Darwin was from around 1870-1880.

And yeah, that theory is kinda like my own, but some things are just left away...

I belive there is no begining nor is there an end. It just keeps goin with no end in sight.

I have one question:

If God created the universe, who created Him?

The way I see it, the world couldn\'t possibly have been created. \"Being created\" implies that something created it, which implies that something was there before. So, I say the universe WASN\'T created.

But since that doesn\'t make any sense, obviously the universe doesn\'t exist.

Meh.

God always was and always will be around. It makes just as much sense as the universe always existing in one of the above posts, so don\'t say that that\'s stupid without saying the above post is stupid.:P

On the subject of God, go to Wind\'s \'Time and Tangibility Revived\' thread.
Well, what Blazen said makes... well, actually, no sense at all, but what does here? The Universe... could it be created? If not, Blazen has a point.

[quote]Originally posted by mr.match

No there isn\'t. There is no \"missing link.\" We did not evolve from apes, apes and man evolved from a common ancestor.

Yeshua (Jesus) was simply an Israli man with links to a high Rabbi family. He did have potential to become the \'King of the Jews\' but he preached that you didn\'t need to pay the Rabbi for them to talk to God for him to forgive you (this was how they made money). The Rabbi didn\'t like this so they had Jesus snuffed.

That\'s the story. It was all about the money. Yeshua of Nazerath has nothing to do with evolution.

EDIT: And X, wasn\'t the entire Lucifer being expolted from Heaven and becoming Satan a fictious story called \"Paridise Lost\"? I believe it to be. I could be wrong though.

[Edited on 10/3/2005 by mr.match] [/quote]

Well yes. Yes it was. But that\'s hardly the point. That\' just the modern tradition for how Lucifer is viewed.

Let\'s get it started. Let\'s start with Evolution.

[quote]In biology, evolution is the process by which populations of organisms acquire and pass on novel traits from generation to generation, affecting the overall makeup of the population and even leading to the emergence of new species.

The modern theory of evolution began with the introduction of natural selection in a joint 1858 paper by Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace. This theory achieved a wider readership in Darwin\'s 1859 book, The Origin of Species. Darwin and Wallace proposed that evolution occurs because a trait that increases an individual\'s chance of successfully reproducing will become more common, by inheritance, from one generation to the next, and likewise a trait that decreases an individual\'s chance of reproducing will become rarer. This work was pathbreaking and overturned other evolutionary theories, such as that advanced by Jean Baptiste Lamarck.

In the 1930s, scientists combined Darwinian natural selection with the re-discovered theory of Mendelian heredity to create the modern evolutionary synthesis, now one of the fundamental scientific theories of biology. In the modern synthesis, \"evolution\" is defined as a change in the frequency of alleles within a population from one generation to the next. This change may be caused by different mechanisms, including natural selection, genetic drift, or changes in population (gene flow).

Scientific theory

The theory underlying the modern synthesis has three major aspects:

• The common descent of all organisms from a single ancestor.
  
• The manifestation of novel traits in a lineage.
  
• The mechanisms that cause some traits to persist while others perish.
  

The modern synthesis, like its Mendelian and Darwinian antecedents, is a scientific theory. In plain English, people use the word \"theory\" to signify \"conjecture\", \"speculation\", or \"opinion\". In contrast, a scientific theory is a model of the world (or some portion of it) from which falsifiable hypotheses can be generated and be verified through empirical observation. In this sense, \"theory\" and \"fact\" do not stand in opposition, but rather exist in a reciprocal relationship — for example, it is a \"fact\" that an apple dropped on earth will fall towards the center of the planet in a straight line, and the \"theory\" which explains it is the current theory of gravitation. Currently, the modern synthesis is the most powerful theory explaining variation and speciation, and within the science of biology it has completely replaced earlier accepted explanations for the origin of species, including creationism and Lamarckism.

Ancestry of organisms

A group of organisms is said to have common descent if they have a common ancestor. In biology, the theory of universal common descent proposes that all organisms on Earth are descended from a common ancestor or ancestral gene pool.

Evidence for common descent may be found in traits shared between all living organisms. In Darwin\'s day, the evidence of shared traits was based solely on visible observation of morphologic similarities, such as the fact that all birds — even those which do not fly — have wings. Today, the theory of evolution has been strongly confirmed by the science of DNA genetics. For example, every living thing makes use of nucleic acids as its genetic material, and uses the same twenty amino acids as the building blocks for proteins. All organisms use the same genetic code (with some extremely rare and minor deviations) to translate nucleic acid sequences into proteins. Because the selection of these traits is somewhat arbitrary, their universality strongly suggests common ancestry.

In addition, abiogenesis — the generation of life from non-living matter — has never been observed, indicating that the origin of life from non-life is either extremely rare or only happens under conditions very unlike those of modern Earth. The 1953 Miller-Urey experiment suggests that conditions on the ancient earth may have permitted abiogenesis.

The evolutionary process can be exceedingly slow. Fossil evidence indicates that the diversity and complexity of modern life has developed over much of the age of the earth. Geological evidence indicates that the Earth is approximately 4.6 billion years old. (See Timeline of evolution.)

Studies on guppies [4] by the National Science Foundation, however, have shown that evolutionary rates in the wild can proceed 10 thousand to 10 million times faster than what is indicated in the fossil record.

Information about the early development of life includes input from the fields of geology and planetary science. These sciences provide information about the history of the Earth and the changes produced by life. A great deal of information about the early Earth has been destroyed by geological processes over the course of time.

Evidence of evolution

Morphological evidence

Fossils are important for estimating when various lineages developed. As fossilization is an uncommon occurrence, usually requiring hard parts (like bone) and death near a site where sediments are being deposited, the fossil record only provides sparse and intermittent information about the evolution of life. Fossil evidence of organisms without hard body parts, such as shell, bone, and teeth is sparse but exists in the form of ancient microfossils and the fossilization of ancient burrows and a few soft-bodied organisms.

Nevertheless, fossil evidence of prehistoric organisms has been found all over the Earth. The age of fossils can often be deduced from the geologic context in which they are found; and their absolute age can be verified with radiometric dating. Some fossils bear a resemblance to organisms alive today, while others are radically different. Fossils have been used to determine at what time a lineage developed, and transitional fossils can be used to demonstrate continuity between two different lineages. Paleontologists investigate evolution largely through analysis of fossils.

Phylogeny, the study of the ancestry of species, has revealed that structures with similar internal organization may perform divergent functions. Vertebrate limbs are a common example of such homologous structures. A vestigial organ or structure may exist with little or no purpose in one organism, though they have a clear purpose in others. The human wisdom teeth and appendix are common examples.

Genetic sequence evidence

Comparison of the genetic sequence of organisms reveals that phylogenetically close organisms have a higher degree of sequence similarity than organisms that are phylogenetically distant. For example, neutral human DNA sequences are approximately 1.2% divergent (based on substitutions) from those of their nearest genetic relative, the chimpanzee, 1.6% from gorillas [5], and 6.6% from baboons[6]. Sequence comparison is considered a measure robust enough to be used to correct mistakes in the phylogenetic tree in instances where other evidence is scarce.

Further evidence for common descent comes from genetic detritus such as pseudogenes, regions of DNA which are orthologous to a gene in a related organism, but are no longer active and appear to be undergoing a steady process of degeneration[7].

Since metabolic processes do not leave fossils, research into the evolution of the basic cellular processes is also done largely by comparison of existing organisms. Many lineages diverged at different stages of development, so it is theoretically possible to determine when certain metabolic processes appeared by comparing the traits of the descendants of a common ancestor.

Origin of life

Not much is known about the earliest development of life. However, all existing organisms share certain traits, including cellular structure, and genetic code. Most scientists interpret this to mean all existing organisms share a common ancestor, which had already developed the most fundamental cellular processes, but there is no scientific consensus on the relationship of the three domains of life (Archea, Bacteria, Eukaryota) or the origin of life. Attempts to shed light on the earliest history of life generally focus on the behavior of macromolecules, particularly RNA, and the behavior of complex systems.

History of life

Though the origins of life are murky, other milestones in the evolutionary history of life are well-known. The emergence of oxygenic photosynthesis (around 3 billion years ago) and the subsequent emergence of an oxygen-rich, non-reducing atmosphere can be traced through the formation of banded iron deposits, and later red beds of iron oxides. This was a necessary prerequisite for the development of aerobic cellular respiration, believed to have emerged around 2 billion years ago. In the last billion years, simple multicellular plants and animals began to appear in the oceans. Soon after the emergence of the first animals the Cambrian explosion (a period of unrivaled and remarkable, but brief, organismal diversity documented in the fossils found at the Burgess Shale) saw the creation of all the major body plans, or phyla, of modern animals; this event is now believed to have been triggered by the development of Hox genes. About 500 million years ago, plants and fungi colonized the land, and were soon followed by arthropods and other animals, leading to the development of land ecosystems with which we are familiar.

Emergence of novel traits

Mutation

Darwin did not know the source of variations in individual organisms, but observed that it seemed to be by chance. Later work pinned much of this variation onto mutations. Mutations are permanent, transmissible changes to the genetic material (usually DNA or RNA) of a cell, and can be caused by \"copying errors\" in the genetic material during cell division and by exposure to radiation, chemicals, or viruses, or can occur deliberately under cellular control during processes such as meiosis or hypermutation. In multicellular organisms, mutations can be subdivided into germline mutations, which can be passed on to progeny and somatic mutations, which (when accidental) often lead to the malfunction or death of a cell and can cause cancer.

Mutations serve to introduce novel genetic variation, upon which selection may (or may not, see Neutral mutations) act. Neutral mutations do not affect the organism\'s chances of survival in its natural environment and can accumulate over time.

Survival of traits

Mechanisms of inheritance

In Darwin\'s time, scientists did not share broad agreement on how traits were inherited. Today most inherited traits are traced to discrete, persistent entities called genes, encoded in linear molecules called DNA. Though by and large faithfully maintained, DNA is both variable across individuals and subject to a process of change or mutation (described below).

However, other non-DNA based forms of heritable variation exist. The processes that produce these variations leave the genetic information intact and are often reversible. This is called epigenetic inheritance and may include phenomena such as DNA methylation, prions, and structural inheritance. Investigations continue into whether these mechanisms allow for the production of specific beneficial heritable variation in response to environmental signals. If this is shown to be the case, then some instances of evolution would lie outside of the typical Darwinian framework, which avoids any connection between environmental signals and the production of heritable variation.

