(Ron) Aristotle

Brian Dean bridean@worldnet.att.net
Mon, 25 May 1998 21:50:03 -0400 (00896169003, 19980526013614.AAA10173@briandea) 

HELEN:
Well just for beginners.
We have some of his writings. The historian, who like Aristotle travel 
with Alexander, I believe mentions him quite a bit. Ever historian I have 
ever read on Alexander mentions that there was an Aristotle and he was 
Alexander's teacher who travelled with him. There is major evidence there 
was an Alexander and he did conquer a good size chunk of the world. We 
have the writings of Aristotle's teacher Plato. We have the plays that 
make fun of Plato's teacher, Socrates, while old Soc was still alive, by an 
enemy. Aristotle is important to us because of what he wrote. And 
perhaps because of his influence on Alexander. We have at least some of 
what he wrote. And ample evidence of Alex. 

Jesus wrote nothing in his life. The first writings we have about this 
fellow were written 20 years after his death by a fellow who freely admit he 
never saw Jesus while he was alive. We have some books that disagree 
with each other and were written at least 40 years after his death. There 
are other famous people mention around Jesus in these stories, but what 
we have on Pilate or Herod does not give us any evidence that seems 
valid of Jesus. We have some Jewish and pagan texts that strongly 
suggest that the story of Jesus that combines the memory of a Jewish 
trouble maker stoned to death on Passover a 100 years before the time 
Jesus was supposed to have been born, the beliefs of the cult of Isis, and 
the worship of Dionysus. 

Since what's important about Aristotle is what he wrote and his student. 
We know that the books did exist, some still do and his student did exist 
and apparently was trained in calssic Greek thought, if every other detail 
that we know about Aristotle should turn out to be wrong, if his books 
were written by six other fellows, because we know they were written and 
about the time that history says and that for many centuries were studied 
as his work does it really change much if he didn't existed. The books did. 
In a similar way even if Alexander's teacher turns out to have been 
someone else train in classic Greek thought, there is a lot of evidence 
that Alexader learned to respect Greek thought somewhere. 

What is important to Christians is that we were all somehow cursed 
under Jewish law (of course, the Jews say this isn't so, but what do Jews 
know about Jewish law.) And this guy Jesus, for whom there is no 
contemporary evidence and never wrote anything. is born of a virgin (yea 
right), who is married to a guy who didn't seem to know who his father 
was. Well this guy Jesus is crucified for which there is no record and 
somehow unlike all the other poor slobs the Romans offed by crucifiction, 
this guy by his dying gets God to lift the Jewish curse the Jews' say never 
existed. Then this guy comes back from the dead in the middle of an 
earthquake during several hours of darkness which covered the whole 
earth in the middle of the day while all the hundreds of other dead guys 
are stumbing around like zombies and even though we have several 
histories covering this period none of them mention any of this. 

I think we have a tad more evidence for Aristotle and it is somewhat 
more believable. Don't you?


RON
  We have 4 books which detail Jesus' life and teachings, not to mention 
the letters of numerous of his direct disciples. We also have the 
letters of the Apostles direct students (The Apostolic Fathers). There 
is a whole culture which keeps time based on their estimate of His 
birth. The largest and longest lasting government (the Catholic Church), 
established by Him, is still in existence. 
  The problem is you have different standards for Him than you do for 
Aristotle. Aristotle doesn't make any demands on you or cause you to 
feel convicted. Aristotle doesn't ask you to change your life. He does.