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Robert Frost was at a public meeting at Amherst College when a minister of religion asked him how religion had influenced his poetry. Frost responded:

"Mary had a little lamb.
His name was Jesus Christ.
God the Father was the ram
But Joseph took it nice."

This doesn't shed much light on who Jesus was, but it gives us an insight into Robert Frost, whose poetry, many believe, embodies "traditional American values."

This episode was recently reported in the Amherst College Alumni Magazine. It can be verified by googling Robert Frost + Amherst + the quotation above

We know the Bible is a hoax. Now how about the Quran? What did Muhammad use to hallucinate his visions. Mr Bush was heard to say, "hear my visions and see what I am saying." Is George the reincarnation of Muhammad?

Interpretation 1501, http://www.hoax-buster.org/sellyoursoul before the price goes to zero. What! You already sold yours. You lucky rascal. No! You didn't give it to God. God's the one that lives in fire, the fire that burns but does not consume. Not too bad. It won't burn up. Better luck next time.

16. Relate in the Book (the story of) Mary, when she withdrew from her family to a place in the East.
17. She placed a screen (to screen herself) from them; then We sent her our angel, and he appeared before her as a man in all respects.
18. She said: "I seek refuge from thee to ((Allah)) Most Gracious: (come not near) if thou dost fear Allah."
19. He said: "Nay, I am only a messenger from thy Lord, (to announce) to thee the gift of a holy son.
20. She said: "How shall I have a son, seeing that no man has touched me, and I am not unchaste?"
21. He said: "So (it will be): Thy Lord saith, 'that is easy for Me: and (We wish) to appoint him as a Sign unto men and a Mercy from Us':It is a matter (so) decreed."
22. So she conceived him, and she retired with him to a remote place.
23. And the pains of childbirth drove her to the trunk of a palm-tree: She cried (in her anguish): "Ah! would that I had died before this! would that I had been a thing forgotten and out of sight!"
24. But (a voice) cried to her from beneath the (palm-tree): "Grieve not! for thy Lord hath provided a rivulet beneath thee;
25. "And shake towards thyself the trunk of the palm-tree: It will let fall fresh ripe dates upon thee.
26. "So eat and drink and cool (thine) eye. And if thou dost see any man, say, 'I have vowed a fast to ((Allah)) Most Gracious, and this day will I enter into not talk with any human being'"
27. At length she brought the (babe) to her people, carrying him (in her arms). They said: "O Mary! truly an amazing thing hast thou brought!
28. "O sister of Aaron! Thy father was not a man of evil, nor thy mother a woman unchaste!"
29. But she pointed to the babe. They said: "How can we talk to one who is a child in the cradle?"
30. He said: "I am indeed a servant of Allah. He hath given me revelation and made me a prophet;
31. "And He hath made me blessed wheresoever I be, and hath enjoined on me Prayer and Charity as long as I live;
32. "(He) hath made me kind to my mother, and not overbearing or miserable;
33. "So peace is on me the day I was born, the day that I die, and the day that I shall be raised up to life (again)"!
34. Such (was) Jesus the son of Mary: (it is) a statement of truth, about which they (vainly) dispute.
35. It is not befitting to (the majesty of) Allah that He should beget a son. Glory be to Him! when He determines a matter, He only says to it, "Be", and it is.
36. Verily Allah is my Lord and your Lord: Him therefore serve ye: this is a Way that is straight.

Quran: chapter Mary

1. Say: He is God,the One.
2. God is He on Whom all depend.
3. He begets not, nor was He begotten.
4. And there is none co-equal or comparable unto him.

Quran: 112

Easy Burton. You should give believers, people of great faith in the Bible the same respect due to fortune tellers, palm readers, astrologers, (Nancy Regan) magicians and the like.

Come to think about it I guess you do.

EVIDENCE, Mark, EVIDENCE! You are not going to convince anybody that "Jesus Christ" (Joshua the messiah) was "the son of God" who "walked among us as one of us" unless you can provide EVIDENCE that he actually existed. Either give us your evidence or go hole up in your church and leave us millions of non-believers alone. We know what "Christians" believe. Human beings have been subjected to "Christian" hogwash for hundreds of years. We are tired of it. And we are incensed at the attempts to "christianize" America on the basis of what "Christians" believe. Your belief is insufficient. Either provide EVIDENCE or admit you are engaged in what is nothing more than a 1900-year-old hoax.
- Burton H. Wolfe

"God conciders Jesus to be his Son. Everything else is just moot."

