TO: JP Holding:
I sat down yesterday and began reading your "flawless" paperback book, THE IMPOSSIBLE FAITH. I must say that you certainly did not disappoint me because it was no time at all that i found misinformation and flaws! As I read on, they grew in magnitude to the point that I burst out in laughter! What a joke!
You began by calling Mormonism One of the faiths "other" than Christianity. Well now, I think that would come as a surprise to members of The Church Of Jesus Christ Of The Latter-Day Saints to learn that they are not Christians!: eek: Fact is, YOU ARE WRONG! They ARE Christians!
One wonders what "atheist" would pay $5000.00 to reput this garbage? I shall do it now for free!
You stated that other religions "move the goal posts" and alter their positions when they are faced with attacks on their doctrines. What do you call Midrash , exegesis, Bible Commentaries, revised versions, new translations, etc.?
One reason that you give as "evidence" of God's "vendication" of Jesus is the darkness at the time of the Crucifixion. Ha! Too bad that it was not noticed or recorded IN HISTORY ANWHERE IN THE WORLD! It can only be found in the NT which was written by anonymous non-eyewitnesses!
Then, even though you told me that you had read the scathing refutation of the so-called "prophecies" by the great Thomas Paine, you still cited them on page 70 in your book as powerful witness to your position! Let's take a look at his words the New, as a prophecy of Jesus Christ:
Matthew ii. 1-6. "Now when Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea, in the days of Herod the king, behold there came wise men from the East to Jerusalem, saying, where is he that is born king of the Jews? for we have seen his star in the East, and are come to worship Him. When Herod the king heard these things he was troubled, and all Jerusalem with him; and when he had gathered all the chief priests and scribes of the people together, he demanded of them where Christ should be born. And they said unto him, In Bethlehem, in the land of Judea: for thus it is written by the prophet, And thou Bethlehem, in the land of Judea, ant not the least among the Princes of Judah, for out of thee shall come a Governor that shall rule my people Israel." This passage is in Micah v. 2.
I pass over the absurdity of seeing and following a star in the day time, as a man would a 'Will with the whip,' or a candle and lantern at night; and also that of seeing it in the east, when themselves came from the east; for could such a thing be seen at all to serve them for a guide, it must be in the west to them. I confine myself solely to the passage called a prophecy of Jesus Christ.
The book of Micah, in the passage above quoted, v. 2, is speaking of some person, without mentioning his name, from whom some great achievements were expected; but the description he gives of this person, ver. 5, 6, proves evidently that it is not Jesus Christ, for he says, "and this man shall be the peace, when the Assyrian shall come into our land: and when he shall tread in our palaces, then shall we raise up against him [that is, against the Assyrian] seven shepherds and eight principal men. And they shall waste the land of Assyria with the sword, and the land of Nimrod on the entrance thereof; thus shall He [the person spoken of at the head of the second verse] deliver us from the Assyrian, when he cometh into our land, and when be treadeth within our borders."
This is so evidently descriptive of a military chief, that it cannot be applied to Christ without outraging the character they pretend to give us of him. Besides which, the circumstances of the times here spoken of, and those of the times in which Christ is said to have lived, are in contradiction to each other. It was the Romans, and not the Assyrians that had conquered and were in the land of Judea, and trod in their palaces when Christ was born, and when he died, and so far from his driving them out, it was they who signed the warrant for his execution, and he suffered under it.
Having thus shown that this is no prophecy of Jesus Christ, I pass on to the third passage quoted from the Old Testament by the New, as a prophecy of him. This, like the first I have spoken of, is introduced by a dream. Joseph dreameth another dream, and dreameth that he seeth another angel. The account begins at Matthew ii. 13. "The angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream, saying, Arise and take the young child and his mother and flee into Egypt, and be thou there until I bring thee word: For Herod will seek the life of the young child to destroy him. When he arose he took the young child and his mother by night and departed into Egypt: and was there until the death of Herod, that it might be fulfilled which was spoken of the Lord by the prophet, saying, Out of Egypt have I called my son."
