Elijah

Descends from heaven... not living there. If it said Jesus came from San Fransisco (instead of heaven) and they meet in Chicago (clouds) are they still in San Francisco?

Elijah

You shouldn't take my word for it you should be able to use reason and evidence to argue your position. If there is some evidence from those books that you think supports your position by all means post it.

Elijah

I can't defend my position until someone presents the information that lead to the other side's position. I've presented evidence of my position that no one has argued against and I'm not even sure what everyone's exact complaint about what I'm saying is. This is my interpretation of religion though, it's not store bought, it comes from actually looking at the materiel and thinking with an open mind and holding reality in context.

I would not be on here having this conversation if I was just a parrot for another person's ideas.

Toto

Every time some evidence is presented, you find a way to reinterpret it with your own spin.

What is this thread if not people arguing against your postion?

That's the problem. You have your own idiosyncratic interpretation of the texts, and you won't consider any other possibility.

The problem in academia is that intelligent people can tackle a problem on their own and come up with a solution that seems brilliant to them. But it is too easy to fall into logical traps and errors, even for the most intelligent people, so testing your ideas against others is a critical part of the process. So far you haven't managed to convince anyone here. This means that you need to go back and reexamine your claims and read more widely on the subject.

Elijah

Evidence? So far Gads has provided two papers that both completely support my position if anyone took the time to read them. Amaleq has one quote that he is misreading. What evidence has really been provided to support your case other then this is what everyone thinks?
A bunch of people saying I need someone else saying what I’m saying with some reputation or it’s not a valid opinion.
Yea interpreting scripture rationally does seem to be a problem for some people if they have a supernatural bias towards everything religious.

And I will reconsider the other possibility once I get some actual evidence that supports it, but until then, I feel if nothing other than information gathering, I’m going to stick here and see if you guys can really support your position or are just part of an echo chamber.
That’s why I’m here to find those gaps. I consider you guys the scholars here. If there is something I’m overlooking then please please please show it to me. I fully expected you to take it to me Toto, with all kinds of evidence backing up the supernatural position but so far that’s not the case.

My claim is a simple claim that the people who founded the Christian religion were influence by the philosophy of the time not supernatural superstitions.

Jeffrey Gibson

Umm, but I'm not stating, let alone arguing, a position. I'm asking a question. And this question is not whether what you've been claiming is true. It's whether your claims are informed and whether you have the expertise in the matters you are making claims about that you are presenting yourself as having.

So are your claims informed by acquaintance with authoritative scholarship on the topics at hand as well with the primary sources vis a vis Plato, Platonism, neo-platonism, and Greco-Roman religion, etc., or not?

A response such as the one above, in which I am presented as doing something I did not do, and which dodges the particular question I asked indicates that they are not and, more importantly, that you are doing what you can to keep from admitting that, despite your posing as one whose views are informed, you really can't truthfully lay claim to that title.

Jeffrey

Elijah

If you have something to contribute to the conversation go for it, if not...


Authority Fallacy.

Toto

Who is Gads?
OK - what evidence would you accept? You seem to feel that any statement by an early century Christian that speaks in supernatural terms has to mean something else, even if every other person in the world reads it as influenced by supernatural thinking.

How often do we have to repeat that "influenced by" is not the same as "identical to?" How often do we have to point out that Middle Platonists believed in supernatural entities?

I think that Richard Carrier's PhD thesis directly addresses your claims. It will be published at some point. You can email him if you wish. (Look him up on the II Modern Library.)

Jeffrey Gibson

My question to you is no more fallacious -- let alone non contributory to a conversation -- than is asking someone who is apodictically offering medical advice if he/she has actually studied medicine and is competent to speak on the matter, especially when there are indications, as there have been here, that that claimant is not well informed.

And just as that person's refusal to answer this question is a sure sign that he/she is not competent, so is your dodge above.

Thanks for clarifying.

Jeffrey

Amaleq13

The Lord descends and takes the faithful back up to live with the Lord forever.

When will you read the passage?

If, to maintain the analogy rather than break it as you do, it said they were taken back from whence the Lord came to live with the Lord forever, yes. Obviously.