Orathaic, archaelogists are finding more and more copies of older versions of the Bible, with only very few and minor (often spelling) differences from the Greek and Hebrew versions we have today. As for your quote that "the life and the doctrines of Gautama Buddha ... correspond in a remarkable manner, and impossibly by mere chance, with the traditions recorded in the Gospels about the life and doctrines of Jesus Christ," that's just not true, as semck pointed out.

@Mujus, have you read the Gospel of Thomas?

"Exploring the Gospel of Thomas, we discover that Jesus believed the self and the divine to be identical and one. Furthermore the Kingdom of God is not in the future but is “right here.” and one only needs to be awakened to this perfection."

It just happens that i've talked to a biblical scholar about Thomas, and this is considered very late and Gnostic... but what archaelogists are or aren't finding doesn't matter too much when many many writing were destroyed by the early church because they happened not to suit some particular story, right?

'that's just not true, as semck pointed out.'

Can you give me an estimate of the percentage difference?

@Invictus, read this then get back to me: http://www.thezensite.com/non_Zen/Was_Jesus_Buddhist.html (several of my quotes are from this article)

"but what archaelogists are or aren't finding doesn't matter too much when many many writing were destroyed by the early church because they happened not to suit some particular story, right?"

And your evidence for that is?

'The New Testament apocrypha are a number of writings by early Christians that claim to be accounts of Jesus and his teachings, the nature of God, or the teachings of his apostles and of their lives. These writings often have links with books regarded as "canonical". Not every branch of the Christian church agrees on which writings should be regarded as "canonical" and which are "apocryphal"'

see: wikipedia, also i've been to the vatican secret library, but i signed a non-disclosure agreement. :p

how about this:

'The victors in the struggles to establish Christian Orthodoxy not only won their theological battles, they also rewrote the history of the conflict; later readers then naturally assumed that the victorious views had been embraced by the vast majority of Christians from the very beginning ... The practice of Christian forgery has a long and distinguished history ... the debate lasted three hundred years ... even within "orthodox" circles there was considerable debate concerning which books to include'

-Ehrman, Lost Scriptures P 2,3

@orathaic, Neither of those supports the claim that "many many writings were destroyed."

Orathaic, some great points/questions. First, yes, all Christian churches that I know of accept the same canon of definitely inspired books that are considered to be the word of God. There are two other categories of books, however, that are the subject of some disagreement. These are called "deutero-canonical" books by some, implying that even though they aren't in the primary canon, they still belong in a canon. Others call the same ones the "apocryphal" books, implying that they are marginally useful at best. At least two major branches of Christianity have two categories of these books in their canons. However, all agree on the primary canon--even Lutherans. ;-) At one point Martin Luther believed that the book of James should not be in the Bible, as it seems to say that works are necessary to be saved, and he was big on "sola fe," or "only faith" as opposed to works....

...but they all agree on the main canon of the Bible, as established a few hundred years after Christ, with several different factions of that day asking the Holy Spirit for guidance.

Second--"the practice of Christian forgery" is a biased statement and without foundation. Just because a book purports to be Christian, or because its author claims that it is, doesn't mean it is a Christian book--It means just the opposite, in fact!

Third @ orathaic, in reply to the best question I've seen anywhere in quite a while. If you mean the percentage difference between Buddhism and Christianity, then the answer is 100% different, where it counts. Explanation: Buddhism teaches denying one's self in order to achieve perfection (albeit a selfless one), called nirvana. Christianity teaches denyine one's self in response to and only after accepting God's gift of eternal relationship with him, which is free to us but cost God a great deal--Jesus came down to Earth, was separated from the Father when he bore the sins of *all* the world on the cross, and (most believe) descended into Hell.

Oh--and while Mormons, who have some extra books, call themselves Christian, they are considered a cult by Christian churches because even though their terminology is very similar, the same words mean different things. For example, they believe that Jesus died so that they can now work their way to becoming gods of their own planets, that the Holy Spirit is actually a different person than God altogether, with his own body that he used to get Mary pregnant, etc. Lots of difference. I recommend the extremely well-documented One Nation Under Gods if anyone is interested in reading about Mormonism.

