Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen.
Albert Einstein (1879 – 1955) (attributed)

The posit is posed over on Veritas Center under “Exclusive Myth” once again that there is “absolute truth”.
Partly because I said I wouldn’t post comments on his site for a while for my own reasons, and partly because I’m too emotionally and intellectually drained to put effort into the debate right now, I simply submit the following.

http://www.universism.org/faq.htm

Questions 16 through 20 address the concepts of absolute truths. This page deals strictly in how the Universism movement specifically deals with these concepts, but I agree for the most part.

That is all.

Ok it’s not all. *sigh* (I hate my brain.) The “truism” that “When something is true, it is absolutely true for all people in all places at all times. If you say that it isn’t you are proving me right,” is a flawed statement. It depends on semantics to make its case and is too subjective to be tested. There’s no need to even to to prove the statement wrong by using “examples” because the statement itself is flawed.

A FACT is something that is universally true. 2 items added to 2 items will make 4 items. Whether we use the words dos or zwei or the Roman numeral II it doesn’t matter. Those are human created words to symbolize 2 items. If you’re black, white, Christian, Atheist, Eskimo, Martian, 2+2=4. Carbon will decay at a constant rate, light will travel at a certain rate unless affected by outside resistance, etc etc. These are facts and are universal because they are outside of human influence. We have observed and measured and tested these concepts as “true” and they will remain so whether humans are around or not.

TRUTH in the manner that challenge presents are concepts of philosphy and religion. They are concepts that cannot be measured or tested and have no emperical objectivity.

Person A says X is a “truth”. Person B says X is not a “truth” for him. Person A says just because you don’t believe it’s a truth does not negate the fact it’s a truth…you just aren’t seeing the truth of it. B says no matter what you say, X is not a truth for me and people like me and here’s why. A says it’s a universal because of these reasons, and ignorance of the law does not give permission to break the law.

Do you see what I’m getting at here? X is something that can be argued and debated and from an objective outsider’s viewpoint may be valid in either direction. If something cannot be observed by everyone and then universally declared a fact, then it is not a universal truth. It is faith, a belief. The only thing that makes it a “truth” is the fact that group A believes with all their heart and soul thatr it’s true even if people B believe with their heart and soul that it’s not. You can’t convince group A it’s not a truth, because they will always come back to say just because YOU don’t believe it’s a truth doesn’t mean it’s not.
OK, fine. So it’s a truth to person A. That doesn’t make it FACT. You can show a person 2 items added to 2 items will always make 4 items, and if they have an IQ over 50 they will understand it. Everyone, universally will understand that. If you explain what a prime number is, and you then ask people to come up with all the prime whole integers under 12, you will universally get all the right results from all creeds and backgrounds and alien races. But a philisophical/religious “truth” is not objective, is debateable, and just because a person believes it doesn’t make it a fact.

There are a great many people out there that are 100% of the TRUTH of alien visitation. Does that make it a fact? People were 100% certain at one time that maggots spontaneously generated from spoiling meat, there was even observable data to “prove” this! But it turned out wrong. People in ancient Greece were certain that the gods lived atop Mount Olympus and that Zeus came down now and then to impregnate women and create half-god heroes. That used to be a certainty, and absolute truth.

The problem isn’t trying to prove truth X or truth Y is “true” or “false”, the problem comes with labeling X or Y a “truth” in the first place.

I lovesem the pirates! I’m all about pirates.

Which in a sense is really weird, when you think about it. Pirates are criminals. They steal and murder and spread fear and dread.
In a way, it’s kind of like being a fan of serial killers, and I think that’s pretty sick and twisted.

But there is a difference, I guess. Pirates often-times works as, or at least start out as, privateers and operating under Letters of Marque which meant they were “legitimately” attacking and raiding ships from a nation at war with the country the privateer was working for. So in THAT sense it’s kind of like being a fan of some war-time batalion or sone-wolf squad of soldiers. Except that pirates often acted outside the bounds of “civil” warfare.

Again, IF they were privateers and had Letters of Marque at all. A lot of pirates were just out for their own gain. But, unlike lone sociopaths and criminals, pirates acted in social groups (“demented and sad, but social”) and often followed unwritten codes of loyalty and protocol.

