Johnny Skeptic

There is in fact a perversion of scientific evidence. Regarding homosexuality, please visit www.johnnyskeptic75.com, and www.johnnyskeptic775.com. Regarding physician assisted suicide, please visit www.euthanasia7.com. If you read those articles and still haven't changed your mind, then I challenge you to debate those issues with me at the GRD forum or the MF&P forum.

countjulian

By the same token, Jesus' admonishment to the young man to sell all he has and follow him could "easily be slotted into the category of traditional Roman values." Same thing with anything else that was said by Jesus or Paul about poverty and simplicity.

Perhaps a chrei from the life of Crates could be compared

And also this

Point being? There were lots of rich Christian bishops. Even Paul whined about needing more money in his epistles.

But much the smae could be said of the church, especially the early church. After all, you had the deacons, then the priests, then the bishops, and amongst the lay people you had an "aristocracy" of Christ-likness; and the "virgins" and the "widows" were an incredibly self-segraget and esteemed "community within the community", even in the letters of Paul.

But according to Epictetus, Cynics stood for the same thing, and he uses much more violent illustration

Why did not Rome think such talk seditious? Why, he was circumventing Roman authority, appealing strait to God over Rome's head! Stoics/Cynics to lions!

countjulian

I'm not getting your point. Neither did Christianity.

Not a single church father spoke out against slavery; many had slaves. The church later decided slaves could not be priests (pope Leo), unlike in various pagan cults. the decision, according to Leo, was not because of legal complications, but because their sheer vilness would "pollute" the ecclesiastical office. Epictetus was a former slave; how many former slaves were prominent Christian leaders? You saw my quote from Seneca about slavery, but here it is again.

Without wanting abolition, I hardly see how you could get more radical. At a council in Spain in 313, the church decided that maid who beat their slaves to death were to be punished with, get this, 1 year without communion! OMG! That's tough Christiant anti-slavery. Ramsay MacMullen in "Christianity & Paganism in the Fourth to Eighth Centuries" tells of one Christian Bishop, Caesarius, who was applauded by his biographer for restricting whippings on individual slaves to 39 lashes a day. What a guy!

Gamera

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Sure it did. That's the point. On it's face its theology contradicted slavery because it posited that every human was the a child of God. Leaving aside the fact that Paul says explicitly that there is no slave or freeman in Christ, this new way of looking at humanity ultimately lead to the anti-slavery movement in Europe and America, which as an historical fact was almost exclusively a Christian movement.

Paul did. The fact that "church fathers' didn't follow what the NT texts teach is hardly a condemnation of the NT texts, but rather the church fathers.

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Yeah, institutional Christianity went far astray from the NT texts. Thank God real Christians returned to the text and at great personal cost created the abolitionist movement that ended slavery in Europe and America.

Gamera

[QUOTE=Haran]They think dinosaurs roamed the earth before the ark was set afloat. They are a joke and have nothing to do with the bible.



Not bitter, I simply oppose it to the core of my being for hijacking the name of Christianity for its odious political goals. I really can't make myself clearer, can I? But go ahead and defend them, if you must.

Uh, "set science" doesn't exist. All we have is theories. Typical religious right claptrap.

Because the liberal left embodies the plain values of the gospel as set forth in the plain language of the gospels, which you and the religious right have to ignore or argue elaborately against in order to promote your odious political agenda.

What do you know about what I listen to or watch, and who cares? What counts is what the religious right teaches, which is contrary to the gospel message, and you've internalized their ugly arguments. Sad really.

Typical religious right claptrap.

The gospel has plain language about how to treat the poor and about eschewing wealth. It's as plain as day. They teach against plain language. And so apparently do you.

You just don't get it -- the gospel teaches that we "remember" the godly by our relationship with people. There is no Christianity without a loving relationship with people, and the religious right is steeped in hatred and materialism.

Read Matthew 25 and get back with us.

Gamera

You've lost the train of your own argument. You argued that Christianity was a fiction that spread due to agressive wars of conversion. I pointed out that your own expert quoted by you, says that the Christian message itself was successful in dealing with existential issues important to people, and hence, it spread.

You replied by attacking the ethics of Christianity and I rebutted that claim.

This rebuts your point.

Johnny Skeptic

My expert Rodney Stark, and all of his numerous corroborative sources, attributed the growth of the early Christian church entirely to secular evidence, not to God's involvement. Don’t you think that they considered arguments like yours? If early Christians were more ethical than anyone else, that does not necessarily prove that it was because of God. At any rate, since when will good ethics get anyone into heaven?

I told you in another thread that it is my position that God is not ethical. If God is not ethical, then what difference does it make if early Christians were ethical? No belief system can be any better than its source, and if you do not wish to defend the ethics of God, I will win by default.

