No Robots

All philosophy is founded on the affirmation that everything that we think is part of a unified thought-complex. Metaphysics seeks to discern special categories within the unified thought-complex that would legitimize belief in personal liberty, immortality and god. It is a kind of wishful thinking, an egoism that obscures the fact that all thoughts are constituents of the one thought, the Cogitant.

Elijah

Hey no No Robots! :wave: I bet it’s still a physical resurrection and not an afterlife/astral realm resurrection he’s talking about. He’s just trying to find a solution to the corporal body cause he can’t explain immortality in the flesh. Which is corruptible to evil depending on the POV.

But you’re right about nuances in religion. I’ve been saying earlier, groups don’t have unified sets of beliefs; it’s on an individual basis.

bacht

Well, reality for Judeans circa 30 C.E. was a mixed bag of ancient traditions, nationalistic aspirations, Hellenistic cultural intrusions, and Roman political control. It seems fair to say that many Jews were anxious about their social and political survival. The temple leadership had already gone through upheaval during Maccabean times, and the wealthy were likely considered to be Greco-Roman collaborators.

Were the early Christians trying to using Hellenistic ideas against the gentiles?

Elijah

No, the thing about reality is that it's the same today as it was then. What they believe, what you believe, doesn't change reality. That's why I think scripture should be read that way because you get a more consistent interpretation then interpreting it by your individual beliefs, especially your beliefs about someone else s beliefs, as is being done here.

By gentiles do you mean Rome? Not sure what you're asking.

Amaleq13

Hence your anachronistic reading of rationality into Paul's explicit references to belief in supernatural powers and entities.

You should read any text in the context in which it was written. More specifically relevant, that means the perception of reality in which it was written. You should not impose another perception of reality upon the author so as to obtain personally acceptable conclusions.

But you can't know from that how they thought about what was going on out their window and that knowledge is what should guide your understanding.

No "supernatural glasses" are required as the supernatural beliefs are explicitly stated with no apology or rational explanation. As you have made abundantly clear, however, one does require special glasses to obtain your unique interpretation.

This all boils down to your personal distaste for the notion that the early Christians were just as "immersed in superstition" as the modern Pentecostals you criticize. Unfortunately for your sensibilities, that notion appears to be a fact according to Paul.

bacht

I agree that the world has not changed fundamentally in historical times, and that human nature has not changed fundamentally since the Old Stone Age.

The scientific method has led to new understandings of our world and ourselves not available to ancient writers. In that sense our reality is different. But some people today still believe in supernatural/paranormal phenomena, just as they did in pre-history.

There may always have been "enlightened" people who rejected magical explanations for natural processes, but there doesn't seem to be a lot of written evidence for this perspective from ancient times.

No Robots

Who do you think laid the philosophical foundations for the scientific method? Hint: they were ancient Greeks.

Again, check the Greek philosophers, who were naturalists to a man.

Elijah

Prove it’s supernatural and not metaphysical then. Are you going to answer my questions on the text you wanted so badly?
I think the constant working, warring and death that mankind has suffered has always sucked. I think they felt the same about building those pyramids then as we do today about building these fortune 500 companies.

You don’t know anything about anything; what you think you know is just what you’ve been told.

That’s why wisdom is valued over knowledge to the Jews. Wisdom doesn’t lie and wisdom comes from experience… in reality.
Yes you must be able to think rationally to get my take on scripture… and have a little understanding of metaphysics. :wide:
No I think it comes down to it’s statistically impossible for the whole world to be superstitious back then because we have papers from philosophers that weren’t who’s uses phrases and terms and ideas that are found in early Christian writings. I think that people who actually do things like lead movements are usually of the more intellectual types in our society and the people who believe in the supernatural are the working class. I think that the religion was founded by religious nerds who were acquainted with the philosophy of the time and not religious retards.

bacht

Fair enough, though they didn't have the means to test their theories, eg. the ideas about sense perception developed by Hellenistic philosophers.

Do you think the early Christians would have used this perspective?

No Robots

The earliest Christians certainly were not philosophers. Christ himself, like the prophets, was a mystic, meaning that his thought consisted of a direct apperception of the oneness of all being. This is the same fundamental insight that forms the basis of philosophy, but philosophy arrives at its conclusions through rational thought, whereas mysticism is direct apperception, or conscious willing.