There’s a whole culture around 16th-18th century piracy in and around the Caribbean. Jargon, habits, locales, it’s pretty rich and colorful and highly involved with the culture and history of sailing.

And highway banditry. =/

Oh well. I likems me the pirates!

Anyway, so today I’ve been looking at pirate flags again. They really fascinate me. One thinks of the Jolly Roger and most people think of that as the one and only “pirate flag,” but like all military divisions and batalions and whatnot, every pirate and every ship had its own unique flag. Although, they all share certain elements. Just like military insignia and decorations, they usually involve death imagery such as skulls, bones, skeletons, bleeding hearts….

By themselves, pirate flags as a group, it’s interesting to note the similarities among them, their kind of childish appearances, but then if you look at them in context with flags of the times, like the flags for the American colonies and especially Revolutionary War era flags, pirate flags pop out as a subset of a similar whole.

Anyway, here’s some interesting pirate flag links.
http://tinpan.fortunecity.com/lennon/897/flags.html
http://www.piratesinfo.com/store/
(I love that site. I eye it more and more as my birthday nears *eg*)
http://www.bostonblueyes.com/images/pflags.htm
That one has a really good history and explanation of pirate flags.

(Added a little later: )
Oh yeah, here’s a link to a bunch of Revolutionary era flags.
http://www.crwflags.com/fotw/flags/us%5Erv.html
Some are really intricate, some look like the same simple style as the pirate flags.

http://www.cnn.com/2005/TECH/science/02/21/bush.science.ap/index.html

Just more evidence that the Bush administration cares more about ideology than facts, science, reason. “There’s no reason to and it’s a waste of money, but I declare we will go to the moon…again!” Provides no clear reason why and no budget to do it. Oh but it’s a Presidential agenda item, so what meager resources NASA’s given they have to focus on how to get to the moon and mars while medicine and aerospace science suffers.

Don’t get me wrong, as a sci-fi freak I’d love it if we started doing more with the moon and especially Mars, but I live in the real world, not fantasy. With finite and limited resources, grandiose gestures that are ultimately pointless and wasteful and simply something “cool” to say in a speech, because you really have no other legacy in your administration other than starting a Middle East Viet Nam and turning the largest government surpless into the largest deficit ever, should not supercede useful and necessary science. Like ohhh…

Medicine? But why should the administration’s attitude toward medical advancement change. Stem cell research could lead to the cure for dozens of diseases and save countless lives and their families from pain and suffering? Oh but the Religious Reicht has blind and uneducated objections? Better ban it.

The environment? Let’s not only not do anything about it, but let’s roll back regulations on polution, give “conservation” projects to corporations who have interests in abusing the land/water in question, and let’s deny all the scientific evidence that we’re negatively affecting the environment because it’s contrary to our corporate interests.

I still seeth a year later after reading in one of Rush Limbaugh’s books that he believes the pinko liberal leftists are full of hot air because, get this, the Earth was created by God and given to humans to control so it’s impossible for us to destroy it. I’m not kidding. That’s the point of view most right-wing Republicans have, and that arrogant hubris pisses me off so much I can’t think straight.

Continuing my new trend to actually blog beyond the realm of topics that can infuriate people and hurt friendships….
We got our new car. Well, it’s a year old program car, but new to us. =) An ‘05 Mercury Sable. And by “we” I mean my wife. I still have my ol’ ‘97 Mercury Tracer.

See, a couple of weeks ago she was in an accident (she’s fine, don’t worry) which totaled her car. A nimrod in the lane to her left stopped in traffic to let someone from the other direction through to cross her lane, and she ran into them. They’re fine too…minivan.

In any case, the other woman got a ticket for failure to yield, and the police officer said that if the nimrod (my term, not his) that stopped in traffic to let the other lady through had stuck around they would have been ticketed as well. Anyway, so the other lady’s insurance, State Farm, finally came back and offered us 50% of the responsibility and value of the totaled car. Now, while we feel we have 0% responsibility in this, we were willing to negotiate and accept only enough to payoff what we still owe on the car, aprox 75% of the value. I fair value we thought, but State Farm said they won’t negotiate.

(Everyone we talk to about this, once we mention “State Farm” they always go “oooohhh” very knowingly.)

