Church losing its grip...

Sleepy

Ms Beanbag wrote:

What I meant in the first place was that I think its hypocritical to dismiss a religion and spout about it negatively and criticise it on public boards and then partake in ceremonies pertaining to the said religion.

What happens if the person you're in love with is a Catholic and wants to get married in their church? Is it hypocritical to participate in a Catholic wedding if all concerned know that for you it's a civil ceremony but for your partner it's religeous? TBH, I'm not sure how I feel about this myself, but given the fact I've had more relationships with the religious than the atheistic, I'm curious as to other people's opinions on the matter.

Therein lies the problem with society today.

Why is it a problem that people see marriage as a civil joining followed by a social celebration of that event rather than as a religious ceremony? Where's there a problem in that?[/QUOTE]

Fysh

Excelsior wrote:

I can't help but think that you have deliberately misread my post since I underlined and strengthened the word "mind". You are no doubt aware of the context of this sentence in the Gospel- that this is the first commandment and to be held over all others. Along with the next sentence recorded in Luke's account we actually have according to Jesus, a summation of Christianity.

You say that there is rarely an emphasis on engaging culture in a positive way because of the Christian faith and I respond with a direct quote from Christ that commands his followers to bring their whole mind to the game when they decide to join the movement. Whatever else may be included in this it undeniably involved engaging with culture.

No, I didn't deliberately misread it. All I saw was a sentence that commands people to dedicate everything they are to worshipping the Lord. I don't consider spending every second of your time and all of your energy worshipping the Lord to be much of an interaction with culture (outside of your specific religion's culture) and a liberal interpretation of that sentence or the meaning behind a certain word isn't going to change my mind. How do you know they didn't specify soul and strength and mind to emphasise that if you are going to join the movement, you have to pour all of yourself into it?

If you'd posted an excerpt where Jesus said something like, I dunno, "go forth and discuss my teachings and see if you can reach a common ground with unbelievers" or even "go forth and be a part of your community, even those who reject my teachings" I might change my mind. What you posted instead was the commandment I despise the most, which hasn't particularly helped change my mind. (Sorry if the above seems rather nastily phrased - the whole "worship me above all other things" aspect of Christianity was the first thing that put me off it, and it still generates a fairly negative reaction from me). I'm fairly sure there's a few passages in which Jesus does exhort community involvement (although not necessarily cultural interaction, which is a subtle but significant disctinction for me), and I reckon one of them would be more useful in supporting your argument.

You're still wrong though

Excelsior wrote:

You misunderstand me. I didn't intend to evangelise to you in the previous post. My interest was in the virulent and patronising tone of many of the posters regarding Christians and their faith. There is a clear distinction between Jesus and his teaching as against the behaviour of the humans who have claimed to follow him. This distinction must be made if you are to particpate in any conversation relating to Christianity in an honest and fortright way.

The distinction can be made, but it requires me to accept that a significant fraction of Christians, preferably a majority, feel strongly enough against the actions of those who claim to follow him and use him to justify actions inspired by hate. I'm not saying that Christ or Christianity should be held responsible for the actions of those people not accurately following the teachings; I am saying that I've not really seen enough to convince me that where such things happen the institution is upset enough to take significant action. Examples would be the anti-gay marriage protests in the US (where the marriages in question were not necessarily church marriages), or rather less relevantly for non-Catholics, the ongoing farce regarding child abuse and coverups. Again, I'm not suggesting that Catholicism endorses child molestation - but one has to be concerned when the institution wishes to distance itself from the problem but refuses to take firm action when the public eye is focused on it.

Excelsior wrote:

Man, I can only tell you I have cried at the outrageous stuff done in the name of Christ by ignorami in the past. I have come to believe through experience and had my beliefs reinforced through study that the Nazarene carpenter actually was God. It breaks my heart when I see Christians using the Prince of Peace to batter and oppress people and I try to stand against it. But the fact remains that Jesus (whether Christ or madman) is defined by rejection- the rejection of the Cross where those he preached to sent him to die. In that rejection he prayed for their forgiveness. Christianity argues that even or maybe actually through their rejection of him he included the people of Jerusalem. There is no space in that leader, his actions and his teachings to go out into the world with repression and arrogance at hand. Acknowledging this fact (and the implication from it that repressive Christianity is not Christianity at all) is, I think a vital part of any discussion of theology.

I would go one further and argue that not only Christ but the Judaeo-Christian God is defined through rejection. Through rejection of God we imperil our souls; through rejection of God's command Adam and Eve damned themselves and their children with Original Sin, Moses damned himself never to see the Holy land and the people of Sodom and Gomorrah damned themself to a fiery death (and afterlife, presumably - a taste of things to come, or an example to be taught to their neighbours?). The problem is that, while in the context of the new testament the theme is very much forgiveness in the face of rejection, in the old testament the theme is more rejection = damnation. I suspect rather a lot of the dichotomy stems from Christians and preachers who find the Old Testament's fire and brimstone approach to make for more rousing sermons. Whether or not this is a correct interpretation, however, is another matter.

Ms Beanbag wrote:

What I meant in the first place was that I think its hypocritical to dismiss a religion and spout about it negatively and criticise it on public boards and then partake in ceremonies pertaining to the said religion.

Even if the only reason for partaking in a ceremony like a wedding or funeral is to respect someone else's beliefs? They are public ceremonies, and have state equivalents. It would be hypocritical to rail against the church and then have a church wedding, (or to rail against the pope then ask for time off to go to a memorial service for him), but I would understand if a close friend asked me to attend their church wedding, and would most likely attend even though the ceremony seems pointless to me. It's about respect for other people. If you're happy to refuse to step in a church at any point ever, that's up to you. For me at least, I value my friends/family and their beliefs enough that I am willing to put aside my own objections voluntarily for the odd occasion that's important to them.

Ms Beanbag wrote:

I'm not too familiar with Japan and how it celebrates Christmas.

Ten seconds with Google might have enlightened you somewhat, but anyway...see here or here for descriptions of how Japan happily subscribes to the commercial aspects of Christmas without even making the 25th of December a national holiday.

Ms Beanbag wrote:

Therein lies the problem with society today.

Where? That religion has come to serve a social purpose? I don't see that as a failure of society, I see it as a failure of religion to remain relevant to people's needs. Care to elaborate on why you see this as society's problem?

Ms Beanbag wrote:

Yeah, just ignore the bits that are irrelevant

What, exactly, is your point? Christmas is a national holiday in most Western countries, religious connotations notwithstanding. Meaning that at a government level regardless of whether you turn to jesus for salvation or rejoice in the story of his betrayal by Judas, you're entitled to the day off work. It had a religious origin, and for many people it's no longer relevant. Why does this incense you so? Would it make any difference to you if people shifted the holiday 6 days along so that, like Japan or China, the biggest holiday of the year were New Year's Celebration? Most big holidays end up being pretty arbitrary in terms of honouring their original meaning given the diversity and size of the population. I don't see the point in raging against it unless you have a viable suggestion for how to remedy this (and no, calling everyone hypocrites doesn't count).

Ms Beanbag wrote:

simu wrote:

you could have argued instead about people who aren't part of the Church whinging about things like the marriage ban on priests or the ban on women priests which are more obvious cases of people giving out about the Church for the sake of it.

Nope. It has nothing to do with the debate. Why do you have a need to obfuscate the discussion...

It's not obfuscating the argument at all. You are complaining about people following events that are now optionally religious (as opposed to only religious) and simu is pointing out that the optional aspect of this renders your complaint moot. A hypocrite would be someone complaining actively about religious issues while having no religious beliefs. Such as an atheist complaining about the vow of celibacy for priests. Of course, if you're not willing to have a bit of a search when someone makes a point you're unfamiliar with, maybe I'm expecting too much by asking you to understand someone else's perspective...

Zombrex

Excelsior wrote:

Wicknight, I don't want to convince you with these posts that the Bible is a historically valid record but I would love if you could take 10 minutes and explain this comment.

The original New Testament of the Bible was not written by Jesus. It was not even writen when Jesus was a live or close after his death. It was written decades, in some cases over a hundred years, after he died. The original New Testament is therefore someone elses interpretation of what Jesus said and did, an interpretation that is based on repeated verbal telling of stories from when he was alive. You only have to look at modern society to see how that can develop (asylum seekers all get free cars for example) to see the problems that that can cause. The Bible is simply an interpretation of what other people believe Jesus meant and did. And as such the moral teachings and foundation of the religion are based not on the beliefs of Jesus but on the interpretations of these beliefs by the early followers of the religon. And that system of interpretation has continued right through the history of the Church.

Excelsior wrote:

To hold your position that there is no validity whatsoever in the apostles' account would require some substantial historical, contextual and scripture based evidence to an extent that simply isn't there.

The validity of the account of the life of Jesus is based, as are all things in the Christian religion, on your interpretation and beliefs of what you believe Jesus would have been like. The point I am making is that your interpretation is as valid or as "true" as the next because no one really knows what Jesus actually taught, we only know how this teaching was interpreted years later by his followers. You following interpretations are based on these initial interpretations. There is no "true" meaning of Jesus that one can seperate from the "bad" intepretations of his followers. The teachings of the church are the moral beliefs of its followers. The movement is the followers.

