Locke

Why are you focusing on the begining then? I'm discussing the first texts. In the beginning, the texts of Christianity had everything I mentioned - they had all of the components of being a religion whether or not you believe it was the intention. Scientology DID NOT have any of that. The first texts of scientology were CLEARLY not a religion wheras Christianity had ALL of the parts we see in a modern day religion. Whether or not you know the intention of the author, it is clear they were formed in VERY different ways - and either you haven't read the Old Testament or you don't know much about the history of Scientology to be arguing the point you are. I suggest you fix whichever the problem is. There is HUGE difference in the beginning of the religions just based on what they offered. I'm sorry that your hatred of Christianity blinds you so much that you are comparing two things that just can't be compared. Even Warrior agreed with me on this one.

Quit putting words in my mouth. I made all of my points very clear that I am talking about the ORIGINAL TEXTS not the INTENTIONS. All you did was respond to points I never made - that is shown by you constantly talking about "intentions" when I am just talking about the ACTUAL TEXTS.

Haha. Okay. Let's pretend your right. Your point is still ridiculous. 1. We know scientology was founded as fictional, and we aren't sure how Christianity was founded but there is a lot of evidence to suggest it was founded as non-fiction. You STILL can't compare the two. That would be like comparing non-fiction to Shakespeare on the claim that, "Well we don't have Shakespeare here today to ask him if he was basing his plays off of real events, so we don't know. Therefore, we should compare Shakespeare with a work of non-fiction like they are the same thing." It might "make sense," to you - but it's ridiculous. 2. We also know that scientology offered no characteristics of a religion we see today at the beginning, but the first texts of Christianity have characteristics of religion. 3. Scientology from the beginning did not offer salvation of any kind, but Christianity did. 4. Scientology did not establish any form of deity or "higher being" in any sense of the word at the beginning, Christianity did. 5. Scientology offered no creation myth at the beginning, Christianity did. There is no way you can claim that a comparison between Scientology and Christianity makes sense. They were founded, just by reading the original texts and not even discussing original intent, in a completely different manner. One clearly established itself as a religion from the beginning just based off of it's texts, one had to change itself many time before ever getting to that point. They cannot be compared. Further, in order to become a member of Scientology you have to take a test that has scientifically been proven to be rigged in order for you to fail so they can suggest you take more classes. Christianity offers no such test when you become a Christian. Scientologists are known to try to cover up secrets of their faith, Christianity is open to any questioning people have, and invite people to come into their services with no questions asked (and no money due). They are not comparable EVEN IF we pretend like there is ambiguity in the Christianities origins.

You have still failed to offer evidence of your claim. That stinks.

Consider the facts. A culture was established that was centered around the idea that the Old Testament was fact. That culture has survived with those beliefs for thousands of years. It is commonly accepted that the original intent of the books was non-fiction. The burden of proof lies on you to explain why it is ambiguous. If you think you have figured something out that thousands and thousands of theologians AND atheists have not - then surely you could explain it. Just because you yourself doubt it, doesn't make it ambiguous. The evidence surrounding the origin of the texts is overwhelming, and I can't force you to read it. Don't you think that every anti-Christian scholar out there would be trying their very hardest to prove a point like this? Afterall, anytime a tomb is discovered that might "prove" Jesus had a family it's all over the news. Anytime that a book comes out that might "prove" something incorrect about Christianity, it's all over the news. Look at Richard Dawkins book, a slap in the face to Christianity, and how long it spent on the New York Times Bestseller list. So if you have any reason to doubt the original intent of the Old Testament, then give it. Because you'd be doing something thousands of people over thousands of years haven't been able to. The burden of proof falls on you.

Wait? So you're saying that your point is made up and you have yet to give any evidence to support your claim? Interesting...

Your point is absolutely made up until you give reasons for it. The only reason you've given is absolutely nonsense. Why not give a reason for your made up point? Because you can't.

I never said Hesiod was around during Biblical times. I was giving an example of how you can't say because it doesn't seem possible in this day and age, it makes sense for it to been have written as fiction. Don't try and turn this around and avoid my question. If you can't do it, then your made up point remains made up. It's kind of sad that you have to make up arguments that don't exist to prove a point. And your post has to do with what exactly? Thank you.

I'd read The Foster Report which was published in 1971. It is very in depth, noting things like even as late as 1971, recruiters for scientology were very uneasy about describing it as a "religion" when recruiting people to the cause. I would suggest that scientology is neither a cult nor a religion. It's a business scam gone very wrong.

Before scientology was even called scientology, before he even decided it would be a religion, it was a secular idea he came up with. Then they realized they could charge people money to take a test, rig the test so they automatically fail it, and charge people more money so they could take classes to fix themselves. Scientology existed before it was ever a religion, and before it was ever "offering salvation." Its entire original intent is different, and is not comparable to Christianity.

Changing the subject. It doesn't matter if it is fantasy, it matters about what the intent was. You refuse to address the actual issue, as always. You just refuse to answer my initial question about finding me fictional writings from the same time period and therefore, should be ignored. If you are so sure that you can use a modern day perspective on an ancient document to talk about its origins, you have no place talking about this. You can't say, "because this is untrue, it seems likely that it had no original intent of being passed off as true." The reason being is look at authors like Hesiod. He wrote what we would consider outlandish fiction/fantasy - but we also know that he was telling stories he believed to be true. You're arguing a non-existent point with absolutely no evidence to back it up. The word secular means without religious or spiritual meaning/connection. I don't understand your question.

