The Lord Is Calling Us To The Table

[andymac]

1 hour ago, Mindimoo said:

I'd tell you if you were receiving messages 

Sorted now. Even sent you a text.

1 hour ago, Mindimoo said:

Sorry, no time.  Heading out for dinner. Pizza and Chips 

You can take the girl out of Cumbernauld but you can't ......

[Padre Andrew]

55 minutes ago, thplinth said:

I don't know but on the GG-W scale...Padre Andrew seems like a good guy.

Seems odd he cant participate in this without being ridiculed for his beliefs.

Thank you.

[Mindimoo]

12 minutes ago, andymac said:

Sorted now. Even sent you a text.

You can take the girl out of Cumbernauld but you can't ......

Ah, that's who it was!

[phart]

1 hour ago, thplinth said:

I don't know but on the GG-W scale...Padre Andrew seems like a good guy.

Seems odd he cant participate in this without being ridiculed for his beliefs.

The intolerance of Certainty.

[Eisegerwind]

18 minutes ago, Scotty CTA said:

Sadly.

OK.

This is a great idea and nothing like an Orange walk.

The crowd here is massive and a fantastic commemoration.

This also shows a massive committment to Jesus and the outfits are marvellous.

Obviously they'll need a bit of cream on that, but time well spent I think.

 

Everybody happy now?

 

 

 

[phart]

 

[Scotty CTA]

I went and saw 'The Case For Christ' this Evening...

 

[DonnyTJS]

6 hours ago, thplinth said:

I don't know but on the GG-W scale...Padre Andrew seems like a good guy.

Seems odd he cant participate in this without being ridiculed for his beliefs.

Yes.

5 hours ago, phart said:

The intolerance of Certainty.

Yes.

3 hours ago, phart said:

 

Yes.

All this and Johnny Cash. If we could cut out the mean-spirited shite it would have the makings of being one of the better Easter threads ...

[Mitre]

9 hours ago, thplinth said:

Easy now let's (FFS! edit) NOT get into grassland. 

That would be a steppe too far

[Mitre]

6 hours ago, Eisegerwind said:

OK.

This is a great idea and nothing like an Orange walk.

The crowd here is massive and a fantastic commemoration.

This also shows a massive committment to Jesus and the outfits are marvellous.

 

 

 

 

A couple of planks of MDF at that size? Is Jesus getting portrayed as some Verne Troyer type midget?

[Marky]

On 16/04/2017 at 1:49 AM, DonnyTJS said:

Tom Stoppard a "believer"? I very much doubt it. Just someone who can see the irony in people in the vast majority attacking those in a increasingly small minority for needing a crutch when both are taking positions that are reliant on faith (the context is secular British society of course).

As I'm sure you know, given that the existence or otherwise of 'God' is not subject to scientific proof, taking a stance on it one way or the other relies on faith. Since belief in God is the harder to these two positions to hold in our society in this day and age, surely those that hold it are showing the stronger character?

 

In fairness Donny you could apply the same logic to the existence of the fairies, the Easter Bunny, Santa Claus and a Rangers tax return. 

[DonnyTJS]

25 minutes ago, Marky said:

In fairness Donny you could apply the same logic to the existence of the fairies, the Easter Bunny, Santa Claus and a Rangers tax return. 

Well, yes, but most of those (in fact all of those apart from Rangers tax returns, a subject about which, alas, I know very little and care less), are simply attenuated examples of religious sensibility. In other words, they stem from the same root (albeit having taken very different paths) that is mankind's apparent need of a spiritual dimension.

 

[Scotty CTA]

2 hours ago, Marky said:

In fairness...

The irony is folk putting forth ridiculous examples of things that even they themselves don't believe in.

No mature, sane adult actually believes in the tooth fairy, the Easter Bunny, Santa Claus, the flying spaghetti monster, an invisible pink unicorn, or a chocolate coffee pot orbiting the sun.

Yet, there are millions upon millions of faithful believers worldwide who would rather die than deny Jesus Christ.

[Ally Bongo]

49 minutes ago, Scotty CTA said:

The irony is folk putting forth ridiculous examples of things that even they themselves don't believe in.

No mature, sane adult actually believes in the tooth fairy, the Easter Bunny, Santa Claus, the flying spaghetti monster, an invisible pink unicorn, or a chocolate coffee pot orbiting the sun.

Yet, there are millions upon millions of faithful believers worldwide who would rather die than deny Jesus Christ.

It isnt irony

The point being made is that there is the same amount of evidence for each

And your last point suggests there is a problem with the human mind rather than with all these followers it must be true.

There are also millions upon millions of faithful believers worldwide who would rather die for Muhammad - who is right ?