Oops I meant, just because a *forged* book purports to be Christian...doesn't mean it is a Christian book--It means just the opposite...."

Yeah, so the books you define as 'not christian' are not. And any other books, many of which are lost, don't count, because they are not christian...

After doing some reading, i may have to change my position. Some books are lost because they were not popular and not copoed many times. The books of the bible were not lost because they were copied many many times. I'm
Sure many of the lost books which contradicted christian doctorine were discouraged, that doesn't mean they were actively and physically destroyed... Though that is untestable.

How and ever, you can define Mormonism and every other christian cult as 'not really' christian, the fact is they existed and had books, most of which didn't survive.

Or maybe aliens came down and incinerated all books they didn't approve of? Of course, that's untestable too. But if you are open-minded, you will consider the possibility that maybe, just maybe, God is real, he wants a relationship with you, and he's provided the means to establish that.

And He will lead you to the truth through the Bible, if you really, truly want him to and you are ready to accept whatever that truth may be.

@mujus, do you realise you are once more wasting your breath preaching in a pantheist who has as much faith in his own beliefs as you do in your own? Also, this may sound offensive but my opinion isn't something i will choose to censor, you sound like a brainwashed nutcase.

Further, i am sure that if i wanted to construct an imaginery god to have a personal relationship with, then i'd be more than capable, just as you suggest. It doesn't appeal to me in the sligthest; though i'm sure it would be indistuinghusable from a rleationship with a real god.

Further still, on a theological level, as a pantheist i find your claims to a personal relationship with God to be offensive hubris on one level, socially dangerous on a second level - because you can use your personal relationship to justify a fabricated understanding of god; just a several men did when they flew two planes into the world trade centre towers 10 years ago. and lastly provabpy false, you may feel that God cares truely for you. How and Ever, you will still die and cease to exist just like everyone else, you will still suffer in the cruel and uncaring world which you claim God created, and you will never have anything beyond your subjective delusions and those shared and written down by similarily deluded people to support your claim.

So next time you decide to take it upon yourself to try and brainwash me, please save your breath and i will not continue to pour my derision for your pathetic belief system.

If you find this offensive, that is fine, your are entitled to be offended. And you are the one who, not so humbly, started out causing offence with your previois posts.

Ok so.

I'm just responding the 45 minute video, which yes I did watch. Yolo.

Anyway, usually this kind of stuff just doesn't really pump me up because it's just sort of hopeless to have anything resembling incontrovertible proof.

But it is fun sometimes to play the game. So here I play devil's advocate for the Christians against some of the ideas in this video. My source for these arguments is hearing them a lot in my childhood, since I was raised evangelical "literal truth" Christian.

The points of theirs I am about to raise I see as legitimate refutations, so I'm curious the response someone may have, and I am also disappointed the video did not address these common refutations of resurrection skeptics.

So first to the "Jesus did not actually die on the cross" theory. Then after we go to the "the tomb was robbed/Jesus left alive/there was no resurrection" theory.

It is indeed pretty interesting about the "vinegar" on the sponge and the whole dying early thing. But if we are going by the gospels, he was, I believe beaten badly enough that he could not carry the cross. So I feel like it's not completely unbelievable to say that he died after like three or six hours.

I probably would lol. And then to claim that he just kind of woke up and healed up in the sealed tomb, with the help of like.. some aloes I guess? Seems just about as unbelievable as a lot of Christian accounts. So... yeah.

Further on that point, which was ignored as well is the spear in the side, producing a mixture of water and blood. I haven't checked this but have heard it all the time - this mixture supposedly indicates heart failure according to medicine of today. Thus... he was dead.

Okay so yeah. I would say that it's maybe equally believable that he died and didn't die.

But what about the resurrection doubting theories?

The first is that he died for real and I guess they stole his body. But the tomb was guarded by professional Roman soldiers who, if I recall right, were executed for deserting their posts. And it was a sealed tomb. So unless these apostles were ninjas or had some secret passage shit going on, it's hard for me to imagine the body getting stolen.