Excelsior wrote:

I am struck by how one can rant and rave at a propagandistic church and its nefarious affairs in the education of our children and simultaneously not notice how very badly the Roman Catholic education system has failed itself in terms of helping to form followers.

I think the fact that a large number of people in modern Ireland are rejecting the iron grip teaching of the church is a very good thing. I think science, logic and humanistic morality are replacing the dogma of the church in modern Ireland. And not a minute too soon.

I am not quite sure how you think that is a sign that the church is actually all friendly and fluffy. Is the church happy about this state of affairs?

Excelsior

Wicknight wrote:

The original New Testament of the Bible was not written by Jesus. It was not even writen when Jesus was a live or close after his death. It was written decades, in some cases over a hundred years, after he died. The original New Testament is therefore someone elses interpretation of what Jesus said and did, an interpretation that is based on repeated verbal telling of stories from when he was alive.

The latest New Testament book is the Gospel of John written between 90 and 95AD, within 60 years of Christ, by one of his direct followers. You are misinformed if you think that the NT record has been compiled in some chinese whispers environment. A million extra people crowded the streets of Jerusalem the weekend of Jesus' death. Over 500 people were reported to have seen him in a bodily resurrected form. There were so many potential naysayers that the idea of inflated Christhood, that over time the apostles exagerrated reports is highly unlikely. On top of that, such an idea shows a complete disregard for the Jewish tradition from which the apostles and the first Christians rose. Of all people, Jews were wary of the word God. This idea that they could happily call Jesus God because He was so much greater than the other teachers shows either a failure to grasp the realities of the Jewish world at the time or a wilful obscuring of context.

On top of that then you have the troublesome issue of their death. 10 of the 12 apostles were killed for their belief in Jesus. Why would they be motivated to inflate Jesus to divine status? That is easy- their motive could be greed for money, power or influence. Why then did they so happily and eagerly die? The self-defeating excercise poses a serious problem to your extreme skepticism.

On top of that you have the history of the messiah complex. Over 100 different messiah figures arose in Israel in the hundred years previous to and post Jesus. Of these, most were killed for sedition. Only Jesus' followers stayed following him after his death. No other records exist of a messiah figure maintaining support after death. Why is this? No other messiah was claimed to have raised from the dead (now if we had time we could take a tour through ideas of reincarnation versus resurrection in the Graeco-Roman world, the Eastern belief systems and indeed Judaism at the time and see that even that poses interesting dilemmas for the supra-skeptic).

Increasingly, I can't find a viable, historically responsible alternative to the resurrection. But all this is digression.

My point is:

Me wrote:

But the New Testament accounts are objectively the most secure ancient documents we have and this position of radical skepticism is held only by the extremists of the Jesus Seminar in California, whose methodologies are some of the most half-baked shoddy practices I have ever heard of in any academic field.

Telling me half-truths about the composition of the New Testament doesn't dispute this. While the New Testament records are not rock solid 100% conclusive (that is the faith part of belief), the claim to an authority nihilism because Christ himself didn't write the NT on the go is preposterous and here you have exceeded even the Jesus Seminar in fundamentalism.

Wicknight wrote:

You only have to look at modern society to see how that can develop (asylum seekers all get free cars for example) to see the problems that that can cause. The Bible is simply an interpretation of what other people believe Jesus meant and did. And as such the moral teachings and foundation of the religion are based not on the beliefs of Jesus but on the interpretations of these beliefs by the early followers of the religon. And that system of interpretation has continued right through the history of the Church.

But asylum seekers and the claim that the Messiah upon which your national identity has been based for 4000 years are not the same thing. Chinese whispers doesn't apply to the claims of Christ because the claims for Christ did not occur in a primary school classroom. There are witnesses, a fixed temporal event, a world-view completely oppossed to it and a societal hierarchy about to be toppled by it. All of these factors mitigate against Christ and yet, as people write in newspapers and on websites leaving records to stand against the claims that asylum seekers get beemers, no one record exists of anyone saying this didn't happen.

No one has said, "I was there", (for there were hundreds of thousands still there on Easter), "and this is a lie".

Undoubtedly, the writings of the NT are interpretations. But to me this seems like a statement that adds no meaning to the conversation because even my autobiography is an interpretation. The fact remains that the NT is a troublingly unkillable document that can't be put to bed. It keeps rising its historical head at us. Retreating into, "I don't like their opinions" is not an argument that is going to bring me out of my religious delusion.

The Corinthian

Excelsior wrote:

The latest New Testament book is the Gospel of John written between 90 and 95AD, within 60 years of Christ, by one of his direct followers.

Actually this is debatable. The fourth Gospel states only that it was written by the “disciple that Jesus loved”, but never actually names John (or which John for that matter). This confusion in the identity of characters and authors is not unusual - the case of Mary Madeline being saved by Jesus from a sentence of death by stoning being a case in point; nowhere does it actually say that the woman in question was Mary Madeline, only that her name was Mary (not that uncommon a name at the time). Yet, possibly for political reasons, the connection stuck.

There is also scholarly disagreement on the date of the writing of the last Gospel or that it was written even by one person, with some arguing that it was completed as late as AD 165.

Finally, just on a point of pedantry, even if written by one of Jesus’ direct followers, much of it would have still been based upon third party accounts. After all, they were hardly present at his birth or during his childhood. This is possibly one of the reasons that the gospels are actually inconsistent on the details of the birth - with one placing it in a stable and another in a house.

A million extra people crowded the streets of Jerusalem the weekend of Jesus' death.

Says who?

Over 500 people were reported to have seen him in a bodily resurrected form.

Says who?

Sleepy

Excelsior wrote:

Of all people, Jews were wary of the word God. This idea that they could happily call Jesus God because He was so much greater than the other teachers shows either a failure to grasp the realities of the Jewish world at the time or a wilful obscuring of context.

I may be wrong but according to your own religious texts didn't the majority of Jewish people of the time not crucify Jesus?

On top of that then you have the troublesome issue of their death. 10 of the 12 apostles were killed for their belief in Jesus. Why would they be motivated to inflate Jesus to divine status? That is easy- their motive could be greed for money, power or influence. Why then did they so happily and eagerly die? The self-defeating excercise poses a serious problem to your extreme skepticism.

Again, you have only third person accounts of their deaths. How can you assert they died happily instead of screamingly renouncing their faith? When the recording party (i.e. early Christians) were documenting these deaths they were always going to document them in the way that best supported their own beliefs.

On top of that you have the history of the messiah complex. Over 100 different messiah figures arose in Israel in the hundred years previous to and post Jesus. Of these, most were killed for sedition. Only Jesus' followers stayed following him after his death. No other records exist of a messiah figure maintaining support after death. Why is this? No other messiah was claimed to have raised from the dead (now if we had time we could take a tour through ideas of reincarnation versus resurrection in the Graeco-Roman world, the Eastern belief systems and indeed Judaism at the time and see that even that poses interesting dilemmas for the supra-skeptic).

Increasingly, I can't find a viable, historically responsible alternative to the resurrection. But all this is digression.

And I can't find one to support it. Given the medical knowledge of the time, the possibility of Jesus not actually being dead when taken down from the cross is entirely plausible. We see remarkable recoveries in humanity and nature on a monthly basis, the difference is people of the religious faith choose to credit these to their deity whereas those of us that aren't associated with a religion tend to put them down to the unexplainable (or down to things Science doesn't yet understand).

Telling me half-truths about the composition of the New Testament doesn't dispute this. While the New Testament records are not rock solid 100% conclusive (that is the faith part of belief), the claim to an authority nihilism because Christ himself didn't write the NT on the go is preposterous and here you have exceeded even the Jesus Seminar in fundamentalism.

Why? If you want to claim a piece of work as your own, you must have written/produced it yourself. Similarly, if you want to categorically state a theory, ideology or teaching as someone else's, you must be able to prove that they wrote/produced it.

But asylum seekers and the claim that the Messiah upon which your national identity has been based for 4000 years are not the same thing. Chinese whispers doesn't apply to the claims of Christ because the claims for Christ did not occur in a primary school classroom. There are witnesses, a fixed temporal event, a world-view completely oppossed to it and a societal hierarchy about to be toppled by it. All of these factors mitigate against Christ and yet, as people write in newspapers and on websites leaving records to stand against the claims that asylum seekers get beemers, no one record exists of anyone saying this didn't happen.

No one has said, "I was there", (for there were hundreds of thousands still there on Easter), "and this is a lie".

Eh? Where have you been in Ireland for the last 5 years? There are people in all walks of life contributing to the "free cars for asylum seekers" rumour mill. It's not just something being put forth by primary school students.

The fact that no record survives of anyone saying that the resurrection didn't happen isn't an extremely strong case to prove that there weren't records of this type. Given that the Catholic Church was the main keeper of historical records throughout the dark ages don't you think that documents of this type could easily have been allowed to fall by the wayside? As a corrolary to this, while I've never had the opportunity to read it myself, the Gospel of St Thomas (and other gospels left out of the bible) all question different areas of the New Testament's validity).

Undoubtedly, the writings of the NT are interpretations. But to me this seems like a statement that adds no meaning to the conversation because even my autobiography is an interpretation. The fact remains that the NT is a troublingly unkillable document that can't be put to bed. It keeps rising its historical head at us. Retreating into, "I don't like their opinions" is not an argument that is going to bring me out of my religious delusion.

