MOJO-JOJO

Judas H. Priest! You need a spell checker Meta!

lpetrich

MC:
Well its not all gravy you know. It's also the same tradition that gave us hospitals,

LP:
Older than Christianity. What would one call temples to Asklepios? And I note that such temples do have testimonials from cured patients written on their walls. So does anyone here plan to sacrifice a rooster to Asklepios when one recovers from some disease?

MC:
modern scinece,

LP:
Which grew out of the rediscovery of pagan learning. It was classical-Greek pagans who were the first really serious scientists, and what's really fun about that is that these tended to reject the literal truth of their society's religion.

MC:
bill of rights, Writ of habius corups {that's habeus corpus}, the basic concept of constitutional rights in general,

LP:
Totally, completely unbiblical. Republics and democracies and legislatures and elections and so forth were ultimately inspired by various Greek and Roman and Germanic examples. The word "democracy" comes from Greek, and the word "republic" was originally applied to the old Roman Republic.

By contrast, the Bible has only one theory of government: the Divine Right of Kings.

And the spelling is "habeas corpus" ("you should have the body") -- it refers to the right to be present at one's trial.

MC:
the first abolution {I assume abolition?} group in America, the first woman's sufferage group in America, the underground rail road, the abolition movement in England,

LP:
There were Christian churches on both sides of the slavery debate, but the Bible expresses only complete acceptance of slavery. And there weren't many churches that had supported 19th-cy. feminist movements either.

MC:
statistical problablity, {probability}, internal evidence as a criterion for the validity of a text, and a hot {host} of other good things that made Western civilization.

LP:
Nothing to do with the Bible. Where in the Bible does anyone evaluate competing hypotheses?

Koyaanisqatsi

I just wanted to go back to what Meta was originally intending with his first post and make a few comments.

After all, the only input Nomad has provided is to say, in essence, "it doesn't matter what the Bible says, God reveals himself only to believers in mysterious ways," effectively negating the worth of any and all input from Nomad in this discussion, but then, that's Nomad.

Not an insult; just a sequitur from your declaratives, though I will have use for your calls to personal whim later.

Oh, and, by the way Meta, I also suffer from lysdexia, so I feel for ya'!

Though "pooding" still gave me a chuckle.

First, how could you possibly know in what way they were "inspired?"

Second, why doesn't this fact automatically negate any possible claims of a coherent doctrine?

From what I can discern, you have been arguing that the whole is not dependent on the parts, yet the parts contain the contradictions and derive the whole.

That is simply impossible, unless you start with the assumption of the whole (the presupposition if you will) and work backwards, dismissing (or apologizing for) the nagging, illogical contradictions along the way.

You have claimed that there are no contradictions in regard to the "biggies," shall we say, but that is not true.

I defy you to write a complete account of the resurrection, for example, without leaving a single element out from any of the accounts (or relying upon apologetics).

You'll find immediately that it cannot be done. Your argument around this will no doubt be, "Well, the common elements are death, dissapearance of the body, witnesses, ascendance," therefore the individual elements are not important, but that's looking at it ass backwards and granting allowances that can not be supported.

If I write a mythical story and then another author hears my story ten years later and writes his version of it--changing details in such a way as to contradict details I had originally written, but nonetheless it's the same plotline, which is the only important element to a myth--and then another author hears this version (or perhaps my original version, which) ten to twenty years later and writes his own version of the same basic plot, embellishing and aggrandizing the myth with new information (some of which also contradicts the original and the revision) then we have the synoptics; all three versions representing poetic interpretations of a myth. No problem; it's just folklore and everyone can learn something from the literary device used.

But this isn't the claim of the cult member. They claim that the synoptics have, perhaps, some element of embellishment and error (Meta's 10%), but the "plotline" is one hundred percent true and factually occured.

Then we have a very different scenario that is not found within the NT. In the following deconstruction, I will not be equating "direct experience" with "God's inspiration," as, to the best of my knowledge, the authors of the synoptics do not claim that what they wrote was written through God's inspiration; this is claimed about them. I could be wrong, but it doesn't effect my point. To whit:

If I write a factual account of an historical event based upon my direct experience with that account and another author ten years later writes their version of the same historical event based upon their direct experience and another author ten to twenty years later writes their factual account of the same historical event based upon their own direct experience and the details of our accounts contradict one another, then you've got a very serious puzzle to figure out. Which of the three is the most accurate account, allowing you to therefore discard the other two? After all, from an historical standpoint, it is the accuracy of the information that is at issue, not necessarily that there are several versions of the same account. Especially since the three do in fact contradict each other in the details of the historical event.

If we had three historical accounts of the World Trade Center attack, all of which contradicted each other in the details of the attack, we wouldn't say, "Well, let's keep all three to give us a more complete idea of what happened." We'd research which of the three was the most accurate and discard the other two as being unreliable and/or factually incorrect.

