saw it on the history channel. anyone else watch it? i thought it was pretty interesting, although i have the sneaky suspicion they left out alot of the surrounding context for their proofs.

generally it goes like this:

the ten plagues can, for the most part, be explained by a large volcanic eruption that occurred in the 1500s BC.

1. water to blood - volcanic gas in water = dissolved rust in nile = blood red color
2. frogs - fish died but frogs escaped the water, which was now poisonous
3. lice - no water = bad hygeine, etc
4. flies. " "
5. disease on livestock " "
6. boils - didn't see it, was in the bathroom taking a deuce
7. hail mixed with fire - pumice and apparently ice does form on volcanic crap spit into the atmosphere
8. locusts - drop in temp typical of volcano aftermath caused locusts to land and mate in egypt
9. darkness - volcanic gasses blot out the sky
10. first born - co2 escaped the nile and killed first born sons, who slept on beds while servants and children typically slept on hammocks or on rooftops.

they cited to a few recent events, such as a volcanic gas incident in cameroon, where the co2 and water to blood actually happened.

the parting of the red sea was explained as a mistranslation. moses parted the *reed sea "yum suf" which was a marshy area crossing into the sinai. the nile silts collapsed during earthquake activity, causing a huge drop in sea level. simultaneously, a tsunami caused by the earthquakes destroyed the purusing egyptian army a short time later.

they concluded by finding what they believed to be mount sinai and finding a representation of the ark of the covenant in a mycenaean colony believed to be part of the tribe of dan.

all in all a real entertaining program.

I like how each plague can probably be linked to an Egyptian deity.

if you can disprove it by the scientific method and observation, it must be false....I think that appeals to any rational human being

and yet I believe God smiles at all that, because God delights in nullifying the "intelligence of the intelligent" and justifying "those who live by faith, and not by sight"...it's the test of immortality, and most will fail the test!



spot the edit :D

right, magical deception by an all powerful being who uses every trick to hide his existance from mankind so he can feel justified in punishing us for not having enough faith in his existance.

and we can never get it right without a starting assumption of "an all powerful being who uses every trick to hide his existance from mankind so he can feel justified in punishing us for not having enough faith in his existance."

i don't think it's unusual to think that god might manipulate nature to create the miracles depicted in the bible.

if anything i felt the "experts" were rather desperate to prove that the exodus actually happened, and it happened exactly as it was described by the bible.

if anything i felt the "experts" were rather desperate to prove that the exodus actually happened, and it happened exactly as it was described by the bible.

it seems like an approach to understanding the bible is to assume that the writers actually saw pretty much what they recorded, but what they ATTRIBUTED as the CAUSE of what they {possibly} observed is made up, fantasy.

like the book of revelation is full-on insane ravings, genesis is a streight-up fairytale, but exodus might well have actually happend sort of like it was recorded, once you get past the fairytale god stuff.

absurd

the evidence of Design is ubiquitous, so that men are "without excuse" (Romans 1)

right, every snowflake is individually handcrafted by an angel because it is impossible for such obvious design to come about unguided by a supernatural spirit.

absurd... good preemptive word choice.

the Resurrection is also a fairy tale

yah, zombies lurching around downtown jeruselem, THAT'S not any sort of fairytale.

Matthew 27:52-53 (King James Version)

52 And the graves were opened; and many bodies of the saints which slept arose,

53 And came out of the graves after his resurrection, and went into the holy city, and appeared unto many.

Acts 9:40-42 (King James Version)


40 But Peter put them all forth, and kneeled down, and prayed; and turning him to the body said, Tabitha, arise. And she opened her eyes: and when she saw Peter, she sat up.

41 And he gave her his hand, and lifted her up, and when he had called the saints and widows, presented her alive.

42 And it was known throughout all Joppa; and many believed in the Lord.

whups !! somebody OTHER THAN JESUS bringing the dead back to life

so this Ressurection of which you speak is just ANOTHER mixed in amongst a slew of ressurections intended to impress the rubes.


plus zombies.

well duh, if god is keeping his word safely hidden from those who aren't Chosen how am I to NOT be ignorant ?

the point being that peter at least was demonstratably fully capable of bringing jesus back to life, so "The Ressurection" is "Just Another Ressurection".

it says that in the bible ?

so jesus bringing people back to life after they had paid the price for their sin by dying was just a temporary fix ?

so the wages of sin is not death, and the death god threatened adam and eve with had nothing to do with the sin of disobedience ??

you will get your reward in heaven. :rolleyes:

so what we call death, which jesus overcame, is different from what god means by death, which is something that jesus did not overcome.

or did jesus in addition to physical death ALSO subject himself to spiritual death and overcome that too ?

Christians do not overcome physical death, with the exception of those who live to see the Rapture...in Christ we overcome (literally escape) spiritual death.

so... what's the point of the physical Ressurection getting a capitol letter ?

'if jesus be not risen then I be a fool. '

with all the zombies staggering around what is one more ?

a tardy zombie at that, three days late for the big rush.

{how long did christian zombies last ? what killed them the second time ?

so, did jesus suffer spiritual death ? and then restore his own soul ?

like he suffered physical death and restored his own body to life WITHOUT calling on god, gave himself life AS god sort of thing, only spiritually ?

