Dear David F.,

«As far as giving God a bad reputation God has been called the most unpleasant character in all fiction.»

Yes, I'm aware that people have called God by so many bad names, including "fictional character". One main reason is ignorance, the second in attempt to avoid their responsibilities, the third is their wish to domineer the world themselves.

«In Joshua God calls for genocide. God, the stinker, has given himself a bad reputation.»

Oh Joshua, Joshua... that ancient Putin... modern forensic research indicates that the local people of his period (who weren't even Israelites), worshiped Joshua as a god. The Biblical book is a moderated version of his exploits where the name of the Hebrew god was inserted in many places to cover up that embarrassing fact.

Bad reputation indeed, except that it was the vile acts of men, not God.

«I consider faith in spiritual matters a vice.»

Indeed, nobody can deny such personal statements.

«I believe one should demand proof for any statement whether in the material or spiritual realm.»

When one demands a proof to, say, the General Relativity Theory, they are told that to understand the proof they must first study mathematics and physics in university for that many years. Geniuses may do so in a year, diligent students in five and average people of I.Q.100 may not complete that study in a lifetime.

Material proofs require material science: when someone attempts to prove material statements with spiritual knowledge, you rightfully laugh.

But when it is the other way round, you seem to unreasonably demand material observations for proving spiritual statements and also such proofs that people can get in 5 minutes.

Either project, one can either have faith in the Einsteins and sages or devote their lives taking the long way to find out for themselves.

«I think the inventions of spiritual matters are nonsense - god or gods and associated rubbish.»

gods or gods do not exist, but can still be quite useful on the spiritual path in the same manner as 'i' (the square-root of -1) is useful in mathematics.

What Paul 1405 says.
Alan B.

Dear Yuyutsu,

I made a mistake. Goodbye,

David

ttbn,

Practice what you preach.

And every now and again give it a rest.

It would be healthier for you.
And for us all.

ttbn,

I certainly don't need you to tell me what I can or can't
do on this forum and whose posts or discussion topics I
can either introduce or comment on. Also if you post
nonsense you should expect to be called out on it.

If you don't like what I post you have the choice of
either not reading my posts or you can improve your own
behaviour. I'm not the one obsessing here. You are.
And your disdain of tolerance in diversity leaps out from
each and every one of your posts.

Get rid of the preconceived stick up your butt.
It's Christmas!

If you start with an absolute false premise like "Christ was born in Bethlehem 25th December 1AD" then anything added to the story is also false, Sheppard's, mangers, Inns, stables and Wise Men etc etc are all untrue as well. You can pepper the story with a little fact, Herod, Bethlehem etc.

There is a strong argument that the whole nativity story was an invention to give legitimacy to Christ as the Messiah. The strongly held belief at the time was the Messiah would be born in Bethlehem and come from the 'House of David'. I think the marketing genius of Christianity Saul of Tarsus (St Paul) played a very big part in establishing the accepted version of the birth of Christ to give legitimacy to Christ as the Messiah.