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Post by kingedmund on Sept 15, 2015 3:48:00 GMT
All beliefs stems from the same place. You just have different people organize there belief system and then religion is created. Then they recruit to grow. Add more "sheeples" to your congregation and you have arguments and crazy people.
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Post by robert on Sept 16, 2015 9:47:57 GMT
The hypothetical of the Jesus story holding up in court assumes a crime, what is the crime?
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Post by tangent on Sept 16, 2015 11:25:49 GMT
The hypothetical of the Jesus story holding up in court assumes a crime, what is the crime? My assertion is that if an independent judge were to review all the evidence of the Jesus story in a court of law, using modern analytical methods, it is highly likely he or she would conclude that Jesus' death and resurrection did take place essentially as described in the Bible.
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Post by robert on Sept 22, 2015 9:59:14 GMT
It was Lee Strobel's book that first proposed this wasn't it?
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Post by tangent on Sept 22, 2015 12:11:29 GMT
No, it was Frank Morison who first undertook critical analysis of the resurrection story, as far back as 1930.
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Post by Moose on Sept 27, 2015 22:02:57 GMT
Eh Steve I know we've had this conversation before but I have no idea where on earth you get this idea from. HOW precisely would it stand up? really seriously... there is virtually no independent evidence.
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Post by JoeP on Sept 28, 2015 14:42:46 GMT
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Post by Miisa on Sept 28, 2015 18:57:26 GMT
I have been meaning to read The Empty Tomb, where Robert M. Price deals with at least Morrison's book, but I am too cheap to buy it.
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Post by tangent on Sept 28, 2015 21:21:07 GMT
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Post by Moose on Sept 28, 2015 21:23:13 GMT
I am too cheap to buy a book that is unlikely to persuade me either. And if he was so damn altruistic he would have made it free
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Post by tangent on Sept 28, 2015 23:53:20 GMT
Ah, but people won't take a free book because they don't think it has any value.
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Post by Moose on Sept 30, 2015 0:47:00 GMT
I am not sure if you're being tongue in cheek but you don't half say some things that, to me at least, are weird, Steve . The idea that the Jesus story would stand up in court is, to me, incredible, in its most literal sense. I am rereading book seven of the Harry Potter series atm. In it, Harry expresses his exasperation at all the things that Dumbledore did not tell him when he (DD) was alive, and ponders as to why this might be. Hermione (?) wonders if it might be because he was supposed to work it out for himself and Harry gets rightfully angry at this suggestion, pointing out that this is not a game or a laugh or a dare ... this is life or death. And that sums up how I feel about the Bible (I suspect it sums up how Rowling feels about it too though I could be wrong). When it's a question of LIFE or DEATH you don't just leave vague hints/traces, or at least you should not. You spell it out: this is how it's meant to be and this is what you're supposed to do. And that you, a sensible and intelligent man (who believes that the earth is considerably older than 4000 years) can think that just ONE story with no outside support happens to stand up apart from the millions of other stories of how we managed to get here (and it conveniently happens to be the most prevalent story in the age and culture you were raised in) is rather strange to me. My friend Islam believes in his own religion for much the same reason and says that you and yours are wrong. Me? I think you're both wrong.
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Post by Wholly Goats on Sept 30, 2015 1:27:31 GMT
*sigh*
Satan....is not atheistic. This is because Satan, as a concept, is a theistic concept. It was invented specifically to fulfill certain roles within the mythic context. As I understand the satanic concept as most English-speakers perceive it, it was invented as part of the Zoroastrian eschatology and then subsequently adopted as a useful concept by grateful Hebrews...and then on to Christians and then us. So, from my view, a theistic Satan makes much more sense than an atheistic one. My understanding is that the Satan figure is portrayed as a 'demigod', on par with the Christ, with whom he shares Final Judgment duties. But then, I suspect his character and role within the dogmas varies by the set of believers and the mythos they have constructed.
In my view, a 'church' is naught but a corporate description of a group of believers.
The Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster was, and is, satire. But, they are a group of like believers, and they believe in continuing the satire through a commitment to continuation of the meme. More power to them.
I suspect that this all links back to the ongoing threats here in the US of erecting large public statues to Baphomet, whom most garden-variety US christians would immediate identify as 'Satan'. It seems that on occasion, when some local religious whackjob wants to do something intrusive, like erect a huge Ten Commandment tablet on the county courthouse lawn, an organization of 'satanists' trot out their desire to add to the public display with their huge bronze Baphomet statue. It tends to dampen the ardor of the 10 Commandment whackjobs. Those attempting to maintain a stricter separation between church and state like that these initiatives by 'satanists' are effective and are, as noted above, a mite jealous. I say more power to them. I don't care whether they believe what they assert, or not. That they have effectively drawn the lines of the public debate and made it clear why the initial project (the huge public religious display on public property) should not go ahead. The same with the Pastafarians. I understand that, in Texas somewhere, there is an active congregation of Hindus who have suggested that if a 10 Commandments monument goes up that a large stone Hanuman statue be added to the public display....more power to them (not to actually attain the placement, but to urge that it join the 10 Commandments), a monkey-faced god on display in a Texas city.