I'm glad you can admit it's a delusion

Joking aside, while the NT is seemingly unkillable, it is extremely easy to question, refute and argue against it's validity.

simu

Ms Beanbag wrote:

Nope. It has nothing to do with the debate. Why do you have a need to
obfuscate the discussion...

Hey, the original question was:

So Ireland is finally becoming an independant country, as the church loses its deepest foothold in Irish society ?

Nothing you said had anything to do with this.

Excelsior

The Corinthian wrote:

Actually this is debatable. The fourth Gospel states only that it was written by the “disciple that Jesus loved”, but never actually names John (or which John for that matter).

There is no question in academic circles but that five books of the NT, including the non-synoptic Gospel were written by John.

Corinthian wrote:

This confusion in the identity of characters and authors is not unusual - the case of Mary Madeline being saved by Jesus from a sentence of death by stoning being a case in point; nowhere does it actually say that the woman in question was Mary Madeline, only that her name was Mary (not that uncommon a name at the time). Yet, possibly for political reasons, the connection stuck.

Actually, it was Pope Gregory the Great in the 600s who created this connection, initially as an admitted creative licence to emphasise the free gift of Grace. It has been warped for theo/political purposes that are in direct opposition to the purpose of the original story.

Corinthian wrote:

There is also scholarly disagreement on the date of the writing of the last Gospel or that it was written even by one person, with some arguing that it was completed as late as AD 165.

To the best of my knowledge, even the fringe Jesus Seminar date John at 85-90. I would love a link or a book or magazine reference to this very late dating. I am still a young student, with a warehouse worth of gaps in my knowledge but I have never heard a word of such a theory.

In Acts of the Apostles, Luke writes that extra to the apostles, 500 others saw Jesus on numerous occassions in bodily resurrected form. We know of now disputes with this figure.

Jesus was crucified at Passover. Pilgrimaging Jews would flow into Jerusalem, up to a million every year for this festival. You might remember Palm Sunday, those of you with a Catholic background. The crowds greeting Jesus were not just the residents of Jerusalem.

Sleepy wrote:

I may be wrong but according to your own religious texts didn't the majority of Jewish people of the time not crucify Jesus?

Which is just my point Sleepy! The crucifixtion is the logical conclusion to the life of a Jew who goes around claiming to be God. How then do you account for the 10,000s of Jews who within weeks were calling themselves part of The Way that eventually became Christianity?

Sleepy wrote:

Again, you have only third person accounts of their deaths. How can you assert they died happily instead of screamingly renouncing their faith? When the recording party (i.e. early Christians) were documenting these deaths they were always going to document them in the way that best supported their own beliefs.

Not only Christians write. There is no reason to disbelieve these claims since those who put the apostles to death did not dispute (although it would be in their own interest) the Christian accounts of the deaths.

Further to that, the fact that they died at all, regardless of the manner of the death (not to suggest that the manner doesn't matter) is the thing the considered skeptic must concern themselves with. Should the conspiracy theory be true, it would be believable that one or maybe a handful of the apostles with particularly hot-headed or unsophisticated personalities might overstep the boundaries and find themselves executed instead of the head of a worshipping cult. But the pattern is far more striking. The almost universal death of the apostles is recreated in the other disciples and then in 3 centuries of Christians. The historical fact is that an unheard of number of people were happy to die for the carpenter. Why?

Sleepy wrote:

And I can't find one to support it. Given the medical knowledge of the time, the possibility of Jesus not actually being dead when taken down from the cross is entirely plausible. We see remarkable recoveries in humanity and nature on a monthly basis, the difference is people of the religious faith choose to credit these to their deity whereas those of us that aren't associated with a religion tend to put them down to the unexplainable (or down to things Science doesn't yet understand).

This is a good theory that I have tried out myself. But the Romans crucified about 100,000 people in the Middle East. They were fairly good at it. On top of that, the method of crucifixtion is highly effective. A squad of Roman executioners (who would themselves be put to death should a prisoner go free), could imaginably however, make such a mistake. But you would have to account for the side-stabbing spoken of in the Gospels. To be allowed to bury a crucified criminal, instead of the default situation of the offender being left out on the cross as meat for the birds, the interested party had to have a Roman guard stab the victim. This is the account in the Gospel, backed up by Roman practice elsewhere. So not only do you have a team of very experienced executioners motivated to execute under threat of their own execution and a very effective execution method but you also have the stabbing as a precursor to ever taking the body down. The purpose of this stabbing was to ensure death.

But let us imagine that the gods favoured the teacher Jesus and fate got him off the cross alive.

The we get to burial. The cave had a tombstone. The burial process for the Jews of the time was not a light cloth wrapped lightly around the corpse but a full embalming. How did the still alive Jesus regain conciousness in the stimulus free environment of a dark cool cave, unwrap himself and after the crucifiction (with the leg breaking and lancia spearing that was customary), the cross bearing walk and the 4 beatings he endured 2 days previously (with one presumes no food or water in the cave) manage to move the stone?

So let us assume that fate has been good and Jesus has survived the punishment and managed to have his still warm body go undetected by the guards who removed him and that he manages to free himself from his tomb. What does he find himself faced with? A group of Roman soldiers ordered personally by Pilate himself (on behalf of the Pharisees) to guard the tomb because of their fears that the apostles might try and pull the wool over their eyes and hoax the resurrection Jesus had taught about.

Jesus, the carpenter, manages to evade death in just such a manner and now manages to dispose of a whole group of armed and trained Roman soldiers who are personally accountable to Pilate.

The Resurrection is hard to believe, but...

Do you seriously hold to this theory? Can you give me some insight into how it might be true?

Sleepy wrote:

The fact that no record survives of anyone saying that the resurrection didn't happen isn't an extremely strong case to prove that there weren't records of this type. Given that the Catholic Church was the main keeper of historical records throughout the dark ages don't you think that documents of this type could easily have been allowed to fall by the wayside?

We don't even need the documents themselves Sleepy to acertain that there was opposition to the accounts of the Resurrection (opposition here from witnesses or close-to-witnesses as oppossed to skepticism). Christianity swept across Europe over the next 400 years. It was the phenomenal movement of the age and a topic of much discussion. The Catholic Church in the dark ages wouldn't just have to wipe out the dissidents but all the people who referenced the dissidents, even the other Christian leaders who would have engaged the dissidents. We don't simply lack any dissidents, we lack any refernece to dissidence on the topic. If this argument was posed it would interest the millions of pagans and Jews who were giving up their identity to become Christians. So the only explanation for the vacuum that would exist would be a total genocide of this written material by a primitive (in a non-perjorative term) Catholic Church in a time before centralisation of publishing data, rapid travel or communication. The Church exhibits, in your proposed theory, a simple miraculous ability to track down all writings, even private ones and remove not only them but all other reference made to them. It is literally unbelievable.

Sleepy wrote:

As a corrolary to this, while I've never had the opportunity to read it myself, the Gospel of St Thomas (and other gospels left out of the bible) all question different areas of the New Testament's validity).

The Gospel of Thomas (according to the extreme liberal Jesus Seminar) probably dates from 70-100AD. It is a collection of over 100 aphorisms with no narrative structure. There are some peculiar teachings within those proverbs but nothing in the Gospel of Thomas questions the validity of the New Testament. Without fail, the other Gnostic texts are considerably later (by as much as 200 years in some incidences) than the canonical documents.

They were not destroyed but all still exist and we knew about them even before the finds in the 1800s because lots of the NT letters refer to Gnosticism (especially the beloved apostle's 1st letter) and lots of the church fathers, like say the famous Iranaeus' Against Heresies tackle just such non-Christian beliefs which references Gnostic texts.

Excelsior

Sleepy wrote:

Joking aside, while the NT is seemingly unkillable, it is extremely easy to question, refute and argue against it's validity.

Saying that doesn't make it true. Why have all the academic departments for biblical studies not shut up shop and let valuable taxpayers money get diverted into engineering or anthropology as the theologians get absorbed in the Classics departments then?

Sleepy wrote:

I'm glad you can admit it's a delusion

Seriously, I am not messing when I ask you to liberate me from the delusion. I take this criticism, that faith is the preserve of the psychologically weak seriously. I agree with it and with St. Paul- if Christ isn't raised like I believe he is then I am wasting my time. I am deluded. But the argument against resurrection hasn't yet been plausibly proposed to me.

Gurgle

Excelsior wrote:

the argument against resurrection hasn't yet been plausibly proposed to me.

You need a scientific arguement to prove that someone didn't come back from the dead after 3 days ?

Excelsior

I need a plausible argument. Science says absolutely nothing against the claim that Jesus rose from the dead.

Fysh

Excelsior wrote:

I need a plausible argument. Science says absolutely nothing against the claim that Jesus rose from the dead.

Well, the only other ritualistic/religiously perceived notion I can think of which talks about people rising from the dead is voudoun (typically referred to as "voodoo" and, courtesy of '50s horror films, rather badly represented in the Western world). Voudoun doctors were claimed to be able to kill people and raise them as zombie slaves. Eventually when their processes were investigated it transpired that the ritual started by feeding the victim a particular drug/poison which put them into a coma-like state under which they appeared to be dead for over a day, and after which they would rise into a highly suggestible state. Hence the "risen from the dead zombie".

