In all honesty… me too when it first popped out. It came out with another flick called "Loose Change.’ So for about a day or two, I was suckered in; however, I am a curious piece of shit and a few minutes of fact-checking, just destroyed everything I thought I had learned.
I am as gullible as the next guy. Do you remember way back when the guy froze the bigfoot in a block of ice? I swear he had me. Someone actually found a Bigfoot. I couldn’t wait for the results. I should have known. I think my skepticism grew by about 15 more points on that day. LOL I checked the date 2008, Was I really that gullible back then? I was certainly old enough to know better.
I still don’t get what you’re trying to say here. If by the “three kings” you mean the three stars in Orion’s belt (Alnilam, Alnitak, and Mintaka), where they “point” doesn’t change “after the solstice” or at any other time. The relationship between these stars is fixed and doesn’t change except for the proper motions of the stars, which cause changes in timescales measured in millennia.
It’s historical fiction if there’s not any admissible objective evidence to back it up. In my opinion, the fact that the bible fails to back up it’s claims shows more and more that it is a fictional novel made up by men.
A good example is Edward Rutherfurd, an author who specializes in historical fiction.
He takes a place and a time and seamlessly weaves his created characters into the story along with historical figures such as Henry VIII and places such as Hampton Court Palace.
So quite naturally, not knowing squat about astronomy, I did a quick fact check and found this.
Ummmm… I’ll be nice and forego any conclusions that I might possibly make. No No Wait. Perhaps things moved a little. I need more data. So… I got this…
Ummm… Okay, Okay…I am about ready to call a ‘Horse’ a ‘Horse’ or so it seems to me. I’m pretty sure we can get off the pot and flush the toilet at this point.
Look. I’m not an expert in the field and I’m not making claims and I’m not here to do the research for you. The reality is that in Egypt some 4,000 years ago, on the winter solstice, the Dog Star would appear on the horizon and the three kings of Orion’s Belt would point at it. The sun was in a precession of sorts - so much so that for three days after the solstice it seemed to remain stationary in the sky. This was taken as the death of the sun. Then on the 25th it would assume a regular transmigration across the sky.
Look. I’m not here to do the digging for you clowns. The information is out there. If you don’t want the digging cause you’re too lazy, go ahead and lean on me for answers. Like I said, I’m not making a claim. All of this information is in the public domain. I’m not doing the research for you and quite frankly I care more about the liver spots on my scrotum than whether or not you believe me.
Error is just human nature isn’t it? I think a lot of times it is just wanting to build on to a thought or an idea. So you quick find a foundational truth and then start building on it because you want to get to that next step. Unfortunately people get very attached to their foundational truths. Even if they aren’t true.
I see it all the time with mechanics, they say,I have seen this problem before, this part will fix it. Well when that doesn’t fix it, a lot of people get pissed or swear it’s just a brand new part that’s bad. No your just believing something that isn’t true. Multiple mechanical problems can have the exact same symptoms as each other. I have watched guys toss perfectly good $1000 motors in the trash because a $20 speed pot was bad. Root problem diagnosis is seriously lacking in people, you have to question everything.
It’s not putting my foot in my mouth that bothers me anymore, it’s how do I remove it graciously.
In fairness to the original poster, I do believe that Jesus existed, and that he was a very early reformed rabbi.
Famous people can be embellished to the point where the original person is–in gradual increments–replaced with a character. We see a very similar mechanism with anglers that exaggerate the size of the fish that “got away,” or a hunter who has a 4 point buck turn into a monster deer with a 12 point rack.
As a better example from recent times, consider Elvis. After his death in the late 70s, people kept claiming to have seen him in obscure places, and this idea of a conspiracy developed that the King of Rock and Roll faked his death in order to escape the negative consequences of his fame. There is an association of Elvis impersonators with Las Vegas . . . and how they officiate at Vegas weddings, they work as strippers, and there is even a subcategory of Elvis impersonators who are lesbian drag kings.
