Kamerad
11-06-2011, 01:33 PM
Thomas Jefferson said, "Question with boldness even the existence of God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason than that of blindfolded fear"
John Adams said in Article 11 of the Treaty of Tripoli," As the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion,—as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion, or tranquility, of Mussulmen"
James Madison. " The purpose of separation of church and state is to keep forever from these shores the ceaseless strife that has soaked the soil of Europe in blood for centuries"
On George Washington, Historian Barry Schwartz writes: "George Washington's practice of Christianity was limited and superficial because he was not himself a Christian... He repeatedly declined the church's sacraments. Never did he take communion, and when his wife, Martha, did, he waited for her outside the sanctuary... Even on his deathbed, Washington asked for no ritual, uttered no prayer to Christ, and expressed no wish to be attended by His representative."
Kamerad
11-06-2011, 02:18 PM
God wants you to question His existence and not accept Him blindly, but since the proof is in (see the 4 Step Proof for God) (http://biblocality.com/forums/showthread.php?3476-4-Step-Proof-for-God-amp-Minimal-Facts-Approach/page2), to still reject God's existence seems asinine don't you think? worthy of Hell. Free will is not truly free without the free choice to eternally separate yourself from God.
The first three steps can be applied to god himself, the last one relies on the bible being completely true. There are numerous reasons why the bible is probably not true, but suffice to say, Gilgamesh probably did not sleep with a goddess.
Sounds like John Adams was confused because nowhere in USA's government is the hand put on the Koran when swearing an oath, only the Bible.
That is a tradition. Not a requirement stated in the Constitution or any other document of the law. John Adams was one of our presidents, one of the founding fathers, and one if the most important diplomats in America when we started out.
Would Jesus "soak the soil of Europe with blood"? No, of course not, so distinguish true religion which the Bible calls helping unwed mothers and fatherless children, from Nicolatians, those who seek power that is not rightly and divinely given to them. Distinguish between false religions and the one true religion. At the heart of true religion would lead to proper authority and submission in government. Quite the opposite is the case of popery (great harlot of religious Rome that makes drunk the nations with the wine of the wrath of her fornications, Rev. 14.8) and other power structures of various false religions. So the real reason God separates Church and State is because State is so corrupt and the Church is so holy, the pearl of great price. Once you find such a wonderful pearl among many pearls, you hold onto it for dear life because it is so precious -- the body of Christ.
Religion has soaked the soil of Europe and the Mideast with blood for centuries. Have you heard of some little, minor incidents like the Inquistion and the Holocaust? Plus all the wars that the Church had the secular rulers fight against the Muslims. Plus all the pogroms against the pagans and the Jews. Oh, yeah, don't forget the witchhunts.
Plus,
Exodus 32[/URL]: 3,000 Israelites killed by Moses for worshipping the golden calf.
Numbers 31: After killing all men, boys and married women among the Midianites, 32,000 virgins remain as booty for the Israelites. (If unmarried girls are a quarter of the population, then 96,000 people were killed.)
Joshua:
Joshua 8: 12,000 men and women, all the people of Ai, killed.
Joshua 10: Joshua completely destroys Gibeon ("larger than Ai"), Makeddah, Libnah, Lachish, Eglon, Hebron, Debir. "He left no survivors."
Joshua 11: Hazor destroyed. [Paul Johnson, A History of the Jews (1987), estimates the population of Hazor at ?> 50,000]
TOTAL: if Ai is average, 12,000 x 9 = 108,000 killed.
Judges 1: 10,000 Canaanites k. at Battle of Bezek. Jerusalem and Zephath destroyed.
Judges 3: ca. 10,000 Moabites k. at Jordan River.
Judges 8: 120,000 Midianite soldiers k. by Gideon
Judges 20: Benjamin attacked by other tribes. 25,000 killed.
1 Samuel 4: 4,000 Isrealites killed at 1st Battle of Ebenezer/Aphek. 30,000 Isr. k. at 2nd battle.
David:
2 Samuel 8: 22,000 Arameans of Damascus and 18,000 Edomites killed in 2 battles.
2 Samuel 10: 40,000 Aramean footsoldiers and 7,000 charioteers killed at Helam.
2 Samuel 18: 20,000 Israelites under Absalom killed at Ephraim.
1 Kings 20: 100,000 Arameans killed by Israelites at Battle of Aphek. Another 27,000 killed by collapsing wall.
2 Chron 13: Judah beat Israel and inflicted 500,000 casualties.
2 Chron 25: Amaziah, king of Judah, k. 10,000 from Seir in battle and executed 10,000 POWs. Discharged Judean soldiers pillaged and killed 3,000.