Unfortunately, many who would desecrate the public space with religious artifacts don't tend to listen to those who hold other beliefs. They are cultural majorities and tend to think that everybody think like they do, or should. But in these cases, what is being used is those peoples' antipathy to seeing the messages, or the images, of other beliefs having any exposure to their community. They tend to think their particular religion should be the only one which has the ability to place its religious message out in the community, under the protection of the community, but they will sacrifice that 'privilege' if they can exclude others. It is a backhanded compromise arrived at by appealing to the bigotry of bigots.
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Post by tangent on Sept 30, 2015 1:29:25 GMT
When it's a question of LIFE or DEATH you don't just leave vague hints/traces, or at least you should not. You spell it out: this is how it's meant to be and this is what you're supposed to do. And that you, a sensible and intelligent man (who believes that the earth is considerably older than 4000 years) can think that just ONE story with no outside support happens to stand up apart from the millions of other stories of how we managed to get here (and it conveniently happens to be the most prevalent story in the age and culture you were raised in) is rather strange to me. I'm wondering if you mistake what I'm saying and think I'm a literalist. What do you mean by "one story with no outside support happens to stand up apart from the millions of other stories of how we managed to get here"? That sounds very much like the Genesis story. I'm not a literalist, I don't take the first seven chapters of Genesis literally and I'm certainly not claiming that the Genesis story will stand up in court. If you think I'm a literalist, no wonder you think some of the things I say are weird I'd like to place limits on what I'm claiming. Earlier in this thread, I said this: My assertion is that if an independent judge were to review all the evidence of the Jesus story in a court of law, using modern analytical methods, it is highly likely he or she would conclude that Jesus' death and resurrection did take place essentially as described in the Bible. By "the Jesus story" I meant the last few days of his life and death (and subsequent resurrection). Nothing else. I am saying that an independent judge would probably decide that the narrative of those last few days was consistent and very likely to be essentially correct. Is the idea of a judge coming to that conclusion really incredible? "When it's a question of LIFE or DEATH you don't just leave vague hints/traces, or at least you should not." - I wouldn't call the New Testament vague hints/traces. Christianity is spelt out in fine detail. And the narrative of the final few days is dealt with by four different authors in a fair bit of detail. But you're right, it's not written in stone. Maybe Jesus should have arranged a video recording. But would that make any difference, would people think it was genuine?
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Post by whollygoats on Sept 30, 2015 1:41:10 GMT
The hypothetical of the Jesus story holding up in court assumes a crime, what is the crime? My assertion is that if an independent judge were to review all the evidence of the Jesus story in a court of law, using modern analytical methods, it is highly likely he or she would conclude that Jesus' death and resurrection did take place essentially as described in the Bible. Perhaps we should try a court of law in a non-Abrahamic culture, like India, or China? You are biased because of your belief. I think if those 'concluding' were honest, no matter what their individual background, they'd state that no conclusion could be made because of inadequate evidence. I personally disagree with your assertion. I think Jesus, and in particular, the Christ, are literary inventions. A mythic one and one accreted over generations and subsequently redacted, edited and embellished. As for courts of law, they are hardly always worthy sources of adjudication. I can think of all too many miscarriages of justice to consider them to be definitive.
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Post by whollygoats on Sept 30, 2015 1:49:29 GMT
No, it was Frank Morison who first undertook critical analysis of the resurrection story, as far back as 1930. I'm sorry, Steve, it goes further back than that. The "historicity" debate has been rehashed several times over the past two centuries. I think we are now in the midst of the fourth "Quest". If you have not read him, I highly recommend Albert Schweitzer's The Quest of the Historical Jesus, published in 1906, wherein he reviews the intellectual background of criticism on the topic for the prior century and renders his opinion, which is neither particularly hopeful for historicists, nor agreeable to mythicists. I have a copy of Joseph McCabe's The Myth of the Resurrection and Other Essays, and it dates from 1925. This kind of stuff is around and accessible and has been for quite a long time.
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Post by whollygoats on Sept 30, 2015 1:55:05 GMT
I've spent that past twenty years reading back and forth across the criticism and commentary around the 'historical Jesus'. I started out back in the 1990's intrigued with what a real, historical Jesus might have been like and went in search of that. I read my way through the works of some of the best known historians who'd dealt with the topic. I even read major portions of Josephus in translation. I engaged in ongoing conversations on line and amongst my friends. I started out thinking he was probably real and historical and have, after all the time and reading and research and discussion, come to think that Jesus is a literary construct. A myth.
