1) The resurrection is absolutely not historical. Jesus the man MIGHT be.

There is a lot of scholarly research that says it is historical, especially in the last 80 years or so. There are volumes upon volumes of work, and there are a lot of things that deserve an honest and indepth discussion.

Almost all skeptical scholars affirm that Jesus was a historical person and that His disciples had an experience which convinced them that He was raised from the dead. Many agree that a group of women discovered the empty tomb. The origin of Christianity is something which must be accounted for, historically. You can't just wave your hand over it and say its all nonsense.

2) I know Christianity is a joke religion invented for political control by Constantine. That is a verifiable, historical fact.

On what do you base that conclusion?

3) mythos cannot verify mythos. You say Satan created other religions (many before Chritianity existed) to trick them out of worshiping Yahweh....why isn't that likely true of Christianity?

Because of the person of Jesus Christ, who is verified to be the Messiah from many lines of evidence. Some of these would include the fulfillment of dozens of prophecies, His life and ministry, and His resurrection from the dead.

4) not true. Verified truth can be proven and defended against being twisted with fact and evidence, at least to those willing to examine actual evidence and not rely on only propaganda and myth. God (if he existed) should have more backbone, and a clear, unambiguous word/voice. ( Your position seems to be he's not willing to stand behind his word and prefers most people burn in hell for their God given inability to distinguish which is which.)
How is it different from politicians? They aren't empowered by all powerful, vengeful gods....clearly neither are clergy.

I'm not sure why you think you are holding the keys of facts and evidence in your hand, first of all. Can your worldview account for these things? You would need to establish that before we can talk about what "verified truth" is. What is your worldview, by the way? I am assuming it is scientific materialism. Have you ever looked into whether it is correct or not?

https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/cross-check/is-scientific-materialism-almost-certainly-false/

5) ...you shall stone them to death.....thou shalt not kill. Not so clear.

I think that is easily explained. The laws you are looking at were civil laws which governed the nation of Israel. Consider that our society has a law against murder, yet we execute criminals. Same concept.

6) only those who believe are saved...so clearly the sin of disbelief is not erased and is worse than all others. If it's not automatic, he didn't die for MY sins or yours, he's trading being saved (from something he told you exists with zero evidence) for belief and obedience.

None of your sins would be erased if you reject Christ. You would be paying not only for unbelief, but for all of the other ones too. Unbelief is like any other sin execept that the consequence of the sin prevents you from receiving forgiveness. It is exactly like expecting your cancer to be cured without taking the cure.

Jesus died for the sins of the world, including mine and yours, but you cannot partake of the atonement unless you receive Him as Lord and Savior.

My evidence is not just what we are discussing. Jesus Christ is alive and He is with me every single day of my life. He comforts me in my distress. He encourages me when I feel stuck. He gives me strength to overcome things I otherwise couldn't. He gives me wisdom for every problem and situation. He gives me love for those I find difficult to love. He fills my heart with generosity when I want to be stringy. He helps me do the right thing when I am going to fall short. This is not abstract, but a living reality in my life that grows more and more. He has utterly changed me and made me into a completely different person just like He said He would.

7) things that only work if you believe are hokum or placebo, things that only exist if you believe enough are pure fantasy.

Without buying your system, I have no sin to repent so I should go straight to heaven and collect my $200.

That's kind of like saying you don't believe in the law so you think you won't be punished when you break it. You have to account for your sin whatever you believe you have any or not. Your conscience, however, tells you that you have done wrong things.

9) You have cancer and some guy tells you God sent a car (he just needs $50 for telling you about it), it's invisible, and will take you to the cure, but you must believe the car exists, and when you die sitting in the freezing street he says it's your fault for not believing enough in God's magic cars. Duh. I'll buy my own plane ticket and get myself there, not wait for ethereal magic cars.

Let's say that you got a sign that the car was legitimate, but you still stubbornly chose not to go. For instance, you had a dream that a green car with a florida license plate drove up to your house, and a middle age woman got out and came up to your door and told you she was sent by God to take you to the cancer cure, and then it really happened. Does that change anything for you?

Mostly the questions are for you, in hope you might see the contradiction and self reinforcing mythos, but your answers do offer insight to your (and other people's) intractable mindsets. Thanks

God had revealed Himself to me, personally, and verified the scripture in my as true. I know that He loves me, personally, and I know that He loves you too. My hearts desire is that you would know that love. That is my mindset, primarily.

"You're still white aren't you?"

Never any pleasing the PC lefty crowd is there. They wont be happy until the Doctor is a middle age, black, transgender, midget woman with a prosthetic leg and suffers from aspergers.

I think Americans woke up to the reality of state-run healthcare only in the last few years. Right now they're just getting used to the idea, but ultimately this GOP ploy will probably backfire in a huge way. The best way to get anyone to notice the value inherent in a program is to take it away from them or sabotage it to the point where it becomes useless.

I've seen so many interviews with middle age to older Americans who voted for Trump because Obamacare increased 200% in cost over a few years and now Trump's going to blow that up by as much as 750%?

Good luck in the mid-terms Republicans.

Fry is almost certainly correct that modern ideas of the middle ages are overstating things. Certainly scholars of the time had sources available describing the earth as a sphere.

I was told the confusion stemmed from Isidore of Seville who wrote a book called the Etymologies, in Latin, to summarise the Greek books from classical antiquity. This was becoming important at a time when Greek was studied much less, and the originals were therefore inaccessible to most scholars. Anyway, in one passage of his Etymologies he described the shape of the earth as being round, like a wheel.