It's amazing what cough syrup can do.

what is the point of jesus returning from the dead {physical death} if that kind of dead doesn't count ?

did jesus die the kind of death {spiritual death} that does count ?

since I assume you are not stupid, and I do, really, there must be a reason you are drawing your blinders totally shut on this topic.

the SINGLE MOST IMPORTANT THING JESUS DID WAS GET RESSURECTED.

without the ressurection nothing else he did matters in the slightest.

RIGHT ????

without the Ressurection the sacrifice on the cross was just another maryter.

so... what's the point of the physical Ressurection getting a capitol letter ?

'if jesus be not risen then I be a fool. '

with all the zombies staggering around what is one more ?

a tardy zombie at that, three days late for the big rush.

{how long did christian zombies last ? what killed them the second time ?

so, did jesus suffer spiritual death ? and then restore his own soul ?

like he suffered physical death and restored his own body to life WITHOUT calling on god, gave himself life AS god sort of thing, only spiritually ?

so, given the above, why ?

by the time jesus rose from the dead there were already a number of living dead around.

Lazarus at least, plus all the saints who rose when jesus "died".

what is special about this zombie ?

bringing people back from the dead wasn't it, because jesus DIDN'T bring people back from the dead, his father did.

could it be that after he came back jesus restored people to life WITHOUT invoking the father ?

no, he skulked off with no big flashy public magic displays.

after he left again his droogies DID revive stiffs, but did they call upon the power of god or the power of jesus ?

what was the POINT of the Resurrection ?

if the only man born to a virgin was ALSO the only man to come back from the dead, that would make it impressive, but having him one of a mob of ressurections... well, see what happened to the capitalization ?

"living dead"?

"reanimated corpses" 17 letters
"living dead" 10 letters
"zombie" 6 letters
"ressurected holy saints of the one true church" - priceless

since we haven't an agreed on a notion of what it is that was taking place getting too finicky on the word choice seems premature.



the soul always lives, it's just a temporary shell....

which is where my puzzlement about the Ressurection stems from.

1 what is the point ? "death" in this context seems to be roughly the same as getting new shoes in that it doesn' really affect YOU just how you interact with reality.

2 for the Ressurection of jesus to be special there MUST be something different in it from all the OTHER ressurections taking place at the same time.
what ?

3 so if the corrupt body dying and releasing the soul is NOT "death" what IS the death that jesus conqured ?

The last enemy that will be destroyed is death.

so the Ressurection was NOT jesus defeating death it was effectivly nothing more than a parlor trick.






the shell died again

this seems reasonable, but I did NOT read it in the bible, did you, or are you inventing it since it seems obvious that it must have happened ?

jesus body was taken to heaven, leaving no corpse to decay, what happened to all the rest of the bodies that were restored to at least enough function to walk around ?

are there a number of stone boxes containing bones that were supernaturally acted on in a way that science might find a measurable difference between them and the bones of contemporaries who were not resurrected ?






only those who were in Christ were resurrected....they were not "living dead", they were living souls, temporarily rejoined to perishable flesh


what is the POINT of dragging a soul out of the snug bed of the grave and forcing it into a rotting corpse for a few days ?

is this a power that god reserved only to jesus, not allowing satan to infest corpses with spirits of his choice ?

this directly contradicts my personal experience with the left hand Bing on Beemer, which was CLEARLY invested with a demonic spirit.

{Beemer = 1978 R80/7 purchased new, currently 180,000 + [the odo died in '87]}

it's obvious...those people did not possess supernatural bodies

Jesus had a supernatural body at the moment of resurrection, the "firstborn of the dead"...those in Christ will receive that same type of body

that sounds like more supposition, the original scarred corpse brought down from the cross 'disappeared'

jesus appeared in a body with the same damage/holes in it.

I note you do not say a "perfect" supernatural body'.

so are the other maryters going to get their supernatural bodies all scarred up as badges of their spiritual valour ?
like jesus ?


is there, somewhere in heaven the ORIGINAL dead body of jesus ?
what happened to it ?
is it stuffed in the ark of the covanant ?

my dad had a 1978 R100RS (I'm pretty sure that is the right date)

I looked at that beauty too, the R80 was lighter, and vibrated less, add the better gas milage and I saw it as the superior touring machine.

so we left off with jesus having TWO human bodies, the one that died on the cross and the one that was supernaturally created with the same wounds as the first body.

ALL the same wounds ?
isn't it sort of the point of getting a new supernatural body that it DOESN'T SUFFER FROM THE RAVAGES OF LIFE ?

the angels had to roll the stone aside to get jesus dead body out of the cave ?


"this is my flesh you eat."

as his churchmembers ate his miraculously undecaying corpus as part of the rituals jesus supernatural body healed.

it took them a couple hundred years to gobble it all, served up on little wafers of bread, at which point writing a bible became needful.

test of theory: there should be a couple hundred pounds of incorruptable, semi-divine, apostle poop still stinky somwhere in the holy land.

well, still smelly, this might be where we get the notion of poop smelling like roses.

since everything of this world will be forgotten when god wraps it all up*, will jesus still be walking around in heaven with scars on his body ?

what would be the point, with everybody wondering what happened ?

yet if the scars eventually disappear that makes them just another temporary sign

* this is where you could HELPFULLY post the bible quote about 'all previous things will be forgotten' to show my error. :D