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Stephen (Colbert) v. Stephen (Prothero) on Religious Truthiness
By Stephen Prothero, Special to CNN It’s probably not the best venue for promoting religious literacy, but I managed to get a few words in edgewise during my brief border crossing into “Colbert Nation” last night. In our mini-battle of the Stephens, Colbert was his usual staccato self, but he allowed me to make a few points about my new book, God is Not One: The Eight Rival Religions That Run the World—and Why Their Differences Matter. Colbert came out swinging, insisting on the superiority of Christianity as the one true faith. I got in a few jabs of my own, however, including my argument that the atheists (who say all religions are one and bad) and the liberal multiculturalists (who say all religions are one and good) both have it wrong. The world's religions aren't different paths up the same mountain, I said. They are “going up different mountains with different techniques and different tools.” The best line of the night belonged, however, to the truthy Stephen. As I was struggling to say something coherent about how Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, and Judaism try to solve very different problems, he delivered classic Colberesque non sequitur: “Adam and Eve were Jewish. Check under the fig leaf, my friend.” Oh, and Stephen Colbert (the man, not the character) was a gracious host backstage. He told me he used to teach Sunday school in his Catholic parish, and he made the day of my star-struck cousin by having a picture made with him. All in all, great fun. I hope it was just round one. The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Stephen Prothero.
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The CNN Belief Blog covers the faith angles of the day's biggest stories, from breaking news to politics to entertainment, fostering a global conversation about the role of religion and belief in readers' lives. It's edited by CNN's Dan Gilgoff and Eric Marrapodi, with daily contributions from CNN's worldwide newsgathering team and frequent posts from religion scholar and author Stephen Prothero.  |
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Stephen Prothero, a Boston University religion scholar and author of "God is Not One: The Eight Rival Religions that Run the World," is a regular CNN Belief Blog contributor.
Bob stated: “who, apart from their atheist writings, are respected scientists who have made significant contributions. It is this position of scientific authority – in highly relevant fields – that gives them license, in my book, to analyze just why human minds are so vulnerable to religion.” Scientific proof before belief seems very important to Atheists. Christians have faith. Atheists conclude that there is absolutely no God, (Agnostics are just unsure). Where is your “scientific proof”, that God does not exist?
You cannot prove that something doesn't exist... Prove that unicorns don't exist. Prove that the FSM doesn't exist. Prove that my missing socks don't exist(or do they?)
But its proof you want, ok. How about vestigial organs? If a god created us, there would not be all these mistakes and leftover/unused parts. And, I don't just mean in humans. These things only make sense in the light of evolution.
Secular Humanist, just because we don't comprehend the purpose of certain organs doesn't mean that they don't have a purpose. Such as the appendix(sp?) or the spleen. We used to think they did not do anything. Now medical science is not so sure. We can survive without them but we may healthier with them. Both possible function as some sort of filters if nothing else........
Jesus' real name was cesar.
son of ceasar & cleopatra.
Rome declared Ceasar a god.
Cesar, son of god.
Thats what Jesus was supposed to be, son of God.
When Ceasar was murdered by the roman senate, his other son Octavious
siezed the throne, and sent troops to Egypt to kill Cesar.
Before her death Cleopatra sent Cesar to India for his safety
(the 13 missing years of Jesus' life)
When Cesar returned to judea it was using the name Jesus Christ (JC – Julius Ceasar)
To reclaim his throne (both Rome & Egypt) he had to change his name or be killed.
The imaculate conception was made up, as was Jesus mother & father.
The whole thing goes bad when the Jewish Priest turn Jesus over to The roman governor
But Jesus was not ressurected, but did survive the crucifiction.
Jesus was of royalty and educated.
History has been altered by the Vatican.
Mary-Magdalene was actually Jesus' half sister
(born to Mark Anthony & Cleopatra along with her twin brother, and another son)
History is out there but has been altered so many times, and the names have been changed
in the name of Christianity.
there are some youtube vids worth watching.
check em out.
Edward: "Sounds like you're positing the 'what about those good people in foreign lands who have never heard the Gospel?' question."
Yeah I've always thought that was an interesting question in terms of what it means regarding evangelization. If a person who dies having never heard the Gospel automatically goes to heaven, then it would seem that it would ultimately be a disservice to introduce them to it, since you would be introducing the possibility of them not accepting it and therefore going to hell. If the unevangelized do automatically go to hell, obviously introducing the Gospel is the right thing to do, but still not everyone has or will get the opportunity to hear it.