Science has, in all its recorded times, never seen a case in which someone proven clinically dead and left unattended for 3 days rose back into good health. The experimental evidence goes against you, I'm afraid. It can't prove Jesus didn't come back from the dead, but there's only one book saying that he did come back. And given the lack of evidence of anyone else ever having done so, and the ethereal nature of Jesus' godlike qualities, Occam's Razor would generally indicate that no, he didn't. If you're willing to accept that a miracle is a violation of natural laws as understood through science, you also have to accept that it is going to be very very hard to prove the occurence of those miracles in accordance with scientific principles. Even more so when the miracles you're talking about happened a couple of thousand years ago and there's no third-party evidence one way or another.

Trying to prove that Jesus performed miracles when your only evidence is a book written well over a thousand years ago is going to convince nobody who doesn't already believe.

Eoghan-psych

Excelsior wrote:

I need a plausible argument. Science says absolutely nothing against the claim that Jesus rose from the dead.

Apart from the whole "when you die your brain turns to mush" thing.

Not to mention the assorted other bits that rot - especially so in the heat of that climate.

The Corinthian

Excelsior wrote:

There is no question in academic circles but that five books of the NT, including the non-synoptic Gospel were written by John.

Actually even the Roman Catholic Church admits that this is debatable:

http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/08438a.htm#VI

Actually, it was Pope Gregory the Great in the 600s who created this connection, initially as an admitted creative licence to emphasise the free gift of Grace. It has been warped for theo/political purposes that are in direct opposition to the purpose of the original story.

Which illustrates my point on the questionable veracity of identifying the ‘named’ individuals.

To the best of my knowledge, even the fringe Jesus Seminar date John at 85-90. I would love a link or a book or magazine reference to this very late dating. I am still a young student, with a warehouse worth of gaps in my knowledge but I have never heard a word of such a theory.

If you read the above link you’ll find reference to it.

In Acts of the Apostles, Luke writes that extra to the apostles, 500 others saw Jesus on numerous occassions in bodily resurrected form. We know of now disputes with this figure.

And back we go again to the circular argument of “the Bible is true, because it says so in the Bible”. One may, on the basis of faith, assume the veracity of the Gospels - to which you are welcome - but otherwise you’re indulging in a circular argument.

Jesus was crucified at Passover. Pilgrimaging Jews would flow into Jerusalem, up to a million every year for this festival. You might remember Palm Sunday, those of you with a Catholic background. The crowds greeting Jesus were not just the residents of Jerusalem.

Jesus was allegedly crucified at Passover. You’re speculating on the number of people who firstly, would have been in Jerusalem and secondly would have seen him even if in the city. And bare in mind, a million people was quite a few in those days, if you consider that this was the population of Rome at its height.

I need a plausible argument. Science says absolutely nothing against the claim that Jesus rose from the dead.

Absolutely, if we assume that Jesus was someone in possession of supernatural powers. But if we do not make that assumption, then medical science will generally point out that when a man dies (not sleeps enters a trance or goes into a coma) then it’s game over.

Excelsior

For science to have anything to say about the resurrection of Jesus, then the resurrection of Jesus would have to be an empirically testable event. So while I appreciate the thrust of Gurgle, Fysh and Eoghan-Psych's skepticism (and share it to a certain degree) it still doesn't account for the claimed resurrection and the remarkable movement that temporal event birthed.

Corinthian, your citation suffers from its dreadfully Catholic bias. I also couldn't find reference to the date of 165AD anywhere. In fact, New Advent seemed to be cocky enough to point to exactly 96AD. A website that discusses the Gospel of John and cites biblical scholars who died in 1840 as the most recent commentators on the text might not be the best source.

I still don't know how:
a) Mary Magdalene cults say anything about authorship of the gospels
b) The admitted and widely known creation of a story surrounding Mary Magdalene proves that identities are often mistaken.

I am not arguing here either that the Bible is divine. We'll keep those arguments on the Christianity board. But here I am arguing for a more complete understanding of the credible ancient text that the New Testament is. Regardless of whether one considers it to be divinely inspired as originally given (I am presuming no one does), I think it is impossible to not view the New Testament as by a considerable distance, the most reliable ancient documents we have.

There is no reason to doubt the Passover crucifixtion of Jesus. The major pilgrimage festival of the Jewish calendar would have topped the already sizeable Jeruslaem population upwards to a million. They did not all see Jesus and I don't propose and haven't that they did. But Jesus was crucified for sedition in part because the furore he was causing in an already boiling hot cauldron of an occupied city celebrating its great emancipation festival made him the kind of threat that prompts such action from the Romans as we saw.

The Corinthian

Excelsior wrote:

For science to have anything to say about the resurrection of Jesus, then the resurrection of Jesus would have to be an empirically testable event. So while I appreciate the thrust of Gurgle, Fysh and Eoghan-Psych's skepticism (and share it to a certain degree) it still doesn't account for the claimed resurrection and the remarkable movement that temporal event birthed.

So, if a man came to you and said, “I a chap die last week, but then he resurrected himself and then raised himself to Heaven before my very eyes”, I take it you would believe him on the basis that you could not disprove his claim empirically?

As for the remarkable movement that is Christianity; that has more to do with Constantine than Christ.

Corinthian, your citation suffers from its dreadfully Catholic bias.

My citation was a rebuttal of your rather dubious assertion that “there is no question in academic circles but that five books of the NT, including the non-synoptic Gospel were written by John” - plainly, regardless of my source’s denomination, there is.

I also couldn't find reference to the date of 165AD anywhere.

My mistake, AD 160 was the correct date - please note the reference to the commentary to the fourth Gospel by Heracleon.

In fact, New Advent seemed to be cocky enough to point to exactly 96AD. A website that discusses the Gospel of John and cites biblical scholars who died in 1840 as the most recent commentators on the text might not be the best source.

I think it a little inconsistent for someone attempting to defend the veracity of a text almost 2,000 years old to dismiss an opinion less than 200 years old. Additionally, why would biblical scholars who died in 1840 not be the best source?

I still don't know how:
a) Mary Magdalene cults say anything about authorship of the gospels
b) The admitted and widely known creation of a story surrounding Mary Magdalene proves that identities are often mistaken.

a) I was pointing out how the meaning and identities of the persons or even authors of said Gospels can be manipulated or even misinterpreted.
b) Actually, you’d be surprised how widely unknown it is. Indeed, Gibson’s Passion of the Christ perpetuated that invention in one of its scenes where Mary Magdalene recalled Jesus saving her from death by stoning.

I am not arguing here either that the Bible is divine. We'll keep those arguments on the Christianity board.

Given I do not have access to that board, you should find the discussion easier there.

But here I am arguing for a more complete understanding of the credible ancient text that the New Testament is. Regardless of whether one considers it to be divinely inspired as originally given (I am presuming no one does), I think it is impossible to not view the New Testament as by a considerable distance, the most reliable ancient documents we have.

Actually it’s very easy to consider it unreliable. Were we to look at texts written by Roman or Greek historians, we would often have conflicting and unreliable or even propagandistic accounts. However, what sets them apart from the Gospels of the New Testament is that they can be compared with texts by independent third parties and sometimes even simple city records.

There is little or no such corroborating evidence on the other hand for the accounts of the New Testament. Now while this does not disprove those accounts it certainly does not mean that they are reliable either, let alone “the most reliable ancient documents we have”.

There is no reason to doubt the Passover crucifixtion of Jesus.

If you cannot verify the account of the crucifixion, then there is no reason to accept it at face value either.

The major pilgrimage festival of the Jewish calendar would have topped the already sizeable Jeruslaem population upwards to a million.

Where do you get this figure?

They did not all see Jesus and I don't propose and haven't that they did. But Jesus was crucified for sedition in part because the furore he was causing in an already boiling hot cauldron of an occupied city celebrating its great emancipation festival made him the kind of threat that prompts such action from the Romans as we saw.

That of course is the account we get from his supporters, several decades after the fact. We don’t actually get this from anywhere else. Off the top of my head, I don’t even know if there is another record of Jesus being crucified at all.

Excelsior

The Corinthian wrote:

So, if a man came to you and said, “I a chap die last week, but then he resurrected himself and then raised himself to Heaven before my very eyes”, I take it you would believe him on the basis that you could not disprove his claim empirically?

1. I don't think that empirical testing is the only way to discern truth, so no.

2. That is not like Christianity, so no.

Corinthian wrote:

As for the remarkable movement that is Christianity; that has more to do with Constantine than Christ.

Dan Brown is not the best source for history. You are proposing a myth.

Corinthian wrote:

My citation was a rebuttal of your rather dubious assertion that “there is no question in academic circles but that five books of the NT, including the non-synoptic Gospel were written by John” - plainly, regardless of my source’s denomination, there is.

A website actually isn't an academic source.

Corinthian wrote:

My mistake, AD 160 was the correct date - please note the reference to the commentary to the fourth Gospel by Heracleon.

If Valentine cites a commentary of the Gospel written in 160AD by his pupil Heracleon, that would require the Gospel to have been written before 160AD. The most liberal estimates put the Johnannine texts in the 90's.

Corinthian wrote:

I think it a little inconsistent for someone attempting to defend the veracity of a text almost 2,000 years old to dismiss an opinion less than 200 years old. Additionally, why would biblical scholars who died in 1840 not be the best source?

