Please Debate This The Secret Sayings of Jesus

His disciples said to him:
On what day will the rest of the dead take place?
And on what day does the new world come?
He said to them:
That rest for which you are waiting has come;
but you do not recognize it.

Jesus said:
I stood in the midst of the world
and I appeared to them in the flesh;
I found all of them drunken;
I found none among them thirsty.
And my soul was pained for the chidren of men,
for they are blind in their hearts,
and they do not see
that they came empty into the world
seeking also to leave the world empty.
But now they are drunken.
When they throw off their wine,
then they will repent.

Jesus said:
If your right eye leads you astray,
tear it out and fling it away;
it is better for you to lose one part of your body
than for the whole of it to be thrown into hell.
And if your right hand is your undoing,
cut it off and fling it away;
it is better for you to lose one part of your body
than for the whole of it to go to hell.

Jesus said:
Look upon the Living One as long as you live
so that you will not die
and seek to see him
without being able to see him.

Jesus said:
I will give you
what eye has not seen
and ear has not heard
and hand has not touched
and which has not come into the heart of man.

Jesus said to his disciples:
Make comparisons; tell me what I am like.
Simon Peter said to him:
You are like a just angel.
Matthew said to him:
You are like a wise philosopher.
Thomas said to him:
Master, my mouth will in no way endue
my saying what you are like.
Jesus said:
I am not your master.

Jesus said:
Blesed are the single ones and the elect,
for you will find the kingdom.
For you are from it,
and you will enter it again.

Jesus said to them:
When you make the two one,
and make the inside like the outside,
and the outside like the inside,
and the upper side like the under side,
and in such a way that you make the man
with the woman a single one,
in order that the man is not man and the
woman is not woman;...
then you will go into the kingdom.

Jesus said:
He who will drink from my mouth
will become like me.
I too will become he
and secrets will be revealed to him.

Jesus said:
Perhaps men think that I came
to cast peace on the world;
and they do not know that I came
to cast divisions upon the earth,
fire, sword, war.
For five will be in a house;
there will be three agianst two and two against three,
the father against the son and the son against the father.
And they will stand because they are single ones.

Jesus said:
The foxes have their holes and the birds have their nest;
but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head and to rest.

Jesus said:
I am the light
which is over everything.
I am the All;
from me the All has gone forth,
and to me the All has returned.
Split wood: I am there.
Lift up the stone, and you will find me there.

Jesus said:
When you make the two one,
you will become sons of man;
and if you say, Mountain, be removed!
in will move.

The disciples said to Jesus:
Tell us in what way our end will take place.
Jesus said:
You have indeed uncovered the beginning
so that you may seek the end;
for in the place where the beginning is,
there the end will be.
Blessed is he who will stand in the beginning,
and will know the end and will not taste death.

Jesus said:
Let him who seeks not cease in his seeking until he finds;
and when he finds, he will be troubled,
and if he is troubled, he will marvel,
and will be a king over the All.

Jesus said:
The kingdom of the Father
is like a merchant who had a cargo,
and who found a pearl.
He was a wise man.
He sold his cargo
and bought for himself the pearl alone.
You too seek for his treasure which does not perish,
which abides where no moth enters to eat
and worms do not destroy.

Jesus said:
If you do not fast to the world,
you will not find the kingdom;
if you do not truly keep the Sabbath,
you will not see the Father.

And he said:
Man is like a wise fisherman, who cast his net in the sea
and drew it out of the sea when it was full of little fishes.
Among them the wise fisherman found a large good fish.
He cast all the little fishes down into the sea.
He selected the large fish without difficulty.
He who has ears to hear, let him hear.

Jesus said:
Many stand before the door,
but the single ones are those who will enter into the bridechamber.

The disciples said to Jesus:
Tell us what the kingdom of heaven is like.
He said to them:
It is like a grain of mustard, smaller than all the seeds.
But when it falls on the earth which is tilled,
it sends forth a great branch and becomes a covering
for the birds of heaven.

Jesus said:
Blessed is he who was before he became.
If you are my disciples and hear my words,
these stones will serve you.
For you have five trees in paradise;
they do not stir, summer or winter,
and their leaves do not fall off.
He who will understand them will not taste death.

