Religion 101: Final Exam

Brent Taylor 2317

Regarding the second question, why do we need to assume that it was epilepsy? Just because something has similar symptoms doesn't mean it's the same thing.

Alternatively, just because a demon was causing a cranial malfunction doesn't mean that they didn't also happen through electrochemical means during that period. It just means in this particular case it was a demon, and He removed that cause.

This question seems needlessly sardonic in tone.

As for the first question, I'd have to review it in detail, but Lynne's answer sounds good to me. Just because different details of a story are recalled in retelling doesn't invalidate the story or make them inaccurate. I'm throwing this together off the top of my head without expecting to correlate to your question exactly, but you get the idea:

Yesterday I ate lunch with Jim and he said he was tired.
Yesterday I ate lunch with Jim and Tony.
Yesterday when I got to the food court none of my friends were there.
Jim and Tony showed up while I was eating lunch.
Yesterday a mailman said he was tired.
I ate lunch alone yesterday.
I ate lunch with friends yesterday.
Tony told me that Jim said he was tired.


They could all be true.

Lynne Lefler 2012

14. I re-read all 4 stories, and in John 20, the two angels aren't mentioned until verse 11, but they WERE there that morning. In all 4 accounts, one of the men/angels spoke to Mary Magdalene.

As for the visitors to the tomb that early (still dark) morning...Mary Magdalene was the only visitor mentioned by name in all 4 accounts, although Mary, mother of James and Solome` was mentioned in 3 of the 4 accounts. In two of the accounts, other people besides the Marys visited with them.

In all 4 of the accounts, Mary Magdalene told people that a man in shining or white clothes (he probably used Chlorox in his wash) informed her that Jesus was risen from the dead.

The confusion about it being either one or two men/angels could easily be explained by people repeating the story and not including the second man in white, because he did not speak. Since he had nothing to say, but just stood around with his hands in his shiny, white pockets, the second man/angel was not as important to the story.

From these accounts, it might be fair to surmise that angels resemble men, so unless they are wearing their nametags, it is hard to tell if it is a man in white shiny clothes, or an actual angel. (I just got a visual of Richard Simmons in white, reflective workout gear...Richard Simmons is most probably NOT an angel.)


21. Recording the epileptic patient's disordered electrochemical brain activity is how we can recognize and measure the "tracks" left by the presence of the demons that are possessing that patient.

Demons are tricky little beasts, and don't visually show themselves very often to people of science or medicine, because they are hideously ugly and ashamed of that fact. They also have an aversion to becoming science experiments, or guinea pigs. That's because even though guinea pigs are much cuter than demons, the guinea pigs usually don't have supernatural powers.

Phillip Clinton New Brain

2-and 2 both questions

Alison Vance 1544

It's like when you played "Telephone" as a kid....you never end up getting the same response from anyone! People wrote what's in the Bible, and people make mistakes, and also have differing points of view.

Guaranteed Success 1341

Let me get this straight...

Jesus offered infinite wisdom from his father but, neurology wasn't one of the things he could channel? The Son of God's only task was to come to Earth and get his ass beat and then stapled to a tree? Must be those Damn demons again! It could also be the pen of the scribes that is archaic and outdated, Jesus knows and is all, so it's clearly someone else's fault!

Debating the rhetoric of two ideals is fruitless unless your intention is to learn from the opposing ideal.
I'm Right.
No I'm Right..
Excuse Me I AM right!
So sorry to disappoint but You are wrong and I'M right!!
NO!!!
Uh Huh!!
..... There is no end


It's high time we put our bibles and koran down to pick ourselves up and dust off the old traditions. The only constant in this reality is our ability to decipher what is real and what is not real. And by constant I mean constantly suspended...

Sammy Phua 1957

HAHAHA... neurology was not his speciality. Anyway, sorry to side track but I stumbled upon this video site. I hope I do not offend anyone in anyway. This was a religious debate between christianity and islam. It is rather perplexing.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-v1TT_ExR2k

Aaron Young 2263

I'm pretty sure that when the two disciples got to the tomb and saw the stone rolled back that they Easter Bunny popped out and told them that if they wanted to see Jesus they would have to find three-hundred eggs each, five chocolate bunnies, and nineteen peeps. The disciples gave up this quest and told everybody Jesus was missing. Hence the fame of the Easter Bunny and the egg-hunt on Easter Sunday.

