My eye! Sweet Jesus, Ouch!

[mattmanic]

Anyone with a knowledge of history and geography can write a story with factual basis.

 

Correct but I don't see your point

 

Errr, the Bible does contradict itself, quite a few times. Admittedly, mostly in the New Testament, but a prime example is the description of the time of Jesus' birth. The most famous description is that of it taking place in the time of Herod and his massacre of every baby, whereas another account has it taking place around the time of a census (hence Joseph and Mary going to Bethlehem), but according to records, those 2 events never overlapped. Then there's the clumsy attempts to make Jesus fit the prophecies made in the OT, including one account that has Jesus riding 2 different animals at the same time during his entry to Jerusalem.

 

Quoted from a website called "Religious Tolerance"

"Census/taxation: Luke 2:1-4 mentions that Jesus' birth occurred during the time that Caesar Augustus had ordered all of the known world to be taxed. Luke said that every person had to return to the city of his ancestors, to be registered and taxed. Joseph went to Bethlehem, because he was of the house and lineage of David. But it is probable that this universal census and tax never actually happened. The Jewish historian Josephus wrote a very complete history of the Jews in Palestine. He does mention a census which was conducted in Judea in 6 CE. But this was only a local census, not one that would enable "all the world to be taxed." Its purpose was to count the male population so that they could be taxed at a later time. And it triggered a major uprising among the Jews, who regarded a census as against scripture and the will of God. He does not refer to an earlier census and poll tax.

 

At the time of Jesus' birth, the Jews were still subject to King Herod. Since Palestine was a client kingdom of Rome, only the king had powers of taxation in the land. 2 It was only in areas that were operated under direct Roman rule that Caesar Augustus could have taxed the citizens directly.

 

There is no record of a mass migration of adults to their ancestral cities in order to be registered. It would have been totally impractical to hold a census in this way. The primitive transportation systems of the Roman Empire would have been totally inadequate to handle the flow of people. The entire empire would be largely shut down for many months while people were returning to their home towns. Even today, with airplanes, trains, busses and automobiles, it would not be practical to hold a census in this manner."

 

Also, it doesn't say that he rode two different animals, it says he was given a donkey and a foal to ride and that he rode the donkey. Where it says he rode both is in Zechariah in the Old Testament written a few hundred years before. I don't know what it means by that, I don't read Hebrew so I can't check.

 

 

Also, I always thought it odd how people think the Old testament god (who gets the jews to exterminate hundreds of thousands of people just for not believing in him) is the same as the New Testament god (Peace, love, understanding and nowhere near as cool). The links are tenuous even in the bible, and it's always smacked to me of someone cashing in on some OT prophecies to set up a cult. Kind of like Mormonism, only more subtle.

 

So you think there are two gods or one that changed?

[spetsnazdave87]

. I don't know what it means by that, I don't read Hebrew so I can't check.

 

Well that's just not good enough...

[Kyrian_Zenda]

I didn't know about the uprising, I must admit, though I did know there was a LOT of unrest around that time. It still shows my point though, full of contradictions, and as spetsnaszdave said, the OT and NT are like completely different books, and it's very evident that they're just trying to cash in.

 

Where did the bowl come from?

Concentrate on the empty part, not the bowl itself.

 

EDIT: Great book to read if you're interested is a book called The Jesus Scroll by Donovan Joyce. It's basically about a scroll that some guy finds and subsequently disappears due to its contents - ie. it claimed to have been written by the man later to become known as Jesus, who was just a man, who survived his ordeal of crucifixion and was later killed along with a lot of his followers after a siege at a fort in Israel. It's probably a load of rubbish, and the author and book has had quite a few articles written about it debunking it, but it does raise a LOT of interesting questions.

[-Angel-]

Most of the Bible is just written accounts of what was happening at the time and is therefore provable through archaeology.

Anyone with a knowledge of history and geography can write a story with factual basis.

Correct but I don't see your point

That just because dates and locations match up doesn't make a factual account of the events. And as we've established in the last few posts, not even the dates and locations always match up!

[mattmanic]

Meh, change of subject! Baby Beauty Queens on BBC Three. WTF. I was looking for Family Guy the other night and saw that. Why would anyone do that to their kids? Lets all dress up like prostitutes and dance around. I expect that sort of thing from the American deep south where it seems to have started but I can't think why it would catch on over here.

[cazboab]

I believe there Is only one god who sent his son to die for our sins.

 

 

 

Alpha Trion.

 

 

 

In the name of the father and of the prime and the holly spark, Transform, and Roll out.

[Vice]

People calling from Withheld numbers.

 

Very annoying, you dont have a clue who it is or where the call is coming from. Especially annoying if the person on the other end is an Agent for a job you're applying for. With a withheld number you cant go and look it up to make sure it aint a conman or someone messing about.

 

made more annoying if you have 4 or five different agencies trying to get you employment. it becomes quite hard to tell them apart if you dont have a caller id when the call comes in.

