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Hilarious Lunatic

God has always existed - so what was he doing before he made Heaven and Earth?

Earth is billions of years old, so why did God only start making people a few thousand years ago? (According to the bible)

Who created God?

If Jesus Christ was God and human, then doesn't that make him a demigod?

Isn't Jesus just a ripoff of Horus, Mithra, and other pagan gods?

Why did God only have one kid?

Didn't the Jews make up God - known as Yahweh? Christians technically worship a Jewish god.

What if Jesus didn't rise from the dead? In Ahmaddiya Islam, Jesus survived the crucifixion, was taken down alive and unconscious, and was treated in the tomb.

If Jesus was God, then did God sacrifice Himself?

But how could God/Jesus die if God is immortal?

If Jesus died and then rose, then his death wasn't a sacrifice.

Liberal Friend

Fullmetal Gurren Titan
God has always existed - so what was he doing before he made Heaven and Earth?


"Behold, I answer to him who asks, 'What was God doing before He made heaven and earth?' I answer not, as a certain person is reported to have done facetiously (avoiding the pressure of the question), 'He was preparing hell,' saith he, 'for those who pry into mysteries.'" - The Confessions, ch. xii

Fullmetal Gurren Titan
Earth is billions of years old, so why did God only start making people a few thousand years ago? (According to the bible)


Because the people in that time only wrote down what they currently observed.

Fullmetal Gurren Titan
Who created God?


Humans.

Fullmetal Gurren Titan
If Jesus Christ was God and human, then doesn't that make him a demigod?


Most Christians believe Jesus was fully human and fully divine, making him not a demigod. I know, that doesn't make any sense to me, either.

Fullmetal Gurren Titan
Isn't Jesus just a ripoff of Horus, Mithra, and other pagan gods?


Nah.

Fullmetal Gurren Titan
Why did God only have one kid?


Well, if you're a Mormon, God had more than one child. If you're familiar with the Ugaritic religion, that question doesn't apply, either. If you're a typical Christian, the answer is that we're all God's children. Jesus is just unique.

Fullmetal Gurren Titan
Didn't the Jews make up God - known as Yahweh? Christians technically worship a Jewish god.


The Canaanites did and now Christians follow a derivative of Yahweh, but not Yahweh himself.

Fullmetal Gurren Titan
What if Jesus didn't rise from the dead? In Ahmaddiya Islam, Jesus survived the crucifixion, was taken down alive and unconscious, and was treated in the tomb.


Then Christianity would still be around. If people could believe Paul and Barnabas were Hermes and Zeus, or believe that Paul was a god because a snake bite didn't cause him to die, then you soon realize how superstitious people were and still are.

Fullmetal Gurren Titan
If Jesus was God, then did God sacrifice Himself?


The answer would be that Jesus is the son of God, not the father, meaning that only the son was crucified. I know, it doesn't make any sense to me, either.

Fullmetal Gurren Titan
But how could God/Jesus die if God is immortal?


You'll be told that Jesus had two natures and that only the human nature died, but I don't think natures die. I think people do. So technically, God died.

Fullmetal Gurren Titan
If Jesus died and then rose, then his death wasn't a sacrifice.


It was presumably planned out, so it was more of a plan to die and then come back to hang out with his pals.

Omnipresent Loiterer

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God has always existed - so what was he doing before he made Heaven and Earth?


His chores...

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Earth is billions of years old, so why did God only start making people a few thousand years ago? (According to the bible)


The same reason why, even if you have an essay that's not due for another month, you don't do it until the night before: god's just lazy.

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Who created God?


Duh...Mega-god.

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If Jesus Christ was God and human, then doesn't that make him a demigod?


Depends on which denomination you're in.

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Isn't Jesus just a ripoff of Horus, Mithra, and other pagan gods?


Not really a ripoff as much as it was a pissing contest. Like "oh yeah, well you think your religious figure did some cool s**t? Well, listen to what ours did!"

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Why did God only have one kid?


Cause he learned the errors of his ways and started wearing condoms.

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Didn't the Jews make up God - known as Yahweh? Christians technically worship a Jewish god.


Not really the jewish god as much as it is the abrahamic god, which the muslims also worship as well.

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What if Jesus didn't rise from the dead?


He didn't...

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In Ahmaddiya Islam, Jesus survived the crucifixion, was taken down alive and unconscious, and was treated in the tomb.


Even if their version of events were true, who cares?

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If Jesus was God, then did God sacrifice Himself?


Again, it depends on what denomination you're talking about. Not all christians view jesus as god.

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But how could God/Jesus die if God is immortal?


...A book full of ludicrous s**t like a dude living in a whale, and that's the part you're confused about?

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If Jesus died and then rose, then his death wasn't a sacrifice.


You're right...it wasn't.
Fullmetal Gurren Titan
God has always existed - so what was he doing before he made Heaven and Earth?


Unfortunately, this is something that I don't know. But I've run a Google search for you, and this is what I found.

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Our finite minds find it hard to comprehend that before the universe was created, God existed alone. We know from John 1:1 that Jesus also existed: “In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The preincarnate Christ was intimately united with the Father, so as to partake of His glory and to be appropriately called God. He has Himself explained it in John 17:5: “And now Father, glorify Me with Yourself with the glory which I had with You before the world was.”