And yet, Joseph considers Jesus to be his son.

Maybe Mary wasn't so innocent after all!!!!

Stay tuned for the exciting conclusion of this Passion Play...

Matthew 3:16-17

As soon as Jesus was baptized, he went up out of the water. At that moment, heaven was opened, and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and lighting on him. And a voice from heaven said, "This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased."

God conciders Jesus to be his Son. Everything else is just moot.

What the comments above tells me is that realigions are the aftermath of something like a high explosive charge that destroyed a piece of furniture. To get back to what it was in the beginning is nearly impossible.

One group is saying "look I found a leg" it must have been a table. Another says, "no. Look at this arm. It was a chair." Still a third group crys, "no! No! Look at this matress cover. It was definitely a bed." In the end they step out into the alley and settle it like gentlemen by trying to break each other's heads.

Then one comes along and say, "it was a whole ware house full of furniture hit by a 15,000 pound bomb. There are pieces of everything anyone ever thought of in furniture to be found. So stop fighting and realize what it is you have for raw material."

Somewhere along the line common sense must set in. Religions are selling furniture that's been destroyed. And people are rushing to the fire sales looking for bargins I suppose. What they are getting is two legged tables, one legged chairs with reconstructed seats made from scraps and beds that are piles of splinters covered with mattress covers that are full of holes.

Now that's not bad enough. The buyers have their heads stuck out their windows yelling insults at their neighbors with enough sense to not buy the trash. And as one might expect, those insults lead to voilent acts, climb up the social scale to the highest places in governments and end up causing wars. The object of those wars is so the losers can be forced to eat at the winner's two legged talbles while sitting on one legged chairs with reconstructed seats and sleep in their bed of splinters.

Just one last thing. No God worth mentioning would touch religion with a 40 foot pole. If saying the Bible is God's word doesn't insult God then there is no God. And if there is one that takes it then that God deserves to eat at a two legged table while setting on a one legged chair with a seat made of scrap pieces of boards. Please don't ask me to get into a bed of splinters with that God. Hell can't possibly be that bad.

Maybe the thing to do is go back before the big explosion and have a look at the furniture before it got blosn up. That's what the fellow who says the Bible is a hoax did. The original furniture was Egyptian and kind of rough cut and patched together at the beginning with a few legs, seats and so on missing. In other words, the warehouse never had anything to sell in the first place that anyone with any brains would buy but it sold none the less and is still selling in it's mangled condition.

In case you care, http://www.hoax-buster.org to see what it looked like before the big explosion.

I can appreciate the reverend's honor and faith in Jesus. I am also a Christian and am profoundly grateful for what he did and taught mankind.

However, the idea that Jesus as God incarnate in man, or any form of matter, is not only contrary to many sayings of Jesus himself ("I can of mine own self do nothing..." etc.), but is a form of idolatry that the Roman church concocted and which many Protestant denominations retained. My denomination clings strongly to the belief in one God and we are able to heal as Jesus did because we ascribe all power to God alone, and do not deify Jesus. As long as one believes Jesus was/is God, then it is a logical conclusion that mankind cannot do the things he did, despite his having instructed us to do them and even saying we would do "greater things" than he.

I appreciate the faith of well meaning and devout Christians such as yourself, but it makes me sad to hear this type of error being taught as "Christianity." "Now are we the sons of God...," "...joint heirs with Christ..." etc. should be enough to raise some questions about the belief of God taking form as man, a pan- and polytheistic belief that has mesmerized Christians for most of the last 2000 years.

Sincerely,

Maitri Ratanasene

E Favorite:

The Gospels were not witnessed, however direct accounts but Genesis were.

I and 11 other reliable witnesses saw the whole thing. God created a teacup full of really compressed matter that's all there is now, then God lit the fuse and ran away as fast as He could. When the thing went kerrrrrrrrrboooooooooooom star dust got all over me.

Now 1 of the 11 others, a Judas type realized he could make a decent buck so he wrote the story of Genesis as it's now believed. He's done alright. It's the most printed, bought, sold, given, stolen and even read book of all time.

