If You Tell a Lie About Christians Long Enough... (1 Viewer)

[Daisy]

People will believe it...

Recently an unbeliever tried to discredit me by saying Christians don’t use their brains. And he brought up the widely-held belief that Christians once insisted the earth was flat.

But that's a myth.

Early church fathers and theologians actually formed the largest group of individuals who advanced and supported the spherical earth view. And Christian scholars are credited with some of the best explanations of the spherical earth in ancient and Middle Age literature. In fact, early European missionaries spread the spherical earth view along with the gospel.

This myth about flat-earth Christians originated when Washington Irving wrote The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus. He mixed fact with fiction and created a story about foolish flat-earth Christians opposing Columbus’ voyages. And somehow this fiction became “fact,” and a popular way to discredit Christianity.

But we can rejoice even in this: “God blesses you when people mock you and persecute you and lie about you.” Matthew 5:11

And I might add that my rude commenter didn't take his own advice--he didn't use his brain. He accepted the myth about flat-earth Christians without checking its validity.

Note: Some people bring up the trial of Galileo as a proof that Christians believed in a flat earth. This is another example of not getting the facts straight. The trial of Galileo is a complex political, scientific and theological controversy. The scientific aspect was NOT about the shape of the earth. All parties believed in a spherical earth. It was over the widely accepted (but wrong) geocentric theory versus Galileo's correct heliocentric belief. It was not the church vs. science. There were scientists on both sides and Christians on both sides.
Want to read more? See: Wiki Galileo; Galileo Controversy

https://biblelovenotes.blogspot.com/2012/09/flat-earth.html

 

[Questerr]

A random Christian blog.

Yep, that's a nonbiased source and their story is definitely 100% true.

The Bible most definitely posits a flat circular earth covered by a dome with all the stars and planets orbiting it. It is true that Christians in Columbus's time believed the Earth was a sphere, but they did so in spite of the Bible, not because of it. The pagan Ancient Greeks proved the Earth was round at the time the Bible-believing Hebrews said it was flat.

 

[Hamish Howl]

Remember Giordano Bruno?

Neither do I.

 

[bongsaway]

I do remember a guy who said the earth was not the center of the universe, the church put him under house arrest the rest of his life. They wanted to kill him but then he agreed the earth was the center of the universe to save his own life.

Another failed thread about how the bible and god knows all.

 

[Noodlegawd]

People will believe it...


https://biblelovenotes.blogspot.com/2012/09/flat-earth.html

Oh no, those poor persecuted Christians. Wasn't Christopher Columbus a Christian? Wasn't pretty much everybody in Europe a Christian in the 1400s? Sounds like a made up grievance to me.

If people think that some Christians are dumb, it's because of what they do and say now, not because some of them might have believed the Earth was flat centuries ago.

 

[Logicman]

Oh no, those poor persecuted Christians. Wasn't Christopher Columbus a Christian? Wasn't pretty much everybody in Europe a Christian in the 1400s? Sounds like a made up grievance to me.

If people think that some Christians are dumb, it's because of what they do and say now, not because some of them might have believed the Earth was flat centuries ago.

I'll tell you who's dumb - the stiff-necked crowd who didn't do their homework on the historical Jesus and who have rejected Jesus' salvation for the remission of their sins, and will wind up in the Lake of Fire for that (Rev. 21:8).

It doesn't get any dumber than that.

 

[Questerr]

I'll tell you who's dumb - the stiff-necked crowd who didn't do their homework on the historical Jesus and who have rejected Jesus' salvation for the remission of their sins, and will wind up in the Lake of Fire for that (Rev. 21:8).

It doesn't get any dumber than that.

The historical Jesus has no verifiable evidence of any supernatural powers. Is that the Jesus we should believe existed? One that was just a man?

 

[HonestJoe]

People will believe it...

Not just about Christians. Any lie that is repeated enough can become commonly believed. That can be (and has been0 used by Christians as much as against them and, like so many things, will typically have nothing to do with Christianity at all, it not actually being the be-all and end-all of everything.

 

[Terryj]

I'll tell you who's dumb - the stiff-necked crowd who didn't do their homework on the historical Jesus and who have rejected Jesus' salvation for the remission of their sins, and will wind up in the Lake of Fire for that (Rev. 21:8).

It doesn't get any dumber than that.

