My Christmas Present to MOCK

[AnonyMoose]

My present to you idiots is knowledge.

1. Jesus did NOT fulfil messianic prophesy. He did not build the Third Temple (Ezekiel 37:26-28). He did notgather all Jews back to the Land of Israel (Isaiah 43:5-6). He did notusher in an era of world peace, and end all hatred, oppression, suffering and disease. As it says: "Nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall man learn war anymore." (Isaiah 2:4). He did notspread universal knowledge of the God of Israel, which will unite humanity as one. As it says: "God will be King over all the world -- on that day, God will be One and His Name will be One" (Zechariah 14:9).

2. Jesus was NOT a prophet. Prophecy can only exist in Israel when the land is inhabited by a majority of world Jewry. During the time of Ezra (circa 300 BCE), when the majority of Jews refused to move from Babylon to Israel, prophecy ended upon the death of the last prophets -- Haggai, Zechariah and Malachi. Jesus appeared on the scene approximately 350 years after prophecy had ended.

3. Jesus was NOT a descendant of David. According to Judaism,the Messiah will be born of human parents and possess normal physical attributes like other people. He will not be a demi-god, nor will he possess supernatural qualities. Also note that there is no evidence that Mary descends from David. The third chapter of Luke traces Joseph's genealogy, not Mary's.

4. Jesus violated Torah Observance. The Messiah will lead the Jewish people to full Torah observance. The Torah states that all mitzvot (commandments) remain binding forever, and anyone coming to change the Torah is immediately identified as a false prophet. (Deut. 13:1-4) . Throughout the New Testament, Jesus contradicts the Torah and states that its commandments are no longer applicable. (see John 1:45 and 9:16, Acts 3:22 and 7:37) For example, John 9:14 records that Jesus made a paste in violation of Shabbat, which caused the Pharisees to say (verse 16), "He does not observe Shabbat!"

5. Jesus violated national revelation. Of the 15,000 religions in human history, only Judaism bases its belief on national revelation -- i.e. God speaking to the entire nation. If God is going to start a religion, it makes sense He'll tell everyone, not just one person. Throughout history, thousands of religions have been started by individuals, attempting to convince people that he or she is God's true prophet. But personal revelation is an extremely weak basis for a religion because one can never know if it is indeed true. Since others did not hear God speak to this person, they have to take his word for it. Even if the individual claiming personal revelation performs miracles, there is still no verification that he is a genuine prophet. Miracles do not prove anything. All they show -- assuming they are genuine -- is that he has certain powers. It has nothing to do with his claim of prophecy. Judaism, unique among all of the world's major religions, does not rely on "claims of miracles" as the basis for its religion. In fact, the Bible says that God sometimes grants the power of "miracles" to charlatans, in order to test Jewish loyalty to the Torah (Deut. 13:4).

6. Jesus contradicts Judaism's belief in one god. Christianidea of Trinity breaks God into three separate beings: The Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost (Matthew 28:19). Contrast this to the Shema, the basis of Jewish belief: "Hear O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is ONE" (Deut. 6:4). Jews declare the Shema every day, while writing it on doorposts (Mezuzah), and binding it to the hand and head (Tefillin). This statement of God's One-ness is the first words a Jewish child is taught to say, and the last words uttered before a Jew dies. In Jewish law, worship of a three-part god is considered idolatry -- one of the three cardinal sins that a Jew should rather give up his life than transgress. This explains why during the Inquisitions and throughout history, Jews gave up their lives rather than convert.

7. Jesus violates the Jewish view of a Man not being a God. Christiansbelieve that God came down to earth in human form, as Jesus said: "I and the Father are one" (John 10:30). God is Eternal, above time. He is Infinite, beyond space. He cannot be born, and cannot die. Saying that God assumes human form makes God small, diminishing both His unity and His divinity. As the Torah says: "God is not a mortal" (Numbers 23:19).

8. Jesus violates the relationship between Jews and God. The Christian belief is that prayer must be directed through an intermediary -- i.e. confessing one's sins to a priest. Jesus himself is an intermediary, as Jesus said: "No man cometh unto the Father but by me." In Judaism, prayer is a totally private matter, between each individual and God. As the Bible says: "God is near to all who call unto Him" (Psalms 145:18). Further, the Ten Commandments state: "You shall have no other gods BEFORE ME," meaning that it is forbidden to set up a mediator between God and man. (see Maimonides - Laws of Idolatry ch. 1) .

