ApostateAbe

I remember reading this in Mere Christianity years ago, and it struck as particularly objectionable. The full quote is:

Consequently atheism turns out to be too simple. If the whole universe has no meaning, we should never have found out that it has no meaning: just as, if there were no light in the universe and therefore no creatures with eyes, we should never know it was dark. Dark would be without meaning.

There is a specific fallacy, and it is the fallacy of conflation--using two very different definitions for one word at the same time. Lewis is using two different definitions of the word "meaning." When atheists say that the universe is without "meaning," then they mean that it is without purpose. They do not mean that the universe lacks definition and form, which is the second definition of "meaning," and it is the definition that Lewis relies on in his argument. If you were to choose just one definition or the other for the word "meaning," than Lewis's argument is either a strawman or it doesn't make coherent sense.
Yes, and I don't think any of us accept that Jesus was a great moral teacher. I am with Lewis on that point. Lewis neglects the belief ubiquitous among critics, however, that most of the things that Christians believe about Jesus are nothing more than legend derived from the religion itself. The New Testament texts show apparent vestiges of Jesus being a doomsday cult leader, which lend themselves to the model of Jesus being a "Devil of Hell," I suppose.

aa5874

Again, in the NT Jesus was NOT a doomsday cult leader. Enough "Chinese Whispers".

Jesus preached the GOOD NEWS of the Kingdom of God.

Mr 1:14 - .

Jesus Christ in the Synoptics wanted Jews to PRACTISE the LAWS of Moses and NOT just preach it.

bacht

I agree that this is what the reader is supposed to think. Clearly the NT presents itself as being by and for Jews who believe in Christ. But as our friend mountainman likes to point out, there's as much propaganda as truth in these pages.

You're putting me on right? When did any mainstream Jew, then or now, embrace Paul as one of the family? The epistles and Acts are full of his conflicts with regular Jews. The apocrypha present Paul as the mortal enemy of the good Torah-Jews James and Peter. Paul was about as kosher as Philo or Josephus in the eyes of the rabbis, which is hardly at all.

funinspace

C.S. Lewis also said in God in the Dock, that Noah's Deluge was a fairy tail, among some of the other grand fairy tales of the OT. He was an interesting man of his time.

No Robots

Well, you are welcome to follow mountainman down the road of de-judaizing conspiracy theory.

I'm afraid you are rather out of touch on this issue. See the following:

Jesus and Paul as Radical Jews

We all know that Jesus was Jewish, but Jews’ relationship to Jesus has been challenging, to say the least. And the apostle Paul, a Jew? Most think of Paul as the first Christian, not as a Jew at all. In this conversation, Matthew Hoffman (assistant professor of History and Jewish Studies at Franklin & Marshall College) and Pamela Eisenbaum (associate professor of Biblical Studies & Christian Origins at Iliff School of Theology), two leading Jewish Studies scholars, are in conversation with each other about the objects of each of their recent books, From Rebel to Rabbi: Reclaiming Jesus and the Making of Modern Jewish Culture (or via: amazon.co.uk) by Matthew Hoffman and Paul Was Not a Christian (or via: amazon.co.uk) by Pamela Eisenbaum. Authors will be available to sign books after the event.

"Modern Jewish Identity and the Apostle Paul: Pauline Studies as an Intra-Jewish Ideological Battleground" / Daniel R. Langton. In Journal for the Study of the New Testament December 2005 vol. 28 no. 2 217-258.

The Apostle Paul in the Jewish Imagination: A Study in Modern Jewish Christian Relations / Daniel Langton (2010).

bacht

But this just proves what I'm saying: Paul was always considered an outsider to the Jewish mainstream, and these scholars are trying to reverse that impression. Are you saying that this mission has been accomplished? If we went to Israel and asked some Orthodox about this what would they say? If we're talking about modern secular ecumenism that's a different kettle of fish.

I know Paul is linked to Gamaliel in Acts, but this seems to be part of his rehabilitation for catholic purposes.

Personally I see the NT as a kind of summary of fringe Judaism of the late 2nd temple period, filtered through pagan minds, and Paul is the primary "radical"

No Robots

And I am saying that if you identify and remove the pagan filters, which are quite minimal, you arrive at pure Judaism. What tends to happen, though, in Gentile scholarship, is that the Judaism is removed, leaving only tiny fragments of pagan filter:

And when we look afresh into all that has been said of these three [Gospels, Jesus, and Christianity], during the first twenty years of this century, we come to the conclusion that nearly all the many Christian scholars, and even the best of them, who have studied the subject deeply, have tried their hardest to find in the historic Jesus something which is not Judaism; but in his actual history they have found nothing of this whatever, since this history is reduced almost to zero. It is therefore no wonder that at the beginning of this century there has been a revival of the eighteenth and nineteenth century view that Jesus never existed.--Jesus of Nazareth: His life, times, and teaching / Joseph Klausner (London: Allen & Unwin, 1925), p. 105.

aa5874

That is just NOT so at all. The JEWS REJECTED Jesus as the Christ and the Son of the Blessed.

We have written sources of antiquity with the Jesus stories and even Peter DENIED ever knowing Jesus or was associated with him and the disciples ABANDONED Jesus when he was Arrested.

The Jesus story is EXTREMELY UNIQUE.

It was AFTER the resurrection on the Day of Pentecost in Acts of the Apostles that THOUSANDS of Jews began to Believe Jesus was Christ. See Acts 2

It is EXTREMELY IMPORTANT to FOLLOW the actual WRITTEN Chronology in the very NT.

The Jews REJECTED Jesus and caused him to be EXECUTED after being condemned to be GUILTY of Blasphemy.

The day Jesus died in the Gospels he was a BLASPHEMER and was NOT KNOWN by JEWS as Christ.

It is the author of Acts who claimed THOUSANDS of Jews believe Jesus was Christ.

The claim by the author of Acts is UNCORROBORATED by the Pauline writers. No where in the Pauline writings do the authors claim the JEWS believed Jesus was Christ.

This is the claim of a Pauline writer.

1Co 1:23 - So, in the Gospels, Jesus was REJECTED by the Jesus on the day he died and in the Pauline writings it is claimed Preaching Christ crucified was a STUMBLING BLOCK to the Jews.

There is NO INTERNAL or EXTERNAL CORROBORATION that the NT was for and by the Jews.

There is simply no credible source of antiquity, ZERO credible sources, that there were THOUSANDS of Jews in Jerusalem that believed the Jesus stories BEFORE the Fall of the Temple.

Perspicuo

This phrase will go into history:

:notworthy: :notworthy: :notworthy:

In fact, there are many posts on this thread that should be blogged and strongly publicized.

No Robots

The State of Israel has issued a stamp bearing the portrait of another Jewish outsider, Baruch Spinoza, who was actually expelled from the Jewish community. Who knows what the future may bring? Perhaps we shall live to see an Israeli stamp bearing likenesses of Shaul ha-Tarsi and Yehoshua ha-Notzri.