So, *sigh* we’re talking to a lawyer. Which I hate. I hate that it had to come to that, and I think it’s stupid that we have to. So now instead of State Farm paying only 75%, they’ll be paying 100% plus we hope the lawyer fee, the storage fee (which we weren’t even asking for in the 1st place,) and perhaps the wages my wife has lost in trying to deal with this issue.

And it’s pretty open-and-shut. The photos of the scene all show we were in the right, the police report shows we were in the right, the measurements of the scene show we were in the right. State Farm could have gotten off easy, and now we’re going to exact justice. Which I wish wasn’t necessary.

Just a quick entry to stay in the writing habit. Which, while it’s picked up quite a bit again due to my new crusade it seems *g*, it’s still not a daily endeavor as I’d like it to be. So, even if it’s tripe (er, more tripe than usual,) I’ll try to post something each day.

So today, it’s Valentine’s Day! Hey, there’s a topic!
OK, nothing to say on it. Except, “Happy Valentine’s, Sweetie!” Which is pretty silly, really, since I’ve been telling her all day already, and she never reads my blog. Hrrm.

Well OK, something useful to make the trip here worth it.
If you’re a Linux user, I highly recommend for your anti-virus protection: F-Prot
It’s free for Linux, which is certainly a plus, and works perfectly in my experience. Linux doesn’t get many virii. Maybe, oh, 1% of what Windows users get. But there are some out there, and it only takes one to screw you over. So, always use protection! =)

For Windows, I highly advocate Grisoft’s AVG! It too has a free version for personal use. And for about a year when I was first using it, I used it in conjunction with a $45 copy of Norton Anti-Virus. AVG had detected the ocassional virus that Norton never saw (I download a lot and get tons of spam,) and AVG would always detect anomolies before Norton would. So, free, and better than Norton. What more need be said?

Fear is a great and powerful motivating force. Fear can keep us alive, keep us safe from harm. It’s built into all (non-sociopathic) humans and animals as a survival mechanism.

There was a time when fear was pretty straightforward. You heard a growl neaby, you went the other direction. You see pretty angry snake rearing up at you, you backed off. You looked at the egde of a huge cliff, you thought twice. Overcoming fear is a gamble. You do something contrary to your fear and you either discover something new and learn something amazing or interesting, or you could be killed in a horrible and painful manner. The risks and rewards to overcoming fear can be pretty steep.

How does fear play into our lives as humans today? We still have our lizard-brain fear reactions when we see angry dogs, oncoming cars, get into planes, do anything that has an obvious risk to our life and limb. But, being the great and powerful humans we are created in “God’s image,” we have a lot more going on than just living physical lives, looking to fulfill the lowest items on Maslowe’s Heirarchy. We are capable of dealing with some very haughty concepts such as souls, the nature of art, the origin of life, the existance of higher-powers, the concept of eternal life. And fear can still play it’s part.

I’m afraid of submitting my writing anywhere. I write short stories, I work on novels, and I’m terrified of submitting them to even ‘zines. Why? It’s not like if they’re rejected an arm comes off. It’s not like I’ll get a disease. The fear that all animals have to keep us safe involves itself into our cerebral minds. I’m actually more afraid of submitting my fiction than I am getting on a stage in front of people, but polls state that most people are more afraid of public speaking than they are of death itself. Wow. The fear of humiliation is actually more powerful to many than the fear of dying. That’s how powerful of a force fear is.

Why do I bring this up? Because I believe that it’s fear that keeps people from questioning their faith and accepting answers that contradict their religion they’ve adopted. If most people are deathly afraid of public speaking, if people like me can be terrified of submitting pieces of paper with words on them to some desk jockey, what kind of effect do you think fear can have on a person when the concept of eternal suffering vs. eternal paradise come into play? And it’s this most incredible force that religion has both intentionally and unintentionally preyed upon for centuries.

Even though I don’t believe in atheism, atheists do have a good phrase: “We’re all born atheists.” It’s true. Given no outside influence, a person will grow up and develop a completely unique and randon concept of God or non-God. If a person were to grow up completely untouched by any religion, is it comprehensible that they would suddenly be “Christian”? Or “Muslem”? Or a believer in ancient Greek gods?

