Should belief in God be rational?

I have a tendency to lurk over in Happy Heathens because I sometimes find their opinions on Christianity, Religion, and Church life to be extremely important. (Not always, but sometimes.) Really, I do it to try and not forget what it's like to be on the outside of Christianity looking in.

Anyway over at the "Happy Heathens", I got myself involved in a discussion of Job that I am probably way theologically unprepared for, but decided that I didn't want to pull the "I just can't explain it," card. And in the process, I realized how hard a time I was having explaining Job in a way that made sense logically.

Now, I do think there are some things about our faith that just can't be explained. Miracles large and small.

But the basics: Is God good? Should we pray? How should we live our lives? Is there a heaven? Do you need to believe in Jesus to get to heaven?

Should we not be able to get at least a basic answer to these from a rational reading of the bible?

Basically, what are we to do when the Bible contradicts itself? Are they always only seeming contradictions? Or when we read the bible must we give ourselves over to irrationality and illogic?

I was just looking for some insight on these issues and maybe some book recommendations if anyone knows of any. (Actually, I think The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind does address this at least indirectly. I need to go back and give it a more careful reading.)

Wow, what a huge question. People have been struggling with these questions for millenia.

Obviously what we believe depends to a large measure in what we think the Bible is, and how it came to be. I think the more we see it as a work of man's creation, the less we know about God. Martin Luther saw the contradictions as paradox. He believed both sides were true (so Faith AND Reason), and was able to become comfortable living in paradox.

Exactly what do you think a "rational" reading of the Bible entails? How is that different than a regular reading of the Bible?

If we assume God to be all powerful and all knowing, then it seems that he must be larger than our rational minds can wrap around.

Have you read any C.S. Lewis? He was an atheist intellectual who developed faith. One of his books is Miracles, and I think addresses some of your questions.

These are indeed crucial questions, the crux of theological debate that I am wrestling with at the moment. I have just started reading Miracles and aim to post some views in a few days.

John

Here's a paradox.

Is. 55:8 "'For my thoughts are not your thoughts, Nor are your ways My ways,' says the Lord. 'For as the heavens are higher than the earth, So are my ways higher than you ways, And My thoughts than your thoughts.'"

Is. 1:18 "'Come now, and let us reason together,' says the Lord."

Rom. 11:33 "Oh the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are His judgments and His ways past finding out! For:
'who has known the mind of he Lord? Or who has become His counselor?'"

1 Cor. 2:16 "For: 'Who has known the mind of the Lord that we may instruct Him?' But we have the mind of Christ."

Chew on this one for awhile. How does this speak to reading the Bible rationally?

I may be misunderstanding what we mean by reading the bible rationally, as it seems to me this is precisely what exegesis is all about. We use all the scientific (rational) tools to try to understand the bible. These include hermeneutics, textual criticism, redaction criticism, linguistics, history, culture, context, determining who the author is and whom the intended audience is, and all the other things whose technical names I can barely remember from my seminary days. That's the tradition within which I have journeyed.

If one reads the bible literally, then it would appear to be more difficult to reconcile the apparent contradictions within the bible.

I have hung out at Happy Heathens myself, partly because for a while there, it seemed that the discussion could sustain itself without recourse to denominational dogma (which can really get in the way, IMHO).

But I have found, to my sorrow, that the primary position on HH is fundamentalist atheist. Or at least, the loudest position. This kind of perspective is based on the strong claim that nothing divine exists - and its proponents will insist (whether they admit it or not) that the "divine" is limited to a very, very small definition that is for all practical purposes the Big Bearded Guy Who Lives Above the Firmament (which most Christian theology moved beyond quite some time ago). Generally, I have found them to be completely uninterested in any nuanced understandings of the Divine.

John, you are right that it depends on where you start, when you begin reading the Bible. If you start from the assumption that the Divine exists, even if as humans we fall short of understanding it completely, then rational reading of the Bible will use the tools you mentioned and tend to strengthen faith. But if you start from the assumption that nothing divine exists, then rational reading of the Bible will show it to be nothing but a collection of cultural myths and fables, conventional wisdom, and purported history (with a little poetry thrown in for good measure).

Ask someone to give rational reason why God does not exist. It should be just as easy and just as rational to show that He does. Both are positions taken on faith.

A straight forward reading of the Bible only leads one into the irrational when dogma is applied. As understanding evolves, dogma can become outdated, hence irrational. For instance, the Creation stories in Genesis pretty closely follow the evolution of species theory in the way creation unfolds, from the Big Bang (Let there be light) to the creation of Man as the last great act of creation. Why, then, must evolution be wrong rather than a deeper understanding of creation itself? While there are irrational bits in the Bible (commanding Jeremiah (I believe) to lie naked 24/7 in the town square is pretty irrational IMHO), the message (that if Israel continues to act as it is, it will be humbled) is quite rational and easily understood.

I do not intend to get OT on Evolution/Creationism. I just used that as an example of how dogma clouds the meaning of the text.

There's a difference between rational beliefs and irrational ones. For example, I've never placed my hand into an open gas flame. My parents told me not to do this because it would burn my hand. I believed them and have no urge to 'test' this belief. I judge this to be a rational belief.

Belief in god can't be rational IMHO (although we can rationally reconstruct the reasons behind the belief in god). Belief in god exists to answer certain existential questions that cannot be answered rationally, by 'science' (i.e., why is there suffering? what is the meaning of life? what is the meaning of death?); the the answers supplied by the belief in god are not rational. For example, much like the Azande (E. E. Evans-Pritchard, Witchcraft and Magic Among the Azande) belief in witchcraft, the belief in god fills in for deficiencies in rational (scientific) knowledge. The Azande do not hold death to be natural: they know that people die for medical reasons or because of accidents (so they have a rational understanding of death), but what needs to be explained is why people die at a certain time and in a certain way. The belief in witchcraft supplies an answer to misfortune. Belief in god functions in a similar way.

Ask someone to give rational reason why God does not exist.

Negative Proof

Negative proof, the fallacy of appealing to lack of proof of the negative, is a logical fallacy of the following form:

"X is true because there is no proof that X is false."