This passage is in the book of Hosea, xi. I. The words are, "When Israel was a child then I loved him and called my son out of Egypt. As they called them so they went from them, they sacrificed unto Baalim and burnt incense to graven images."
This passage, falsely called a prophecy of Christ, refers to the children of Israel coming out of Egypt in the time of Pharaoh, and to the idolatry they committed afterwards. To make it apply to Jesus Christ, he then must be the person who sacrificed unto Baalim and burnt incense to graven images; for the person called out of Egypt by the collective name, Israel, and the persons committing this idolatry, are the same persons, or the descendants of them. This then can be no prophecy of Jesus Christ, unless they are willing to make an idolator of him.
here:
Now for the next one:
forced and far-fetched piece of imposition.
Matthew iv. 12-16, "Now when Jesus heard that John was cast into prison, he departed into Galilee: and leaving Nazareth, he came and dwelt in Capernaum, which is upon the sea coast, in the borders of Zebulon and Nephthalim: That it might be fulfilled which was spoken by Esaias [Isaiah] the prophet, saying, 'The land of Zebulon and the land of Nephthalim, by the way of the sea, beyond Jordan, Galilee of the Gentiles, the people which sat in the region and shadow of death, light is springing upon them.'
I wonder Matthew has not made the cris-cross-row, or the christ-cross-row (I know not how the priests spell it) into a prophecy. He might as well have done this as cut out these unconnected and undescriptive sentences from the place they stand in and dubbed them with that title. The words however, are in Isaiah, ix. 1, 2, as follows: "Nevertheless the dimness shall not be such as was in her vexation, when at the first he lightly afflicted the land of Zebulon and the land of Naphtali, and afterwards did more grievously afflict her by the way of the sea beyond Jordan in Galilee of the nations."
All this relates to two circumstances that had already happened at the time these words in Isaiah were written. The one, where the land of Zebulon and Naphtali had been lightly afflicted, and afterwards more grievously by the way of the sea.
But observe, reader, how Matthew has falsified the text. He begins his quotation at a part of the verse where there is not so much as a comma, and thereby cuts off everything that relates to the first affliction. He then leaves out all that relates to the second affliction, and by this means leaves out every thing that makes the verse intelligible, and reduces it to a senseless skeleton of names of towns.
To bring this imposition of Matthew clearly and immediately before the eye of the reader, I will repeat the verse, and put between crotchets [ ] the words he has left out, and put in Italics those he has preserved.
"[Nevertheless the dimness shall not be such as was in her vexation when at the first he lightly afflicted] the land of Zebulon and the land of Naphtali, [and did afterwards more grievously afflict her] by the way of the sea beyond Jordan in Galilee of the nations."
What gross imposition is it to gut, as the phrase is, a verse in this manner, render it perfectly senseless, and then puff it off on a credulous world as a prophecy. I proceed to the next verse.
Ver. 2. "The people that walked in darkness have seen a great light; they that dwell in the land of the shadow of death, upon them hath the light shined." All this is historical, and not in the least prophetical. The whole is in the preter tense: it speaks of things that had been accomplished at the time the words were written, and not of things to be accomplished afterwards.
As then the passage is in no possible sense prophetical, nor intended to be so, and that to attempt to make it so is not only to falsify the original but to commit a criminal imposition, it is matter of no concern to us, otherwise than as curiosity, to know who the people were of which the passage speaks that sat in darkness, and what the light was that had shined in upon them.
If we look into the preceding chapter, Is. viii., of which ix. is only a continuation, we shall find the writer speaking, at verse 19 of "witches and wizards who peep about and mutter," and of people who made application to them; and he preaches and exhorts them against this darksome practice. It is of this people, and of this darksome practice, of walking in darkness, that he is speaking at ix. 2; and with respect to the light that had shined in upon them, it refers entirely to his own ministry, and to the boldness of it, which opposed itself to that of the witches and wizards who peeped about a and muttered.