You’re indoctrinated into the religion of the culture you’re born into. You’re born in America in 2005 you’re 90% likely to be raised Christian. You’re born in the Middle East, you’re 90% likely to be raised Muslem. India, 90% Hindu. Greece circa 400 BC, a believer in Zeus. Norway circa 800 AD, Odin. Hawaii pre-1900, Pele. Rome pre 400 AD, Jupiter. Rome post 400 AD, Yaweh. There are hundreds and hundreds of religions. So, why are people raised Christian only afraid of a Christian hell, and not afraid of a Muslem hell (even though more people believe in a Muslem hell than a Christian hell?) Not afraid of Hades or Ghenna or Shaol or Midgaard? Why are Christians only afraid of lack of Yahweh’s paradise, but not afraid of the lack of Allah’s paradise or Nirvana or the Elusian Fields or enlightenment or the Happy Hunting Grounds? Each of these places are as real to each believer that was raised to believe that afterlife. Why am I afraid of a concept of a hell that wasn’t even around until around 100 AD, but I’m not the least bit afraid of a hell of another religion that may have existed for greater than 2000 years and believed by more people? But those people are deathly afraid on that afterlife?

The Church has used fear for centuries to control people. To gain power. They preyed on people’s fear by offering “indulgences” which people could BUY to alleviate themselves thge guilt of a sin. Even though the Bible tells Christians that Jesus is the only mediator between yourself and God, the Church enforced “confession” to a priest in order to offer forgiveness so that the priest had the power and control over his “flock”. Even today’s Protestant denominations that focus on the love of Jesus, have their ocassional fire and brimestone lessons to remind people of the penalty for not being “good Christians”. Not to mention the implied lack of God’s love and forgiveness and eternal life that is more predominate in today’s moderate religions.

As humans who fear death and pain, it makes no wonder why the reward for piety and belief would be eternal life, no matter the religion or New Age belief.

It’s fear that kept me from finally embracing the freethinking deist within me. Ever since I started questioning at 18 and the 15 years since, the fear of hell and the fear of the lack of the Christian heaven have always filled me with guilt, resistance, trepidation, and most of all and most dangerous, an ability to rationalize the most rediculous assumptions and fallacies.

The power of fear makes a person, subconciously even, to make 2+2=5 so that it can match the belief they’ve been indoctrinated into. To force square pegs into round holes, because if they accept that it doesn’t fit, then that opens the door to uncertainty, fear, questions without answers, and humans hate that. We’re more willing to accept the most rediculous ideas and make them fit if it means we don’t have to question what happens when we die, or if there’s some supernatural power out there keeping an eye on us. Making sense out of everything. Some system that allows us to feel we’re right, and others that don’t believe as we do are wrong.

If the idea of putting some pages of text into an envelope and mailing it to a publisher can cause a person to rationalize any excuse to not do it, then imagine what the fear of hell/lack of heaven can make a person rationalize and do?

It makes some people fly planes into buildings. Burn people as heretics. Destroy every living creature from infant to animal in a city on their way to a promised land. Drink poisoned kool-aid. Think it might also make people simply rationalize and make sense where there isn’t any in their chosen religious text?

As you’re about to read, this blog shares the same title as an article written by Penn Jillete (of Penn & Teller) who names HIS article after a book called “Why People Believe Weird Things.”

Excellent book. My wife had to read it for her class on pseudosciences and critical thinking. Like Penn implies, the book focuses mainly on a set list of weird items people believe, and doesn’t sit right down and discuss point-blank the thesis the title reveals. But, it does so in a sort of tangential way.

Anyway, I love Penn. He can be crass and crude, which I don’t care for (if you can say something without having to include profanity, then it’s better that you do both for your own image as well as the reception of the message. Although there are some times that saying “f**k!” in times of great stress gets the message across in the only way possible *g*), but he makes good points.
Even if he IS an atheist.

