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First of all, the Bible doesn't teach that there will be a second coming. Second of all, if it did it would probably take place in Japan where the people are the smartest.

Only joking. How smart you are is a relative term.

I think that Americans tend to be intellectually lazy because they are far more materialistic. From societies perspective they place great import on education almost as blindly as in the past they did theocracy. Its just the thing to do. A few months ago I saw a program on PBS about some writer who wrote all sorts of observations on how it was generally thought that if you didn't have an education you were unintelligent and if you had an education you were supposed to be intelligent and his research and observations demonstrated quite effectively that that wasn't the case at all. I saw only the last portion of it, though, and don't know when or where it took place. I seen a more recent example of this when some reporter went to "the number one school in America" (Berkeley) and asked as many students there things that a 5th grader should know, like who is the vice President and simple history and they didn't have a clue.

If you have money you can go to a great school and that makes you seem a great deal smarter than you are and you can make more money - which you would probably have made without knowing simple history. I tend to think the more technology you have the more stupid you will become if you are lazy. Which is why the Japanese seem, in my opinion, to be a great deal smarter than Americans. Americans have this odd combination of idealism and materialism. They are, in general, uninterested in intellectual pursuit.

Propaganster wrote:

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Before we discuss a second coming, someone might want to show clear evidence that there was a first one...

Seriously? I have two historical references that are commonly accepted. Of a small town carpenter named Jesus who Christianity. Those are not the usual obviously fake ones. However, I don't think that we would have to get bogged down in that sort of discussion. The fact is that the Bible itself doesn't support the idea of a "second coming."

It makes sense, really. Jesus sacrificed himself once and for all time, what would be the point in his actually returning? There is none.

The Bible teaches that he will return his attention back towards the Earth when the time is right, but not that he would come back in human form.

Rambo123UK wrote:

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2 historical references? There aren't any.

You mean that there aren't any that are either not generally believed to be forgeries, additions etc. or that atheists accept as genuine. This speaks volumes about the importance of secular history. Makes the point somewhat moot, doesn't it? It also makes history somewhat moot.

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The Twelve Caesars, by Suetonius (c. 69 - 140 C.E.) - "Because the Jews at Rome caused continuous disturbances at the instigation of Chrestus, he expelled them from the city." (Acts 18:1-2)

The Jewish Antiquities, Josephus, Book XX, sec. 200 - "James, the brother of Jesus who was called the Christ."

The Complete Works of Tacitus (New York, 1942), "The Annals," Book 15, par. 44 - "Christus, from whom the name had its origin, suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius at the hands of one of our procurators, Pontius Pilatus."

The Story of Civilization,: Part III, "Caesar and Christ." - On doubt in the first century that Christ ever existed; "seems never to have occurred even to the bitterest gentile or Jewish opponents of nascent Christianity." "That a few simple men should in one generation have invented so powerful and appealing a personality, so lofty an ethic and so inspiring a vision of human brotherhood, would be a miracle far more incredible than any recorded in the Gospels."

F.F. Bruce, retired professor of Biblical Criticism and Exegesis at the University of Manchester - : "It is not usually possible to demonstrate by historical arguments the truth of every detail in an ancient writing, whether inside or outside the Bible. It is sufficient to have reasonable confidence in a writer's general trustworthiness; if that is established, there is an a priori likelihood that his details are true. . . . The New Testament is not less likely to be historically reliable because Christians receive it as 'sacred' literature."

Jean-Jacques Rousseau - "The history of Socrates, which nobody presumes to doubt, is not so well attested as that of Jesus Christ."

New Encyclopædia Britannica (1976), Macropædia, Vol. 10, p. 145 - "These independent accounts prove that in ancient times even the opponents of Christianity never doubted the historicity of Jesus, which was disputed for the first time and on inadequate grounds by several authors at the end of the 18th, during the 19th, and at the beginning of the 20th centuries."

The Wall Street Journal, December 2002 - "Science Can't Ignore Jesus . . . Most scholars, barring the stray atheist, have already accepted Jesus of Nazareth as a historical person."

Time magazine - "It would require much exotic calculation, to deny that the single most powerful figure - not merely in these two millenniums but in all human history - has been Jesus of Nazareth . . . A serious argument can be made that no one else's life has proved remotely as powerful and enduring as that of Jesus . . . almost no educated person these days doubts that Jesus lived."

Rambo123UK wrote:

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Josephus is of course most highly contested, with the view of later interpolation being the most widely held, and Pliny, as I recall, mentions only the existence of some apparently sun-worshipping christians at the time of writing, not Jesus.

The first mention of Jesus as the Messiah is generally regarded as a fake, but the second, where Jesus the Christ, brother of James is believed to be authentic because the vocabulary and the style are basically those of Josephus, and the passage is found in all available manuscripts.