On a related note of people mentioning prescription drugs. I would say avoid them, and instead listen to Porcupine Tree. Start with the album "Fear of a Blank Planet" which touches closely to these subjects.dramaybaz

If you can naturally get yourself in a better mood sure but often clinically depressed people only get further depressed without some sort of help be it counseling or medication. Exercise will go a long way in increasing mood, it is just getting out and doing it.

I'm still sporting my worst injury, 4 years ago I had a corrosive acid spill onto my hand causing nerve damage. What REALLY sucks is trying to turn the pages of a book, trying to pick small things up off of flat surfaces and open things like chocolate bars or bags of chips because I lost the feeling in all the finger tips of my right hand. Sure I could just use my left hand to do most things but 23 years of being right handed I can't just start using my left because it just feels awkward.

NamelessJay

That sucks man. What were you doing with corrosive acid if you dont mind me asking?

I have a tendency to get my head split. Once when I was 5 my older brother threw a large rock in the air and it hit me. Again when I was about 13 my friend threw a chunk of cinderblock in the air and said heads up, I wasn't paying attention and looked up, I know dumb move. Then again at 17 I got into a fight drunk and a punch caught me off guard and swept me off my feet and my head met the concrete. If I ever shave my head/go bald I will have some storys to tell. Thankfully I have avoided any further head injuries. Never broke a bone im my life though. *crosses fingers*

He looks more like Bin Ladin than what I would picture god as.

Create memes. mrmusicman247

This. I would be a meme god. A source of meme inspiration. There would be hubadubalubahu memes in no time.

LazerTurtle is that you? Do you find yourself feeling like a pathetic vessel of slime?

I agree with the pills approach. My entire family, myself included, would be a bunch of miserable sh*ts and were until they started going to the doctor for meds. There are generics to nearly everything too which makes it rather inexpensive in the end. I will say though I went through many many drugs until we found one that worked well. Some made things worse some didn't do anything, and the likelihood is you will be on a combination of a few by the end. It sounds to me though that your depression stems more from your anxiety than just clinical depression, the two quite often compliment each other. Of course they will ask you the normal questions about exercise, eating habits, what you do in your spare time, if you do drugs, your sleeping pattern, stress at the moment, and really anything to help determine the cause and possible solutions. This will also help them discover what to give you. Just make sure that when they initially give you a drug do not take more than they say to. They usually start you out on a very very small dose and gradually bump it up. If there is anything wrong that you notice or your family notices a mood difference for the worse, (it can be hard to notice these things yourself), then don't hesitate to call your doctor. Some drugs just don't agree with people. Everyone is different. With the amount of people on anti depressants and anti anxiety pills it is slowly becoming the norm and there is no reason to be ashamed of turning to meds.

[QUOTE="Hubadubalubahu"]

So the numerous similarities that show christianity is a copy cat religion are irrelevent to you? You choose to ignore how everything in christianity was already expressed through pagan myths. All you have done is said no all your sources are wrong and invalid mine are correct. You have done nothing but beat the dead horse that is common christian belief and attempt to pass these as facts. This is silly.

Philokalia

I'm suggesting that none of those parrelels actually exist and even if they did you cannot connect them to the New testament, No one can. It requires more than saying here are two stories and they are similar therefore one stole from the other. It needs actual historical criticism and investigation and no one can do it cause its not true! I remember if I recall right Freke and Gandy say a mesoamerican God was a source for the early Christians, am I right on that?

Suggesting that those parrelels dont exist doesn't mean that they don't though. Apparently you forgot the amount of resistance against christianity and that early Christian Church fathers such as Justin Martyr, Tertullian, and Irenaeus felt compelled to answer the pagan critics of the time who claimed the Jesus story was based on earlier traditions. The fathers claimed that the similarities were the work of the devil, who copied the Jesus story ahead of time to mislead the gullible. That doesn't sound like a very strong claim to me. One you choose to ignore. I am not very familiar with Freke and Gandy but was merely using them for a specific part of the argument and only used them as a source once, no need to focus on them. Although I do believe they are historians whether or not you agree with them. But as I said out of all of that they have one paragraph in there, and does not debunk the argument no matter your opinion on their opinion.