Why People Believe Weird Things
by Penn Jillette

The title of this article is also the title of a book by a friend of
mine, Michael Shermer. It’s a book for people who are sick of credulous
nuts. On the back of the book is a little Penn & Teller quote (we’ve
written a few books ourselves), where we rant against the
epistemological hedonistic (if it feels good, believe it). It’s a great
book that debunks. (Shermer hates that word. He and James Randi
research; I, however, debunk. I ridicule. I guffaw. If Michael and
Randi ever find that any of this garbage is true, I’ll eat my words, but
. . hey, I’m not staying hungry.) It debunks everything from
Holocaust denial, creationism, and ESP to the recovered memory movement,
alien abduction experiences, and the satanic ritual abuse scare.
Shermer indirectly attempts to answer the question the title poses. He
offers a list of common thinking mistakes people make but the real “why”
is much deeper.
We believe these nut things because it’s part of our little monkey
brains to try desperately to make patterns. That’s the genius of
humans, the quality that lets us learn. Pattern recognition has moved
us off the hostile savanna and into the much safer condominiums. When
you see your cavemate die shortly after a snake bite, it’s probably a
good idea to avoid all snakes. Of course, this over-simplification
also leads to racism, religion, and all kinds of magical thinking.
These human qualities are as natural as rape and just as undesirable.
Civilization and science fight against the natural mistakes of our
brains. It’s a wonder of our species that we’re learning to use our
brains to fight our brains. If you feel it, but it isn’t right, don’t
do it and don’t believe it. We can be better than natural — we’re
human.
The answer to why people believe weird things seems to be one of those
topics that’s either too hard or too easy for a book. The “too hard”
part would involve a detailed analysis of the evolution of our monkey
brains. But it’s also “too easy,” because many people are just lazy
and don’t bother to make the time to learn the truth. It’s so easy to
get that wonderful “a-ha” rush from some TV schlock about our big bad
government — of course, it’s partially the government’s fault for
really being big and bad — holding back information on extraterrestrial
gray people. (It’s funny that these aliens never look African. They
always look like Caucasian children and that tells you a bit about our
evil little monkey brains.)
It’s much harder to get the “a-ha” with the understanding of a real
discovery. After all, it takes a lot of genius and effort to be
Richard Feynman. Any ignorant drunk can see lights in the sky and get
on TV to talk about them.
In the September 4 issue of “Nature, “John C. Marshall made a great
point in his review of Shermer’s book. (I didn’t read the review;
“Nature” is way too hard for me. Even the pictures in “Nature” are too
hard for me. A smart friend told me about the article.) The great
point is that Michael’s book isn’t even about “weird things.” It’s not
weird to believe that uber-people are coming down from the skies to take
care of us. It’s not weird to think that some other weirdos can read
minds. It’s not weird to think that one’s race is superior to other
races. That’s simple stuff. That is, sadly, majority thinking.
Those are the evil, stupid, thoughts we’ve been believing for 150
thousand years.
The real weird stuff is that disease is caused by invisible critters.
Real weird is the idea of the whole universe starting out smaller than a
piece of gunk in your contact lens. Real weird is that light is both a
wave and a particle and flies along at 186,000 miles per second. Real
weird is that I was able to type that last number without looking it up.
And those of us who believe those weird things believe them (maybe
tentatively) because there’s some evidence.
How weird is that?

I’ve been calling fundamental and staunch religiousness to task quite a bit recently. Its time I put a little focus on fundamentalism and staunchness of the other kind. Atheism. The belief that there is no God.

I LOVE Penn & Teller. Those crazy psycho magicians. And I really like their Showtime show Bulls**t!. (They might be comfortable “cutting through the c**p” and using profanity, but I’m not really comfortable with it. Forgive me. *grin*). The’ve spent two seasons so far examining everything from pseudoscience to bottled water, from speaking with the dead to the war on drugs, and exposing the bullkarp that underpins so much of these subjects.

Thing is, while these guys are great, active spokesmodels (*g*) for skepticism, which I applaud and aspire to, they’re also raving atheists–and that bugs me. And that’s what sparked my writing this blog. I’m disappointed in them, and questionable in general, of the whole atheism thing. Why? Because I feel atheism is just another form of fundamentalist dogma, and hypocritically, also a belief structure based on faith.

Why do I say that? Well, best as I understand it, atheists believe there’s no god because: There is no evidence to prove his existance, this existance and universe has no use or need for a god (or anything supernatural) to exist to explain anything regarding this existance and universe, and in light of lack of evidence and lack of necessity, ergo there is no god.