9. Christianity misunderstands the physical world. Christiandoctrine often treats the physical world as an evil to be avoided. Mary, the holiest woman, is portrayed as a virgin. Priests and nuns are celibate. And monasteries are in remote, secluded locations. By contrast, Judaism believes that God created the physical world not to frustrate us, but for our pleasure. Jewish spirituality comes through grappling with the mundane world in a way that uplifts and elevates. Sex in the proper context is one of the holiest acts we can perform. The Talmud says if a person has the opportunity to taste a new fruit and refuses to do so, he will have to account for that in the World to Come. Jewish rabbinical schools teach how to live amidst the bustle of commercial activity. Jews don't retreat from life, we elevate it.

[Liquid]

I don't believe in God, Jesus or religion, so that was a lot of words that mean absolutely nothing to me.

FOTM 4 Life

[LuMPyPussy]

Joseph Smith was sexy!

[AnonyMoose]

I don't believe in God, Jesus or religion, so that was a lot of words that mean absolutely nothing to me.

I can boil it down for you. The shit in the New Testament is in EXACT opposition ot the shit in the Old Testament. Jesus never existed and the stories about him clearly prove he could NOT be messiah.

[AnonyMoose]

Joseph Smith was sexy!

I'm sure you are old enough to know that horse thief first hand. Do you live off your own fat to exist that long?

[Maggot]

Merry Christmas!::aww::

[AnonyMoose]

Merry Christmas!::aww::

You mean merry bullshit-storymas. Welcome to the group of chumps that were bamboozled by St. Augustine.

[sally]

You typed all that just for Ramsey? You must really love her.

[Liquid]

I have always said that it is my belief (and from a having History minor degree in college and studying classic and late Antiquity) that the Bible and Jesus were clearly political tools used by the Church to gain control. The Bible was a very well written novel, by a "stephen king" like writer, or multiple witters at that time, with direction and motive from the church leaders. This direction was a well thought out and a long term plan for control of the population and a way to spread their message through the disguise of "religion". As you mentioned there are MANY MANY historical references to this and it is not debated that the popes and other leaders of the day were "king like" with their influence OR actual power.

That being said no one ever said that these church leaders of the day were stupid. Far from it. They devised a plan that worked for centuries and centuries to gain wide spread control and influence over the masses that still remains today. That influence has lessened some with the world changing, but nevertheless they did create a powerful tool with "the STORY/fable of god, jesus, etc.

[Maggot]

Merry Xmas!::aww::

[AnonyMoose]

You typed all that just for Ramsey? You must really love her.

Nope. That was for all you idiots that believe in Jeebus the whore monger.

[sally]

You typed all that just for Ramsey? You must really love her.

Nope. That was for all you idiots that believe in Jeebus the whore monger.

I believe Ramsey was the only one to say that she believes in Jesus and the bible.

[AnonyMoose]

I believe Ramsey was the only one to say that she believes in Jesus and the bible.

Something like 90% of Americans believe in God; and 86% of that is Jeebus. Scary numbers. Further proof that Americans are stupid.

[LuMPyPussy]

I believe Ramsey was the only one to say that she believes in Jesus and the bible.

Something like 90% of Americans believe in God; and 86% of that is Jeebus. Scary numbers. Further proof that Americans are stupid.

You'll have to supply links to prove your numbers, I think you're way off.

[AnonyMoose]

You'll have to supply links to prove your numbers, I think you're way off.

The format may not come through in the cut/paste but here goes:



Top Ten Largest Religions in the United States, 1990
(self-identification, NSRI)

Christian

151,225,000
86.2%

Nonreligious
13,116,000
7.5%

Judaism
3,137,000
1.8%

Agnostic
1,186,000
0.7%

Islam
527,000
* 0.5%

Unitarian Universalist
502,000
0.3%

Buddhism
401,000
* 0.4%

Hinduism
227,000
* 0.2%

Native American Religion
47,000
0.03%

Scientologist
45,000
0.03%

* Islam, Buddhist, Hindu figures in table have been adjusted upwards by Kosmin to account for possible undercount.

