also the xmas thing:the bible never says anything like this, and i thought it was pretty well known that he wasn't actually born on christmas, that's why i laughed. like i'd laugh if an 'academic' work highlighted that WHOA, THE QUEEN WASN'T BORN ON THE QUEENS BIRTHDAY HOLIDAY (i don't know if you americans have an equivalent)
For the Americans you could go with: George Washington wasn't born on the 3rd Monday in February. Or that the pilgrims didn't celebrate the subjugation of the native Americans *only* on the 4th Thursday in November.
Well, DarkAngel, it looks like I'm not the only person who thinks that website is poorly researched and presented. If you want to continue to argue the validity of the site, it looks like you can go point-by-point with cilmbtree. I found enough sensationalism and misrepresentation in the few parts I did skim--I don't need to read and research every word to tell that your source is not much of a valid or scholarly source. The points I (and climbtree) made about the
quality of research show this. And, as such, isn't worth my time.
You weren't the only person who offered (read: spouted) websites. You weren't the only self-proclaimed atheist. I wasn't writing only to you. You seem to have ignored the meatier part of that sentence that speaks much more specifically against many Christian ideas. Apparently, you've decided to take the first one-third of a sentence and take it much more personally that it was intended to be taken by any one person. If you're so offended by my obvious generalizations, start defending the born-again Christians I brought up in that sentence as well.
three different stories/books were all written before the bible. The oldest of of those being written in 1700 BC, still 200 hundred years older!
When do the events in these stories take place? MANY BIBLE SCHOLARS AGREE (that's a fun phrase) that Adam & Eve were cast from the garden of Eden around 4000 BC (give or take a few years--the record is pretty scarce
). So, a few thousand years later separate civilations have similar stories... Perhaps they all came from a similar source?
Let's look at this from a pseudo-eternal perpsective. If Christianity is the true religion that will bring everyone to God, and God wants us to be brought to Him, would Abraham or Moses be the first to hear the Gospel? That wouldn't make much sense, would it? If God created Adam & Eve (Or Gilgamesh, or Lilith, or Frankenstein, or Elvis) wouldn't He want
them to follow Him? Wouldn't He tell them His laws? Wouldn't stories about the Gospel get warped and misrepresented over time (just like they do today) by people who aren't quite following them, and even many of the people who are? I assume you've played the Telephone game: imagine that, over a few thousand years into groups separated by miles of desert who continue to play amongst themselves. How similar might their stories be by the time we dig up various records and compare them? I think it can be agreed on that God doesn't spend all his time politely correcting the records of people who aren't doing anything He said to do in the first place. So, the civilations who aren't following His word aren't going to keep flawless renditions of the creation (or any other story). The Bible isn't a ripoff, its a record. I believe it to be one of the more inspired records, but who's to say that all these mysteriously similar stories didn't originally come from a common source?
If you want to understand Christian religions you need to look at the whole picture they paint, not try to prove random traditions false. Many of these tactics sound similar to the nit-picking I hear from Jehova's Witnesses who don't teach doctrine, they argue obscurities and tradition in hopes of confusing rather than converting.
So what if Jesus was born in what we now call April and not December, does
that change who He was?
So what if he had long hair, short hair, no hair, does
that change the means by which we can get to heaven?
So what if parts of the Bible have been corrupted by the Catholic church (which was started by Romans as a means of controlling people), does
that change the nature of God?
So what if Moses brought down tablets with an indeterminate number of precise Laws on them, does
that change the fact that obeying God is a good idea?
So what if Saturday (not Sunday) is, according to the Gregorian calendar, the Seventh day of the week, does
that change the fact that we should worship God?
"Ye blind guides, which strain at a gnat, and swallow a camel" (Matt. 23: 24). Don't pick the Gospel to death, live it correctly and it will work out in your favor.
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