2 Chron 28: Pekah, king of Israel, slew 120,000 Judeans
TOTAL: That comes to about 1,283,000 mass killings specifically enumerated in the Bible.
Crusades (1095-1291) 3 000 000 [[URL="http://necrometrics.com/pre1700a.htm#Crusades"]make link (http://www.thebricktestament.com/exodus/the_golden_calf/ex32_28b.html)]
Estimated totals:
Robertson, John M., A Short History of Christianity (1902) p.278: 9,000,000
Aletheia, The Rationalist's Manual: 5,000,000
Henry William Elson, Modern Times and the Living Past, (1921) p. 261: 5,000,000
Om Prakesh Jaggi, Religion, Practice and Science of Non-violence, (1974) p. 40: "The crusades cost Europe five million young men"
Fielding Hudson Garrison, Notes on the History of Military Medicine, Association of Military Surgeons, (1922) p. 106: 3,000,000 total, incl. 2,000,000 Europeans
MEDIAN: 3 million
Philip Alexander Prince, Parallel universal history, an outline of the history and biography of the world divided into ...(1838) p.207: "Although two million souls perished in the Crusades..."
Charles Mackay, Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds (1841): 2,000,000 Europeans killed. [http://www.bootlegbooks.com/NonFiction/Mackay/PopDelusions/chap09.html]
Wertham: 1,000,000
John Shertzer Hittell, A Brief History of Culture (1874) p.137: "In the two centuries of this warfare one million persons had been slain..."
Individual Events:
Davies: Crusaders killed up to 8,000 Jews in Rhineland
Paul Johnson A History of the Jews (1987): 1,000 Jewish women in Rhineland comm. suicide to avoid the mob, 1096.
Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, v.5, 6
1st Crusade: 300,000 Eur. k at Battle of Nice [Nicea].
Crusaders vs. Solimon of Roum: 4,000 Christians, 3,000 Moslems
1098, Fall of Antioch: 100,000 Moslems massacred.
50,000 Pilgrims died of disease.
1099, Fall of Jerusalem: 70,000 Moslems massacred.
Siege of Tiberias: 30,000 Christians k.
Siege of Tyre: 1,000 Turks
Richard the Lionhearted executes 3,000 Moslem POWs.
1291: 100,000 Christians k after fall of Acre.
Fall of Christian Antioch: 17,000 massacred.
[TOTAL: 677,000 listed in these episodes here.]
Catholic Encyclopedia (1910) [http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/]
Jaffa: 20,000 Christians massacred, 1197
Sorokin estimates that French, English & Imperial German Crusaders lost a total of 3,600 in battle.
1st C (1096-99): 400
2nd C (1147-49): 750
3rd C (1189-91): 930
4th C (1202-04): 120
5th C (1228-29): 600
7th C (1248-54): 700
James Trager, The People's Chronology (1992)
1099: Crusaders slaughter 40,000 inhabs of Jerusalem. Dis/starv reduced Crusaders from 300,000 to 60,000.
1147: 2nd Crusades begins with 500,000. "Most" lost to starv./disease/battle.
1190: 500 Jews massacred in York.
1192: 3rd Crusade reduced from 100,000 to 5,000 through famine, plagues and desertions in campaign vs Antioch.
1212: Children's Crusade loses some 50,000.
[TOTAL: Just in these incidents, it appears the Europeans lost around 650,000.]
Albigensian Crusade (1208-49) 1 000 000 [make link (http://necrometrics.com/pre1700a.htm#Albigensian)]
The traditional death toll given for the war against the Cathars is one million, which is repeated in these:
John M. Robertson, A Short History of Christianity, London: Watts, 1902, p.254 ("It has been reckoned that a million of all ages and both sexes were slain.")
Christopher Brookmyre, Not the End of the World (New York: Grove Press, 1998) p.39
Max Dimont, Jews, God, and History, (New York: Penguin, 1994) p.225: 1,000,000 Frenchmen suspected of being Albigensians slain
Dizerega Gus, Pagans & Christians: The Personal Spiritual Experience (St. Paul, MN: Llewellyn, 2001) p.195
Helen Ellerbe, The Dark Side of Christian History (Orlando, FL: Morningstar & Lark, 1995) p.74
Michael Newton, Holy Homicide (Port Townsend, WA: Loompanics Unlimited, 1998) p.117
Rummel: 200,000 democides
Individual incidents:
Flexner, Pessimist's Guide to History: 20,000 massacred in Beziers.
