rlogan

hey Killer Mike -

Is this a hit and run posting? You got some responses here and then ran for the hills. Was it for lack of evidence beyond the appeal to "authority" of vested religious interests?



Juliana:


Did you have a thread here at IIDB where this theory was fleshed out some?
it's an out-of-the-blue proposition, for sure.

Lafcadio

LMAO, was there any significant (anthropo-caused) global warming in the so profoundly christian (in Europe) middle ages?
So many argue that christianity opposes science, so how could christianity be blamed for enviromental problems caused by the very science it opposes? This sounds like a "Blame Canada!" to me!

Socrates is stated to exist as a fact in most historiographies. But what about those who are thought probably to exist (instead of probably not to exist) like micenian atrides brothers which have no contemporary historical data to attest them?
On the other hand, there are so many personalities in the ancient history known to us from a single (or a set with the same source) document.

Vorkosigan

What kind of question is this? I never claimed that there was any global warming in the middle ages. What a bizarre comment! Rather, the strain of right-wing facist Christinsanity that is currently tightening its grip on the US is opposed to doing anything to prevent global warming.

Vorkosigan

Lafcadio

If you'd read my paragraph to its end, you'll see that my point is that christians as being anti-progressists cannot threaten the enviroment. It's selfcontradictory!

A lot of extremists threaten the enviroment. Why the christianity is to blame for that?
So, if I find an (extremist) atheistic organization that by its activity threatens the enviroment, is it justifiable for me to say "atheism threatens the enviroment"?

Vorkosigan

Whatever.

Again the strange logic. Reich Christians are just one of many fruitcake movements that threaten the environment. The fact that they are a threat does not mean that there are no other threats.

No, because atheism = lacking belief in Gods and has no other moral fallout. Whereas expecting Jesus to come back soon has a very definite effect on one's beliefs about how the world should be treated.

Vorkosigan

Lafcadio

I was making the point that the threatening actors have as common characteristic an extremist position. Being christian is irrelevant, and you cannot say that christianity (in its majority, or in its ideology) it's dangerous for enviroment! Again you answer to a sentence losing the point of the whole paragraph.

I'm not familiar with these radical right-wing christian movements from your country.
How exactly do they threaten the enviroment? (Like organization, not like irresponsible individuals) Intentionally pour oil into oceans? Intentionally burn combustibles to pollute the air? Hunt endangered species? Demolish hills, deforest, build artificial islands, encourage tourism, build large cities and large industry facilities? How?


Of course it does have a moral fallout, don't give me this double-standarded way! There's no God -> I can afford misanthropy and using all resources for myself. "After me, the deluge", as one great man once said
On the other hand, christian doctrine claims that everything is created by god, and we don't have the right to end something that god started, therefore its followers (the christians) have a certain respect to the nature, as sacred, as being a creation of their god.

And at last, but not at least, in your second paragraph from your post (first paragraph quoted in mine) you followed this approach: "Christianity can be blamed for threating the enviroment because a radical movement does that." If you claim the previous inference to be valid, then you must agree that I can replace "christianity" with "atheism" or any noun which obeys the factual description.

Juliana

No, it's not an "out-of-the-blue proposition", however it seems to be ignored, because some people don't want it to be true. Or has anybody found factual errors in this epoch-making discovery yet?
Here is the thread: http://www.iidb.org/vbb/showthread.php?t=109654

Juliana

Amaleq13

There is an expressed belief that God did not create the world with finite resources and, therefore, believe there is no need to conserve them.

Also, given a belief in an imminent Apocalypse, the need to conserve Earth's resources is not evident.

I agree with you that there is an excellent argument for Christians to consider themselves stewards of the planet but that does not appear to be a view shared by the majority of U.S. Christians (and certainly not the President). That, alone, is sufficient to constitute a genuine threat to the global environment given that the U.S. consumes such an enormous amount of the resources available.

[added later: My "majority of U.S. Christians" may actually only refer to the Christians who get their views reported by the press]

gurugeorge

Part of the problem is that it just doesn't occur to most people that Jesus might be an entirely mythological character. But to me that hypothesis, bold as it is, seems to fit the extant texts and facts better. For me, the most convincing point is that the further back in time you go with the texts that are left to us, the more like any other mythological Saviour figure of the day He appears and the less specific sayings of His seem to be quoted in argument; the corollary being that, as you come back towards the present, the Jesus figure seems to accrue more and more of the supposed factuality and history (including preachings) that we know and love.

This is, surely, not what you'd expect if he were a historical figure who had lived at an actual time and place and did and said certain things. This is especially so, if you take the modern, liberal "impressive guy" view! The earlier the texts, the more they'd be full of what Jesus did, where he did it, quotes of his sayings in support of arguments, etc. - it's only later you'd expect the mythology to accrue.

(Traditionalist "Son of God"-ers would be able to argue more that he was so impressive and so obviously godly, that the early deification of him was no more than his due. But such a traditionalist is then faced with the traditional rationalist counter-argument - if the guy was so damned impressive, not just impressive as a cool dude, but literally as a living God, performing miracles, etc., causing a stir, then there's a peculiar hole where the mountain of evidence ought to be, especially considering that, if it existed at all, it would have been in the best interests of the Church to preserve it.)

As I said, this hypothesis just doesn't occur to most people, religious or rationalist. Maybe part of the reason it doesn't occur to people is because the implications (about the Church as an organisation, its history, the duplicity at its root, how the literalist historical version of Christianity has conned people, how it repressed other forms of Christianity) are so monstrous the mind actually shies away from it. It's a bit like the 80 million dead human beings that were the cost of the "Communist" experiments of the 20th century. People who believe in the "dream" of Communism don't like to let their minds even drift into that area, if at all possible (whereas denunciations of Fascism for its hecatombs are rightly almost ritualistic by now).

Vivisector

I think you're right that many people don't consider the MJ model to be a possibility. When it comes to Christians, the reason for their assessment of the hypothesis as an impossibility is obvious. When it comes to non-Christians (myself included), I consider it to be a possibility, but less powerful in explaining the texts/facts (or what can be reasonably assessed as factual) than a hypothesis of an HJ. I do think you're on target in using explanatory power as a criterion in drawing a conclusion.

If I look at Q (yes, I'm assuming it existed) and the Gospel of Thomas, then I see some very rudimentary material, most of which is inoffensive and, for the most part, unremarkable. I see little, if anything, that would depict him as a Savior figure.

I think this type of assessment is conditioned on several important factors, all of which would have to be established before I could weight it heavily. Namely, it's conditioned on the nature of his "impressiveness." Not many non-Christians on here would argue that he was impressive because he did walked on water, raised the dead, etc. So why was he impressive? How impressive was he? To whom was he impressive? Were those whom he impressed literate? When did he become impressive? It seems to me that, there are many models of HJ's ministry/movement, most with something to commend them, but none that explains all or nearly all of the texts/facts. If we knew more about what he really did/advocated, then we could perhaps combine this with his milieu and do a better job of explaining the development of the textual tradition. But then, this is the Holy Grail of HJ scholarship.

Makes sense to me, but no Traditionalist "Son of God-er" is going to buy it. Many of them are going to say that Matthew the Publican was taking meticulous notes, Peter was remembering everything he would later pass along to John Mark, John the Beloved Disciple was banking everything in his memory, Luke had Paul to draw on, and the Holy Spirit was verbally inspiring each of them.

As I wrote earlier, it *occurs* to me, but doesn't explain as much - yet (I try to keep an open mind) - as the hypothesis of an HJ with a more modest ministry/movement.