- Todangst (with Rook Hawkins)

"[T]here is not a single contemporary historical mention of Jesus, not by Romans or by Jews, not by believers or by unbelievers, not during his entire lifetime. This does not disprove his existence, but it certainly casts great doubt on the historicity of a man who was supposedly widely known to have made a great impact on the world. Someone should have noticed." - Dan Barker

The Gospel story, with its figure of Jesus of Nazareth, cannot be found before the Gospels. In Christian writings earlier than Mark, including almost all of the New Testament epistles, as well as in many writings from the second century, the object of Christian faith is never spoken of as a human man who had recently lived, taught, performed miracles, suffered and died at the hands of human authorities, or rose from a tomb outside Jerusalem. There is no sign in the epistles of Mary or Joseph, Judas or John the Baptist, no birth story, teaching or appointment of apostles by Jesus, no mention of holy places or sites of Jesus’ career, not even the hill of Calvary or the empty tomb. This silence is so pervasive and so perplexing that attempted explanations for it have proven inadequate. - Earl Doherty, The Jesus Puzzle

There is a legend about a group of Islamic traders that traveled to Africa and met with a tribal chief. The traders were given a warm welcome and stayed with the tribe for many weeks. When they were preparing to leave, the invited the chief to tour their ship. Once aboard the ship, the traders proceeded to confine the chief, abducting him and selling him in the slave trade back home.

The king learned all he could from his slave masters, then escaped and made his way back to his people in Africa. Upon his return, he taught his people about Islam, read to them from a copy of the Koran that he brought with him, and converted his tribal nation.

Ahoy to all.
Here are some stories that I wrote nearly one year ago, that I've just found.
---
9/19/2005
Church Day: Nazarene

John 3:16

I’ve heard that one verse more than any other. (The 23rd Psalm coming in 2nd)

If you were to have any other religion with such a death-centric worship, the media would flock to it. They would denounce it as evil. All practitioners’ considered mindless murderers. But sadly, that’s not what I saw when I went into the church of the Nazarene for my weekly Church Day.

The last time I walked in those walls was well over 6 months ago. The same deity was shown (when I was Muslim), but with different wrapping. Wrapping is also used in Scripture to ignore or hide some of the Bible’s many blemishes. Try reading Judges to a Sunday school group.

I have committed various actions in order to rid myself of the instilled dogma prefered by most westerners and what seems to be the world. At age 17, my Christianity Rebellion, if you will, truly began when I finally heard my youth pastor ask for the umpteeth time that he wanted to have a debate with my father. Mind you, he knew that my dad was a biology teacher at my local high school and that he was an "agnostic." I had so little doubt of my father's answer that one could call it faith. However, it wasn't my dad's answer or re-action to my pastor's desire to convert him (or whatever his true intentions were) that caused me to start completely doubting my "reason for existence;" it was the overwhelming realisation that I knew there was no way on earth my pastor would win such a battle. Instead of questioning my youth pastor, I started questioning myself. When it finally occurred to me that my doubting the very existence of God was considered a sin to my Christian community and that I no longer wanted be led along by blind faith. Or in other words, I realised that I could no longer live on bread alone--I needed facts and proof, not just stories and law. I had already heard enough bull from my god-fearing peers in school during science calss and from adult christians at any given time about how God ceated the world in only 6 days. This seemed utterly ridiculous to me and not just logically speaking, as they were inadvertantly claiming that they knew God's Time! No where in this book did it ever say God created the world in six 24 hour periods or six human days...All I could think was," Come on! Get with it. Don't just read your Bible, comprehend it; question it and ask God about it!"

Irreducible complexity is an argument given to us by Michael Behe. In brief, he claims that some bio-molecular systems cannot have evolved gradually. From this failure of imagination he makes the argument from ignorance that a 'designer' - a deus ex machina, is required to solve the dilemma.

While Behe if often credited with the idea, I thought it interesting to note that Charles Darwin not only predicted the concept of Irreducible complexity, he also refuted it.... on the same page.

From page 159 of the Barnes and Noble edition of The Origin of the Species, Darwin first touches upon the notion of Irreducible complexity:

For anyone who cares check out my website
www.pathofreason.com

It is just so bloody stinking ridiculous!

Atheist like to pretend that they are, by and large, the most persecuted minority group around today. In fact, it is brought up repeatedly as a mantra of sorts, that atheist are the last grouping of people to whom it is considered acceptable to persecute.

This is, of course, wholly untrue.

Thing is, there are other groups who are far more ostracised and persecuted than atheists. In some cases, they are far more numerous, and yet there is no end to the social stigma and heavy weight of political and social persecution towards some of them.