Koyaanisqatsi

I find it highly implausible to the point of impossibility that cult leaders aren't aware that they are perpetrating fraud (particularly those in the Vatican), but then, I can't fathom why anyone believes this nonsense to begin with (outside of cult indoctrination).

I absolutely think that Paul was aware of his fraud and his writings, IMO, betray just that over and over. As to how anyone could say for sure? Well, we can't. We can just critically assess what someone has said and/or done and look for clues. Number one, for me, is whenever you are told "this is the truth and if you don't believe it, you will be punished," but then, that's a perspective of mine based on what I would imagine an actual "god" to be like. Number two, however, and one that Paul is guilty of, would be to deliberately confuse the cult members with nonsense like the "god made wisdom foolish" tactic. In essence, only believers can understand the Bible. Well, then, what good is it? Believers are presumably not the problem.

This kind of "preaching to the choir," therefore betrays that such a ruse is designed to keep the sheep from ever reallizing that being compared to sheep is an insult. Likewise, the very existence of apologetics should prove fraud to any critical thinker, but then, the first thing that all cults make sure of is that critical thinking is subverted (the "wisdom is foolishness" sophistry).

When you're dealing with cults, you're literally dealing with brainwashing, so does a brainwashed individual know that they are perpetuating a fraud? Well, no, of course not, by definition. Delusional states induced through cognitive dissonance are therefore impossible to quantify.

Whoever first started the brainwashing, however, is more than likely aware of their fraud, but not always. Again, I think you'd have to critically deconstruct what they write or say on the matter and assess things from there.

The real, question, however, is, does it matter or not if they are just indoctrinated zombies that have grown up to innocently indoctrinate others or self-aware snake-oil salesmen? They're still pushing poison and it's the poison that causes the sickness so no matter what the honest intent of the pusher, the poison has to stop.

We've had over five thousand years (at least) of this particular poison and one look around the world will tell you (or should tell you) that it's just making us sicker and sicker and sicker.

I voted "yes, definitely," btw, because of the way you worded the question. Cults are ultimately based on dishonesty, just as telling your children about Santa Clause is dishonest; whether or not cult leaders/members are aware of this dishonesty or not, well, again, almost by definition, they aren't capable of being aware of it, so the question is moot. But somebody was (and probably many were) and they are the ones who shaped it and wrote the indoctrination dogma and the like, so, again, my first money's on Paul and my second is on whoever told the gospel writers to write shit down.

All writers know when they are making shit up and since the gospel writers never say, "This is what I heard had happened, so I'm just reporting what others told me" as any kind of qualifyer, I'd vote that they were probably in on the fraud, too. It simply would not be possible, IMO, to write the trial sequence, for example, and not know you're writing something that could not possibly have happened, even if you were just writing down oral history (which, again, is not the claim of the gospel writers).

We know today that the trial sequence could not have happened the way it was written down in the passion narratives, and we're some two thousand years removed from the time, so it is truly stretching credulity that Mark, at least (whoever he was), didn't know that what he was writing was sheep dip.

spin

We are talking about the people who wrote the stuff a couple of millennia ago. It seems to me that you are projecting your modern ideas onto them. The job of understanding ancient texts involves attempting to get at the context in which a text was written, to know what the author(s) knew, and to work out what he was doing.

This was a time before science, when even the Romans of the time didn't know that the morning star and the evening star were one and the same... they had two different names for them, lucifer and hesperus. Were they being fraudulent because they got it wrong? Were many cultures perpetrating deception because they thought planets were either heavenly beings or being moved by heavenly beings? Were the people who related the death of annual vegetation because they assumed it reflected the death of the god who gave it life setting out to lie?

Paul may have been a well-known manipulator, but did he lie, if he came to believe that the messiah who he was waiting for had already been?

Messianic speculation gave hope to Jews after the siege of Jerusalem by Pompey the Great, that someone was coming to liberate them and herald a new era. This was not a stagnant belief, but gained momentum as time passed. Do you consider that there was deception involved in messianic speculation?

What do you make of the ghost shirt movement amongst some Native Americans in the late 19th century? Did someone lie to them to make them believe that these shirts would protect them? The belief was plainly wrong. Lies? or did someone have a vision -- say a drunken or drug-crazed experience, who knows? -- based on a long-shot hope for survival that the shirts would protect them?

The '"god made wisdom foolish" tactic' should be edifying to people who have difficulties dealing with clever types. It's nothing particularly strange or offensive. It's definitely not confusing, though we wouldn't agree with it. It may be "nonsense" to you, but you are not dealing with what the author is doing. I don't see anything offensive in that which you complain about regarding Paul. I see a mixture of altruism and ego in his writings.