See the problem with that idea is the widespread geographical nature of those whom are mentioned and whom give this attribution and coupled with the non existence of any rival tradition we have every good reason I believe to trust in these accounts. Now you need to account for this and not just appeal to authority, though I do recognise a lot of scholars do dismiss the traditional authorship but how odd that you would go to them in this case when they would likewise dismiss your zeitgeistian theory of Christian origins. As for the Authorship of the book of revelation I am not concerned with that at this moment. The big thing for me is the gospels which as far as I'm concerned are the most useful for the Christian. But the widespread nature of these views is evidenced by the locations of these men, Iraneaus in Lyons France, Papias of HIeropalos in Greece and Clement from Egypt. Now I find it hard to imagine all of these men gathered together and just came up with who they thought should write the gospels, rather it seems more plausible they had a tradition originating from the origins of when these texts were written which shows their Authenticity in regards to the traditional authors.

Now I will say you are a conspiracy theorist, this much is true, the pagan copy cat view (if you are so in line with scholarship) you must admit has been all but abandoned by even the most sceptical critics of Christian origins for the simple reason it cannot be demonstrated to be true, one cannot establish these supposed cults with these supposed resurrection accounts which supposebly match that of the Christian account were known in the time of first century by 1st century jews and that the apostles supposebly took this account for an unknown reason by which we cannot say anything about, we just have to assume it happened, Supposebly. But yes I do think the Dead sea scrolls are very important in regards to different views regarding the messiah and in particular the great Issaiah Scroll about the Messiah I find most interesting as it is in line with Septuagint's rendering over the Masoretic text. I was genuinely quite surprised about that.

Now you suggest discrepencies within the gospels somehow suggest that the authors just made them up, that doesn't bode well for the Q Theory which would suggest some different, though these aren't necessarily contradictions and nor does it go to show they made up their stories at the core of the gospel accounts in regards to the Crufixion there is that basic outlining of the events and if we take this logically and admit your premise they do contradict each other this speaks more for the historicity of the Crucifixion event than it would other wise because of Multiple independent sources which are not derived from each other, so this doesn't hurt the Christian account it only goes to strengthen it.

But if you don't want to watch an actual scholar actually lay out the argument that's fine, I won't force you, though it is extremely beneficial to do so I would add.

Now I'm going to be honest, Freke and Gandy are not historians, they don't have any qualifications and when you go to such people I honestly don't need respond to anything. But as to the Ebionites being the first Christians, Clement, Ignatius and Polycarp predate them and they were orthodox and were most likely taught by the apostles, establish the ebionites were first Christians.

But the New testament was not written as a gnostic work that much is clear, you would have us believe writings which are so fundamentally jewish are actually gnostic. What you are doing is reading in on them.

But you have quite possibly made the worst argument zeitgeist made (so bad they took it out of the original cut) "the sun of God" these are english, look at the Greek words for these terms and realise how silly that statement is. Now I've told you what you need to do in order to demonstrate Christianity was stolen from Pagan ideologies, you need to establish these ideas were known to the first century Jews of Palestine and then explain how the apostles used them and what was the idea and goal of the original Apostles in doing this. But you have no primary sources for this, No Zeitgeist theorist does and thats why you aren't and will not be taken seriously.

Lord have mercy.

Philokalia

So the numerous similarities that show christianity is a copy cat religion are irrelevant to you? You choose to ignore how everything in christianity was already expressed through pagan myths. All you have done is said no all your sources are wrong and invalid mine are correct. You have done nothing but beat the dead horse that is common christian belief and attempt to pass these as facts. This is silly. Saying lord have mercy at the end does not help your close minded standpoint. Because I dont agree with your religion the lord should have mercy on my soul? You make it sound like I am a doomed non believer. Im sorry but people in this world are going to disagree with you and saying lord have mercy on your soul does not improve the elitist mentality that is sadly how some christians feel. Which you have made evident. That kind of unjustified judgement is something I want nothing to do with regardless.

@Philokalia

"Are the four gospels Anonymous? I've heard this claim many times before and I don't agree with it when we simply look at the historical attribution. But Anonymous we are to take that to mean Internally anonymous and this is true but that doesn't void the attributed authors based on the following things, all copies of the gospels have the same authors attributed to it, if these were truly anonymous never written by the actual people we might suspect different traditions of authorship arising but they never did and this speaks to the credibility of the gospels. We might also consider the names attributed to these gospels, especially Mark and Luke whom were not the most prominent examples one might choose if they are going to say they wrote their gospel knowing they did not, in fact they are rarely even mentioned in the New testament."

