My View On Life

[tryscotty]

http://discoverthefaith.com/2008/04/06/origin-of-the-word-christian-it-is-in-the-bible/

But come on, the Bible is full of wild claims that most of us are aware that they are not literal.

Different topic..were just discussing date of writing, all content aside. There are many well documented dated copies of all portions of the Bible. No problem though I would never read this whole thread before I answered either. Talk about your fixer upper.

[5VP]

The oldest known handwritten copy is dated to 1488. It is in a museum in London.

Estimates of the age of the Gita itself range from 500 BCE to first century CE. It's thought to be later than the rest of the Mahabharata based on internal evidence and poetic style. Please keep in mind holy books usually make far fetched claims and certainly Hindu books do. I look for actual proof located in famous museums you can see with your own eyes. Otherwise I would have to believe eqyptian rulers were 20-40 thousand years old when they died. The big issue is people get their history from movies today. On the other note Jesus did not use the term Christian that was given to people shortly after his death. Those who were followers of Jesus and did as he did. I won't be commenting anymore on this subject if that basic fact isn't something that can be agreed on. Hay , people who mine for coal are called coal miners even if the first people doing it wernt. You could look back and still call them the first coal miners.

Yup; and...

A case could be made for the symbolic texts of our cave man ancestors from 16-30,000+ years ago.

Where did they get their inspiration??

GOD existed long before written texts and even before this planet/solar system/galaxy/universe existed and definitely long before "christianity" existed.

The message is the same no matter which moniker humans devise to rationalize their perceptions of the great spirit, holy father, etc...

Jesus did not call himself or his teachings Christian during his lifetime. Buddha didn't name his teachings Buddhism and Confucious didn't name his writings confucianism.

The term Christ is a derivation of the Greek Christos added to the bible after the greeks translated it into their language.

Even though the term christian is in the bible it was used only after the death of Jesus to describe the adherents to Jesus' word. Even the apostle Paul refused to accept the term Christian because he felt it misrepresented Jesus's message.

Using such loose definitions of christian would also mean that Lord Lucifer, Satan and the Devil are also christians in the sense that they, before any of us, knew of the existence of GOD and Jesus.

The meaning of being christian in your beliefs doesn't change just because of a difference in definition of the concept and the timeline.

My original statement stands...

Jesus Christ DID NOT specifically preach Christianity.

His message was more "catholic" (another greek term meaning universal) but one doesn't need to dig very deep into the history books to see how corrupt the "religion" of catholicism became and continues to be through the ages.

It's all the after-the-fact fabrications and misinterpretations of mankind that has corrupted his message and I daresay caused more grief than Jesus ever intended.

I too get irritated when "super christian" types put on airs of superiority while they dwell in hypocrisy.

Clear evidence of how mankind corrupts these messages is seen on a daily basis as Jewish (as a race of peoples as well as a religious faith) and "christian" peoples continue to be engaged in jihadist holy wars with the corrupters of the Islamic faith.

Other corruptions can be seen in Sikhism which declares that, "GOD is the sword, and the sword is GOD".

All these aspects however do not give me my faith.

I have found faith despite religion...

[tryscotty]

The Jews as a race? Were done.

[Glacier]

The Jews as a race? Were done.

Have you read this exchange yet? viewtopic.php?f=28&t=16364&p=423703#p423428

[1nick]

[5VP]

The Jews as a race? Were done.

Hmm...

HISTORY 001

Jews are most definitely among the most historically ancient and confirmed and controversial ethnoreligious races on the planet.

As are the Arabs.

The bloodlines for both of these peoples are intertwined and traceable in the bible.


Look out for the swinging door...

[Homeownertoo]

Jews are not a race. They are perhaps best defined as a civilization.

[tryscotty]

Jews are not a race. They are perhaps best defined as a civilization.

crack is not a drug its best described as a social skill.

[steven lloyd]

Jews are not a race. They are perhaps best defined as a civilization.

crack is not a drug its best described as a social skill.

Jews are not a race (see Sammy Davis Jr.). Crack is a drug. Reading comprehension and learning ability is a skill.

[tryscotty]

Jews are not a race. They are perhaps best defined as a civilization.

crack is not a drug its best described as a social skill.

Jews are not a race (see Sammy Davis Jr.). Crack is a drug. Reading comprehension and learning ability is a skill.

I was not serious about crack. Jewish people are a ethnicity of people, like Italians are. Some are not Jewish as a faith. two different things. Sammy converted to Judaism and was not of the Jewish race. Anyways I don't really care that much about this insignificant post. I was just bored. Winter's a drag, can we all agree on that?