That is a really good point on the surface but the archeological finds, the original texts recovered, the centralisation of expertise from many different fields focused on the Bible and the massive amount of work (especially in relation to the previous 1800 years) done in those 200 years means that someone from the 1st historical quest for Jesus (as we stand today at the sunset on the 3rd quest) might not be an appropriate place to end your discussion.

I am not dismissing New Advent because they cite 200 year old opinion. I am disimissing New Advent because they cite Catholic opinion and stop 200 years ago.

Corinthian wrote:

a) I was pointing out how the meaning and identities of the persons or even authors of said
Gospels can be manipulated or even misinterpreted.
b) Actually, you’d be surprised how widely unknown it is. Indeed, Gibson’s Passion of the Christ perpetuated that invention in one of its scenes where Mary Magdalene recalled Jesus saving her from death by stoning.

They could have been manipulated but there is no evidence that they were.

It may not be well known that Gregory is the source of Magdalene myths but it is well broadcast and available to anyone who wants to know. There is no recourse to Gnosis to track that data down, especially after Dan Brown's escapades made biblical criticism such a bestseller.

Gibson has a 2nd source alongside the Gospel for his movie and it is the mysical visions of a german woman in the 1700's. What we learn from that is the revolutionary:
1) Mel Gibson may not be automatically trusted
2) Mystics and visionaries are hard to pin down.

Corinthian wrote:

Given I do not have access to that board, you should find the discussion easier there.

Witty arrogance is what makes you so attractive.

Corinthian wrote:

There is little or no such corroborating evidence on the other hand for the accounts of the New Testament. Now while this does not disprove those accounts it certainly does not mean that they are reliable either, let alone “the most reliable ancient documents we have”.

There is a boatload of corroborating evidence in those very same Greek and Roman civic and private writings for the New Testament. In terms of quality, spread and number of original artifacts and in terms of impact of that text, the New Testament can't even be compared with the Tetralogies or the Gallic Wars or any other such major classical document. I don't intend this to be a faith statement here, like when I say "Jesus is the Lamb who was slain" (I am forever saying that, after all ) but as a simple let's look at the data assertion of fact.

Corinthian wrote:

That of course is the account we get from his supporters, several decades after the fact. We don’t actually get this from anywhere else. Off the top of my head, I don’t even know if there is another record of Jesus being crucified at all.

The figure is a much touted one by archeologists and jewish historians. There are lots of other "gospels" that deal with the crucifixion. Is it strange that to you that no one wrote a "This is balls!" revelation?

Fysh

Excelsior wrote:

For science to have anything to say about the resurrection of Jesus, then the resurrection of Jesus would have to be an empirically testable event. So while I appreciate the thrust of Gurgle, Fysh and Eoghan-Psych's skepticism (and share it to a certain degree) it still doesn't account for the claimed resurrection and the remarkable movement that temporal event birthed.

Yes, but since there's buggerall empirical evidence that it did happen, and the claims are that it violated one of the most basic tenets of biology (ie that dead is dead, and deadness is a permanent state rather than somewhere you go on holiday) you have to accept that from a scientific standpoint there is no way of proving rationally that it happened. A bunch of people wrote abook about it happening, and an even bigger bunch of people believe it.

To put this in context, a bunch of people have written stories about Star Wars, and an even bigger bunch have been and put "Jedi" on their census forms in the UK. That is not evidence that there are midichlorians in people's blood that allow them to manipulate an ethereal Force and talk like they've got severe sinus congestion, nor is it evidence of the existence of Luke Skywalker.

Science ain't on your side and it disagrees with you. The death of jesus christ is not empirically testable, but the death of every other human being on the planet is, and the big JC is the only one who supposedly returned to life. So, either you accept that there was something special about him (taking it on faith), or you conclude that it's a bit of a fib or at the very least an exagerration. That's the scientific standpoint. Trying to distinguish Jesus' death from everyone elses doesn't work, because Jesus was still born into the flesh and blood of a human being.

(cue "jesus was an alien" claims in the Weekly World News, no doubt )

Excelsior

Fysh wrote:

you have to accept that from a scientific standpoint there is no way of proving rationally that it happened.

That is what I have been saying all the time Fysh.

A Wicknightian interpretation of me wrote:

Science says absolutely nothing against the claim that Jesus rose from the dead.

The Corinthian

Excelsior wrote:

1. I don't think that empirical testing is the only way to discern truth, so no.

2. That is not like Christianity, so no.

1. So you impose conditions on others that you now refuse to use yourself?
2. How is it not? Outside of a few thousand years of political obfuscation?

Dan Brown is not the best source for history. You are proposing a myth.

I’ve not read any of Browns books to date, and am quite aware that they are fiction, so please avoid the attempt at condescension. As for myth, it is certainly debatable, but not invented. The Roman Empire’s adoption of Christianity was an important turning point in its history. To deny this would be delusionary to say the least.

A website actually isn't an academic source.

A website that correctly cites an academic source is.

That is a really good point on the surface but the archeological finds, the original texts recovered, the centralisation of expertise from many different fields focused on the Bible and the massive amount of work (especially in relation to the previous 1800 years) done in those 200 years means that someone from the 1st historical quest for Jesus (as we stand today at the sunset on the 3rd quest) might not be an appropriate place to end your discussion.

None of which you’ve actually presented, so I’ll have to assume they have not shed any contradictory light to those arguments.

I am not dismissing New Advent because they cite 200 year old opinion. I am disimissing New Advent because they cite Catholic opinion and stop 200 years ago.

How does this make your rather dubious assertion that “there is no question in academic circles but that five books of the NT, including the non-synoptic Gospel were written by John” any less wrong?

They could have been manipulated but there is no evidence that they were.

The identification of Mary Magdalene as the woman saved from stoning is such a manipulation. No greater than the assumption that the author of the fourth Gospel, “the most beloved disciple”, was John.

It may not be well known that Gregory is the source of Magdalene myths but it is well broadcast and available to anyone who wants to know. There is no recourse to Gnosis to track that data down, especially after Dan Brown's escapades made biblical criticism such a bestseller.

Sorry, a moment ago you said it was “widely known” - could you make up your mind?

1) Mel Gibson may not be automatically trusted
2) Mystics and visionaries are hard to pin down.

Yet you’re willing to take someone who may, or may not, be John the disciple at his word.

Witty arrogance is what makes you so attractive.

Spare me your self-deprecatory justifications for avoiding uncomfortable discussions.

There is a boatload of corroborating evidence in those very same Greek and Roman civic and private writings for the New Testament.

Name them. Third party and impartial evidence mind - none of this “the Bible is true because it says so” stuff please.

I don't intend this to be a faith statement here, like when I say "Jesus is the Lamb who was slain" (I am forever saying that, after all ) but as a simple let's look at the data assertion of fact.

An assertion of fact is a faith statement.

The figure is a much touted one by archeologists and jewish historians. There are lots of other "gospels" that deal with the crucifixion. Is it strange that to you that no one wrote a "This is balls!" revelation?

I think you’ll find Mohammad did.

Sleepy

Excelsior, let me put my view on the crucifixion into the words of the most famous (fictional) detective of all time:

"When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth"

So, given that it's impossible for a human being to rise from the dead 3 days after their death, and that you argue quite convincingly that Jesus couldn't have recovered from a coma like state and escaped the tomb, it seems to me that the only remaining alternative was that he had a twin who took his place in an attempt to prove his brother's teachings true.

Logic, reason and science all tell us that Christianity is little more than a fairytale adopted as true by the masses (and regardless of your opinion of Dan Brown, Constantine's roll in the spread of Christianity is unquestionable). Why otherwise intelligent people seem to believe it still baffles me tbh.

Sleepy

Excelsior wrote:

Witty arrogance is what makes you so attractive.

In TC's defence, the same could be said of Oscar Wilde or Stephen Fry

Sleepy

Excelsior wrote:

I need a plausible argument. Science says absolutely nothing against the claim that Jesus rose from the dead.

I think you'll find that Science says it's impossible for *anyone* to rise from the dead three days after being confirmed as dead.

Excelsior

Sleepy, Corinthian and gach duine ar fad, forgive for continuing my unreasonable belief in the risen Jesus over the Jesus twin theory.

Corinthian, I have never imposed empirical standards on anyone. I think you have misunderstood me.

The proposal you give for the 2nd point is like Christianity if Christianity is a one sentence-able fairy tale. Instead, it is a belief system grounded in historical events. Strip context and historical rigour from the scenario and you might have a comparison.

The Roman Empire embraced Christianity with Constantine and quickly rejected it with Julian- the truth of the situation is more appropriately phrased in terms of the momentum of Christianity becoming so strong that the Romans had to embrace it. This led to a great deal of dreadful things but claiming that Christianity has more to do with Constantine than with Christ is absurd.

Let me say it clearly then in terms of New Advent- it is not an academic source and it in no way references any serious or contemporarily held views regarding the authorship of John or the age of John. The debate about Johanine texts is to do with the non-Synoptic style of writing, the philosophising and the imagery- can they be regarded as historical. The whole debate, most publiclitly laden in the Jesus Seminar is about whether the John Gospel is history in the same way as the Synoptics.

If I say something is "widely known" and "well broadcast", there is no contradiction. Those who wish to geniunely investigate Magdalene will very quickly find the source of such stories. Such stories and their genesis are not on the secondary school curriculum and are not featured in government publications posted to every house, yet everyone in the field will quickly become familiar with it.

