What's with all of the religious threads?

Get rid of "Pancakes" and all the trash (religion, politics) will go away. A Prius chat group should be about Prius--not anything else. it's that simple.

 

Have many of you had the desire to go to a forum populated with offroading lifted pickups that spew homophobic and other vitrol about the Prius? Most would probably conclude: 1) their not not going to change their minds unless Hell freezes and maybe not then, 2) it's going to be an unpleasant visit.

The religion threads often have the same hostile atmosphere towards the more religious members at PC - not from all the non-religious, but definitely sharp and disrespectful vitrol from some.

In other words, the members with viewpoints similar to mine have always been out at PC - just quiet. Some (that I know) still choose to remain quiet for the above reasons.

A few members decided to speak up and I and possibly a few others decided it was time to speak up.

This brings up another obvious point: many religion threads have been anything but discusson, but venting instead. An example of that is Daniel stating Jesus did not exist as a person. It's one thing to hear someone not to believe in what Jesus said he was, but that he did not exist?....that's a bit incredible and someone's feelings getting the best of them.

 

Is nothing sacred, you may ask? Well, to a non-believer, maybe not. I'm not aware that the existence of Jesus has ever been proven. I don't mean that as an insult or anything personal - perhaps the assumption is an example of how pervasive religion can be. The story of Jesus has many lessons for all of us, regardless of religion or level of belief. But whether he was a mythical figure of one religion, or an actual person is not established fact.

 

How can the existence of a person 2000 years ago get a pass until now?

Don't you think it would have been called out back then?

 

how would you establish as 'fact' that someone who no onger exists, once existed? wouldn't it be a theory based on evidence until someone could prove otherwise? sorta like agw?

 

It's not a question of calling it out "back then". It's a question of having a reliably proven chain of evidence reaching all the way back. Such chains exist for ancients like Plato, usually because they were the direct authors of writings still referenced today. No such chain has been found for the personality (widely regarded as having actual supernatural capabilities) known as Jesus Christ, and the mythic qualities that attend the popular conception of that figure are strong evidence no such figure existed. A real person would appear in the historic record somewhere as a real person, not as a miraculous apparition.

Most important, had a human being actually had the capabilities attributed to Jesus Christ his appearance in the historic record would stand out and fill the anthropologic and biological compendium with conjecture as to what manner of creature was he. The only place he appears is in religious literature, alongside other mythic, non-existent figures which, across time, were gradually forgotten as a single figure stood proxy for monotheism.

 

There are a LOT of people in history we could question ever existed for that matter.

 

Yeah! Like Charles Nelson Reilly!

 

I hope whoever is holding a gun to your head forcing you to read FHOP goes away soon!

 

Jesus tore time in half... Before Christ, After Death.

 

Also Newsweek and Maxim. With the phone book he didn't have as much success.

 

AD does not mean After Death, it means Anno Domini, "In The Year of Our Lord". The Gregorian calendar was created half a millenium after Christ was assumed to have lived, far enough into the past that the myth was larger than anyone who may have actually lived.

The terms BCE and CE are starting to appear with increasing frequency as the world gets more secular. No one contemplates overturning a calendar system 1500 years old that the entire world employs, but the terminology for it won't remain religious.

[ame=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anno_Domini]Anno Domini - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia[/ame]

 

Spiderman was trying, he described a calendar that had three eras, Before Christ, During Christ and After Death of Christ.

 

this is all very good, but does it answer the o.p.'s question?

 

God called me, said that he has nothing to do with the human race, he watched it being created and laughed his nice person off because he could see into the future, and he knew it was going to be a waste of intelligence.

 

I figured you would bring that up but you miss the point.

 

There are many different calendars - Julian, Mayan, Chinese, Jewish, Islamic...how we tell time has an interesting history, and there are many fascinating stories contained in the names of the days of the week, the names of the month, and how closely our time-keeping follows celestial rhythms. As a result of cultural dominance and for the sake of consistency, most of the world now uses the christian Gregorian calendar, named after Pope Gregory who decreed it as 'official' in 1582.

 

My post didn't address your point, you're correct. Your point is that Christ's influence was so far reaching the entire world has centered its calendar system on the period in which he was supposed to have existed.

Well, something as significant as a calendar system isn't going to be based on some whim. It'll either be based on some profound cataclysmic event or some great personality. Since we're human we give greater weight to exemplars of ourselves than to humdrum if dramatic cataclysms - earthquakes, fires, floods, volcanic eruptions are all attention getting and indelibly mark and change history, but they're indifferent to the affairs of man and they don't affect any sizeable percentage of humankind. It's much more meaningful to commemorate one of ourselves, and that for something as significant as a calendar someone large, larger than life, a myth.

All of which to say if the calendar weren't based on Jesus Christ it'd've been based on some other personality, also likely mythical, because it would have been based on something. Like a lottery winner - someone will always be a winner.

 

But the point is: it was based on Jesus Christ. You know, it really doesn't matter what we would put forth as evidence that Jesus was, you all would simply put it off as irrelevant. So what is the point?
But just for fun, here is some links in case anyone really cares.
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How do we know that George Washington existed?