leonarde

Partial post by Ion: Well, b) was about attributing a given event to
an invisible/supernatural being. How would one
"observe" (in a non-religious sense) an "invisible" being?

C)involved "the identification of the being(s)and the "mechanism" by which it occurs ("mechanism" here would be things like prayer, fasting, juxtaposition with a sacrament etc.)

Again, how could a scientist AS A SCIENTIST "identify" a SPIRITUAL BEING?

These things don't easily lend themselves to the
normal scientific methodology.

Cheers!

leonarde

Partial post by FM: Well, I agree 100% that the QUESTIONS are primarily historical, but the METHODOLOGY which
the theologians would use would no doubt be different (although with some overlap)from professionals in other fields. For instance, if
a given saying/deed is, they suspect, not one uttered/done by Jesus the suspicion and perhaps even the evaluation is based upon things like:

1)is this saying in ALL the Gospel texts? Is it
in the SAME chronological ORDER in all the texts?
Is there an element in the utterance/deed which
seems to be imitative of (and perhaps inspired by)
an OT text? Here I have in mind such things as
prophecies attributed to Jesus. (With the possible
exception of Mark's G, all the Gs were written post 70 AD and hence a destroyed Temple was a fait
accompli so there may have been a temptation to
reinterpret a true utterance of Jesus in light of
this fact, ie attribute to Jesus the PREDICTION of
the destruction of the Temple).

2) Is a given utterance of Jesus consistent with
the THEOLOGY of a pre-30 AD Sadduccee, Pharisee, or Essene? Or does it seem to be consistent with a
LATER THEOLOGICAL development? (say 2nd half of
1st Century or early 2nd Century).

3)What were Matthew, Mark, Luke and John's (theological)audiences like? Gentile or Pharisee?
Levant or elsewhere?

etcetera.

Cheers!

Ion

Regarding the "..."invisible" being..." and "...Again, how could a scientist AS A SCIENTIST "identify" a SPIRITUAL BEING?":
.) they are in contradiction with a 'God' advertised in the Bible as wanting to appear to all humans -the empirical, and the theoretical ones-;
.) no empirical proof supports this 'being' as being true, since the origins of history.

All of your post Leonarde, to my mind has a common denominator:
why believe then, since I am an empirical person?
religions fit the description of blind faith in some "..."invisible" being...", and they shouldn't be forced onto other people's different minds, like indoctrinators want to do in order to control people's thinking.

[ November 07, 2002: Message edited by: Ion ]</p>

Family Man

How can the question of whether supernatural events occur be anything other than true/false questions? Events are, by their nature, true or false. Either I ate roast beef for dinner tonight or I didn't. Either my father died of a heart attack or he didn't. Either Jesus was supernaturally resurrected or he wasn't. Of course these are true/false questions.

Nor do I see the advantage to you of pointing out that illnesses and other things are interpreted as supernatural when they're not. In fact, it works against your position because it demonstrates the propensity of humans -- and the NT authors in particular -- to read supernatural events into purely natural ones.

I do agree with you that the effects of supernatural claims are interesting and lends itself to more sophisticated analysis. But it is beside the point.

As for whether the supernatural can exist, you are correct in describing our disagreement. But the real question is whether you can provide any strong evidence that supernatural events truly occur. The real difference between us is that I have higher standards than you do in this area.

[ November 07, 2002: Message edited by: Family Man ]</p>

Family Man

Why would they be different? I'm not an expert on Jesus Seminar's methodology, though I've read some things on the subject. Take a look at the questions you outlined above. They are very good, critical questions that require an objective look at the text to answer. They deal with the theology but they don't require acceptance of the theology. I could apply those questions without feeling uncomfortable about presuming the truth of the theology presented in the NT. There may be flaws that I'm not seeing, but to me your questions are quite perceptive and might help to separate the historical from the non.

