spin

I'm sorry, I don't see why you are saying this here in a thread about resurrection.

None that I know of.


spin

spamandham

The comment was in response to your response to dog-on's comment that had diverged into MJ. ...getting dizzy, but here's the context

http://iidb.infidels.org/vbb/showpos...4&postcount=17

spin

OK. Well, as you still want to talk about it here, I've wound back through the trajectory and have had time to understand the context.

Belief is what you have in common with the HJer. You believe something or other has adequately been demonstrated. There are many figures from the past whose substantive existence has not sufficiently been demonstrated. Merely consigning such figures to mythology due to insufficient evidence is a linguistic game. What was Pontius Pilate's father's name? Umm, dunno... insufficient evidence: therefore, Pontius Pilate didn't have a father,... the little bastard.

I'm happily willing to concede the possibility that Jesus didn't exist, as willing as I am to concede that he did, but I await the demonstration either way, not someone's opinions.


spin

chrisengland

MMM
The Gospels say Jesus had 12 deciples' two of them were names Peter and James.
Paul says he met 2 people who had those names' seems lilely to me he was refering to them.
If it was one person with the same name I could understand but two' no it seems to me it was likely he was refering to the deciples.
Chris

Amaleq13

No, the Gospels say that "Peter" is a nickname for a disciple named "Simon" and "James" was a brother of Jesus who thought he was crazy.

Paul never suggests or hints that "Peter" is a nickname and never refers to any "Simon". While he does refer to a "James" as the "brother of the lord", he never suggests or hints that this man once considered Jesus to be out of his mind.

As we have seen, it is not quite that simple.

chrisengland

MMM ok
I,ll get back to you

aa5874

I think you may be right. James, the son of Zebedee, according to the Gospels, is mentioned as a disciple and sometimes in the company of Peter. The authors of gMark and gLuke put Peter, James and John as very close companions.

Matthew 10.2 Mark 9.2

neilgodfrey

What you say is logically true of course. But I'm looking at knowledge as understood socially, generally. Logically we cannot say that unicorns and fairies under toadstools do not exist, only that we haven't observed the phenomena etc. Ditto we cannot say logically that the sun will definitely rise tomorrow. People accept a difference between things they know and things they believe on the basis of a lot of social workings (I touched on them in my initial post) -- simply because it is impossible for everyone to do the tests they need to do to prove everything themselves. We can't all get in a rocket and check out stuff for ourselves. What we know is inevitably a social construct.

Ditto for the things people believe. But the social institutions and workings that support the two are different. That was what I was getting at. Generally we "know" that the earth is round, but "believe" that God made the world in 6 days.



Again, I'm speaking about social knowledge as opposed to beliefs. When I say that something like gravity might be found one day not to be a "law" I am playing with the idea that there might be some new discovery about the underlying forces of the universe that relegates what we now understand as gravity to be merely a side-effect of something much bigger or quite different. Whatever replaces today's knowledge will presumably be based on sound method, but it will be social factors over time that puts this into the realm of general knowledge. Again, there are different social operations at work -- at least in our predominantly secular and post-enlightenment societies -- that underpin beliefs.

spin

Now you seem to be confusing knowledge with tradition.

You tell that to scientists and researchers.

This is an artificial separation in your approach, The world being made in six days is just as much "known" socially as the earth being round. Whole communities accept the six days some want it taught in schools.

Again, I'm speaking about social knowledge as opposed to beliefs.[/quote]
This opposition as you perceive it hasn't been enunciated convincingly.

As things stand you haven't actually made the sort of separation you desire.

We are getting away from the original contention "People who are dead do not rise from the dead" that you came to defend after I called the contention a belief. It is also my belief, ie that the dead do not rise. But your notion of social knowledge, isn't, as I perceive it, adequate to have any effect here. Ultimately the only key to what you know is a demonstrable how you know it. Without it all you have is tradition (within which many beliefs survive).

If there is a god, and your view of social knowledge doesn't exclude it, the abilities of that god may include methods of circumventing death. Our common sense tells us that that's a load of hooey, but the common sense of millions doesn't agree with us. We need to get beyond this. We need a more rigorous idea of knowledge, so that when we say something is known it is not the arbitrary notion you put forward as "social knowledge". What is known needs an objective how it is known. So, while you can't claim to show knowledge that resurrection is bunk, the notion of resurrection itself is not functional because there is no objective how it is known.


spin

neilgodfrey

No not at all. We know the world is round, that gravity keeps us on it, that we need air to breathe, etc. without needing a higher education. These are not traditions. I was only alluding to both the fact and the ways that society establishes the difference between "knowledge" and "beliefs".

I don't think I was being controversial at all. The old teacup orbiting a planet quip.

The separation is sociological, not artificial. It is a fact to that extent. There is a huge fund of knowledge in any society that is necessarily "socially constructed". It is not diminished from the status of knowledge in a post enlightenment secular society for that reason. In such a society the institutions that are accepted as valid teach the world is round for reasons that are monitored and understood and generally accepted as based on valid (i.e. experimental as opposed to revelatory) method.

Mea culpa. I was not meaning to be controversial or even meaning to construct an argument over the particular point. But I do concede in hindsight that we are all coming from different disciplines etc and that it is not always advisable to throw a set of concepts from one of those into the arena without some explanation. I took it for granted that what passes for facts and knowledge in society is different from what passes for same in academia. Society can and should be able to rely on socially recognized experts and socially authoritative publications of the claims of those experts. That is not to deny the vital role of scientific method and integrity -- that is what our social institutions and interactions are constructed to monitor so that the ordinary folks can have confidence in certain claims. When sub groups propose alternate claims then the social systems kick in and alert the ordinary citizen when that alternate claim is coming from a sectarian belief system. But I admit I am attempting to summarize a chapter of thought and concepts into a single paragraph here. Mea culpa.


"isn't . . . adequate to have an effect here".

Agreed, if you mean specifically IIDB. But, rightly or wrongly, I did not think it out of place to address the point from the understanding of the more general social context, because that is the context in which the believers claims are usually addressed and where they seek their biggest audience.

I do think there is a difference between "common sense" and what has been taught in order to appear to contradict "common sense". It is "common sense" that if you drop a lead pellet at your feet it will hit the ground sooner than if fired horizontally from a rifle, but we know scientifically that is not so. Children anguish over whether their pet animals will live again, and they need to find comfort (in a contrary belief system) against what "common sense" tells (and hurts) them.

I don't argue for a minute against the need to go beyond . . . , nor against rigour. But I do argue that the evangelists of the resurrection will need a lot more than a few dot-points of sophistic logical assertions to make their case.

My point, and I should have couched it better I now admit, is that the thing under discussion is not just one more concept sitting equally alongside any other academic hypothesis subject to serious and justifiable debate, but a claim that sits in opposition to all the most fundamental socially (not sub-culturally) sanctioned findings of methods and testings by those who have gone through the socially monitored and respected processes to earn the authority to make those claims.

In other words, we "know" when to laugh at Monty Python's Dead Parrot sketch and not wander off into metaphysical and sociological philosophical debates as I am skirting against here.

But this discussion, as you suggest too, is getting away from the point of this thread. . . .