IndyJohan said:
There are prophesies that go WAY beyond anything that could be self-fullfilling. Think about it...Israel as a nation dissapeared for almost 2000yrs! And then suddenly they are a nation again. The Bible say's the Jewish people will begin to return to Jerusalem...this has happened in the past 50 years in the hundreds of thousands, one news article I read say's as much as 5 million!What other nation in History dissapears for 2000 years and all of a sudden is back? Anyway, talk to me after you have taken an Eschatology course.
And your information on the voting thing is quite skewed, there are many BEFORE (John The Baptist), during, and directly after that knew Chirst to be God and devine...and you would know it too if you have seen its power in the way I have.
And it was "pre-dominantly" jewish literature, of course there were other books I don't think the Nazi's took the time to read them before deciding to burn them, they were just ruthless and burnt what they found.
Hmmm... I'll try and refrain from simply replying in the slightly histrionic tone of your mail.
I'm afraid you've completely missed the point as regards my "self-fulfilling prophecy" argument. What I say is that the very fact that the rebirth of israel was in the bible/torah was the driving force behind the will of the jewish people to see it formed, as happened in 1948. If the old testament had remained totally undiscovered until, say, being found in jars in the desert after the formation of the israeli state, and then proved to mention the event, then THAT would indeed by an astounding phrophecy. As it stands, I am afraid that it is impossible to assess the causality of these two factors to any meaningful degree (I.e. when an event is known to have been phrophesied before the fact and then transpires, what influence did the prior knowledge of the prophecy have on its transpiring!!). We can reason the likely cause-effect relationship based on an understanding of human nature and mass psychology but nothing more concrete (this I feel suggests the self-fulfilling prophecy idea to be nearer the truth...).
You also fail to 'get' my point regarding the vote. The very nature of Christianity as it now stands and the content of that religion's sacred scriptures was determined by the outcome of these votes (and many subsequent revisions by various churches throughout history). Consequently, of course the said RESULTANT scriptures depict characters at/prior to the time of Christ "knowing" him to be divine! Your argument is circular and therefore invalid (nothing to do with what I am saying, just an incontravertible fact of logical reasoning). To paraphrase... Anyway, talk to me after you have taken an epistimiological course.
If it is the case that you just have blind faith in a religion or religious scriptures then please let me know as i'll give up trying to have a reasoned argument with you, as by definition your blind faith will prevent any of my points hitting home and I may as well save giving myself an aneurism over your intransigence. LOL.
As an additional point, do you know that there are actually no supporting historical texts referring to Jesus from before the 4th century or so? There are a handful of references to a "Christ" - but this simply means "Messiah". I.e. it is a generic term that simply regurgitates the age-old jewish belief that a messiah will return and in no way shows that such a man became famous in that time-period. History is written by the victors and the Catholic Christian church out-maneouvred the Gnostic Christian church in the first few centuries to leave us with their self-serving depiction of events. Heard about the suppressed Gnostic gospels by any chance?
The gnostics by the way believed "the christ" to be a state of mind/consciousness within us all that we could all attain - essentially a development of age-old pagan belief systems. But as some kind of expert on this subject I suppose i'm just telling you stuff you can blow out of the water Indyjohan??