"My point is... God is omnipresent and omniscient.. and if someone wanted to seek the true God, then He would reveal Himself to them."
I agree to the extent that a person is unlikely to find God if they have hardened their heart toward Him, but I think that most people sincerely believe that whatever god they worship is the one true God (or gods, in some cases), and that most atheists/agnostics are sincere in their non-belief.
Btw I appreciate your comments, I always enjoy hearing someone else's take on these things.
We live in a strange land where Comedy central is considered news. When the school system teaches evolution when there is no evidence and God is questioned. "Oh lord protect me from decietful men and rescue me from the lies of this world."
Mark says "We live in a strange land where Comedy central is considered news. When the school system teaches evolution when there is no evidence and God is questioned"
Mark, Mark, Mark. You are mad about them teaching evolution (even though it has plenty of evidence) because you claim there is no evidence and yet you are also angry about questioning the existence of god (when there is no evidence at all). So which is it, do you follow logic or nonsense?-oh thats right, like other christians you get to choose when to follow logic and you only use it when you want to sound right.
Someone posted earlier about the futility of these comments... that he had never seen anyone change make anyone else have a change of mind. Well, perhaps that mind won't change *on the spot*, but valuable information is imparted to those who really are looking for it. I was probably around 18 years old when I met my first real-live atheist. Up until then, having been deeply ensconced in religion since birth, I had only heard stories about these evil, horned, spike-tailed monster atheists. Of course I rejected everything that he had to say... repeatedly - my 'faith' was strong. Years of study, listening and thinking deeply finally changed my mind, but his input was the first part of the journey.
some of you who believe in god should consider letting go of the bible with all it's inconsistancies and and obvious mistakes, consider the approach of science or medicine that your current understanding is not the only or last understanding, the human race is so young, consider that we have much to learn, instead of putting all your effort in to arguing to prove something that is patently unprovable (and being soooo condescending)consider that god is undefinable by human language and that THAT is the problem, the first indicator that I have that someone does NOT know that they are talking about is when they state that they know EXACTLY what they are talking about, there is no way anyone can on the subject of god and to say so is to put yourself ABOVE god and that is wrong in any religion, so consider letting go of your specific definitions and in a general sense if it doesn't come from love, it doesn't come from god
Anyone interested in biblical origins and the authors of the new testament should check out Bart Ermahn's fantastic books. Paul never met Jesus or his apostles and kind of made it up as he went along. The gospels were not written by their name sakes but by anonymous authors many years after the supposed non-events occurred. The original book much of the new testament is based on ("Q") was carelessly lost and everything else is pure speculation and bad story telling. There is virtually no historical evidence for the life of Jesus, Mohammad, Moses, Abraham, Noah, Adam, or Eve.
Stuart ,unfortunatly much written evidence of Muhammad....I think he was born around 600 A.D. Much of what was written I am sure is pure crap.
he never mentioned the one true master of all – the flying spaghetti monster
his noodly goodness shall fulfill all
Oops, make that "From a contemporary historic Jesus exegete:"
luke wrote: "In science there is a Law of Physics called the 1st Law of Thermodynamics. Within it is a Conservation of Energy Law that states, as a key principle that all energy in a closed system must be conserved...Believe it or not, a 5 year old child could be an atheistic scientist's worst nightmare by merely asking him “where did everything come from if God didn't make it?” +++++ For you to try to apply any of the three laws of thermo to God, is awfully simplistic. The 5 year old child's question can be answered by: "It always existed. If always existing is impossible: where did God come from?" We can't visualize time stopping from occurring in the future (what would happen AFTER it does?) so, since nature seems symmetric, why should there be a time when things started (what happened BEFORE that?)? It may be that the "Big Bang" is one of an infinite number of Big Bangs that occur as the universe's total energy expands and contracts in 100 billion year or so cycles. If the current sum of energy in the universe requires a beginning and a creator, then doesn't God also require a creator? Where did HE come from? In any case, it's tough applying Thermo – especially if you spin the second law (entropy) into it – intro rules for creation of the universe. Those of us who've studied Thermodynamics at the undergrad and graduate levels say: "The first course in which you study thermo, you're upset because you don't understand it. The second course: you think you're beginning to understand it. The third course: you're sure it's impossible for anyone to understand it."
agree fully with you Mick ....