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Post by whollygoats on Sept 30, 2015 4:49:27 GMT
"When it's a question of LIFE or DEATH you don't just leave vague hints/traces, or at least you should not." - I wouldn't call the New Testament vague hints/traces. Christianity is spelt out in fine detail. And the narrative of the final few days is dealt with by four different authors in a fair bit of detail. But you're right, it's not written in stone. Maybe Jesus should have arranged a video recording. But would that make any difference, would people think it was genuine? ROFLMAO. The New Testament? A mishmosh of variant accounts with contradictory details and reworked rantings from multiple pseudonymous authors writing, editing, and embellishing over a span of multiple hundreds of years in multiple languages. It is nothing but a bunch of reworked polemical tales sacralized into an idol. It is a confused handbook of dogma. The New Testament is not an historical chronology. For crying out loud, even the gospels get historical and geographical details wrong in one account and correct them, but add in completely insane and entirely unbelievable dreck in its place in another. It is myth, pure and simple. Frankly, I think it is entirely unbelievable, so I have no delusions of 'genuine'.
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Post by tangent on Sept 30, 2015 8:35:23 GMT
Yes, we've been through this many times in the past so I hope you'll forgive me if I don't answer your points. I know I'm biased. And you're biased too, and every book I've come across appears to be biased. Yes, you're right about Frank Morison's book not being the first of its kind. First in modern times, maybe. But what struck me is that it was written by a man who was trying to prove the opposite. He was biased the wrong way for the book to be written. Better than most books I've seen. [The New Testament] is nothing but a bunch of reworked polemical tales. Acts was, for the most part, written by an eye witness. Paul's letters were written by him (or more accurately dictated by him). Only the gospels could be described as reworked polemic tales. Jo was complaining that "when it's a question of life or death, you spell it out. Or you should do." Acts and Paul's letters spell it out. I was answering her point. I was, incidentally, not trying to prove the correctness of the Jesus story but answering Jo's point that an independent judge cannot possibly form an opinion of the Jesus story. (At least, I think that was Jo's point.) That's a rather different matter. Bias is hugely important but I hadn't realised how important it was until I read the arguments for and against mercury poisoning by industrial concerns. I read one set of arguments (by a protagonist) and became convinced that industry was poisoning the oceans. I read another set of arguments (by an antagonist) and became convinced it was all balone, (albeit a little suspicious). It was only when I read a review by an independent researcher that I realised what was going on. Both sides were presenting only those arguments that supported their views and ignoring the opposing arguments. It opened my eyes to the effect of bias. And so it is with the Gospel story. Arguments by people who are biased carry little weight in my eyes. It goes without saying, therefore, that you shouldn't believe anything I say because I'm biased
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Post by whollygoats on Sept 30, 2015 12:48:02 GMT
Yes, we've been through this many times in the past so I hope you'll forgive me if I don't answer your points. I know I'm biased. And you're biased too, and every book I've come across appears to be biased. Yes, you're right about Frank Morison's book not being the first of its kind. First in modern times, maybe. But what struck me is that it was written by a man who was trying to prove the opposite. He was biased the wrong way for the book to be written. Better than most books I've seen. In other words, his final conclusion agrees with your bias. Fine. I don't believe claptrap like 'resurrection from the dead'. That you do and think that some first century Hebrew not only was resurrected, but went about instructing his followers after his death and then 'ascended'...well, it detracts from your ability to be convincing. To me, and, I would think, to any 'independent judge'. No, they don't. Which of Paul's letters? It makes a difference because scholars are quite sure that there are several pseudo 'Pauls', and their polemical points of view vary throughout the NT and there is bit of an argument over which are 'real' and which are spurious knockoffs with dogmatic cross-purposes. And, it is quite strongly argued that the 'real' Paul's works were subsequently edited to insert things like his infamous directive for women to STFU. All of the works are infused with potential fraud; they've been edited, redacted, expurgated, reedited, annotated and translated multiple times. Then...There is Steve Mason's excellent hypothesis that both Luke and Acts were written by the same author, but that that author was in no way a 'witness' to the events. Indeed, the author was most likely far from the events in both time and space. So, how did the author get so much detail so convincingly? He used Josephus along with an early version of GMark, amongst other possible sources. Yep...We are all biased, all right. I tend to 'weight' things which others assert based on a number of measures. You, Steve, are biased to believe the screamingly impossible outright. You read that stuff and believe things included which are physically impossible merely because it is in a text which has been sacrilized. And then you assert that they were 'historical'. That makes it quite easy for me to dismiss.
