03-09-2004, 06:53 PM
No, I'm not saying any of that.
Good many? Try all but a handful (as in <1% of the world population). Being illiterate and uneducated doesn't necessarily make them stupid, but it doesn't make them the brightest people in the history of the planet either. If it wasn't a genetic trait (intellect-wise), they didn't have it. Unless they learned it, but that was reserved for the upper-class. Very religious schooling too, not exactly the best way to open minds.
And yes, metaphoric prophecies are vague, by definition. Otherwise, they wouldn't be written in obscure verse and would have one outcome.
Isaiah 11:1 "There shall come forth a rod out of the [stump] of Jesse, and a Branch shall grow out of his roots"
That tells me that the lineage of Jesse will continue (and if it really means stump, then it will be continued after being severed), and something else that could be described as a rod being created from the stump (or stem, as the case may be). If anybody of Jesse's line took the throne, it has been validated. If a shrubbery he was partial to was cut down, but managed to grow a branch, it has been validated. That's two totally different interpretations, without altering the wording. Hence, 'vague', as in unclear, not to the point, level of specificity nearly zero.
That quoted material there is largely false. Christianity is a monotheistic following believing that Jesus of Nazareth was the son of god, and as such, the messiah. To be sure you're a Christian, you must know if you believe that Jesus is the son of god. Simple as that. Being sure it isn't a "blind leap of faith" will show an inability to think. Despite what it says, all religion is a leap of faith (blind is redundant), since no proof can be produced that any part of it is right. There is also no overwhelming evidence, since there are no unbiased records from that time. In fact, common practice was to write history in your favour, even if it was false.
Yes, many scholars have spent their lives researching the life and aftermath of Jesus, but there isn't exactly an abundance of records outside of religious texts, which would either embelish the truth, or lie through their teeth, depending on their take, 'cuz that's the way things were done. If you were a scholar of religion, up to about the sixties, you were of some faith or other, meaning your end result is predetermined. Like how conspiracy (used in legal sense) to bribe witnesses is used to assume that the reason is a missing body was the result of a miracle. What if they wanted to stop the dawn of a false faith (hey, to them it was) that was threatening their power, and did something, like say, crucify the leader to set an example, and then find out his body has gone missing and his followers believe it was a miracle. So they take another crack at cutting the head off the serpent and bribe people to say it wasn't a miracle, when they can't find the body to prove it with. With the given information, that is a perfectly feasible reason, but it wouldn't occur to the pious mind (if it did, it wouldn't seem likely).
Good many? Try all but a handful (as in <1% of the world population). Being illiterate and uneducated doesn't necessarily make them stupid, but it doesn't make them the brightest people in the history of the planet either. If it wasn't a genetic trait (intellect-wise), they didn't have it. Unless they learned it, but that was reserved for the upper-class. Very religious schooling too, not exactly the best way to open minds.
And yes, metaphoric prophecies are vague, by definition. Otherwise, they wouldn't be written in obscure verse and would have one outcome.
Isaiah 11:1 "There shall come forth a rod out of the [stump] of Jesse, and a Branch shall grow out of his roots"
That tells me that the lineage of Jesse will continue (and if it really means stump, then it will be continued after being severed), and something else that could be described as a rod being created from the stump (or stem, as the case may be). If anybody of Jesse's line took the throne, it has been validated. If a shrubbery he was partial to was cut down, but managed to grow a branch, it has been validated. That's two totally different interpretations, without altering the wording. Hence, 'vague', as in unclear, not to the point, level of specificity nearly zero.
That quoted material there is largely false. Christianity is a monotheistic following believing that Jesus of Nazareth was the son of god, and as such, the messiah. To be sure you're a Christian, you must know if you believe that Jesus is the son of god. Simple as that. Being sure it isn't a "blind leap of faith" will show an inability to think. Despite what it says, all religion is a leap of faith (blind is redundant), since no proof can be produced that any part of it is right. There is also no overwhelming evidence, since there are no unbiased records from that time. In fact, common practice was to write history in your favour, even if it was false.
Yes, many scholars have spent their lives researching the life and aftermath of Jesus, but there isn't exactly an abundance of records outside of religious texts, which would either embelish the truth, or lie through their teeth, depending on their take, 'cuz that's the way things were done. If you were a scholar of religion, up to about the sixties, you were of some faith or other, meaning your end result is predetermined. Like how conspiracy (used in legal sense) to bribe witnesses is used to assume that the reason is a missing body was the result of a miracle. What if they wanted to stop the dawn of a false faith (hey, to them it was) that was threatening their power, and did something, like say, crucify the leader to set an example, and then find out his body has gone missing and his followers believe it was a miracle. So they take another crack at cutting the head off the serpent and bribe people to say it wasn't a miracle, when they can't find the body to prove it with. With the given information, that is a perfectly feasible reason, but it wouldn't occur to the pious mind (if it did, it wouldn't seem likely).