I find that, while very logical and reasoned, it’s very short-sighted, arrogant, and probably an example of a fallacy of ignorance, or lack of imagination. OK, I admit to possibly twisting the concept of that fallacy. To say solely that athiests are wrong simply because they can’t imagine the possibility that he might exist is pretty absurd. It’s like saying skeptics are absurb because they can’t imagine the existance of a giant sharp-toothed bunny in my bathroom which shaves my beard for me. (I borrowed that arguement from somewhere, but I can’t recall where. I give credit where it’s due even if I can’t remember who to give it to *g*).

There really IS no reason to believe god exists. There is no evidence, nothing emperical. Nothing that can’t be explained by science and rational thought. Just like there’s no evidence of the bunny in my bathroom. My shaved beared can be perfectly explained by the fact there is evidence of razors sold in stores, but no actual sightings of these bunnies.

But what’s to explain the existance of all of existance? What was first cause? There’s exacting scientific data on teh Big Bang and even observable affter-effects of the actual event. There’s scientific data to prove that the universe is expanding and always will and it never existed before and then collapsed upon itself to Big Bang again. The universe had a finite beginning. Science can explain the fact that all the matter and energy in the universe has existed since the Big Bang…but where did it come from? What initiated the Big Bang?

I suppose the atheist might say, just because we don’t know, doesn’t mean it has to be a supernatural cause…we just don’t have the scientific ability or sophistication to explain it yet.
OK, so, it’s still just speculation, then, a belief that the existance of the universe was not created by an intelligent Creator. Atheism in my opinion falls into the fallacy of…I forget, the one that’s expressed as “lack of evidence does not equal evidence of lack.” Meaning, just because there’s no evidence to prove something exists, doesn’t make that lack of evidence into evidence for non-existance. The lack of proof in the existance of god does not disprove his existance.

The very arguement that we don’t have the scientific ability yet to explain the existance of all creation also can be used to show that the existance of god need not be “supernatural.” Why can’t god be an intelligent designer, a sentient (albeit not omnipotent and not omniscient and not omnibeneficient) “creature” with existance in a science explainable ultra-universe capable of creating our universe? Why can’t god exist as the universe itself, in a natural and perfectly “scientific” manner, but we simply can’t measure and detect and quantify it yet?

We have proof that the universe will always expand despite the properties of gravity. But, we don’t understand why yet. We have reason to believe in the existance in “dark matter” and “dark energy” to help explain this expansion as well as the lack of being able to account for all the mass there should be in the universe we calculate. So science can’t explain “dark matter” yet. We don’t have an exact handle yet on the final outcome of matter sucked into black holes, why can’t we also admit that we don’t have a handle on the existance of a power beyond our universe that while may be involved in a “science” that appears to be so unusual as to be “supernatural” but actually follows logical and reasonable super-science laws and rules.

Take quantum science. 100 years ago the mere concept of “observation affecting existance” would be considered absurd. The concept that light is both a wave and a particle was nearly impossible to grasp. As quantum theory started to grow in speculation, even Einstein refused to believe in the prossibility of all quantum physics seemed to imply. The laws we have been able to suss from massive bodies seemed to not apply at all to the ultramicroscopic and vise versa. Now we have empirical evidence in many of the seemingly absurd concepts of quantum physics that was before unimagineable. We have proof of Einstein’s theroies of relativity now, when before his theories were also considered absurd.
Why can’t this path of absurd-to-real be carried out on an even more massive scale?

The existance of a creator god does not have to equal “supernatural” and that’s where atheists have a lack of imagination and an overbloated arrogance. Maybe they feel it’s a slippery scope? To accept the possibility in the existance of something seemingly supernatural opens the door to accepting that all supernatural is a possible matter of scientific reality, like ghosts and ESP.

Well, there’s a huge difference. It’s a fine, delicate difference, but it exists. And it’s also why I’m a deist and not a believer in any religion or new age phiosophy. The creation of the universe is the one thing we don’t have any evidence of either way, for or against the existance of a creator god. Everything else from ghosts to burning bushes to ESP to crying statues, all can be examined and be provided with perfectly reasonable and logical explanations that involve science or psychology. That whole creation of the universe thing, there’s simply no data, nothing to examine except for the existance of the universe in the first place.

And so that’s why I believe in God, and simply can’t really accept the atheist point of view.