There are factors that influence the frequency of existing alleles. These factors mean that some characteristics will become more frequent while others diminish or are lost entirely. There are three known processes that affect the survival of a characteristic; or, more specifically, the frequency of an allele:

• Natural selection
  
• Gene flow
  
• Genetic drift
  

Natural selection

Natural selection is survival and reproduction as a result of the environment. Differential mortality is the survival rate of individuals to their reproductive age. Differential fertility is the total genetic contribution to the next generation. The central role of natural selection in evolutionary theory has given rise to a strong connection between that field and the study of ecology.

Natural selection can be subdivided into two categories:

• Ecological selection occurs when organisms which survive and reproduce increase the frequency of their genes in the gene pool over those which do not survive.
  
• Sexual selection occurs when organisms which are more attractive to the opposite sex because of their features reproduce more and thus increase the frequency of those features in the gene pool.

Natural selection also operates on mutations in several different ways:

• Purifying or background selection eliminates deleterious mutations from a population.
  
• Positive selection increases the frequency of a beneficial mutation.
  
• Balancing selection maintains variation within a population through a number of mechanisms, including:
  *Overdominance or heterozygote advantage, where the heterozygote is more fit than either of the homozygous forms (exemplified by human sickle cell anemia conferring resistance to malaria)
  *Frequency-dependent selection, where the rare variants have a higher fitness.
  
• Stabilizing selection favors average characteristics in a population, thus reducing gene variation but retaining the mean.
  
• Directional selection favors one extreme of a characteristic; results in a shift in the mean in the direction of the extreme.
  
• Disruptive selection favors both extremes, and results in a bimodal distribution of gene frequency. The mean may or may not shift.
  

Mutations that are not affected by natural selection are called neutral mutations. Their frequency in the population is governed entirely by genetic drift and gene flow. It is understood that an organism\'s DNA sequence, in the absence of selection, undergoes a steady accumulation of neutral mutations. The probable mutation effect is the proposition that a gene that is not under selection will be destroyed by accumulated mutations. This is an aspect of genome degradation.

• Baldwinian evolution refers to the way human beings, as cultured animals capable of symbolic (extrasomatic) learning, can change their environment, or the environment of any species, in such a way as to result in new selective forces.
  

Gene flow

Gene flow (or gene admixture) is the only mechanism whereby populations can become closer genetically while building larger gene pools. Migration of one population into another area occupied by a second population can result in gene flow. Gene flow operates when geography and culture are not obstacles.

Genetic drift

Genetic drift describes changes in allele frequency from one generation to the next due to sampling variance. The frequency of an allele in the offspring generation will vary according to a probability distribution of the frequency of the allele in the parent generation.

Many aspects of genetic drift depend on the size of the population (generally abbreviated as N). This is especially important in small mating populations, where chance fluctuations from generation to generation can be large. Such fluctuations in allele frequency between successive generations may result in some alleles disappearing from the population. Two separate populations that begin with the same allele frequency might, therefore, \"drift\" by random fluctuation into two divergent populations with different allele sets (for example, alleles that are present in one have been lost in the other).

The relative importance of natural selection and genetic drift in determining the fate of new mutations also depends on the population size and the strength of selection: when N times s (population size times strength of selection) is small, genetic drift predominates. When N times s is large, selection predominates. Thus natural selection is \'more efficient\' in large populations, or equivalently, genetic drift is stronger in small populations. Finally, the time for an allele to become fixed in the population by genetic drift (that is, for all individuals in the population to carry that allele) depends on population size, with smaller populations requiring a shorter time to fixation.

Adaptation

Through the process of natural selection, species become better adapted to their environments. Adaptation is any evolutionary process that increases the fitness of the individual, or sometimes the trait that confers increased fitness, e.g. a stronger prehensile tail or greater visual acuity. Note that adaptation is context-sensitive; a trait that increases fitness in one environment may decrease it in another.

Most biologists believe that adaptation occurs through the accumulation of many mutations of small effect. However, macromutation is an alternative process for adaptation which involves a single, very large scale mutation.

Speciation and extinction

Speciation is the creation of two or more species from one. There are various mechanisms by which this may take place. Allopatric speciation begins when subpopulations of a species become isolated geographically, for example by habitat fragmentation or migration. Sympatric speciation occurs when new species emerge in the same geographic area. Ernst Mayr\'s peripatric speciation is a type of speciation that exists in between the extremes of allopatry and sympatry. Peripatric speciation is a critical underpinning of the theory of punctuated equilibrium.

Extinction is the disappearance of species (i.e. gene pools). The moment of extinction is generally considered to be the death of the last individual of that species. Extinction is not an unusual event in geological time — species are created by speciation, and disappear through extinction.

Evolutionary biology

Evolutionary biology is a subfield of biology concerned with the origin and descent of species, as well as their change over time. Evolutionary biology is a kind of meta field because it includes scientists from many traditional taxonomically oriented disciplines. For example, it generally includes scientists who may have a specialist training in particular organisms such as mammalogy, ornithology, or herpetology but use those organisms as systems to answer general questions in evolution.

Evolutionary biology as an academic discipline in its own right emerged as a result of the modern evolutionary synthesis in the 1930s and 1940s. It was not until the 1970s and 1980s, however, that a significant number of universities had departments that specifically included the term evolutionary biology in their titles.

Evolutionary developmental biology

Evolutionary developmental biology is an emergent subfield of evolutionary biology that looks at genes of related and unrelated organisms. By comparing the explicit nucleotide sequences of DNA/RNA, it is possible to experimentally determine and trace timelines of species development. For example, gene sequences support the conclusion that chimpanzees are the closest primate ancestor to humans, and that arthropods (e.g., insects) and vertebrates (e.g., humans) have a common biological ancestor.

History of evolutionary thought

The idea of biological evolution has existed since ancient times, notably among Hellenists such as Epicurus, but the modern theory was not established until the 18th and 19th centuries, by scientists such as Jean-Baptiste Lamarck and Charles Darwin. While transmutation of species was accepted by a sizeable number of scientists before 1859, it was the publication of Charles Darwin\'s The Origin of Species which provided the first cogent mechanism by which evolutionary change could occur: his theory of natural selection. Darwin was motivated to publish his work on evolution after receiving a letter from Alfred Russel Wallace, in which Wallace revealed his own discovery of natural selection. As such, Wallace is sometimes given shared credit for the theory of evolution.

Darwin\'s theory, though it succeeded in profoundly shaking scientific opinion regarding the development of life, could not explain the source of variation in traits within a species, and Darwin\'s proposal of a hereditary mechanism (pangenesis) was not compelling to most biologists. It was not until the late 19th and early 20th centuries that these mechanisms were established.

When Gregor Mendel\'s work regarding the nature of inheritance in the late 19th century was \"rediscovered\" in 1900, it led to a storm of conflict between Mendelians (Charles Benedict Davenport) and biometricians (Walter Frank Raphael Weldon and Karl Pearson), who insisted that the great majority of traits important to evolution must show continuous variation that was not explainable by Mendelian analysis. Eventually, the two models were reconciled and merged, primarily through the work of the biologist and statistician R.A. Fisher. This combined approach, applying a rigorous statistical model to Mendel\'s theories of inheritance via genes, became known in the 1930s and 1940s as the modern evolutionary synthesis.

In the 1940s, following up on Griffith\'s experiment, Avery, McCleod and McCarty definitively identified deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) as the \"transforming principle\" responsible for transmitting genetic information. In 1953, Francis Crick and James Watson published their famous paper on the structure of DNA, based on the research of Rosalind Franklin and Maurice Wilkins. These developments ignited the era of molecular biology and transformed the understanding of evolution into a molecular process: the mutation of segments of DNA (see molecular evolution).

George C. Williams\' 1966 Adaptation and natural selection: A Critique of some Current Evolutionary Thought marked a departure from the idea of group selection towards the modern notion of the gene as the unit of selection. In the mid-1970s, Motoo Kimura formulated the neutral theory of molecular evolution, firmly establishing the importance of genetic drift as a major mechanism of evolution.

Debates have continued within the field. One of the most prominent public debates was over the theory of punctuated equilibrium, proposed in 1972 by paleontologists Niles Eldredge and Stephen Jay Gould to explain the paucity of transitional forms between phyla in the fossil record.

References

• Darwin, Charles November 24, 1859. On the Origin of Species by means of Natural Selection or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life. London: John Murray, Albemarle Street. 502 pages. Reprinted: Gramercy (May 22, 1995). ISBN 0517123207
  
• Zimmer, Carl. Evolution: The Triumph of an Idea. Perennial (October 1, 2002). ISBN 0060958502
  
• Larson, Edward J. Evolution: The Remarkable History of a Scientific Theory (Modern Library Chronicles). Modern Library (May 4, 2004). ISBN 0679642889
  
• Mayr, Ernst. What Evolution Is. Basic Books (October, 2002). ISBN 0465044263
  
• Gigerenzer, Gerd, et al., The empire of chance: how probability changed science and everyday life (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1989).
  
• # Williams, G.C. (1966). Adaptation and Natural Selection: A Critique of some Current Evolutionary Thought. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.
  
• # Sean B. Carroll, 2005, Endless Forms Most Beautiful: The New Science of Evo Devo and the Making of the Animal Kingdom, W. W. Norton & Company. ISBN 0393060160
  

[/quote]

Let\'s uh...let\'s save Jesus for my next post.

Instead of quoting, couldn\'t you just give us a link? Much easier, less spacious, and you could\'ve included Jesus as well.

From my experience, people hardly ever click the links. Thusly the information is far more effective, if less pretty, should it be placed here.

That and it gives me an excuse to have a large post.

Well aren\'t we proud of your large post. Can you sum it up now? I\'m a very busy man and all, you must understand.:lol: The only thing in evolution I can see true is that we never look like our ancestor, our looks change over time, therefor creating \'a new species\' or some crap like that, but anyway, I don\'t think that we came from apes or fish or anything outrageous like that. I don\'t have gills, nor do I have a big nose with big fingers to pick it with.:D So, evolution may only be slightly true.

PS: I really am not going to read all that......:P

Let me just go on the record that all my posts have been vauge and cut short because it\'s hard to type on here and take notes in class. Long live multitasking!

But yeah...Darwin\'s theory is a bit out dated and not totaly accurate. A lot of what he thought has been disproven.

Everything that it a \'proven fact\', can also be apposed by \'proven facts\'...



Your like a priest, Mega... They just can\'t shut their mouths when the get open...

(And now we do Jesus. This is the last post, I swear.)