We also know that the Holy Spirit was present before we were created. Genesis 1:2 describes the Spirit “hovering over the face” of the dark and formless earth. So, before time even existed, God existed in three Persons: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. The Trinity existed in perfect harmony and flawlessness, having all they needed in one another. David said in Psalms 16:11 that "joy and pleasures forever more" are in the presence of God. That means to be in the presence of God carries with it an overwhelming sense of joy, fulfillment, and pleasure. Before creation, God felt complete joy and fulfillment as He perfectly beheld and communed with Himself. God has and always will experience complete joy because He has complete and perfect knowledge of Himself.

So before He created the universe, God experienced absolute satisfaction in Himself. God dwelt joyfully alone in eternity as the Trinity. These three were together in fellowship with one another from all eternity. They loved each other. We know at some point they discussed the redemption of mankind (Ephesians 1:4-5; 2 Timothy 1:9; John 17:24), but everything else lies in mystery.


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Earth is billions of years old, so why did God only start making people a few thousand years ago? (According to the bible)


As for the age of the earth, this is what the same website had to say about it:

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Given the fact that, according to the Bible, Adam was created on the sixth day of our planet’s existence, we can determine a biblically based, approximate age for the earth by looking at the chronological details of the human race. This assumes that the Genesis account is accurate, that the six days of creation were literal 24-hour periods, and that there were no ambiguous gaps in the chronology of Genesis.

The genealogies listed in Genesis chapters 5 and 11 provide the age at which Adam and his descendants each fathered the next generation in a successive ancestral line from Adam to Abraham. By determining where Abraham fits into history chronologically and adding up the ages provided in Genesis 5 and 11, it becomes apparent that the Bible teaches the earth to be about 6000 years old, give or take a few hundred years.

What about the billions of years accepted by most scientists today and taught in the vast majority of our academic institutions? This age is primarily derived from two dating techniques: radiometric dating and the geologic timescale. Scientists who advocate the younger age of about 6000 years insist that radiometric dating is flawed in that it is founded upon a series of faulty assumptions, while the geologic timescale is flawed in that it employs circular reasoning. Moreover, they point to the debunking of old-earth myths, like the popular misconception that it takes long periods of time for stratification, fossilization and the formation of diamonds, coal, oil, stalactites, stalagmites, etc, to occur. Finally, young-earth advocates present positive evidence for a young age for the earth in place of the old-earth evidences which they debunk. Young-earth scientists acknowledge that they are in the minority today but insist that their ranks will swell over time as more and more scientists reexamine the evidence and take a closer look at the currently accepted old-earth paradigm.

Ultimately, the age of the earth cannot be proven. Whether 6000 years or billions of years, both viewpoints (and everything in between) rest on faith and assumptions. Those who hold to billions of years trust that methods such as radiometric dating are reliable and that nothing has occurred in history that may have disrupted the normal decay of radio-isotopes. Those who hold to 6000 years trust that the Bible is true and that other factors explain the “apparent” age of the earth, such as the global flood, or God’s creating the universe in a state that “appears” to give it a very long age. As an example, God created Adam and Eve as fully-grown adult human beings. If a doctor had examined Adam and Eve on the day of their creation, the doctor would have estimated their age at 20 years (or whatever age they appeared to be) when, in fact, Adam and Eve were less than one day old. Whatever the case, there is always good reason to trust the Word of God over the words of atheistic scientists with an evolutionary agenda.


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Who created God?


Nobody created God. God always existed; He always was, always has been, and always will be. God created us, and we did not create God.

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If Jesus Christ was God and human, then doesn't that make him a demigod?


No. A demigod is defined as a being with partial or lesser divine status, such as a minor deity, the offspring of a god and a mortal, or a mortal raised to divine rank. Jesus is fully God, and always has been. He is not any less than God the Father or God the Holy Ghost, but is just as much God as they are. He is not a minor deity; He is the God.

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Isn't Jesus just a ripoff of Horus, Mithra, and other pagan gods?


No. Jesus is a real, historical person who lived, taught about God, was crucified, and resurrected. Historians such as Josephus and Tacitus, among others, have written about Jesus.

Here is more information for you about this.

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There are a number of people claiming that the accounts of Jesus as recorded in the New Testament are simply myths borrowed from pagan folklore, such as the stories of Osiris, Dionysus, Adonis, Attis, and Mithras. The claim is that these myths are essentially the same story as the New Testament’s narrative of Jesus Christ of Nazareth. As Dan Brown claims in The Da Vinci Code, “Nothing in Christianity is original.”

To discover the truth about the claim that the Gospel writers borrowed from mythology, it is important to (1) unearth the history behind the assertions, (2) examine the actual portrayals of the false gods being compared to Christ, (3) expose any logical fallacies being made, and (4) look at why the New Testament Gospels are trustworthy depictions of the true and historical Jesus Christ.

The claim that Jesus was a myth or an exaggeration originated in the writings of liberal German theologians in the nineteenth century. They essentially said that Jesus was nothing more than a copy of popular dying-and-rising fertility gods in various places—Tammuz in Mesopotamia, Adonis in Syria, Attis in Asia Minor, and Horus in Egypt. Of note is the fact that none of the books containing these theories were taken seriously by the academics of the day. The assertion that Jesus was a recycled Tammuz, for example, was investigated by contemporary scholars and determined to be completely baseless. It has only been recently that these assertions have been resurrected, primarily due to the rise of the Internet and the mass distribution of information from unaccountable sources.