Jesus said:
He who has known the world has found a corpse,
and he who has found a corpse,
of him the world is not worthy.

His disciples said:
Show us the place where you are
for it is necessary for us to seek it.
He said to them:
He who has ears, let him hear!
There is light within a light-man
and it illuminates the whole world;
if it does not illuminate it, it is darkness.

 

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This appears to be not inspired text. There is a reason that is is not included as one of the gospels that are canonized. What is this the gospel of Thomas? The holy scriptures are the insired word of God. This means that those who chose the holy scriptures out of other contemporary rightings, had to be inspired also.

This text, I dont think, is inspired. What do you want to debate about? What about this text do you find interesting/disturbing?

 

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What source do you have for these sayings? Why do you say they are the sayings of Jesus?

 

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...because it's written in some dinky leathered book called a 'bible'?

 

lack of proof for God

But the evidence for God is all around you.

Evolution is the lie. It is a convenient paradigm that allows the beauty and complexity and elegance of biology to be the way it is without a Creator.

But even evolution cannot explain how the universe is so perfectly suited to our existence. The odds that the universe would exist this way by random is something like one in 10 to the 17 power!

 

Re: lack of proof for God

But the evidence for God is all around you.

Ah, yes, God created my laptop. Oh, no, wait, IBM did.

Evolution is the lie. It is a convenient paradigm that allows the beauty and complexity and elegance of biology to be the way it is without a Creator.

How do you know that evolution is the lie? I think that YOU are the lie, you don't really exist, you are just a tool used by the Vatican to promote Christianity (Catholicism in particular), you are some sort of PHP script that posts messages at certain forums and responds "intelligently".

But even evolution cannot explain how the universe is so perfectly suited to our existence. The odds that the universe would exist this way by random is something like one in 10 to the 17 power!

Gee, I don't know. If I have a round of Russian Roulet, the odds that this next barrel will have a bullet are... hmm... relatively LOW. However, it has a bullet in it! Goodbye my friend!

The thing about chances is that: if there is a one in 10^17 chance that something will happen, there still is a chance that it will happen, and this means that it could've happened. Mary could've given a virgin birth without divine intervention. Apparently, it's happened before. However, the chances are very low.

Now, imagine this: you are just another random person (soon-to-be lottery winner) who has bought a lottery ticket. Since there are 17 numbers, your chance of winning the jackpot is something like 1 in 100000000000000000. 3 days later, when the number is being read off on TV, you are very excited as the numbers keep matching... 13... 14... 15... 16... 17! All 17 matched! Now, this does happen to people.

So, think of evolution as the lottery. All these conditions as the lottery. Mr. Universe wanted to get all the conditions for the existance of humans, so he entered the lottery for it. He won.

 

Re: lack of proof for God

Originally posted by drsyme
But even evolution cannot explain how the universe is so perfectly suited to our existence.

We are perfectly suited to the Universe. Not the other way around. If the Universe were different any life that developed would also fit the different Universe perfectly.

The odds that the universe would exist this way by random is something like one in 10 to the 17 power!

Try this experiment: Take a die and roll it 100 times. Write each number down. Now then, the odds of you rolling that specific series of numbers is 6^100. But it did happen, didn't it?

~Raithere

 

Re: Re: lack of proof for God

Try this experiment: Take a die and roll it 100 times. Write each number down. Now then, the odds of you rolling that specific series of numbers is 6^100. But it did happen, didn't it?

~Raithere

In other words, the chances are one and six google

 

Drsyme,

You seem to be erroneously assuming that we came first and the universe adapted itself to suit us, and of course that is nonsense.

The evidence shows we only exist because the conditions were appropriate for evolution to take place. It is not that the conditions adapted to us but that we evolved with and adapted to the conditions, so of course it will appear perfect since we are the product of the conditions.

If I were to bake a cake in a round tin, then the resultant cake would of course be round. By analogy your argument is trying to maintain that it is unlikely that a round (out of all the infinite possible shapes) tin would have randomly appeared to produce a cake that must be round. I hope you can see how your reasoning is invalid.