Jesus, or Jesus of Nazareth, also known as Jesus Christ, is Christianity\'s central figure, both as Messiah and, for most Christians, as God incarnate. In Islam he is regarded as one of God\'s most important prophets.

The primary sources about Jesus are the four canonical Gospel accounts, which depict him as a Galilean Jewish preacher and healer often at odds with Jewish authorities — who was crucified in Jerusalem during the rule of the Roman prefect Pontius Pilate. In addition to the four Gospels, a dozen or so non-canonical texts also exist, among which the Gospel of Thomas is believed by some textual critics to predate the Gospels of the traditional canon.

Most Christians believe in one God that is a trinity composed of three persons, that Jesus is the second person of that trinity, and also that he is the Messiah (Greek: Christos) prophesied in the Old Testament (or Hebrew Bible). Most Christians also believe that Jesus died on the cross and rose from the dead, and that through him they can be saved. Muslims believe that he was one of God\'s most important prophets and also the Messiah, though they attach a different meaning to this than Christians, as they do not share the Christian belief in the divinity of Jesus.

The canonical Gospel accounts focus primarily on Jesus\' last one to three years, especially the last week before his crucifixion, which, based upon mention of Pilate, would have been sometime during the years AD/CE 26 to AD/CE 36. The earlier dating agrees with Tertullian (died 230) who, in Adversus Marcionem xv, expresses a Roman tradition that placed the crucifixion in the twelfth year of Tiberius Caesar.

A faulty 6th-century attempt to calculate the year of his birth (which, based upon a story in the Gospel of Matthew involving Herod the Great, is now estimated from 8 BC/BCE to 4 BC/BCE) became the basis for the Anno Domini system of reckoning years (and also the chronologically equivalent Common Era system).

The historicity, teachings and nature of Jesus are subject to debate. The earliest New Testament texts which refer to him are Paul\'s letters, which are usually dated from the mid-1st century. Paul saw Jesus only in visions, but he claimed they were divine revelations and hence authoritative. Many modern scholars hold that the works describing Jesus (primarily the Gospel accounts) were initially communicated by oral tradition and were committed to writing as soon as several decades after the Crucifixion. Some believe that these texts may not have retained the same level of historical accuracy as direct firsthand accounts written during or soon after the life of Jesus. However, some scholars argue for a high degree of historical reliability of the key New Testament events, and some also for early dates of the entire New Testament. Although the exact level of the historical accuracy contained in these texts is debated, the vast majority of scholars agree that Jesus did exist.

Historicity

The four canonical Gospel accounts are the primary sources about Jesus received by the Church and the Christian faith. Some critics speculate that the Synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark and Luke) used as sources a Q document, Logia, M-Source, and Oral tradition, and that the Gospel of John used a Signs Gospel though none of these source documents are currently extant. However, noted scholars reject the arguments of critics based on various historical and textual issues (see: Augustinian hypothesis). Also, considered as important by a handful of scholars, though arguably not as authoritative sources for the Christian faith, are several apocryphal writings such as the Gospel of the Hebrews, the Gospel of Mary, the Infancy Gospels, the Gospel of Peter, the Unknown Berlin Gospel, the Naassene Fragment, the Secret Gospel of Mark, the Egerton Gospel, the Oxyrhynchus Gospels, the Fayyum Fragment and some others compiled in The Complete Gospels.

The dating of the Gospel of Thomas is believed by some scholars to possibly predate the canonical Gospels, and therefore this non-canonical Gospel may not rightly be called apocryphal, or be said to have any greater or lesser level of scholarly certainty existing about its authenticity, than any of the four canonical Gospels. The Gospel of Thomas is included with the canonicals in the Five Gospels of the Jesus Seminar. However, other scholars date the Gospel of Thomas as late as 150, see gnostic influences in it, cite the lack of any definitive support that any church fathers quoted it, and believe it suffers from a paucity of manuscripts. In addition, some scholars see the Gospel of Thomas as being very unlike the other Gospels and cite its lack of a resurrection of Jesus, despite the fact that the gospel of Mark originally may have ended without a resurrection as well.

The debates that went on in the 4th century regarding which works should and should not be included in the canon were not known to include modern techniques of historical analysis, and generally tended to center more upon theology than upon historicity. However, noted scholars F.F. Bruce, Bruce Metzger and others argue that many considerations (including historical considerations) were taken into consideration regarding New Testament canon. It may be surmised that the early church leaders took for granted that historicity was not an issue to be debated, any more than debating the historicity of the Articles of Confederation or the Constitution would be major issues today. In addition, Bible scholar Bruce Metzger wrote regarding the Canon formation, \"Although the fringes of the emerging canon remained unsettled for generations, a high degree of unanimity concerning the greater part of the New Testament was attained among the very diverse and scattered congregations of believers not only throughout the Mediterranean world, but also over an area extending from Britain to Mesopotamia.\"

Several historians have observed that historical documentation is often partial and second hand, and must be interpreted with care. Thus, many have suggested that one treat the existence of Jesus and the accuracy of the New Testament as distinct questions. For example, F.F. Bruce, Rylands professor of biblical criticism and exegesis at the University of Manchester, has said: \"Some writers may toy with the fancy of a \"Christ-myth\", but they do not do so on the ground of historical evidence. The historicity of Christ is as axiomatic for an unbiased historian as the historicity of Julius Caesar.\" In The Historical Figure of Jesus, E.P. Sanders explains that historians often have to contend with documentation of differing quantity and quality. In many cases (Sanders provides the examples of Thomas Jefferson and Winston Churchill) historians are fortunate to have access to a good deal of documentation, although much of it has to be interpreted critically. In some cases, and Sanders presents Alexander the Great as paradigmatic, the available sources tell us much about his deeds, but nothing about his thoughts. Sanders considers the quest for the \"historical Jesus\" to be much closer to that of Alexander than to Jefferson or Churchill. Nevertheless, he concludes, \"the sources for Jesus are better, however, than those that deal with Alexander\" and \"the superiority of evidence for Jesus is seen when we ask what he thought\" (1993:3). Paul Barnett has also pointed out that \"scholars of ancient history have always recognized the \"subjectivity\" factor in their available sources\" and that \"they have so few sources available compared to their modern counterparts that they will gladly seize whatever scraps of information that are at hand\". He notes that modern history and ancient history are two separate disciplines, with differing methods of analysis and interpretation.

Consequently, scholars like Sanders, Geza Vermes, Paula Fredriksen, John Dominic Crossan and John Meier, argue that although many readers are accustomed to thinking of Jesus solely as a theological figure, whose existence is a matter of theological debate, the source documents (see Two-Source Hypothesis, and Gospel of Mark), on which several modern source hypotheses argue the four canonical Gospel accounts are based, were written within living memory of Jesus\' lifetime and therefore provide a basis for the study of the \"historical\" Jesus. They draw on the canonical Gospel accounts, but also on other historical sources and archaeological evidence to reconstruct as best as possible the life of Jesus in his historical and cultural context. Some scholars reject supernatural elements in the Gospels and other early texts about Jesus.

Even among those who do believe in his existence there are divisions over the extent of historicity of the canonical Gospel accounts. Some say that the Gospel accounts are neither objective nor accurate, since they were written or compiled by his followers. Those who have a naturalistic view of history do not believe in divine intervention or miracles such as the resurrection of Jesus mentioned by the Gospels.

There are many similarities between stories about Jesus and myths of Pagan Godmen such as Mithras, Apollo, Attis, Horus, and Osiris Dionysus, leading to conjectures that the pagan myths were adopted by some authors of early accounts of Jesus. Devout Christian thinkers, such as C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien, believed that such myths were created by ancient pagans with vague and imprecise knowledge of Gospel truth. However, not all agree. For example, the contributors to the Proceedings of the First International Congress of Mithraic Studies maintained that the only area which has any historical detail with regard to the influence of Mithraism on Christianity was in the area of art.

It is commonly thought that Jesus preached for a period of three years, yet this is never mentioned explicitly in any of the Gospels. However, many interpretations of the Synoptic Gospels suggest only one year; and to achieve consistency with the Gospel of John, one theory suggests that the last Gospel describes a timeline which depicts a ministry time period of approximately one year.

Religious perspectives

Christianity

The vast majority of Christian denominations (generally including Catholicism, Orthodox Christianity, and most forms of Protestantism, but not Restorationism) derive their beliefs from the agreement reached at the First Council of Nicaea in 325, known as the Nicene Creed, in the form of the Creed of Constantinople (381). In addition to the belief in \"one God, the Father, Almighty, maker of heaven and earth ...\"and in \"the Holy Spirit, the Lord and life-giver, Who proceeds from the Father ...\", this Creed confesses the belief in \"one Lord Jesus Christ, the only begotten Son of God, begotten from the Father before all ages, light from light, true God from true God, begotten not made, of one substance with the Father, through Whom all things came into existence, Who because of us men and because of our salvation came down from the heavens, and was incarnate from the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary and became man, and was crucified for us under Pontius Pilate and suffered and was buried, and rose again on the third day according to the Scriptures and ascended to heaven, and sits on the right hand of the Father, and will come again with glory to judge living and dead, of Whose kingdom there will be no end\" (for both the Greek text and the above quoted English translation, cf. J. Stevenson, Creeds, Councils and Controversies, (London 1989); note that the above quotation follows Stevenson in italicizing those phrases that do not occur in the Creed of Nicaea).

Protestant Christians generally believe that faith in Jesus is the only way to receive salvation and to enter into heaven, and that salvation is a gift given by the grace of God. Although most members of the various Christian denominations believe that faith in Jesus is necessary (based upon John 3:16), good works are certainly expected. Jesus says (John 13:15) that his life was given as an example or role model for followers. The Lutheran position on justification is nearly identical. In contrast, Roman Catholics believe that even non-Christians can receive the grace needed for salvation if they live a just life.

As reflected in the different Christian denominations, Christianity has undergone several schisms in its understanding of Jesus. The vast majority of Christians believe that Jesus is God according to the nature, as the only begotten Son of God the Second Person of the Divine Trinity, who was Incarnate from the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary, that is to say, who took on a human body and became also man according to the nature, and who came to earth to save mankind from sin and death through the shedding of his own blood in sacrifice and his rising from the dead on the third day and who later ascended into Heaven.

