LMAO

long story short, religion is as old as mankind... religion was formed to explain the unexplainable

mankind erred when he begain basing his life on the make-believe, aka religion

when one bases one's life on the unproveable, aka religion, one tends to narrow one's mind to not accept anything other than what one believes

so when something comes along to even possibly disprove what one believes, one is so blind with faith that one misses the boat, and in the process doesn't live up to one's human potential, wasting away as a mindless drone

there, that good enough?

ROFL No kidding... not one person will read all that.

I did.

Glenn Beck is a Mormon...Mormon's really don't give Jesus he reverence that Christians do. In fact, Mormon's feel that that level of "holiness" can be achieved by man.

Glenn Beck is a watered-down, more charming version of Limbaugh with a better sense of humor. After a week, it gets old. He's a pretty shallow conservative, that loves to remind us that that his daughter has cerebral palsy or something like that.

I did, and I 100% agree. But I tend to agree with logic.

IM pretty biased....James Cameron is pretty much the best filmaker alive....

So No....

I wonder why this would piss people off so much.

I don't know how much "proof" Cameron has, but even if it were 100% that this definitely was Jesus' remains, how does that change his message, his actions and his ideas? I don't get it. So he wasn't resurrected... his message still remains the same.

Well the difference would be Jesus being a fine Humanitarian and being the risen Son of God...which is one of the more important parts of Christianity. Otherwise Christians would be far more similar to Buddhists.

100% of people are hypocrites - including you. The fact that you feel compelled to deride others while you state "it's just what I believe" proves just that. With a statement like that you had no intent on attempting to sway anyone's opinion, merely to humiliate them if they disagreed with you - kind of like the religions you are complaining about.

Yup - Just like government, including the socialistic regimes you dream about.

However, on the other hand, religion has also fostered more charity, arts, exploration, and businesses than any other socio-economic group I can think of.

I was using it to show how ridiculously stupid it is as it's impossible to argue against it. You know, I was trying to let the religious people taste their own medicine.

Yup

Your assumption is in error (IMO) due to the second statement. You have no proof, but merely your own tenet to base the statement that mankind invented religion.

Regardless of what anyone wants to believe, the simple fact is that there is some power somewhere that simply breaks all the base rules of all sciences. You don't believe in a god, fine. Then you assume that either time is not accurately measured (as there has to be a beginning somewhere according to mainstream science), that physics are based upon flawed logic (as matter can be created not simply changed - else where did matter come from), and/or that the law of probability is simply wrong to the infinite power (not only did this cell create life from non-life, but it managed to replicate hundreds of quintillion times in just the right and precarious balance to have trillions of life forms attempting to destroy one another while co-existing without simple destruction). After all, according to science all matter tends toward a resting state. I find all of the above "beliefs" to be just as silly as your idea that mankind created religion to explain the unexplainable.

You were attempting to ridicule others while calling them hypocrites for ridiculing others.

You can use the old excuse "they started it first", but you were being a hypocrite.

What? lol

I wouldn't agree with any of that statement, even though I know why you think that. Let's see exploration - missionaries would be sent in to clean up only after the places were already discovered (as far as Christianity is concerned). I'm sure some expeditions were commissioned by the church in it's power hay day, but certainly it wasn't the majority if you take the whole history of the mankind.

Charity? Maybe recently and it's always on very small scale, but again, if you look at the whole picture, religion has brought more suffering than anything else.

Arts? I can see that.

Business? You have to be more specific.

Jesus, you're reeruned. I was using it on purpose to show that it wasn't a good way to argue. Because if I say "It's just my belief" about something, there's no way you can refute that. Later in the thread you can see me saying that I didn't mean what I said because I don't know the guy.

Trade routes to the Middle East were established by the Christians. The Jesuits opened China to a free market. South America and the Western United States were settled by the Franciscan Monks long before any other settlements were made. The majority of Occidental explorations occurred due to monarchies - but the only reason the pushes into the unknown survived was due to the base of the missionaries.

Charity on a small scale? Prior the generosity of governments of the middle 20th century, where did a family go when they lost income due to the death of the primary male? Who took care of the sick during ravenous plagues? Who took in orphans? To this day the Catholic missionaries do a helluva lot more in the Sudan, Mexico, and the Phillipines than any government effort of which I am aware.