JoeP:"Particularly if a person has tried to live a moral life and do what's right, but simply chose the wrong religion to follow."
Sounds like you're positing the "what about those good people in foreign lands who have never heard the Gospel?" question.
Well, let me preface my response by saying that I don't know fully how God deals with these people. Yet, in the Bible, He says that those who truly, in their hearts, seek Him will find Him. Let me give a few examples.
The first one involves the high ranking eunich from Ethiopia who was reading the Hebrew scriptures on the way home from Jerusalem. While reading, he found he could not understand them. That is when God provided Phillip, a disciple appointed by the Apostles, to explain the scriptures to him. This then led to him being baptized into Christ.
The second example involves a Roman centurion (sp?) who believed in God in the Judiastic kind of way, along with being kind and supporting the surrounding Jews in his neighborhood. God then led Peter, one of the early church leaders, to tell him of the Gospel, which his family and household quickly believed and were saved.
The last example comes from church history. There was a city in Asia Minor where the leader had heard all kinds of stories re Jesus Christ and the things He did and taught during his ministry. This leader wanted Jesus to come up and visit with him. Instead though, Jesus sent word back that because He was primarily sent to the lost children of Israel, he would not be able to come. Yet He also said that after certain events take place, he would send his followers up and tell of his teachings and work miracles, which is what happened. I can't remember the exact name. But it was first of the cities to get what is now referred to the Shroud of Turin.
My point is... God is omnipresent and omniscient.. and if someone wanted to seek the true God, then He would reveal Himself to them.
Wow. I like how you took the time to refut each of my points there, Gary. When they were feeding you all of the MACRO evolution garbage in school did you let them know that they were "dead wrong"? To believe in Evolution, you must accept a belief in an old Earth that is “billions of years old”, but the scientific evidence actually points to a young Earth that's about 6000 years old, which would support the interpretation of 6 literal 24 hour days of the Genesis Creation as recorded in the Bible. First though, we have to realize we have been conditioned to believe that biological or geological change takes long periods of time. However, the actual scientific evidence shows that things we assume take “millions of years” to happen actually don't take that long at all.
One small example of this brainwashing is the Geologic Column. We've all seen these impressive layers of ground as we drive on a road that has been cut through a mountain or when we look at the walls of the Grand Canyon. We also see this Geologic Column on paper in our Geology books. Here's a dirty little secret the evolutionary scientists don't want you to know. The Geologic column in your school textbook doesn't line up with the actual geologic strata in the ground. Over 99% of all the layers in the actual ground are different than the official “Geologic Column” you see in your Geology book. Bottom line, it appears that way on paper, but not in the ground. The layers in the ground are actually all out of sequence, upside down, inverted, missing layers, etc. The layers are all randomly shuffled throughout the entire planet like a deck of cards. This is exactly what we would expect to see if there were a worldwide flood producing massive mud deposits all over the Earth. It is not what we should see if these layers supposedly represent the surfaces of the Earth over the last “500 million years”.
Simply put, the Creation Scientist says the Geological strata we see in the ground was all laid downover a fairly short period of time as part of the natural layering that takes place after massive flooding and mud deposits, or in other words, after Noah's flood about 4500 years ago. Evolutionary scientists say the layers in the ground were the various surfaces of the Earth over the last 500 million years. Remember, they need that to be true because they need 100's of millions of years for the theory of MACROevolution. So let's examine the evidence to see which theory makes sense.
In the ground, right now are literally thousands of “polystrate” fossils. These are fossils that are standing upright, vertically punching through many (poly) of the layers (strate or strata) in the ground. In other words, picture a fossilized tree standing upright, right in the middle of the Geologic Column going up through “millions of years” of several layers. If the evolutionists are right, that would mean the bottom of that tree would be in layers of the ground millions of years “older” that the top of the tree. How logical is that? There are literally thousands of these polystrate trees, right now, in the ground all over the Earth. I can assure you, you'll never see their photos in your school Geology books because evolutionists don't want you to know about them. What's also interesting is that the majority of these fossilized trees do not have branches or roots. They literally look like telephone poles. So how and when did they get there? To find out, let's look at Mt. St Helens.