We must judge ancient authors on their own scales, not modern ones that don't understand, let alone consider, the ancient writer.


spin

joedad

"Doing the right thing in some sense" is all inclusive. Certainly some were outright honest and some were outright manipulative, and this continues today. Unfortunately or not it is a moot, academic distinction. I tend to take a Shakesperian slant and conclude that religion by any other name would still be religion.

rlogan

Spin - We've hashed out our opinions, and it can go no further. I don't want to waste any board space by repeating ourselves.

Koyaanisqatsi

So was I.

Not any more than you are projecting romantic ideas onto them.

And if he was engaging in fraud?

By the way, I already stated: I think you'd have to critically deconstruct what they write or say on the matter and assess things from there.

I don't claim the early christian cult authors got insignificant facts like the position of stars "wrong." In fact, I didn't claim anything at all. I said I find it "highly implausible" that somebody didn't catch on that what they were writing (or preaching) wasn't made up, considering all of the contradictions, poor Jewish scholarship and obvious, illogical revisionist history as well as the fact that none of the authors honestly state that they just heard these stories from others and are writing them down for prosperity, or the like, and therefore can't be certain about anything they are repeating, including whether or not it was all just made up decades ago.

Had you addressed the points I made in my post to this issue, I wouldn't have to repeat them here.

Would someone who knows that Jesus died and was burried and stayed dead like all men do and yet makes up a story that he resurrected as proof that he was the son of God be perpetrating deception?

I snipped the addended fallacy to answer the real question, so you tell me if Paul lied. Paul tells the Thesollonians that "the Jews" killed Jesus and have therefore acquired the wrath of their own God. Mark makes it clear that it was Pilate who killed Jesus.

Before you answer, remember that Paul did not say that "the Jews" conspired to have Pilate (a far more heinous crime) kill Jesus; in fact, he makes no mention of the Roman involvement in Jesus' death at all in that section. He also makes it abundantly clear that "the Jews" (plural, non-specific) are also the same ones who killed "the prophets" and drove them out, so he can't be referring to the "crowd" that so terrified Pilate ( ) as to force him to put Jesus to death just after publicly declaring him innocent of all charges thrice (indeed, he states there was no crime).

So, who is lying? Paul or whoever wrote GMark? One of them must be, since Paul says it was "the Jews" who killed Jesus and Mark says it was Pilate and the Romans who illogically killed Jesus.

It can't be both, even if you accept the ritual that never existed and Pilate's illogical fear of a crowd of Jews forcing him to kill Jesus, because no matter what, it was the Romans who killed Jesus. Not the "Jews who killed the Lord Jesus and the prophets and also droves us out."

So, your call.

I take it you're referring to Daniel? If so, then you've got some explaining to do!

No, in the manipulation of that "messianic speculation." The authors of the passion narrative (or, actually, author) is not engaging in "speculation" and Paul certainly wasn't. They were declaring what happened and what it means to all followers of the cult.

Was Paul "speculating" that "the Jews" killed Jesus (and the prophets)? Was Mark "speculating" that Jesus resurrected from the dead (though, to be fair, he did give a huge clue by saying that the tomb was open and a "young man"--not an angel, but a "young man"--was sitting in the tomb).

Was the author of Matthew "speculating" about what Jesus said to the devil in the desert or what he said on the Mount of Olives? He must have been, since he wasn't there and could only have been, at best, writing down the stories that he heard passed on from generation to generation.

Was the author of Luke "speculating" when he opens his gospel with:

The "certainty" of the things you have been taught. Doesn't sound like "speculating" to me, though at least he starts out by admitting these stories were all word of mouth.

Excellent question, which is why I said originally:
And followed that later with the same question you just asked me:
And then concluded that thought with:
So, as you can see, I've already addressed your questions and even presented them prior to your reiteration.

"Clever types?" Paul is deliberately making an "end run" (if you will) around anyone questioning what he's preaching and all but instructing his followers to believe what he tells you, because he tells you to; that anyone who questions him just doesn't get it, because god made wisdom foolish and foolishness wisdom and blah, blah, blah, so if any of "you" (his followers) ever apply any kind of critical analysis to the stories he's telling and find them ridiculous, it's because God made wisdom foolish (an absurd contradiction to begin with). In other words, Paul isn't spouting obvious mythology and they see through it; they aren't capable of seeing through anything, because god scrambled the combination.

As I, again, pointed out previously:

But the main question, of course, is why does Paul say this at all? To whom was he referring to? To the Greeks, who called the idea of a resurrection "foolish." So, Paul spins it to say that God has made all wisdom foolish. He doesn't address the question, he undercuts the very ability for them to question. Jesus died and was resurrected and if you don't buy it, it's because God already made wisdom foolish, so you are just mistaken in what you know to be true about things and I know this because god made my wisdom not-foolish, but everybody else's is foolish.

