Freethought & Rationalism Archive

No Robots · 05-26-2006, 02:26 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Clivedurdle

May I recommend three tablespoons of Jung four times a day for the well being of humanity? He is particularly interesting on archetypes like Christ!

I went through a rather intense Jungian phase. I really liked this. The situation with Christ, though, is that no archetype can do justice to the man, not even the archetype of the divine itself.

Doug Shaver · 05-26-2006, 04:12 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by No Robots

But you have said you want to cure people of their belief in miracles

Yes, and some of them want to cure me of my disbelief.

Just so long as the cure attempted by both sides is limited to debate and involves no coercion, I don't see a problem with it.

Amaleq13 · 05-26-2006, 07:43 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Didymus

But we needn't presume any dementation or irrationality on the part of subsequent believers.

True. I don't think the "hysteria" part really applies in all cases and not in this one but only the essentially contagious nature of the belief/experience.

Sparrow · 05-26-2006, 08:54 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by No Robots

I think so, yes, in the sense that religion is a generalized distortion of thought, and belief in miracles is the specific manifestation of that distortion.

I'm no expert on eastern religions but I'm under the impression that The Tao and Buddhism do not postulate miracles. At least not in the same way as the Abrhamic ones.

Quote:

I am a Christian atheist. By that I mean that, yes, if you apply rational analysis to the question of Christ, you come to the conclusion that he is definitely someone who is useful to our conduct of life.

What teachings ascribed to Jesus do you think are unique to him?

Quote:

JM is gaining in profile. I have no problem with people promulgating it. Of course, I think it my duty to oppose it. I do think it dangerous, in the same way that I think it dangerous that some people believe that by blowing up themselves and others they get a ticket to heaven. Any ill-founded belief is dangerous. JM is particularly dangerous because it touches on something that is absolutely vital to the well-being of humanity, ie. our understanding of Christ. It is also my chief competitor for those who have broken free of religious dogma.

You seem to be saying that some knowledge of Christ is essential for the well being of humanity. As more than half of humanity is not Christian, I find that a little hard to go along with.

J-D · 05-27-2006, 03:27 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Clivedurdle

This is a very common way that religions started! Try William James Varieties of Religious Experience!

The leaders commonly had ecstatic experiences. Persiger has shown that by puting some volts through the right area of the brain, anyone can have a full blown religious experience.

Paul is an example of quite heavy visionary experience - rumour has it a symptom was loss of sight, with quite good education, adding one and one and getting twenty seven, with a bit of some older rituals and alchemy and the chance of finding favour with an emperor, result a world religion.

Not a bad explanation if the story is that Paul founded the Christian movement. But I've never heard anybody tell the story that way. The story seems to be that Paul came into a movement that already existed.

The idea of a religious movement starting with an individual who has a vision, or thinks they have, or at any rate says they have: that I can believe. Joseph Smith said he'd had a vision of the angel Moroni. But as far as I know, nobody else said that they'd had the same vision. It's the hypothesis of the Christian movement starting with a group of people all saying they'd had a common vision that I have some difficulty with.

J-D · 05-27-2006, 03:37 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Amaleq13

I tend to assume that it would have started with the reported experience of a single member of an existing group of Messiah-seekers subsequent to much Scripture studying (and fasting?) and that the experience spread by way of the psychological phenomenon referred to as "group think" or "mass hysteria".

You see, this sounds to me like an explanation of where early Christian ideas came from. I said that the point I stick on is the origin, not of Christianity-the-idea, but of Christianity-the-movement. You posit 'an existing group of Messiah-seekers', which means that we haven't really got an explanation for the origin of Christianity-the-movement until we have an explanation for the origin of this existing group.

Geetarmoore · 05-27-2006, 03:44 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by J-D

Not a bad explanation if the story is that Paul founded the Christian movement. But I've never heard anybody tell the story that way. The story seems to be that Paul came into a movement that already existed.

seems to be? The question is, what movement was Paul preaching to?

Quote:

Originally Posted by J-D

It's the hypothesis of the Christian movement starting with a group of people all saying they'd had a common vision that I have some difficulty with.

I don't know that anyone believes this - who believes, for example, that multiple people had the exact same vision at the exact same time. I for sure don't. I believe that once someone suggests a vision, other people can claim to have quite similar ones..

"I was abducted by aliens."...

"Me too! I was abducted by aliens too!"....

"Yea - we all were abducted by aliens!!".....

The way I read it, Paul was preaching on his revelational vision of Christ as the savior who was foretold in the Jewish scriptures, and he was writing to a community that was primed for just such an mystery idea.

Geetarmoore · 05-27-2006, 03:53 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by J-D

You posit 'an existing group of Messiah-seekers', which means that we haven't really got an explanation for the origin of Christianity-the-movement until we have an explanation for the origin of this existing group.

Robert Price does have some things to say about these pre-existing communities and their origins in his 'Deconstructing Jesus' book, IIRC..... I'd have to re-scan it in order to kick start my brain into remembering the details...

J-D · 05-27-2006, 04:45 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sparrow

But what do we know of what those other, earlier people believed? There are apparently no surviving writings. The difference in your anaolgy between Catholocism and Protestantism is that both survived the spilt. Is there any surviving group from Christian peoples prior to Paul? Do we even know if they all believed the same things or whether ther may have been multiple competing Christianities prior to Paul (I can see there are now).

So? Maybe we don't know anything of what they believed and maybe there's no way of finding out. That doesn't mean they didn't exist. Remember, my original point was about the origin of Christianity-the-organisation, not Christianity-the-idea.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sparrow

You seem to be assuming there was a shared experinence. I'm not sure that is supported by the evidence. I think all we can say is that after the fact, some people believed there was a shared experience.

OK. In fact, maybe all we can say is that some people said they had had a shared experience. But then, why did they believe, or why did they say, they had had a shared experience?

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sparrow

So if there was a live leader, what can we accurately say we know about his life?

I think I already said. I think we can deduce that the place and time of his life corresponded approximately with the conventional account in order to explain what we know about the time and place of the spread of the early Christian movement. Maybe we can't deduce anything else reliably: that depends on whether it's possible to develop a reliable methodology that could tell us what sort of distortions are likely to have been introduced in the course of the development of a tradition of this kind and what details, if any, are likely to be preserved reliably. If no such methodology is possible, then we can't know much about his life. So? I'm only saying that his existence at the centre of a religious following would provide an explanation for the origin of the Christian movement. That doesn't depend on knowing anything else about his life.

J-D · 05-27-2006, 04:50 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Amaleq13

You are simply wrong. People claim to share visions and dreams all the time. It is a psychological phenomenon that is entirely explicable without appeal to a belief in the impossible.

I've never heard of this before. Can you tell me more?

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