It is asserted that a proposition is true, only because it has not been proven false. The negative proof fallacy often occurs in the debate of the existence of supernatural phenomena, in the following form:

"A supernatural force must exist, because there is no proof that it does not exist".

However, the fallacy can also occur when the predicate of a subject is denied:

"A supernatural force must not exist, because there is no proof that it does exist."

"Scientists don't know for sure what natural forces caused the first single-cell life, so it must be intelligent design."

Science has pretty well proven that human beings wear out just like a pair of jeans. While life can be taken away at any time, we pretty much know why we die and are always interested in how we die.

Answers to the existential questions don't have to come through the irrational. Until our understanding improves those answers may be irrational (?) but once we understand more they become more rational. The only aspects of creation we cannot approach rationally are those for which we have no experience, ie what happens after we die? where are we before we are conceived? does God exist? where does He live? I tend not to concern myself with these questions because they have no bearing on my life. If I live as much in the will of God as I can, all those things will take care of themselves.

Jesse -- what I get from post #10 is that, based on logic alone, one can neither prove nor disprove the existence of the supernatural/God. That would mean that logic alone lands squarely in the agnostic camp. Am I getting your point? Or what am I missing?

walk2work, there is actually an Atheism and Humanism group, but it does seem that, in practice, Happy Heathens gets most of the atheist/agnostic/skeptic/etc. action. However, there is a smattering of pagans, non-traditional Christians, and so on.

For what it's worth, I think you have a good point about the Big Bearded Guy thing. In my experience, many (American) people, Christian and non- , equate "religion" with "modern Western Christianity" (often Protestant). And discussions and arguments about "religion" therefore generally are pretty much referring mainly to "the conception of white Protestant Christianity in which I was raised," rather than religion in general.

Seems to me that greater religious literacy -- among people of all faiths, as well as the non-religious -- would be very helpful. However, that is, I think, a topic for another thread. ;)

As a non-Christian, I find this thread interesting, and am glad to see such questions (per twomoredays) being asked and addressed. I think that for some people, e.g. ex-Christians I have known, frustration comes when, often as youth, they ask these types of questions and are told "shut up" or "just have faith," rather than getting an honest "We don't know" or the chance to study and grapple with the issues.

Essa Thanks for your post.

Here's the rub: When people reject religion based on "the conception of white Protestant Christianity in which I was raised,", it's not simply that they are rejecting "Christianity." They are usually rejecting the over-simplified, child-like image of the Divine that they were taught as a child, that didn't make sense as they grew up.

But most Christian theology simply does not teach The Big Bearded Guy as God. That's a concrete idea for children (mostly). Christian theology, like that of most religions, is much more complex and nuanced. I find it rather sad when folks reject a child's perspective of God but are unwilling to explore whether there are other images/faiths/metaphors that are more compelling. Not because I think folks will "go to Hell" if they don't believe, but because I think that believing in something greater than yourself can be beneficial in very many ways.

-12 - I agree that from a purely rational standpoint you get agnosticism. However, the god that provides no evidence of his existence and is impossible to observe in human life is clearly not worth my interest (personally) and I find the actions of organized religion so repugnant that I am an atheist - a person who believes there is no god, just like a religious person believes there is a god.

So what do you think about people who say that they have had personal encounters with the Divine? Their "knowing" of the Divine, the Other, is a completely different thing than a logical/rational deduction.

If you approach religion from a logical/rationalistic stance can you define faith? Can you relate anecdotes of how you've demonstrated faith?

>16 saxhorn:
I'm not sure if you were addressing someone in particular, but I'm going to answer your question anyway.

I, personally, struggle with some of the non-rational expressions of religion that are common in different faiths.

You know that joke about the man who is stranded in a flood or hurricane and won't leave because God will save him, and then a rescuer in a boat comes by and he says, no God will save him and he gets to heaven and God says, what were you doing, I was trying to save you?

I'm pretty sure God works in our lives something like that.

When I pray, and I suppose I struggle a lot with prayer, but when I do pray, I don't expect some otherworldly voice to answer them. I usually expect the answer to come in a sudden confidence about a decision or some sort of help in making the decision I suddenly stumble across or remember.

I would never want to say that someone else's experience with a God who they can feel or see is wrong or ingenuine. Maybe, that is how God reaches them. Without having had the same experience, I could never say for sure.

I'm not sure what you mean by anecdotes of demonstrating faith, but for me it's about being a good friend. Listening when someone is struggling in their job or volunteering in my community. It's admitting I'm flawed and need help. It's about trying to be patient with people.

Really, I think I demonstrate my faith by being a better person with it than I was without it. And still acknowledging that I have miles and miles to go.

twomoredays,

I was really addressing everyone who is reading and/or participating in this discussion. So, thanks for your response.

I would say that you have a rational response to your understanding of what a Christian should do in the world around him/her. It's a response to the parable of the good Samaritan, or the rest of Luke's gospel. That kind of response doesn't require any particular illumination to generate action. Your faith sees this action as the moral/ethical thing to do, and you obey.

There are the responses that some have that occur because they feel an interior prompting, or hear an interior voice. In that case, the response is probably not purely rational, because it wasn't initiated by a rational decision.

> 14 walk2work True! Of course, there are also people who have studied Christianity, the Christian Bible, and so on, in depth and in its various permutations, and still rejected it on various bases. Also, I wonder how many Christians have thoroughly studied other religions in depth, have a firm grasp of those religions' beliefs (as the religions see themselves, not just the Christian viewpoint of them) -- and are thus in a position to reject them on an educated basis. :)

#19

I think most Christians have not studied other religions, and probably not seeking, or they would have.

However, there are noted Christian authors who have spent much time reading and analyizing the claims of other religions. Walter Martin Kingdom of the Cults and Josh McDowell Evidence that demands a verdict, 2 vols. immediately come to mind.

> 20 I've read Kingdom of the Cults, and unfortunately, the late Walter Martin's approach is precisely the one I was thinking of, in post 19, as the one NOT to take, or the least useful to take. Although, again, I think such a tangent is probably best for another thread and I don't wish to sidetrack this one, especially as I'm a lurker/guest here.

Oh.