[Homeownertoo]

No, they are not an ethnicity, though many Jews can claim such ethnicity. If you were bored and disinterested, why did you venture beyond mere opinion, to assert "Jews are most definitely among the most historically ancient and confirmed and controversial ethnoreligious races on the planet."

As for my view that they are best described as a civilization, I claim no originality, but offer the views of Barbara Kay (a Jew):

"We must look beyond such narrow words as “race” and “culture,” since in both cases the Jewish condition escapes these rigid molds: Conversion into Judaism endows the convert with all the same rights and obligations of any other Jews, so race is not an issue, and indeed there are white Jews and black Jews and every shade in between; and as for cultures, Jews have always tended to take on, more or less, the cultural attributes of their historical bivouacs. An English Jew and a Yemeni Jew could pray together, but would have little else in common."

And Mordecai Kaplan, author of Judaism as a Civilization, who maintained the Jews encompass the four components of a viable civiliation: a sacred piece of land; a sacred language unique to that people; a constitution -- some document or series of texts -- that set forth the values and principles guiding the social behaviour of the group; and what he called “folkways,” sacred rituals, days, anniversaries -- the basis, as the civilization developed, for the organic evolution of unique music, art forms and other cultural expressions of group identity that periodically united the people in ceremonies designed to further renewed cohesion. Of the four, he maintained that a constitution -- Talmud and Torah in this case -- was the one immutable factor in civilzational perpetuation.

You are not the only person confused on this issue, and such confusion too often carries over into other, less sanguine, opinions about the Jews, so I though some clarification was in order.

[Viprium]

Glad to see my thread got some people chattin'. ...and yes I really was a hardcore atheist when I was younger. I was like 16-17 when I was an atheist and I'm 19 now. Anyways alot of my main points were to not buy every little theory you read on the internet and maybe even give Jesus a chance.

[kompili]

You will find that approximately 90% of people in the world today who call themselves Jews are actually Khazars, or as they like to be known, Ashkenazi Jews. These people knowingly lie to the world with their claims that the land of Israel is theirs by birthright, when in actual fact their real homeland is over 800 miles away in Georgia.

[janalta]

I really was a hardcore atheist when I was younger. I was like 16-17 when I was an atheist and I'm 19 now. .

OMG...sorry...but this really made me laugh.
When you were younger?? TWO years ago ???????
But...now you're mature, and you've found Jesus...and you've learned all there is to learn about the world and religion...at 19.

I know that you think you know all you need to know at 19...but...trust me....you don't.
I actually thought getting married at 19 was a good idea...turns out...I knew nothing about life back then.

I'm glad you think you have found jesus and all is good...but.....you can't blame anyone for being a wee bit sceptical when someone, especially someone still in their teens, suggests that they were a harcore atheist two years ago...and now...poof...christian !
Faith and beliefs are not things you can just turn on and off like a light switch.

[5VP]

Jews are not a race. They are perhaps best defined as a civilization.

Wow...

Talk about chasing butterflies...

My original comment about Jewish/Judaic folks was mentioned among other religious groups to illustrate how off track religion can be from having actual faith.

Why were those other groups not similarly latched onto and discussed??

As witnessed by the last few posts one can see how easily humans are led astray about true faith by opinion and half truths especially when the "Doubting Thomases" are leading the pack into the fray...

It isn't just my opinion that Jews are a distinct peoples when the facts are good enough to be mentioned thosands of years ago in the bible and good enough for the UN to return the Jews to their biblical homeland after the attempt of mass extinction of Jewish peoples by the Nazis; than that historical opinion is good enough for me. These "opinions" were put forth long before I was born.

More correctly the Israelite/Hassidic/Ashkenazi peoples can be classified as a sub-"race" of Caucasians (hence Georgian homeland notions), much like our native aboriginal cultures in North america can be classified as a sub-race of the Oriental "race".

Native aboriginals however are as distinct an ethnocultural group from their parent race as the Jewish people are from other Caucasoids.

Were they not, the Chinese would have a legal claim to North and South America.

Is that where some of you are going with this?? Islamists??

Faith is not age or race or even religiously related. You can have faith from birth or discover it later in life.

To not have faith is fine by me. To be skeptical is natural; but to knock those who do have faith and choose to live by it, is a sad statement of yourself and an admission of lack of compassion for your fellow humans and, perhaps, even a bit bullying and we all know what eventually happens to bullies.

Faith gives me a much happier outlook for all things possible on this planet. We all have it and demonstrate it in our own way; even atheists acknowledge the possiblity of the existence of GOD. Why else would they include "theism" in their disbelief system??

Should all true a"theists" then be called only "a's"??

Anyways...