Clipmarks | askwhy's clips

Gluten, the hidden poison

Sun, 10 Jun 2007 16:16:52 GMT

clipped by: askwhy
clipper's remarks: Gluen is increasingly added to food for no obvious reason, yet it is a dangerous poison to many people, and in added quantities probably to many who otherwise would be tolerant. You will find it added to many foods to improve its texture with no regard to its harmful effects.

Clip Source: www.elivinghealth.com

Gluten intolerance is now being linked to some major brain development and immune system disorders, and the pathway is not exclusively through the gut.

Depression, migraines, ADHD, autism, obsessive compulsive disorder, schizophrenia, balance problems, epilepsy, inability to concentrate, autoimmune thyroid disease, and dermatitis, are amongst the many non-digestive disorders that have now been linked to gluten intolerance. Dr. Lewey suggests that gluten intolerance affects as much as 10% to 30% of the population. When you consider the number of people on medications for the above mentioned brain and immune system disorders, it’s possible that the numbers are even higher than Dr. Lewey suggests.

Tags: gluten, food, additives

Time Zero?

Mon, 12 Mar 2007 18:55:48 GMT

clipped by: askwhy
clipper's remarks: There is a minimum time and so no time zero, and no creation. Time is eternal.

Clip Source: www.askwhy.co.uk

( t_v )² - ( t_o )² = ( t_c )²

Using the difference of two squares, it reduces to the same form as the original hypothesised equation. When we trace back our observed time to zero at the Big Bang, universal time has the value t_c, the time that corresponds with T in our original surmise, the time we took to be Planck’s time, a fundamental unit of time. For universal time to reach zero, our observed time has to become imaginary. It suggests that there never was a Big Bang. On the miniscule scale, time is eternal. Perhaps that will actually please Christians.

Tags: time, zero, big bang, creation

Jesus Family Tomb--James Ossuary

Tue, 06 Mar 2007 00:52:30 GMT

clipped by: askwhy
clipper's remarks: Why should anyone believe this from Ben Witherington? On December 29, 2004, Golan was indicted in an Israeli court along with three other men - Robert Deutsch, an inscriptions expert who teaches at Haifa University; collector Shlomo Cohen; and antiquities dealer Faiz al-Amaleh. They are accused of being part of a forgery ring that had been operating for more than 20 years. Golan denies the charges against him, but the forgery factory was in a hidden part of his own luxury flat in Jerusalem. Golan is sufficiently dhady for anyone sensible not to believe a word he says.

Clip Source: benwitherington.blogspot.com

The James ossuary, according to the report of the antiquities dealer that Oded Golan got the ossuary from, said that the ossuary came from Silwan, not Talpiot, and had dirt in it that matched up with the soil in that particular spot in Jerusalem. In fact Oded confirmed this to me personally when I spoke with him at an SBL meeting.

Tags: jesus, tomb, james, ossuary, golan

Jesus Family Tomb

Mon, 05 Mar 2007 19:25:14 GMT

clipped by: askwhy
clipper's remarks: What we know about the Essenes is that “they related to each other as family, even when they were not physically related”. They called each other brother and siter, and very likely called senior members father and mother, just as Christians came to do. The Essenes did BC what the Christians did AD except that Essenes were Jews and Christians quickly became mainly gentiles. There is a continuity between the culture of the Essenes and that of the Christians that modern Christians simply will not recognize because they insist on supernatural explnations not natural ones.

Clip Source: benwitherington.blogspot.com

And what we know about those Christians is that they related to each other as family, even when they were not physically related, and were in some cases buried together, not in clan tombs, because their religious families were more important to them than their physical ones. This tomb may reflect that later Christian practice and reality.

Tags: christianity, tomb, essenes

Jesus Family Tomb

Mon, 05 Mar 2007 19:22:14 GMT

clipped by: askwhy
clipper's remarks: The rosette was a sign of Judah come down from Persian times when the Persians colonized the country and set up the Temple State of Yehud (417—BC). That rosette is still a symbol of both ancient nations. Who then would use the rosette other than fervent Jewish nationalists? And who were the fervent Jewish natinalists other than the Essenes. This could have been an Essene tomb and not a Jewish family tomb at all. The original archaeological reports by Amos Klonos need to be scrutinized for evidence of this, if it has not been erased by clumsy archaeology. The Essenes were not identical with the Nazarenes, and so the Nazarenes need not have known where the Essenes had buried their brother. The Nazarenes were converts to the idea of the kingdom coming soon, and need not have known much about the basic affiliations of their leader, but simply his immediately pressing principle which was an Essene principle—the world was about to end and Jews had to repent to get into it.

Clip Source: benwitherington.blogspot.com

It is not, and indeed was not a secret tomb where a despised split off sect of Jesus following Jews could have hidden the bodies of Jesus or James or other family members. The ornamental decoration is meant to attract attention and draw people to the tomb. Indeed it is meant to distinguish the tomb from others. This is the opposite of what we would expect if this is a pre-70 A.D. Jesus family tomb. Remember we have clear historical evidence that Saul of Tarsus, from his own letters and from Acts was a persecutor of Christians. By the 40s this persecution got so bad that some Christians fled the city (see the sweep and trajectory of the story in Act 3-9). Under no circumstances would these beleaguered early Jewish Christians have been advertising where the bones of Jesus laid, if they knew.

