Freethought & Rationalism Archive

Gamera · 12-26-2006, 02:10 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by goldenroad

Okay yall, I don't want to be classified as a bible fed Christian that eats whats he's fed from the scriptures, uses arguments that everyone else uses, and doesn't study the bible and related sources. (for the last person who wrote before me) I'm fifteen and would like to learn all i can. Some of my arguments i've heard before, some i come up with on my own but i won't post anything without researching the facts and haven't. I joined this website for several reasons. First and formost i want to know what atheists think. Second, i want to see how Christiantity holds up to atheistic arguments (i've already heard many). Lastly, i want to sharpen my knowledge and hopefully give insight to those reading this forum. I've heard several people respond to my arguments so far and to be honest, i haven't been impressed with the atheistic arguments (i do try to approach everything with an open mind). If all documents were judged the same way the bible is judged here i don't suppose we would have any reliable documents. Imagine if 2000 yrs from now people didn't believe that America ever existed because the atom bomb is too outlandish and the documents don't meet there criteria. I think its the same way regarding the bible. Every little fact is being questioned in doing so you are missing the big picture of what happened. Sure, most factual disputes and dating issues can be easily cleared up with a little research (though it seems as though most are not willing to do so) but when you approach something like this with a closed mind you are going to think what you want to think and no fact is going to dissuade you no matter how convincing. So, basically i want to spread the truth and know the truth better. If my arguments seem puny, then i'll admit i'm young and inexperienced but hopefully i'll grow mentally and become more convincing.

A fifteen year old interested in this site should be commended.

You'll learn a great deal about palaeography here, as it relates to the mss that make up the Christian canon. Most of the posters here come from the standard philological tradition, and know little about postmodernism, so their approach to historiography is somewhat naive and behind the times. Most modern historians (or at least the interesting ones) have embraced postmodernism, which is actually quite helpful to Christianity, though few American Christians realize it.

I'm afraid you won't find the gospel "verified" here, or anywhere else. As a mature Christian let me assure you that it's by faith alone that one accepts the gospel, not by historical evidence or mss evidence.

spin · 12-26-2006, 02:18 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Gamera

Most of the posters here come from the standard philological tradition, and know little about postmodernism, so their approach to historiography is somewhat naive and behind the times. Most modern historians (or at least the interesting ones) have embraced postmodernism, which is actually quite helpful to Christianity, though few American Christians realize it.

How does a lawyer embrace postmodernism when attempting to delineate or uncover the facts of a case in court?

spin

Mythra · 12-26-2006, 02:45 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Gamera

A fifteen year old interested in this site should be commended.

If there was any indication that this young man came here to attempt to learn anything, I'd probably agree with you.

At this point, it looks much more like a Sunday School evangelism assignment.

Malachi151 · 12-26-2006, 03:11 PM

goldenroad: This is only a rough draft, and still has errors of a variety or sorts, but I think it addresses most of your issues:

http://www.rationalrevolution.net/ar...th_history.htm

A basic starting question.

For over 1,000 years Christians and the compilers of the Bible have believed that the Gospel of Matthew was the first Gospel that was written about Jesus Christ. Today scholarship, which includes even evangelical Christians, universally agrees that the Gospel of Mark was the first of the synoptic Gospels that was written, and was also probably written before John.

This position comes from the examination of the evidence, and has only been held for the past 200 years, and only overwhelmingly agreed upon in the past 50 years.

How could it be that Christians were so wrong about something as fundamental as this for so long? How could the compilers of the Bible have gotten this wrong?

Within a short time of the details of the texts being examined critically it became apparent to all that Matthew and Luke are based on Mark.

This should certainly give one pause in their "faith" in the Bible and in the Christian institutions that compiled it, elevated it to its status in our civilization, and claimed it to be infallible. These same people didn't even get the order of the writing of the Gospels right, and this is quite significant, because we now also see that Matthew and Luke are based on Mark, again something that has only been realized in the last 200 years, and also something that is overwhelmingly agreed upon by scholars of all kinds, Christian and non.

Also, consider something else about the Gospels, which is the degree to which they are crafted from prior scriptures, for example:

Quote:

Matthew 15:

30 They spit on him, and took the staff and struck him on the head again and again. 31After they had mocked him, they took off the robe and put his own clothes on him. Then they led him away to crucify him.

32 As they were going out, they met a man from Cyrene, named Simon, and they forced him to carry the cross. 33 They came to a place called Golgotha (which means The Place of the Skull). 34 There they offered Jesus wine to drink, mixed with gall; but after tasting it, he refused to drink it. 35 When they had crucified him, they divided up his clothes by casting lots. 36 And sitting down, they kept watch over him there. 37 Above his head they placed the written charge against him: THIS IS JESUS, THE KING OF THE JEWS. 38 Two robbers were crucified with him, one on his right and one on his left. 39 Those who passed by hurled insults at him, shaking their heads 40 and saying, "You who are going to destroy the temple and build it in three days, save yourself! Come down from the cross, if you are the Son of God!"