[AnonyMoose]

ADDITIONAL NOTES:

Christianity. Note that in the NSRI and ARIS studies, based on self-identification, Christianity includes: Catholic, Baptist, Protestant, Methodist/Wesleyan, Lutheran, Presbyterian, Pentecostal/Charismatic, Episcopalian/Anglican, Mormon/Latter-day Saints/LDS, Churches of Christ, Jehovah's Witness, Seventh-Day Adventist, Assemblies of God, Holiness/Holy, Congregational/United Church of Christ, Church of the Nazarine, Church of God, Eastern Orthodox, Evangelical, Mennonite, Christian Science, Church of the Brethren, Born Again, Nondenominational Christians, Disciples of Christ, Reformed/Dutch Reformed, Apostolic/New Apostolic, Quaker, Full Gospel, Christian Reform, Foursquare Gospel, Fundamentalist, Salvation Army, Independent Christian Church, Covenant Church, Jewish Christians, plus 240,000 adults classified as "other" (who did not fall into the preceding groups).

Islam. In recent years Muslim leaders in the United States have optimistically estimated that there were approximately 6.5 million Muslims in the country (Aly Abuzaakouk, American Muslim Council, 1999). In 1998 a Pakistani newspaper even reported that there were 12 million Muslims in the United States (4.2% of the total population)! After the events of September 11, 2001, many newspaper accounts included an estimate of 8 million American Muslims. This would equate to 3% of the U.S. population, or roughly 1 in every 33 people in the country. No comparable figure has ever been confirmed by independent research similar to the Kosmin or Glenmary studies, or the Gallup, Harris, Pew, Barna polls. Currently, surveys consistently report less than 1% of people surveyed identify themselves as Muslims. Muslim community leaders say that many American Muslims are relatively recent immigrants who either do not have telephone service, do not participate in surveys or are afraid to identify themselves as Muslims for fear of anti-Muslim discrimination. Researchers generally agree that the estimate of 300,000 Muslims in the Kosmin study (1990) and Kosmin's adjusted estimate (to 500,000) are too small to reflect current (year 2005) numbers of American Muslims. In 2004 the National Study of Youth and Religion conducted by the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (sample size: 3,370 teens nationwide) found that less than one half of one percent (0.5%) of American teens were Muslim, a proportion right in line with the adult Muslim population, based on other studies. Tom W. Smith of the National Opinion Research Center (NORC) at the University of Chicago is a nationally recognized expert in survey research specializing in the study of social change and survey methodology. Smith published "Estimating the Muslim Population in the United States" in 2001. This is probably the most thorough academic study of this topic in recent years. This study concluded: "The best, adjusted, survey-based estimates put the adult Muslim population in 2000 at 0.67 percent or 1,401,000, and the total Muslim population at 1,886,000. Even if high-side estimates based on local surveys, figures from mosques, and ancestry and immigration statistics are given more weight than the survey-based numbers, it is hard to accept estimates that Muslims are greater than 1 percent of the population (2,090,000 adults or 2,814,000 total)." Additional articles and links are here: Number of Muslims in the United States.

Jews and Judaism. The American Jewish Identity Survey of 2000, conducted by Barry Kosmin, Egon Mayer, and Ariela Keysar at the Center for Jewish Studies at the City University of New York's Graduate Center, concluded that there were 5.5 million Jews in the United States. Of these, 1.4 million were aligned with a religion other than Judaism, 1.4 million were secular or non-religious, leaving 51% of American Jews (just over 3 million people) whose religion was Judaism. The study surveyed 50,000 randomly selected adult Americans. More.

Baha'i. Some representatives of the Baha'i Faith have questioned their omission from the 1990 NSRI "Top 10" list. The NSRI study indicated there were 28,000 self-identified Baha'is in the United States in 1990, making them the 11^th largest religion in the country. If one excludes the "nonreligious" and "agnostic" categories from this list, then the Kosmin study would place Baha'is as the 9^th largest religion in the U.S.