In 1980 when Mt. St. Helens erupted, we noticed a fascinating phenomenon. The force of the eruption blasted the forests in the area with such power that it broke the trees off at the base of the ground, leaving the roots underground and stripped the branches from the trunks leaving the hillsides littered with thousands of, what appeared to be “telephone poles”. No branches, no roots. We see that this is common when volcanoes erupt near forests and leave thousands of branch-less, rootless trees littering the hillsides. Near Mt. St. Helens, thousands of these “telephone pole” trees rolled into nearby Spirit Lake creating massive log mats. To see the photos, it just looks like thousands of telephone poles floating in the water. As the trees became waterlogged, they sank, but they didn't sink horizontally. It was observed that as they got more waterlogged, they eventually turned upright, floating vertically until finally they sank to the bottom, punching their way down into the muddy bottom. Additional mud deposits into the lake covered them up even more. This is not theory, this is what was actually observed.
Now let's go back to Noah's flood. If there were a worldwide flood and waters were springing forth from the deep as the Bible says, there would have been massive continental shifting. We know today that continental shifting triggers volcanoes, so it is safe to presume that if the story of Noah is true, there would have been volcanoes erupting all over the Earth. That means there would have been forests laid bare, it's trees stripped of their roots and branches, and floating log mats worldwide of branchless, rootless trees. (Remember, this isn't guess work, we can now observe that this is what actually happens when volcanoes erupt) These trees back then would have done exactly what they did in 1980. They would have gotten waterlogged, turned vertical in the flood waters, and eventually sank that way, punching into the muddy bottom and being covered up vertically by the natural layering of mud deposits. All over the Earth today are literally thousands of rootless, branch-less fossilized trees, standing uprightthrough several layers of the Geological strata that is supposed to, according to evolutionists, represent hundreds of millions of years of layering.
Another thing we've been conditioned to believe is that if something is fossilized, it must be very old, but that's just not true. What if that fossilized bone the evolutionists tell you is millions of years old were actually only 50 or 100 years old? Sound crazy? It's not. The fact is the fossilization process is fairly rapid. Creation scientists and Creation Museums have in their possession and on display fossilized items such as hats, food, sausage links, hams, bags of flour, a foot in a cowboy boot, even Teddy Bears. Remember, for Evolution to be true, evolutionists must convince us the Earth is billions of years old because a young Earth would destroy evolutionary claims and support a literal Genesis Creation of 6 – 24 hour days as recorded in the Bible.
You reject carbon dating lol. I cant listen to anything you say because you are ignorant and brainwashed. All of your science facts are largely wrong and you cherry picked from the countless examples that prove your stance wrong.
Luke ....please study plate techtonics,fossils,erosion sites ,carbon dating,prehistoric mamals bones,mid oceanic ridges, fossil fuels like oil and how it developed over years from foilage,the puzzel of Pangia. dont be another Ted Haggerd,Jim Bakker,Osama bin ladin,Jimmy Swaggert,Jim Jones,David Koresh, use the brain God gave you sir. I can tell by your posts you are a very intelligent person. If you beilieve in the bible fine! My parents due and my dad is a Geologist a devout christian realizes earth is old but God is in control still. I love book of matthew especially the meek will inherit the earth blessed are those who are kind and have mercy.
despite your long post being laughable I wont laugh. I respect your opinion. I have no right or reason to try and convince you otherwise. I hope you are a peaceful productive person like myselt and wish you a long happy life and eventually afterlife!
Luke, willful ignorance is not a virtue.
cling as tightly as you can, in observing recent christians it becomes easier to understand things like the nazis ability
to get otherwise good people to do horrible things, watching someone like you just reject reality and state complete and utter BS as fact is very enlightening about just how far we can go when brainwashed.
the church (christian and otherwise) has been committing abuses against humanity for 1000s of years and they do it with the help of poor deluded suckers like you
Gary, everything you've brought up "plate techtonics,fossils,erosion sites,carbon dating,prehistoric mamals bones,mid oceanic ridges, fossil fuels like oil and how it developed over years from foilage,the puzzel of Pangia" can be easily reconciled with biblical history. Most of that can be explained by the global flood described in the Bible. Think about vast underground seas opening up and spewing their millions of gallons upon the surface of the earth and into the oceans, cracking apart the plates like a puzzle. Think about the immense layer of moisture in the atmosphere that was loosed upon the earth, depositing its waters upon the land and ripping through landscape of the planet. All of this happening suddenly and covering over countless herds of animals of all shapes and sizes and descriptions with layer upon layer of mud, sediment, and sand. All of this is described in the Bible and so easily upsets the apple-cart of much of modern thinking which has all been tied to the incorrect and desperate need to find any way other than the Biblical account for the earth's existence.