41 In the same way the chief priests, the teachers of the law and the elders mocked him. 42 "He saved others," they said, "but he can't save himself! He's the King of Israel! Let him come down now from the cross, and we will believe in him. 43 He trusts in God. Let God rescue him now if he wants him, for he said, 'I am the Son of God.' " 44 In the same way the robbers who were crucified with him also heaped insults on him.

45 From the sixth hour* until the ninth hour darkness came over all the land. 46 About the ninth hour Jesus cried out in a loud voice, "Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?"—which means, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?"

47 When some of those standing there heard this, they said, "He's calling Elijah."

48 Immediately one of them ran and got a sponge. He filled it with wine vinegar, put it on a stick, and offered it to Jesus to drink. 49 The rest said, "Now leave him alone. Let's see if Elijah comes to save him."

50 And when Jesus had cried out again in a loud voice, he gave up his spirit.

51 At that moment the curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom. The earth shook and the rocks split. 52 The tombs broke open and the bodies of many holy people who had died were raised to life. 53 They came out of the tombs, and after Jesus' resurrection they went into the holy city and appeared to many people.

* The sixth hour is noon

Quote:

Isaiah 50:
6 I offered my back to those who beat me, my cheeks to those who pulled out my beard; I did not hide my face from mocking and spitting.

Psalm 22:
1 My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
Why are you so far from saving me,
so far from the words of my groaning?
...
7 All who see me mock me;
they hurl insults, shaking their heads:
8 "He trusts in the LORD;
let the LORD rescue him.
Let him deliver him,
since he delights in him."
...
16 Dogs have surrounded me;
a band of evil men has encircled me,
they have pierced my hands and my feet.
17 I can count all my bones;
people stare and gloat over me.
18 They divide my garments among them
and cast lots for my clothing.

Amos 2:
11 I also raised up prophets from among your sons and Nazirites from among your young men. Is this not true, people of Israel?' declares the LORD. 12 'But you made the Nazirites drink wine and commanded the prophets not to prophesy.

Psalm 69:
Insults have broken my heart, so that I am in despair. I looked for pity, but there was none; and for comforters, but I found none. They gave me poison for food, and for my thirst they gave me vinegar to drink.

Amos 8:
8 "Will not the land tremble for this, and all who live in it mourn? ... 9 "In that day," declares the Sovereign LORD, "I will make the sun go down at noon and darken the earth in broad daylight.

Ezekiel 37:
12 Therefore prophesy and say to them: 'This is what the Sovereign LORD says: O my people, I am going to open your graves and bring you up from them; I will bring you back to the land of Israel. 13 Then you, my people, will know that I am the LORD, when I open your graves and bring you up from them. 14 I will put my Spirit in you and you will live, and I will settle you in your own land. Then you will know that I the LORD have spoken, and I have done it, declares the LORD.' "

Now, early Christians recognized some of these similarities, indeed many of them, though not all, but what the believers thought (Greeks and Romans mind you, not Jews) was that these similarities "proved that the Hebrew scriptures were divine prophecies, and that Jesus was the fulfillment of those prophecies".

Now, think about that for a second.

If Mark wrote his Gospel first and he constructed it by piecing together a bunch of story elements from older scriptures, which it very much appears that he did, and then Matthew and Luke copied his story and added more of their own references, which is very much appears that they did, then the fact that the story of Jesus so well corresponds to the prior scriptures is due to the fact that the story is indeed based on the prior scriptures!

But lets see what the early Christians had to say about this:

Quote:

CHAPTER XXXVI -- DIFFERENT MODES OF PROPHECY.

But when you hear the utterances of the prophets spoken as it were personally, you must not suppose that they are spoken by the inspired themselves, but by the Divine Word who moves them. For sometimes He declares things that are to come to pass, in the manner of one who foretells the future; sometimes He speaks as from the person of God the Lord and Father of all; sometimes as from the person of Christ; sometimes as from the person of the people answering the Lord or His Father, just as you can see even in your own writers, one man being the writer of the whole, but introducing the persons who converse. And this the Jews who possessed the books of the prophets did not understand, and therefore did not recognize Christ even when He came, but even hate us who say that He has come, and who prove that, as was predicted, He was crucified by them.

...

CHAPTER XLII -- PROPHECY USING THE PAST TENSE.