Well, I think that many college and university campuses have religion professors who have studied, and who teach world religion or comparative religion courses. They would likely be able to make a less biased decision.

Essa, I think you're right that most Christians have not studied other religions in any depth at all.

For example, we were discussing Eckhart Tolle's A New Earth in a class at church and it was blatantly obvious to me that most of his claims stemmed from eastern religions - mostly Shintoism and Hinduism. For most of the rest of the class, they wouldn't have had any idea of this. All they knew was "this is not biblical." Which is fine, I guess.

I have studied other religions my whole life, pretty much every one but Christianity because I thought I knew enough about it from pop culture–only I realize now that pop culture Christianity resembles the religion put forth in the bible very little.

Actually, this is something about the typical Christian that bugs me a little. (Probably because of my UU upbringing.) How can you say yours is the one true religion if you don't even know what the other religions say?

#12

I'm not sure whether there's a way to prove the existence of God conclusively one way or the other. There are some pretty interesting arguments made from all sides, but I'm not sure any of them have closed the deal over the past whatever thousands of years.

#23

On what basis do you think one should decide what the "one true religion" is?

Should one do a pro vs con analysis, a balance sheet? Should one count up the number of inconsistencies there are in the sacred texts?

#23

I'm just thinking real quick here as I'm off of work just now and was taking the time to read the posts but really must be leaving to see my family! ;-)

Off the top of my head I would say that if we believe the Bible is true then we should study it and know it well. What I mean is that you don't need to know the details of other religions to know your own is true. If you are challenged in your faith/beliefs and are unable to give an answer, or such a question causes you to seriously doubt your own religion, then you are not really sure what you yourself believe.

Does that make any sense? I think I'm too tired to really focus...maybe I'll clarify what i mean later tonight. Or not, we'll see!

Take care all! ;-)

>25 saxhorn:
I wouldn't recommend such an approach, but if it works for you... :)

>26 enoch_elijah:
But I think for Christianity to flourish and spread, those who go out trying to spread the gospel in whatever way need to be familiar with the culture they're interacting with. Paul did this in his letters. He quotes the poets of their culture. Talking about the prophecies of the old testament would've been pointless for his audiences.

Furthermore, even leaving evangelism aside I think to truly be friends with someone it helps to understand the basics of their religion and culture. I think a lot of the negative influences of Christianity come when Christians refuse to allow themselves to try and understand another human being as anything other than a "target" for evangelism.

#27 Well, that's not my approach, either. But then, I have no need to know other religions in detail. I was trying to ascertain how a rational person would determine the validity of a religion. Maybe even playing (can I say it?) devil's advocate.

Mostly I agree with #26.

Paul evangelized first by speaking to Jews in the synagogues. Then, he went into the marketplaces. Only in Athens are we told that he quoted from poets. But, I agree the prophecies of the OT would have been meaningless.

So, what was his message? The life, miracles, death and resurrection of Jesus. The good news that had never been heard by any of the Greeks. Paul also attested to the message he was bringing by "works of power." He got their attention and ministered to their needs.

But, I agree that Christians going to evangelize outside of their own culture (today that's their own congregation), should understand the culture. Actually, Christian missionaries have done that for at least 200 years. Consider Hudson Taylor and the Inland China Mission. Taylor and his staff wore Chinese dress, and ate and lived as Chinese. But they didn't become Taoists, or Buddhists, or Shintoists, or Confucionists in order to minister.

So, do we consider other groups who aggressively evangelize negative also? How about Jehovah's Witnesses or Mormons who visit your house at least twice a year?

twomoredays That's funny to me, about Tolle's book. Someone in my church mentioned she began reading it because of Oprah's book club, so I got a copy to have a look. I did not bother to read it, because I also immediately recognized that it was primarily eastern theology/philosophy, and I've already read books that were much better written!

Clearly some folk here feel that they can assess Christianity's "truth" from an internal position. That's okay; I don't get much hung up on the objective "truth" of a religion, so long as it's humane and just.

But I do agree that it would be helpful for Christians to know about other religions with a respectful depth. For one thing, doing so helps to humanize people from other cultures in our eyes. As for me, I began to question Christianity as a teenager, and went seeking for a meaningful faith. Along the way, I learned a lot about other faiths. Though I returned to Christianity, I can say that my seeking deepened my faith immeasurably.

#29 walk2work can you define what you mean by truth as in:

assess Christianity's "truth" ? or objective "truth"?

saxhorn: Well, I have spent a fair amount of time over at Happy Heathens, because while most of the posters are atheist or agnostic, they can be pretty well informed about theology (even if they disagree) and they challenge me to be consistent in my own theology.

But a lot of them are very concerned about whether a religion is "true." For example, with Christianity, they may have a rigid view of the Bible that can't tolerate its different perspectives - they see it as internally inconsistent and thus "false." Or they are troubled by the lack of archaelogical "proof" when some of what's in the Bible was clearly never meant as history. Then there are all the issues with the existence of God versus lack of scientific evidence for God.

But I don't worry so much about all that, because to me faith is not about "proving" something. The more archaelogical evidence we gather . . . well, that's just cool. But it doesn't "prove" God exists anymore than science "proves" God doesn't (you can't prove a negative). To me, faith is about relationship and the way we live. To argue whether Christianity is "true" is to miss the point, IMHO.

So I guess that I wrote that as if I were posting to HH.

I always felt that teaching religion as a subject in school was a good idea. It should be taught in an interdisciplinary mode with history and geography and it should be taught from the third grade forward. Start with the basics and work up to comparative studies. Religion is such a wide open topic and we don't teach it at all, except in the home where we are likely to repeat our own prejudices.

Two things to keep in mind: all religions attempt to accomplish the same thing, illuminate the hidden, and, atheism is a religion and should be organized and taught as such.

If I understand walk2work correctly, "truth" is the same thing as validity.

Do the folks over at HH subject the sacred writings of other religions to the same scrutiny that they do the Bible?

Are their discussions based upon comparing the theologies, meaning that they have read some books about the sacred writings and doctrines (and therefore someone's interpretation of what they mean), or are they based upon the sacred writings themselves?

geneg: although I don't oppose the teaching of religion in schools, starting at the third grade means that we're already teaching interpretation, and repeating the prejudices of the author or teacher.