That's not the point. Clearly there were those among the Thessolonians who were saying "this part is ridiculous," and Paul's answer is, in essence, "no, you're ridiculous, because wisdom is ridiculous and god told me so!"

Yes, I am. You just don't agree with my assessment.

Well, I don't and detailed why. Now what?

And there's that romanticism. Everyone back then just floated around on holy fairy dust all the time, is that it?

The question is whether or not there is evidence of knowing fraud and I agree, it would be exceedingly difficult to conclusively know what is in a man's mind when they push their snake oil, but, again as I pointed out in my previous post:

Now, please don't post another response where you just reiterate what I've already stated, yes .

spin

Well, you've just continued to make more unsupportable claims, including intentionality, about people who you know little about, based on your personal reactions to literature you are reading in English without even knowing much about the literary milieu available to the writer, especially because nobody has done the work to know reconstruct either when the texts were written, to whom exactly, what for, what was known by the writer and what others were writing at the time of production (milieu). I guess you've been able to say what you could, ie nothing. I just appreciate the way you've said it (despite the lack of will to read what was written to you).

("Had you addressed the points I made in my post to this issue, I wouldn't have to repeat them here. " Cute, very, umm, cute.)


spin

spin

I think the results of this poll, though featuring a small sample, are illuminating for our xian brethren. They are for me. They show that few non-religionists here are prepared to support the possibility that a religion needs no act of deception or dishonesty on the part of those who produce the theology to explain its existence.

This may be because of interaction with modern religionists and perceived acts of dishonesty from them. But I wonder if such perceptions aren't just the fruits of modern anxieties. The door-to-door xians I've come across are usually so hyped up to use whatever methods they can find to be persuasive I'm sure this can give the impression of resorting to trickery and evasion. Then we have the Jim Bakkers of the world, the born again manipulators whose two faces can meet. These experiences can be retrojected to the times of the makers of the theology (I understand that the religionist will disagree with my basic presupposition here, but hopefully can get the motivation regardless).

Some of the religionists on this forum may also give the impression of being deceptive as well.

I wonder what the religionist feels about the subject, about the way some of them are perceived, about what non-religionists think in this matter.


spin

Koyaanisqatsi

I made no claims, I told you what I thought was the case and why I thought it.

About people who everybody knows little about.

Based on a deconstruction of the content of that literature.

What "milieu" is necessary to know about when speculating about fraud? Not to mention the fact that, you're wrong; I happen to know a lot about literay methods of that time, but that isn't relevant to whether or not fraud can be determined by reading someone's stories as I conceded several times.

I didn't reallize mindreading was one of your talents spin .

Then why are you assailing me with what everyone has to deal with? We don't know what was in their heads (as you seem so sure what is in mine), which is why speculation--especially as duely qualified by myself--is all we're left with.

If you want to get into the head of the author of GMark, for example, then you only have what he wrote and what others wrote in kind, yes? This "miliue" you're talking about certainly wouldn't apply if the author of GMark was engaged in deliberate fraud, other than the form it was written, yes?

So, AGAIN, as I fully qualified in my first post and had to reiterate to you three times now: whoever first started the brainwashing, however, is more than likely aware of their fraud, but not always. Again, I think you'd have to critically deconstruct what they write or say on the matter and assess things from there.

In case you still don't get it, I've been agreeing with you that it is exceedingly difficult (except for you, apparently) to know what is in another man's mind when they are writing what they write, so the only possible way to determine it is to critically assess what they wrote and see if there any signs of contradiction, basic scholarly mistakes, claims of certainty from people who could not possibly know for certain, etc., etc., etc.

That was why I supported my contentions by referring to what was allegedly written. That I don't speak or read Greek is true, so if you want to point me to a translation that you feel most accurately depicts the "original" documents, then good luck, since no such translation and no such "original" documents exisst.

No matter what any of us do, we are dependent upon what the authors wrote and the stories they told and the comparison of claims from other like-minded (aka, "cult members") versions, if, indeed, we are to answer your OP question regarding the "dishonesty" quotient.

Yes, of course, it's perfectly possible that every single person involved in creating the Jesus cult believed that the stories they told were true, but, again, in order to see whether or not that is the case, you would have to read what they claimed and compare that to other claims and see what "jibes" and what doesn't.

Paul's declaration that "the Jews" killed Jesus, for example, in 1 Thesollonians does not jibe with what Mark said (Pilate killed Jesus). So, either Paul was lying or wrong or mistaken (and his fervent attestation gives no evidence of any of those) or whoever wrote Mark was lying, wrong or mistaken (and therefore those who based their stories on Mark or likewise wrong or mistaken).