In fact, I am donating my time this summer to help the people of Neuvo Progresso. We are building 6 houses and completing a purified water station for the rest of the village. I don't do this because I am worried about being judged. I don't do it because I fell I need to balance my good deeds versus bad deeds book. I am doing it because I enjoy the time, and because it will assist me in my bid to go to the Sudan for a year in 2009 to do the same in the Dinkan village of Lounariik if the US government allows us to go.

Our church has raised over 300,000.00 nationwide to bring water purifiers and housing materials to the village.

Yours, and others on this board, natural bent to hate any organized religion simply shows your own prejudices to be as narrow as those you deride.

So religion has nothing to do with that charity. You're a nice person. Or are you saying that had you not been religious, you wouldn't do the same?

So yeah, exploration wasn't carried out by the church. The church did the early settling in order to spread the word of god.

You mean like losing the primary male due to a Crusade, Jihad or any religious war/conflict (you know like the one in England, Yugoslavia, India and everywhere else in the world) or some sort of an inquisition? Or being ****ed in the ass by the greedy church in form of land taxes and the indulgences? I'm not saying relgion does no good, I'm saying the negatives outweigh the positives if you take into account that organized religion is full of hypocrites (who feel justified to do anything they ****ing want in the name of god), extremists, was/is/will be full of corruption.

Look, I'm not saying that religion makes you evil, I'm saying that it doesn't stop you from being one and often serves as a very good cover for very bad people. And to add to that, you absolutely don't have to be religious to be a just, moral and overall a good person. And if you're not religious and somehow manage to **** up (bang someone before you marry, lie to parrents, steal something), at least you don't look like a total ****ing hypocrite.

I deleted the rest of the quote because it is not dead on target with what I started.

You put it all in black and white with your last paragraph. You, and many others who feel an obsessive/compulsive desire to deride organized religion have an overwhelming desire to prove that those who are involved in religion are "hypocrites". The fact is that ALL humans are hypocrites - including you. The old bumper sticker states "I am not perfect, I am forgiven".

Government serves as cover for bad people, school does, hell - jobs do as well.

My point is that every organized group ever created can house evil or bad intent - after all, they are created and run by humans - who have a huge propensity toward evil. But the fact is that more people get good out of religion than bad. If they didn't, the faith based groups would no longer exist.

Hows that Jiffy Pop tasting?

I've become an atheist as of late, but I seriously doubt James Cameron has been able to disprove Jesus' divinity.


What weirds me out is that there is a part of me that really HOPES he did though. I'd like to see the fallout. I'd love to see if all the Christians in the world would suddenly become Isreali, or if they would adjust the Christian religion to compensate for the "bad news."

In my perfect world, we would stop basing our actions on what we think the Supernatural world wants us to do. I don't believe in the supernatural, and frankly it would be a breath of fresh air to see the world start making a rational and concerted effort to improve upon our NATURAL world.

Better all the time. :)

Debunking Jesus, if it happens, is not debunking God. One can very easily believe in God without believing in Jesus. Millions already do.

DNA samples from the Shroud of Turin have been stored for quite some time now, waiting for something to test them against. Of course, even this presents a conundrum for Christians - if the samples from the remains match the samples from the Shroud, then one is forced to accept one of two very uncomfortable things: (1) the Shroud was Christ's, and his bones are in the ossuary, meaning he didn't resurrect; or (2) they've been wrong all along about the Shroud belonging to Christ, and the resurrection story is preserved, but the Shroud is lost as an important "proof" of the resurrection and existence of Jesus. Then there will be that subset who will resort to the old, "The Devil put those bones there" argument.

On the other hand, if the Shroud and the bones don't match, everybody can just return to their normal programming.

Question, though, especially for the Christians on here - if it is proven conclusively that the remains in that ossuary are the remains of Jesus of Nazareth, how will it affect your spirituality and beliefs?

Very likely, all of the above, and more. If it should come to pass that Jesus' resurrection and divinity are disproven, you'll see a lot of things happening, including:

• Some remaining Christian, refusing to believe the disproof
• Some rejecting Christianity altogether, moving to any number of other faiths
• Some committing suicide
• Some committing murder (James Cameron and anyone else associated with the discovery would be a walking dead man)
• Some abandoning their moral codes, having lost what they believe is their moral compass

It won't do jack shit. Bible > Science/Logic.