That's what happens to historical, documentary accounts. All of the factually incorrect versions of the event are discarded, not held up as equal as some form of proof of the event through numbers.

The same should have happened with the synoptic accounts, if in fact they were historical accounts of factual events. The fact that they weren't is strong evidence for the mythology instead of the documentary value of these works.

If they are to be taken as historical accounts of factual events, then precisely the opposite of that declarative is true.

If they are nothing more than what Nomad claims--personal myths about personal gods--then you're correct.

Given what you and Nomad have claimed about God's mysterious revelationary nature, this is a non-sequitur.

Again, based on what you and Nomad have claimed here, such a non-sequitur is not tenable. You are doing nothing more than making irrational and unsupportable declaratives about something you have granted cannot be known.

There is no possible way you could ever know which "witness" was telling the truth and which one was telling a lie, either according to humanity, God or the forces against God alleged to also exist by these alleged "witnesses," so this declarative is also untenable.

False on all counts. It is either an historical account of factual beings or it is not. If such matters as history, science and geography, to use just your examples, are not recorded correctly, then this negates the validity of the whole.

If Jesus says the smallest seed is a mustard seed, for example and this is factually incorrect, then this is proof that Jesus could not be the omniscient, creator-of-mustard-seeds-being alleged by you to factually exist.

To make allowances for such an obvious mistake--i.e., to apologize for it--instantly places you in denial and the entire factual claim is negated, if, indeed, there is any such claim.

If I were you, Meta, I'd stick to Nomad's approach. "If it ain't real, who gives a shit? After all, in my mind, nothing's real if this isn't real so fuck it."

lpetrich

Nomad:
... In a universe created by a single being, it is fully rational to assume that the initiative for knowledge about Him, who He is, and what He wants from us will from Him to us.

LP:
However, humanity is only a small part of the Universe, and if the Universe had a creator, then that being may not have much interest in our species -- if any at all.

I remember from my childhood that I would look underneath sidewalks and see lots of pillbugs. I considered them moderately interesting, but I had no special desire to be their ruler, and I certainly was not obsessed with their sex lives.

Nomad

I do not follow your line of reasoning at all Emperor. First, I gave you the clearest guidelines I could find to help you understand how we can know God's Word and Will. We do this by faith, through His Holy Spirit, His Word, AND the Church. I even referenced an in depth explanation of how this works, written by St Augustine over 1600 years ago. I invite you to read it, as much of what he has to say will no doubt, surprise you.

Your objection appears to be that since there is disagreement, no one should be viewed as right, but such an approach in any other area of knowledge would be pure nonsense. Just looking at morality alone, because some think some things are moral, and other that they are immoral, are we to reject all models for living a moral life?

As you can see, such an opinion would be nonsensical, and would lead to complete social chaos.

Nomad

Nomad

First, I already know that you do not see the assumptions built into your assertions above. Miracles have been proven to be true scientifically, yet you reject that proof. Further, it is a logical impossibility to assert that God(s) has been disproven by science. As I said in an earlier post, an omnipotent God will reveal Himself as He wishes, not as we might wish. Finally, you continue to assert that I reject miraculous claims made on behalf of other supernatural entities when I have already told you that I do not automatically reject such claims.

If you will not listen to me, and continue in your own stubborn insistence on knowing what you do not know, especially about what I believe, then I have no idea how to carry on a rational discussion with you Michael. At some point you must be willing to listen to what I say, rather than putting words and thoughts in my head. For now you appear content to argue your strawmen, and that is your right, but I will not continue this conversation until you agree to address my points, rather than your distorted ideas of what my views really are.

Nomad

lpetrich

The hypothesis that mystical experiences were set up by God so that he/she/it could communicate to us is, IMO, unconvincing, because there are more efficient ways of accomplishing that task.

As a programmer, I qualify as a creator, so I have an idea of what might be reasonable for a creator to do.

Jesse

lpetrich:
The hypothesis that mystical experiences were set up by God so that he/she/it could communicate to us is, IMO, unconvincing, because there are more efficient ways of accomplishing that task.

The other problem, I think, is that the more people cultivate these experiences, the more likely they are to start saying things which don't square very well with Christian theology. For example, it's a pretty common thread among mystics to say that an individual's true self or true nature is in some sense identical to "God," whereas Christianity says that can only be true of one guy, Jesus Christ. Likewise, mystics from diverse traditions like Zen and Sufism all tend to agree that part of the goal of mysticism is to move beyond "dualistic" thinking, whereas traditional Christianity is dualistic through-and-through (most notably in their belief that all humans will recieve either eternal salvation or eternal damnation, with no second chances). It's certainly "interesting" that so many of the serious mystics within the Christian tradition ended up getting branded as heretics at some point.

Toto

Where?? Did they collect the million dollars from Randi??

Kosh

Yes Nomad, Please:

SHOW US THE MONEY!!!!!