Thus, to dismiss the Jesus Seminar scholars from doing history because they were trained as theologians is as flawed as dismissing them because they are "liberal". I'm not saying they are right, but they clearly are doing history.

leonarde

Partial post by FM: This is indeed one of the areas in which we disagree: take the eclipe which I offered as an example: eclipses HAPPEN, but how they are interpreted will vary from historical epoch to historical epoch. Today we understand the movements of heavenly bodies and classify (in most cases) eclipses as "non-supernatural events". That DOESN'T mean that they "didn't/don't happen".If investigators took your approach there would be no need to vote on the DEEDS of Jesus in the Jesus Seminar: all supernatural events could be ruled out a priori.

Cheeers!

Ion

Interpreting natural phenomenons like eclipses in this example, is the cautious approach taken by science observing nature. Science retraces its steps when in error, back to what it has been established and tries again.

I don't see this rational approach in religions:
for example "...and then all the tribes on the earth will mourn, and they will see the Son of Man coming..." is stated by Matt 24:30 as Jesus' prophecy for resurrection during that lifetime (Matt 16:28); it is a positive claim, an absolute that this was going to happen and be witnessed and understood by "...all the tribes on the earth..."; it didn't happen, exactly like Family Man gives the example of roast beef: it was roast beef, or it wasn't roast beef; when the event of resurrection didn't happen, as clearly stated as it was, it is clumsy to see religious people using interpretations, aplogetics, unsupported imaginations, substitutions (here Eastern Sunday) to 'justify' why it didn't happen.

That's the difference between science and religion: both make errors, but science wants to keep a rational consistency, and religion is pathetic with regards to rational consistency.

Family Man

This isn't a matter of us disagreeing. This is a matter of you doing every thing in your power to avoid the point. How eclipses were interpreted in the past is quite irrelevant to the question of whether supernatural events happen. Either Jesus walked on water or he didn't. Either Jesus feed the masses with a few loaves of bread and fish, or he didn't. Either he was resurrected or he wasn't. These are very simple, straightforward questions. How Jesus's contemporaries interpreted events might explain how supernatural stories about him came about, but it doesn't tell us anything about the truth of the claim, except maybe implying that they allowed their beliefs to cloud their judgement.

Since when are all of Jesus's deeds supernatural? Show me one supernatural deed held by the Jesus Seminar to be historical. I don't think you'll find one. As Ernest Kaseman put it:

His conclusion:

Miracles are ruled out. Not on a priori grounds, but on the grounds that there is no sound evidence that supernatural events even occur and on the grounds that the supernatural stories of the gospels were made up after Jesus's death.

[ November 08, 2002: Message edited by: Family Man ]</p>

lpetrich

There is a good reason to reject the miracles of the Bible.

It is because if they had appeared outside the Bible, they would immediately be rejected.

I'm sure that Vanderzyden believes that the historical Romulus and Remus, if they had ever existed, had not been the son of the god Mars. And that Pythagoras and Plato had not been sons of the god Apollo. And that Alexander the Great had not been a son of the god Zeus. But if one rejects the divine paternity of all those gentlemen, why not also reject that of Jesus Christ?

According to the Gospels, Jesus Christ had used magical spit therapy to make some blind people see. And according to some usually-reliable historians, the Roman Emperor Vespasian had done the same.

If one believes that the Vespasian story is pro-Vespasian propaganda or a psychosomatic cure or whatever, then why not believe something similar about Jesus Christ's magical spit cures?

I don't know what sect Vanderzyden belongs to, but if he is not a Catholic, he very likely considers medieval-saint miracles to be some combination of non-miracles and fiction. For example, I'm sure that he believes that the historical <a href="http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/richard_carrier/resurrection/lecture.html" target="_blank">St. Genevieve</a>, if there was one, had never calmed storms or miraculously materialized water and oil or drove out demons or performed other miraculous cures. But why reject those miracles while believing that Jesus Christ had worked some similar miracles?

(edited to correct some malapropisms)

[ November 10, 2002: Message edited by: lpetrich ]</p>

Family Man

lpetrich --

Exactly. <img src="graemlins/notworthy.gif" border="0" alt="[Not Worthy]" />