> 32 With due respect, and speaking as one of the at least occasional participants in the aforementioned Happy Heathens, I disagree. A-theism or nontheism is exactly that: a lack of belief in gods. (Cf. atypical, "not typical.") Of course, some atheists are what is termed "hard" atheists, who have a positive belief that there is no deity of any kind; as opposed to "soft" atheism which is simply the lack of belief in any deity.

Even so, atheism is not a religion, it is not organized, there is no creed, manifesto or secret handshake, and two atheists may have nothing in the world in common other than that they each lack belief in any gods. It's also worth noting that, generally, most Christians are non-theistic when it comes to other people's gods. Most Christians don't believe in -- or are a-theistic in regards to -- Maat, Freya, Ishtar, Ahura Mazda, Shiva, Eshu-Legbara, Amaterasu, and so on. A-theists just go a step further -- they don't believe in any of those, and they don't believe in HaShem/God/Allah, either.

Totally agreed, however, on the value of engaging in comparative religious study. :)

walk2work, I think you have very good points, but I also think it does matter about truth, at least to a point. If it's not true that sacrificing a child on an altar makes the sun come up each morning, then we can save lives by not making a pointless sacrifice each day. I think the search for truth is important both to Christians (and other theists) and to non-theists, each in their own ways.

saxhorn: I have only been on LT for a few months, but so far in my experience, the folks at HH do not deconstruct other religions in anywhere near the same way that they do Christianity (i.e. subject the sacred writings of other religions to the same scrutiny that they do the Bible).

My guess is that most of them live in countries where Christianity is the dominant culture/religion. Since Christianity has a belief in a divine mandate regarding morality, and teaches the duty to evangelize, said atheists apparently feel a strong need to defend themselves against Christianity. It's clearly different in non-Christian countries. Christians in India have to defend themselves against institutional Hinduism; evangelizing Muslims is punishable by death in some Muslim countries. Though we don't go that far, I can understand the western atheist's focus on Christianity.

Essa I did rather imply that truth is not important to me, and that was an overstatement. I thought I had corrected it by saying that it's important to me that a religion be humane and just. But the truth is, I am enough a child of the Enlightenment, post-modernism, and liberal Protestantism, that to me, it's quite impossible to absolutely determine that one religion is completely right, while others are completely wrong. It would be appropriate to call me a Universalist. Thus, I find arguments about whether a religion is "true" soon run off the rails, focusing instead on minutiae rather than the basics (for example, are you "loving {all} your neighbors as you love yourself"?) I do agree with your example, and the point you were making. I have spent most of my life searching for that kind of truth.

Edited to add: Upon further reflection, I see that I have unintentionally perpetrated a bit of hypocrisy in my post. In reality, it has always been devastatingly important to me that what I believe be based on reality, on the way that the Universe really is. I don't talk about that much here, because the HH group is full of atheists who spend a lot of time arguing one extreme (nothing Divine, theistic or non-theistic) and this Christianity group has a lot of very vocal folks with so-called traditional theology (the other extreme). So there is nowhere here for me to wrestle as a faithful person with what really is. Unless I have not found it yet . . . and this edit is most certainly not an invitation to be evangelized. I have spent 40-some years working on this problem. You are not going to solve it by yelling at me.

#35

Interesting that you say "this Christianity group has a lot of very vocal folks with so-called traditional theology (the other extreme)" because my experience is that in these threads I have found so few that actually hold to traditional theology! ;-)

Am I missing something?

I agree with enoch_elijah that I find few posting on the Chrsitianity group pages with "traditional" Christian theology.

Of course, we have to ask ourselves what "traditional" means. I would suggest that it means a literal interpretation of the Apostles and Nicene creeds and a view that the Bible is the inspired Word of God (without specifying the method of inspiration.

But, walk2work confirmed what I had suspected, that Christianity is mainly the religion to suffer deconstruction.

"I always felt that teaching religion as a subject in school was a good idea. "

I had religion in school throughout (in Germany this is standard) and I enjoyed it very much. In elementary school it was more of the Bible study, but after about 5th grade it became a philosophy/history/theology/ethics class with many lively discussions (especially as we got older). We studied arguments for atheism etc. and were not indoctrinated in any way (although officially it was catholic religion - the protestants had their own religion classes).

But in Germany people are generally much more relaxed about religion than in the US. I could see that many fundamentalist parents would be upset about the kind of open-minded religion classes I enjoyed back home. Plus you would have to find the kind of open-minded and well-educated teachers that could teach something like that.

For those of you advocating Comparative Religion courses, you may be interested in checking out Religious Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know--And Doesn't ...

Thanks. I heard once that a good percentage of American teenagers think that Sodom and Gomorrah were two people.

Probably, but then they don't much about American history, either.

Yes, a good example is our latest celebrity politician (Sarah Palin) who thinks that the founding fathers wrote 'under God' into the pledge of allegiance, when in reality the pledge of allegiance was written in 1892 and 'under God' was added in 1954.

Well I am a natural born American, and an Alaskan to boot, and I don't mind saying it.

Sarah Palin has many virtues, but she is not the brightest bulb on the block.

Among other things, we are still having babies--something non-Muslim Germans seem to have (speaking generally of course) forgotten how to do.

If you use contraception, the terrorists are winning.

It may have been the tone that you were objecting to, Oakes, but I am not sure what other point you were really trying to make with respect to the German educational system.

The truth is, compared to folks from pre-Baby Boomer generations, our youngest generations born in the United States are truly and genuinely ignorant not only of other religions but also of Christianity (which many of them don't espouse anyway). This lack is clearly not due to any "open-minded" religion courses. That we have failed to evangelize even our own children is, IMHO, no reason to cast aspersions toward folks from northern Europe.

Jesse: I hope you were making a joke. In this day of fundamentalist/extremeist interfaith violence, it's critical that Christians grasp that most Muslims are not terrorists, but are more-or-less ordinary people with varying degrees of committment to their (albeit non-Christian) faith. Consider what it would be like if you felt you had to hide or downplay your faith because you had a reasonable concern that showing it would lead to discrimination, threats, or even outright violence. The history of anti-Semitism in the US should provide ample caution about demonizing the adherants of an entire religion.