 

Edited April 17, 2017 by Ally Bongo

[phart]

Indeed who is right? You claim it's you Ally and Scotty claims it's him.

Yet there is no way to find and you'll spend hours saying why the other is wrong.

[Ally Bongo]

2 minutes ago, phart said:

Indeed who is right? You claim it's you Ally and Scotty claims it's him.

Yet there is no way to find and you'll spend hours saying why the other is wrong.

Agreed

And i have never claimed i am right - only that all religions are wrong

[Scotty CTA]

34 minutes ago, Ally Bongo said:

The point being made is that there is the same amount of evidence for each

There is stacks of evidence for the life, death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

There is literally nothing for the tooth fairy, Easter bunny, or Santa Claus.

We understand the point you are trying to make, but you literally have zero evidence with which to make your point.

We, on the other hand, do!

40 minutes ago, Ally Bongo said:

There are also millions upon millions of faithful believers worldwide who would rather die for Muhammad - who is right ?

We know there are muslims who believe in Allah (my goodness, give me strength) but there isn't any sane, mature adult who would give his life for the phony, joke, pretend, belief of a flying spaghetti monster or an invisible pink unicorn.

You see? You had to change gears from the obviously fake to a false belief system (Islam) to even come close to making a point.

Why not stick with the fake?

Because you couldn't.

That's why.

[Ally Bongo]

4 minutes ago, Scotty CTA said:

There is stacks of evidence for the life, death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

There is literally nothing for the tooth fairy, Easter bunny, or Santa Claus.

We understand the point you are trying to make, but you literally have zero evidence with which to make your point.

We, on the other hand, do!

We know there are muslims who believe in Allah (my goodness, give me strength) but there isn't any sane, mature adult who would give his life for the phony, joke, pretend, belief of a flying spaghetti monster or an invisible pink unicorn.

You see? You had to change gears from the obviously fake to a false belief system (Islam) to even come close to making a point.

Why not stick with the fake?

Because you couldn't.

That's why.

[Scotty CTA]

23 minutes ago, phart said:

Indeed who is right? You claim it's you Ally and Scotty claims it's him.

I say that God is right.

24 minutes ago, phart said:

Yet there is no way to find out...

Incorrect.

A person can prove creation over evolution, and creation will be proved to the world as the script continues to unfold.

(Not accepting that 2+2=4 doesn't mean that 2+2 doesn't equal 4.)

[Scotty CTA]

2 minutes ago, Ally Bongo said:

I told you you couldn't.

First you say that there is just as much evidence for Jesus as the tooth fairy, etc. then you follow up being called out by posting a 'face palm' image (as if that's going to 'get you out of jail').

[Ally Bongo]

3 minutes ago, Scotty CTA said:

I told you you couldn't.

First you say that there is just as much evidence for Jesus as the tooth fairy, etc. then you follow up being called out by posting a 'face palm' image (as if that's going to 'get you out of jail').

I can

There is as much evidence for the Jesus of the Bible as there is the Loch Ness Monster

You really should know this

Thats why you call it "faith"

Belief without evidence  

[Scotty CTA]

Manuscript evidence for superior New Testament reliability

 

The New Testament is constantly under attack, and its reliability and accuracy are often contested by critics.  If the critics want to disregard the New Testament, then they must also disregard other ancient writings by Plato, Aristotle, and Homer.  This is because the New Testament documents are better-preserved and more numerous than any other ancient writings.  Because they are so numerous, they can be cross checked for accuracy . . . and they are very consistent.

There are presently 5,686 Greek manuscripts in existence today for the New Testament.1 If we were to compare the number of New Testament manuscripts to other ancient writings, we find that the New Testament manuscripts far outweigh the others in quantity.2

Author	Date Written	Earliest Copy	Approximate Time Span between original & copy	Number of Copies	Accuracy of Copies
Lucretius	died 55 or 53 B.C.		1100 yrs	2	----
Pliny	A.D. 61-113	A.D. 850	750 yrs	7	----
Plato	427-347 B.C.	A.D. 900	1200 yrs	7	----
Demosthenes	4th Cent. B.C.	A.D. 1100	800 yrs	8	----
Herodotus	480-425 B.C.	A.D. 900	1300 yrs	8	----
Suetonius	A.D. 75-160	A.D. 950	800 yrs	8	----
Thucydides	460-400 B.C.	A.D. 900	1300 yrs	8	----
Euripides	480-406 B.C.	A.D. 1100	1300 yrs	9	----
Aristophanes	450-385 B.C.	A.D. 900	1200	10	----
Caesar	100-44 B.C.	A.D. 900	1000	10	----
Livy	59 BC-AD 17	----	???	20	----
Tacitus	circa A.D. 100	A.D. 1100	1000 yrs	20	----
Aristotle	384-322 B.C.	A.D. 1100	1400	49	----
Sophocles	496-406 B.C.	A.D. 1000	1400 yrs	193	----
Homer (Iliad)	900 B.C.	400 B.C.	500 yrs	643	95%
New Testament	1st Cent. A.D. (A.D. 50-100)	2nd Cent. A.D. (c. A.D. 130 f.)	less than 100 years	5600	99.5%

