not a theist

I have. I've realized that they and I share completely different presuppositions.

I value parsimony in a theory they don't. They think 100 ad hoc theories are as good as one simple theory.

I use common sense, they don't. They believe that hundreds of examples of identical wording, order, and material could be coincidence. (Or course, in any academic situation, these would be counted as undeniable proof of plagiarism, but they're probably not familiar with adademic standards.)

I value scholarship, they don't. They believe that all of the scholars from all backgrounds who have studied this for decades are wrong.

Agreed. I'm gone from there. It's just going in circles.

I considered burying them with mounds of parallel synoptic passages and then realized that it wouldn't matter; they would just attribute it to similar subject matter.

Also, I think that they're liars. Some have claimed that both they and someone else have written something and ended up with the same degree of similarity; I don't believe them.
No, I didn't and now I feel even more foolish.
I would never dream of engaging him in debate since he has proven so impervious to reason in the past on this board. Talking to him is a complete waste of time. Thank you for letting me know.

[ November 27, 2002: Message edited by: not a theist ]</p>

TerryTryon

It has more to do with basic intelligence or the churches' desire to keep the mass of christians from reading the gospels critically. The synoptic gospels are mind-numbingly tedious. You have to read through ridiculous lists such as the generations from David to Joseph, it's written in this archaic English that sets the brain bong-bong-bonging from its "poetic cadence," and the story line is constantly interrupted by these long winded sermons that seem to start nowhere only to end somewhere even more remote. No wonder christians say that you have to read it with the holy spirit. You can get through it if you believe that there is a magical force that you can't quite tune in to that lets you see glimmers of its transcendant beauty now and then.

When I was christian, I read the synoptic gospels straight through numerous times and never once did I notice that verse after verse was identical word for word. For this reason, christianity culls the thing for the good stuff and lets the rest of it kind of lie there, just waiting, like a pool of quicksand. One reads the stuff and instantly forgets it. The words go through the mind, but there are no hooks to make them stick. It's worse than one of those Woody Allen movies imitating Ingmar Bergman.

Butters

Thanks for the link, Not a Theist.
What a hoot! It should be obivous to you that Mark, Luke, Matthew, and John were four of the original twelve disciples, and were first hand wittnesses to the life of Jesus and wrote it all down as it happened! This kind of thing is common, in fact it seems to me that the degree of fundamentalism of a persons belief is inversly proportional to their knowledge of the Bible.
It is true that many are ignorant of the synoptic problem, but many are also unaware of many things in the bible that are unflattering to their religion. So far I have met at least a dozen fundies that claim to have read the Bible, but were completely ignorant of the story of God sending a bear to kill children that were teasing Elisha. Ask your average Christian how many animals got on the Ark, they answer two of each kind, ask is it two or seven, and they respond with "Huh?" The whole mindset seems crazy to me.

Sojourner553

Frankly, Not a theist, I do not think in the days when I was a Christian, that I would have been much swayed knowing that the Synoptic Gospels were copied from earlier sources (as opposed to dictating directly from God or Jesus.)

If I were you, I would change my emphasis to some of the following:

(1) If religion is really true, shouldn’t GOOD people of different cultures and time periods have arrived at the same doctrines? History shows just the opposite. Typically two people have similar doctrines only if they have been TAUGHT or EXPOSED to the same doctrines.

How many sects are there just in Christianity? If God’s will is “absolute” why are there something like 20,000 Christian sects? That’s before you start in with the other religions…

(2) How many times have you seen a person proclaiming they know “God’s will”, when it’s obvious they are talking to themselves (fooling themselves). Nice people have compassionate gods; Mean people have authoritative, cruel gods.

(3) Why do something like 95-8% of people hold the same main religion as their parents? This points to religion being something we learn as children and carry with us in life.


(4) Good people have honestly struggled to find the “true” religion, for millennium. If they are sincere, it is inconsistent that a good God would punish them for honestly choosing the wrong religion; But it is PERFECTLY consistent if this is a human invention: (priests desiring power, secular authorities encouraging people to “wait” for social justice, etc)


(5) Why is there such evil in the world? Why has so much evil been done in the name of religion? (Inquisitions, wars, pograms, witch trials, slavery, torture)?

Why have CONSERVATIVE Christian authorities (who have ruled for most of the millennium) been opposed to much of the progress from the last couple of centuries. Indeed most of the American Founding Fathers were either deists or greatly influenced from the deism from the Enlightenment.

"It's hard to be religious when certain people are never incinerated bybolts of lightning." – Calvin


(6) Why have literal verses in the Bible been used to oppose much of the progress of science? Why are there discrepancies between biblical texts; why are there discrepancies between science and the bible in the area of astronomy and geology?