Ellerbe:
Beziers: 20-100,000
St. Nazair: 12,000
Tolouse: 10,000
Newton: 20-100,000 massacred in Beziers.
Sumption, Albigensian Crusade (1978): <5,000 k. by Inquisition [ca. 1229-1279]
General Religious Mayhem:
An oft-repeated or summarized passage in religious polemics of the 19th Century. The earliest I found is this p.6, The Second Advent, Or Coming of the Messiah in Glory by Elias Boudinot (1815)
"Dr Moore in his divine dialogues 161, and in his mystery of Iniquity, lib. 2d, ch. 15, 10, says, 'Pope Julius was in seven years the occasion of the slaughter of two hundred thousand Christians — the massacre in France cut off one hundred thousand in three months — P. Peronius avers that in the persecution of the Albigenscs and Waldenses one million lost their lives — from the establishment of the Jesuits till the year 1580, about 30 or 40 years, Balduinus says, nine hundred thousand perished — the Duke of Alva, by the hangman, put to death thirty-six thousand — Vergerius affirms that the Inquisition, in thirty years, destroyed one hundred and fifty thousand — to this I may add the Irish rebellion in the last century, in which thirty thousand were destroyed, as tho Lord Orrery reports in a paper printed in the reign of kin Charles Sd."
From Aletheia, The Rationalist's Manual (1897)
7,000,000 during the Saracen slaughters in Spain.
2,000,000 Saxons and Scandinavians lost their lives opposing the introduction of Christianity.
1,000,000 in the Holy Wars against the Netherlands (http://necrometrics.com/pre1700a.htm#Ne1566), Albigenses (http://necrometrics.com/pre1700a.htm#Albigensian), Waldenses (http://necrometrics.com/pre1700a.htm#Waldens), and Huguenots (http://necrometrics.com/pre1700a.htm#Huguenot).
Witch Hunts (1400-1800) [make link (http://necrometrics.com/pre1700a.htm#Witch)]
Wertham: 20,000
Jenny Gibbons "Recent Developments in the Study of The Great European Witch Hunt", Pomegranate, no.5, Lammas 1998 [http://www.interchg.ubc.ca/fmuntean/POM5a1.html] cites:
Levack: 60,000
Hutton: 40,000
Barstow: 100,000, "but her reasoning was flawed" (i.e. too high.)
Davies, Norman, Europe A History: 50,000
Rummel: 100,000
Bethancourt: The Killings of Witches, lists 628 named and 268,331 unnamed witches killed as of Dec. 2000, and estimates that between 20,000 and 500,000 people were killed as witches. [http://www.illusions.com/burning/burnwitc.htm?]
M. D. Aletheia, The Rationalist's Manual (1897): 9,000,000 burned for witchcraft.
5 Jan. 1999 Deutsche Presse-Agentur: review of Wolfgang Behringer's Hexen: Glaube - Verfolgung - Vermarktung:
estimates cited favorably
Thomas Brady: 40-50,000
Merry Wiesner: 50-100,000
Behringer, at lowest: 30,000
estimates cited unfavorably
Gottfried Christian Voigt (1740-1791) extrapolated from his section of Germany to calculate 9,442,994 witches killed throughout Europe. From this came the common estimate of 9M (http://www.google.com/search%3Fq=million+witches+burned&hl=en).
Mathilde Ludendorff (1877-1966): 9M
Friederike Mueller-Reimerdes (1935): 9-10M
Erika Wisselinck: 6-13 Million
MEDIAN: Of the 15 estimate listed here, the median is 100,000. If we limit it to just the ten estimates that are cited favorably, the median falls between 50,000 and 60,000.
George Washington did not contradict himself when he said, "It is rightly impossible to govern the world without God and the Bible." Barry Schwartz's accusations against George Washington are false, because there are no sacraments in the Church, there is no communion of transubstantiation of the body of Christ, and a believer should wait outside of a sanctuary not ordained by God. God is against denominations. His prayer to God was his alone privately to God which no man can know the spirit of another man the Bible says. Nothing you have said shows fault with George Washington. I would have done the same as George Washington.
He actually never said that, and in Washington's denomination (Episcopalianism) there were sacraments, and all those other things. The only thing that is ever actually recorded as saying in a verifiable manner (it was in a letter) was a statement that basically came down to "come on guys, can't we all just get along?". "He tended to talk more about Providence and Destiny rather than God"-His Excellency: George Washington, by Joseph J. Ellis.