Isaiah is, upon the whole, a wild disorderly writer, preserving in general no clear chain of perception in the arrangement of his ideas, and consequently producing no defined conclusions from them. It is the wildness of his stile, the confusion of his ideas, and the ranting metaphors he employs, that have afforded so many opportunities to priestcraft in some cases, and to superstition in others, to impose those defects upon the world as prophecies of Jesus Christ. Finding no direct meaning in them, and not knowing what to make of them, and supposing at the same time they were intended to have a meaning, they supplied the defect by inventing a meaning of their own, and called it 'his.' I have however in this place done Isaiah the justice to rescue him from the claws of Matthew, who has torn him unmercifully to pieces, and from the imposition or ignorance of priests and commentators, by letting Isaiah speak for himself.
If the words walking in darkness, and light breaking in, could in any case be applied prophetically, which they cannot be, they would better apply to the times we now live in than to any other. The world has "walked in darkness" for eighteen hundred years, both as to religion and government, and it is only since the American Revolution began that light has broken in. The belief of one God, whose attributes are revealed to us in the book or scripture of the creation, which no human hand can counterfeit or falsify, and not in the written or printed book which, as Matthew has shown, can be altered or falsified by ignorance or design, is now making its way among us: and as to government, 'the light is already gone forth,' and whilst men ought to be careful not to be blinded by the excess of it, as at a certain time in France when everything was Robespierrean violence, they ought to reverence, and even to adore it, with all the perseverance that true wisdom can inspire.
So, we see that this imposition purporting to be a validation of your stance has been shown to be a fraud and you to be one as well!
I could go on and on with an attack on the rest of the book but I do not wish to overwhelm the members here. Besides, the Resurrection, which comprises the remainder of the book, is a big subject in itself and will be address later elsewhere.
In conclusion, I shall offer a few reasons why I believe that Christianity has survived. First, a few observations: There are millions of sperm after one ovum but only one gets to fertilize it. If defied greated odds than did Christanity. President Obama, a black man, overcame great odds. Then there's Islam and other great religions that have survived gigantic odds as well. In fact, combing all the other religions, they dwarf Christianity and are growing while it is on the wane!
The survival of Christianity is due largely to happenstance. A major factor was do to opportunist Emperor Constantine, who saw a chance to exploit the fervor of Christians and thus convenientlysaw a cross in the sky and then gave his stamp of approval on Christianity by making it the state religion. That was, however, still some 400 years after Jesus that he convened the Council of Nicea in 325 A.D. The history of years prior to that are murky, indeed.
Christianity spread rapidly because the conditions were fertile in the Roman Empire for a new religion to take a firm hold. Having the power of government on it's side was a huge advantage. The use of threat of hell as punishment and the reward of heaven for compliance also bolstered the faith. The other religions had no such vehicle of motivation.
Those who resisted were subjected to severe forms of abuse and even murder. Skepticism was stifled by banning free speech, knowledge, philosophy, and scientific discoveries. The Church held enormous power for centuries with such bully tactics. Indeed, the engine of oppression was fueled by ostracism, superstition, ignorance , torture confiscation of property, murder, etc.
The Dark Ages are a stain on our history. Instruments of torture such as the Rck and Fagot,, forgery, fake "relics" such as the Shroud of Turin,, blue laws, witch burnings, etc., give silent testimony of the tools used to advance the "success" of Christianity!
You can also thank such men as Luther, Campbell, Wesley, Calvin, Williams, etc. for the proliferation of the faith. You now have countless denominations that sprung from differences over "interpretation" of Scripture.
Today, we can see the fruits of a religion that was sustained by the social fabric of societies. The family values that frowned on divorce, abortion, promiscuity,etc. helped to facilitate the spread of the Church. There was a convert who told his family the "good News" and they told their friends, etc., and the word spread and so did the Churches. That produced Church-related institutions and organizations that grew and began to influence laws and business as well.
We can also credit the prohibition of birth control, which produced more followers of the faith, for the further fruitfulness of Christianity. However, I met a Christian once who was married for 14 years and only had two kids. I asked him why and he said " I cheat." Still, many do not and thus the population problem is exacerbated.
Now, as one degreed in Social Psychology and a Minor in History, I could go on and on. However, as i said, I do not want to inundate you here now.
Your turn.
***Rest in peace, Curtmudgeon!***