(7) Why are there so many superstitions in the Bible? For example the belief that ALL mental illnesses were DEMONIC in nature, and required exorcism.


(8) If you analyze the stories (such as the Ark and the creation story) in the Bible, it is apparent they are simplistic superstitions.


(9) Much of the stories of Jesus’ miracles were taken from stories of miracles in other religions – especially the Greek mystery religions.

<a href="http://mac-2001.com/philo/crit/MIRACLE.TXT" target="_blank">http://mac-2001.com/philo/crit/MIRACLE.TXT</a>

(10) All the classical philosophies that prove God exists, are merely built on foundations of sand!

<a href="http://mac-2001.com/philo/crit/PHILOSOP.TXT" target="_blank">http://mac-2001.com/philo/crit/PHILOSOP.TXT</a>

(11) Why are important morality laws omitted in the Bible – that are today considered basic to any “humane” civilization: The Ten Commandments do not have laws outlawing slavery, torture and child abuse. Look at the history of slavery and cruelty to blacks? The arguments FOR it were based on religion and great opposition to these laws came from Christian fundamentalists/conservatives. (usually not liberals though – if you could find any back then!)

This is not a timeperiod issue. The Egyptian Book of the Dead has many humane laws not found in the OT – examples of virtuous living (I like the last one.) I have not caused terror.I have not burned with rageI have never fouled the water.I have not caused shedding of tears.


<a href="http://mac-2001.com/philo/crit/MYSTERY.TXT" target="_blank">http://mac-2001.com/philo/crit/MYSTERY.TXT</a>

Also, look at the terrible suffering from witch trials in Salem and Europe that occurred because of superstitious lines like “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live” in the OT. As one example. In 1769, John Wesley, founder of Methodism wrote in his JOURNAL: "It is true, likewise, that the English in general, and indeed most of themen of learning in Europe, have given up all accounts of witches andapparitions as mere old wives' fables. I am sorry for it, and I willingly take this opportunity of entering my solemn protest against this violent compliment which so many that believe the Bible pay to those who do notbelieve it.... They well know (whether Christians know it or not)that the giving up of witchcraft is in effect giving up the Bible

(12) If God is omnipotent, if he willed it, everyone would wake up and “know” what was true vs. false (Right now all religious people guess or hopes theirs is THE ONE TRUE RELIGION. The vast MAJORITY of people must be wrong on the EXACT ONE RELIGION to choose, because of the large number of different sects/religions, yes?

Shelley summarized this once: "If God has spoken, why is the universe not convinced?

***********
In short, I would recommend you try to move people away from thinking they have perfect, literal FUNDAMENTAL knowledge of God's will, to realizing that many people struggle to understand exactly what God's true will is.

I wouldn't set as a goal to convert theists as atheists -- only to move them more toward a universal deistic view (ie away from fundamentalism).

Sojourner

[ November 28, 2002: Message edited by: Sojourner553 ]</p>

Steven Carr

Or unless you want to claim that the Gospel writers did not edit their sources, and did not change what they liked for purely theological purposes, because they found what was written in the Gospels unacceptable.

If you see what Matthew did to Mark in
<a href="http://www.bowness.demon.co.uk/gosp1.htm" target="_blank">http://www.bowness.demon.co.uk/gosp1.htm</a> it is hard to draw the conclusion that the author of Matthew thought Mark's Gospel was wonderful.

If you have no problem with the idea that the Gospels are second-hand anonymous accounts, edited at will, with no trace of eyewitness corrections, then I don't see how the idea that Matthew and Luke were forced to rely on an anonymous source they felt need changing, to be at all a problem.

David Conklin

"For any here who don't know, the Synoptic Problem is the issue of the interdependence of Matthew, Mark, and Luke. In brief, these three gospels have extreme similarities in grammar, content, and structure that makes it virtually certain that some of them used the others as direct sources (i.e. copied) or that they mutually used other written documents."

As one prof noted what makes the Synoptic Problem so interesting is the fact that all three are veru dissimilar as well in terms of grammar, content, and structure.

When you have studied the Synoptic Problem as thoroughly as I have (see the three bibliographies at <a href="http://members.tcq.net/dconklin/)" target="_blank">http://members.tcq.net/dconklin/)</a> then you realize very fats that no matter which theory is proposed they all presuppose that there was literary dependence. And then you see how the critics of each theory poke holes in the theory if one assumes litereary dependence. So, in working out my own ideas on the subject the first thing I did was to drop the litereary dependence idea. Now the similarities are simply the result of a common oral tradition (see the Baily article ab't "informal controlled oral tradition" here)/eyewitness accounts.