This probably didn't cause nearly as much confusion as people think.

Yes, it is and that was stupid too.

Just because they've rebooted it doesn't mean they get to do what they want with it. They could reboot Batman to be about a middle aged man having an identity crisis, and yeah, there's some aspect of that to Batman, but that's not really why anyone wants to see Batman.

I never thought it would be anything like the original movies or the tv series, I thought it SHOULD be like those. Just because I know how they're fucking it up doesn't mean I won't criticise it.

Congratulations! Your comment on Advertising swords with middle aged men hacking at meat has just received enough votes from the community to earn you 1 Power Point. Thank you for your quality contribution to VideoSift.

So much good stuff here. Please unkill this @eric3579.

I've said here before that 99% of the time when someone complains about "PC gone mad", they're a middle-aged straight white dude that can't understand why they can't call people fags, niggers or bitches anymore. And most of them don't even understand they're being a dick. As far as they're concerned they genuinely believe they're just "telling it like it is".

I'm going to let the late, insanely great, Iain Banks have the last word here:

'Political correctness is what right-wing bigots call what everybody else calls being polite ... Like everybody else, I have my own definitions of what is what, and I would never seek to deny that a few stupid people can take a perfectly good idea too far, but I stand by my contention that political correctness is more sinned against than sinning.'

Since you brought up unusual punishments, let's take stoning people for adultery (which exists in both the Koran and the Bible). When was the last time someone was stoned to death by a group in the U.S., U.K., Australia, or even Malaysia for adultery? Hundreds of millions of Muslims and Christians around the world seem perfectly fine ignoring that part of their holy texts. Just because something that we find distasteful today is written in the holy text doesn't automatically make the religion evil nor does it suddenly force the practioners to behave like savages.

You need to look at the specifics. Take a look at the countries where stoning actually does still occasionally happen and who actually carries it out: Iran, Somalia, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan. Invariably when it does occur it happens in rural areas where there are people who still actually live like it is the middle ages, with extreme poverty and little education to speak of (other than religious). Sure, the book gave them the idea but it wasn't the only factor in play and to ignore these other factors or the fact that honor killings are in fact common across a wide number of cultures with varying religious backgrounds (even the Romans did it) is what would be truly intellectually dishonest.

As for extremists--they exist in all religions including Christianity. It wasn't a mob of Muslims who attacked Charlie Hedbo--it was two deranged individuals. And while some Muslims might have applauded the attack others denounced it, such as the hunderds of thousands of Chechen protestors who who were upset with the cartoons but didn't think violence was the right response (see article here).

Again, it's a complex issue that can't be boiled down to "Islam = Good/Bad." Islam as practiced by ISIS or Boko Haram? Yeah, there's some dark shit going on there. Islam as practiced by average citizens in Kuala Lumpur or Boston? Not so much.

But again, moderate statements based on reason and facts are not what sell books, generate online clicks, or fill lecture halls to capacity.

Yea, sounds like something hedonists in the middle ages would come up with.

Now he just needs to get these guys to sell it
http://videosift.com/video/Advertising-swords-with-middle-aged-mean-hacking-at-meat

I must say, I wish it was alien to me as well. It is a disturbing thing to have to fear any interaction with those charged with my safety, but it's the only reasonable reaction when you have had the types of disrespectful interactions I've consistently had with police, no matter how compliant and respectful I was, invariably they are disrespectful, angry, and dishonest.

I grew up believing that cops were there to help citizens and that telling the truth to them is always the best thing to do. Personal and familial experience has dissuaded me of that belief thoroughly.

I'm also a middle-class, middle-aged, straight, white dude, but because I've lived in poor (largely black) areas I have been repeatedly targeted by police for 'sticking out'.

I've seen numerous close family members believe cop's lies, say too much trying to be helpful and/or truthful, and charged with crimes for what they revealed, or in some cases what the cop SAID they revealed. I've personally had cops lie on the stand about what I've said and/or done in their presence, and had them caught by the judge (lucky me) in the lies. Friends and family were not so lucky, and some of them did serious time for things they either did not do or things they were told would be ignored if they just told the nice friendly cops where the fireworks/pot/beer/anything they need to know about/etc. was, then when they tell the truth, officer friendly morphs into angry drill sergeant who charges them with any possible infraction he can think of and off to jail they go charged with the crimes they were promised would be ignored or crimes the officers created by lying.

When you see this behavior repeated time and time again, directed towards quite different people, one must conclude that it's an issue with those in the profession, not any personal issue by the victims. It's quite sad.

I have to admit, this kind of thinking is alien to me.

Maybe it's because I don't live in the US, maybe it's because I'm a middle-class, middle-aged, straight, white dude, but I simply don't have this kind of adversarial relationship with cops.

Even in the last few times I was in the US, every interaction I've had with police was courteous and respectful, even when I was in the wrong (like when I was pulled over for speeding).

Same in NZ. I don't have many official interactions with cops, a few random alcohol breath tests, pulled over once for speeding, but again they've always been fine.

Now, I absolutely would take this line if I encountered a situation like the one portrayed here, but as a general rule, I don't think most cops are out to get me, and again, maybe that's just because I'm not their target demographic.

As a non-native English speaker, what can I do to be middle-aged when I'm 60?