If you see the evolution from fictional intent to non-fictional intent as something that is okay, then that's your opinion. However, all evidence suggests that Christianity, and most other modern day religions, were established first as non-fiction, and didn't evolve in such a manner - and that's the point being discussed. You can't compare the attributes of two belief systems when they were originally established for entirely different purposes. They are fundamentally different. The mere evolution from not believing to believing in what you yourself have said is an enormous enough difference to make the belief systems incomparable in most senses.

It wasn't originally established as non-fiction. Even more so, Hubbard created the ideas completely secular at first, and later on decided it was a religion. It wasn't even "defined" as a religion by his own words until he realized he could make money off of it. The original intent is clearly very different.

The books have no characteristics of written fiction at the time and have all the characteristics of non-fiction such as the thorough tracing of genealogy throughout the entire Old Testament. If you found lists of fiction written during the same time of the Old Testament you would realize this, but since your entire point is made up, you're not going to. EDIT: Quit trying to pretend that is is whether or not the stories are believable. That has nothing to do with this. That's called: "Changing the subject." You are saying they have characteristics of intended fiction from THIS time. I don't care about that. Show me characteristics of intended fiction that they have concerning the time they were written by comparing them to other pieces of intended fiction from the time.

You are changing the subject. This isn't about whether or not Christianity IS fiction, it's about whether or not it was written with the intent of being passed off as fiction or non-fiction. There is a big difference and I would appreciate it if you quit changing the subject.

There's a much easier method to do this. Give me a list of fiction written in the time period that was preserved that long if you believe that the Old Testament has the characteristics of fiction. If you want to show me there is a reason to believe that the original intention of the Bible was to be a fictitious piece of work, then you have to give reasons to believe that. You can't just say "it's possible," that's a cop out, like I said before. EDIT: This has nothing to do with whether or not you think Christianity is true, which you are trying to argue by pointing out the improbability of Moses foretelling his own death. This has to do with whether or not the works we have show characteristics of fiction from the time, or not. So quit trying to change the subject like you always do.

There is no ambiguity. You're just making it up to prove a made up point.

So your argument is this: "We know that Scientology was first established as fiction and it was only later that we found that people started passing it off as non-fiction. Christianity, on the other hand, has no indication that it was ever meant as fiction. We know this because it was not written like fiction would have been written in the time and not very much fiction was written during the time. Therefore, it seems logical to assume that Christianity might have been written as fiction and later latched onto despite the fact that we have historical evidence that those following Jesus while he was preaching were killed for believing Jesus was the Messiah (therefore showing us that even before the Gospel was written, people believed the ideas were non-fiction)." You are being ridiculous to try and argue the point that Christianity "might" have been first meant as fiction. There are NUMEROUS reasons to show it was not. Sure, you could argue that Christianity is a cult - but the two religion fundamentally started for different purposes. So whether or not they "both offer salvation" is irrelevant to the point, because their fundamental beginning was ENTIRELY different. You simply cannot compare them that closely. The entire point of your argument is this "ambiguity" about the original intent of Christianity, and you've simply made that up.

It documented the lives of other people, whose genealogy traces up through the bloodline that eventually becomes Jesus. The point you are making is ridiculous. You are basically saying, "You can't know anything for sure about Christianity, so in conclusion, I know for sure that Christianity and Scientology were established with the same purpose."

Cop-out. Jesus was a person whom Roman records identified as being crucified. The Gospels not only detail the life of him (of which other non-Christian historical data shows was accurate as far as where he was, and what he was doing in terms of preaching and gathering crowds), but they also explain the events in terms of actual genealogy and what happened in the family line. Sure, you can never be 100% sure, but it's just a cop-out to bring up that point because it's possible that you can never be 100% sure of anything.

Scientology was created by a science fiction writer. Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Mormonism, Hinduism, Buddhism, etc were created with the purpose of being non-fictional. It's not a matter of whether or not you can prove a metaphysical concept, it's a matter of what the original purpose was. For instance, the roots of Scientology, Dianetics, was first established in a magazine titled "Astounding Science Fiction." Don't you see the difference? One was established with the original intent of non-fiction, whether or not you believe it - and one was authored by a writer of science fiction. I don't know how much you know about either religion, but they were established with completely different original purposes, and are therefore not in the same line. Maybe you just don't know enough about the origins of either of the two religions?

You're right, and that's my fault for not being clear - except that I did specify that the books were being sold back, for profit, for cheaper than the distributor sold them for. So even without specifying that it was second-hand, you still should have been able to understand my point.

How is the local shop making a loss? Let me explain how this system works: - Wholesaler sells textbook to the University textbook store for $150. - The university textbook store sells it back for $187 (25% markup). - The university textbook store, at the end of the semester, will only pay $10 for the used back, so a new store opens which will buy the book back for $20. - My friend buys that book for $40, then sells it to a student for $80, because the used textbooks store isn't very common. - The University textbook store will sell it's used books for around $115. - Therefore, the person buying from the used bookstore and selling to students is making profit while selling the book for less than the wholeseller sells them for. No, I don't know why the market works like this - but is does. You can't assume you know how every system works.

I have a friend who buys textbooks from a local bookstore and resells them to college student to make 100% profit on every book he makes. If he bought from the distributor instead of the bookstore, he would be paying more for the books than he is able to turn around and sell them for currently. So how do you propose your solution would make more money? Buy from the wholesaler. Also, "merchant" is not a bloody verb. Maybe you misunderstood my post. Buying these books from the wholesaler is more expensive than the price that he sells them back for. And when he sells them back, he makes 100% profit on them. So how would buying from the wholesaler be more beneficial?

I have a friend who buys textbooks from a local bookstore and resells them to college student to make 100% profit on every book he makes. If he bought from the distributor instead of the bookstore, he would be paying more for the books than he is able to turn around and sell them for currently. So how do you propose your solution would make more money?