This presents us with some interesting speculations on how life might evolve on other planets where the conditions are different but sufficient to produce some form of life. The incredible number of varieties of life on this planet virtually guarantees that life on other planets is likely to be very different to our own. And perhaps may not even be biologically (carbon) based.

Cris

 

Rait,

Sorry, I posted before seeing your post.

Oh well, at least I think Drsyme will get the point.

Cris

 

In the council of nicea, around 250-500 a.d. or so a bunch of guys got together and decided what would go into the official christian bible.
Among the things they outlawed were gnosticism, after all if you dont need an intermediary to get access to god how could they tax it?
As usually happens at such events the faction that showed up at the meeting with the most weapons , money and political clout got to decide the future of christianity.
The sayings of jesus that made it into the official canon were of course the ones that favored hierarchical organization and entrenched political power.

 

Hi morlock,

Welcome to sciforums.

And yup I reckon you are right. Xtianity was purely a political creation.

BTW have you considered dropping the imprecise notation of BC and AD in favor of BCE and CE, which are being increasingly used by impartial historians?

CE = Common Era.
BCE = Before the Common ERA.

No one knows if Christ actually existed and no one knows when he was born, so the the terms BC and AD are inherrently innacurate. Also why should other religions be forced to adopt the notation of another religion. CE and BCE are simply impartial and secular.

Cris

 

Thanks for the welcome

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Point taken

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Morlock welcome

You are right they did decide what way they could make money out of religion and thats why i belive in god not the church

 

Andrew,

Ok that is fine to some extent but it was that church that chose, edited, and created the mythologies that you have taken as a basis for your theistic beliefs. If you are convinced that that church was/is corrupt then it follows that you should have significant doubts about the truth of the texts they engineered. If we agree they were corrupt then that is because they chose and created texts to suit their own personal desires and which had nothing to do with potential truths about alleged deities.

Since all Christian texts came through that church then why do you believe texts generated by a corrupt church?

Cris

 

cris

Jesus said:
I am the light
which is over everything.
I am the All;
from me the All has gone forth,
and to me the All has returned.
Split wood: I am there.
Lift up the stone, and you will find me there.

The Church dose not like these words because it means you dont have to go to church you dont have to belive what they tell you can be your own person and still be a belever in god and that heven or hell is inside you and its you that can make a difrence in this world.
These Gosbles were writen by thomas and never have benn agreed with by the church and thats why there not in the bible

 

Re: cris

Originally posted by Andrew111
The Church dose not like these words because it means you dont have to go to church you dont have to belive what they tell you can be your own person and still be a belever in god and that heven or hell is inside you and its you that can make a difrence in this world.

The Gospel of Thomas is indeed interesting. Personally, I like this one:

"Rather, the Kingdom is inside of you, and it is outside of you. When you come to know yourselves, then you will become known, and you will realize that it is you who are the sons of the living Father."

Indicating that each of us is the "son" of God, not just Jesus.

And from the Apocryphon of James:

(In response to the Apostles rejoicing after Jesus told them he would intercede with God on their behalf) "Woe to you who are in want of an advocate! Woe to you who are in need of grace! Blessed are those who have spoken freely and have produced grace for themselves."

"Truly I say to you, no one will ever enter the Kingdom of Heaven if I bid him, but rather because you yourselves are full."

"In truth I say to you, the one who will receive life and believe in the Kingdom will never leave it - not even if the Father desires to banish him!"

Indicating that we do not need Jesus to intercede for us or even God to achieve Heaven and that those who achieve grace on their own are blessed.

The Non-Canonical Gospels are quite interesting.

~Raithere

 

Hi all thanks for the responses. I want to quickly respond about the "design of the univers" and then move on, I just want to make sure there is no misunderstanding.

I am not that smart a guy. The argument that I stated is an ancient one called the telelogical argument for God's existence. Now there are two powerful secular responses to this, Darwinian evolution, and the Anthropic principle. The Antrhopic principle, for those who dont know, deals with the problem of how can the universe be so perfectly suited for us to exist as intelligent beings There is no physical reason why the stong/weak/electromagnetic forces have to have the relative strengths that they do, for example. But cosmologists understand that if any of these forces were slightly different we would not exist. Since there are nearly an infinite number of other combinations it seems unlikely that this ocurred by chance, in fact some say it is impossible to have ocurred by chance.