Sorry to be so heavy-minded this afternoon, but perpetuating hostile attitudes is not a useful (or faithful!) thing to do in this day and age.

#43 I think you are over-reading my post. I didn't say Americans are ignorant, I wasn't sneering or say that Americans are whacky fundamentalists. These are all things that you imply without even knowing me.

I am worried about this country. I have chosen to live here because I like it here. If I wouldn't like it, I wouldn't be here. I love the generous people and the beautiful wide-open landscape of this country and the enlightenment ideas upon which this country is founded. And I see people like Bush trying to undermine many of these things at every turn (environment, constitution: wire-tapping, habeas corpus, Guantanamo etc). I look at Palin and I see Bush redux, only worse.

I have lived here for almost 20 years, I help educate the next generation of Americans. I am married to a third-generation American and I am entitled to an opinion like anybody else, even if it does not line up with your right-wing ideas.

#43 More to the point: What is wrong with open-minded religious instruction? What would you prefer instead? No religious instruction - fine with me, that's what we have right now. Although it would be nice if people would know more about their own and other religions.

Or religious instruction which indoctricates? Is that what you want? I think that would go against the spirit and the letter of the constitution of this country.

#45/46 Don't worry, Jesse was being sarcastic. ;-)

#44 Arctic, now I know how you feel sometimes when you get it from the ultra-atheists at Happy Heathens. Whew, seems like Christianity is not making everybody meek and peaceful...

You would think.....

#50 Of course, yapete, you recognize that conservative Christians feel like they are constantly having to defend their beliefs in an antagonistic world. That certainly makes one edgy and not "meek." You know, the OT says Moses was the meekest of men. Think Pharaoh felt that?

Speaking of pre-Boomers, I'm in the very first Boomer gen., and I can tell you the atmosphere toward traditional religion in this country is a far cry from when I grew up. It's cool to make fun of the 1950s and Leave it to Beaver but, by and large, that was the life-style to which society aspired. Religion was respected. Saturdays on TV would always have the announcement, "Be sure to visit the church or synagogue of your choice." Eastern religions and Islam weren't visible yet.

As a teacher I can tell you that much of how to behave in public was taught by sitting in the pew on Sunday between your parents. Our society shared many more values that we do today.

(And, of course, there were bad things about the 1950s, too. There still was segregation, and there were the HUAC meetings and blacklisting.)

As for Bush-redux: are you aware that Lincoln also suspended habeas corpus and took the constitution into his own hands? Yet, today, we consider him to be our greatest President. Did Roosevelt's WWII administration violate the rights of any Americans? You know it did, just ask the Japanese citizens who were interred on the west coast. You know, we like him, too. Or how about the citizens of Germanic decent during WWI? They were afraid to enjoy anything of their heritage for fear that their neighbors would report them to the police for being unpatriotic. I live in a state where there was considerable harassment of ethnic German citizens.

Insofar as the environment is concerned: Part of our high gas prices are do to constraints placed on the oil companies. Who supports these? Not Bush or his administration.

OK, enough rant. :-) I'll be meek and peaceful now.

I appreciate your post. It's to the topics and you are not getting personal ;-)

Ok, one-by-one:

Meekness:
I was joking, of course. But people do emphasize different aspects of the Bible. I grew up in a liberal, European, catholic setting and the biggest thing in the Bible was the sermon on the mound. Revelations, for example, was never read in Church (not that I can remember). So, I probably grew up with a maybe mistaken idea that Christianity is about non-violence (there is a lot of Jesus sayings to back that up, but of course, there are counter examples, plus the OT is anything but peaceful).

50s: I have heard what you talk about from several people and I can appreciate that. On the other hand, when I think of "leave it to Beaver" world, with mommy confined to the cookstove, a kind of shudder tingles down my spine. I'm thinking pleasantville here.

Lincoln, Roosevelt: You are right. Especially the Japanese internment thing was a big moral failing, and I would be railing against that, if this were the 1940s. But then again, look at the situation in both cases and compare to today. Yes, terrorism is a big problem, but WWII and the Civil War had the real potential to destroy this country. Plus as soon as these conflicts were over, normal rights were restored. But the so-called 'war on terror' has no end. It is not even a real war, it should be more like a 'war of ideas' and an international police action. IMHO, by giving up a lot of our precious rights seemingly indefinitely, we are conceding way too much to the terrorists.

Environment: How would low gas prices help the environment? I'm lost here. IMHO, gas prizes should be $6/gallon to jump start real alternative energy research and get people out of gas guzzlers. Drilling in beautiful areas of this great country is only going to prolong our gas addiction for a short time at enormous environmental cost.

By the way, I am about as meek and peaceful as it goes, so I did not mean that as a slur at all. When I was an active Christian (I used to be a very active Christian), peace and respect was what being a Christian was all about.

As to oil prices, Palin's 25 percent oil tax might have something to do with higher oil prices.

Alaska gets the money, and the rest of the country pays for the higher oil.

Can I get my money back? ;-)

HA! HA! I just got a check for $2,300 for every single person in my family! Curtesy of BP, Conaco Phillips, and other oil companies.

thank you governor Palin for the extra $1200 this year.

By my calculation you owe me $73.92. My bank account number is ....

#53. I think I knew "meekness" was sort of tongue in cheek, but then, there are people who think that's what Christianity is all about. I also rely a lot on Jesus's teaching of non-violence, but here we're expressing our opinions, and sometimes pretty emphatically. Thank God, not like sports boards on ESPN.

50s: I don't have problems with women working, with leading/managing/administrating, or with pursuing meaningful careers. However, I don't think Pleasantville is exactly the way the 50s were. the point of the movie is "look how much you've been missing," and "those in authority are trying to interfere with your freedom." During the 50s and in previous generations mothering and caring for family was given a lot of respect. (In fact, we could use a lot more mothering with our youth today. The two income household has not been a blessing for our young). Many mothers worked outside the home, and many volunteered for charitable organizations. Some of he women of the 50s worked in war plants during WWII, and some continued to work following the war.