This leads us to the next area of investigation—do the mythological gods of antiquity really mirror the person of Jesus Christ? As an example, the Zeitgeist movie makes these claims about the Egyptian god Horus:

• He was born on December 25 of a virgin: Isis Mary
• A star in the East proclaimed his arrival
• Three kings came to adore the newborn “savior”
• He became a child prodigy teacher at age 12
• At age 30 he was “baptized” and began a “ministry”
• Horus had twelve “disciples”
• Horus was betrayed
• He was crucified
• He was buried for three days
• He was resurrected after three days

However, when the actual writings about Horus are competently examined, this is what we find:

• Horus was born to Isis; there is no mention in history of her being called “Mary.” Moreover, “Mary” is our Anglicized form of her real name, Miryam or Miriam. “Mary” was not even used in the original texts of Scripture.
• Isis was not a virgin; she was the widow of Osiris and conceived Horus with Osiris.
• Horus was born during month of Khoiak (Oct/Nov), not December 25. Further, there is no mention in the Bible as to Christ’s actual birth date.
• There is no record of three kings visiting Horus at his birth. The Bible never states the actual number of magi that came to see Christ.
• Horus is not a “savior” in any way; he did not die for anyone.
• There are no accounts of Horus being a teacher at the age of 12.
• Horus was not “baptized.” The only account of Horus that involves water is one story where Horus is torn to pieces, with Isis requesting the crocodile god to fish him out of the water.
• Horus did not have a “ministry.”
• Horus did not have 12 disciples. According to the Horus accounts, Horus had four demigods that followed him, and there are some indications of 16 human followers and an unknown number of blacksmiths that went into battle with him.
• There is no account of Horus being betrayed by a friend.
• Horus did not die by crucifixion. There are various accounts of Horus’ death, but none of them involve crucifixion.
• There is no account of Horus being buried for three days.
• Horus was not resurrected. There is no account of Horus coming out of the grave with the body he went in with. Some accounts have Horus/Osiris being brought back to life by Isis and then becoming the lord of the underworld.

When compared side by side, Jesus and Horus bear little, if any, resemblance to one another.

Jesus is also compared to Mithras by those claiming that Jesus Christ is a myth. All the above descriptions of Horus are applied to Mithras (e.g., born of a virgin, being crucified, rising in three days, etc.). But what does the Mithras myth actually say?

• He was born out of a solid rock, not from any woman.
• He battled first with the sun and then with a primeval bull, thought to be the first act of creation. Mithras killed the bull, which then became the ground of life for the human race.
• Mithras’s birth was celebrated on December 25, along with winter solstice.
• There is no mention of his being a great teacher.
• There is no mention of Mithras having 12 disciples. The idea that Mithras had 12 disciples may have come from a mural in which Mithras is surrounded by the twelve signs of the zodiac.
• Mithras had no bodily resurrection. Rather, when Mithras completed his earthly mission, he was taken to paradise in a chariot, alive and well. The early Christian writer Tertullian did write about Mithraic cultists re-enacting resurrection scenes, but this occurred well after New Testament times, so if any copycatting was done, it was Mithraism copying Christianity.

More examples can be given of Krishna, Attis, Dionysus, and other mythological gods, but the result is the same. In the end, the historical Jesus portrayed in the Bible is unique. The alleged similarities of Jesus’ story to pagan myths are greatly exaggerated. Further, while tales of Horus, Mithras, and others pre-date Christianity, there is very little historical record of the pre-Christian beliefs of those religions. The vast majority of the earliest writings of these religions date from the third and fourth centuries A.D. To assume that the pre-Christian beliefs of these religions (of which there is no record) were identical to their post-Christian beliefs is naive. It is more logical to attribute any similarities between these religions and Christianity to the religions’ copying Christian teaching about Jesus.

This leads us to the next area to examine: the logical fallacies committed by those claiming that Christianity borrowed from pagan mystery religions. We’ll consider two fallacies in particular: the fallacy of the false cause and the terminological fallacy.

If one thing precedes another, some conclude that the first thing must have caused the second. This is the fallacy of the false cause. A rooster may crow before the sunrise every morning, but that does not mean the rooster causes the sun to rise. Even if pre-Christian accounts of mythological gods closely resembled Christ (and they do not), it does not mean they caused the Gospel writers to invent a false Jesus. Making such a claim is akin to saying the TV series Star Trek caused the NASA Space Shuttle program.

The terminological fallacy occurs when words are redefined to prove a point. For example, the Zeitgeist movie says that Horus “began his ministry,” but the word ministry is being redefined. Horus had no actual “ministry”—nothing like that of Christ’s ministry. Those claiming a link between Mithras and Jesus talk about the “baptism” that initiated prospects into the Mithras cult, but what was it actually? Mithraic priests would place initiates into a pit, suspend a bull over the pit, and slit the bull’s stomach, covering the initiates in blood and gore. Such a practice bears no resemblance whatsoever to Christian baptism—a person going under water (symbolizing the death of Christ) and then coming back out of the water (symbolizing Christ’s resurrection). But advocates of a mythological Jesus deceptively use the same term, “baptism,” to describe both rites in hopes of linking the two.