As you can see, there are thousands more New Testament Greek manuscripts than any other ancient writing.  The internal consistency of the New Testament documents is about 99.5% textually pure.  That is an amazing accuracy.  In addition, there are over 19,000 copies in the Syriac, Latin, Coptic, and Aramaic languages.  The total supporting New Testament manuscript base is over 24,000.

Almost all biblical scholars agree that the New Testament documents were all written before the close of the First Century.  If Jesus was crucified in A.D. 30., then that means the entire New Testament was completed within 70 years. This is important because it means there were plenty of people around when the New Testament documents were penned--people who could have contested the writings.  In other words, those who wrote the documents knew that if they were inaccurate, plenty of people would have pointed it out.  But, we have absolutely no ancient documents contemporary with the First Century that contest the New Testament texts.

Furthermore, another important aspect of this discussion is the fact that we have a fragment of the gospel of John that dates back to around 29 years from the original writing (John Rylands Papyri A.D. 125).  This is extremely close to the original writing date.  This is simply unheard of in any other ancient writing, and it demonstrates that the Gospel of John is a First Century document.

Below is a chart with some of the oldest extant New Testament manuscripts compared to when they were originally penned.  Compare these time spans with the next closest, which is Homer's Iliad, where the closest copy from the original is 500 years later.  Undoubtedly, that period of time allows for more textual corruption in its transmission.  How much less so for the New Testament documents?

Important Manuscript Papyri	Contents	Date Original Written	MSS Date	Approx. Time Span	Location
p52 (John Rylands Fragment)3	John 18:31-33, 37-38	circa A.D. 96	circa A.D. 125	29 yrs	John Rylands Library, Manchester, England
P46 (Chester Beatty Papyrus)	Rom. 5:17-6:3, 5-14; 8:15-25, 27-35; 10:1-11, 22, 24-33, 35; 16:1-23, 25-27; Heb.; 1 & 2 Cor., Eph., Gal., Phil., Col.; 1 Thess. 1:1, 9-10; 2:1-3; 5:5-9, 23-28	50's-70's	circa A.D. 200	Approx. 150 yrs	Chester Beatty Museum, Dublin & Ann Arbor, Michigan, University of Michigan library
P66 (Bodmer Papyrus)	John 1:1-6:11, 35-14:26; fragment of 14:29-21:9	70's	circa A.D. 200	Approx. 130 yrs	Cologne, Geneva
P67	Matt. 3:9,15; 5:20-22, 25-28		circa A.D. 200	Approx. 130 yrs	Barcelona, Fundacion San Lucas Evangelista, P. Barc.1

If the critics of the Bible dismiss the New Testament as reliable information, then they must also dismiss the reliability of the writings of Plato, Aristotle, Caesar, Homer, and the other authors mentioned in the chart at the beginning of the paper. On the other hand, if the critics acknowledge the historicity and writings of those other individuals, then they must also retain the historicity and writings of the New Testament authors; after all, the evidence for the New Testament's reliability is far greater than the others.  The Christian has substantially superior criteria for affirming the New Testament documents than he does for any other ancient writing.  It is good evidence on which to base the trust in the reliability of the New Testament.

[thplinth]

What I find interesting is how religions are so prone to schisms. 

And within these major schisms if you drill down you find schisms within the schisms.

And it is hilarious seeing the utter disdain many (not all) have for each other, even ones very close together. Totally dismissive. It is very funny to see but also a little tragic. Very human.

[Larky Masher]

6 minutes ago, Scotty CTA said:

Manuscript evidence for superior New Testament reliability

 

The New Testament is constantly under attack, and its reliability and accuracy are often contested by critics.  If the critics want to disregard the New Testament, then they must also disregard other ancient writings by Plato, Aristotle, and Homer.  This is because the New Testament documents are better-preserved and more numerous than any other ancient writings.  Because they are so numerous, they can be cross checked for accuracy . . . and they are very consistent.