Other groups such as the Christadelphians believe that the Bible clearly teaches that Jesus is the Son of God, but not God the Son. Some groups identifying themselves as Christian, such as Jehovah\'s Witnesses, and Christian Scientists, believe Jesus was divinely inspired but not God incarnate. Others, such as Mormons (members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints), believe in a Trinity, but maintain that God the Father begot Jesus as God the Son, and that Jesus created the Earth under the direction of God the Father. Mormons also have additional sacred texts—the Book of Mormon, Doctrine and Covenants, and Pearl of Great Price—that testify that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God. Chronologically, their book of scripture continues on past the period of the New Testament; and thus provides additional Christian history. Swedenborgians (members of the New Church) believe that Jesus is God incarnate, but not a separate person from the Father; the Father is in the Son like the soul in the body.

There are differing views within Christian groups as to whether or not Jesus ever claimed divinity. The majority of lay Christians, theologians and clergy hold that the Bible shows Jesus both as divine, and claiming divinity. Many Bible Students, however, believe that Jesus never claimed divinity, and stated plainly that he was not equal with God.

The Docetics, an early Christian sect, believed (as Muslims do today) that Jesus never died and the Crucifixion was a type of illusion done by God.

The Gnostics believed in the secret wisdom that they say Paul received during his road to Damascus experience (Rom 16:25; 1 Cor 2:7; 2 Cor 12:2–4; Acts 9).

The Marcionites believed Paul and Jesus rejected the Law of Moses and revealed in Jesus Christ a Supreme God, greater than the creator god of the Old Testament.

The Montanists believed in the Paraclete promised in John 14:16.

The Ebionites believed in Jesus as a great prophet who had commanded the end of animal sacrifices and the end of the eating of animal flesh. Other than that, they were observant Jews and did not believe in Jesus as God. They followed Jacob (\"James\" in the English New Testament), the brother of Jesus, and insisted that Paul\'s teachings were without authority and totally alien to what Jesus taught.

The Arians believed that the Father was the only true God based on John 17:3. On the other hand, some semi-Arians believed that the Father and the Son are two beings, both called God. They do not believe that the Holy Spirit is God (as it is not, in their view, a distinct person, but rather an impersonal force emanating from God)—modern groups that hold this semi-Arian view sometimes refer to themselves as Binitarian.

Unitarians

Unitarianism developed out of theological arguments about whether or not Jesus is God. Trinitarians coined the term \"unitarian\" to describe the arguments of those who believed God, as one being, is a single person and not three. This historical argument gave birth to the Unitarian denomination and later the Unitarian Universalist Association. Today few Unitarian Universalists define their religion solely based on this theological characterization. Most Universalists believe in universal reconciliation—that eventually everyone will be saved.

Some Unitarians consider themselves Christian because they are followers of the teachings of Jesus, while others do not self-identify as Christian. Unitarian Universalists who consider themselves Christian can be found throughout the denomination and in such groups as the Unitarian Universalist Christian Fellowship, certain congregations of the Unitarian Universalist Association, and the American Unitarian Conference.

Binitarians

A few modern groups deny the personality of the Holy Spirit, but believe that Jesus is also God, although a being separate from the Father; and this view is described as Binitarianism. They profess to believe that Jesus existed as God the Word and that He became flesh and dwelt among us (John 1). They also believe that Jesus ceased to be God in order to become a man (citing Philippians 2:7), but returned to being God (citing Matthew 28:18), arguing that the first time He was called God was in John 20:28, after his resurrection.

Although self-described binitarians are a minority, they believe that the view has been held by others throughout history . They assume of course, that the early apostles were binitarian, along with other early leaders such as Polycarp and Melito of Sardis. Mainstream Christianity maintains that the binitarian view is heresy.

Islam

Mainstream Muslims believe that:

• Jesus (Isa in the Qur\'an) was one of God\'s highest ranked and most beloved prophets. He was sent specifically to guide the Children of Israel.
  
• He was neither God nor the son of God, but rather a human prophet, one of many prophets sent over history to guide mankind. Jesus\' message to mankind was originally the same as all of the other prophets, from Adam to Muhammad, but has been distorted by those who claim to be its adherents.
  
• Jesus was born miraculously without a human biological father by the will of God. His mother, Mary (\"Maryam\" in Arabic), is among the most saintly, pious, chaste, and virtuous women ever.
  
• Jesus was able to perform miracles, but only by the will of God. Besides his miraculous birth, his first miracle was when, although only a few days old, Jesus spoke and defended his mother against accusations of adultery. The Qur\'an mentions, among other miracles, that he raised the dead, restored sight to the blind, and cured lepers.
  
• Jesus renounced all worldly possessions and lived a life of strict nonviolence, abstaining from eating animal flesh and from drinking alcohol.
  
• Jesus received a Gospel from God, called (in Arabic) the \"Injeel\", and corresponding to the New Testament. However, Muslims hold that the New Testament we have today has been changed and does not accurately represent the original. Some Muslims accept the Gospel of Barnabas as the most accurate testament of Jesus. Almost all non-Muslim scholars regard this text as a medieval production, and thus not an authentic text.
  
• Jesus was neither killed nor crucified; but God made it appear so to his enemies. Some Muslim scholars (notably Ahmad Deedat) maintain that Jesus was indeed put up on the cross, but did not die on it, but was revived and then ascended bodily to heaven, while others say that it was actually Judas who was mistakenly crucified by the Romans.
  
• Jesus is alive in heaven and will return to the world in the flesh with Imam Mahdi to defeat the dajjal (the anti-Christ in Islamic belief), once the world has become filled with injustice.
  

Ahmadiyya Movement

Mirza Ghulam Ahmad (1835–1908), the founder of the Ahmadiyya Movement, wrote in his book Jesus in India (April 1896) that Jesus survived the crucifixion and later travelled to India, where he lived as a prophet (and died) under the name of Yuz Asaf. Ahmad argued that when Jesus was taken down from the cross, he had lapsed into a state similar to Jonah\'s state of \"swoon\" in the belly of a fish [Matthew 12:40] (see swoon hypothesis). A medicine known as Marham-e-Issa (Ointment of Jesus) was applied to his wounds and he revived. Drawing from Biblical, Quranic and Buddhist scriptures, Ahmad wrote that Jesus appeared to Mary, his apostles and others with the same (not resurrected) human body, evidenced by his human wounds and his subsequent clandestine rendezvous over about forty days in the Jerusalem surroundings. The book uses historical documents to suggest Jesus\' travel to Nasibain (Nisbis), Afghanistan and then to Kashmir, India in search of some of the lost tribes of Israel, who had settled in the east some 700 years prior.

Ahmadiyya Muslims also believe that references to the Second Coming of Jesus in religious scriptures are allegorical and refer to the arrival of Mirza Ghulam Ahmad.

Hinduism

Most people that follow Hinduism believe that Jesus existed, and that he was an incarnation of god on earth, of the same sort as Krishna, Rama, Buddha and many others. Hinduism as a whole is an open religion and does not identify itself as the only true religion. Some Hindus believe that Jesus spent the so-called \"lost years\" between his birth and his baptism (which are not described in the canonical Gospels) in India living with the gurus and saints, and learning from them. They claim that this was not mentioned in the Bible because Christians did not want to give the teachings of Hinduism credit, and instead labeled these years as Jesus\' lost years.

The Hare Krishna sect of Hinduism believes that Jesus is the son of Krishna (who they believe is God the Father that Jesus spoke of), and they accept many of his teachings.

On the other hand many Hindus do not believe he was actually god on Earth, instead believing that he was a guru or a yogi.

Judaism

Judaism does not see Jesus as a messiah and also rejects the Muslim belief that Jesus was a prophet. Religious Jews are still awaiting the coming of the Messiah (a notable exception concerns many members of the Chabad Lubavitch sect, who view their last Rebbe as being the Messiah). As for the historical personality of Jesus, Judaism has fewer objections to quotes attributed to him than they do with subsequent confessions by early Christian adherents, Paul in particular. Some Jewish scholars believe that Jesus is mentioned as Yeshu in the Jewish Talmud, although other scholars dispute this. Joseph Klausner, a prominent Israeli scholar, was vigorous in asserting the Judaism of Jesus.

The primary reasons why Jesus is not accepted as the Jewish Messiah are as follows:

• The many Biblical prophecies regarding the Messiah (bringing the Jews back to the Land of Israel and bringing peace on earth, the dead rising, all people knowing God, the Messiah ruling from the throne in Jerusalem, etc.) have not been fulfilled.
  
• According to the New Testament Jesus\' father is God, but according to the Hebrew Bible, the Messiah must descend patrilineally from King David.
  
• According to the New Testament Jesus was killed. Maimonides rules (Laws of Kings 11:4) concerning one who is killed that \"it is certain that he is not the one whom the Torah has promised.\"
  

Other perspectives

Atheists, by definition, have no belief in a divinity—and thus not in any divinity of Jesus. Some doubt he lived, some regard him as an important moral teacher, and some as another historical preacher.

The Bahá\'í Faith considers Jesus to be a manifestation (prophet) of God, while not being God incarnate. Some Buddhists believe Jesus may have been a Bodhisattva, one who gives up his own Nirvana to help others reach theirs. Many in the Surat Shabda Yoga tradition regard Jesus as a Sat Guru.

Mandaeanism regards Jesus as a deceiving prophet of the false Jewish god Adunay, and an opponent of the good prophet John the Baptist (whom they nonetheless believe to have baptized him).

The New Age movement has reinterpreted the life and teaching of Jesus in a large variety of ways (e.g., see A Course in Miracles). He has also been claimed as an Ascended Master by Theosophy and some of its offshoots; related speculations have him studying mysticism in the Himalaya or hermeticism in Egypt in the period between his childhood and his public career.

A Zen Buddhist interpretation of Jesus, based on the Gospel of Thomas, is also possible.

The Multidinarian Doctrine teaches that Jesus is not one of three Persons in God (as taught by Trinitarian Doctrine), but one of a hundred trillion Persons in God.

The discipline of Christology discusses who Jesus was or was not from a philosophical and theological perspective. The Christological argument attempts to prove the existence of God based on the existence of Jesus and his claims about himself as presented in the Gospels.

The question of the divinity of Jesus was discussed and decided on by Ecumenical Councils, starting with the First Council of Nicaea and others of Constantine I\'s attempts at producing unity, enforcement of the resulting decision thus suggesting an air of politicisation to the religious issue. It is not the case that all scholars reject Jesus\' divinity, yet some may choose to describe the social and cultural implications of claiming divinity in the 1st century. As such, scholars are interested in providing an historical context to the beliefs and tenets of Jesus\' apparent Kingdom of God movement. As a consequence, some secular scholars believe he was simply a Jewish apocalyptic teacher and faith healer who was crucified, and was subsequently the inspiration for Christianity.