God's priorities are indeed suspect, and suggest that he does not exist. A loving God's #1 priority would have to be insuring that as many people as possible go to heaven, and as few people as possible go to hell. God has not done that. Today, if Jesus made some more appearances, surely some people would become Christians who were not previously convinced, and surely they deserve that chance. Nostradamus, Edgar Cayce, and other historical characters, attracted lots of followers based upon much less evidence that the miracles that the Bible attributes to Jesus.

Consider the following Scriptures:

Matthew 14:14 And Jesus went forth, and saw a great multitude, and was moved with compassion toward them, and he healed their sick.

Mark 8:2-3 I have compassion on the multitude, because they have now been with me three days, and have nothing to eat: And if I send them away fasting to their own houses, they will faint by the way: for divers of them came from far.

John 3:16 For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.

Luke 15:10 Likewise, I say unto you, there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner that repenteth.

Johnny: Now really, are you going to try to tell me that Jesus had compassion upon people because of their brief, temporal needs for physical healing and food, and suffered on the cross for mankind, and yet God refuses to do all that he can in order to insure that as many people as possible go to heaven, and as few people as possible go to hell? A loving God who was willing to give mankind something that cost him a lot would surely be much more willing to give mankind something that would cost him little, namely sending Jesus back to earth to make some more appearances. God could not possibly have anything to lose by doing that, and surely mankind would have much to gain.

To what extent would a loving God go in order to keep people from going to hell? Surely to a much greater extent than God has gone to. Is there anything that God can do in order to increase the number of people who will go to heaven? Of course there is and you know it.

Many Christians claim that there is a lot of evidence other than faith that reasonably proves that the Bible should be trusted, but they would surely reject THE VERY SAME EVIDENCE if the evidence said that everyone would go to hell. In other words, the number of eyewitnesses, the number of gospels, or the number of copies of ancient manuscripts would not matter at all, in fact, even if the evidence was twice as good as the evidence that is found in the Bible. In other words, even if the evidence had been just as good, or even twice as good, that Christians would go to hell, CHRISTIANITY WOULD NEVER HAVE BEGUN.

Regardless of the evidence, self-interest ALWAYS presumes that whenever a person is confronted by evidence that claims that he will go to hell, it is best to argue against the evidence, or if a person is uncertain to hope that the evidence was wrong. There would be no possible advantage in doing otherwise.

If a powerful being came from outer space, claimed be a God other than the God of the Bible, demonstrated FIRSTHAND in front of everyone in the world, not hearsay evidence like in the Bible, that he could destroy a mountain in one second, said that he was going to destroy the earth in six months, and left the earth, most Christians would hope that the supposed God would somehow not be able to carry out his threat. On the other hand, if a being from outer space came to earth, claimed that he was Jesus, and demonstrated THE EXACT SAME POWERS, Christians would hope, in fact assume, that the being was actually Jesus.

Hypothetical arguments are often excellent means of revealing inconsistent arguments. Christians frequently use them whenever they believe that it suits their purposes to do so. A good example is C. S. Lewis’ ‘Lord, Liar, or Lunatic.’ Evidence that cannot be credibly consistently applied is not evidence at all.

spin

You misunderstand Tacitus. As I said, there were different status provinces. Syria was a big one, at the proconsular level. They didn't call the ruler a proconsul though, because the emperor was officially only a permanent proconsul and someone of the same status wouldn't serve another -- hence the name game. Syria was an A grade province so to speak, while Judea after Archelaus was a C grade province, you know, one run by a prefect (and we're talking about a praefectus civitatium). It was under the wing of Syria. And serious disturbance was dealt with by Syria, because there were only a few cohorts in Judea and a prefect didn't have the power to wield more.

When H.Agrippa died the province would have gone into the hands of Syria, until the appointed procurator sent by Claudius could take over.

Tacitus has it right.


spin

gregor

Folks

Can't the off-topic meanderings be moved (somewhere to let Haran explain this gem)?

Johnny Skeptic

Gamera basically claims that early Christians made unprecedented, extraordinary ethical advances, by implication that such advances could only have come from God. Otherwise, all that you would have would be a group of people who made unusual ethical advances for entirely secular reasons.

Ethics is in fact a quite strange word to use here. Hebrews 8:6 says "But now hath he obtained a more excellent ministry, by how much also he is the mediator of a better covenant, which was established upon better promises." Now really, folks, if you invented a cure for cancer, which certainly would not be as helpful to the world as a much better covenant, would you withold it from the world for 4,000 years, although it was needed just as much 4,000 years prior, then give it to the world but allow hundreds of millions of people to die of cancer because you chose to give the cure only to people who were lucky enough to live within a certain geographic proximity to where the cure was developed, leave the spread of the cure up to the grossly inefficient means of transportation and communication of ancient times, and encourage people to believe that you were ethical?