Jesus thingie.. interesting.

http://time-blog.com/middle_east/

Brace yourself. James Cameron, the man who brought you 'The Titanic' is back with another blockbuster. This time, the ship he's sinking is Christianity.

In a new documentary, Producer Cameron and his director, Simcha Jacobovici, make the starting claim that Jesus wasn't resurrected --the cornerstone of Christian faith-- and that his burial cave was discovered near Jerusalem. And, get this, Jesus sired a son with Mary Magdelene.

No, it's not a re-make of "The Da Vinci Codes'. It's supposed to be true.

Let's go back 27 years, when Israeli construction workers were gouging out the foundations for a new building in the industrial park in the Talpiyot, a Jerusalem suburb. of Jerusalem. The earth gave way, revealing a 2,000 year old cave with 10 stone caskets. Archologists were summoned, and the stone caskets carted away for examination. It took 20 years for experts to decipher the names on the ten tombs. They were: Jesua, son of Joseph, Mary, Mary, Mathew, Jofa and Judah, son of Jesua.
Israel's prominent archeologist Professor Amos Kloner didn't associate the crypt with the New Testament Jesus. His father, after all, was a humble carpenter who couldn't afford a luxury crypt for his family. And all were common Jewish names.

There was also this little inconvenience that a few miles away, in the old city of Jerusalem, Christians for centuries had been worshipping the empty tomb of Christ at the Church of the Holy Sepulcher. Christ's resurrection, after all, is the main foundation of the faith, proof that a boy born to a carpenter's wife in a manger is the Son of God.

But film-makers Cameron and Jacobovici claim to have amassed evidence through DNA tests, archeological evidence and Biblical studies, that the 10 coffins belong to Jesus and his family.

Ever the showman, (Why does this remind me of the impresario in another movie,"King Kong", whose hubris blinds him to the dangers of an angry and very large ape?) Cameron is holding a New York press conference on Monday at which he will reveal three coffins, supposedly those of Jesus of Nazareth, his mother Mary and Mary Magdalene. News about the film, which will be shown soon on Discovery Channel, Britain's Channel 4, Canada's Vision, and Israel's Channel 8, has been a hot blog topic in the Middle East (check out a personal favorite: Israelity Bites) Here in the Holy Land, Biblical Archeology is a dangerous profession. This 90-minute documentary is bound to outrage Christians and stir up a titanic debate between believers and skeptics. Stay tuned.
--Tim McGirk/Jerusalem

sounds quite interesting, although i am an athiest who does not even believe any of that crap. i hate the way this gets so much prominence since at best it is a exaggerated history and at worst a made up story. if this is true it is exaggerated history.

still, anything that brings a bit of fact to it instead of relying on a bunch of writings writtent thousands of years ago. seriously, i really doubt any of what was written in the bible actually happened when it happened. those stories had probably been passed down through the generations through oral tradition(no jokes please) until finally written down.

that in itself casts doubt on it IMO. so much is unknown, like why anyone needs to believe in such tosh in the first place. ach, i best stop now before i rant some more uninformed crap.

They will all burn in Hell!!!!! [/reactionary archconservatice Catholic]

What fails for religion in unHolywood is usually blind worship of money, fame and idiocy. I'm not sure what scientology really is, but speaking as someone who comes from a very technical/scientific family, science and faith do not mix. They really do not mix.

Mainly, the reason why the two do not mix is really pretty simple. In any scientific field, how much would you trust something written 100 years ago, let alone 2,000? Also, bearing in mind that the bible was written over a period of 5,000-odd years, by numerous people, all of whom had their own perspective of events and their own opinions? Well - although I do read said book, like any other book I take what I'm reading with a pinch of salt.

Let's take the Gospels: Four different Gospels, written by four separate disciples, all four with different viewpoints etc, and all four Gospels differ in small, subtle ways. Basically, the bible is like any other historical text - written by the people, edited by the winners. Broadly speaking true, just don't examine it in close detail.

'Have faith like a little child' we were told. I don't ask questions, I don't try to figure out what the hell is going on, I go to church on and off, and I do unto others. Seems to be working so far.

Oh, yeah, the whole God thing? As far as I'm concerned, He exists. I'm also thinking that He is still trying to figure out why He promised not to flood us again... and if God turns out to not exist, well, I'm probably going to be very embarrassed if/when I die.

I'm only hoping that it doesn't turn out to be Gods - I'd rather take my chances with Wingding.

I agree - two completely different things, and one has absolutely nothing to do with the other.

So why people, much like StrangeStranger, insist on using one to disprove the other, I'll never really understand.

-I believe that God exists.
-Well I believe that he doesn't!
-Poop on you!
-Double poop on you!

Where science fits into this dialog...

..Archimedes, Hippocrates, Sun Tsu (hey.. scientific way of going about war)...

...*honks to the ecumenical, diocesan snorkius*...

I know. I should develop a policy about hitting the forums on a sunday after a long party weekend. The vast amounts of endorphins, adrenaline, caffeine and marijuana tend to make me a little careless.

Then again, many theories which were accepted as scientific fact have been debunked as well. The phlogiston theory, to name but one.

For every scientific theory proven, I'd hate to know how many have been disproven.

probably not that many, but yeah...

The most intelligent people in the world don't believe in a higher power because everything can be explained by science.

Well said. As long as the believer isn't trying to convert me or make me give them money or my time, I don't care what they believe in. I don't understand why different religions can't just accept the others (mainly Christianity) and realize that cultures develop in different ways. You would think people that study forgiveness and compassion would be able to accept others for their point of view.

Your sig and your post are fighting an epic battle..."contradiction" keeps popping up on my screen.

to accept that other religions exist is to admit that you are wrong. if you accept that other gods apart from god exist then you accept that he cannot have solely created the earth and that humans are in his image(aint that what the bible says?)

no, if people accept other faiths they are basically saying their's and other religions are false.