Birth, death, and resurrection chronology

In Christianity, the most detailed information about Jesus\' birth and death is contained in the Gospel of Matthew and the Gospel of Luke. There is considerable debate about the details of Jesus\' birth even among Christian scholars. Few, if any, scholars claim to know either the year or the date of his birth or of his death.

Based on the accounts in the Gospels of the shepherds\' activities, the time of year depicted for Jesus\' birth could be spring or summer. However, as early as 354, Roman Christians celebrated it following the December solstice in an attempt to replace the Roman pagan festival of Saturnalia. Before then, Jesus\' birth was generally celebrated on January 6 as part of the feast of Theophany, also known as Epiphany, which commemorated not only Jesus\' birth but also his baptism by John in the Jordan and possibly additional events in Jesus\' life.

In the 248th year of the Diocletian Era (based on Diocletian\'s ascension to the Roman throne), Dionysius Exiguus attempted to pinpoint the number of years since Jesus\' birth, arriving at a figure of 753 years after the founding of Rome. Dionysius then set Jesus\' birth as being December 25 1 ACN (for \"Ante Christum Natum\", or \"before the birth of Christ\"), and assigned AD 1 to the following year—thereby establishing the system of numbering years from the birth of Jesus: Anno Domini (which translates as \"in the year of the Lord\"). This system made the then current year 532, and almost two centuries later it won acceptance and became the established calendar in Western civilization due to its championing by the Venerable Bede.

However, based on a lunar eclipse that Josephus reports shortly before the death of Herod the Great, the birth of Christ would have been some time before the year 4 BC/BCE, probably 5 BC/BCE or 6 BC/BCE. This estimate itself relies on the historicity of the story in the Gospel of Matthew involving Herod around the time of Jesus\' birth. Having fewer sources and being even further removed in time from the authors of the New Testament, details surrounding Jesus\' birth are regarded, even by many believers, as less likely to be historical fact, and therefore establishing a reliable birth date is particularly difficult.

As for Jesus\' death, the exact date is also unclear. The Gospel of John depicts the crucifixion just before the Passover festival on Friday 14 Nisan, called the Quartodeciman, whereas the synoptic gospels describe the Last Supper, immediately before Jesus\' arrest, as the Passover meal on Friday 15 Nisan. Further, the Jews followed a lunisolar calendar with phases of the moon as dates, complicating calculations of any exact date in a solar calendar. According to John P. Meier\'s A Marginal Jew, allowing for the time of the procuratorship of Pontius Pilate and the dates of the Passover in those years, his death can be placed most probably on April 7, 30 or April 3, 33 or March 30, 36.

Hyam Maccoby and other scholars have pointed out that several details of the Triumphant Entry into Jerusalem—the waving of palm fronds, the Hosanna cry, the proclamation of a king—are connected with the Festival of Sukkot or Tabernacles, not with Passover. It is possible that the Entry (and subsequent events, including the Crucifixion and Resurrection) in historical reality took place at this time—the month of Tishri in the autumn, not Nisan in the spring. There could have been confusion due to a misunderstanding, or a deliberate change due to doctrinal points.

Life and teachings

According to the texts of Christianity, Jesus was born in Bethlehem to Mary, a virgin, via the Holy Spirit. Joseph, Mary\'s betrothed husband, appears only in stories of Jesus\' childhood; this is generally taken to mean that he was dead by the time of Jesus\' ministry. In the Gospels, Jesus\' birth is attended by visits from shepherds who were told of the birth by angels. Magi (\"Wise Men\") from the East were guided by a star to his location some months later.

Mark 6:3 (and analogous passages in Matthew and Luke) reports that Jesus was \"Mary\'s son and the brother of James, Joseph, Judas and Simon,\" and also states that Jesus had sisters. The 1st-century Jewish historian Josephus and the Christian historian Eusebius (who wrote in the 4th century but quoted much earlier sources now unavailable to us) refer to James the Just as Jesus\' brother (See Desposyni). However, Jerome argued that they were Jesus\' cousins, which the Greek word for \"brother\" used in the Gospels would allow. This was based on the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox tradition that Mary remained a perpetual virgin, thus having no biological children before or after Jesus. Luke\'s Gospel records that Mary was a relative of Elizabeth, mother of John the Baptist (Luke 1:36). The Bible, however, does not exactly reveal how Mary and Elizabeth were related.

Nazareth in Galilee is represented as his childhood home. Only one incident between his infancy and his adult life is mentioned in the canonical Gospels (although New Testament apocrypha go into these details, some quite extensively). At the age of twelve, Jesus was left behind by his parents after a pilgrimage to Jerusalem. On being missed, he was found \"instructing the scholars in the temple\".

Just after he was baptized by John the Baptist he began his public teaching; he is generally considered to have been about thirty years old at that time. Jesus used a variety of methods in his teaching, such as paradox, metaphor and parable. His teaching frequently centered on the Kingdom of God, or Kingdom of Heaven. Some of his most famous teachings are in the Sermon on the Mount, which also contains the Beatitudes. His parables (or stories with a hidden meaning) include the parable of the Good Samaritan, and the Prodigal Son. Jesus had a number of disciples. His closest followers were twelve apostles, headed by Peter. According to the New Testament, Jesus also performed various miracles in the course of his ministry, including healings, exorcisms, and raising Lazarus from the dead.

Jesus frequently put himself in opposition to the Jewish religious leaders including the opposing forces of Sadducees and Pharisees. His teaching castigated the Pharisees primarily for their legalism and hypocrisy, although he also had followers among the religious leaders (see Nicodemus). In his role as a social reformer, and with his followers holding the inflammatory view that he was the Jewish Messiah, Jesus threatened the status quo.

Jesus preachings included the forgiveness of sin, life after death, and resurrection of the body. Jesus also preached the imminent end of the current era (αίών) of history, or even the literal end of the world; in this sense he was an apocalyptic preacher. Some interpretations of the text, particularly amongst Protestants, suggest that Jesus opposed stringent interpretations of Jewish law, supporting the spirit more than the letter.

Jesus as a Leader of Nonviolent Resistance

In Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews, Book 18, chapter 3, paragraph 1, we learn that Pontius Pilate began his administration of Judea by ordering Eagle Standards with images of the emperor set up in Jerusalem (\"whereas our law forbids us the very making of images\"). Thousands of Jewish people descended on Caesarea to ask the standards\' removal. When Pilate refused, the Jews fell prostrate around his house for five days and nights. Pilate threatened them with death, ordering his soldiers to circle around them. They \"laid their necks bare\", and replied that they would rather die than see the Torah violated. Pilate gave in and ordered the standards removed. Josephus does not say who inspired and organized this major act of Nonviolent Resistance, but in the third paragraph, just two paragraphs later, he tells of the Crucifixion of Jesus by Pilate—though he does not say for what crime was he executed, if any. (This section of Josephus contains obvious Christian interpolations in most texts, but the Arabic version seems to be free of these.) It could be plausibly argued that the organizer of the Caesarea resistance was Jesus himself—no alternative candidate presents himself—though it may be that the activity was generated spontaneously from general reports. It is rather implausible that such a major popular action was carried out, and kept within the bounds of nonviolence, without a very charismatic leader to inspire it and lead it. If Jesus did have a hand in this action, the Gospels show no sign of it. This would be part of the general tendency of the Gospel writers to distance Jesus from his own people and to absolve the Romans for his death. Such an action as the Caesarea Protest would have offered a major reason for Pilate to order his Crucifixion. Therefore, Gospel writers would have good reason, from their point of view, to avoid any mention of it. Their silence also reflects their tendency to try to present Jesus as purely a religious leader, without any political activities.

Arrest and trial

Jesus came with his followers to Jerusalem during the Passover festival, and created a disturbance at the Temple by overturning the tables of the moneychangers there. He was subsequently arrested on the orders of the Sanhedrin and the High Priest, Joseph Caiaphas. He was identified to the guards by one of his apostles, Judas Iscariot, who is portrayed as having betrayed Jesus by a kiss.

He was condemned for blasphemy by the Sanhedrin and turned over to the Romans for execution—not for blasphemy, but for sedition against the Empire. According to the canonical gospel accounts (Matt 27:24–26; Mark 15:15; Luke 23:24–25; John 19:16a), Pontius Pilate, bowing to the Jewish religious leaders\' pressure, handed Jesus over (paredōken) (to his Roman soldiers) to be crucified. Some scholars argue that it was an ordinary Roman trial of a rebel, whose Messianic claims made him especially dangerous, but the Gospels consistently paint the sedition charge as a strained treatment of Jesus\' theological position, a tactic used by the Jewish religious leadership as a method to force Pilate\'s hand (see Barabbas). All four Gospel accounts mention that the charge noted on the tablet called the titulus crucis, attached by orders of Pilate atop the cross, included the term \"King of the Jews\", though Pilate is represented as having found nothing inherently seditious in Jesus\' kingdom conception. In art the titulus crucis is often written as INRI, the Latin acronym for \"Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews.\"

Following the crucifixion, Joseph of Arimathea obtained Pilate\'s permission to take down Jesus\' body and lay it into his own new tomb. This was observed by Mary and other women, notably Mary Magdalene.

Resurrection and Ascension

n accordance with the four canonical Gospel accounts Christians believe that Jesus was raised from the dead on the third day after his crucifixion. This article of faith is referred to in Christian terminology as the Resurrection of Jesus Christ; and each year at Easter (on a Sunday) it is commemorated and celebrated by most groups who consider themselves Christians.

No one was a witness to the event of the resurrection. However, the women who had witnessed the entombment and the closure of the tomb with a great stone, found it empty when they arrived on the third day to anoint the body. The Synoptic Gospel accounts further state that an angel was waiting at the tomb to explain to them that Jesus had been resurrected, though the Gospel according to John makes no mention of this encounter. The sight of the same angel had apparently left the guards unconscious (cf. Matt 28:2–4) that according to Matthew 27:62–66 the high priests and Pharisees, with Pilate\'s permission, had posted in front of the tomb to prevent the body from being stolen by Jesus\' disciples. Mark 16:9 says that Mary Magdalene was the first to whom Jesus appeared very early that morning. John 20:11–18 states that when Mary looked into the tomb, two angels asked her why she was crying; and as she turned round she initially failed to recognize Jesus—even by his voice—until he called her by her name. The Gospel accounts and the Acts of the Apostles tell of several appearances of Jesus to various people in various places over a period of forty days before he \"ascended into heaven\". Just hours after his resurrection he appeared to two travelers on the road to Emmaus. To his assembled disciples he showed himself on the evening after his resurrection, when Thomas was however absent, though he was present when Jesus repeated his visit to them a week later. Thereafter he went to Galilee and showed himself to several of his disciples by the lake and on the mountain; and they were present when he returned to Bethany and was lifted up and a cloud concealed him from their sight.