Churchwork
11-10-2011, 04:42 PM
We know the Apostles died for their eyewitness testimony, and people don't willingly die for what they know is a lie. So the burden remains on you to find a naturalistic explanation for their eyewitness testimony in various group settings.
Jesus with His Father and the Spirit created Hell because for free will to truly be free, you must have the free choice to eternally separate yourself from God and that domain is called Hell. It should not be a place full of roses and pleasurely delights but commensurate with your attitude against your Creator.
Would Jesus do what? No, Jesus would not do what Hitler did (killed 30 million) whom you follow in your quest for natural selection along with Stalin who killed 40 million and Mao who killed 60 million. Jesus never killed anyone like your atheist leaders.
The OT mentions Hell lots in various ways, e.g. Dan. 12.2 proclaims, "Multitudes who sleep in the dust of the earth will awake: some to everlasting life, others to shame and everlasting contempt." Here are some more verses,
http://www.allaboutworldview.org/does-hell-exist.htm
Think how evil you are that you would rather live in that place of eternal torment and separation from God than subject yourself to the risen Lord who fully proved Himself to you. Truly you are a bad person. All those who receive eternal life (today) can never lose it, for those who gave their lives to Christ truly are kept and God obliges. This is what it is to be a Christian: "I give unto them eternal life; and they shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them out of my hand" (John 10.28). Anyone who thinks they could lose salvation as a Christian was never a Christian since that is not what a Christian is. A Christian is by definition kept for eternity. Hence, any who claim they entered into the faith but admit they are not Christian now actually never were Christians ever.
Of course George Washington said that and mentioned Jesus elswhere too, completely consistent,
"The Hon. Continental Congress having been pleased to allow a Chaplain to each Regiment, with the pay of Thirty-three Dollars and one third pr month -- The Colonels or commanding officers of each regiment are directed to procure Chaplains accordingly; persons of good Characters and exemplary lives -- To see that all inferior officers and soldiers pay them a suitable respect and attend carefully upon religious exercises. The blessing and protection of Heaven are at all times necessary but especially so in times of public distress and danger -- The General hopes and trusts, that every officer and man, will endeavour so to live, and act, as becomes a Christian Soldier defending the dearest Rights and Liberties of his country." – General Orders, (July 9, 1776) (http://etext.virginia.edu/etcbin/ot2www-washington?specfile=/texts/english/washington/fitzpatrick/search/gw.o2w&act=surround&offset=5975853&tag=Writings+of+Washington,+Vol.+5:+GENERAL+ORDERS +Head+Quarters,+New+York,+July+9,+1776.+&query=as+becomes+a+christian&id=gw050226) George Washington Papers at the Library of Congress, 1741-1799: Series 3g Varick Transcripts
"The Commander in Chief directs that divine Service be performed every Sunday at 11 oClock in those Brigades to which there are Chaplains; those which have none to attend the places of worship nearest to them. It is expected that Officers of all Ranks will by their attendance set an Example to their men. While we are zealously performing the duties of good Citizens and soldiers we certainly ought not to be inattentive to the higher duties of Religion. To the distinguished Character of Patriot, it should be our highest Glory to add the more distinguished Character of Christian. The signal Instances of providential Goodness which we have experienced and which have now almost crowned our labours with complete Success, demand from us in a peculiar manner the warmest returns of Gratitude and Piety to the Supreme Author of all Good." – General Orders (May 2, 1778) (http://etext.virginia.edu/etcbin/toccer-new2?id=WasFi11.xml&images=images/modeng&data=/texts/english/modeng/parsed&tag=public&part=320&division=div1); published in Writings of George Washington (1932), Vol.XI, pp. 342-343
"My ears hear with pleasure the other matters you mention. Congress will be glad to hear them too. You do well to wish to learn our arts and ways of life, and above all, the religion of Jesus Christ. These will make you a greater and happier people than you are. Congress will do every thing they can to assist you in this wise intention; and to tie the knot of friendship and union so fast, that nothing shall ever be able to loose it." – George Washington speech to the Delaware Indian Chiefs (May 12, 1779) (http://etext.virginia.edu/etcbin/ot2www-washington?specfile=/texts/english/washington/fitzpatrick/search/gw.o2w&act=surround&offset=18502415&tag=Writings+of+Washington,+Vol.+15:+SPEECH+TO+THE +DELAWARE+CHIEFS&query=the+religion+of+jesus&id=gw150049); published in The Writings of George Washington (1932), Vol.XV, p. 55
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