The anthropic principle has several versions. The Strong Anthropic Principle is championed by Mr. Hawking. This version claims that the universe exists this way because we, as intelligent observers, cause it to be this way! That is what Hawking meant in that quote!

If you want to read more here is a link:

http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/rossuk/c-anthro.htm





Now back to Andrew's original post.

As I suspected this is the gospel of Thomas. I am not catholic so dont make that assumption. But, when the scriptures were canonized they took all of the individual works into consideration. While some portions of it may be consistent with the rest of the scriptures, if enough of it is inconsistent it was not included. You can claim that it was for purely political purposes, but to claim that does not prove it. I suspect that enough of the Gospel of Thomas is questionable that, while like any other righting from the time is worth looking at, cannot be considered divinely inspired.

Let me just give you one insight into the political aspect. When the scriptures where canonized, it was by the Church fathers. This for all intents and purposes is what we would call the Catholic church today. When the reformation ocurred in the 16th century, the reformers proclaimed solo scriptura, scriptures alone. This was in reaction to the Catholic churche's emphasis on their own liturgy and doctrine. But the reformers obviously thought enought of the Catholic church in the past to accept what they had canonized as scripture.

Thanks for listening

 

Re: Divinely Inspired

You obviously think that the bible was divinely inspired and I would agree if emporer constantine was divine.
Its was constantine not church leaders that called for the council, his motives were entirely political, factional christian bickering was causing disorder in his empire.
The council lasted a few weeks with constantine attending, if you think that the church fathers were so godly and unworldy that they didnt feel the emporer breathing down their necks youre a fool.
Constantine oversaw the creation of the official christian canon with an eye to consolidating his governments authority by extending its sphere to include domination over the souls of his subjects.
If your a christian in the way that the term is in use today, you are to a large degree worshipping the dead political philosophy of a 4th century emporer.

 

Originally posted by drsyme
The Antrhopic principle, for those who dont know, deals with the problem of how can the universe be so perfectly suited for us to exist as intelligent beings There is no physical reason why the stong/weak/electromagnetic forces have to have the relative strengths that they do, for example. But cosmologists understand that if any of these forces were slightly different we would not exist. Since there are nearly an infinite number of other combinations it seems unlikely that this ocurred by chance, in fact some say it is impossible to have ocurred by chance.

There are several problems with the Anthropocentric argument. One is that it presupposes that our existence is necessary. This is known as a modal fallacy in formal logic. In this instance what it boils down to is; The fact that we exist does not make our existence a logical necessity, our non-existence is not precluded.

Another problem with the argument is that the defined set is only 1. We have no means of knowing if there might be other Universes besides this one. Therefore, the odds of a Universe with the conditions necessary for our existence could be many orders of magnitude greater than that which you provided and still we could have no concept of how likely it's occurrence might be. There might be only one Universe or there might be an infinite number of Universes, we have no way of knowing for sure. But if there were an infinite number of Universes, with any finite range of variables, all of these possibilities would then exist.

The anthropic principle has several versions. The Strong Anthropic Principle is championed by Mr. Hawking. This version claims that the universe exists this way because we, as intelligent observers, cause it to be this way! That is what Hawking meant in that quote!

Yes. However, there are alternatives to the Copenhagen Interpretation. One is that the collapse of a quantum wave function may occur due to the interrelationship of quantum events. Another that the collapse does not actually occur, that it is perceptual. There are also several others, here is a site with brief comparison of a few. All of these, of course, have striking implications in epistemology.

http://www.quantonics.com/Level_5_QTO_Quantum_Interpretations.html

However, even if we take the Anthropocentric assertion as a given, one cannot build a case for any specific concept of God. One could only state that "God" is that which caused the conditions of the Universe to allow for the evolution of man. This neither implies any specific intent nor continued involvement with the Universe or humanity. Nothing else may be asserted.

~Raithere