You're so wrong on so many points that I don't know where to begin. One mistake stands out among many: you're forgetting that many layers of strata are eroded away every century with wind and rain. that's why there are gaps and whole missing ages in some places. Geologists have chemically tested rocks on top of the Matterhorn, which are a different color from rocks beneath the top black triangle, and have ascertained that the tip is part of Africa left from when it collided with Europe eons ago; the rest of African plate that once covered Italy has eroded away. That took eons. Look at the Grand Canyon for another example. But then you'd have to read actual scientific data and that would require critical thinking to comprehend. The magitude of time involved doesn't negate the spiritual message of and in the Bible. Get a grip.
In science there is a Law of Physics called the 1st Law of Thermodynamics. Within it is a Conservation of Energy Law that states, as a key principle that all energy in a closed system must be conserved. Okay, fancy language, but what does that mean? It means that while energy can convert into matter (physical “stuff”), and matter into energy, however much total “stuff” there is (matter and energy), there can never be an increase in that total amount or a decrease in that total amount. So however much total “stuff” there is in the universe, (matter and energy combined), there can never have been more and never have been less. All it can do is convert to different forms, like matter to energy or energy to matter, but the total amount of all of it has to remain the same.
The “closed system” is a scientific term that refers to a system or an “area” that has no outside influence, like the universe. Now, as believers we know, of course, that God does influence the universe, so many believers would consider the universe an “open system”, (one that does get outside influence), but for the atheist who says there is no God, the universe is all there is, so from their perspective and for the sake of conventional science, the universe would get no outside influence and would therefore be considered a “closed system”.
Back to the 1st Law of Thermodynamics. If it states that you can never have an increase or decrease of energy/matter, which means that matter/energy can not be created from nothingness, how did we get all the matter and energy in the universe? If science is all there is and there is no God, then the 1st Law of Thermodynamics reigns supreme and therefore it would be impossible to have matter and energy in existence right now. Simply put, when you open your eyes and see matter and experience energy, what you see is impossible according to the known Laws of science if, in fact, there is no God. Therefore, science itself says there must be a God.
Plain and simple, matter/energy can not come into existence. It is scientifically impossible, yet here we see everything around us, so how can that be? There are really only 3 possibilities. Option A: Everything came into existence by itself anyway, without the help of God, (even though science has proven that impossible). Option B: Everything in the universe has always existed for all of eternity, (which, by the way is also scientifically impossible due to something called the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics), or Option C: There must be a God, a Being greater than science, who created the Laws of science and has the ability to disobey them. Not only is a belief in God the only logical conclusion to draw, it's the only one scientifically possible because remember, if there is no God, the first two options are scientifically impossible according to the actual Laws of Physics.
Believe it or not, a 5 year old child could be an atheistic scientist's worst nightmare by merely asking him “where did everything come from if God didn't make it?” What that child is actually asking in scientific terms is “how do we have a violation of the 1st Law of Thermodynamics by the creation of energy and matter in the closed system of the universe if there is no Creator capable of doing that?”
Many times people who do not believe there is evidence of God have claimed that a faith in God is only a matter of faith and that it can not be proven scientifically. They say "does God exist ?....if so, prove it to me". When confronted with this, we must fully understand what it means to “prove” something. The fact is that none of us were there when the universe came into being, so technically, none of us can “prove” what happened. We can't “prove” God did it and the atheists can't “prove” everything came into being on it's own, so what we have to do is examine the evidence based on science to determine the most plausible explanation. For example, if I see a beautiful sand castle on the beach with intricate design, but no one there along with it, I can not “prove” someone made it, just as someone else can not “prove” the sand castle made itself from the wind, waves and sand randomly interacting with one another, so we have to determine what logic and reason tell us is the most plausible explanation, based on scientific evidence and examination.
Dead wrong Luke ...and just because a book written 2000 years ago by men for men states some angles to go to heaven is no proof of anything related to God or our existence in any way.
Not true. Just because we don’t have a complete understanding of something doesn’t mean there is a god.