[amateurstuntman]

Also, what caused the Big Bang? There must have been some trigger and if all the energy in the universe was inside then nothing could've been outside to do that.

 

There is a theory postulated to cover this but it is beyond me to understand it.

I'm actually happier that the point of creation is so difficult to understand that is is pretty much beyond our culture.

I prefer that idea to the alternative (easily understood by people who believe the earth is 6000 years old).

 

 

Well considering that space is more the absence of matter, any place that doesn't exist could be described as "space". It's empty, there's nothing there, so yes, it could have existed beforehand, if it wasn't for the fact that space is the absence of anything.

 

Space is not the absence of anything, it there is space then there is something - space.

You have to do a bit of mental gymnastics to understand space-time but.

 

Time (without our social rubbish) is simply one of a number of ways to compare different states of matter.

If there is no matter there is no time (nothing to compare = no frame of reference = no time.

 

Space (the three dimensions of it that we perceive certainly) is also just a way of comparing different states of matter.

 

Space and time are inextricably linked.

If you have space you have more than nothing, you have something to put your stuff in when you get it.

If you didn't have any space you wouldn't have any time so then you would definitely have nothing.

 

 

Well actually it's written by dozens of different men over nearly 2000 years and it still doesn't contradict itself which is fairly impressive, if something like that was to happen without something/one in charge of it all you'd get conflicting opinions, confused/distorted fact/figures and generally wouldn't fit together. Most of the Bible is just written accounts of what was happening at the time and is therefore provable through archaeology.

 

 

One of my abiding memories of my studies of the bible is that it is riddled with contradiction both epic and trivial.

 

That either means that it is all made up or that some of it is made up or that it is all about something that was true but was written and translated by people who make loads of mistakes.

 

 

 

There is no record of a mass migration of adults to their ancestral cities in order to be registered. It would have been totally impractical to hold a census in this way. The primitive transportation systems of the Roman Empire would have been totally inadequate to handle the flow of people.

 

 

Except that the very thing that would have made that kind of census impractical would have meant that most people would still be in the town of their birth which would make that technique practical again.

 

It would also mean that the would be no mass migration since most people wouldn't have to move, only traders and soldiers on the whole.

 

Seems plausible to me.

 

 

 

Meh.

[Hedganian]

My personally favoured theory is that the Big Bang was not caused by anything, as such. There could have been no external stimulous to cause it to happen. The cause of the event was simply that all matter in the universe cannot exist in a singularity - causing said singularity to explode.

 

How did the singularity get there in the first place? Gravity. Currently, the various galaxies/stars/etc are moving away fro each other as the universe expands. However, the speed at which they are moving apart is slowing down because of the gravitation pull of every object on every other object. (Remember that gravity has no maximum range. The gravity from the furthest away object in the universe still affects us here on Earth, albeit in a very, very, very infintesimal way)

 

Eventually, the universe will stop expanding. Logically, after that, the various objects will start moving towards each other again. Given enough time, gravity will pull all matter back to the centre of the universe and compress it down to a singularity, in what is termed the Big Crunch (no, honestly, that's what it's called). Given that the singularity containing all the matter in the universe cannot exist, it will explode again, in a new big bang.

 

The theory goes that before the big bang which created our universe, there was another universe in the final stages of destruction. And another before that, and another. After our universe is destroyed in billions of billions of years, there will be another one after it, and another after that.

 

There is, essentially, an infinite and never-ending series of universes being created by big bangs and being destroyed later in order for a new big bang to occur.

 

Everyone still with me?

[Skarclaw]

I just found a tick, right on my shaft.

[Shriven]

Nice.

 

I got stung on the bellend a few weeks by a wasp. That *suitcase* was not fun.

[amateurstuntman]

Yeah but your infinite loop of "bang -> crunch" still had to start somehow.

 

 

Keeps me awake at night that.

[Kyrian_Zenda]

Yeah but your infinite loop of "bang -> crunch" still had to start somehow.

Only if you think of time as linear. According to some sources, it isn't, we just perceive it as such.

[Skarclaw]

Sources being?

[scorch]

I know someone who caught their foreskin on barbed wire.

 

He was drunk and fell while taking a leak on a camping trip.

[Habakure]

I thought only fundamentalist christians believed the earth is 6000 (odd) years old or was it 12,000?. You know, adding up the ages in the bible etc. Christians do not (My wife certainly doesn't think that)think that, well all the ones I have spoken too don't.

 

I think in a thousand years time, people will laugh at the big bang theory and look at it as a way to explain to the common man, how the universe was created. Just like the bible served that purpose for several hundred years.

[mattmanic]

I thought only fundamentalist christians believed the earth is 6000 (odd) years old or was it 12,000?. You know, adding up the ages in the bible etc. Christians do not (My wife certainly doesn't think that)think that, well all the ones I have spoken too don't.

 

I think in a thousand years time, people will laugh at the big bang theory and look at it as a way to explain to the common man, how the universe was created. Just like the bible served that purpose for several hundred years.