There are presently 5,686 Greek manuscripts in existence today for the New Testament.1 If we were to compare the number of New Testament manuscripts to other ancient writings, we find that the New Testament manuscripts far outweigh the others in quantity.2

Author	Date Written	Earliest Copy	Approximate Time Span between original & copy	Number of Copies	Accuracy of Copies
Lucretius	died 55 or 53 B.C.		1100 yrs	2	----
Pliny	A.D. 61-113	A.D. 850	750 yrs	7	----
Plato	427-347 B.C.	A.D. 900	1200 yrs	7	----
Demosthenes	4th Cent. B.C.	A.D. 1100	800 yrs	8	----
Herodotus	480-425 B.C.	A.D. 900	1300 yrs	8	----
Suetonius	A.D. 75-160	A.D. 950	800 yrs	8	----
Thucydides	460-400 B.C.	A.D. 900	1300 yrs	8	----
Euripides	480-406 B.C.	A.D. 1100	1300 yrs	9	----
Aristophanes	450-385 B.C.	A.D. 900	1200	10	----
Caesar	100-44 B.C.	A.D. 900	1000	10	----
Livy	59 BC-AD 17	----	???	20	----
Tacitus	circa A.D. 100	A.D. 1100	1000 yrs	20	----
Aristotle	384-322 B.C.	A.D. 1100	1400	49	----
Sophocles	496-406 B.C.	A.D. 1000	1400 yrs	193	----
Homer (Iliad)	900 B.C.	400 B.C.	500 yrs	643	95%
New Testament	1st Cent. A.D. (A.D. 50-100)	2nd Cent. A.D. (c. A.D. 130 f.)	less than 100 years	5600	99.5%

As you can see, there are thousands more New Testament Greek manuscripts than any other ancient writing.  The internal consistency of the New Testament documents is about 99.5% textually pure.  That is an amazing accuracy.  In addition, there are over 19,000 copies in the Syriac, Latin, Coptic, and Aramaic languages.  The total supporting New Testament manuscript base is over 24,000.

Almost all biblical scholars agree that the New Testament documents were all written before the close of the First Century.  If Jesus was crucified in A.D. 30., then that means the entire New Testament was completed within 70 years. This is important because it means there were plenty of people around when the New Testament documents were penned--people who could have contested the writings.  In other words, those who wrote the documents knew that if they were inaccurate, plenty of people would have pointed it out.  But, we have absolutely no ancient documents contemporary with the First Century that contest the New Testament texts.

Furthermore, another important aspect of this discussion is the fact that we have a fragment of the gospel of John that dates back to around 29 years from the original writing (John Rylands Papyri A.D. 125).  This is extremely close to the original writing date.  This is simply unheard of in any other ancient writing, and it demonstrates that the Gospel of John is a First Century document.

Below is a chart with some of the oldest extant New Testament manuscripts compared to when they were originally penned.  Compare these time spans with the next closest, which is Homer's Iliad, where the closest copy from the original is 500 years later.  Undoubtedly, that period of time allows for more textual corruption in its transmission.  How much less so for the New Testament documents?

Important Manuscript Papyri	Contents	Date Original Written	MSS Date	Approx. Time Span	Location
p52 (John Rylands Fragment)3	John 18:31-33, 37-38	circa A.D. 96	circa A.D. 125	29 yrs	John Rylands Library, Manchester, England
P46 (Chester Beatty Papyrus)	Rom. 5:17-6:3, 5-14; 8:15-25, 27-35; 10:1-11, 22, 24-33, 35; 16:1-23, 25-27; Heb.; 1 & 2 Cor., Eph., Gal., Phil., Col.; 1 Thess. 1:1, 9-10; 2:1-3; 5:5-9, 23-28	50's-70's	circa A.D. 200	Approx. 150 yrs	Chester Beatty Museum, Dublin & Ann Arbor, Michigan, University of Michigan library
P66 (Bodmer Papyrus)	John 1:1-6:11, 35-14:26; fragment of 14:29-21:9	70's	circa A.D. 200	Approx. 130 yrs	Cologne, Geneva
P67	Matt. 3:9,15; 5:20-22, 25-28		circa A.D. 200	Approx. 130 yrs	Barcelona, Fundacion San Lucas Evangelista, P. Barc.1

If the critics of the Bible dismiss the New Testament as reliable information, then they must also dismiss the reliability of the writings of Plato, Aristotle, Caesar, Homer, and the other authors mentioned in the chart at the beginning of the paper. On the other hand, if the critics acknowledge the historicity and writings of those other individuals, then they must also retain the historicity and writings of the New Testament authors; after all, the evidence for the New Testament's reliability is far greater than the others.  The Christian has substantially superior criteria for affirming the New Testament documents than he does for any other ancient writing.  It is good evidence on which to base the trust in the reliability of the New Testament.

Is that  assessment from a peer reviewed journal?

[Ally Bongo]