As much as people like to write about the person called Jesus there is no historical evidence of the person as mentioned in the Gospels. Even Philo of Alexandria make no mention of Jesus and Philo was a contemporary of Jesus's time. One would think that if in Mark 15.33: "And when the sixth hour was come, there was darkness over the whole land until the ninth hour.", or in Matthew 27.52-53: "And the graves were opened; and many bodies of the saints which slept arose, And came out of the graves after his resurrection, and went into the holy city, and appeared unto many." that Philo would at least made a mention of it. After all Philo was very connected though out the region.

To be fair there is a paragraph in the writings of Josephus (The Antiquities of the Jews) that does mention the Christ, well, it reads more like Christian propaganda than the writings of Josephus, it just doesn't fit with Josephus's style of writing. Another thing is this, "Why only a paragraph" why not a whole chapter dedicated to Jesus the Christ after all he was God in the flesh.

Here is the paragraph: "Now, there was about this time, Jesus, a wise man, if it be lawful to call him a man, for he was a doer of wonderful works, a teacher of such men as receive the truth with pleasure. He drew over to him both many of the Jews, and many of the Gentiles. He was the Christ; and when Pilate, at the suggestion of the principal men amongst us, had condemned him to the cross, those that loved him at the first did not forsake him, for he appeared to them alive again the third day, as the divine prophets had foretold these and ten thousand other wonderful things concerning him; and the tribe of Christians, so named from him, are not extinct at this day."

With all due respect to Josephus, it is suggested that Bishop Eusebius, the self confessed liar-for-God, may have forged this paragraph into Josephus works around 340-345AD. If Josephus really believed what he wrote, why was he a devout Jew until his death and not convert to Christianity?

 

[Noodlegawd]

I'll tell you who's dumb - the stiff-necked crowd who didn't do their homework on the historical Jesus and who have rejected Jesus' salvation for the remission of their sins, and will wind up in the Lake of Fire for that (Rev. 21:8).

It doesn't get any dumber than that.

Doing homework on "historical Jesus" is no more useful than reading Harry Potter.

 

[Logicman]

As much as people like to write about the person called Jesus there is no historical evidence of the person as mentioned in the Gospels.

That's absurd.

"The fact is, the early church fathers were unanimous that Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John wrote the gospels that bear their names." Jesus is mentioned repeatedly in those Gospels.

"Following are web pages that contain the quotations of the early church fathers, confirming traditional Gospel authorship:"


Matthew

https://renewal-theology.com/2019/04/15/1-church-fathers-and-matthews-gospel/


Mark Authorship

https://renewal-theology.com/2019/04/15/2-church-fathers-and-marks-gospel/


References for Luke and John in the article below.

Who Wrote the Gospels?

Many have questioned who the original authors of the Gospels – Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John – were. Skeptics and those with a revisionist liberal agenda love to argue that the Gospels …

righterreport.com

 

[Questerr]

That's absurd.

"The fact is, the early church fathers were unanimous that Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John wrote the gospels that bear their names." Jesus is mentioned repeatedly in those Gospels.

"Following are web pages that contain the quotations of the early church fathers, confirming traditional Gospel authorship:"


Matthew

https://renewal-theology.com/2019/04/15/1-church-fathers-and-matthews-gospel/


Mark Authorship

https://renewal-theology.com/2019/04/15/2-church-fathers-and-marks-gospel/


References for Luke and John in the article below.

Who Wrote the Gospels?

Many have questioned who the original authors of the Gospels – Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John – were. Skeptics and those with a revisionist liberal agenda love to argue that the Gospels …

righterreport.com

The early church fathers were also unanimous that the Earth was the center of the universe and was orbited by the sun. Just because they believed something, that doesn’t make that belief right. They didn’t have original copies of the gospels either.

 

[Terryj]

That's absurd.

"The fact is, the early church fathers were unanimous that Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John wrote the gospels that bear their names." Jesus is mentioned repeatedly in those Gospels.

"Following are web pages that contain the quotations of the early church fathers, confirming traditional Gospel authorship:"


Matthew

https://renewal-theology.com/2019/04/15/1-church-fathers-and-matthews-gospel/


Mark Authorship

https://renewal-theology.com/2019/04/15/2-church-fathers-and-marks-gospel/


References for Luke and John in the article below.

Who Wrote the Gospels?