The resurrection of Jesus is almost universally denied by those who do not follow the Christian religion. Most Christians—even those who do not hold to the literal truth of everything in the canonical Gospel accounts—accept the New Testament presentation of the Resurrection as a historical account of an actual event central to their faith. Therefore, belief in the resurrection is one of the most distinctive elements of Christian faith; and defending the historicity of the resurrection is usually a central issue of Christian apologetics. However, some liberal Christians do not accept that Jesus was raised bodily from the dead, or that he still lives bodily (e.g., John Shelby Spong).

Preparation of apostles

According to most Christian interpretations of the Bible, the theme of Jesus\' preaching was that of apocalyptic repentance. During his public ministry Jesus extensively trained twelve Apostles to continue after his departure his leadership of the many who had begun to follow him mainly in the towns and villages throughout Galilee, Samaria, and the Decapolis. Most Christians who hold that Jesus\' miracles were literally true, not allegory, think that the Apostles gained the power to perform healing for both Jews and Gentiles alike after they had been empowered by the Holy Spirit of Truth (to pneuma tēs alētheias, John 14:17, 26; Luke 24:49, Acts 1:8, 2:4) that he had promised the Father would send them after his departure—a promise that according to Acts 2:4 was fulfilled at Pentecost, poignantly the Jewish feast that, in addition to other Scriptural events, commemorates also the giving of the Law to Moses.

Jesus is derived from the Koine Greek Ιησους (Iēsoûs)via Latin. The earliest uses of Iēsoûs are found in the writings of Philo of Alexandria, Josephus, and the Septuagint, as a transliteration of the Hebrew name Yehoshua (יהושע--known in English as Joshua when transliterated directly from Hebrew), and also Yeshua (ישוע). Jesus\' original name is not reported by contemporary or near-contemporary sources, but modern scholars have suggested that Jesus\' name was the Aramaic ישׁוע / Yēšûaʿ (as in the Syriac New Testament) a shortened form of Yehoshua used in Ezra, Nehemiah and Chronicles), which was a fairly common name at the time. Josephus, a first-century Jewish historian, mentions no fewer than nineteen different people with this name, about half of them contemporaries of Jesus of Nazareth. Other Aramaic forms of the name include Yeshu`, Ishu`, and Eshu His patronymic would have been, bar Yosef, for \"son of Joseph\".

Some scholars speculate that Jesus was also known as \"Bar Abba\" (\"Son of the Father\") because many times in the Gospels he addressed God as \"Father\". The Aramaic word for \"father\" (Abba) survives still untranslated in Mark 14:36. Such speculations are largely in connection with further theories concerning Barabbas.

The Arabic form of the name used by Christians, following Syriac, isYasu` . Muslims, following Qur\'anic usage, refer to him by the name `Isa (possibly cognate with the Hebrew name Esau).

Christ is not a name but a title, which comes from the Greek Χριστός (Christos) via Latin, meaning anointed with chrism. The Greek form is a liberal translation of Messiah from Hebrew mashiach (משיח) or Aramaic m\'shikha (משיחא), a word which occurs often in the Hebrew Bible and typically refers to the \"high priest\" or \"king\". The word mashiach in Hebrew means anointed (a cognate in English is \"massage,\" from the Arabic for \"vigorous rubbing with aromatic oils\") , because the Israelite kings were anointed with oil. The title does not imply, either in Greek or in Hebrew, a divine nature for the possessor of it. In fact, it would seem prima facie that an inherently divine being would not be in need of being anointed. The title Christ is also sometimes identified with the Greek chrestos, meaning \"good\", although the words are unrelated in terms of etymology, and Chrestus was often used as a pet name for slaves.

The Gospels record Jesus referring to himself both as Son of Man and as Son of God, but not as God the Son. However, some scholars have argued that Son of Man was an expression that functioned as an indirect first person pronoun, and that Son of God was an expression that signified \"a righteous person\". Evidence for these positions is provided by similar use by persons other than Jesus at a similar time to the writing of the Gospels, such as Jewish priests and judges.

In the Gospels, Jesus has many other titles, including Prophet (a title that he applied to himself, unlike others), Lord, King of the Jews, and Rabboni. Together, the majority of Christians understand these titles as attesting to Jesus\' divinity. Some historians argue that when used in other Hebrew and Aramaic texts of the time, these titles have other meanings, and therefore may have other meanings when used in the Gospels as well.

The title Jesus the Nazarene may be a reference to a place of origin called Nazareth, or to a Jewish sect called the Nazarenes. It is often translated Jesus of Nazareth to support the former hypothesis.

Raymond E. Brown in Theological Studies #26 (1965) pp. 545–73, Does the NT call Jesus God? wrote that Mk 10:18, Lk18:19, Mt 19:17, Mk 15:34, Mt 27:46, Jn 20:17, Eph 1:17, 2 Cor 1:3, 1 Pt 1:3, Jn 17:3, 1 Cor 8:6, Eph 4:4–6, 1 Cor 12:4–6, 2 Cor 13:14, 1 Tm 2:5, Jn 14:28, Mk 13:32, Ph 2:5–10, 1 Cor 15:24–28 are \"texts that seem to imply that the title God was not used for Jesus\" and are \"negative evidence which is often somewhat neglected in Catholic treatments of the subject.\" Also: \"Jesus is never called God in the Synoptic Gospels, and a passage like Mk 10:18 would seem to preclude the possibility that Jesus used the title of himself. Even the fourth Gospel never portrays Jesus as saying specifically that he is God. The sermons which Acts attributes to the beginning of the Christian mission do not speak of Jesus as God. Thus, there is no reason to think that Jesus was called God in the earliest layers of New Testament tradition. This negative conclusion is substantiated by the fact that Paul does not use the title in any epistle written before 58.\" In his An Introduction to New Testament Christology, Appendix III, p.189, he wrote: \"In three reasonably clear instances in the NT [Heb 1:8–9; Jn 1:1, Jn 20:28] and in five instances that have probability, Jesus is called God. The use of God for Jesus that is attested in the early 2nd-century [ Pliny the Younger Letter 10.96] was a continuation of a usage that had begun in NT times. There is no reason to be surprised at this. Jesus is Lord was evidently a popular confessional formula in NT times, and in this formula Christians gave Jesus the title kyrios [Greek for Lord] which was the Septuagint translation for YHWH. If Jesus could be given this title, why could he not be called God (theos) which the Septuagint often used to translate Elohim? The two Hebrew terms had become relatively interchangeable, and indeed YHWH was the more sacred term.\"

Cultural and historical background

The world in which Jesus lived was volatile, marked by cultural and political dilemmas. Culturally, Jews had to grapple with the values and philosophy of Hellenism, and the imperialism of Rome, together with the paradox that their Torah applied only to them, but revealed universal truths. This situation led to new interpretations of the Torah, influenced by Hellenic thought and in response to Gentile interest in Judaism.

All of the land of Israel belonged to the Roman Empire at the time of Jesus\' birth. It was directly ruled by the Idumaean Herod the Great who was appointed King of the Jews in Rome in 39 BC/BCE by Mark Antony and Octavian. In AD/CE 6, Octavian, renamed Augustus in 26 BC and Roman emperor since 23 BC, deposed Herod\'s son Herod Archelaus. He combined Judea, Samaria, and Idumea into Iudaea Province which was placed under direct Roman administration and supervision by a Roman prefect who appointed a Jewish High Priest for Herod\'s Temple in Jerusalem. This situation existed, more or less, till 64 and the start of the Great Jewish Revolt. Galilee, where Jesus grew up according to the Gospels, remained under the jurisdiction of another of Herod\'s sons, Herod Antipas, Tetrarch of Galilee and Perea, from 4 BC/BCE to AD/CE 39.

At this time Jesus\' childhood hometown of Nazareth (Hebrew, Natserath) was, as revealed by archaeology, a tiny hamlet of a few hundred inhabitants. It had no synagogue, nor any public buildings. No gold, silver or imported goods have been found in it by archaeological excavation.

According to Josephus, within 1st-century Judaism there were several sects, primarily the Sadducees, closely connected with the priesthood and the Temple, and the Pharisees, who were teachers and leaders of the synagogues. They resented Roman occupation, but, according to historian Shaye Cohen (1988), were in Jesus\' time relatively apolitical. In addition, isolated in small communities from these main groups, by choice, some even taking to remote desert caves in anticipation of the end times, lived the Essenes, whose theology and philosophy are thought, by some scholars, to have influenced Jesus and/or John the Baptist.

Many Jews hoped that the Romans would be replaced by a Jewish king (or Messiah) of the line of King David—in their view the last legitimate Jewish regime. Most people at that time believed that their history was governed by God, meaning that even the conquest of Judea by the Romans was a divine act. Therefore the Romans would be replaced by a Jewish king only through divine intervention. Some, like John the Baptist in the first half of the century, and Yehoshua ben Ananias in the second half, claimed that a messianic age was at hand. Josephus\' Jewish Antiquities book 18 states there was a \"fourth sect\", in addition to Sadducees, Pharisees and Essenes, which scholars associate with those he called Zealots. They were founded by Judas of Galilee and Zadok the Pharisee in the year 6 against Quirinius\' tax reform and \"agree in all other things with the Pharisaic notions; but they have an inviolable attachment to liberty, and say that God is to be their only Ruler and Lord.\" (18.1.6) They believed that the kingdom should be restored immediately, even through violent human action, and advocated direct action against the Romans. Roman reaction to the Zealots eventually led to the destruction of Herod\'s Temple by Vespasian in August of AD/CE 70 , and the subsequent decline of the Zealots, Sadducees and Essenes.

Some scholars have asserted that, despite the depictions of him as antagonistic towards the Pharisees, Jesus was a member of that group. [14] See also Pharisees and Christianity

Jesus\' language was most probably Aramaic; see Aramaic of Jesus. He may also have spoken other languages of the time, such as the Jewish liturgical language Hebrew, and the administrative language, Greek.

Relics

There are many items that are purported to be authentic relics of the Gospel account. The most famous alleged relics of Jesus are the Shroud of Turin, which is claimed to be the burial shroud used to wrap his body, the Sudarium of Oviedo, which is claimed to be the cloth which was used to cover his face, and the Holy Grail which is said to have been used to collect his blood during his crucifixion and possibly used at the Last Supper. Many modern Christians, however, do not accept any of these as true relics. Indeed, this skepticism has been around for centuries, with Erasmus joking that so much wood formed parts of the True Cross, that Jesus must have been crucified on a whole forest.

