Evangelical Christians

[David Dennison 18662]

3 hours ago, JBJ said:

Let's start with the most powerful man in the world at the time, Emperor Tiberius.  Find me one account.

 

And there are first-hand accounts of Jesus, just not written before his death, which was your criteria.

Please tell me where I can find a first hand account of Jesus of Nazareth written by someone who was alive when he was alive.

 

[Anastasis 23398]

Just now, David Dennison said:

Please tell me where I can find a first hand account of Jesus of Nazareth written by someone who was alive when he was alive.

  

This challenge belies a total lack of understanding of how such accounts would be transmitted by first century jews.  You might as well be asking for a link to his facebook page.  

[David Dennison 18662]

1 minute ago, Anastasis said:

This challenge belies a total lack of understanding of how such accounts would be transmitted by first century jews.  You might as well be asking for a link to his facebook page.  

That means a whole slew of scholars have a total lack of such understanding.

Or they might look beyond accounts from first century Jews. Like, oh, I don't know, Romans. 

Edited May 17, 2018 by David Dennison

[Anastasis 23398]

Just now, David Dennison said:

That means a whole slew of scholars have a total lack of such understanding.

Or they might look beyond accounts from first century Jews. Like, oh, I don't know, Romans. 

Please, name all of the Romans that Jesus had first hand interaction with according to the Gospels? 

[David Dennison 18662]

1 minute ago, Anastasis said:

Please, name all of the Romans that Jesus had first hand interaction with according to the Gospels? 

You mean besides Pontius Pilate?

[Guest]

12 minutes ago, Anastasis said:

This challenge belies a total lack of understanding of how such accounts would be transmitted by first century jews.  You might as well be asking for a link to his facebook page.  

Yep. Jews, and to a large extent, the world.  Oral traditions. 

And DD, listen to JBJ, though, it sounds like you don’t want to entertain any thought to your already made-up mind. 

[David Dennison 18662]

1 minute ago, Rex Kramer said:

Yep. Jews, and to a large extent, the world.  Oral traditions. 

And DD, listen to JBJ, though, it sounds like you don’t want to entertain any thought to your already made-up mind. 

I have no idea what the truth is. I'm just brushing aside the notion that there isn't any doubt about whether Jesus existed. There's a lot of doubt on that front. Mainly because there is not one contemporary account of his existence.

Edited May 17, 2018 by David Dennison

[Anastasis 23398]

He's the one of note I can think of off the top of my head.  Other than soldiers. So your burden of proof for the historicity of Jesus is a written first hand account of Jesus' presentation to Pilate. I hope that you can see why it's hard to take your approach seriously. 

Edited May 17, 2018 by Anastasis

[Guest]

Just now, David Dennison said:

I have no idea what the truth is. I'm just brushing aside the notion that there isn't any doubt about whether Jesus existed. There's a lot of doubt on that front.

Amongst scholars, there is very little debate. I mean, just check out Wikipedia bra. 

[David Dennison 18662]

Just now, Anastasis said:

He's the one of note I can think of off the top of my head.  Other than soldiers. So your burden of proof for the historicity of Jesus is a written first hand account of Jesus' presentation to Pilate. I hope that you can see why it's hard to take your approach seriously. 

The burden of proof is on those arguing for his existence. 

[David Dennison 18662]

Just now, Rex Kramer said:

Amongst scholars, there is very little debate. I mean, just check out Wikipedia bra. 

That just isn't true.

[JBJ 3649]

 

3 hours ago, JBJ said:

Let's start with the most powerful man in the world at the time, Emperor Tiberius.  Find me one account.

No?  Let's go on...

How about his successor Nero?  We have so much knowledge about Nero even including rumors of his personal life.  He is one of the most famous Roman rulers.  Surely someone wrote about him during his lifetime?

Edited May 17, 2018 by JBJ

[David Dennison 18662]

1 minute ago, JBJ said:

 

No?  Let's go on...

How about his successor Nero?  We have so much knowledge about Nero even including rumors of his personal life.  He is one of the most famous Roman rulers.  Surely someone wrote about him during his lifetime?

If they did, they no longer exist. 

[Brisketexan 104674]

25 minutes ago, Anastasis said:

The rabbinical references actually bring to light a particular argument that undermines the jesus myth argument.