Many have questioned who the original authors of the Gospels – Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John – were. Skeptics and those with a revisionist liberal agenda love to argue that the Gospels …

righterreport.com

The early church fathers were liars and were well schooled in the practiced in the ways of deceit, "liars-for-God"

Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History, Vol. 8, chapter 2: "We shall introduce into this history in general only those events which may be useful first to ourselves and afterwards to posterity."

Clement of Alexandria: "Not all true things are the truth, nor should that truth which merely seems true according to human opinions be preferred to the true truth, that according to the faith."

John Chrysostom: "Do you see the advantage of deceit? ... For great is the value of deceit, provided it be not introduced with a mischievous intention. In fact action of this kind ought not to be called deceit, but rather a kind of good management, cleverness and skill, capable of finding out ways where resources fail, and making up for the defects of the mind ... And often it is necessary to deceive, and to do the greatest benefits by means of this device, whereas he who has gone by a straight course has done great mischief to the person whom he has not deceived."

The forgeries that prevailed were many, so many that no one new which was true and which were outright lies.

The Manichean bishop Faustus said this: "Many things have been inserted by our ancestors in the speeches of our Lord which, though put forth under his name, agree not with his faith; especially since – as already it has been often proved – these things were written not by Christ, nor his apostles, but a long while after their assumption, by I know not what sort of half Jews, not even agreeing with themselves, who made up their tale out of reports and opinions merely, and yet, fathering the whole upon the names of the apostles of the Lord or on those who were supposed to follow the apostles, they maliciously pretended that they had written their lies and conceits according to them."

This leads me to believe that the Gospels are not accurate in their content nor their authorship, one has to take this on faith, their were no eye witnesses to the writing of the Gospels, just hearsay.

 

[Logicman]

The early church fathers were liars....

Nonsense, and Faustus didn't appear in history until the fourth century, so you've got nothing there.

 

[Logicman]

their were no eye witnesses to the writing of the Gospels, just hearsay.

Wrong again - there were numerous eyewitnesses. As for hearsay,

If that's your standard you'll need to trash most of your history books, because an exceptionally large part of them are based on eyewitness testimonies and hearsay.

J. Warner Wallace, a former devout atheist for 35 years, and a cold case homicide detective familiar with the laws of evidence in a courtroom, commented on Eyewitness Reliability Related to Chronological Truths:

"The standard for establishing historical truths must, by necessity, be very different than the standard for criminal trials, unless, of course, we are willing to reject any claim of history for which we don’t have a living eyewitness (to cross-examine). History is established on the written testimony of eyewitnesses or the research of historians who have access to such testimony. If we rejected every claim about the past that couldn’t be supported by living testimony, we’d be forced to live in the present, unsure of anything that precedes us by more than two generations."

So, you ready to trash your ancient history books, based on your own standards of evidence?

https://coldcasechristianity.com/writings/why-the-hearsay-rule-shouldnt-apply-to-the-gospels/

 

[Questerr]

Wrong again - there were numerous eyewitnesses. As for hearsay,

If that's your standard you'll need to trash most of your history books, because an exceptionally large part of them are based on eyewitness testimonies and hearsay.

J. Warner Wallace, a former devout atheist for 35 years, and a cold case homicide detective familiar with the laws of evidence in a courtroom, commented on Eyewitness Reliability Related to Chronological Truths:

"The standard for establishing historical truths must, by necessity, be very different than the standard for criminal trials, unless, of course, we are willing to reject any claim of history for which we don’t have a living eyewitness (to cross-examine). History is established on the written testimony of eyewitnesses or the research of historians who have access to such testimony. If we rejected every claim about the past that couldn’t be supported by living testimony, we’d be forced to live in the present, unsure of anything that precedes us by more than two generations."

So, you ready to trash your ancient history books, based on your own standards of evidence?

https://coldcasechristianity.com/writings/why-the-hearsay-rule-shouldnt-apply-to-the-gospels/

The problem with this claim is that we have zero original copies of these supposed “eyewitness accounts”. We have copies of copies of fragmentary copies. There is no way to tell how they were changed in the interim.

 

[Terryj]

Wrong again - there were numerous eyewitnesses. As for hearsay,

If that's your standard you'll need to trash most of your history books, because an exceptionally large part of them are based on eyewitness testimonies and hearsay.