 

'tis 6000ish

 

And I agree with your thinking about the big bang. We cannot say for certain unless we can recreate it or go back in time and look. All we can do is speculate and ponder.

[Arghoslent93]

I know someone who caught their foreskin on barbed wire.

 

He was drunk and fell while taking a leak on a camping trip.

Invariably, this someone is you.

[Hedganian]

I think in a thousand years time, people will laugh at the big bang theory and look at it as a way to explain to the common man, how the universe was created. Just like the bible served that purpose for several hundred years.

 

 

That's possibly true. The good thing about science, however, is that if someone disproves a theory, then a better theory is constructed, instead of a lynch mob burning that someone alive for heresy or witchcraft or something.

 

Maybe the big bang theory isn't correct. At the moment, it's the best we can come up with. If someone can come up with something better one day, then great. That's called progress.

[Habakure]

I don't think you got my point Hedganian.

 

Also, burning people for their scientific views (If I have read your post as you intended it too be, correctly), hasn't been around for quite some time around here (The United Kingdom, I mean). Also I didn't intend my post to be aggressive, and I don't doubt that progress is a good thing. I believe in science, but at the same time a part of me sees some truth in religion. Maybe thats the so called brain washing of the catholic church at play.

 

I have a friend who believes that when he dies, thats it, no spiritual after life or even progression to a different life form. The end. That to me is a scary thought, though I have been there before (Before I was born of course) just don't remember it. And that is the biggest problem I have with religion, the nothing before birth. So that is my rant towards religion, where was I before I was born, and if I can be nothing, then surely you can go back to being, nothing.

[Stuey]

However, the speed at which they are moving apart is slowing down

 

Fairly sure in Physics we're taught that the universe is expanding at an ever-increasing rate.

[Seraphim989]

Christianity is a conglomeration of many other religions in order to make it more acceptable to people at the time. Almost everything about Jesus is taken from other religions(see Mitra), and if you look at everything logically its almost assured that he wasnt born on Christmas etc. Thus, Bible is not non-contradictory.

[Habakure]

William DeFoe looks wrong with a mustach.

[Hedganian]

Fairly sure in Physics we're taught that the universe is expanding at an ever-increasing rate.

 

 

You might want to check on that, then, because if that's what you've been taught then you have been misled. To what level have you studied the subject?

 

The acceleration of steller bodies from each other is decreasing. At present, they are still moving apart at ever-increasing speed, but the rate of the increase of speed is decreasing. One day, the speed will be constant. Then, it will start to decrease, inevitably leading to a halt of expansion and indeed, thereafter, to contraction.

 

I don't think you got my point Hedganian.

 

Also, burning people for their scientific views (If I have read your post as you intended it too be, correctly), hasn't been around for quite some time around here (The United Kingdom, I mean). Also I didn't intend my post to be aggressive, and I don't doubt that progress is a good thing. I believe in science, but at the same time a part of me sees some truth in religion. Maybe thats the so called brain washing of the catholic church at play.

 

I have a friend who believes that when he dies, thats it, no spiritual after life or even progression to a different life form. The end. That to me is a scary thought, though I have been there before (Before I was born of course) just don't remember it. And that is the biggest problem I have with religion, the nothing before birth. So that is my rant towards religion, where was I before I was born, and if I can be nothing, then surely you can go back to being, nothing.

 

 

I don't think you got my point. I was attempting to contrast the scientific method's acceptance of the overturn of a theory and its replacement with a newer, more accurate theory with religion's dogmatic resistance to questioning its "teachings".

 

Science makes progress by questioning assumptions and testing theories. If a theory proves unable to stand up to testing, it is replaced with a better theory. No theory, no matter how well proven in the past, is above being torn down by experiment. Religion, on the other hand, retards progress and seeks to stagnate society in order to maintain its control over a populace discouraged from questioning the "truths" handed down by those in charge of the doctrine.

 

Many people are frightened by the prospect of what will happen to them when they die. This fear is one of the reasons religions were created and continues to be a reason for them to cling to existance. When people are frightened, they cling to a comfort blanket which promises answers to questions which cannot possibly be answered.

 

But however comforting it is, or however scary the alternative, until and unless there is actually some evidence that can withstand experimental questioning, such things are just delusions, created to enable control over the general populace.

[Vice]

You might want to check on that, then, because if that's what you've been taught then you have been misled. To what level have you studied the subject?

 

The acceleration of steller bodies from each other is decreasing. At present, they are still moving apart at ever-increasing speed, but the rate of the increase of speed is decreasing. One day, the speed will be constant. Then, it will start to decrease, inevitably leading to a halt of expansion and indeed, thereafter, to contraction.

 

@Stuey

He speaks truth -> go look up Hubble's Law/Constant on wikipedia and the cosmology surrounding it.

 

The rate (acceleration) of expansion is decelerating..

 

On astro related things, guy I met at uni is on 'The sky at night' with Sir Patrick Moore talking about a 350Msun star they have found.