How can we be sure that all religions are wrong?

A+ on that. But think on that the next time you hear someone berated for their futile attempt to do so.

I think it's best done poetically or through music, but Joseph Campbell does a pretty good job prosaically.

True that, but I'd add C.S. Lewis to the prose side.

Have you read this?



This is about the 3rd strand in the Narnia books. It's very good.

did the brits finish the movie about CS Lewis and JRR Tolkien? It was a big deal about 8 years ago and then , prrrt nothing more.

Narnia v th Hobbit

I don't know anything about that. Planet Narnia is about the hidden third meaning in his books, the second being the Christian mythology. Ward argues very convincingly that each of the books represents one of the seven classical planets. Lewis was a Medieval expert after all. The seven planets are Mercury, Venus, Mars, Sun, Moon, Jupiter and Saturn, each of the books represents one of those "planets."

Lewis was also a "lapsed Catholic" who, through Tolkeins friendship, reconnected with his family's religion and further, became a popular writer of Apologetics.

I was always a picker of phrases from "Screwtape" when I was a kid .

Joseph Campbell is/was a self-promoting bullsh*t artist who cherry-picked legendary sources to prop up his silly thesis.

The Narnia stuff never appealed much to me, and I didn't know about Lewis' academic background. But it's not surprising, nor is Tolkien's part in it. Tolkien was, initially, an Anglo-Saxon scholar who added several Germanic and northern European languages to his interests after the Great War. (The elvish language Sindarin was, so some claim, based on one of the Finnish languages.) Tolkien's academic background can be seen very distinctly in The Lord of the Rings. The stilted, pompous language of many of his passages of spontaneous song in the novel is completely identifiable as an echo of AS song from the pre-Norman history of England. His "dissertation" (I don't know if it's called that at Oxford) was on the "Battle of Maldon Ford." The echo of that is plain in the "songs" by Aragorn and Legolas as they prepared Boromir's corpse before setting it adrift in the river.

The scope of Tolkien's study can be seen all over the novels. For example, one of the names in Snorri Sturluson's list of names of dwarfs from his summary of Norse mythology was Gandalf.

I love sh*t like this. I don't get to expand on it often, though.

You are babbling. What exactly is "The Christian religion which is the most favored in our country"? It doesn't matter. Even the goofiest denomination bases its crap on bible verses, even if they are misread or severely twisted. Pagan influences are never officially admitted.

You apparently missed the point of my message, which is that Christianity is not a religion, it is the family of God. Religion is men telling each other what to do, and Christians don't have to do anything. Except go to heaven when Jesus calls.

Another religious superstition heard from.

WHY FOUR GOSPELS?

It concerns the Hebrew word 'tsemach', also spelled zemach, which means branch. The study is too long to post here, so let's start in the middle: there were four prophecies of the savior.

Isaiah 4:2: "In that day shall the branch [tsemach] of the Lord be beautiful and glorious, and the fruit of the earth shall be excellent and comely for them that are escaped of Israel."

Jeremiah 23:5: "Behold, the days come, saith the Lord, that I will raise unto David a righteous Branch [tsemach], and a king shall reign and prosper, and shall execute judgment and justice in the earth."

Jeremiah 33:15: "In those days, and at that time, will I cause the Branch [tsemach] of righteousness to grow up unto David; and he shall execute judgment and righteousness in the land."

Zechariah 3:8: "Hear now, O Joshua the high priest, thou, and thy fellows that sit before thee: for they are men wondered at: for behold, I will bring forth my servant the Branch [tsemach]."

Zechariah 6:12: "And speak unto him, saying, Thus speaketh the Lord of hosts, saying, Behold the man whose name is The Branch [tsemach]; and he shall grow up out of his place, and he shall build the temple of the Lord:"

Relax now, that is the last of the verses. Now we can put it all together. Now we can see the reason for four gospels: the savior was prophesied as a servant, a king, a man, and the son of God. There are five prophecies, but the reference to a king is repeated in Jeremiah, so there are four different aspects of his life to be documented. Each gospel treats one of these four aspects.

Matthew is the story of a king. The genealogy in Matthew is the royal line, in ascending order because a king traces his ascent to the throne. It is in Matthew that we are told of wise men bringing gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh: the traditional gifts to a king. It is in Matthew that another king tries to murder the infant Jesus to protect his own status. It is in Matthew that Jesus declares most of the new, stricter interpretations of the law of Moses, acting on his kingly authority. In Matthew we see the pageantry of an angel rolling the stone away from the tomb and sitting upon it. The other gospels just say the tomb was open.