Why do we call them Matthew, Mark, Luke and John? Because sometime in the second century, when proto-orthodox Christians recognized the need for apostolic authorities, they attributed these books to apostles (Matthew and John) and close companions of apostles (Mark, the secretary of Peter; and Luke, the travelling companion of Paul). Most scholars today have abandoned these identifications, and recognize that the books were written by otherwise unknown (anonymous) but relatively well-educated Greek-speaking (and writing) Christians during the second half of the first century

Take the Gospel of John for example:

The name John was common. Even though the Gospel and Epistles of John do not claim to be written by someone of that name, the book of Revelations does (see Rev. 1:9). But the author does not claim to be John the son of Zebedee, one of Jesus' apostles. In fact, in one scene "John" has a vision of the throne of God surrounded by twenty-four elders who worship him forever (Rev. 4:4, 9-10). These twenty-four elders are usually taken to refer to the twelve patriarchs of Israel and the twelve apostles. But the author gives no indication that he is seeing himself. Probably, then, this was not the apostle. And so, the book is anonymous, later accepted by Christians as canonical because they believed the author was, in fact, Jesus' earthly disciple.

"Now here is where we get into the main crux of the issue, the zeitgeistian theory of pagan copy cats. This theory has been abandoned by scholarship and for good reason theres no way to substantiate it, the only people that support it are crackpots and internet atheists who do not know what they are talking about and I hope I can demonstrate that, God willing."

I'm trying to have a down to earth discussion with you and you imply I am a crackpot/internet atheist. This part really helps you look like an open minded individual who is weighing all the information. It has not been abandoned and there are multiple records against you that you for some reason claim do not exist. Ever heard of The Dead Sea Scrolls? They help provide a genuine context for what was to become Christianity. For example, they tell us just how widespread was the expectation and longing for a saving Messiah among Jews at that time, and that there were a number of competing theories about the expected role of this Messiah in the world of Judaism. The scrolls also reveal that the expectation found in the Gospels that the end of the world was imminent was a dominant belief in many quarters in Judaea.

All biblical scholars agree that, apart from their intrinsic value, the sectarian scrolls are of tremendous importance as background information to the social and religious conditions in Judaea that led to the rise of Christianity. There are subtle implications that can be derived from the Qumran texts, for they not only provide interesting parallels to Christian concepts and practice but tend to reduce the uniqueness of the Yeshua movement.

"Now you suggest multiple historians at the time kept extensive records, there are things to consider, which of these historians besides Josephus took time out of the day to record the events of 1st century Palestine? How do you know all this? Where are the sources which suggest what you are saying that everyone would be so concerned about Palestine which was on the edge of the empire and not considered significant in the grand scheme of things. This seems like a flawed assumption here and it needs to be backed up. But it is wrong to say the only records we have are by Chrsitians themselves and even if we assume this for the sake of argument that's all we need as can be established by employing many of the historical methods to judge the veracity of the gosp

That is not all you need. Of course Christians are going to vouch for the validity of their own claims. This is common sense and often referred to as bias. That entire time period has been well recorded, not sure when that came into question, and the only records we have of the Crucifixion and Resurrection of Jesus are those written by Christians themselves, the Gospels. And within each of those gospels nearly all details of the crucifixion and resurrection are different. Very important details, such as Jesus' last words are so different that it appears they are simply being made up by the authors. You overlook all of this.

"Consider this lecture series by Historian of Science Dr Timothy McGrew and how the Gospels are coorabarrated by external accounts in the small details, not the testimonium Flavium or what Tacitius said of Jesus specifically he goes into a range of evidences and that's not the most of them.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MtL8hCrvctc&context=C41c95e0ADvjVQa1PpcFPgmIFZaAmua6qqaldHjalvy0EIyV2b2uE="

I'm not using more of my time to watch some youtube video you couldn't be bothered to explain in your own words. Again, this is not helping your argument.

"But it is wrong to say that the early Christians did not know the location of the tomb, the location of the tomb was within Jeruselum, that much is clear by the early accounts and if Christ had never existed or wasn't buried in Jeruselum Christianity could never have gotten off the ground with its claims of a risen messiah, and we must not let ourselves be fooled into thinking resurrection was only spiritual or that Paul thought of Christ as a spirit, this is false given that Paul mentions Christ being Born of a woman and was a Pharisee member of the Jewish Sect which explicitely affirmed resurrection and thus we would not mean something different in using the term. We can also be confident of the burial account because Of Joseph of Arimethea whom the Early Christians had no reason to make up, as he was a member of the Sanhedrin which condemned Jesus and thus they had no love for them to invent a sympathetic character who would give Christ an Honourable burial."