I always thought so, now my doubts have been solidified, whether there was even a person named Jesus to ever even exist.

Even back when I called myself a Christian I entertained doubts about the full accuracy of his existance, actions, and sayings. I mean, what proof was there aside from the Bible? And the Bible isn’t exactly an accurate, unbiased work of non-fiction. I always relyed on the fact that some non-Bliblical documents existed somewhere…but, do they? The only non-Judeo/Christian document to mention Jesus doesn’t even mention him by name, and says he was stoned to death then hung on a tree.

Why not just go with the Bible? Well, it has a vested interest in his existance. It’s a collection of religious stories and rules and prophesies, much of which either predicting the coming of a supernatural messiah or telling the story about the arrival of the messiah…all based on the same religion.

Think about this: The writers of the New Testament were Jewish. They were well schooled and knowledgeable of the Talmud and Torah (what would become the Old Testament,) and knew the prophesies. Likewise were most of the early Christians whom the stories passed around through. They weren’t exactly unbiased fact checkers and historical researchers. They had a purpose and an agenda, and there’s no reason they couldn’t alter and change and fudge and fabricate stories and descriptions to match Old Testament prophesies (many of which don’t exactly match anyway.)

Be skeptical for a second, and think, hypothetically, isn’t it possible, even just simply possible, that early Christians may have expanded on stories both real and imagined, rumored and taken from other people, and built up someone that may not at all have been like we assume?

The “facts” in the Bible are self-contradictory. The lineage of Christ in one Gospel is different from the other. One has the newborn Jesus and his family going to different countries and different times than the other Gospel. The exact events of the 2nd or 3rd most important event in Christianity (the crucifixion, depending on how you rank the birth,) has some discrepancies among the Gospels, and the most important event, the resurrection, only has one thing in common among the four Gospels and that’s the presence of Mary (interesting fact, that.) The four Gospels, when they aren’t copying word-for-word and style-for-style from the earlier written Gospels, have other factual differences among themselves…much like how rumor and stories passed by word-of-mouth would develop.

Jesus had always been thought of as the new Moses. So I’ve always had my concerns over the whole repeating of the murdering of the first-born Jews surrounding both Moses and Jesus’ births. Especially when something and horrific and monumental as that, wasn’t recorded anywhere else in history regarding the period of Jesus’ birth. And we have a lot of non-religious reporting of events in that time and place.

It’s something to consider. And to not consider it, not just entertain the possibility, I think, would be a sign of fear and insecurity and too much reliance on dogma.

I came across this site last night:
http://www.atheists.org/christianity/didjesusexist.html
yeah, it’s from an atheist Web site. And so I say again, I am neither an atheist nor do I endorse nor encourage atheism.
Also, the author’s style tends to be very abrasive and disrespectful, and a bit insulting wich I don’t appreciate. But the article is still worth reading and considering.

In this letter to John Adams from Thomas Jefferson expresses Jefferson’s Deist beliefs–that of a Creator God, but the refutation of the divinity of Jesus:

http://www.stephenjaygould.org/ctrl/jefferson_adams.html

Note the passage:
“And the day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus, by the supreme being as his father in the womb of a virgin will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter. But we may hope that the dawn of reason and freedom of thought in these United States will do away with all this artificial scaffolding, and restore to us the primitive and genuine doctrines of this the most venerated reformer of human errors.”

Of course, take it in context, and read the entire letter. Interesting stuff.

I love Roger Ebert. When I think he’s wrong, I usually think he’s completely wrong. But most of the time he hits things right on the head of the nail.

After watching “Lost in Translation” I searched for reviews on Sofia Coppala’s previous and first film, “The Virgin Suicides” (which I still have yet to see, and have wanted to ever since I saw its amazing trailer that still makes my eyes water when I watch it. I’m a trailer sucker.)

And in Ebert’s review of it, he ends with this:

“We see her talking to a psychiatrist after she tries to slash her wrists. “You’re not even old enough to know how hard life gets,” he tells her. “Obviously, doctor,” she says, “you’ve never been a 13-year-old girl.” No, but his profession and every adult life is to some degree a search for the happiness she does not even know she has.”

Maybe I’m a freak but that last sentance had me choke back a tear of poingent sad truth.