Science has not proven impossible the creation of everything from nothing. We dont even know how many dimensions there are or anything about gravity or how particles gain mass (the higgs boson). But nice try! just a bunch of bad premises, circular arguments, and Non sequiturs in that post. Just because you make it sound intelligent doesn’t mean its true.
OUR ACTUAL LAWS OF PHYSICS ARE NOT COMPLETE. Our quantum world doesn’t jive with the macro world. Different formulas are needed to predict outcomes for each world. Our mathematics stop predicting when we start talking about singularities. so making claims that our incomplete (although it predicts wonderfully in most cases) physics understanding proves god is just as nonsense as the argument "scientists cant explain the origins of the universe so god must have done it.-LOL.
By your argument we could also replace god with pink unicorn and it would be the same. since scientists cant explain the origins of the universe then the pink unicorn must have done it. Sorry but the burden of proof is on you. I always love reading the proofs of god by Christians (especially based in science), they never work.
wow you really put a lot of effort in to convincing your self huh?
So in other words, Luke, your religious beliefs can be compared to the naivete of a 5 year old child? Religion does not offer answers, it offers comfort. In fact, religion avoids answers - it thrives in ignorance. It is your absolute right to take comfort in your own ignorance, but don't expect everyone else to be satisfied with religion's avoidance of the truth.
*accept, not accepts
Edward,
I understand what you're saying, but when you say that He doesn't want anyone to burn and that He provided a way to avoid it, it sounds as though He had no choice but to create a hell, which for an omnipotent being would not be the case.
"He doesn't send us... we send ourselves."
I understand what you're saying – that we all have free will and we can choose to accepts Christ or not, but seeing as how our time on earth and our choices and actions are finite, a punishment that is infinite seems inherently unjust. Particularly if a person has tried to live a moral life and do what's right, but simply chose the wrong religion to follow.
exactly JoeP I agree with you 100%.
JoeP, what you have to understand is that the bible says in Matthew 25:41 "Then he will say to those on his left, 'Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels." God made hell as a place of punishment for the devil. The only place in the universe God doesn't go. A place where evil will be deposited once and for all. A place where pain, suffering, sorrow, sin, and death will be deposited once and for all. GOD IS 100% HOLY AND PURE and if we expect to be with Him for eternity, we must be cleansed by the blood of Jesus (the Lamb of God, who was slain for our sins).
"...but simply chose the wrong religion to follow." Yes, or the wrong country to be born in, or the wrong, pre-Jesus, century.
The words that stand out the most in this string are words like "ignorant," "absurd," "uninformed," "no better," "Roman Catholics" (meant disparagingly), etc. I like to think I've done my time studying this stuff, so I'm not going to try to one-up anyone. But when I imagine this blue-collared hippy who preached around the Sea of Galilee approximately 2k years ago – and yes, I believe the man existed, if not the divinity – I think he would have had a snit fit similar to the one detailed in the Garden of Gethsemane story or the Thieves in the Temple yarn.
It puzzles me that so many people argue about the divinity of this man...or really any religious figure. This guy, whose name we think was Yeshua (we don't know for sure, since no one wrote anything down during his life, an uncomcomfortable fact we can't really explain), talked himself blue in the face that we need to be kind, merciful, giving, humble, principled, etc. People often gloss over this stuff, claiming that those lessons are the obvious and easy stuff. I've done the same thing, but I can only speak for myself when I say that I've glossed over this stuff in the past not because it was the easy stuff, but because it was the hardest stuff.
Does it feel good or satisfactory to no longer be convinced in the divinity of Yeshua – and to shove that down people's throats? I can attest that it does not. I, for one, would want people to keep whatever beliefs that will get them through the day as long as they don’t tread on mine.
I had a day dream this morning. It's probably not an original one, but it is what it is. I pretended I was one of the supposedly poor people who came to hear this guy preach. I'm hungry for food as well as knowledge and it shows. A family sitting next to me has a small portion of bread and some dates, which they see me glance at a bit. Feeling a tap on my shoulder, one of them hands me a small bite of bread with a shrug that is clearly meant to be taken as, "I can't spare much, but I can spare this."
