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Pariah said:
As per usual, when the person speaking for the majority voice of the forum gets cornered, the posse in agreement with him congregates a mass circle-jerk of pot-shots cuz' their afraid of being proven wrong.




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And I find that rewarding. Bringing out the defensive nature in everyone means……Well….I WIN!!


or no one likes you.....

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The first civilization may not have been Judeo/Christian, but they most assuredly retained belief in the God from those religions. However, later down the line, they stopped caring and were proven to be exactly the opposite of what you assert. Body’s that were dug up from Deluge strata, as well as pre-Deluge strata, have shown evidence of mass amounts of sexual deviance (including incestuous pedophilia), cannibalism, and brutality. They definitely didn’t have morals. Whether or not they had laws is irrelevant in light of their behavior. If their actions were those laws, then your argument that implies lawful civilization is junked. What they were doing was neither spiritually nor secularly reasonable to be considered at all logically lawful. ]/quote]
you're arguing morality based on modern standards. what about the multiple wives in the bible?
the marrying of daughters/sisters was more common and accepted then as well.
The only real time you could judge thousand year old acts to be immoral would perhaps be slavery/blood sacrifice or other acts that harmed another.
Gay guys and kissing cousins don't equate to an immoral society.

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Ever seen the movie "Vlad"? Laws are created to hold up society. They're not necessarily ground in morals. They can be, but that's not universally true. Egypt is one of the best examples here.


Laws are set up to clarify moral standards (or at least the base laws are) and keep people in line by setting down what those moral standards are.
This way people with opposing viewpoints on something can look to the law for a tie breaker, or a man whose been wronged can go to the law for compensation (as opposed to random revenge violence).

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The only account of the flood, which we know happened, came from the Old Testament.


That's not true. You can't say the bible happened because it says so in the Bible.
There are flood myths in several cultures. Each is really just as "provable" as the Biblical one.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_flood
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The flood killed everyone except for a few people and every single species of land animal on earth. The only way they could have survived was with a really huge boat. Noe was documented as having a really huge boat. Coincidence? I think not.



Did you watch footage from the Tsunami?
When a massive tidal wave comes in (and the bible doesn't say this is a slow flood that takes time to rise) it decimated what it hit, it didn't lift the cars and the buildings and the modern era boats and carry them safely along the sea.

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No. It wasn't. The Crusades was a retaliatory war on the part of the Europeans. Scripture wasn't used to reason the logic of a war.


Uh, yeah it was.
The Pope told the knights that this was a holy "crusade" and that any acts committed would be forgiven upon reclaiming the holy land.

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It occurs to me that you're trying to create a standard that doesn't exist. We weren't talking about Muslims and you suddenly just bring them up in comparison to Christians.


I think it came up as you were saying the christians were persecuted and I was making the point that they persecuted plenty of people themselves.
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Apparently you just hate Christianity. I mean, you could have simply said 'Christians did such and such', not 'Muslims weren't as bad as Christians'. Anyway, if you had any semblence of credibility left, it's gone now.


I'm not a fan of either religion, however I find Christians to be the most offensive in terms of their beliefs and pushing it on others.
I live in downtown SF and everyday see some Christian guy with a sign condemning this or that, some christian guy passing out flyers.
I've never met an Allah's Witness.

I don't hate Christians, I don't really hate any religion or people. I think its all a waste of time to be honest.
Christians irritate me the most because they have to make sure everyone knows we're sinners in their eyes.
I just wish they'd keep to themselves and didn't try to force everyone else to conform to their view of things.

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Before I respond to that case in particular, is it the only one that you feel makes a case for "mainly" Christians being the one's to persecute Jews over the past few millenia?



Its just one example. And look at the last few hundred years. There is a clear animosity between Christians and Jews that goes back to the time of Jesus when some Jews became Christians and some didn't.

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But how are the proposed end results of their respective movements consequential in every circumstance. They were catering to a certain crowd. They wouldn't have been able to convince everyone on the planet. A secularist movement knows to gain momentum through a secular populace just as a social predator knows to recruit lonely depressed people for his or her cult.


But "faith" has more power for people than "logic" in most cases. Because logic dictates that if you want your life to change then you make it change, but faith is this magical thing that says if you want change believe in god and it'll all work out in Heaven.

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Actually, I believe the world began around 12,000 years ago. Not 8000; that’s just absurd.



You're kidding, right?
What about fossils and sedimentary layers that show the earth as being millions of years old.
Lets go from a religious and observational point of view.
When have you seen god just create anything? By your belief god is nature and nature takes time. Would it really be so hard for you to just say that god took his time in making the earth? Or that the seven days in the bible is maybe an inacurate idea?
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Additionally, there wasn’t multiple floods. If that were the case, we’d find multiple flood-strata in different sedimentary layers below the Deluge layer, and we haven’t. Furthermore, please don’t try to pretend to know anything about what I’m talking about. Carbon-14 tests performed at Jericho show beyond the shadow of a doubt that the flood happened around the time of 7800-6200 BC—The date is more specific than that though.


Again:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_flood
I think you should look at mythology as a whole. The ancient world is not just a few countries in the mideast, Pariah.

Bow ties are coool.