Jesus went to USC of Jerusalem. Jesus was a frat boy, though, and really didn't study - more PARTY!!! The lecture on epilepsy was the morning after Jesus was coaxed into being "Edward Fortyhands" after consuming two bottles of wine (previously bottles of water). So as you can imagine Jesus was quite hungover and nothing about epilepsy sunk in. Luckily Jesus had his Blackberry handy and texted his doctor to find out what ailed the man and how to cure it. Jesus had lisp, so when he said epilepsy it sounded like "epewefpy" which in Hebrew translates to "ugly red thing with horns and a pointy tail" or "demon".

"If you can't laugh and joke about it, then you shouldn't talk about it at all."
- Jaspen Bishop

Jody Mena 2396

14. None of those men were there when it happened, so it's all hearsay anyway. The jist is that when they arrived, the stone had been rolled back, the tomb was empty and Jesus then appeared to the women later.

21. How do you know it wasn't demons? Were you there? Exorcisms are still performed today, with varying degrees of success. Whether the problem is due to mental illness or genuine possession is impossible to prove, but people have been known to have seizures during the process. Maybe it WAS demons

Or, more likely, both can be attributed to mishandling and misinterpretation by flawed and fallible hands of mankind.

The words of the Bible were divinely inspired. They were then written down by fallible human hands. They were then translated. They were then severely cut and edited by the Romans. They were then translated a bunch more times into all sorts of fun languages. Scholars read them and wrote a bunch of other books about what they thought they meant. Other people read those books, read the edited Words, then made up their own opinions about what it all meant.

The Bible is inspired by God. But it was written by men - lots of different men, in fact - and then filtered through 2000 years worth of social and political machinations. So I have to wonder how people can base their faith entirely on something that has been so corrupted by the often self-serving and ignorant touch of mankind.

Hell, the Council of Constantine cut half the gospels out of the Cannon because they didn't fit into the propaganda the Roman empire was pushing and were deemed 'politically incorrect' for the time. Not to mention that when the Bible was translated from the original Hebrew, some careless monk scribing in the basement of an abbey somewhere took the genderless Hebrew pronoun used in reference to God, arbitrarily inserted the masculine pronoun 'He' and poof!: God is suddenly male.

You should read the Bible. You should consider its message. You should not base your faith on that alone. Christianity is more than just the Bible. It is a basic belief in God the Creator, Christ the Savior and the Holy Spirit that moves us to act with love towards others. The rites and ceremonies associated with worship all lead back to that central idea. The Bible tells the story of that idea - but it is the idea itself and the way it affects us and our relationship with God that makes us Christian, not semantics and not ink on a page.

People who hide behind the Bible like a shield are terrified to do otherwise because without it they think they would be lost. But faith is a thing you must work out for yourself. The Bible should be a guide, a means to an end, not the end itself, because when it's all said and done, its still just words on a page, while what you feel and know in your heart is the true Word of God.

Most Christians understand that. I feel sorry for those that don't, because their relationship with God is superficial.

Unknown Brain 1556

MOAR! haha, never done that before, but i'd like to see more. :)

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Luke is the only one of those four who was quite well-educated, a physician, and an investigative journalist (so to speak), so i think it would be wise to ignore (for the most part) what the others have to say about it; closeness to a subject makes seeing the big picture hard.

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Jesus was 100% divine, and 100% human. sorting out which bits were which would've gotten him more dates, and probably would have also led him to conclude he didn't need to answer that question at all.

or maybe the man was more than neurological, was insane in such a way that could only be reffered to as demon posession (why call it something that nobody else around Him would understand?) and he fixed the insanity through verbal negotiation with the man's alter-ego.

haha, this is fun.

Unknown Brain 1892

Answer to your first question cameron:
*My theory anyways*

Jesus was out partying the night before easter, and dropped some grade A acid. (windowpane). When he got home, he decided to relax and watch some cable. Unfortunately, he was already on house arrest from those kiddie porn indicents, so he had to be home early. In leu of this, he decided to masturbate to his favorite shows since his puter was taken away by the cops. "Little people, big world" and "touched by an angel" starring michael landon. In all the confusion, the power went out. Hence... the confusion on who he saw. (Rumor has it that he was able to shoot off his last load though before attending court in the morning). Hence..... why those damn crackers at communion always taste salted.
As for the siezures, it was one of his televangelist tricks to get money from his followers to support his crack habit.

You'll probably get alot of fucked up answers by people trying to justify bullshit, so I figured i'd throw in my two cents and at least make some interesting reading out of it. (But frankly... this is my theory)*shrug*
Good question!!