But, the point I'm making is that there was a strong desire in society to create and duplicate the model nuclear family. Most mothers were committed to that vision, and didn't consider themselves "confined." In the early 60s it was not uncommon for young coeds to still have as a No. 1 goal of attending college "to earn their Mrs. degree."

We live in a post women's lib world where this former lifestyle is treated like Pleasantville. Libbers don't value women's freedom to choose to be stay-at-home moms. They think these women are being dominated by their husbands, and not making free choices. They can't imagine well-educated young women making the choice of family-first. But they do! (I can say thins because my libber wife takes our daughter to task for making that choice).

Moving on...

We also thought that Vietnam wouldn't end, but it did. I'm not sure that the current terrorist crisis doesn't have the ability to destroy this country. We "fought" the cold war for a long time, and one could say that Korea and SE Asia were the hot war against communism. With your background you should know about that cultural war more than I. You lived a lot closer to the iron curtain than I.

Did you watch any of the 9/11 films this past week? Did you catch the strong feelings for going to war that were expressed by many caught on private videos (i.e., not talking heads on a TV show)? I had forgotten how much stronger our feelings were right after that event. Even many prominent Democrats who are now against the "war" expressed strong approval for the action.

That being said, I am concerned that we do not sacrifice our basic constitutional rights, and thereby cease being America, in order to fight terrorism. But, I also know that I do not have access to all the data available, and can't make a fully informed decision. But, it sure seems like we've made lots of mistakes. Of course, huge mistakes were made in past wars, too.

Environment: I guess my rant was an economic one. I think some of the steps we take to protect the environment prevent reasonable progress. We belonged to a church that wanted to expand it building on its own property, but were prevented by EPA regulations that deemed a depression that filled with water after the rain(a puddle) as "wet lands." Oil companies can not use their profits to build new, and more efficient, refineries because of EPA regulations. Everyone would benefit from more and newer refineries.

Gas guzzlers are a catch-22. Detroit tried making small cars in the early 60s before there was any gas shortage. There was a wave of small, cheap, and economic imported cars, (the VW was one of them) and Detroit was trying to answer the competition. Among the new cars was the Corvair (the one that made Ralph Nader famous). Well, these small, inexpensive cars were felt to be unsafe, and the public began buying larger cars again.

Then in the mid 70s we had the first OPEC oil embargo during Pres. Carter's administration and gas which had been 27 cents in 1972 rose to 1.75. So, once again, Detroit made more fuel efficient cars. Guess what? Americans wanted minivans and SUVs.

So, will the current oil crisis cause a change in habits. So far, it seems to be. Library attendance was way up this summer, and the travel industry was very poor. US airlines are in the worst shape ever, and the public abhors going through the hassle to fly. Businesses are considering changes in working hours to limit driving and save some gas.

Today the Volt was announced. A new electric car that can travel 40 miles before a gas engine will engage to recharge the battery. Now I wonder, can I drive this car 1,000 miles to see my kids on the east coast? I certainly can't afford to fly any longer, and my kids and grandkids can't afford to fly here. Will the environmentalists help me out of this dilemma?

OK, this REALLY is enough rant. You pushed my buttons :-D

Doesn't sound like a rant ;-). Well reasoned. Allow me to somewhat disagree though - that's my right as tree-hugging, women-liberating liberal ;-)

50s: I don't object to women staying at home, if they choose so. My mother was a stay-at-home mom and it was very good for the three of us. But I know that my mother has her regrets. She is very intelligent and I think she would have made a great psychologist or something. We would have been fine - except missing out on some fantastic meals ;-)

I'm too young to have experienced the 50s, so probably on some level I don't know what I'm talking about. It just seems that choices were more limited and gender roles were much more entrenched. Plus, racial segregation is definitely nothing to miss.

Cold war etc: Again, the cold war was different. We are talking about two superpowers that really could annihilate each other. I remember having nightmares about nuclear explosions when Bush Sr. put those Pershings in Germany.

I also want to make clear that I do not object to the Afghanistan war. This was very necessary. But when I first heard about the Iraq war, I was like "Hey, what does that have to do with anything?" And it has been a huge distraction and terrorist recruitment opportunity.

I think it would have been much smarter to concentrate on Afghanistan and then undermine the Arabic despots (in Iraq, but also in Saudi Arabia, Iran, Egypt) from within by supporting democratic forces within these countries. Plus generally showing good will towards the Arabic people. Imagine how powerful this would have been. The US got brutally attacked, but we show the true face of mercy and democracy and help you guys out. We live up to our ideals that we always keep talking about (freedom, democracy, rule of law etc).

I bet terrorism would have been undermined much more efficiently than by trying to kill one terrorist at a time just to create three new ones (as oakes pointed out they do have a lot of kids and those kids are angry we killed their daddy). I think the foreign policy of Bush & Co. was not very smart and is harming the US in the long run. A bit more imagination and boldness would have been a better idea than to just bomb, baby, bomb.

Also, I don't think the terrorists are a real threat to this country - unless we do the destruction ourselves as we sell out all we hold dear out of fear...and remember, fear is the currency the terrorists like to deal in.

Remember, Europe lived through many years of terrorism, and we got through it fine with some of the most liberal societies around (of course, restrictive policies were and are being applied there as well, which I don't agree to).

Gas guzzlers: I understand that the car companies have to make money and therefore bow to consumer demand. But living at the hub of the whole thing and being in a technical field, I have listened to many white collar car guys coming to our department just two, three years ago telling us how stupid the Japanese are for building hybrids on which they are loosing money. Now, see who has been incredibly stupid. The joke in Detroit is that only our former mayor may have been stupider than the CEOs of the big three.

If you can't see where things are going, you have no business running important corporation like GM or Ford.

The GM Volt will have a range 360 miles. The plan is to make it a plug-in hybrid, i.e. you can drive 40 miles (which is in the range of normal commuting) on electricity only. If you go further, the gas engine kicks in. Since most people drive most of the time less than 40 miles (my commute is 36 miles/day for example), you could get an effective >100 enevada: miles/gallon.

So, finally, a good idea from the GM dunces. Just about time.

Since you are so proud of your religious superiority, let me remind you of these lines:

"Thou shalt not bear false witness against your neighbour."