Artistic portrayals

Jesus has been portrayed in countless paintings and sculptures throughout the Middle Ages, Renaissance, and modern times. Often he is portrayed as looking like a male from the region of the artist creating the portrait. According to historians, forensic scientists, and genetics experts, he was most likely a bronze-skinned man—resembling a modern-day man of Middle Eastern descent.

Jesus has been featured in many films and media forms, sometimes seriously, and other times satirically. The British musical stage play Jerry Springer - The Opera is a notable recent example of the latter. Many of these portrayals have attracted controversy, either when they were intended to be based on genuine Biblical accounts (such as Mel Gibson\'s 2004 film The Passion of the Christ and Pier Pasolini\'s The Gospel According to St. Matthew) or based on alternative interpretations (such as Martin Scorsese\'s The Last Temptation of Christ). Other portrayals have attracted less controversy, such as the television miniseries Jesus of Nazareth by Franco Zeffirelli. Another theme is bringing Jesus\' story into the present day (such as in Jesus of Montreal) or imagining his Second Coming (in The Seventh Sign, for example). In many films Jesus himself is a minor character, used to develop the overall themes or to provide context. For example, in Ben-Hur and The Life of Brian Jesus only appears in a few scenes.

In music, many songs refer to Jesus and Jesus provides the theme for many classical works throughout musical history.

In literature, we find Yeshua, the historical original of Jesus, as a character in the fantasy novel The Master and Margarita, by the 20th century Russian writer Mikhail Bulgakov and in the science fiction short novel Riverworld by the 20th-century American writer Philip Jose Farmer. The portrayal in these two works is so similar that Farmer\'s narrative can easily be read as a sequel to Bulgakov\'s. A mystical version of Jesus as the Eternal Holy Child can be read in the story The Selfish Giant by Oscar Wilde. Also the Portuguese Nobel Prize winner José Saramago wrote his novel The Gospel According to Jesus Christ (ISBN 0151367000) based on his atheist view of Jesus and the Gospels.

Sources and further reading

• The New Testament of the Bible, especially the Gospels.
  
• The Greek New Testament, Aland, United Bible Societies
  
• A Textual Commentary on the Greek NT, Metzger
  
• Teach Yourself NT Greek, Hudson, ISBN 0844237892
  
• The Apostolic Fathers, Lightfoot, Harmer, Holmes
  
• Akers, Keith, \"The Lost Religion of Jesus,\" ISBN 1930051263
  
• Akers, Keith, \"The Lost Religion of Jesus,\" ISBN 1930051263
  
• Albright, William F. Yahweh and the Gods of Canaan: An Historical Analysis of Two Contrasting Faiths, ISBN 0931464013
  
• Badenas, Robert. Christ the End of the Law, Romans 10.4 in Pauline Perspective, ISBN 0905774930
  
• Blomberg, Craig L. The Historical Reliablility of the Gospels, ISBN 0877849927
  
• Brown, Raymond. Does the NT call Jesus God?, Theological Studies #26, 1965
  
• Browne, Sir Thomas. Pseudodoxia Epidemica, 6th edition, 1672, V:vi.
  
• Cohen, Shaye J.D. 1988 From the Maccabees to the Mishnah ISBN 0-664-25017-3
  
• Craig, William Lane. The Son Rises: The Historical Evidence for the Resurrection of Jesus ISBN 1579104649
  
• Craig, William Lane. Will the Real Jesus Please Stand Up?: A Debate Between William Lane Craig and John Dominic Crossan ISBN 0801021758
  
• Crossan, John Dominic. Who Killed Jesus?: Exposing the Roots of Anti-Semitism in the Gospel Story of the Death of Jesus
  
• # Davenport, Guy and Urrutia, Benjamin. The Logia of Yeshua: The Sayings of Jesus, ISBN 1887178708
  
• Doherty, Earl. The Jesus Puzzle. Did Christianity Begin with a Mythical Christ?: Challenging the Existence of an Historical Jesus, ISBN 0968601405
  
• Dunn, James D.G. Jesus, Paul and the Law, ISBN 0664250955
  
• Ehrman, Bart. Jesus: apocalyptic prophet of the new millennium, ISBN 019512474X
  
• Ehrman, Bart. The New Testament: A Historical Introduction to the Early Christian Writings, ISBN 0195154622
  
• Fredriksen, Paula. Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews: A Jewish Life and the Emergence of Christianity ISBN 0679767460
  
• Fredriksen, Paula. From Jesus to Christ: The Origins of the New Testament Images of Christ ISBN 0300084579, ISBN 0300040180
  
• Funk, Robert W. The Five Gospels: What Did Jesus Really Say? The Search for the Authentic Words of Jesus
  
• Gaus, Andy. The Unvarnished New Testament, A new translation from the original Greek free of doctrines and dogmas, ISBN 0933999992
  
• Lewis, C.S. Mere Christianity A book on Christianity and logical support for Jesus as God. ISBN 0060652926
  
• McDowell, Josh. Evidence that Demands a Verdict, Two volumes looking at Jesus from the point of view of evidence. Vol I: ISBN 0918956463 , Vol. II: ISBN 0918956730
  
• Meier, John P. A Marginal Jew: Rethinking the Historical Jesus ISBN 0385264259
  
• Mendenhall, George E. The Tenth Generation: The Origins of the Biblical Tradition, The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1973. ISBN 0-8018-1654-8. A study of the earliest traditions
  
• Mendenhall, George E. The Tenth Generation: The Origins of the Biblical Tradition, The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1973. ISBN 0-8018-1654-8. A study of the earliest traditions of Israel from linguistic and archaeological evidence which also treats the teachings and followers of Jesus in that context.
  
• Mendenhall, George E. Ancient Israel\'s Faith and History: An Introduction to the Bible in Context, Westminster John Knox Press, 2001. ISBN 0-664-22313-3. Another, less technical, study of the earliest traditions of Israel from linguistic and archaeological evidence which also treats the teachings and followers of Jesus in that context.
  
• Messori, Vittorio. Jesus hypotheses, St Paul Publications, 1977, ISBN 0854391541; The translation from Italian Ipotesi su Gesù. An amazing and very readable book that shows how Vittorio Messori, a recognized Italian historian who didn\'t care about faith, explores the question of Jesus, starting from two points of view, mythical (Jesus never lived) and critical (Jesus was not God) and finally comes to the third hypothesis, the one of the faith. The author is also famous as one of the rare who did an interview with Pope John Paul II.
  
• Metzger, Bruce, The New Testament Canon, page 254
  
• Miller, Robert, The Complete Gospels, the Scholars Version translation of gospels from the first three centuries, includes canonical gospels, Thomas, James, Mary, infancy gospels, fragments, ISBN 0944344305
  
• Mithraic Studies: Proceedings of the First International Congress of Mithraic Studies. Manchester U. Press, 1975.
  
• Pelikan, Jaroslav. Jesus Through the Centuries: His Place in the History of Culture, Yale University Press, 1985, hardcover, 270 pages, ISBN 0300034962; trade paperback, HarperCollins reprint, 304 pages, ISBN 0060970804; trade paperback, Yale University Press, 1999, 320 pages, ISBN 0300079877
  
• Price, Robert M. Incredible Shrinking Son of Man: How Reliable Is the Gospel Tradition? ISBN 1591021219
  
• Sanders, E.P. The historical figure of Jesus, Penguin, 1996, ISBN 0140144994. An up-to-date, popular, but thoroughly scholarly book.
  
• Sanders, E.P. Jesus and Judaism, Fortress Press, 1987, ISBN 0800620615. More specialistic than the previous book, though not inaccessible.
  
• Schaberg, Jane. Illegitimacy of Jesus: A Feminist Theological Interpretation of the Infancy Narratives
  
• Theissen, Gerd, and Annette Merz. The Historical Jesus: A Comprehensive Guide, Fortress Press, 2003, ISBN 0800631226. An amazing book, tough but rewarding, exceptionally detailed.
  
• Theissen, Gerd. The Shadow of the Galilean: The Quest of the Historical Jesus in Narrative Form. Fortress Press.
  
• # Tolstoy, Leo The Kingdom of God is Within You ISBN 0803294042
  
• # Lewis, C.S. Mere Christianity ISBN 0060652926
  
• # Vermes, Geza. Jesus the Jew: A Historian\'s Reading of the Gospels ISBN 0800614437
  
• Walvoord, John F. Jesus Christ Our Lord. Moody Press, 1969. ISBN 0802443265
  
• # Wilson, Ian Jesus: The evidence ISBN 0297835297
  
• # Yoder, John H. The Politics of Jesus ISBN 0-8028-0734-8
  
• Yogananda, Paramahansa: The Second Coming of Christ, ISBN 0876125550
  
• # In Quest of the Hero:(Mythos Series) — Otto Rank, Lord Fitzroy Richard Somerset Raglan and Alan Dundes, Princeton University Press, 1990, ISBN 0691020620
  
• Carlyle, Thomas. On Heroes, Hero-Worship, & the Heroic in History.
  
• The Superhuman life of Gesar of Ling — Alexandra David-Neel (A divine hero still in oral tradition)
  
• In some editions of Jewish Antiquities by the Jewish historian Josephus Book 18, chapter 3, paragraph 3 www.josephus-1.com refer to Jesus. Most scholars believe that these passages were added to Josephus\'s text by later Christians. The Arabic version of Josephus is free of these apparent Christian interpolations, but still makes it clear that Pilate ordered the execution of Jesus.
  
• Jesus and the Victory of God N.T.Wright, SPCK (London), 1996 ISBN 0281047170. Second in a projected massive five or six volume series on Christian origins, dealing with the life and death of Christ from a very open Evangelical perspective. The author is now Bishop of Durham (Church of England).
  
• # Michael H. Hart, The 100, Carol Publishing Group, July 1992, paperback, 576 pages, ISBN 0806513500
  
• Kierkegaard, Soren: \"Training in Christianity\", Vintage Spiritual Classics
  
• Kumar V. and Panakal L.: \"The Ancient Mother – I : The Key to the bible\" and \"The Ancient Mother – II : The Key to the bible\", Identity Publishers, Switzerland, 1997. (Available online in PDF format - http://www.quicknet.ch/urech/online.htm)
  

...Sorry, Mega X. That\'s too much for me... I made it past the ressurection part and had to drop it. ^^;

Atheist, then?
As a nitpick, know isn\'t necessarily a stronger statement than believe. If a Christian BELIEVES Jesus rose from the dead, he KNOWS he is right. Similarly, if he KNOWS Jesus rose from the dead, he BELIEVES he is right. They\'re interchangable. In another instance, if you \"believe\" you\'d better not fall off of a log bridge because you will die, you are safer than one who simply \"knows\" he must not fall off or he will die. If he knows, I think he\'d actually be more subject to doubt and more likely to waver on his way across. Many times beliefs carry more weight than knowledge.