J. Warner Wallace, a former devout atheist for 35 years, and a cold case homicide detective familiar with the laws of evidence in a courtroom, commented on Eyewitness Reliability Related to Chronological Truths:

"The standard for establishing historical truths must, by necessity, be very different than the standard for criminal trials, unless, of course, we are willing to reject any claim of history for which we don’t have a living eyewitness (to cross-examine). History is established on the written testimony of eyewitnesses or the research of historians who have access to such testimony. If we rejected every claim about the past that couldn’t be supported by living testimony, we’d be forced to live in the present, unsure of anything that precedes us by more than two generations."

So, you ready to trash your ancient history books, based on your own standards of evidence?

https://coldcasechristianity.com/writings/why-the-hearsay-rule-shouldnt-apply-to-the-gospels/

I'm not saying that a person named Jesus didn't exist, I'm just saying that he didn't exist in the way that the Gospels portray him. There may have well been a Jesus walking around teaching the things he believed in but it was of no real importance, this is why there is no mention of him in the writings of Philo and just a short paragraph in the writings of Josephus (which have been proven a fraud). Religious teachers were a dime a dozen during the times of Jesus, so it was not surprising that he was not mentioned.

 

[Logicman]

I'm not saying that a person named Jesus didn't exist, I'm just saying that he didn't exist in the way that the Gospels portray him. There may have well been a Jesus walking around teaching the things he believed in but it was of no real importance, this is why there is no mention of him in the writings of Philo and just a short paragraph in the writings of Josephus (which have been proven a fraud). Religious teachers were a dime a dozen during the times of Jesus, so it was not surprising that he was not mentioned.

Actually only a few parts of what Josephus wrote about Jesus was what is known as an interpolation. The rest of it is real. Most scholars take that view. I can give you info on that if you want.

Sounds like you don't believe in the supernatural / miracles. To date, science has never demonstrated that God and the supernatural do not and cannot exist. People have been reporting miracles for centuries.

 

[Drowning Man]

Revelation 7:1
After this I saw four angels standing at the four corners of the earth, holding back the four winds of the earth so that no wind could blow on earth or sea or against any tree.

Revelation 20:8
and will go out to deceive the nations in the four corners of the earth—Gog and Magog—and to gather them for battle. In number they are like the sand on the seashore.

Isaiah 11:12
He will raise a banner for the nations and gather the exiles of Israel; he will assemble the scattered people of Judah from the four quarters of the earth

 

[Terryj]

Actually only a few parts of what Josephus wrote about Jesus was what is known as an interpolation. The rest of it is real. Most scholars take that view. I can give you info on that if you want.

Sounds like you don't believe in the supernatural / miracles. To date, science has never demonstrated that God and the supernatural do not and cannot exist. People have been reporting miracles for centuries.

Logicman, don't assume I'm an atheist for I am not. I do not believe in an anthropomorphic God, my views and beliefs are more along the lines of Pantheism, there is no separation between this source called God and reality, all things are of it. So no I don't believe in the so call "supernatural" or "miracles" all things are natural, and so called miracles are just events that we fail to understand, because in Pantheism all things are endowed with this spirit we call God and therefore what ever traits you give God you must give to creation, again, they are not separate.

 

[Logicman]

Logicman, don't assume I'm an atheist for I am not. I do not believe in an anthropomorphic God, my views and beliefs are more along the lines of Pantheism, there is no separation between this source called God and reality, all things are of it. So no I don't believe in the so call "supernatural" or "miracles" all things are natural, and so called miracles are just events that we fail to understand, because in Pantheism all things are endowed with this spirit we call God and therefore what ever traits you give God you must give to creation, again, they are not separate.

I believe God is separate from his creation.

Anyway, believe as you will, but don't think for a moment Christianity is false because you will be unable to make that case with any kind of evidence or substantiation. I've studied it historically for almost 50 years now and it's solid as a rock. There's even evidence for a great miracle at the time of the crucifixion that's confirmed by outside sources.

Documenting A Miracle

THE SUN DARKENED AT NOON Circa 750 B.C. According to Amos 1:1, Amos prophesied during the reigns of Uzziah, king of Judah (767-739 B.C.), and Jeroboam, king of Israel (782-753 B.C.). The name &#822…

righterreport.com

 

[devildavid]

Actually only a few parts of what Josephus wrote about Jesus was what is known as an interpolation. The rest of it is real. Most scholars take that view. I can give you info on that if you want.

Sounds like you don't believe in the supernatural / miracles. To date, science has never demonstrated that God and the supernatural do not and cannot exist. People have been reporting miracles for centuries.

Science does not examine imaginary things because... well...they are imaginary.