I do take the apostle John as more trustworthy than Mel Gibson, you have me pegged there.

As far as sources are concerned, let's look at why I was so sure that Roman soldiers lanced the crucified if they were to be buried. Quintillian was the Roman writer who filled us in on that independent of the Gospel account. In relation to the early church's charity, we see from among many others the aforementioned Julian moan about it in his letters. How broad do you want to go?

While an assertion of fact is a faith statement, it is an entirely different faith statement to "Jesus loves me this I know, cos the Bible told me so", as explicitly qualified.

Mohammed was a great figure but he wasn't in Jerusalem over Easter. Of course there are skeptical works against the risen Christ claims but my argument has been that there is a fascinating absence of conflicting works- nobody has questioned the accounts who was close to the events.

TC wrote:

Spare me your self-deprecatory justifications for avoiding uncomfortable discussions.

I didn't mean to be self-deprecatory when I complimented you.

Manach

From memory, there is a doctrine that stated Jesus had a dual nature, both God and man. As science deals with observations from discernable facts do you wish to withhold judgement on the rising, until we find another such unique sample?

Sleepy

Science typically holds that something is not true until it's proven to be so.

At present it is held that resurrection from the dead after three days is impossible. It would take a scientific proof of a case of that magnitude to convince me of even *that* much of the catholic faith and even at that, it still wouldn't prove the existence of a deity, merely the fact that there is an infinitessamally small proportion of the historical population of the earth that can escape death.

I've no idea of the historical number of people who have lived on this earth but I know it's in the trillions (at the least). How someone can seriously suggest that one person amongst this number cheated death purely because they've been told so since birth baffles me. If you were never told that Santa Claus wasn't a fairytale would you still believe in him?

rsynnott

Sleepy wrote:

I've no idea of the historical number of people who have lived on this earth but I know it's in the trillions (at the least). How someone can seriously suggest that one person amongst this number cheated death purely because they've been told so since birth baffles me. If you were never told that Santa Claus wasn't a fairytale would you still believe in him?

Actually, it's estimated at only about 100billion, I think. Giant world populations are recent.

But yes, people are willing to believe ridiculous things on little or no evidence because people they trust tell them it is so, or just because they want to believe. Homeopathy, the lunatic end of the audiophile industry, stickers that prolong battery life, mobile phone signals as death rays, fortune telling... lots of things.

Of course, most people have no real conception of how, say, electricity works, either. The difference is, that if they want, they can go and find out about it, see for themselves. People believe without question that Intel's unexpected problems with their recent processors are largely due to Quantum Tunnelling (which is just plain MAGIC by most standards); but even that is checkable... Noone who claimed that it was really caused by goblins would be taken at all seriously.

Oddly, some people seem more willing to believe in the unprovable than the provable; compare many people's faith in homeopathy to their distrust of real medicine.

Excelsior

Sleepy, I appreciate where you are coming from but I have tried my best in the very limited forum of an internet bulletin board to outline some of the reasoning that informs a considered Christianity.

Jesus never claimed to be a man like me or Manach, he never claimed to even be a sage or cynic like the role The Corinthian plays on these boards but was always working off the assumption that he was the Son of God. He doesn't claim that anyone else will be able to do what he did. So I find it hard to conceive where scientific testing comes into the equation.

There are a great deal of things that we all accept as truth even though science has nothing to say into them. I don't just mean airy-fairy ****e like the value of every individual human let's all hold hands, but even the relationships that form the very fabric of your existence are extra-scientific. To demand a scientific testing for everything (which I don't think you are doing) would be to dismiss all other routes to truth. Philosophers would be sacked from their McDonalds and Burger King positions immediately!

Santa and Christ do not come into the same category and to claim that they do either shows a wilful refusal to investigate the data as it is or an unthinking ignorance that couldn't exist after a few informed conversations and a handful of books.

Zombrex

The point is that the Bible is not proof or evidence that Jesus actually rose from the dead, anymore than talk radio is proof or evidence that asylum seekers get allowances for cars (they don't). Even in this modern time with high tech access to information and news urban myths continue to develop all the time. You will meet people who say that they know for a fact that asylum seekers get "entertainment" money, that is completely incorrect. 2000 years ago you would probably meet people who know for a fact that Jesus walked out of his tomb...

The argument that a load of people claim they saw him do it therefore he probably did does not stand up. The descriptions of the event were written decades after the event, in a time where recording things was not as sophisticated as it is now. Word of mouth was largely used to record these events until they were eventually written down.

If you believe Jesus is the son of God then when you read he rose from the dead you would tend to believe that. But the fact that it was written down 2000 years ago that he did is not evidence he did, and I don't think would convince anyone who doesn't already believe he is the son of God.

I am not trying to convince you it didn't happen, just responding to the idea that the Bible proves it did happen. It doesn't, you have to believe in Christianity first to believe it happened. If you don't believe there is nothing in the Bible that would convince you otherwise

The Corinthian

Excelsior wrote:

Sleepy, Corinthian and gach duine ar fad, forgive for continuing my unreasonable belief in the risen Jesus over the Jesus twin theory.

I have never postulated any ‘Jesus twin theory’.

Corinthian, I have never imposed empirical standards on anyone. I think you have misunderstood me.

You imposed standards of logic, sating that you required proof of non-existence and then refused to be bound by any standards of logic yourself.

The proposal you give for the 2nd point is like Christianity if Christianity is a one sentence-able fairy tale. Instead, it is a belief system grounded in historical events. Strip context and historical rigour from the scenario and you might have a comparison.

Actually my point was precisely related to the context and historical rigour from the scenario. It is you who are happy to overlook them and take Christianity at face value.

The Roman Empire embraced Christianity with Constantine and quickly rejected it with Julian- the truth of the situation is more appropriately phrased in terms of the momentum of Christianity becoming so strong that the Romans had to embrace it. This led to a great deal of dreadful things but claiming that Christianity has more to do with Constantine than with Christ is absurd.

Rejected briefly by Julian and then again adopted again, largely because of infighting between the various noble families in Rome rather than its perceived popularity. After all, similar moves were attempted by Christians in the Persian Empire, but without political patronage, they failed.

Let me say it clearly then in terms of New Advent- it is not an academic source and it in no way references any serious or contemporarily held views regarding the authorship of John or the age of John. The debate about Johanine texts is to do with the non-Synoptic style of writing, the philosophising and the imagery- can they be regarded as historical. The whole debate, most publiclitly laden in the Jesus Seminar is about whether the John Gospel is history in the same way as the Synoptics.

I’m sorry, but given a choice on academic sources between your opinion and a source of information backed by a major religion, I’ll go for the latter first.

If I say something is "widely known" and "well broadcast", there is no contradiction.

If you say something is “widely known” and then begin to backtrack by saying that it “may not be well known” is.

I do take the apostle John as more trustworthy than Mel Gibson, you have me pegged there.

The problem is that he’s not. There’s no real evidence to say that he was even the apostle John for that matter, let alone the veracity of his accounts.

As far as sources are concerned, let's look at why I was so sure that Roman soldiers lanced the crucified if they were to be buried. Quintillian was the Roman writer who filled us in on that independent of the Gospel account. In relation to the early church's charity, we see from among many others the aforementioned Julian moan about it in his letters. How broad do you want to go?

Outside of verifying the existence of early Christians, which nobody here denies, where exactly did Quintillian or Julian independently verify anything?

While an assertion of fact is a faith statement, it is an entirely different faith statement to "Jesus loves me this I know, cos the Bible told me so", as explicitly qualified.

A faith statement is a faith statement regardless of where it comes from and claiming you don’t want to make a faith statement but will make an assertion of fact is just playing with words.

Mohammed was a great figure but he wasn't in Jerusalem over Easter. Of course there are skeptical works against the risen Christ claims but my argument has been that there is a fascinating absence of conflicting works- nobody has questioned the accounts who was close to the events.

Most, if not all, of the Gospels were written by individuals who were not in Jerusalem over Easter while we’re at it.

But that’s hardly the point, you claimed that there had not been dissenting gospels and I pointed out one (and that’s before we consider the numerous apocryphal works - that we even know of).

So your assertion that there is a “fascinating absence of conflicting works” is false; there are plenty of them. And Islam, for example, is based on one.

I didn't mean to be self-deprecatory when I complimented you.

I don’t believe you meant to compliment me.

Excelsior

The Corinthian wrote:

You imposed standards of logic, sating that you required proof of non-existence and then refused to be bound by any standards of logic yourself.

If logic is defined as agreeing with you or being convinced by you then I have been illogical. But there is nothing illogical in what I have argued.

TC wrote:

Rejected briefly by Julian and then again adopted again, largely because of infighting between the various noble families in Rome rather than its perceived popularity. After all, similar moves were attempted by Christians in the Persian Empire, but without political patronage, they failed.

If Constantine has had more influence in Christianity as you have argued than Christ, then the fanatical paganism of the very next emperor would pose a problem to your theory. Let us stay on topic here- you have argued that Constantine is more important to Christianity as a movement than Jesus. This is absurd.

TC wrote:

I’m sorry, but given a choice on academic sources between your opinion and a source of information backed by a major religion, I’ll go for the latter first.