This brings us to the subject of the truthfulness of the New Testament. No other work of antiquity has more evidence to its historical veracity than the New Testament. The New Testament has more writers (nine), better writers, and earlier writers than any other document from that era. Further, history testifies that these writers went to their deaths claiming that Jesus had risen from the dead. While some may die for a lie they think is true, no person dies for a lie he knows to be false. Think about it—if someone was about to crucify you upside down, as happened to the apostle Peter, and all you had to do to save your life was renounce a lie you had knowingly told, what would you do?

In addition, history has shown that it takes at least two generations to pass before myth can enter a historical account. That’s because, as long as there are eyewitnesses to an event, errors can be refuted and mythical embellishments can be exposed. All the Gospels of the New Testament were written during the lifetime of the eyewitnesses, with some of Paul’s Epistles being written as early as A.D. 50. Paul directly appeals to contemporary eyewitnesses to verify his testimony (1 Corinthians 15:6).

The New Testament attests to the fact that, in the first century, Jesus was not mistaken for any other god. When Paul preached in Athens, the elite thinkers of that city said, “‘He seems to be a proclaimer of strange deities,’—because he was preaching Jesus and the resurrection. And they took him and brought him to the Areopagus, saying, ‘May we know what this new teaching is which you are proclaiming? For you are bringing some strange things to our ears; so we want to know what these things mean’” (Acts 17:18–20, NASB). Clearly, if Paul were simply rehashing stories of other gods, the Athenians would not have referred to his doctrine as a “new” and “strange” teaching. If dying-and-rising gods were plentiful in the first century, why, when the apostle Paul preached Jesus rising from the dead, did the Epicureans and Stoics not remark, “Ah, just like Horus and Mithras”?

In conclusion, the claim that Jesus is a copy of mythological gods originated with authors whose works have been discounted by academia, contain logical fallacies, and cannot compare to the New Testament Gospels, which have withstood nearly 2,000 years of intense scrutiny. The alleged parallels between Jesus and other gods disappear when the original myths are examined. The Jesus-is-a-myth theory relies on selective descriptions, redefined words, and false assumptions.

Jesus Christ is unique in history, with His voice rising above all false gods’ as He asks the question that ultimately determines a person’s eternal destiny: “Who do you say I am?” (Matthew 16:15).


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Why did God only have one kid?


God is three persons in one: Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. God the Father sent His son to die for our sins; God the Son (Jesus) willingly came to earth out of love for His Father and His creation to die and redeem us to Himself; God the Holy Ghost gave Him the power that He needed for His earthly ministry and lives inside each and every Christian who truly accepts Jesus as Savior.

That is why there is only one Son. Because that's just who God is.

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Didn't the Jews make up God - known as Yahweh? Christians technically worship a Jewish god.


Christians do worship a Jewish God.

And no, the Jews did not make God up. God always existed, and He chose the Jewish people in order to work His redemptive plan and to show the world His love for them. He chose them to be a special witness to the world.

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What if Jesus didn't rise from the dead? In Ahmaddiya Islam, Jesus survived the crucifixion, was taken down alive and unconscious, and was treated in the tomb.


The Jewish High Priest wanted Jesus crucified because He threatened their power in the region. They were corrupt and greedy, and they did not appreciate how outspoken Jesus was against the way they were running things. They saw Him as the enemy that He never was, charged Him with blasphemy, and they delivered Him up to Rome to be crucified.

Blasphemy is not worthy of the death penalty under Roman law, but the fact that Jesus also claimed to be King was. The Romans saw it as treason, and so they charged Jesus and delivered Him to the Roman garrisons to be crucified.

As the day had wore on, Pontius Pilate ordered that those who were crucified have their legs broken so that they would die quicker. It was against the law to have people hanging on a cross overnight. When the Roman soldiers had arrived at Jesus's cross, they saw that He had already died. Roman soldiers were really good about making sure their victims were dead. They crucified many, many people and they would not have mistaken Jesus's own death. In fact, to make sure that He really was dead, they pierced his side with a spear.

Joseph of Arimathea, a wealthy member of the Jewish council called the Sanhedrin, petitioned Pilate for Jesus's body so He could be buried in his tomb. Pilate granted the request, and they buried Jesus.

The Jewish High Priest, very much aware of the fact that Jesus publicly claimed, multiple times, that He would rise from the dead on the third day, wanted to ensure that He was dead, gone, and buried, and would not rise from the dead. To make sure that His disciples would not come and steal His body away in the night and claim that Jesus rose from the dead, the high priest ordered Temple guards to stand guard in front of the tomb. Additionally, Rome also stationed their own soldiers outside of the tomb that Jesus was buried in and placed a Roman seal across the stone. Breaking a Roman seal made one guilty and worthy of the death penalty. Nobody would be getting into that tomb to treat Jesus or to steal His body away.

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If Jesus was God, then did God sacrifice Himself?


Yes. He did. He sacrificed Himself out of His love for us, in spite of everything that we have done to Him. He suffered everything and gave His all for each and every one of us that is alive now.