Here is the problem with what you are doing. You are taking things from the Gospels and trying to use them as evidence in your argument when the authenticity of the Gospels themselves is in question in this discussion. You are clinging to a story book and trying to pass it as truth in a believer to non-believer debate. I would like other sources then what they have written in the Gospels, if I took the Gospels as proof I would probably be a Christian wouldn't I? Luke locates Arimathea in Judea, but aside from the association with Joseph, there is no solid information about where it was and what might have happened there. Some scholars have identified Arimathea with Ramathaim-Zophim in Ephraim, the place where Samuel was born. Other scholars say that Arimathea is Ramleh. It is still skeptical at best. Let alone not even close to pinpointed. Not to say archeology can't find some proof but claims alone don't cut it.

"Justin Martyr certaintly tried to point to pagan parrelels in an effort to protect Christians from persecution but he ultimately failed and remained convinced of Christ's trueness after that. Can you for instance provide any pre Christian account that matches what Jesus did and then succinctly tie that thought or knowledge to first century Palestine and then establish that the early Christians invented this? Not only that but you have to explain the motivations for doing so? Money? Power? Wisdom? What is the wisdom in promoting a resurrected messiah when you are not convinced of one? There are so many questions begged by Zeitgeistians that they cannot possibly answer them all and still be coherent. But its interesting that you would suggest the original Christians were gnostics when overwhelmingly their group and their gospels came into existence mid way through the second century, after the New testament."

Elements common to all types of the Christian religion that were common in previous Pagan mystery religions include much of the religious content of Christianity. All elements of Jesus' life such as the events around his birth, death and ministry were already parts of the myths surrounding other god-men of the time. Peripheral elements such as there being twelve disciples were similarly present in other more ancient religions and sometimes with an astonishing amount of duplication. First century critics of Christianity voiced accusations that Christianity was nothing but another copy of common religions.

The reason why all these narratives are so similar, with a godman who is crucified and resurrected, who does miracles and has 12 disciples, is that these stories were based on the movements of the sun through the heavens, an astrotheological development that can be found throughout the planet because the sun and the 12 zodiac signs can be observed around the globe. In other words, Jesus Christ and all the others upon whom this character is predicated are personifications of the sun, and the Gospel fable is merely a rehash of a mythological formula (the "Mythos," as mentioned above) revolving around the movements of the sun through the heavens.

For instance, many of the world's crucified godmen have their traditional birthday on December 25th. This is because the ancients recognized that (from an earthcentric perspective) the sun makes an annual descent southward until December 21st or 22nd, the winter solstice, when it stops moving southerly for three days and then starts to move northward again. During this time, the ancients declared that "God's sun" had "died" for three days and was "born again" on December 25th. The ancients realized quite abundantly that they needed the sun to return every day and that they would be in big trouble if the sun continued to move southward and did not stop and reverse its direction. Thus, these many different cultures celebrated the "sun of God's" birthday on December 25th

Ebionite Christians were the true Christians: Aramaic-speakers like Jesus and his apostles, they would have been the Jewish witnesses to Jesus' ministry and preaching. From this starting point, Jesus' teachings spread. They also, however, spread from Saul of Damascus, who renamed himself Paul and who preached an anti-Ebionite version of Christianity for the gentiles, which was much easier to follow and more popular.

Gnostic Christians: With stories, myths and beliefs that are exactly the same as Christian ones in many of the little details, gnostic beliefs manage to pre-date Christians ones by over 200 years. They understood what the stories of the NT really meant. Jesus didn't really exist, but was a collection of such earlier stories, rewritten in Greek, with Greek names. This is the approach taken by historians such as Freke & Gandy.

Pauline / Roman Christians: When the Roman-backed instance of Christianity went in search of the ancient centres of Christianity, they discovered to their horror that the Ebionites and Gnostics pre-dated them. Their un-Christian answer was to edit verses, burn books, arrest and harass the other poverty-stricken Christians until no opposition was left. The form of Christianity that we have inherited from the Roman Empire is far from what Christianity originally was.

"Now I can't wait for the response."

Again snide comments don't help. You make it seem like I should have no response for you and that you have already accepted that anything I say is ludicrous. This is a really counterproductive mindset if you are going to come onto an internet forum and attempt to debate. Or really debate in general. You have to be willing to listen first. If you want to belittle each other's responses like you have done on a couple occasions now or insult other people in this thread who do not agree with you, then sure we can throw playground insults at one another and call it a debate. I guess just ask yourself, what would Jesus do? I'm sure he wouldn't be so arrogant. When logic permits the existence of a deity then I too will jump on the bandwagon but as it stands human reason is incapable of providing sufficient rational grounds to justify the belief that deities either do or do not exist.

Sorry to flood the thread with this but it couldn't be any further shortened.