Now tell me. How many people have to believe a lie before it transmutes into a truth? Maybe if everyone believed it? You're holding up progress. It's obvious you don't believe a word of it. And I'll bet you don't even believe my story either. "Oh ye of no faith."

LUKE 4:24
24
And he said, Verily I say unto you, No prophet is accepted in his own country

And yet anyone that Has read the Bible Knows that at least 2 prophets-Samuel and Nathan were not only given HONOR in their own country at their own time BUT by THEIR KINGS

13
And no man hath ascended up to heaven, but he that came down from heaven, even the Son of man which is in heaven ( compare this to below from 2 Kings)

2 Kings 2:1
And it came to pass, when the LORD would take up Elijah into heaven by a whirlwind, that Elijah went with Elisha from Gilgal.

Jesus said that he was one of the Lords mentioned in the saying " The Lord said to my Lord" which appears in Psalm 110

1 The LORD said unto my Lord, Sit thou at my right hand, until I make thine enemies thy footstool.

2 The LORD shall send the rod of thy strength out of Zion: rule thou in the midst of thine enemies.

3 Thy people shall be willing in the day of thy power, in the beauties of holiness from the womb of the morning: thou hast the dew of thy youth.

4 The LORD hath sworn, and will not repent, Thou art a priest for ever after the order of Melchizedek. ( a Priest like Mel- not the Messiah or greatest- or My Heir,)

The above seems to inidicate that Jesus was ignorant or a liar.

But you are invited to visit
http://www.religionquestioned.com which has an offer tro shut down based on false information taught Christians about O.T. Messiah message

Reverend Sisk, you say, “Yes, as audacious as that claim is to make, I do believe that Jesus Christ was, and is, the Son of God.”

As I mentioned in Miroslav Volf’s discussion, I don’t think that is a very audacious claim – especially for a Christian clergyman. It is completely customary. It’s all over the gospels and all through the hymns – especially at this time of year.

In my opinion, “audacious” would be to speak openly and clearly to the public about what you learned in divinity school about Christian history and how you accommodate that knowledge with your professed beliefs.

As I posted in Jon Meacham’s discussion, “Conveying That Faith Is A Most Ordinary Thing,” other people (granted, they’re no longer preaching!) have done so. I’ve reposted their thoughts here. One is by Arthur Broadhurst, a graduate of Colgate Rochester Divinity School, from his “Christian Humanist” site. The other is from a 1993 essay by Marcus Borg (an “On Faith” panelist) called “Jesus and Me” which is posted on the “Jesus Seminar” site.

Marcus Borg: http://www.westarinstitute.org/Periodicals/4R_Articles/Borg_bio/borg_bio.html
“I realized that the image of Jesus from my childhood—the popular image of Jesus as the divine savior who knew himself to be the Son of God and who offered up his life for the sins of the world—was not historically true. Moreover, I learned that scholars had been saying this for almost two hundred years.

This mind-boggling realization was based on the understanding of the gospels that has developed during the last two centuries. I learned that the gospels were neither divine nor particularly historical. They were not, as I had thought, "divine products" inspired directly by God, whose contents therefore were to be "believed." And they were not "eyewitness accounts" written by people who knew Jesus and who sought to report what they had seen and heard. I was fascinated. In spite of the heavy workload assigned to Union students in those days, I did voluminous amounts of extra reading about the quest for the historical Jesus.

From that first semester came some central awarenesses about Jesus and the gospels. These realizations were, I think, the "common property" of most of us doing graduate work in the 1960s. Several remain foundational to my work on Jesus, though some have fallen away.

The first four realizations were about the gospels:

The gospels are not primarily history, but "proclamation" (kerygma, as we learned to call it).

The oldest parts of the gospel tradition are Q (a collection of sayings) and Mark (the oldest narrative).

The gospel of John is highly symbolic and essentially not historical.

Even the material in the synoptic gospels is the product of a long process of development, shaped by Christian communities during the time of oral transmission, and further redacted by the evangelists. Using them as historical sources for Jesus is thus difficult.