I must appluad you, Mega X, that is a lot of information you got there, you are very informed.;) I\'m not reading that, either though. If we had 48 hour days I might, but we don\'t. So have these 2 posts swayed anybody into believing differently. I still believe in God.

I\'ll read them, but not now, so little time...

I lost the link to the board, but now i\'m back! Um, that\'s all REALLY REALLY good info Mega X! But still... I understand it all and all i have to say after reading all that is...

MY BRAIN IS BLEEDING!!!

-from Bob and George.com the comic strip.

[Edit] Wow, where\'d you get all that?can you get info about the second coming where ever you got those? What grade are you in? It would take me (a middle schooler) like 10 days to find all that and post in.

[Edited on 10-10-2005 by Sephiroth XX]

[Edited on 10-10-2005 by Sephiroth XX]

how in the hell did jesus come in to how the world was created I was gone for some time, but wow! Mega X that was a lot of information for ANYONE, even me, to try to go after. You know as well as anyone I\'m all ready for a good fight but damn son.

Still Jesus has nothing to do with who or what created the world. now it\'s my time to shine a little

First you must know what evolution is:
Evolution is the process by which all living things have developed from primitive organisms through changes occurring over billions of years, a progression that includes the most advanced animals and plants. Exactly how evolution occurs is still a matter of debate, but that it occurs is a scientific fact. Biologists agree that all living things arose through a long history of changes shaped by physical and chemical processes that are still taking place. It is plausible that all organisms can be traced back to the origin of LIFE from inanimate matter.

If you give an experienced mechanic all of the parts that form a vehicle, there isn\'t a doubt that he will assemble it correctly and make it work. Otherwise, if a biologist is given a collection of proteins, nucleic acids, sugars, lipids and other organic substances, he would be incapable of creating a living being. That is due to the fact that the phenomenon of life can\'t be reproduced in a laboratory. Scientists know the components of life very well, but they haven\'t found a way to animate them.

Or have they, Deborah L. Robertson and Gerald F. Joyce, from the Department of Molecular Biology of the Scripps Institute of Clinical Investigation, in La Joya, California, have been able to synthesize a fragment of RNA - one of the key molecules in genetics - gifted with a special talent, imitating life.

This RNA appropriates the organic material in it\'s environment to make copies of itself. In a matter of time, the copies start to evolve and develop new and unexpected chemical properties.

The idea of a primitive world of RNA seems likelier after three important discoveries: the main reaction in the synthesis of proteins is done by a type of RNA, the first enzyme that bonded amino acids to transference could of also been an RNA, and, last but not least, the existence of a possible rudimentary genetic code certain retro viruses - viruses that contain in their genetic material a molecule of RNA instead of one of DNA.

The Earth formed about ~4.555 billion years ago, and surprisingly the first fossil microorganisms are approximately 3.5 billion years old, according to paleo-biologist J. William Schopf, from the University of California at Los Angeles. They are stromatolites - structures formed on rocks by colonies of microorganisms - found in North Pole (Australia) and South Africa. Including the oldest stratum of the Earth, which have been found in Greenland, date from 3.8 billion years ago and seem to house, no more Precambrian fossils, but signs of active biological life

Homo sapiens did not appear on the earth, just a geologic second ago, because evolutionary theory predicts such an outcome based on themes of progress and increasing neural complexity. Humans arose, rather, as a fortuitous and contingent outcome of thousands of linked events, any one of which could have occurred differently and sent history on an alternative pathway that would not have led to consciousness. To cite just four among a multitude: (1) If our inconspicuous and fragile lineage had not been among the few survivors of the initial radiation of multicellular animal life in the Cambrian explosion 530 million years ago, then no vertebrates would have inhabited the earth at all. (Only one member of our chordate phylum, the genus Pikaia, has been found among these earliest fossils. This small and simple swimming creature, showing its allegiance to us by possessing a notochord, or dorsal stiffening rod, is among the rarest fossils of the Burgess Shale, our best preserved Cambrian fauna.) (2) If a small and unpromising group of lobe-finned fishes had not evolved fin bones with a strong central axis capable of bearing weight on land, then vertebrates might never have become terrestrial. (3) If a large extraterrestrial body had not struck the earth 65 million years ago, then dinosaurs would still be dominant and mammals insignificant (the situation that had prevailed for 100 million years previously). (4) If a small lineage of primates had not evolved upright posture on the drying African savannas just two to four million years ago, then our ancestry might have ended in a line of apes that, like the chimpanzee and gorilla today, would have become ecologically marginal and probably doomed to extinction despite their remarkable behavioral complexity.

I\'m sure some of you will ask \"well what about the missing link?\"
Although they are present, transitional forms are rare in the fossil record. In fact, the fossil record demonstrates that some species have remained essentially unchanged for millions of years. This makes sense, because if a species is well adapted to its environment, its current traits will continue to be selected for. A species will only undergo major change, if its environment changes in a way which leaves it significantly less well adapted to survive. Such transitions tend to occur rapidly. A mammal species for example, might evolve into another distinct mammal species in less than a hundred thousand years. In the history of life, that is a short period of time. Speciation of plants and simpler animals, can occur much more rapidly. This evolutionary pattern of long periods of geologic time with little change, punctuated by short periods of rapid change, is referred to as punctuated equilibrium.
And an example of a so called missing link would be the Archaeopteryx an animal possessing both avian (bird) and reptilian characteristics.

Don\'t think of evolution as a ladder but more like a branching tree with hundreds of branching paths

I believe that in most cases, people don\'t reject the concept of evolution because they disagree with the science. Rather, they refuse to consider it because it contradicts their religious beliefs. After all, to believe that the species living on Earth today evolved, is to believe that much of the Bible does not represent the literal truth. In the minds of religious fundamentalists, that cannot be considered!

I might have jumped around a bit on this but it\'s really late and that was a spur of the moment thing, so I was typing and kinda forgot what all I typed...hehe

I believe that the world was created by a god and a goddess. End of story.

Demons are the populace of Heaven that went with Satan, who supported his ideals, and went to Hell with him.
I belive in God. I don\'t like the fact i evolved from a primitive being, or created from a explosion, and the molecules rearranging themselves to create a human.

You know. That we call God God is confusing. We don\'t even know if \'Ooh! It\'s a boy!\'
Since people say God is Omnipotent, which means he can do everything, which is blocked by Mega X\'s paradox in the \'Logical Paradoxes\' thread, he should be able to be both man and woman. The Bible does state that Adam and Eve were created at the same time, non? But in another version of the Bible, it says that the man was first created, and the woman from one of his ribs.

My conclusion? Don\'t trust the Bible. It\'s evil.

Actually, if He created man in his image, wouldn\'t that imply that He is a guy? Also, He\'s always referred to (to my knowledge) as the Heavenly Father.

Also, Mega X\'s topic didn\'t disprove that. Everyone had different opinions, one being that God in His omnipotence could choose not to create the rock, knowing it would defeat his omnipotence.

Yeah, okay, okay. And to come back to the other post, the evil bible was a joke, m\'kay?
There are some things in the Bible that we can (almost) certainly hold for not-true, and some things are (almost) certainly true.
I\'ve only read two parts of the bible, the first book (Genesis) and the latter (Apocalypse). If you read the latter and take a look at the world, you really become frightened.

Okay, it isn\'t literally said like that, but look around! There are more Satan worshippers than ever! People kill each other for no real reason! (Not that there actually are real reasons to kill somebody.)

I think we should just create three big spaceships. Put in people who are frozen, so that we can bring them back on our new homeplanet. Than head out with a couple of hundred people on each of those ships to find a new planet to live on.
Those people, though, may not be:
- Satanics
- Over-violent
- Addicted to alcohol, drugs or anything else.
- Dumb = Not able to use the technology on the ship.
- Racists, facist, or have any ideas on equality other than that people ARE equal, must be treated equal, but that people also have their place in society
- Extremists
- Terrorists (partly applies to the above)

I know the evil thing was a joke, but I feel that I should add something.

Over the many many many many years that we have had the Bible, people have made their own versions of the bible, which may or may not be true. Because back in the middle ages, Catholics practically ruled over the king, they were able to add things to the Bible, and they never made a translated version for the people to read it themselves. They had total control over religion. The only example that really comes to mind, is that they said, if you wanna pray to jesus, you must pray through Mary, or something like that. That\'s not true, you wanna talk to God, then you can talk to God, there\'s no restriction. Other religions have also changed the Bible, such as Jehova Witnesses, etc. It\'s all about being a control freak. Also, the translations aren\'t the same in every version of the Bible, it may be worded defferent, but it still means the same thing. Just thought I\'d add that.

As for God being a Him. Nowhere in the Bible have I ever read God be refered to as a She.

I believe in God, and Jesus, etc.

Why are people voting something else than God?All I Have To Call Those People are \"DEE DEE DEES\"!I can;t belive people whould vote \"The Devil\"Or whatever the hell the choice was for the Devil.....What Are Y\'all Stupid?!(The people who voted The Devil)I know some people don\'t belive in God But DAMN!If You don\'t belive in God,You must not belive in The Devil Right?If you are one of those people WHY VOTE!I belive In Jesus,God....Or I belive in the Bible.....Just Vote God!DAMN!:madgo:

Sigh.....Dan Da Man gave Satanists a bad rap around here. I\'m not that bad of a person, am I? I don\'t worship \"Satan\" like that dilusional ock but I am a LaVeyan Satanist. Before you flame me and calling me names I implure you to read up on the subject. And I voted \'Big Bang\'...just so you know.

Here\'s a good artical
A good crash course
Church of Satan homepage

That\'s one funny lookin\' goat they stuffed into a pentagram.


Anyway, I dunno about the whole world starting thing. I tend to look at things from a Scientific standpoint by default, but the Big Bang theory never seemed to hold water for me.

I believe there probobly is a God.
But did he start everything? That would require him starting himself. Or the editing of time. However, both of those seem unlikely to me, so I really coundn\'t say one way or the other.

Maybe that crazy goat did it...

Where in the bible is that? It\'s not in Genesis or Revelation.