There was great tension between the jewish religious establishment and the jesus movement from the very beginning and it only grew stronger over the first couples centuries. The rabbinical tradition that emerged during this time transmits  a few things about jesus, none of them complimentary. They refer to his crucifixion, they call him a sorcerer, they even have this whole clever play on words in the process of describing him as the bastard child of a Roman soldier.  All the rabbinical references generally take a posture of discrediting Jesus. Never once do they just make the most straightforward argument to discredit if you beg the myth hypothesis: "Jesus never existed, he was a invention of gnostic Paul."   

 

21 minutes ago, Anastasis said:

This challenge belies a total lack of understanding of how such accounts would be transmitted by first century jews.  You might as well be asking for a link to his facebook page.  

 

6 minutes ago, David Dennison said:

I have no idea what the truth is. I'm just brushing aside the notion that there isn't any doubt about whether Jesus existed. There's a lot of doubt on that front. Mainly because there is not one contemporary account of his existence.

DD, i don't begrudge you the skepticism.  But I do begrudge your blind spot on the logic here.

Not every person who lived in a dusty backwater like the levant had things written about them.  In fact, MOST did not.  There's no contemporary accounts of Bemjamin the great basket weaver of Bethlehem....but he surely existed (my point being, his analog did -- Benjamin the basket weaver, Saul the shoe maker, etc.).  That's because they were not extraordinary folks.

So, look at Jesus as a CONTEMPORARY figure -- was he particularly extraordinary or remarkable?  He was a troublemaking rabble-rouser who created some local trouble among the followers of a troublesome religion in a far-flung outpost of the empire.  The empire dealt with him - literally - the way it dealt with common thieves.  It summarily executed him.  Just another dead troublemaker, with only a few devoted followers who really mourned his passing.  Would you expect there to be many contemporary accounts of "in today's news, another three guys executed, two thieves and a troublemaker?"

In short, Jesus didn't become much of a "big deal" until after his death -- generally, some years after his death.  But the fact that we do have critical writings that follow closely in time the period in which he existed, and NONE of those criticisms grab on to the easiest, low-hanging fruit criticism - "Jesus?  WTF are you talking about?  There was never any such dude, y'all are f'n nuts!" - that tells us that (1) he was real enough to the rabbis to merit discussion and criticism, and (2) nobody near in time to his life was noting something that would have been much more easily ascertainable back then -- that there never WAS a Jesus.

When it comes to relying on history, that's the sort of evidence we're going to have from that era, when it comes to a person who was only remarkable after he died.  The absence of evidence that we wouldn't expect to have is probative of nothing.  And the existence of the evidence we DO have, which excludes the most obvious rebuttal of "what Jesus?" is strong evidence that they were criticizing a real person.

[Mole 4320]

3 minutes ago, David Dennison said:

If they did, they no longer exist. 

I mean yeah, they're probably all dead by now.

[David Dennison 18662]

Just now, Mole said:

I mean yeah, they're probably all dead by now.

Well, they all can't be Julius Caesar.

[Onboard 2.0 9083]

17 minutes ago, Rex Kramer said:

Amongst scholars, there is very little debate. I mean, just check out Wikipedia bra. 

Psssst...........  Schaaaaaaaa-lars dude, not Dave Deeeeeeeeenison.  Who ya gonna believe ?

[JBJ 3649]

3 minutes ago, David Dennison said:

Well, they all can't be Julius Caesar.

Were Suetonius or Plutarch alive when Julius Caesar was? 

[David Dennison 18662]

Just now, JBJ said:

Were Suetonius or Plutarch alive when Julius Caesar was? 

I have no idea, but I do know that Julius Caesar left his own primary sources.

[JBJ 3649]

12 minutes ago, David Dennison said:

I have no idea, but I do know that Julius Caesar left his own primary sources.

He wrote about the Gallic Wars as a proconsul, but was he ever really Emperor?  Is Plutarch's account reliable?

Edited May 17, 2018 by JBJ

[F250 28700]

12 minutes ago, David Dennison said:

I have no idea, but I do know that Julius Caesar left his own primary sources.

I believe he wrote under the pseudonym William Shakespeare.

[Brisketexan 104674]

24 minutes ago, David Dennison said:

Well, they all can't be Julius Caesar.

Of whom we have AMPLE record....

[Onboard 2.0 9083]

3 minutes ago, Brisketexan said:

Of whom we have AMPLE record....

.