Indeed they would not take a bribe because and empty tomb would also mean a failed mission and severe punishment for those men. So they would have guarded it with their lives.

Doesn't seem possible. You could of course say that in fact the tomb had the body the whole time and the resurrection was totally fabricated, but then why did the Romans or high priests not produce the body to disprove them? Perhaps you could say the resurrection story was not invented until long after the body was decomposed beyond recognition. I am not sure what evidence there is on how early the claim was being made.

All of that also goes for a revival by a not-dead Jesus. How the fuck was the bastard supposed to get out of there lol. He would have, like, re-died.

Soo...

yeah just curious if any of you know any refutations to those arguments.

Lol no pun intended when i said I was "playing devil's advocate for the Christians " haha

Anyway I guess one other argument you could make is that they put a dummy body (i.e. not Jesus) in the tomb and Jesus was, like, taken back to Nicodemus' place. But then again you could also argue, that, like, aliens, man.

@The tomb and secret passages, I don't know who provided the tomb, and i don't think anyone knows about it's construction (which is when you would expect to put a secret passage, if you were going to)

If there is any info about this i'd be happy to hear it, that said, it seems fairly unlikely; though not as unlikely as resurrection.

On the other points, well i'm not really going to address them, mostly because i'm more interested in the potential for Jesus' message to have been influenced by Buddhism - which doesn't actually require a resurrection and return to India.

Well okay hang on then.

When you said "about as likely as resurrection" I take issue.

I don't think you can really talk about the likelihood of a supernatural occurrence. We only have, by definition, workable information/statistics/empirical understanding of physical events. So if there was a supernatural resurrection, we can only say "it would not be consistent with what we believe to be natural law" and cannot talk about the likelihood.

Far better to talk about evidence that it happened. So anyway that was just an aside.

But come on you don't actually think there was like a secret passage lol. I mean yeah it's possible. It is. It just seems kind of like mental gymnastics. More believable would be (since I don't think anyone knows what became of those guards) that some Christian contact in the Roman army put some Christians as guards who then fled with Jesus (if he lived) or just fled without him to Parthia I guess.

That seems more likely than a secret passage lol but anyway. Suffice to say that based on what evidence we have, a grave robbery/escape seems far fetched. And I CAN say that since it would be a natural event.

About the Buddhist thing, if he actually went to the East ages 14-29, don't you think he would have mentioned that, even obliquely? Unless that was the "trip into the desert" I see absolutely no reference or even shadow of a reference to something as life changing as a globe trek during your formative years.

All you really have is silence on those years of his life and a couple of Buddhist themes in his ideas.

Once again, I'd say it's a bit of a stretch to go from that to "well then he must have travelled thousands of miles away - there's no other way he could have heard about that stuff."

It seems a lot more likely that he heard it from someone who had been there, maybe even an actual Buddhist, in Palestine. Or even that he came up with it on his own... I mean... Buddha did. Indeed a lot of "great ideas" have been independently developed in lots of places. They tend to be really common sense, natural progression kind of ideas. And it really does feel (could be wrong) like a pretty strong human thing is the whole Golden Rule kind of ideology.

So yeah, I think the idea that Jesus went to the East is kind of far fetched too.

Indeed it's kind of silly if you think it was actually the wise men who took him, because that implies you believe there was some kind of astronomical phenomenon that led them there. I do not believe (though I have not researched) that astronomers or historians believe there was anything of the kind observed in that time period.

So unless they were just bullshitters and the "new star" thing was an after the fact construction.

So again we come back to my original mental block with all this kind of stuff:

Pretty much any scenario is *possible.* Proving possibility is easy, although sometimes your argument may be forced into ridiculous contortions (secret passages! golden tablets! etc). What is difficult is proving plausibility, even likelihood, for what are in truth unprovable, extraordinary claims.

You will only ever get skeptics to follow a claim like that if you have a really strong backup argument.

A good example is science, which frequently makes what are on fact seemingly absurd claims, but they have credibility and certain kinds of evidence which convince us. Producing that kind of shit with something as long ago and miniscule in scale as the death of a religious leader is probably not going to happen.

