how to distinguish religious from others

[Straighterway]

He came to His own, and His own did not recieve Him [John 11:1] through Him this world was made but they say it's all a myth.

False, false, false.
i am ready to take step by step and debate about every single contradiction in the Bible that u can come up with, and u will find it very hard to prove the Bible self-contradictory. whether to believe that Jesus is the Son or not is ur business, but u cannot say that the Bible is clearly proven false.

i wish i had more time, i gotta go cook though.

don't worry, i never lost it exept only when i started talking about evolution.

luv always, Ev.

Greetings Evelyn,
Listen, you can read in black and white what I have said about Luke and Mathew. I am not the crusader. I did not start this topic. Science can be confusing but with time it will be self evident. Time answers all questions.
I am not a believer, but I feel that the Pope was right when he said that: " Heaven or
Hell is here on earth. It is your state of mind. It has to do with how you get along with your fellow Human Beings." Have confidence in real people. Build real relationships with real people. Everything else is just a SCAM.
Good Luck.
Ps: Regarding my friend, his faith had nothing to do with anything. It's more like
I feel compassion for him and through compassion came tolerance. I have the same feelings for you.

[This message has been edited by B.Ungaro (edited 06 July 2000).]

[Nonson]

SOS!!! We who stand on the allegorical soapbox are being swept away by this raging flood of Christological enthusiasm. Would someone please send us a parabl-ic boat with a wise steersman? Peace

[Nonson]

If I am correctly interpreting the intertextual sense of the above posts, it appears that what is being said is that Christianity is but a hypothetical construct upon some yet to be discovered religion. Then if we do an extra-textual interpretation of what is being stated(over-looking the obvious anacolution)we have a hypothetical construct that somehow manages to condemn that very same value system which the adherents claim to be in support of at various stages of their agruments. I'm not as sharp on exegesis as I once was, but I do know when it becomes eisexegesis. On what path have we planted our footsies? Peace

[Straighterway]

Dear Mr ungaro,

i have a lot to say about Chrisitianity being some form of 'dependency' and about prefering life in the 'real' world, but let me first deal with the much overdone Bethlehem and Nazareth issue, since i see there will be no peace until we clear that up.

Luke: if "Jesus of Nazareth" could singularly imply ONLY the place of His birth, then Luke would be pretty stupid to say He was born in Bethlehem at the beginning of the Gospel, and then call Him Jesus of Nazareth and expect to himself to be believed. yes i agree that it would be conventional to assume Jesus of Nazareth implies the place of His birth, but i think i explained why in this case it was not so.

p.s. on Luke: Luke only says that M a r y was from Nazareth. we don't know were Joseph was originaly from, exept that he was of David's lineage.

no records found of the census does not prove anything. i do not know about the alleged impossibility of the journey to Egypt and therefore i will not talk of something i don't know.

Matthew [spelling his name right would add credibility to ur opinion. it indicates how familiar u r with the original source. <just a tip for the future>]: WHERE in Matthew does it say Mary and Joseph were native to Bethlehem. the only thing i read is this --now after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea...--

no confusion as i see it. if u won't admit it, admit at least that ur arguments are debatable.

--these points have been proven wrong already by science in history--
have they really? or were some people so eager to extinguish even the possibility of existence of the Christ and God that they jumped conclusions from everything they could , and using the long church vs. science traditions, those jump-conclusions became scientific conclusions.

--If Jesus was born in Nazareth, it is
possible that early Christian writers changed his birthplace to Bethlehem because they wanted to make it appear that Jesus fulfilled an Old Testament prophecy--
yeah, those people had this strange idea to write a book that sais all liars go to hell, and then they just lied when the facts suited them not. ???

as u probably noticed, flame debates are not exactly on my favourites list. i much prefer peaceful and lighter discussions. but here u have touched something that i hold Holy and i will defend it with everything i got.

obviously both of us think the other person has been lied to. i am not making a war on u out of it though. only...of all the things u said calling Jesus a XXXX[nazi] (the ugliest thing i have ever heard in my life!) really angers me. this Man suffered sooooo MUCH for humanity, and u call Him a nazi? nazis were criminals from hell, for ur information. how's that supposed to make me feel? anyways, i am glad u r not using the term anymore and i hope u will never use it again.

i appreciate ur compassion, but there's One that showed greater compassion to me and that's why i'm listening to Him before listenning to u. and it's for the sake of His compassion that Christians go out and try to break the lies in the world.

luv, Ev.