He begs to differ

Edited May 17, 2018 by Onboard 2.0

[Guest]

42 minutes ago, David Dennison said:

That just isn't true.

Yeah, it is. Look at what everyone here, who likely has studied this on some basic level, is telling you. 

[phdhorn 6224]

33 minutes ago, Brisketexan said:

 

DD, i don't begrudge you the skepticism.  But I do begrudge your blind spot on the logic here.

Not every person who lived in a dusty backwater like the levant had things written about them.  In fact, MOST did not.  There's no contemporary accounts of Bemjamin the great basket weaver of Bethlehem....but he surely existed (my point being, his analog did -- Benjamin the basket weaver, Saul the shoe maker, etc.).  That's because they were not extraordinary folks.

So, look at Jesus as a CONTEMPORARY figure -- was he particularly extraordinary or remarkable?  He was a troublemaking rabble-rouser who created some local trouble among the followers of a troublesome religion in a far-flung outpost of the empire.  The empire dealt with him - literally - the way it dealt with common thieves.  It summarily executed him.  Just another dead troublemaker, with only a few devoted followers who really mourned his passing.  Would you expect there to be many contemporary accounts of "in today's news, another three guys executed, two thieves and a troublemaker?"

In short, Jesus didn't become much of a "big deal" until after his death -- generally, some years after his death.  But the fact that we do have critical writings that follow closely in time the period in which he existed, and NONE of those criticisms grab on to the easiest, low-hanging fruit criticism - "Jesus?  WTF are you talking about?  There was never any such dude, y'all are f'n nuts!" - that tells us that (1) he was real enough to the rabbis to merit discussion and criticism, and (2) nobody near in time to his life was noting something that would have been much more easily ascertainable back then -- that there never WAS a Jesus.

When it comes to relying on history, that's the sort of evidence we're going to have from that era, when it comes to a person who was only remarkable after he died.  The absence of evidence that we wouldn't expect to have is probative of nothing.  And the existence of the evidence we DO have, which excludes the most obvious rebuttal of "what Jesus?" is strong evidence that they were criticizing a real person.

Add to this that, up until the late 17th Century, oral history was in general more highly regarded than written history, something that any historian knows, since they study historiography and understand the historical method (which of course is a separate method pertaining to history just as the scientific method does so for science.  They are different, though, because while each shares some from the other, science is not history, and history is not science.  Everyone knew that, but the horrible outcomes of the Positivists, Eugenicists, and Social Darwinists  in the height of the "history is just a science" bacchanalia in the late 19th Century have pretty much put that to rest.

Over 11 years or so on this place (and previous ones), of course we keep coming back to the "historical Jesus" and all that, but simply put, if you think "proving" Jesus' existence (or more to the point, non-existence) by something that applies to 21st Century standards, when they either didn't exist, or were so lowly regarded and distrusted (which they were) that no one but hacks trusted most written documents as "history" beyond having a record of transactions, deals, etc.  The rest was looked upon with massive disdain and suspicion.

So, not to trot out that old beaten up horse again, but people who think Jesus didn't exist because they're looking for shit the way historians do now, are at best, severealy misguided, and at worst, biased dipshits without any fucking clue as to how history has morphed through the ages, and how the cultures themselves regarded important stuff worth keeping, and how they kept it.

Historians who know their shit (and there are fucking MANY MANY of them in "Classical" or "Biblical" history, know how to interpret the most telling artifacts.  The fact that there is almost nothing that "proves" King David existed doesn't mean dogshit as to whether he did or not.  They said the same thing about Solomon, well, until a number of times, most recently 2010, when they found a wall that pretty much lines up letter for letter with its description in 1 Kings.

You learn one thing on archeological digs over there... the ENTIRE FUCKING CONTINENT contains stuff from 2,000-4,000 years ago.  Everywhere.  What you see isn't what they "found", it's the spot they dug up.  Anywhere and everywhere in the Middle East and Eastern Europe (to name just a few regions) you stick a shovel, if you stick it long enough, you WILL find evidence of a past time. Period.  You just can't fucking raze the entire city of Athens to do it.

It's equivalent to finding evidence of a Surlyer in a city the size of Austin without much to go on 10,000 years from now when this entire area is under 20 feet of earth and growth..  CERTAINLY evidence is there.  So people poke around in 10 places, find no evidence, and say, "see, that guy never existed!"

GIve me a fucking break.   That's not history, that's mining for metallic shit on the beach with one of them detectors.

