Chris Weimer

You have a weird understanding of how religion's start. No one accepted the gospels as true and then started a religion based on it. The gospels were eked out of an existing religion.

And the relevance of a work has to do with not only the message, but the depth of the message, the emotions it charges, and the way it presents it.

sometimesisquint

How could the gospels (which are supposedly based upon the actual account of a historical figure) be eked out of a religion which has no bearing in truth without said historical basis? A fictional account with no foundation in reality would have to be present first in order to provide any "religion" with such a basis.

However, if the story is based upon a historical account, then what you said would be accurate. If Jesus was not a historical figure, then what is such "religious" text based upon? Word of mouth? Myths? Thus the gospels would have to influence the beginning of said religion.

I'm dealing entirely with what Gamera said regarding truth, and attempting to form an idea about how it is possible, not your ideas regarding the relevance of the bible or any other work you deem relevant.

Chris Weimer

No, not at all.

Wrong. You ignore oral tradition. The ancient world wasn't founded on literature. Oral tradition was a vital force in the ancient society. Check out Dr. April DeConick on the role of oral tradition in the formation of Christianity. Then check out James Crossley for the cause foundation of Christianity.

You're the one who mentioned relevance.

sometimesisquint

I obviously disagree. So this oral tradition occurs and then after it is already established, the historical basis for that oral tradition occurs? What kind of loony shit is that?

I didn't ignore anything. I said "fictional account", not fictional piece of literature. I did so entirely because I wanted to include "oral tradition" as a factor.

Just following your lead. That is, you mentioned it first.

This is what I was referencing.

gurugeorge

I agree, and I agree a fair bit with Freke and Gandy, although I think that (perhaps overly influenced by Advaita) they lay too much emphasis on the non-dual mystical aspect of Christianity (mystical experience of oneness, which is undoubtedly there to some degree) and not enough on the "magical" aspect (visionary experience, conversing and having an intimate relationship with an internal "guide" - also the things Paul talks about such as prophecy, tongues, faith, "knowledge" - which I take to be the aspect that developed into the Gnostic cosmologies).

From a rationalist point of view, and holding to materialism until something convincing comes along that might cast it into doubt, and taking a leaf out of the page of the evolutionary psychologists, let's say that our brain has certain capacities and expectations which, if thwarted, lead the person to feel dissatisfied (another, smarter way of looking at the "unconscious").

We (or most of us) need such things as family, friendship, love, intimacy, clean air, a bit of nature around us, collective experiences (sports, clubs, dancing, worship and wonder); but we also need those quiet moments alone when the self (which takes a lot of effort to maintain with integrity) can unbutton itself, and the organism feel its unity with everything; and we also seem to need to exercise this other part of our brain, the part that's capable of producing "visions". Artists are people who can instinctively tap into it (to produce art, music, books, from whole cloth - a rare but much sought after way of creating), but perhaps we might say there were at one time (and in some parts of the world still are) more systematic ways of tapping into that particular function. (Drugs I don't think are actually connected with that, and are more of a form of derangement - perhaps sometimes instructive, but not necessarily to be taken too seriously.)

Anyway, these are all, I think, "needs" in a sense, which if thwarted make people unhappy, even if they don't know about it. Or another way of looking at it - if these organismic expectations are thwarted, the person feels incomplete, wonky, dissatisfied.

Caveats: of course different people will have different combinations of needs, capacities, thresholds, etc. And many of the things I've mentioned are easily abused and have been abused in the past, leading these kinds of things into disrepute. But putting these kinds of problems to the side as something ongoingly to be solved, let's say we do have these unconscious expectations. Christianity is as good a way of fulfilling them as any of the other great religions, and (again, as with all other religions) given as you say some kind of scientific understanding of the mechanisms underlying all this, and given monitoring by reason, and by the kinds of moral rules to which all human activity must be subject, there's no reason not to conceive of it as a healthy, beautiful way of being.

While I think that some people like Dawkins, Harris, Dennett, and Hitchens are absolutely right to take the "hard line" (it's a dirty job but somebody's got to do it, somebody has to map out that logical space), and while I would agree wholeheartedly with them that the mixture of religion with politics or religion with public morality or religion with cosmology are ultimosque horribilis, the overarching truth about religion is in fact not so hard-edged, and religion does indeed have a place in life, because it's part of the way we're constructed to be religious beasts, and if done in a spirit of sincere "suspended disbelief" (much as we'd watch a moving play or film) the religious way of life (awe, wonder, gratitude for the gift of life) is beneficial to (most of) us.

Chris Weimer

What are you talking about?

I asked how your comments were relevant to the discussion, not how the Bible or Hamlet or Harry Potter are relevant to people's lives.

No Robots

The scholarly question is not whether or not you like him; but rather what is it in him that has led so many people, including great scholars, to have so much love for him?

As for your reconstruction of Christ showing him to be an apocalyptic, I am sure you can do better than that. Ehrman's book on that subject doesn't even mention the word "mystic".

sometimesisquint

I said, "A fictional account [in this case, the "oral tradition"] with no foundation in reality would have to be present first in order to provide any "religion" with such a basis."

To which you replied, "No."

If the basis of the religion IS the oral tradition (which you agreed was the case with Christianity), then, yes, it must be present first. The influencing factor of a religion cannot come after the religion is already formed.

THAT is what I'm talking about.

Yeah, and then later you said (which I already quoted):

AGAIN...this is what I was referencing. I was NOT referencing anytime you may have used the word relevant or relevance.

What the hell is the point of any of this? What a boring and completely pointless tangent? Is any of this relevant to the "discussion"? :huh:

Chris Weimer

There are two different tangents here, so I'll separate them. The first is relevance.

But I was responding to you:

Emphasis mine. I pointed out that this is naive. The Gospels are different than both Hamlet and Harry Potter, and Hamlet is different than Harry Potter, and their relevance is different as well. Jesus being "fictional" (which the use of the word itself is ignorant of ancient genres, but that's another story) does not mean that his relevance is equated to Hamlet and Harry Potter. Nor the fact that Hamlet is fictional mean that his relevance is equal to Harry Potter. There's more depth, the style is different, it's presented differently, meanings change.

As No Robots said, someone said those things (even if it was the gospel writers themselves). Hamlet moved me far more profoundly than Harry Potter did. I live much of my life in accord with the 道德經 - but if Lao Zi never existed, does that change anything? No. Ars longa, vita brevis.

Chris Weimer

You have some major problems in understanding how the ancient world works:

First of all, the gospels are theological documents. Matthew didn't literally intend for his story on the infants slaughtering to be taken as true. Once canonized, however, it generally became understood as true. The same for Genesis. Luckily, many Christian fathers understood the account in Genesis 1-2 to be allegory.

If I understand correctly, Robert Price is a Christian who accepts that Jesus never existed. I think he might even be an atheist Christian. As you seemed to miss, "There are more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy." Do you think I said that for my own pleasure? You're far too naive in this respect to think outside the box. People have accepted a version of Christianity without a real Christ. There are atheist Christians. Just because you cannot fathom it doesn't mean it doesn't exist.

And how you define religion also affects what you mean by Hamletian.

The religious texts are based on oral tradition and were transformed into their present state by the understanding at 70 CE and later. Do give you a clue - Paul wrote before the gospels, but he was a Christian nonetheless - how so?