Greetings Evelyn,
I knew that agression would soon sneak into your correspondence. You have ways with words also. You are all over the place but I will try to put things into perspective for you. No Jesus was not a Nazi. There were plenty of Zealoted people even in his times,
the Nazis did not arrive until Adolf. There are plenty here in the US today. I will give you some examples: The Christian Hoodlums who beat up on the Jewish Boy in Santa Fe, Texas are Jesus Nazis. The Christian Zealots who go around murdering doctors because they are performing legal abortions are Jesus Nazis. The Christian Zealots who murder Homosexuals out of hatred (learned in church) are Jesus Nazis. Christian Zealots who denigrate other faiths are Jesus Nazis. As I said they are all over the place. I authored the term Jesus Nazi not as a reflection on him but on those who use his name in hatred. I think I have given you enough examples. Now,- On Jesus of Nazareth, it was not Luke who gave him that name. He was known by that name to everybody. Including you. In the book of Matthew, they are talking about King Herod
destroying Bethlehem. If they were from Nazareth, the simple thing to do would have been just to go home, right? Listen, I did not write the book. All I know is that there are plenty of conflicts in other areas as well. This is not to denigrate the book. It does prove that its not Gods Word, or she was poorly informed. Practically every major teaching in the bible has been either changed, proven wrong or just simply ignored.
Let us get serious for a moment. Do you believe in Genesis I and II? Very few peole
do. Like I said, there is a lot of squirming going on. I my posting I told you that neither Luke nor Matthew are a LOCK on the bithplace of Jesus. One thing for sure, one or the other is wrong. The rest you can work out for yourself.
As I close this posting, I want to be sure that you understand that you do not have my permission to call anybody a Jesus Nazi. That term is mine, and I doubt if I ever will use it again. Incedentally, do you know what a FEMME NAZI is? Do you know who authored that? Is that nice? I tell you, the world is full of crazies.
My spelling is bad and I know it. Please don't ridicule it in the future.
Good Luck,
The Superstition Police.

[This message has been edited by B.Ungaro (edited 06 July 2000).]

[Nonson]

Things are again getting out of hand. The laws in Texas and Calif.,require that bulldogs be leashed at all times when in public, and no fighting in secret places. That which is being over-looked is 'Mors janua vitae', and it was and is true of all mystery religions and secret societies. However, the pursuit of this method is foolish if one does not have the 'cultural grounding' from which to operate. Without giving too much away, and without doing some editing(which I hate)let me encourage each of you to consider the Parable of the Sower. If the seed sown falls in the soil(mind) of one who lives by the art of perversity what chance has that seed of bringing forth that which is good? Now suppose that that seed falls on the soil of one with a strong cultral grounding of refined ethics and morals. Will it not have a better of bearing that which is good? My dead friends, you are missing so much of the profound truths that lie behind many veils and false faces. The admonishment being, "Cast not your jewels before the swine........" Heated arguments avail nothing if the salient points are unseen. It is but another manner in which to vulgarize and profane that which is indeed Holy and cause a further degeneration of a Spiritual Pathway that is already being pushed into oblivion. I too do some bashing of those who post here, but it is done only when I catch them debasing any of the Five Sacred Components. My intent in doing is: Vel invenit sanctum, vel facit. It is doubtful that one could find a knowlegeable person who would deny the existence of a 'Sanctum Scriptum' somewhere in the world. The prot-religion which it definitely establishes would be 're-ligare', or a binding back to the original state of being. Those who would negate this do so at great danger to themselves. I fear I have said too much already. Peace