By the criteria used at the time to denote significance, it's far more likely that Jesus did exist than didn't.  Almost a slam dunk.  But will we ever find the thing that some narrow-minded dipshit in 2018 wants exactly to tell us that?  Like a YouTube video?  A birth certificate?  A receipt from the strip club (hopefully on that one)?  Maybe, maybe not.

Until then, people have gotten a fuckova lot further acting historically on the fact that Jesus (and many, many other contemporaries, secular as well, on FAR less evidence) existed.  Because they know how to do history from beyond a computer chair and long pointed finger.

Edited May 17, 2018 by phdhorn

[Sawbonz 27445]

10 minutes ago, F250 said:

I believe he wrote under the pseudonym William Shakespeare.

I think you are confusing Caesar with Albert Einstein

[David Dennison 18662]

11 minutes ago, JBJ said:

He wrote about the Gallic Wars as a proconsul, but was he ever really Emperor?  Is Plutarch's account reliable?

There's always Cicero.

[David Dennison 18662]

48 minutes ago, Rex Kramer said:

Amongst scholars, there is very little debate. I mean, just check out Wikipedia bra. 

OK.

[Brisketexan 104674]

3 minutes ago, phdhorn said:

GIve me a fucking break.   That's not history, that's mining for metallic shit on the beach with one of them detectors.

I only trust information that comes from Mitch Cumsteen.

Of course, a lot of my knowledge of history consists of bric-a-brac, so your mileage may vary.

3 minutes ago, phdhorn said:

A birth certificate?

Long form, please.

Edited May 17, 2018 by Brisketexan

[Guest]

3 minutes ago, David Dennison said:

OK.

I was kidding about Wiki, but, since you linked, check out the first line of the second paragraph of your own link:

”Virtually all scholars who write on the subject agree that Jesus existed,^[5][6][7][8] although scholars differ about the beliefs and teachings of Jesus as well as the accuracy of the biblical accounts....”

[JBJ 3649]

Just now, David Dennison said:

There's always Cicero.

Cicero wrote to Caius Caesar.  Maybe this Julius character is related to him?

[phdhorn 6224]

2 minutes ago, Brisketexan said:

I only trust information that comes from Mitch Cumsteen.

Of course, a lot of my knowledge of history consists of bric-a-brac, so your mileage may vary.

Long form, please.

Easy:

Oh, BTW, CIcero at the time was far more regarded as a politician, and not an essayist, historian, or poet.  In fact, most of that stuff was lost (much of it still is).  What survived the most was his simple correspondence of tedious political and commercial matters.  So much for his "historian" aspect.  His own age didn't give a shit about his history, because they didn't give a shit about that kind of history... they thought it foolish.  They gave a shit about his political opinions.

Only about 1,400 years later did people really start paying attention to him as a documentarian.

[David Dennison 18662]

Just now, Rex Kramer said:

I was kidding about Wiki, but, since you linked, check out the first line of the second paragraph of your own link:

”Virtually all scholars who write on the subject agree that Jesus existed,^[5][6][7][8] although scholars differ about the beliefs and teachings of Jesus as well as the accuracy of the biblical accounts....”

Exactly. 

[David Dennison 18662]

Just now, JBJ said:

Cicero wrote to Caius Caesar.  Maybe this Julius character is related to him?

Wait. Are you kidding?

[JBJ 3649]

29 minutes ago, David Dennison said:

Wait. Are you kidding?

Dead serious.  How do we get from Cicero's generic Caius Caesar with no story to Plutarch's account of Caesar?  I mean there were a few Caius Julius that lived and died before Plutarch put the full account together, including several emperors, senators, and consuls.

Edited May 17, 2018 by JBJ

[David Dennison 18662]

25 minutes ago, JBJ said:

Dead serious.  How do we get from Cicero's generic Caius Caesar with no story to Plutarch's account of Caesar?  I mean there were a few Caius Julius that lived and died before Plutarch put the full account together, including several emperors, senators, and consuls.

Were they also fighting in Gaul?

[Guest]

6 hours ago, BrickHorn said:

Not rage.  Annoyance.  The kind you might feel if a pesky child kept tugging on your shirt and demanding you consider his half-baked theories on the mechanics of Santa Claus’s sleigh.  Except worse, because at least a child has a legitimate developmental excuse for magical thinking.