Although the Kosmin study is well-respected, it should be noted that even with a random sample of such unprecedented size (113,000 respondents), the practical margin of error for this study was high for relatively smaller groups -- those with less than 300,000 individuals. In this study, there were a few more respondents who said they were Scientologists or Native American religionists than said they were Baha'is. But given the margin of error, it is possible that in 1990 there were actually more Baha'is. This would be the case especially if, as some Baha'is suggested in response to these findings, there were a high proportion of Baha'is who lived communally and did not have phones for each family, or were recent Iranian immigrants reluctant to identify their Baha'i affiliation over the phone because of past persecution. In 1990 the Baha'i world faith itself claimed 110,000 adherents in the United States. If there were 110,000 self-identified Baha'is in 1990 they would have ranked as the 9^th largest U.S. religion (assuming that the other Kosmin figures are accurate).

It is quite possible that growth within this group during this last 9 years has outpaced growth of some other groups, and that Baha'is are now among America's ten largest religions. But this proposition has not been verified empirically and similar claims of recent growth have also been made by the other groups. Current official estimates from the Baha'i National Spiritual Assembly for the U.S. Baha'i population are about 113,000, or about 0.05% of the U.S. population. On 31 March 2000 received information from the U.S. National Spiritual Assembly listing the number of U.S. Baha'is at 133,709. A non-Baha'i historian from the University of Michigan who has scrutinized American Baha'i statistical practices has estimated a current (1999) figure of about 60,000 self-identified Baha'is in the U.S. But, with the ARIS survey now estimating 84,000 adult self-identified Baha'is in the U.S. in the year 2001, it appears that that historian's estimate is too low. If children are included and a slight undercount assumed, it is quite possible that there were closer to 100,000 (perhaps more) Baha'is in the U.S. in 2001.

It may also be noted that Baha'is are ranked as one of the world's ten largest international religious bodies and are among the top ten largest organized religions in the world, based on their current reported estimated membership.

Neo-pagan/Wiccan: There were 768,400 Neo-pagans (largest subset were Wiccans) in the U.S. in the year 2000, according to the Wiccan/Pagan Poll, conducted by the Covenant of the Goddess (CoG) beginning in late July, 1999. [Online source: http://www.cog.org/cogpoll_final.html] The Covenant of the Goddess (CoG) poll methodology is not comparable to methodology used in the Kosmin NSRI/ARIS studies, Harris Poll, Gallup polls, or Glenmary study. In 2004 the National Study of Youth and Religion conducted by the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (sample size: 3,370 teens nationwide) found that fewer than one-third of 1 percent of U.S. teens identified themselves as adherents of paganism (including Wicca). This indicates that the Wiccan/pagan population in the U.S. skews young; the proportion of teens identifying themselves as adherents is up to 3 times the proportion of the total population (0.3%, according to ARIS, 2001).

Another source, published before ARIS data was available:
According to the 2001 edition of David Barrett's World Christian Encyclopedia, the largest non-Christian organized religions in the U.S. are:

Jews: 5.6 million
Muslims: 4.1 million
Buddhists: 2.4 million
Hindus: 1 million

[ramseycat]

You typed all that just for Ramsey? You must really love her.

Now see? THAT's mocking. It made me laugh out loud.

And I didnt read any of that shit you wrote Moose. Who the fuck care what you think? Certainly not I.

[AnonyMoose]

You typed all that just for Ramsey? You must really love her.

Now see? THAT's mocking. It made me laugh out loud.

And I didnt read any of that shit you wrote Moose. Who the fuck care what you think? Certainly not I.

You read everything I write, loser. And if you think sally's post is a mock; you have the intelligence of a chia pet. *

* Who are we kidding? You do have the intelligence of a chia pet.

[sally]

Ignore him Ramsey. Moose's biggest goal in life is to be the little baby Jesus of Mock.

[ramseycat]

I don't give a fuck what he says. He is meaningless.

And I sure as hell didn't take the time to read that drivel. I have my own beliefs and as soon as I saw what your post was about I skipped over it. And I would rather be me secure in who I am than some poser on the internet that makes enemies on every forum he is on. The internet can be a wonderful thing and I have met some great people and formed a lot of close special friendships. People like you give the rest of the net a bad rap.