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But how could God/Jesus die if God is immortal?


Just as Jesus is fully divine, He is also fully mortal. He gave up His power, His throne, His immortality, all for a time so He could come to this earth and pay the penalty for our sins. And just as He had the power to lay down his own life for us and die, He also had the power to take up His life and rise from the dead. And because He lives, we can live with Him if we have faith in Him. That is what sets Jesus apart from other Messiahs, other Christs, and other religious leaders. Jesus is the only one who rose from the dead and is currently living.

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If Jesus died and then rose, then his death wasn't a sacrifice.


Just because Jesus died, then rose again, doesn't mean that His death wasn't a sacrifice. He suffered on that cross for six hours. He bled just as we do. He felt pain just as we do. He physically died, just as we do. His heart stopped beating, his soul left his body, and he was dead. That's a pretty serious sacrifice.

Then He rose from the dead so that we can live with Him as well.

Magical Investigator

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Awful lot of non-Christians in this thread. Why not add one more? I have some legit info though.
Fullmetal Gurren Titan
God has always existed - so what was he doing before he made Heaven and Earth?

Twiddling his thumbs. Jerking off. Okay, maybe not always legit.

Fullmetal Gurren Titan
Earth is billions of years old, so why did God only start making people a few thousand years ago? (According to the bible)

Dude. According to the Bible (and Creationists) the world was only created a few thousand years ago. Honestly, science isn't that much better as far as human age though, we get maybe 200,000 years since the first modern humans (Homo sapiens) appeared, at the earliest. But science doesn't presume it's all here for us, anyway. emotion_awesome

Fullmetal Gurren Titan
Who created God?

Nobody...? Honestly though, this is the most glaring flaw of the whole "Watchmaker hypothesis." If the world can only exist due to the interaction of an outside force, then where did that force come from? Why don't people ask this question nearly enough?

Fullmetal Gurren Titan
If Jesus Christ was God and human, then doesn't that make him a demigod?

Arguably, yes. Though a demigod is (quite literally) a half-god. The term is often used for minor gods, mortals who attained godhood, and (most fittingly) individuals with one human and one god as parents.

Christians don't seem to view Jesus in this way though. They believe Jesus to be God incarnate, which is more in line with the Hindu beliefs of avatars.

Fullmetal Gurren Titan
Isn't Jesus just a ripoff of Horus, Mithra, and other pagan gods?

Nope. But in its spread, he (like many gods before him) was associated with them as an attempt to "prove" his legitimacy.

Fullmetal Gurren Titan
Why did God only have one kid?

Funny thing, actually. If I recall correctly, early on in the Bible angels as the children of God, and I think later (or at least, now) it's used to refer to all of humanity.

Fullmetal Gurren Titan
Didn't the Jews make up God - known as Yahweh? Christians technically worship a Jewish god.

Erm... no, then yes. As far as I've gathered, Yahweh was a Canaanite god. The trouble is, the Hebrews have traveled a lot, so they've picked up a lot of concepts. Monotheism could have come from rumors of Akhenaten and his sun god. They certainly picked up the description of the Ark of the Covenant by the Egyptians' portable shrines. I mean, they could have had it before then (many cultures have this concept), but the Biblical narrative says it occurred after.

Also, as the Bible itself was actually written during the Babylonian exile, it's very possible a number of narratives (such as the Flood) were influenced by Babylonian mythology too.

Still... yeah, the early Christians were Jewish. Jesus was also Jewish. But eventually it spread, and changed, and is now pretty unrecognizable as a Jewish religion.

Fullmetal Gurren Titan
What if Jesus didn't rise from the dead? In Ahmaddiya Islam, Jesus survived the crucifixion, was taken down alive and unconscious, and was treated in the tomb.

Uhmmm... personal opinion here, editorial, non-educational, but I think the whole "rose from the dead" thing is pretty much a creation by the Christians to assert something special about their founder and give credence to their belief in him as the Messiah, which was sort of disproven by the fact that he died before saving Israel. Even the whole "his death saved us" is sort of grasping at straws, nothing was ever spoken of before that as the endgoal.

Fullmetal Gurren Titan
If Jesus was God, then did God sacrifice Himself?

Yyyyyes?

Fullmetal Gurren Titan
But how could God/Jesus die if God is immortal?

Like I said, avatar. But according to Christians, that's sort of the point and why he came back, I guess.

Fullmetal Gurren Titan
If Jesus died and then rose, then his death wasn't a sacrifice.

Exactly! That's been my grief for years. "Oh, but he suffered." Bullshit, everybody suffers! According to the Bible he had a pretty sweet ******** life up until he was murdered, that's not feeling the pain of a ******** human being!
Fullmetal Gurren Titan
If Jesus died and then rose, then his death wasn't a sacrifice.


His leaving this plane of existence was the sacrifice. And the crucifixion.
Lucky~9~Lives
Fullmetal Gurren Titan
If Jesus died and then rose, then his death wasn't a sacrifice.


His leaving this plane of existence was the sacrifice. And the crucifixion.


Surely, sacrifices are supposed to stay dead?
Fermionic
Lucky~9~Lives
Fullmetal Gurren Titan
If Jesus died and then rose, then his death wasn't a sacrifice.