Personally (and this is just personally as I have a differing view on my Christianity than MANY do) it wouldn't affect it much. I base my beliefs on Jesus' teaching and his actions. The deity aspect is a part of the story, but not the whole of the story, in my heart. Even if it does turn out to be true, that doesn't make him any less the son of God, any less the revolutionary he was/is, and any less the basis of my beliefs.

His movie Aquaman was badass!

There's no way it can be proven conclusively. The hardcore christians will always have some escape clause.

IN 1973 the shroud was proven to have vermillion ink, not blood in it by Walter McCrone - thus no DNA is available.

I believe the shroud was completely debunked in 1988, according to carbon dating anyway. All three independent labs that investigated the shroud dated it around the 1300s.

Which would create yet another scientific paradox. If you believe the DNA matches and is proof of Christ, then you must accept that cardon dating is seriously flawed and should not be taken as serious scientific fact as it is currently used.

If Cameron's theories are based upon the shroud, he has already laid a foundation of sand for his castle of "proof".

Next

We're talking about people that believe dinosaurs and humans lived on Earth at the same time in history.
James Cameron making a dipshit documentary is NOT going to shake the faith in these people.

You are assuming that only literalists are Christians.

Your statement is as erroneous as if I said that any idiot who pays to watch a first run movie stupidly believes the Hollywood precept of how life is supposed to be: If we all just focus on how we look to others then the world will be a better place.


There are a great many Christians, including Albert Einstein, Isaac Newton, Louis Pasteur, Werner Heisenberg, Marie Curie, and Linus Pauling who have no trouble understanding that Christianity (or in Einstein's case, Judaism) is not literally driven and actually works hand in hand with science.

It won't affect my faith in the least.

Yeah my dad told me that he believes the devil mixed lizards with other animals to create dinosaurs and that they walked the earth with humans.

He also believes that all carbon dating is flawed, fossils were planted by the devil, vestigial organs test our faith and asserts that Hitler was greatly influenced by Darwin, therefore Darwin is evil.

People are going to believe what they want to believe. I'm not going to change it, nor do I really care to.

I am Catholic. I do not believe Dinosaurs and man walked the Earth at the same time. Therefore I am as smart as Einstein and Newton.

No just kidding, but seriously what I was trying to say is there are divisions of Christianity that claim to take the bible as literal word of God. Therefore anything disproving that belief is automatically considered a lie and must be evil.
I was watching a documentry on evangelical christians not too long ago that showed preachers in front of large groups of children explaining to them the people and dinosaurs INDEED did exsist together. This is dangerous and irresponsible no matter how you look at it.

Ditto! :thumb:

As far as i'm concerned man is flawed, so any great Discoveries need to be combed over so thoroughly before they become FACT. Take for instance our historic calendar that misses about 500 years of history due to the "Dark Age of Greece" , truth is that 500 years doesn't exist but we continue to teach that it does and we in fact do not have anything(zero) from that time period. yeah i would have to say that mankind is prone to mistakes, so just because Hitler is popular and says something doesn't necessarily mean it's fact. ;)

I don't see what the big deal is if like 95% of humanity (I made that figure up, but it should be close) believes in a supernatural being, believes morals MUST come from religion, impedes science on many fronts, wages war on each other throughout history including today, and influences decisions of people in government. I can't see how that could be bad.

Isn't God just a Santa Claus for adults? If not, how can you prove Santa doesn't exist and God does?

Oh and for the record, providing "proof" rests on the believers. It is not the job for atheists/agnostics to provide proof that god DOESN'T exist. Nothing else works that way.

"The network also scheduled a last-minute special that harshly criticized its own documentary, and has yanked a planned repeat of "Tomb."

Too bad I missed it. Maybe I'll have to catch it DVD. Quite simply for me, the whole "Jesus is God" and "Jesus is a Prophet & Messiah" could have easily been cleared up over 2,000 years ago (and this goes for Mohammed as well).

1. Let everyone know that the Earth is round, not flat.

2. Let everyone know that the Earth revolves around the sun, not the other way around.

3. Hey Jews, pack up your sh*t. We're going to North America!

Until someone can give me a reason why one of those three simple things didn't happen, I'll be extremely skeptical about any religion or anyone claiming to be God.

Agreed, or how about "Two strands entwined are the secret of life" ;)



James Cameron is not the "anti-christ".

James Cameron is not a fictional character. IMO, the "anti-christ" is.

James Cameron also has less chance of disproving the divinity of any historical figure than I do of wrangling a threesome with Mary Magdalene and Jezebel.