-and-forth of ideas why not just go into an echoic chamber and talk to yourself?

Oh, and give the evangelising a rest. We've all heard it all before and the repetition doesn't make it more persuasive, just very tiresome. If we want to convert then that's our business, and we can get by just fine without your help.

//How much better if you could be honest instead of a liar.//

How much better it would be if you didn't throw tantrums when people challenge your ideas.

//How much better it would be if you could be upfront instead of a Hippocrate.//

Et tu, brute.

Oh, and the word is 'hypocrite'. Christ, that one's in the Bible and everything. A Hippocrate is presumably some sort of box used for transporting hippos. I imagine they'd have to be fairly sturdy.

//So instead, I think I will teach.//

You do realise this the exact reason that nobody joins your churches, right? Because of this sort of patronising behaviour?

We all have access to Bibles, and we can all read, and I must have heard both those parables at least a dozen times before. But we don't believe you're privy to some divinely revealed truth which we're all too ignorant to comprehend. And we find it rather arrogant of you that you do.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=geStcOk2tmM

Not_Now.Soon,

Quoting Scripture is ineffective on anyone who is not lost and in desperate need of something (which is why God can be found at AA meetings), because there is no good reason to believe that there is any truth to what you’re quoting. You may as well be quoting Harry Potter.

If your God exists, then He knows what it would take to convince each of us of His existence. The ball is in His court. But if I were to seek out this god of yours hard enough, and for long enough, then I would eventually find Him whether or not He exists - and that’s a problem.

--

Anyway, I’m looking forward to Sells’ third instalment to this trilogy, as we are now only left with the most evil being of the trinity:

Gott der Vater!

Watch as he creates little people to love and then blames all his problems on them; be horrified as he kills and oversees the deaths of 2,476,633* people; be puzzled by his inability to forgive his creations, for what is not even their fault, without a filthy human sacrifice.

Is it a joke? Is it a delusion? Or is it just the attempt of an alleged virgin to cover up her infidelity gone way out of hand?

Romance.

Intrigue.

Desire!

This week in…

The first person of the Trinity: der Vater

*Figure does not include the countless victims of the Flood.

Not_Now.Soon

Hello NNS…I think you lack understanding with your approach to conversion.

If you wish to convince a body to convert to the Christian belief system, you first must convince them of the need to convert. Physics is near as ever it will be, to help with this need.

The scientific field of study is epigenetics. In crude terms, it is explaining in physical terms, how the sins of the father are passed on down the line of generations.
It's called the inherent badness of man. In colloquial terms, the bad streak, or even the black sheep of the family!
It's this bad streak, that God is attempting to rectify, by the addition of Christ!

He had one bite of the cherry with the great flood. But sadly, it was not entirely successful.
The Jews were/are battling the outcome of this failure to the present day. (Their approach to cleaning up the mess, is annihilation of the enemy in physical terms. It's why they should be feared).

Most of the bad people were drowned, but as it now appears, not all. Faulty genetics which slipped the net of the flood, have reproduced the bad-arse in man. Thus the Christian belief of a need for a saviour in Christ! The mission is to save the Gentiles, (the masses). The Jews are seen by Christians, as “hard of heart” and beyond saving!

Cont.,

Cont.,

The law. The law of Moses was made null and void by the advent of a saviour. (The Jewish way to salvation by good works, and following the law of Moses, is dead in the water). Not by good works will you be saved, but by grace alone! Your fate is entirely in Gods hands.
Believe in me and your sins (inherited genetic sins of the father), are forgiven, and you may enter the kingdom of God and be seated with him after death of the sinful body, which will remain inherently sinful on this earth, no matter what; its genetics!

There shall be no remedy for the war between good and evil here on earth, unless a way is discovered, (and it may be), to remove the epigenetic scars of sin on the DNA.

So it is possible, to my mind, the second coming of Christ may be through a Laboratory discovery that will genetically cleanse man from sin, and convert him to the perfect man here on earth. (Jehovah's witnesses).