Again, let us stay on topic. In an effort to prove that John's Gospel may have been written 3 generations after the most liberal Jesus Seminar theorises it was written, you quoted a Catholic mouthpiece who discussed the opinions of 200 year old Catholic theories on John and then concluded that it was written in 96AD. I would not be willing to advise friends to cite New Advent as a source in an academic paper. Failure would ensue.

The New Advent site doesn't even state that the Gospel of John might have been written in 165AD but was misread by you. What it actually references is a commentary on John written in 165AD, thus clearly proving that such a late date is impossible.

The fact remains that scholars agree on a 90s AD date for John. As far as John's authorship is concerned, I admitted in the first posting on this maze like discussion that I could well have just not familiarised myself with discussions about multiple or non-John authorship but that all I have read is secure to say that John is by John. I would love a magazine article or book or website reference to learn about this theory.

TC wrote:

If you say something is “widely known” and then begin to backtrack by saying that it “may not be well known” is.

Indeed, I agree. But I didn't say that. I said it was widely known and then said it was widely broadcast.

TC wrote:

Outside of verifying the existence of early Christians, which nobody here denies, where exactly did Quintillian or Julian independently verify anything?

Quintillian verifies that a disputed aspect of the Gospel account is ture. Julian, like many others, sheds light on the early church by sharing his opinions and these opinions corroborate the NT accounts.

TC wrote:

A faith statement is a faith statement regardless of where it comes from and claiming you don’t want to make a faith statement but will make an assertion of fact is just playing with words.

In a Humian sense, I can still make qualitative assessment sof the value of the faith-based statement, such that empirically supported beliefs have more appeal to undisputed universiality than a religious belief. While the claim "The earth revolves around the sun" remains strictly faith-based, we recognise that the category of faith is entirely different than a statement such as "The homeopathic remedy cured my cancer" which in turn is very different to the statment "Jesus of Nazareth is the promised Messiah".

TC wrote:

Most, if not all, of the Gospels were written by individuals who were not in Jerusalem over Easter while we’re at it.

We have reason to think that Matthew and John (and maybe John Mark) were, in that we have reason to think they were either disciples or apostles of Jesus. But where do you draw this comment from?

TC wrote:

So your assertion that there is a “fascinating absence of conflicting works” is false; there are plenty of them. And Islam, for example, is based on one.

Islam is a skeptical report. I clarified earlier in the thread that I meant to distinguish a skeptical record (of which there are many) from a conflicting record (which would be a record written by someone at or near the events).

TC wrote:

I don’t believe you meant to compliment me.

At the risk of annoying you, I think you are witty and that wittiness comes with a certain arrogance that makes reading your responses very enjoyable.

Wicknight wrote:

The point is that the Bible is not proof or evidence that Jesus actually rose from the dead, anymore than talk radio is proof or evidence that asylum seekers get allowances for cars (they don't).

Wicknight, I should clarify that I don't intend to pass the Bible off as undeniable proof that Jesus walks. Instead, I do hope to simply defend it as an authoritative classical work of history, the best supported that we have.

Accepting that the NT has historical value is not the same as accepting Christ, the Lamb who was slain as your personal Lord and Saviour yadda yadda yadda. Accepting the NT has a valid classical historical text does not mean that you have to accept each verse as God's inerrantly transmitted utterance.

Instead, it means honestly surveying the data at hand and accepting that there is a lot more to do this than the default opinion within our society gives to it.

On the asylum issue, I think your analogy is faulty because at most the racist lies promulgated on the likes of the Adrian Kennedy Phone Show lead to harsh words and violent attacks on immigrants. History shows us that it doesn't take much for humans to get angry and aggressive.

Yet with the fairy-tale of Christ's resurrection, supporters by their thousands forsake entirely their world views and created a movement that was a revolutionary force for good (and I know full well that this went wrong but leave it aside for a second so I can finish my point ). They were willing to die by their bucketloads for it. Any crazy story can incite violence, aggression and barriers in the hearts and minds of people. A very good political theory can encourage some martyrs and some really great communal behaviour. But the Christian movement was not a political one and didn't encourage some martyrs and some good but a great deal of it and it also demanded a complete rejection of previous identity, unlike many political ideologies.

Be clear that I am not trying to say "ooh the Church was perfect, get yourself rebaptised boy!". Instead I just intend to show that the movement of Christianity can't be explained by comparing it to Santa Claus or the asylum seeker myths. If this is a myth, it is a much more interesting one than you are giving it credit for.

One final word, as I have to go away with work for a while and this thread will probably be dead by my return. I am sorry if I got side-tracked in Christ-is-God discussions not only because it is annoying for others to read through that but also because my point isn't that Christianity is an undeniable logical force that you can't resist (because it isn't) but that the New Testament has a great deal of value as a historical document that gets ignored.

Fysh

Excelsior wrote:

One final word, as I have to go away with work for a while and this thread will probably be dead by my return. I am sorry if I got side-tracked in Christ-is-God discussions not only because it is annoying for others to read through that but also because my point isn't that Christianity is an undeniable logical force that you can't resist (because it isn't) but that the New Testament has a great deal of value as a historical document that gets ignored.

If we're talking about the same NT that contains the Book of Revelations, then I concur. If nothing else, it proves that hallucinogens have been kicking around (at least on Patmos) since waaaaaaaaaaaaaay back. And if Jesus didn't make a commandment against taking mushrooms, that means he must approve of them! Right?

Right?

(Yeah, ok, I'm just kidding around....don't mind me)

(On a faintly serious note, it could be argued that the NT is valid only insofar as it shows what people thought was happening, not necessarily what was actually happening. Although this can be said about any historical source, it does become rather more relevant when the source in question is discussing a document reporting gross violations of accepted scientific rules.)

Zombrex

Excelsior wrote:

Instead, I do hope to simply defend it as an authoritative classical work of history, the best supported that we have.

The Bible is a very very weak historical document, and should be viewed as such. Because it is one of the few remaining docuements from that time doesn't change that fact.

It was written not as an historical document but as a teaching/propaganda tool for a religion. That instantly diminsishes its autority as a historical text. Secondly it was written decades after the events it descibes, again severly weaking its authority as a historical document.

Purely from a historical point of view it would be very hard to trust or assume anything described in the Bible actually happened without corroborative external evidence.

Excelsior wrote:

But the Christian movement was not a political one and didn't encourage some martyrs and some good but a great deal of it and it also demanded a complete rejection of previous identity, unlike many political ideologies.

Well even in this modern world full of science and logic you find groups of people willing to commit mass suicide because they believe a UFO from a commet is going to take them home to heaven.

A large number of people follow the Hindu religion, that has nothing to do with the Judaism/Christian/Islamic history and belief structure. Does that mean they are more or less "right" than Christians?

Because a large group of people follow a religion (some fanatically) it doesn't really prove either way the validity of that religions beliefs.

Excelsior

Wicknight wrote:

The Bible is a very very weak historical document, and should be viewed as such. Because it is one of the few remaining docuements from that time doesn't change that fact.

The Bible as a whole is not meant to be a historical text. In terms of author's intention, only 5 books in the whole Bible are certainly meant to be a historical record of events as they happened and all of them are in the NT.

The huge remaining deposit of NT texts does weigh heavily on any assessement of its value as a carrier of historical detail and to disregard that is, I think, to be very narrow minded.

Wicknight wrote:

It was written not as an historical document but as a teaching/propaganda tool for a religion. That instantly diminsishes its autority as a historical text. Secondly it was written decades after the events it descibes, again severly weaking its authority as a historical document.

You are applying categories of writing to the Roman era that are suspect at best. The way a history book is written today by say, Joe Lee is entirely different to a historical text from 2000 years ago. There are entirely different methodologies.

But seperate even from that, we know that much of the NT is written to instruct. The Pauline letters, for example, reveal implicit historical data of great worth just as a feature piece in a newspaper whose primary purpose is not historical in the modern sense will leave valuable historical data for the future. Then there are sections of the NT that are clearly not intended to be viewed in such ways, such as Revelations. And then there are sections that are very definitely written with the intention of recording events as they happened. The Gospels, specifically the Synoptics fall into this category.

Now regardless of whether the Gospel stories regarding Jesus are trustworthy in a modern understanding of history (which is not as cut and dried a proposition as sometimes it is assumed to be), the Gospels are a mine of data of great historical worth that may be incidental to the intentions of the evangelists. I am not arguing that the NT is an authority to the extent of undeniability, but that of all the ancient texts, it is the most profitable in terms of historical insight.

To claim that as something was written decades after the event it can't serve as history is harebrained. I am giving this book away since it can't possibly be historically valid.

Finally, I am not talking about the Bible but the New Testament.

Wicknight wrote:

Purely from a historical point of view it would be very hard to trust or assume anything described in the Bible actually happened without corroborative external evidence.

It would be a strange and unrigourous approach that intends to study a text without referencing the contemperaneous texts. One of the most under-accepted aspects of this discussion is that the corroborative evidence lines up to a surprising extent.

Wicknight wrote:

Well even in this modern world full of science and logic you find groups of people willing to commit mass suicide because they believe a UFO from a commet is going to take them home to heaven.

So large numbers of people can very easily be convinced to do destructive things. How do you explain the very rare phenomenon of people rejecting their identities for positive purposes?

Excelsior

Just one final note, the belief in progress so that somehow we are now in a world "full of science and logic" where previously humans were not logical is a fallacy.