Also: Mathew 7:1-2

1"Do not judge, or you too will be judged. 2For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.

Now, I never said that Americans are ignorant or are whacky fundamentalists. I was saying that fundamentalist parents would object to an open-minded religion class in school, as they also object to teaching proper science for example. Americans are not equal fundamentalist parents. I don't see how you make that equation. I certainly don't.

You also agree that people in Germany are more relaxed than Americans about religion. You make that out as something that makes Germans inferior. I don't agree with that - but so be it. But again, this does not equate in me thinking of Americans as whackos.

In terms of teachers: I teach teachers. There are some wonderful teachers out there, but in general, I have to say that the quality of people going into the teaching profession is not what it should be. I have had several teachers going for their MS in Science Education who can't do basic algebra. In MA a few years back, they instituted a basic skills test for beginning teachers and they had to simplify it, because most of them were flunking it.

It is simple: If the schools are awful, the people coming out of the school are underprepared for college. The colleges are run like businesses and thus have to keep students at all cost. So they dumb down. So these people graduate, knowing even less than their teachers. Then they go into schools to teach and guess what: The kids they teach will know even less than they did and so on in a downward spiral.

This is what I see every day I go to work.

Now add to this the politicization of education and you can see where open-minded, well informed religion instruction could be tough to come by. Not impossible, but difficult.

In all this, I fail to see where I impugn Americans. I stand by what I said. It is clear that you are demonizing me because of your own prejudices towards Europeans and liberals.

Actually, what you really remind me of is a guy who is upset that somebody calls him 'violent' and then, just to show how upset he is, punches his accuser into the stomach.

Funny, I have never heard "Do not judge, or you too will be judged" stated except within the context of the utterer judging other people. And usually it's non-Christians or liberal "Christians" who use it--how ironic, how cutting etc., etc, etc. It's the oldest trick in the book. And it's boring.

I concur wholeheartedly... The whole sermon on the mount is completely overrated.

Whatever do you mean, sir? The whole "Sermon on the Mount" portion of Christ's teachings has been much overemphasized much to the detriment of Christ's strictures against homosexuality and abortion.

ooooo . . . irony, right? I get it!

#63 I think this conversation has gone way beyond productiveness. I'm off to Happy Heathens, where people act more .... Christian. Bye bye.

Saxhorn, I enjoyed our conversation.

yapete, thanks for your thoughts on this topic. Conversations in the Christianity group are generally a little less hostile and a little more productive, but there are exceptions.

#62 - I can assure you you're not the only one who has felt that way!

I just came back from New York on Sept. 11th. Tell those people at the ceremony that terrorism is not a threat to the US.

#70 Yep. I watched some of the 9/11 programs on TV last week. It brought everything back.

I remember how patriotic everyone was for the first year. I remember flying into Nashville and seeing National Guard troops with M-16s posted throughout the airport. I remember becoming irritated that I was always the one pulled out of line and frisked with the magic wand.

Now,with our false sense of security reestablished we want to forget the whole thing.

Thanks for reminding us.

Since the word "rational" is in the title of this thread, lets talk reason for a moment.

What of the odds of anyone dying of a terrorist attack in this country, if you are not a soldier serving in Iraq?

Pretty slim. Much less than the odds of dying of a sudden heart attack, brain aneurysm, car accident, or, if live in Durham, NC, murder.

Yet we have a very false sense of security about these things.

This is not a safe world. Get used to it. Yes, you can do things to protect yourself from somethings, but living in fear is not really an option.

When I first starting working in the hospital it was kind of scary to see how many people die. One week I attended the deaths of three people who were my age. I now wear a seat belt, I eat healthier food, I exercise more, and do a few more things to improve my health. But living in fear is not one of them.

Reason dicates that we cannnot create a totally safe existence for ourselves. people get sick, people get sick and and die, people die. We can a few reasonable things to improve our odds, but frisking a nine year old for bombs at the airport (which happened to my son more than once) is hardly reasonable.

Yesterday someone was telling that they were on an airplane and a TSA agent came on and said the videos of the carry-ons showed someone brought a leatherman on board, and that the plane would not take off until that one person surrendered it.

Nine people raised their hands with leathermen in them.

Arctic, what's a leatherman?

Fraidy cats vote Republican.
People living in the "peace that passes all understanding" vote Democratic.

That is a natural born fact.

A leatherman is probably an Alaska thing. I bet Sarah Palin has one.

It is a swiss army knife on steroids. Most of them open up to be pliers, and their is a knife blade, hack saw, etc. Tool kit in your pocket, and they issue you one when you move up here.

Every Alaskan man worth his weight in moose meat has one.

Oh and while we are speaking about Alaska, their is a saying up here; If you are looking for that special person, the odds are good. But the goods are odd.

What of the odds of anyone dying of a terrorist attack in this country, if you are not a soldier serving in Iraq?

Well let's see. There was the bombing of the federal building in Oklahoma City by a home grown terrorist. We have school shootings by nine-year olds and teens.

Of course, there's the 9/11 attacks where over 3,000 people died in the twin towers, plus flight 93, plus the Pentagon.

Then there are embassy workers oversees, and not all are military.

I agree that nothing can make us really secure; it's an illusion. Yet, terrorism IS a threat and accepting that fact IS rational.

#73 geneg --- LOL

So, do rational minded people vote independent?

Accepting the fact of terrorism as a threat is indeed rational, living in fear of terrorism is not only irrational, but unChristian. We are commanded to be joyful in the Lord.

Sax, rational people vote their irrationalities. If they voted rationally we would live in a far different world.

42,116 people died in car accidents in 2001. If we lowered the speed limits, we could cut that number by at least the number of people who were killed on Sept 11 in NYC, Washington and PA.

An average of 90 people a year are killed in lightning strikes. Between 1959 and 1994, lightning killed 3239 people, roughly the number of people who died on 9/11.

More soldiers have died fighting terrorism than were killed on 9/11. I am not saying that we give in to the terrorists (whatever that means) but I don't think living in fear is a healthy way to approach the problem.