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Post by whollygoats on Sept 30, 2015 16:46:05 GMT
Heh...I looked up Morison's book online, only to find that the latest printing includes a forward by Lee Strobel. Whoa. Talk about a red flag. Then, the site also offers up Josh McDowell's latest piece of dreck. Multiple red flags now. Morison is being lined up with some of the worst examples of christian hacks engaged in intellectual masturbation. Strobel and McDowell are egregiouosly bad examples of 'scholarship'. But that is 'guilt by association' and I'd rather sample the work to determine whether it should be condemned out of hand like Strobel and McDowell.
I tell you what, Steve. I think you need to think a bit more outside your confining little intellectual box. How about I volunteer to read what I'm fairly sure will be a huge forkin' disappointment of 'evidence' that is Morison's Who Moved the Stone?, if you will agree to read Robert M. Price's Incredible Shrinking Son of Man: How Reliable Is the Gospel Tradition? Now, I'm quite sure that neither of us will change our positions, but at least we'll be able to trash our opponent's source with some understanding.
Are you up for it?
Oh, and as ever, if you want to read a real, unquestionably engaged and informed scholar on the background of the New Testament, you should read Burton Mack's Who Wrote the New Testament?: The Making of the Christian Myth. "Burton L. Mack is an author and scholar of early Christian history and the New Testament. He is John Wesley Professor emeritus in early Christianity at the Claremont School of Theology in Claremont, California. Mack is primarily a scholar of Christian origins, approaching it from the angle of social group formation." Not to worry, he thinks that Jesus was, most likely, historical.
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Post by whollygoats on Sept 30, 2015 17:12:42 GMT
Yes. Are you familiar with Peter Kirby's Early Christianity sites? If not, I encourage you to check them out. He also has a historical Jesus page where he provides links to 25 scholars whose works he breaks down into nine separate typifications of what an historical Jesus might have been like....25 scholars with nine different views? How is it that this fictional 'independent judge' going definitively to decide amongst them? So, again...yes, your claim in incredible.
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Post by whollygoats on Sept 30, 2015 17:34:59 GMT
The hypothetical of the Jesus story holding up in court assumes a crime, what is the crime? Fraud.
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Post by Miisa on Sept 30, 2015 19:11:36 GMT
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Post by JoeP on Sept 30, 2015 19:56:05 GMT
Ooh. That actually gives an answer relevant to the OP. LaVeyan Satanism doesn't see Satan as an actual God or supernatural being, just a symbol. ... But then, why use the word Satan? It doesn't seem entirely honest.
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Post by tangent on Sept 30, 2015 23:50:16 GMT
This was what I said, WG, in my first response. Yes, we've been through this many times in the past so I hope you'll forgive me if I don't answer your points. I don't think anything can be gained from this discussion and so I will leave you in your thoughts (I nearly said rants but I have no wish to be unkind).
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Post by whollygoats on Sept 30, 2015 23:52:19 GMT
Sure. Walk away from it. It obviously is not worth defending.
The fear of reading another opinion is unbecoming in you, Tangent.
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Post by tangent on Oct 1, 2015 0:09:28 GMT
Nice try, but no. I said 'no' very courteously right at the beginning of this conversation and 'no' it is.
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Post by whollygoats on Oct 1, 2015 0:29:09 GMT
Nice try, but no. I said 'no' very courteously right at the beginning of this conversation and 'no' it is. If you're going to do such things, then you need to not shovel your bullshit on to the table in the first place. Take note...I will call you on this every time I catch you doing it.
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Post by Moose on Oct 1, 2015 0:36:14 GMT
Yes of course it is. It is claiming that something supernatural happened - ie that a man was raised from the dead. Even if you ignore that (fairly significant, wouldn't you say? ) part of the story I still don't see how a court could reliably find that the story of Jesus's death was true, given that the evidence for it, outside of the New Testament, is sketchy at best .. virtually non existent at worst. But not only is the NT talking about the death of a man that can't be conclusively proven to have existed in the first place, it's also claiming a supernatural occurrence after said man's death. And the independent evidence for THAT simply is not there. The fact that 'the bible says it happened' does not make it so. Find me a bunch of independent sources that back up the story of the Resurrection and I might start to take it seriously. But for now, I see no more evidence of it than I do of the stories of any other religion. What if I told you that I thought there was enough evidence of the existence of, say, BAcchus, for a court to conclude that such a person existed - and then the only 'evidence' I produced was that written by people with a vested interest? I don't have a problem with people having 'faith' in something .. I often wish that I did. But faith and empiricism are utterly irreconcilable. If the Christ story could be 'proven' by a court of law then .. why has it not been?
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