Now, cut forward to modern times. We have a story in the New Testament about Yeshua/Jesus multiplying the loafs and fish to feed the masses. The more conservative-minded (I always read that as ‘more scared‘) interpret this to mean that Yeshua was indeed a mystic who could literally defy the laws of physics. The more liberal-minded scholars have come to the conclusion that early writers used Yeshua as an analogy for the kindness these people showed to each other by sharing what meager provisions they possessed with those who "had not."
Going back to my little fantasy, if I had a choice between that bite of bread from the family that could hardly spare it…and a whole loaf of bread supposedly conjured up out of thin air by a self-labeled mystic, I like to think I would have told that mystic to shove that loaf so far up his ass he'll be coughing unleavened yeast. Then I would pick my bag of bones up and go home, having learned my lesson for the day.
Obviously I don't believe "He" multiplied the loaves. I suspect that kind-hearted people did. And that's all I need to get through the day and to strive to be a better person than I am. I don’t know it all, but that’s what I know now. Tomorrow I most certainly hope I know something more.
Oops. Factual error. Yeast can't be unleavened. You know what I mean, I hope.
Lovely thoughts, Christopher. Thank you. Yes, this Yeshua, as is questionably reported, had some good advice to give on how to live peaceably, but it is also reported that he said he was "God", and that people would be damned forever if they didn't follow him. When he goes off on that tangent he loses me.
Charlie, I want to address your contention that slaughter of Canaanites was an immoral act committed solely by the Jews. You are inaccurate in saying this. It was the Jews acting under orders from their Jehovah G-d. Now if God did not command them, then you can possibly say they were acting immorally. But if the scripture is correct, and that God had given the Canaanites enough time to change their ways, then His commanding the Jews to attack cities seeped in evil was not bad at all. Imagine the possibility that these cities were mini Nazi Germany's in regards to level of sin. Also, consider that God had two goals; the first, giving His people their promised land, and two, to teach them how he views sin in a national body of people. He told them before and after that they too would suffer similar fate if they should also turn to evil and away from Him.
Another point, just because some people (incorrectly) in the past said they were commanded by God to kill, it doesn't make others claims just as false. It is very possible that some actually were commanded to do so by God himself.
One last note. One of the groups of people who were attacked "and slaughtered" by the Israelites called the Amelekites were being punished because when the Jews were leaving Egypt enmass, they (Amalekites) were attacking and killing them in the rear where the young and the weak were concentrated. God was avenging this act of cowardice, and he was right to do so, even through His own people.
Humility in our daily lives, an unwavering faith, a moral sense of modesty in conversation, justice in acts, mercy in deed, discipline, refusal to harm others, a readiness to suffer harm, peaceableness with our brothers, a wholehearted love of the Lord, loving in him what is of the Father, fearing him because he is God, preferring nothing to him who preferred nothing to us, clinging tenaciously to his love, standing by his cross with loyalty and courage whenever there is any conflict involving his honor and his name, manifesting in our speech the constancy of our profession and under torture confidence for the fight, and in dying the endurance for which we will be crowned – this is what it means to wish to be a coheir with Christ, to keep God's command; this is what it means to do the will of the Father.
@Ms. E. Lauren, who said that at no time in the interview did Mr. Prothero say that he was a Christian: I could be wrong, but I've got a pretty clear memory that Mr. Prothero DID make a reference to "We Christians" in his interview.
JoeP,
It's not like you claim. The "Heavenly Father" of Christianity doesn't just throw people, young and old, on the eternal bbq pit for making Him angry. In fact, He doesn't want anyone to burn. Rather, He provided a way for us to avoid it... thru the voluntary sacrificial act of his Son Jesus Christ, who took the punishment for everyone's sins, both in the past (back to creation) to the future. Then he commissioned his believers to go out into the world and to tell others about this way to avoid the fire and to live a better life... and not in a crusade or inquisitory way either. (True Biblical Christianity doesn't depend on force. It stands by itself.)
What it comes down to in the end, what makes the difference betw walking on golden pavement or walking on hot coals is how did each of us respond to the good news provided (not on our own efforts, but on God's grace) to us within our lifetimes. He doesn't send us... we send ourselves.
would make sense if we had a level playing field. children born into muslim,hindu,agnostic,jewish, families and countries are less likely to become or learn about christianity ....consider native americans and all primitive cultures around the world....I do respect your faith and wish you the very best !
That's really parellel logic to a father who beats his kids, all the while telling them "You're making me do this. It's your fault."