Do you really think I'm asking you to consider my views on theology?  Nothing in my posts & responses in this thread involves asking one to consider the supernatural.

Now I think you are a very clever person and a good debater; you are probably well educated and successful at whatever type of law you practice.  But you are working with a garbage argument in this discussion and you should abandon it.  I say this to you with nothing more than genuine honesty and respect because I believe this argument to be beneath you.  This is the atheist analog to young earth creationism.  You are good enough at the debate game that you can probably work with even this crap argument and still do ok in many situations, but that's merely because you can outgun most folks due to your skill set.  But if you use this argument against folks who study this subject, it will not go as smoothly as what you may be accustomed to when engaging others who have only limited interest.  

I don't have any delusions that the above will make you question your beliefs or consider my beliefs; I'm merely suggesting that you look it objectively, see the argument for what it is, and then consider discarding it and moving on to better arguments for atheism/agnosticism/whatever you believe. 

 

6 hours ago, David Dennison said:

Counter point.

Here's a counter point in return to this overtly biased author:

"I finally read with great reluctance Mr. Raphael Lataster’s piece published by The Conversation, entitled “Weighing up the evidence for the ‘Historical Jesus’”. My hesitation was justified; the article turned out to be just another attempt to propound the ideological holy grail of fringe atheist groups, namely, that Jesus never existed.

That is because, to be frank, those of us who work in the academic profession of religion and history simply have a hard time taking them seriously. They are the equivalent of climate change deniers or 9/11 conspiracy theorists. None of them are bonafide academics with tenure at a respected institution in this field, have peer-reviewed publications, and are recognised as experts in their area.

The Jesus mythicists are a group of enthusiastic atheists who through websites and self-published books try to prove the equivalent of a flat earth. I serve on the editorial board for the Journal for the Study of the Historical Jesus, where we have an editorial team of people from all faiths and none, celebrated experts in their fields; and I can tell you that the Jesus mythicist nonsense would never get a foot in the door of a peer-reviewed journal committed to the academic study of the historical Jesus.

...Mr. Lataster complains about the lack of early sources. Well, what do you mean by “early”? Paul’s letters are written about 20-30 years after Jesus’ death, and the Gospels about 50-70 years after his death. Our oldest piece of papyrus with a fragment of John 18 is P25 and is dated to about 125-150 CE. Authors like Josephus, Pliny the Younger, Suetonius, and Tacitus from the late first and early second century wrote about Jesus too.

That sounds pretty early to me, at least in comparison to other historical figures. For example, there is a gap of over 200 years between the death of Alexander the Great and our first known biographies of him written by Diodorus Siculus, Plutarch, and Arrian. These biographies include miracle stories, legendary development, hagiography, and are heavily edited accounts. One could employ the same arguments that Mr. Lataster uses to dismiss these sources to prove that Alexander the Great did not exist.

The complaint that the earliest sources portray the “mythical Christ of faith” is a classic case of assuming what you’re proving. But let’s indulge the argument for a moment. I wonder if we might say the same thing about Roman historians. Let us remember that the historical Gaius Octavius was known principally through the lens of Roman veneration of him as “The Divine Augustus,” an object of worship in the state-sanctioned imperial cult, complete with temples and priesthood across the eastern Mediterranean. Should we dismiss all Roman sources because they appear to be written from the perspective of the Augustus of faith? Same argument, but I don’t hear any Roman historians claiming that Octavius did not exist."

https://www.ridley.edu.au/bible-theology/yes-jesus-existed-relax-can-still-atheist-want/

Edited May 17, 2018 by Guest

[David Dennison 18662]

Let's stipulate historic Jesus.

Who was his father?

[JBJ 3649]

35 minutes ago, David Dennison said:

Were they also fighting in Gaul?

Cicero's Caius Caesar just gave judgements and pardons.  You'd think Cicero would mention that he was a war hero.

[Guest]

Man, nothing has ever discredited BadTeammate’s line of thinking in his posts—even the few where he eschews trolling to make a point or two— more than knowing he, through his David Dennison sock, is truly living in irrationality land.

[relapse98 634]

6 hours ago, hayden_horn said:

ladies and gentlemen, this man is a christian!

To be fair, most evangelicals I know talk like that.

[David Dennison 18662]

28 minutes ago, JBJ said:

Cicero's Caius Caesar just gave judgements and pardons.  You'd think Cicero would mention that he was a war hero.