But when the Spirit of prophecy speaks of things that are about to come to pass as if they had already taken place,--as may be observed even in the passages already cited by me,--that this circumstance may afford no excuse to readers [for misinterpreting them], we will make even this also quite plain. The things which He absolutely knows will take place, He predicts as if already they had taken place. And that the utterances must be thus received, you will perceive, if you give your attention to them. The words cited above, David uttered 1500 years before Christ became a man and was crucified; and no one of those who lived before Him, nor yet of His contemporaries, afforded joy to the Gentiles by being crucified. But our Jesus Christ, being crucified and dead, rose again, and having ascended to heaven, reigned; and by those things which were published in His name among all nations by the apostles, there is joy afforded to those who expect the immortality promised by Him.

- Justin Martyr; First Apology, written in the 2nd century

The first person to comment on this phenomenon jumps through hoops to make sense of the correlations between the Gospels and the Hebrew scriptures, but he concludes that the similarities between the two "proves that the religion is true, and that the scriptures are divine"!

Other go on to make the same claims.

This is a major misunderstanding gone wrong!

The "truth" of the Gospels has historically been defended by Christians by the fact that Gospels parallel the earlier scriptures, which has been the most significant argument for the "validity" of the Gospels since the earliest days. I hope you can see the problem with this reasoning.

Gamera · 12-26-2006, 03:29 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by spin

How does a lawyer embrace postmodernism when attempting to delineate or uncover the facts of a case in court?

spin

This is a good question and actually fits well in the postmodern paradigm, as most lawyers know, if not philosophically then at least experientially.

On the most superficial level, lawyers aren't interested in "facts", but in "themes" that interpret the facts and impart meanings the attorneys want to foster. But on a deeper level, court cases are explicit procedings under specific authority (i.e., power) which explicitly defines facts and truth according to certain explicitly prescribed forms of discourse (what we call the rules of evidence, such as hearsay and expert opinion). It has nothing to do with the "facts" as you and I know them in everyday life, which is why there is such a rift between legal decisions and popular cultural views of cases.

Thus, everybody "knows" OJ killed his wife and Goldman, but under the particular proceeding he was "innoncent" and a different counterintuitive "truth" was affirmed.

The McDonald's "hot coffe case" also comes to mind -- makes perfect sense from a legal doctrine view, but it is at odds with popular cultural views of coffee and restaurants.

What happens explicitly in court cases happens implicitly in all historiography, where the author always has an agenda, usually political in nature, and usually under the auspices of some authority. Poor Josephus comes to mind.

Gamera · 12-26-2006, 03:37 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mythra

If there was any indication that this young man came here to attempt to learn anything, I'd probably agree with you.

At this point, it looks much more like a Sunday School evangelism assignment.

Give the guy a break. I wish more 15 year olds would attempt some kind of dialog with philogists on the mss that constitute the bible. Hell, I wish more 45 year old Christians would.

Mythra · 12-26-2006, 03:48 PM

Gamera:

I couldn't agree more. And, at the first indication that it's becoming a dialog, I will apologize profusely.

gregor · 12-26-2006, 08:13 PM

postmodernism is the antithesis of legal proceedings wherein final decisions are rendered. All evidence is not considered equal in outcomes.

Sauron · 12-26-2006, 08:39 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mythra

Gamera:

I couldn't agree more. And, at the first indication that it's becoming a dialog, I will apologize profusely.

I doubt it will ever come to that. I suspect goldenroad is gone, for good.

He seems to fit the pattern of "drive by evangelist" who find that they suddenly get a few flat tires when trying to drive by IIDB.

Joan of Bark · 12-27-2006, 12:34 AM

Goldenroad.

May I suggest "Don't Know Much About the Bible (or via: amazon.co.uk)", by Kenneth C. Davis. This is the best introduction to the Bible I have ever seen, written by a believer in both God and Jesus.

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12-26-2006, 03:48 PM	#37
Mythra Regular Member Join Date: Jun 2006 Location: BFE Posts: 416	Gamera: I couldn't agree more. And, at the first indication that it's becoming a dialog, I will apologize profusely.

12-26-2006, 08:13 PM	#38
gregor Senior Member Join Date: Sep 2003 Location: Texas Posts: 932	postmodernism is the antithesis of legal proceedings wherein final decisions are rendered. All evidence is not considered equal in outcomes.

12-27-2006, 12:34 AM	#40
Joan of Bark Veteran Member Join Date: Jan 2005 Location: Pua, in northern Thailand Posts: 2,823	Goldenroad. May I suggest "Don't Know Much About the Bible (or via: amazon.co.uk)", by Kenneth C. Davis. This is the best introduction to the Bible I have ever seen, written by a believer in both God and Jesus.

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