Mark is the story of a servant. It begins, with only a slight preamble, where Jesus's ministry begins. Very little of what Jesus said is recorded, since a servant's opinions and pronouncements are important only insofar as they come from his master. His last words are not recorded, he just "cried with a loud voice." Mark is a short, terse record of where Jesus went and what he did. There is no genealogy because a servant has none.

Luke is the story of a man. As such it has a man's genealogy, recorded in descending order because a man traces his descent from an ancestor. The genealogy in Luke is the legal line, beginning with "as was supposed", which is a legal term meaning "determined by law". The genealogy in Matthew is the kingly line, recorded in ascending order because a king traces his ascent to the throne. The genealogy in Luke says so-and-so "son of" so-and-so, and some of the names were in fact adopted sons. But in Matthew it says so-and-so "begat" so-and-so, a purely human genealogy. Mark has no genealogy because a servant has none.

John has a very short genealogy: he is the son of God. His last words on the cross, "It is finished", recall his first recorded words, "Wist ye not that I must be about my father's business?"

Material from E. W. Bullinger

Now what is this bullsnot about "evidence for your god"? No group of men has ever been smart enough to write any such thing. It took thousands of years just to find one man who was smart enough to notice that it had been done.

Ah-hahahahahahahahahahahahaha . . . you crack me up.

Wanna buy a bridge?

Too bad your Biblical god didn't know of all the other gods created by man. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_mythology. There were many virgin births from mythology. http://entheology.org/POCM/pagan_origins_virgin_birth.html Gods of today. http://www.godchecker.com/top-gods/index.php?deity-of-the-day. Jewels, Most of us understand how difficult it is to change your beliefs about your god, but use some logic to arrive at the correct conclusion. 1. Why did your god appear only 2,000 years ago? Wasn't humans important enough before his arrival? 2. Many cultures created their own gods long before your "christian" god was created in the Middle East. 3. Why are Jews god's chosen people? 4. Why are there so many errors and contradictions in the Bible? 5. Why would any human want to live forever? 6. Do you age in heaven? 7. Do you continue to procreate in heaven? Why are those born in heaven given no choice to be human? To be free? Do they become like robots? 8. Does heaven have night and day? Do you sleep in heaven? 9. What kind of reading material will there be? Novels? Fiction? Historical? About earth? About humans and animals and how they interacted? 10. What is the life expectancy in heaven? 11. What happens to evolution? About our planet earth: Some Interesting Facts about the Sun
www-istp.gsfc.nasa.gov/istp/outreach/workshop/...
Existing for about 4 and a half billion years, it has burnt up about half of the hydrogen in its core. This leaves the Sun's life expectancy to 5 billion more years, at which time, the Sun's elements will "swell" up, swallow Earth, and eventually die off into a small white dwarf. Credits go to Professor Stephen Lawrence, Columbia University

Have not, but reading other's take on Lewis interests me. I didn't get into the Narnia tales, just didn't grab me. Favorite was same as farmer's . (The Screwtape Letters) I must go back and read Hideous Strength again. I was too young and/or ignorant to get it the first time.

I think you had to read the Narnia books as a kid. Planet Narnia is academic, while the focus in on the Narnia books, his other works, like Hideous Strength and Screwtape feature.

except for several of CS Lewis's popular works (not including Narnia crap), Ive always been more of an admirer of his views on science and biological evolution in particular.

The Narnia stuff is very good for kids. When I was a kid I loved it and my kids loved it too. Now I'm all grown up it's not really my cup of tea.

I have two comments on the Narnia books. Firstly , as entertainment for children by expanding on the notion of parallel worlds, I think they are useful for stimulating creativity and a source of escapism. On the other hand, as a parable of the Christ story involving sacrifice and resurrection, and the struggle between ''good and evil' they could be said to be a covert form of indoctrination which could be seen as out of place in a pluralist society. So relative to my argument that rhe evaluation of religion should be based on social consequences, it might be necessary for me to reconsider my overview of Narnia.

If you went to school when I did you probably had far more overt Christian teachings than Narnia books.

I remember reading Enid Blyton, it wasn't all Noddy and the Famous Five.



From what I remember the kids who got the Christ parallel were already well godsquad, the rest not so much.

Having said that the Christian parallels aren't exactly hidden, but Ward was the first one to spot the planet references.

That Jesus there looks like a little, blond Aryan type. He doesn't look disturbingly Jewish, if you know what I mean.