So . . . we have a famous artist who comes back from the dead and spawns numerous “sects,” and a “holy city” (Las Vegas) where people make pilgrimages to.
I was trained on fire alarm systems. The other electrician was the lead, and I just was basically a spectator. But if he encountered a problem, all he did was swap a card, and if it worked fine. If not, time for a new card. He never exercised the part of his brain where the did any troubleshooting, he just swapped parts until things worked. Guys like that motivated me to take my time, do homework, learn systems, and I know for a fact I am a much better technician because of such brain-dead people.
That much is obvious. The three belt stars in Orion always point at Sirius, no matter what time of year. The relationship is fixed.
As for the sun appearing to remain stationary in the sky, that is also somewhat of a misnomer. The sun always appears to move in the sky, rising in the east and setting in the west. Sure, it traverses different paths through the sky depending on the season, but it always follows a path from east to west during the day.
The word “solstice” combines the Latin words for sun (Sol) and “stand still” (sistere). What this really means is that the declination (the celestial equivalent of latitude) of the sun doesn’t appear to change much around the time of the solstices. If you consider the yearly path of the sun with respect to the constellations to be a sine function, the derivative of the sun’s path at the solstices is zero. Likewise, the derivative is at a maximum at the equinoxes (like the one coming up on Friday).
I agree. I think they over embellished. Over kill, all of it. I think when they started adding things to the real person and making up things that the real Jesus never did, they ended up making a whole new character in the process. So if we compared the real guy to the super hero fictional dude that all Xtians refer to as Jesus. There would be a tremendously big difference between the two. One being a normal guy that inspired people and one being a fictional character with fairy tale magical powers.
Exactly. They did the same shit with Adolph Hitler. Sightings in other countries and people saying he faked his death. All sorts of misinformation.
I work at a Ford dealership and the main problem is people coming back irate saying that the service department didn’t fix their car and don’t want to pay a second time because they spent a couple thousand bucks and having to wait several hours in the waiting room for it to get fixed to begin with.
Surprisingly a lot of the mechanics we’ve gotten can’t actually fix shit. We maybe get 1 guy that knows what he’s doing.
Understandable; poor Ratty rarely knows what the fuck he is talking about. He just hears shit and repeats it as if it is true without fact checking anything. We all do it occasionally, but most of us make an attempt to not sound like dweebs. Not Ratty, he just jumps in with all four feet and then grabs on to the rock at the bottom so that you can’t even pull him out by his tail. Demonstrate he is wrong with facts, citations, and demonstrable evidence, and he will still double down on his delusional responses. Poor Poor Ratty.
Saying the Bible doesn’t act as evidence is a rhetorical trick and a category error. You people simply made that rule up. It is arbitrary and you are simply hiding your head in the sand. The fact is that the New Testament bears the marks of authenticity. I gave multiple examples of that. They are serious, sober accounts. It’s one continuous story from the Gospels through Acts, and then the characters jump out in the Epistles with extreme consistency. They act as verification for each other. I can use their writings to clarify each other because they’re saying the same thing. And they wrote during the lifetimes of most of the witnesses. Having writings a few decades after the events is really, really early. Especially since we have so many of their writings so early that we can cross check. 1 Corinthians 15 is very good evidence, since some of the material there was written within a decade after Christ. So far, I have many reasons to believe the accounts and little reason to doubt them.
Dude, the Jesus Seminar is laughable. The criteria they set were just a reflection of their own values.
Open my eyes to what now? What reasons do we have to conclude the New Testament writings are fictional?
I’m actually interested in pursuing the whole point about claims vs evidence. Maybe we should focus on that.
Thank you! That’s the same thing I’ve been trying to tell all these Bozos about the “Lord of the Rings” trilogy! If you’ve ever read any of those books, you know they clearly state all the magic and creatures are real and the events actually happened. But the ONLY “defense” they have is, “Hay, duhmass! Them books is onlee clames! They is not everdense! Yoo stoopid Tinman.” Good to know I finally have somebody in my corner here.