Tags: christianity, tomb, essenes

Jesus Illigitimate and taken in by the Essenes

Mon, 05 Mar 2007 19:16:50 GMT

clipped by: askwhy
clipper's remarks: What this boils down to is that the early evidence of Jesus’s birth is that he was illigitimate. It is special pleading to say this conclusion is uncharitable because Mary claimed it was a miracle. It ought not to need saying that no Christian father would accept the same excuse for his daughter’s pregnancy, so there is nothing uncharitable about it. In those days, Greeks thought it possible for human women to be impregnated by gods, and it was used as an excuse in that culture, but no traditional Jewish culture was likely to accept it. The Christians who wrote the gospels were not traditional Jews. If they were Jews at all, they were writing for people in the Hellenized world outside Palestine where divine births were acceptable. The two birth narratives were quite plainly stuck on to the bios of Christ, and no scholar considers them to be anything other than myth. It leaves the notion of illigitimacy as the only explanation for Jesus being called the son of Mary. The question then is

Clip Source: benwitherington.blogspot.com

Did the people in Nazareth know there was something unusual about Jesus’ origins, and it disconnected him from Joseph? Yes they did, which is why they were angry and did not think Jesus had any right to teach them. He was probably viewed as a mamzer, as Dr. Bruce Chilton has argued—an illegitimate child. And this is precisely what James Tabor argues in his Jesus Dynasty book, claiming he was the son of a Roman soldier named Pantera. But of course now, he has reversed himself to support the Jesus Family Tomb theory. You can’t have it both ways, and in fact neither are correct. Jesus was not the physical descendent of Joseph, was known not to be by his hometown folks. The uncharitable suggested he was illegitimate but Mary claimed his conception was a miracle. Those are the two opposing explanations we have from the first century about Jesus’ origins.

Tags: christianity, essene, jesus, origin

Mary Magdalene

Mon, 05 Mar 2007 19:05:37 GMT

clipped by: askwhy
clipper's remarks: Ben Witherington makes these statements in his blog about the Jesus Family Tomb book. He is a professional Christian and is complaining about the facts offered by the authors, Charles Pellegrino and Simcha Jacobivici, a pair of ancient history sensationalists out to make money. Yet this tiny part of the professional Christian response is just as mendacious. How does he know all the early Christians in Jerusalem spoke only Aramaic, and had no Greek? Since this country had been in the Greek sphere of influence for over three centuries, it seems most unlikely. If they did speak only Aramaic, it was a deliberate choice, not because they had no Greek. As for Mary Magdalene growing up in a Jewish fishing village called Migdal, this is pure invention. No one knows what “Magdalene” means, and so it is pure conjecture that it refers to any town. If it refers to Migdal at all, it could be translated as “Mary the Tower”, implying her fortitude, or even her towering stature.

Clip Source: benwitherington.blogspot.com

The earliest Jewish Christians in Jerusalem, including the members of Jesus’ family and Mary Magdalene, did not speak Greek. They spoke Aramaic. We have absolutely no historical evidence to suggest Mary Magdalene would have been called by a Greek name before A.D. 70. She grew up in a Jewish fishing village called Migdal, not a Greek city at all.

Tags: christians, magdalene

The Lost Tomb of Jesus

Sun, 04 Mar 2007 23:42:47 GMT

clipped by: askwhy
clipper's remarks: Christians will persist in complaining that others misrepresent them, yet they will not examine the facts of their own belief honestly.

Clip Source: mikemagee.wordpress.com

This whole nonsense could not have arisen unless the Christians felt obliged to believe that Jesus had a close family. Looked at in a fair and balanced way, he did not. he was a member of a brotherhood, the Essenes. Little in the story need be changed if this is true, and a great deal that seems mysterious can then be answered. But will the Christian suddenly stop just believing and instead look at the evidence properly. No chance! Christianity depends on exactly the sort of scam that Jacobovici is perpetrating. They are therefore hypocrites to complain about it. The skeptic can call down a plague on to both their houses!

Tags: christianity, jesus, tomb, essenes, brotherhood

Do Christians think God is trying to Trick them?

Sat, 03 Mar 2007 17:36:30 GMT

clipped by: askwhy
clipper's remarks: It seems that no Christians dare. No one has replied.

Clip Source: mikemagee.wordpress.com

Do Christians think that God is trying to trick them in making history seem different from the myths in the so-called holy books? When the holy books are so much at variance with scholarship, would it not be more sensible to realize that dishonest people in the past have lured honest Jews and Christians into believing falsehoods? How do they know that God has been trying to persuade them of their errors but the Devil has such a grip on them that they will not listen? I have a lot of relevant analysis of these matters at the askwhy website. Take a look, even you Christians, if you dare!

Tags: god, christianity, belief, devil