Ex went pyscho-religious on me.. haha Dumped her.

Focking fruitcake. I avoid anyone devoted or religious.

My coworker still to this day does not believe dinosaurs ever existed because of his religious act.

Another girl I worked with previously.. we got into an argument once.. I flat out laughed at her. She, being a very intelligent person, made the comment and argumen that the earth is no older than 10,000 years because of what the Bible says.

WTF?! I don't get these religious nuts.

you want to hear something really funny. a woman i work with got into a heated argument with me. although an athiest i hate people who say they are relgious but who don't follow it.

she basically said that you don't have to follow the bible to be a christian and that you could pick and choose which parts you wanted. all you had to do was be christ like.

now forgive but when i tried to explain that in order to be christ like you had to follow all the messages in the bible regardless of if you like them or not, she went berserk and started shouting STFU at me over and over. she just did not want her bubble burst about how she wasn't a christian.

it hasn't been brought up since.

Really? Everything? 8O

Every scientist I know would vehemently disagree with that statement. I know some who hold out hope everything could be explained via science and "reason" but. . . no where even close to that point.

I agree. When my wife said she wanted to start going to church, I told her to go. Don't pick and choose what weeks you go, don't sit in the back and space off, go and get the full experience... Give it 100%.

That said, I fight with her whenever she wants me to go (usually just Christmas and Easter).

I truly don't believe that going to church two or three times a year is good for anyone.

The world we live in is based of physics.

Name something that have factual presence that can't be explained, ever, by science?

They're slowing figuring out black holes and gray matter.. come on. They're getting ideas behind it.

You know, no one truly knows if E = MC2.. You do realize that? But its such a sound concept that basing things off it would give us a point to work with.

You know they said Speed of Light is a constant? And it has been that for years and that is a bench mark point. Some brains slowed light down to like 10 mph or something insane.

You know some Aussie people actually have made 2 successful molecular transporations? They sent a few atoms or something a few inches a year or two ago. Very recently they sent a larger group of atoms or molecules a greater distance.

Come on.. the world around us is a science lab. Everything is based off it that we know and I doubt there is something out there that science won't cover at some point.

Its a set point to base your work off. Whatever that number would be, the result would be the same.. just in proportion to that number. Everything based of pi would need to be adjusted.

Though I forget exactly how pi was created so long ago.

Yeah I looked it up and didn't bother more..

Its close enough for our uses.

Well, to start with, the whole of the old testament is completely and utterly irrelevant to Christianity.

Then you have to remember that a lot of things can, and are, interpreted in very different ways, not even taking into account all the things that are lost in translation.

Oh, and then there's all the church dogma that has nothing to with Christ in the first place. Like celibacy for catholic priests.

As with any fanatic, your posts are ignorant to the core, for all your professed rationality.

Only if you had a perfect circle...

i hate that damn e=mc2. IMO there is no evidence that light is a constant. for one, we have not measured light anywhere but on earth. now, who's to say light isn't affected by forces in the universe?

how can we say that light travelling from one place to another is subjected to the same forces. yes, in our solar system the forces acting on it may allow it to travel that fast but somewhere else it may be faster or slower, we just do not know nor can it be tested until we can travel a considerable distance away for earth. one day we may be able to experiment in labs but until we know every force that exists we cannot say one way or the other until it is tested in real life.

oh and here is another thought of mine. time does not exist, time is a human made concept and has no basis in science. time cannot change, the rate at which things happen can but time cannot IMO. people have made clocks to help keep track of the passing of "time" but to me it cannot be changed. i'm sure some may disagree.

oh and snorkius. since jesus is the son of god i have a funny feeling you'll find his fathers teaching may just matter a teency weency bit, or maybe even alot

also, churches have nothing to do with religion, to be a part of a religion, you just have to follow the teaching of them from whatever documents they exist in.

all, just my opinion, if you can expand my knowledge on any of the crap i have written here please do but theories or opinion don't count unfortunately.

Correct. There is a huge amount of evidence that the speed of light isn't a constant. However, the speed of light in a vacuum IS. No-one is claiming that the speed of light is contstant under all conditions. You should have stayed awke in physics lessons in school.

8O Yeeeeeees, that's right. Man has never launched probes into space. The moon landing was faked...

You keep him talking, I'll call the police.

We don't. Who is telling you that we are?

True, but we can test our theories by varying the conditions on earth. We can pass light through a variety of different materials and measure how it affects the velocity. We can even develop models/formula to predict the speed of light through a substance of which we know the physical properties.

Whilst it is true that most of our physical laws are expressed in equations that work equally well forwards as backwards (and so are reversible in the sense of time), there are some that are not - entropy for example.
Feynmann did a lot of work regarding the physics and time - it's mostly horrendously complicated, but a good place to start would be a book called "In Search of Schrodingers Cat", written by John Gribbin.

His response seemed perfectly reasonable to me *shrugs*

when i said forces, i wasn't really meaning physical objects and i am saying that i do not belive that light is constant in a vacuum either. you might have missed my point.

also, alot of people describe time as if it is real and can be changed. take people who go on about time travel. absolutely impossible IMO.

basically my opinion is that unless you can prove something then it ain't worth shit. however, since humans will never be able say they know everything as we cannot ever know if the instruments we measure things with are capable of measuring something we do not know exists, humans quest for knowledge and understanding will continue until we are destroyed or destroy ourselves.

now, how about we move onto the existence of extraterrestrial life and how god was actually an evil alien overlord(no i don't think he used the pyramids as landing bases nor do i actually believe god was an alien either, that would be just silly now wouldn't it.)