His leaving this plane of existence was the sacrifice. And the crucifixion.


Surely, sacrifices are supposed to stay dead?


Indeed, sacrifices, plural; one is okay.
Lucky~9~Lives
Fermionic
Lucky~9~Lives
Fullmetal Gurren Titan
If Jesus died and then rose, then his death wasn't a sacrifice.


His leaving this plane of existence was the sacrifice. And the crucifixion.


Surely, sacrifices are supposed to stay dead?


Indeed, sacrifices, plural; one is okay.


Not for the Romans; what a lot of time He wasted.

Quotable Dabbler

As a Christian w/ a rule book which my Lord expects His children obey.

Titus 3:9 But avoid foolish questions, and genealogies, and contentions, and strivings about the law; for they are unprofitable and vain.


2Timothy 2:23 But foolish and unlearned questions avoid, knowing that they do gender strifes.


i personally suspect you already have your mind made up and seek to begin a debate and argue to prove why you're right and why we're wrong.

Mora Starseed's Husband

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(I'm going to just ignore most of the instances where you beg the question of God's existence and Biblical validity, because if I didn't this post would be three times as long as it already is.)
Jewish at Heart
Fullmetal Gurren Titan
God has always existed - so what was he doing before he made Heaven and Earth?
Unfortunately, this is something that I don't know. But I've run a Google search for you, and this is what I found.
The website you quoted is GotQuestions.org, an online fundamentalist Christian ministry. Unsurprisingly, they deny scientific evidence, support Young Earth Creationism, and seem to be highly skeptical of anthropogenic global warming. They also seem to be suffering from the delusion that every scientist born before 1900 were all Christians and Creationists (especially Newton and Copernicus), that history supports - nay, proves - the authenticity of the Bible, and that the evidence for God's existence is so obvious, anyone who thinks he doesn't exist is just in denial.

On the other hand, they misrepresent every position which conflicts their own, saying such things as "agnostics don't believe in absolute truths", "Hinduism is pantheistic", and insinuating that there's some sort of anti-religious motive amongst the scientific community... as evidenced by this line from the second time you quoted them:
GotQuestions, 'What is the age of the earth? How old is the earth?'
Whatever the case, there is always good reason to trust the Word of God over the words of atheistic scientists with an evolutionary agenda.
Since when is the scientific community explicitly atheistic, and since when does it have an "agenda" beyond wanting to understand how things are?
Jewish at Heart
Fullmetal Gurren Titan
Who created God?
Nobody created God. God always existed; He always was, always has been, and always will be.
Doesn't that fly in the face of First Cause arguments, which are often used to support the idea of a creator?

I mean, if "everything has a cause", how can one say that the universe's existence was caused by God on the one hand, while saying that God has no cause on the other? Isn't that a double-standard?
Jewish at Heart
Fullmetal Gurren Titan
If Jesus Christ was God and human, then doesn't that make him a demigod?
No. A demigod is defined as a being with partial or lesser divine status, such as a minor deity, the offspring of a god and a mortal, or a mortal raised to divine rank.
You're actually right about Jesus not being a Demigod; based on Christian Dogma, he'd be God's Avatar.
Jewish at Heart
Jesus is fully God, and always has been. He is not any less than God the Father or God the Holy Ghost, but is just as much God as they are. He is not a minor deity; He is the God.
Funny thing about the Trinity... All three of its members violate the Law of Identity - and things which violate the Law of Identity do not exist, because there is no entity that is not itself.
Jewish at Heart
Jesus is a real, historical person who lived, taught about God, was crucified, and resurrected. Historians such as Josephus and Tacitus, among others, have written about Jesus.
Those first three things may have been spoken of (collectively) by Josephus and Tacitus, but the latter was not, and neither of them were eyewitnesses to any part of it, despite popular Christian assertions to the contrary by sites like (and including) GotQuestions.

Josephus' birth was in 37 CE, and he didn't write his Antiquities until 93 CE. Similarly, Tacitus wasn't born until 56 CE, and didn't write his Annals for another 60 years. How the two of them were able to write with firsthand knowledge about events said to take place before they were even born always seems to come as a surprise to Christians who cite him. Why, it's almost as though they just look up quotes without any understanding of what constitutes a valid source for determining historical events...

Anyway, most scholars are of the opinion that Josephus' two paragraphs about Jesus are the result of deliberate edits made by a later Church father (most likely, Eusebius of Caesarea), and the only thing that Tacitus says about him is that the Christians of his day claim he was executed by Pilate.

Acknowledging what some people in a cult are saying (because at the time that's all Christianity was) is a far cry from a confirmation of that thing actually existing.
Jewish at Heart
Fullmetal Gurren Titan
Why did God only have one kid?
God is three persons in one: Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.
Another funny thing about the Trinity is that it's not actually a Biblical concept. At no point in the Bible does the word "trinity" appear, nor is the number 3 or any of its derivatives used to describe the nature of God. Likewise, the Holy Spirit is never conflated with being either God or Jesus throughout scripture.

The only thing resembling a trinitarian passage are Jesus' baptismal instructions during the Great Commission (which aren't even unambiguously trinitarian in nature), and a deliberate redaction made to 1 John.
Jewish at Heart
Fullmetal Gurren Titan
Didn't the Jews make up God - known as Yahweh? Christians technically worship a Jewish god.