It's probably another Caesar in Gaul.

[JBJ 3649]

12 minutes ago, David Dennison said:

It's probably another Caesar in Gaul.

 Julius was not Caeser in 54 BC.

Edited May 18, 2018 by JBJ

[David Dennison 18662]

Just now, JBJ said:

There was no Roman Caeser in 54 BC.

Indeed.

[JBJ 3649]

Just now, David Dennison said:

Indeed.

Sorry to put you through the ringer but I think you get the point I'm making?

[David Dennison 18662]

1 minute ago, JBJ said:

Sorry to put you through the ringer but I think you get the point I'm making?

I do and it's unconvincing.

[Bozo_Casanova 26306]

The rabbinical references actually bring to light a particular argument that undermines the jesus myth argument.
There was great tension between the jewish religious establishment and the jesus movement from the very beginning and it only grew stronger over the first couples centuries. The rabbinical tradition that emerged during this time transmits  a few things about jesus, none of them complimentary. They refer to his crucifixion, they call him a sorcerer, they even have this whole clever play on words in the process of describing him as the bastard child of a Roman soldier.  All the rabbinical references generally take a posture of discrediting Jesus. Never once do they just make the most straightforward argument to discredit if you beg the myth hypothesis: "Jesus never existed, he was a invention of gnostic Paul."   

This reminds me of one of my very favorite quotations of my Kurt Vonnegut:

“The visitor from outer space made a gift to the Earth of a new Gospel. In it, Jesus really was a nobody, and a pain in the neck to a lot of people with better connections than he had. He still got to say all the lovely and puzzling things he said in the other Gospels.

So the people amused themselves one day by nailing him to a cross and planting the cross in the ground. There couldn’t possibly be any repercussions, the lynchers thought. The reader would have to think that, too, since the new Gospel hammered home again and again what a nobody Jesus was.

And then, just before the nobody died, the heavens opened up, and there was thunder and lightning. The voice of God came crashing down. He told the people that he was adopting the bum as his son, giving him the full powers and privileges of The Son of the Creator of the Universe throughout all eternity. God said this: From this moment on, He will punish horribly anybody who torments a bum who has no connections”


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[Guest]

8 minutes ago, Bozo_Casanova said:

This reminds me of one of my very favorite quotations of my Kurt Vonnegut:

“The visitor from outer space made a gift to the Earth of a new Gospel. In it, Jesus really was a nobody, and a pain in the neck to a lot of people with better connections than he had. He still got to say all the lovely and puzzling things he said in the other Gospels.

So the people amused themselves one day by nailing him to a cross and planting the cross in the ground. There couldn’t possibly be any repercussions, the lynchers thought. The reader would have to think that, too, since the new Gospel hammered home again and again what a nobody Jesus was.

And then, just before the nobody died, the heavens opened up, and there was thunder and lightning. The voice of God came crashing down. He told the people that he was adopting the bum as his son, giving him the full powers and privileges of The Son of the Creator of the Universe throughout all eternity. God said this: From this moment on, He will punish horribly anybody who torments a bum who has no connections”


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

I don’t get it

[Onboard 2.0 9083]

1 minute ago, OatmealRaisinCookie said:

I don’t get it

Dude, yer a fuckin' OatmealRaisonCookie, of course you don't get it.

[hayden_horn 11360]

1 hour ago, Bozo_Casanova said:

This reminds me of one of my very favorite quotations of my Kurt Vonnegut:

“The visitor from outer space made a gift to the Earth of a new Gospel. In it, Jesus really was a nobody, and a pain in the neck to a lot of people with better connections than he had. He still got to say all the lovely and puzzling things he said in the other Gospels.

So the people amused themselves one day by nailing him to a cross and planting the cross in the ground. There couldn’t possibly be any repercussions, the lynchers thought. The reader would have to think that, too, since the new Gospel hammered home again and again what a nobody Jesus was.

And then, just before the nobody died, the heavens opened up, and there was thunder and lightning. The voice of God came crashing down. He told the people that he was adopting the bum as his son, giving him the full powers and privileges of The Son of the Creator of the Universe throughout all eternity. God said this: From this moment on, He will punish horribly anybody who torments a bum who has no connections”


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

This reminds me of one of my very favorite quotations from kurt Vonnegut:

"He had a tremendous wang, incidentally. You never know who'll get one."

Edited May 18, 2018 by hayden_horn