What if that dude in south France actually found Jesus' bones? Or thought he did? What would it prove? Basically nothing. It's just some bones in a box.

'About the Buddhist thing, if he actually went to the East ages 14-29, don't you think he would have mentioned that, even obliquely? Unless that was the "trip into the desert" I see absolutely no reference or even shadow of a reference to something as life changing as a globe trek during your formative years.'

Well maybe he did, but the story being put forward, and as written by his followers ~20 years and later, was setup to make him fulfill a Jewish prophecy, right? So to see a continuation of Jewish tradition that God spoke to prophets only God's authority could over-turn previous rules of God...

'All you really have is silence on those years of his life and a couple of Buddhist themes in his ideas.'

I think Mujus put it best: "Buddhism teaches denying one's self in order to achieve perfection (albeit a selfless one), called nirvana. Christianity teaches denyine one's self in response to and only after accepting God's gift of eternal relationship with him" - though he seems to think this disproves the theory. Both theories in reality achieve the same effects, while having meta-physically different justifications.

At least in this simple comparison.

An influence from Buddhism doesn't mean taking it on entirely. Though as written on one of the websites which i linked above, it is possible or even likely that Jesus could have know about Buddhist teachings without having to leave Palestine at all, based on Buddhist attempts to spread their philosophy in the 500 previous years. (oh i see you acknowledge that...)

I have to concede most of the rest of your arguement. Though the 'universality' of the rules laid down, if valid, does take away from any need for a 'God' character in a story - if you can prove that certain moral rules are universal - which of course you can't because several moral systems have and do exist which do not take such a pacifist ruling...

Orathaic, amazing. You conceded someone's argument, and you agreed with part of what I wrote. As for hubris, no--we have to accept God's salvation as a gift, not something we have earned. Jesus said that no one is good but God. And Christians are still sinners even as God is working in us. I admit to some pique, not a godly emotion, in my previous post about the space aliens who destroyed all of the evidence that people think must be there because they need something to refute the substantial documentary evidence of Jesus' life and work. I don't mean it disrespectfully, at heart. :-)

no, Mujus, i think you'll find i think that both Christianty and Buddhism teaching denying oneself is the same, regardless of the meta-physics you make up to justify it, ie the bits about god's sacrifice are meaningless to the overall effect on human well-being, and if that is the goal of your teaching then you're willing to use whatever stories you can to get people to accept/understand it...

I took your point and interpreted it to get the precise opposite of your meaning.

'As for hubris, no--we have to accept God's salvation as a gift...' - this is just more disgusting hubris, you think you know something about God which is in essence unknowable.

I guess i'm done talking to you about off-topic christian propaganda, if you want to create a thread to discuss or even promote your faith feel free, and i will feel free to ignore.

'I admit to some pique, not a godly emotion, in my previous post about the space aliens who destroyed all of the evidence that people think must be there because they need something to refute the substantial documentary evidence of Jesus' life and work.'

This part i don't find offensive, it is a valid point and relevant to the arguements i was attempting. I'm sorry if i didn't address it properly, i will not do so now i only because it is late and i'm tired. Might get back to you tomorrow. Good night!

Aha! You may have identified the root of the problem-- You believe that God is unknowable. I am telling you that he is not only knowable, but is reaching to you specifically, out of love for you personally. Yes, this boggles the brain. No, it's not "enlightenment" to people who deserve it. It's deliverance to those who need it, who admit their need, and who tell God they accept his ransom, his buying us back out of hock, his payment for our failings in the life and death of Jesus the Messiah. And based on everything I know and have experienced, that is the root of the matter.

And now good night.

"I am telling you that he is not only knowable, but is reaching to you specifically, out of love for you personally."

This is possible but not certain. You cannot prove this claim.

Thucy, true enough. But if it's even barely possible, wouldn't you want to find out? If the God of this universe *might* love you and want you with him as his friend for eternity, I mean, what could be bigger than that?? And enough people are telling you that there is something there that I would think it's worth investigating honestly and openly, with your heart in addition to your brain.

There's no trick, no "gotcha"--with salvation as a free gift.