Christians do worship a Jewish God.
...just not the one they think they do.

The entity known as "God" got his start as part of the Canaanite pantheon. He held the position of what was essentially a god of war, leading the Israelites to victory in battle in exchange for their exclusive patronage and worship. Over time, as the Israelites evolved from a henotheistic culture into a monotheistic one, he became the dynastic god of the Israelites and was conflated with El (the "father god" from the pantheon which YHWH originated from).
Jewish at Heart
Fullmetal Gurren Titan
What if Jesus didn't rise from the dead? In Ahmaddiya Islam, Jesus survived the crucifixion, was taken down alive and unconscious, and was treated in the tomb.
The Jewish High Priest wanted Jesus crucified because He threatened their power in the region. They were corrupt and greedy, and they did not appreciate how outspoken Jesus was against the way they were running things. They saw Him as the enemy that He never was, charged Him with blasphemy, and they delivered Him up to Rome to be crucified.

Blasphemy is not worthy of the death penalty under Roman law, but the fact that Jesus also claimed to be King was. The Romans saw it as treason, and so they charged Jesus and delivered Him to the Roman garrisons to be crucified.

As the day had wore on, Pontius Pilate ordered that those who were crucified have their legs broken so that they would die quicker. It was against the law to have people hanging on a cross overnight. When the Roman soldiers had arrived at Jesus's cross, they saw that He had already died. Roman soldiers were really good about making sure their victims were dead. They crucified many, many people and they would not have mistaken Jesus's own death. In fact, to make sure that He really was dead, they pierced his side with a spear.

Joseph of Arimathea, a wealthy member of the Jewish council called the Sanhedrin, petitioned Pilate for Jesus's body so He could be buried in his tomb. Pilate granted the request, and they buried Jesus.

The Jewish High Priest, very much aware of the fact that Jesus publicly claimed, multiple times, that He would rise from the dead on the third day, wanted to ensure that He was dead, gone, and buried, and would not rise from the dead. To make sure that His disciples would not come and steal His body away in the night and claim that Jesus rose from the dead, the high priest ordered Temple guards to stand guard in front of the tomb. Additionally, Rome also stationed their own soldiers outside of the tomb that Jesus was buried in and placed a Roman seal across the stone. Breaking a Roman seal made one guilty and worthy of the death penalty. Nobody would be getting into that tomb to treat Jesus or to steal His body away.
Among the other problems contained within it, a great deal of that was pure inference, since it wasn't actually said in scripture.
Jewish at Heart
Fullmetal Gurren Titan
If Jesus was God, then did God sacrifice Himself?
Yes. He did. He sacrificed Himself out of His love for us, in spite of everything that we have done to Him.
What exactly did we do to God...?

No, seriously; he's God. He has the power to do whatever he wants. What could we possibly have done to him?
Jewish at Heart
Fullmetal Gurren Titan
But how could God/Jesus die if God is immortal?
Just as Jesus is fully divine, He is also fully mortal.
That's a cop out and a half. One cannot be immortal and mortal at the same time, because that's a contradiction.
Jewish at Heart
Fullmetal Gurren Titan
If Jesus died and then rose, then his death wasn't a sacrifice.
Just because Jesus died, then rose again, doesn't mean that His death wasn't a sacrifice. He suffered on that cross for six hours. He bled just as we do. He felt pain just as we do. He physically died, just as we do. His heart stopped beating, his soul left his body, and he was dead. That's a pretty serious sacrifice.
...but he knew the whole time that the outcome would be his resurrection, so a few inconvenient hours really isn't that bad.

I imagine most pregnant women going through hard labor encounter suffering that's just as intense, and it often lasts for longer than six hours.
Jewish at Heart
Then He rose from the dead so that we can live with Him as well.
[Citation Needed]
Fullmetal Gurren Titan
God has always existed - so what was he doing before he made Heaven and Earth?

This is sort of a tricky question because time is a dimension of the universe, so it's hard to describe what someone who existed "before" the universe would be "doing." God's eternal being means He transcends time and space, so it's impossible for us to really describe it given our current complete lack of understanding of what it means to be timeless.

So the short answer is, "We don't know."

Quote:
Earth is billions of years old, so why did God only start making people a few thousand years ago? (According to the bible)

The Bible is not a science book. Anyways, as a corollary to the first question, scale of time really would not be an issue for God. The Bible has verses with analogies such as a second for God being like thousands of years to us. The time between the creation of the universe and the creation of humans is not really a hurdle.

Quote:
Who created God?

No one. God is what some philosophers call an "unmoved mover."

Quote:
If Jesus Christ was God and human, then doesn't that make him a demigod?

No, a demigod is a being that is half god and half human. Most Christians believe that Jesus was fully God and fully human.

Quote:
Isn't Jesus just a ripoff of Horus, Mithra, and other pagan gods?

No. Those circulating these rumors have exaggerated and/or fabricated many of the similarities with each retelling, so that the charts you find online make the parallels seem much more similar than they actually are. This is especially true for Horus, as the connection to him is much more tenuous than Mithra.