The next six realizations were about Jesus himself:

Most (perhaps all) of the "exalted titles" by which Jesus is known In the Christian tradition do not go back to Jesus himself. He did not speak of or think of himself as "the Son of God," or as "one with the Father," or as "the light of the world," or as "the way, the truth, and the life," or as "the savior of the world." Only two "exalted titles" might possibly go back to him: "messiah" (about which "cutting edge" scholarly opinion seemed to be negative), and "Son of man" (see "9" below).

It follows that Jesus message was not about himself or the importance of believing in him.
Jesus was an eschatological figure. He expected "the end of the world" in his own generation. This expectation was quite literal, involving the coming of the Kingdom of God "in power," the gathering of the elect, and judgment. This expectation was central, not peripheral, to shaping and animating Jesus' ministry and message. This point, along with the next three, has fallen away as a foundation to my work.

His central message was the imminent coming of the Kingdom of God, understood eschatologically.

Jesus also spoke of "the coming of the Son of man," whose advent would be associated with end of the world events. Scholars were divided about whether he was referring to himself (that is, to his own future role), or whether he was speaking about a figure other than himself (that is, though he expected "the coming of the Son of man," he did not identify himself with that figure).

Finally, we cannot know much about Jesus. Any very specific claim about him is highly problematic.
The news that "the Jesus of history" (as I learned to call him) was very different from the Jesus I had heard about growing up in the church seemed important to me. It also seemed vaguely scandalous, and something I shouldn't tell my mother about.”

Arthur Broadhurst http://christianhumanist.net/credo2.aspx

“The unstated but obvious educational strategy of graduate theological education was to knock down the intellectual underpinnings, the nave assumptions, the simplistic theological concepts, the various religious prejudices, the inconsistencies in thinking and the conflicting values of those of us who came to our theological education with a variety of preparatory experiences; and then, having succeeded in at least disturbing the foundations, beginning the long process of helping us build a faith that was ours rather than one that was handed to us and accepted uncritically. “
….

“…the Church’s professional clergy have retreated deeper into a schizophrenic religious world in which what is said and implied on Sunday morning not only is disconnected from the lessons and conclusions of their theological education, but has virtually no connection with the real world that we live in during the rest of the week. The professional clergy are unwilling to say out loud to their congregation: “of course we do not believe that, that idea arose in a different time when people had a different world view, and of course we do not believe it happened that way….”

Reverend Sisk, I invite you and your colleagues to address these issues.

audacious? or fraudulent? Honest people recognize that religion is simply a fraud.

If you want spirituality, Christianity is the Wal-mart versionof as much.

jesus would puke on christian's in america today.

Bishop:

If God was made man and walked among us today would we recognize God? It God sends us a sign to save us from global destruction will we recognize it? Is God here or has God signaled us? How sure are you?

http://www.hoax-buster.org for it is not God that makes global religious conflicts. It't the devil that does that. You do believe in, have faith there is a devil? If a supernatural being is behind global religious conflicts then is that being God or Devil?

Jesus said first, of all things, that he was the Son of Man. For me that is enough. It is enough to try to understand what he meant by saying that. I wonder if we can be live in these or any times as people with morality and dignity through a personal code. If this is not possible, then surely there must be a God, else mercy, love, and compassion would stem entirely from outside ourselves, from Superior Grace. But if we are capable of being moral creatures, for its own sake, because we believe it is right and we want to live in a moral world, then being human is enough, without God or religion. In fact, it is essential.

Mithras was a good bet but the Nazareen copped the prize. Too bad. How many dead in the last two millenia and a berserk president now lustily adding to the tab?
Robert G. Ingersoll tried the Van Helsing thing but you can't keep that mouldy ole time religion down. There is always a horde of cretins to bow before the latest Gantry.

IO SATURNALIA TO ALL AND TO ALL A GOOD NIGHT

I feel like I am the son of god also.

I also love "people of “all races and tongues”, all political persuasions, male and female, gay and straight, Muslim, Buddhist, Hindu, believers of all sorts, and those who do not believe."

I admire Jesus for standing up to the authorities and ridicule of his time to show us the true path that humanity must take to survive.

I hope that all will open thier minds as we continue the pursuit of how and why we are here. This path will make us dive into the brain and the very fundemental nature of the universe. Study all the religions, different opinions
in your own religion, philosophy, science, the philosphy of science, and all the great literature of not just your culture, but all
cultures.

Peace and contentment are my wishes for you.

Merry Christmas.

Love.