Is it all deliberate fraud? Nobody knows, as I've freely and repeatedly conceded, but there is certainly evidence within their writings that someone was not telling the truth, either deliberately or because they got things wrong. The problem being, of course, that all of the NT was canonized as being "the Truth," so there's another layer to deal with.

And I guess you think that this kind of fallacy is a legitimate reason to not address any of the specifics of what I presented.

I not only read what you wrote to me, I responded almost point-by-point and offered further support of my position.

It wasn't meant to be. Spin, all you did was say the exact same things I said regarding how difficult it would be to determine fraud and that the way to go about it would be to critically assess what was written. I then presented examples of how I arrived at my thoughts on why Paul probably knew he was perpetuating a fraud.

It was consistently qualified by me that this is what I thought and why I thought it, with examples from the various texts and cogent arguments as to why it represented fraud to me.

Instead of just addressing what I wrote directly and explaining in any kind of detail why it wasn't supportable, you just accused me of strawmen I didn't build and then threw in a few of your own, making with some irrelevant insults to my intelligence based, apparently, on your mindreading abilities.

All I did was explain why I found it highly implausible that nobody knew that they were writing or perpetuating obvious myths and yes, I do think you're over romanticising just as you accused me of falsely applying "modern" thinking to ancient writers.

Their shit stank just as much as ours does and not everyone walked around as if the holiest of all holy thoughts were always upper most in their minds. Many did. Others, did not. The question of whether fraud or deliberate mythology or whether or not religions are based on dishonesty, however, would not be a matter for those who truly thought they were passing on divine wisdom so much as it would be about those who may (or may not) have been trying to exploit those beliefs for their own ends.

Deceit, power mongering and deliberate frauds are not the invention of twenty first century people so to simply discount that fact a priori as you appear to be doing in your repeated admonitions that the authors of that age were all above reproach due to their "miliue" is nothing more than romanticism, IMO.

Take careful note of the qualification I have consistently maintained: In My Opinion and remember your own OP question: These things involve (remunerative) gain, and manipulation and control of the religionist. Do you believe that they are at the heart of religions?

Do I "believe" it? Yes, I do and that's why I presented reasons and quotes and arguments and concessional qualifications to that end.

Don't ask us if we "believe" something to be true, if what you really wanted was for us to prove something is true, yes?

spin

I'm too lazy to format the text of a response to your brand of deconstruction to do justice to that decostruction.

I believe that you believe that forgery, fraud, and deception are involved to some degree in the construction of theology. Of course a simple "yes" would have sufficed, but then you proceeded to give your reasoning, which is itself susceptible to analysis and comment. When doing so, we get a message of the sort of your last one. Fine.

You said of cults" "you're literally dealing with brainwashing". Is this not a claim (and a retrojection based on some notion of uniformity)? Isn't the following cut of yours a few claims?

When you say in your last message, "I made no claims", I don't agree with you.

That's just dealing with half of one of your lines. But much of what you said in the last message begs similar responses, which requires too much of an effort to do. So let me just say that you didn't really make any claims. I won't deal with the ingenuousness of "What "milieu" is necessary to know about when speculating about fraud?" or "This "miliue" you're talking about certainly wouldn't apply if the author of GMark was engaged in deliberate fraud". Great call there.

This is interesting:

That's something. And yet milieu doesn't rate in your books.

Oh, alright. Milieu is important to understand the writer's approach to writing. For example, names in early ancient literature weren't important. Lots of texts we have from antiquity don't have authors' names attached to them, the Epic of Gilgamesh, Joshua/Judges/Ruth etc., but then the individual was not so important as he or she was after the renaissance. Schools were more important, continuity. Isaiah is supposed to have written a very big book, but it isn't a work of a single author (be he Isaiah or not). We find traces of different eras spanning a long period; we find different styles, different vocabulary, different historical knowledge, different theology, but we also find it all under the name of Isaiah. The individual was not as important as the (for want of better terms) school. This reflects the milieu (and is just a simple example), but how many people want to cry forgery or fraud because most of the text wasn't written by the same guy, umm, Isaiah? Not understanding the milieu of the work you are dealing with means that your value judgments have less worth than you might want them to have.

So, I've done more than I intended. Laziness is a b-a-d state of mind.

But let me add, you need to improve on your one-liners.


spin

rlcjhardesty

[QUOTE]Originally posted by spin
In reading much of what people post to this forum, I often find mention of forgery, fraud, and deception given as having occurred in the development of religious culture. These things involve (remunerative) gain, and manipulation and control of the religionist. Do you believe that they are at the heart of religions? [/QUO

Without a Doubt!!![/B]

Although, there's no difference between the religious world and the secular world. Seems to be plenty of forgery, fraud and deception in the business world... The sports world... The government (especially the government)... The entertainment industry... Wow, it's just about everywhere!