There were admittedly a few similarities between early Christianity and Mithraism. However, the Mithra texts were written after the Gospels, and there are documents where the early Christians complained that Mithraism was copying Christianity. So if anything, Mithraism ripped off Jesus (though, again, it was not as close as many would have you believe.)

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Why did God only have one kid?

He only needed one.

Quote:
Didn't the Jews make up God - known as Yahweh? Christians technically worship a Jewish god.

No, the Jews discovered Yahweh as the one true deity who stood out from the other deities in their pantheon. Christians don't worship as "Jewish god," Christians, Jews, Muslims, and many other groups all worship "God."

Quote:
What if Jesus didn't rise from the dead?

Then Christianity wouldn't exist.

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If Jesus was God, then did God sacrifice Himself?

In a sense.

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But how could God/Jesus die if God is immortal?

Jesus was completely human and completely God. As a human, His mortal body could die.

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If Jesus died and then rose, then his death wasn't a sacrifice.

Of course it was. He gave up his human life.

Mora Starseed's Husband

Intellectual Combatant

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SARL0
Titus 3:9 But avoid foolish questions, and genealogies, and contentions, and strivings about the law; for they are unprofitable and vain.


2Timothy 2:23 But foolish and unlearned questions avoid, knowing that they do gender strifes.
Who are you to say what qualifies as "foolish and unlearned questions", pray tell?
SARL0
i personally suspect you already have your mind made up and seek to begin a debate and argue to prove why you're right and why we're wrong.
I personally suspect that your presuppositions about FGT's intentions were instilled in you by your Church.

Clover Leigh's Husband

Friendly Gaian

These are not new objections to Christianity, and they have been sufficiently answered so I am going to provide you with links to what I myself find to be adequate answers and then you can decide for yourself.

If God Created Everything, Who Created God?

Answers your question about the nature of God. Who created God? Did God sacrifice Himself? etc.

How Can Jesus Be God and Man?

Explains how Jesus could be God, and still die.

What was God doing before He created the universe?

Answer to your question; God has always existed - so what was he doing before he made Heaven and Earth?

Did Jesus survive the Crucifixion?

Answer to; What if Jesus didn't rise from the dead? In Ahmaddiya Islam, Jesus survived the crucifixion, was taken down alive and unconscious, and was treated in the tomb.

Was Jesus a Copy of Horus, Mithras, Krishna, Dionysus and Other Pagan Gods?

Answer to: Isn't Jesus just a ripoff of Horus, Mithra, and other pagan gods?

If Jesus didn't stay dead, how could His death have been a REAL sacrifice?

Answer to the claim: If Jesus died and then rose, then his death wasn't a sacrifice.

Liberal Friend



Theogony is not out of the realm of possibility. Chaos is found in Enuma Elish and in Greek myth. Out of the water comes land, just like out of Nu comes Benben. Consider the verse, And God said, "Let the waters under the heavens be gathered together into one place, and let the dry land appear." And it was so. (Gen. 1:9) The only difference here is that it's Yahweh forming the land, rather than Benben rising out of the watery abyss, Nu. Why make Yahweh subject to Tehom, the watery abyss? Genesis doesn't promote ex nihilo. It promotes ex aeternum.

Next, saying "before the beginning of time" is a nonsensical statement because "began" is a word used to denote time. Making up some "metaphysical time" would need to be proved to exist and it would need to be proved that the authors of the Bible who wrote this understood it in that way. Justin Martyr doesn't prove anything, either. He simply assumes that Plato taught himself biblical cosmogony.

The other problem with Rich Deem's argument about time and causality is that he says it's a false premise, but then goes on to say that without time, there is no cause, therefore God had no cause, therefore God was never created. If this is the case, then that means God cannot cause anything and he's just simply existing. He would no longer be omnipotent or omniscient. He wouldn't be the former because he could never act. He wouldn't be the latter because to think is to act, which he cannot do. I don't see any reason to accept Rich Deem's second interpretation, either.

The next argument Rich Deem presents is funny because he dismisses the multiverse hypothesis on the basis that there's no evidence, yet there's no evidence of his god. Then he says Ockham's razor would also remove this hypothesis, yet he ignores that throughout history, many have believed in different gods and even the ancient Israelites believed there were other gods, not just Yahweh. He also gets Ockham's razor wrong because it has nothing to do with a hypothesis being simple, but a hypothesis that makes the fewest assumptions. The belief in one god also require many assumptions, such as being omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, eternal, incorporeal, spiritual, transcendent, &c.

As far as I'm aware, the idea of time having a beginning isn't accepted. Anyone who saw William Lane Craig debate with Sean Carroll would know that it's false that the Borde-Guth-Vilenkin theorem implies that the Universe had a beginning and that even Guth suspects that the Universe did not have a beginning and that it's very likely it's eternal, but no one knows. Of course, Craig gets whiny about that because we all know that even if the evidence was in his face, the feeling of the holy spirit would be enough for him to believe Christianity is true.

With regard to the age of the Universe, that's as far back as we can go. That can change in the future. Unlike religion, science is provisional on the basis that new evidence will cause new changes. Any change in religion is entirely dependent on being forced to fit with our current time. It doesn't change because it's scientific. It changes because it must, or it will die out. That's all I'm going to say.

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