Any assessment of the most logical and science-booned century, our last, would show you that the destructive instinctive illogic of humankind has been sharpened and not controlled by the technological explosion.

Let me put it this way, are you somehow more capable of discerning truth or applying logic than someone from 1005AD or 0005AD? Discounting the mountainous extra data at your disposal, you are in no way more intellectually capable than a Brehon Irishman from pre-Norman times. The idea that you have an intellectual advantage by dint of your fortuitous placement on the chronology of civilisation is flawed.

Manach

Well, Excelsior is off, so the team reserves have been called up

In my experience, the Bible has been used in University courses as an indication of how people embraced or rejected the culture of the Roman Empire. Fysh mentions the Book of Revelations: this has been sited as the one of the best ancient texts which articulate opposition to the corruption of an oppressive and arrogant elite.
The rather colourful language used is an idiom (which was widespread in the Meditarean during that period) that was used to predict the fall of the Empire.

Offhand, I can time of only one historical source of that period that was written as the actual events were occurring, and that would be Caesar’s “Gallic Wars”. But in common with all sources, it was written with its own in-built bias.

As for being “right”, forgive me for thinking that there are many ways to achieve a Religious truth. The great strength of science, is that observable data can be gathered into fundamental laws, but humans do not so easily fall into such neat categorisations.
A Christian/Catholic belief is that everybody has the grace to be saved, but it is because of the humanity that was present in Jesus.

mycroft

Excelsior wrote:

Let me put it this way, are you somehow more capable of discerning truth or applying logic than someone from 1005AD or 0005AD? Discounting the mountainous extra data at your disposal, you are in no way more intellectually capable than a Brehon Irishman from pre-Norman times. The idea that you have an intellectual advantage by dint of your fortuitous placement on the chronology of civilisation is flawed.

I do however have a vast amount of data at my disposal, and a greater understanding of how my environment works.

I understand why the sun rises and sets, and seasons happen. I don't have to rely on religion to justify how we all got here.

Fysh

mycroft wrote:

I do however have a vast amount of data at my disposal, and a greater understanding of how my environment works.

I understand why the sun rises and sets, and seasons happen. I don't have to rely on religion to justify how we all got here.

Thank you for saying what I was going to say.

The whole point of science and the scientific endeavour is to allow us to stand on the shoulders of those who have gone before and see further than was previously possible and further our knowledge. Religions, being static by virtue of being defined in ancient texts, cannot grow and adapt without some fancy explanations by leaders and so end up having to make excuses of one sort or another when the contents or claims of their texts are challenged by new scientific theories and data.

TBH none of us have claimed to be more intelligent or intellectually proficient than those in biblical times. Nice try and deflecting our arguments though. What we've been saying is that, through our distilled understanding of the months and years of effort of those who went before us we are in a better position to try and understand any phenomenon described and discuss its merits and likelihoods of happening. I don't see how you can claim that this is not the case; especially not when the scientific notions we have been passed generally all come with details of the experiments which led to their formation, thus enabling us to test them to our own satisfaction.

The Corinthian

Excelsior wrote:

If logic is defined as agreeing with you or being convinced by you then I have been illogical. But there is nothing illogical in what I have argued.

It has nothing to do with agreeing with me or not. It has to do with asking people to provide proof and then suggesting that you do not require the same of yourself.

If Constantine has had more influence in Christianity as you have argued than Christ, then the fanatical paganism of the very next emperor would pose a problem to your theory. Let us stay on topic here- you have argued that Constantine is more important to Christianity as a movement than Jesus. This is absurd.

The attempt to return to paganism by Julian was short-lived - his reign lasted only two years. Jovian, who succeeded him was Christian and he reinstated the Christian direction started by Constantine. Had Julian’s reign been longer or had successive pagan emperors succeeded him, your assertion might have some currency. As this was not the case, Julian’s policies had limited influence on the already established state religion.

History is littered with religions that have risen and fallen once more. Typically, one of the determining factors is that they gain support from the State, and in this regard it is undeniable that Constantine’s adoption of Christianity as the religion of the State significantly helped it to thrive. Otherwise there is no reason to believe that Christianity would not have eventually fallen in popularity and disappeared from history like any of the other cults and faiths that Rome saw in her imperial history.

To this add that we do not know if Jesus really had any input into Christianity. A combination of unreliable third hand accounts and the subsequent Pauline slant to the New Testament is such that it is even questionable that Jesus had any input into what we now call Christianity.

So in all practical terms Constantine was most likely much more influential to Christianity than Jesus.

Again, let us stay on topic. In an effort to prove that John's Gospel may have been written 3 generations after the most liberal Jesus Seminar theorises it was written, you quoted a Catholic mouthpiece who discussed the opinions of 200 year old Catholic theories on John and then concluded that it was written in 96AD. I would not be willing to advise friends to cite New Advent as a source in an academic paper. Failure would ensue.

You claimed that there is no decent with regard to the veracity of the fourth gospel. I demonstrated dissent. You now are attempting to invalidate that decent because you dislike the source quoted (you can find the same information in non-Catholic sources, BTW) and the age of the decent.

Yet throughout this all, you have failed to provide evidence to back up your own claims. Funny that.

The New Advent site doesn't even state that the Gospel of John might have been written in 165AD but was misread by you. What it actually references is a commentary on John written in 165AD, thus clearly proving that such a late date is impossible.

Actually I didn’t misread it, I was just working from memory and got it wrong (AD 160 was the correct year). But just to show that such dissent (which you claimed does not exist) is out there a quick Google got me this.

The fact remains that scholars agree on a 90s AD date for John.

The fact remains that this is not a fact. I’ve demonstrated that scholars do not agree and you have not presented any evidence to back up your assertion.

Indeed, I agree. But I didn't say that.

You’ll find you did. Hence the quotes.

Quintillian verifies that a disputed aspect of the Gospel account is ture.

Where does he say this?

Julian, like many others, sheds light on the early church by sharing his opinions and these opinions corroborate the NT accounts.

Where does he say this?

In a Humian sense, I can still make qualitative assessment sof the value of the faith-based statement, such that empirically supported beliefs have more appeal to undisputed universiality than a religious belief. While the claim "The earth revolves around the sun" remains strictly faith-based, we recognise that the category of faith is entirely different than a statement such as "The homeopathic remedy cured my cancer" which in turn is very different to the statment "Jesus of Nazareth is the promised Messiah".

That has no relevance to you playing with words earlier. Outside of being another attempt to play with words, that is.

We have reason to think that Matthew and John (and maybe John Mark) were, in that we have reason to think they were either disciples or apostles of Jesus. But where do you draw this comment from?

From the fact that the authorship of the Gospels and that the integrity of the original texts is disputed.

Islam is a skeptical report. I clarified earlier in the thread that I meant to distinguish a skeptical record (of which there are many) from a conflicting record (which would be a record written by someone at or near the events).

Actually most of the apocryphal Gospels such as of Mary, Thomas, the Egyptians and Pistis Sophia would disagree significantly.

At the risk of annoying you, I think you are witty and that wittiness comes with a certain arrogance that makes reading your responses very enjoyable.

And I do not believe that this was the meaning behind your earlier comment.

Let me put it this way, are you somehow more capable of discerning truth or applying logic than someone from 1005AD or 0005AD? Discounting the mountainous extra data at your disposal, you are in no way more intellectually capable than a Brehon Irishman from pre-Norman times. The idea that you have an intellectual advantage by dint of your fortuitous placement on the chronology of civilisation is flawed.

The rules of logic have not changed, so no we are not more capable of discerning truth or applying logic than someone from 1005AD or 2005AD. However the flaw of logic is that it is axiomatic and if we make false assumptions then no matter how perfect our logic is, our conclusions will inevitably be false. And in this regard we are probably in a better position to discern truth.

Your problem in this discussion is you have been attempting to sit in two camps; one of faith and one of cold reason. Your axioms are essentially based on faith, and so you fall into the trap of attempting to justify premises that you accepted before applying reason. Your logic is perfect thereafter; unfortunately it is these axioms that are being challenged.

bus77

mycroft wrote:

I do however have a vast amount of data at my disposal, and a greater understanding of how my environment works.

So do trekies. But nevertheless you still get in-depth enjoyment of fiction.

tomireland

Muslum scum on here slagging the catholic church. We all know yer agenda! Filth!

goin'_to_the_PS

your not backing up anything you say, why do you feel there filth

rsynnott

Oh, don't worry about him, he's some sort of troll thing. He just posted on the LGBT board with the "AIDS is a punishment from god" ****e.

tomireland

Everyone knows yer Muslum scum here to convert!

rsynnott

tomireland wrote:

Everyone knows yer Muslum scum here to convert!

No, no, I'm not a fan of any Abrahamic religion, to be honest

goin'_to_the_PS

tomireland wrote:

Everyone knows yer Muslum scum here to convert!

you clearly are not a member of any religion(like me) if you were you'ld realise that to judge someone is a sin

rsynnott

goin'_to_the_PS wrote:

you clearly are not a member of any religion(like me) if you were you'ld realise that to judge someone is a sin

It's funny how often the obstensibly religious forget that one. And the whole love for your fellow man thing. And in fact ALL the good elements of christianity.

tomireland

also pagans who have no morality..

goin'_to_the_PS

pagans are nearly non exsistant....

tomireland

pagans are nearly non exsistant....

True. Thank God for that