Totally off-topic, but the Leatherman multi-tools aren't just an Alaska thing. Many of my friends (here in Oregon) have them. Some have more than one. :D Although one friend swears by some other brand, whose name escapes me at the moment, because he can use it one-handed more easily than the Leatherman brand.

Reams and volumes have been written about risk perception. Cryptographer, security expert and squid fan Bruce Schneier had a column on it, a couple of years back, which is pretty interesting.

#72,78 Arctic said about all I wanted to say ;-)

Bad diets kill far more people in this country than terrorists. Our freedoms are too precious to surrender them to the terrorists out of fear. Remember: That is what the terrorists want us to do, so we are just delivering the 'goods' when we open up a Guantanamo or start listening to everybody's phone conversations.

Don't get me wrong: We need some security. Airport security is good. New technology for FBI and CIA is good. Train arabic speakers etc. Be smart about it. But don't sell out freedom for security.

"Those who would sacrifice freedom for security deserve neither" (Benjamin Franklin)

"“Fear is the path to the dark side." (Yoda ;-) )

Rational people vote their irrationalities.

geneg, that's priceless, it's more than LOL it's a full-blown belly laugh. I just added it to my favorite quotes on facebook.

I agree with you all about not living in fear. I'm just saying that we do have danger of terrorism in this country and we should take steps to try to prevent it. I will not deny that terrorism exists, but I won't build a bomb shelter in Montana either.

I also agree that we shouldn't abrogate justice or constitutional freedoms because of terror. I think that American law and justice should be available to all who enter our sphere of influence.

Did anyone else see Mollie Ziegler Hemingway's Houses of Worship column in yesterday's WSJ?

Entitled, "Look who's irrational now?" and based on the findings of a recent Gallup/Baylor University poll "What Americans Really Believe":

"... a comprehensive new study released by Baylor University yesterday, shows that traditional Christian religion greatly decreases belief in everything from the efficacy of palm readers to the usefulness of astrology. It also shows that the irreligious and the members of more liberal Protestant denominations, far from being resistant to superstition, tend to be much more likely to believe in the paranormal and in pseudoscience than evangelical Christians.

The Gallup Organization, under contract to Baylor's Institute for Studies of Religion, asked American adults a series of questions to gauge credulity....

The answers were added up to create an index of belief in occult and the paranormal. While 31% of people who never worship expressed strong belief in these things, only 8% of people who attend a house of worship more than once a week did."

Worth reading, and link here:
http://reno.wsj.com/article/SB122178219865054585.html

Excerpt From Baylor site on findings:

"Christianity and Superstition

The Baylor Survey found that traditional Christian religion greatly decreases credulity, as measured by beliefs in such things as dreams, Bigfoot, UFOs, haunted houses, communicating with the dead and astrology (Ch. 15, "Credulity: Who Believes in Bigfoot"). Still, it remains widely believed that religious people are especially credulous, particularly those who identify themselves as Evangelicals, born again, Bible believers and fundamentalists. However, the ISR researchers found that conservative religious Americans are far less likely to believe in the occult and paranormal than are other Americans, with self-identified theological liberals and the irreligious far more likely than other Americans to believe. The researchers say this shows that it is not religion in general that suppresses such beliefs, but conservative religion.

"There's an old saying that a man who no longer believes in God is ready to believe in just about anything, and it turns out our data suggests it's true. That is to say, religious people don't believe this stuff, but there's no education effect," Stark said. "

link here:

http://www.baylor.edu/pr/news.php?action=story&story=52815

I think the "old saying” belongs to Chesterton, doesn’t it? In spirit, at least.

http://chesterton.org/qmeister2/any-everything.htm

#82 - enevada,

I'm an atheist who cruised over from Happy Heathens. I promise I'm not trying to troll the group. But I have a question about the study being cited.

I'm not clear on what exactly that study proves. What is the difference between believing in a palm reader or believing that your prayers are answered?

How many of those 'less credulous Christians' believe in faith healing? Why is a haunted house so unbelievable to a person who clearly believes that a soul survives the death of the body? Why is a U.F.O. sighting any different than an angelic (or demonic) visitation?

This will likely be my only post. I don't mean to make it seem like I'm crashing your party. It just seems that the study shows that some people have one set of incredible beliefs and a much, much larger group has a different set of incredible beliefs and there are some who have both sets of incredible beliefs at the same time.

#85: jseger9000,

The "study" was a survey, a survey doesn't prove, it reveals.

The survey revealed that Christian faith - a faith that is predicated on the assumption of supreme rationality, namely Divine Reason, significantly reduces credulity.

This wouldn't be surprising to anyone (philosophers, theologians) who are well versed in the originating concept of Logos, a God of word, of reason (begin with John, then Paul, then the Greeks, the Scholastics and keep reading up to the works of this century).

It may or may not surprise someone who is unfamiliar with this body of work, someone, if not born yesterday, who has not bothered or been inclined to read the works of the thinkers who came before him or her, or who applies a limited retrospective to these works and does not see the evolving theological whole behind them.

Now, I have a question for you, non-trolling Happy Heathen: why the incessant, unproductive and uninformed discussion on matters of faith of which you have no understanding? And apparently no desire to learn? That puzzles me. I know many of you are quite proud of your “scientific” orientation , and I can appreciate that, but, then, why not confine yourselves to the intelligible universe, where your skill set and orientation are most valued, and leave off metaphysical speculation?

I can anticipate a few responses:

1.tribal affirmation (understandable)

2. a rejection against a perceived imposition of religiosity (again, understandable, but in my view a false perception)

3. intellectual curiousity (the best answer, and one we all can sink our teeth into)

Am I overlooking anything?

But it defines credulity as belief in some things my religion doesn't believe. The Astrologers could take a similar survey replacing belief in Astrology with belief in prayer and find that it is the Christians who lack credulity.

Credulity, in this context, as I read it, would mean belief in the paranormal – that which is unproven by science, or inexplicable and outside the context of philosophy or theology.

Astrology? The archaic tribe of astronomers, yes? How many of you are left?

Actually, the standard definition from Merriam Webster's works as well:

Credulity: readiness or willingness to believe especially on slight or uncertain evidence

I would hardly call several centuries’ worth of theological exegesis and philosophical inquiry slight. Would you? Dismiss it out of hand because an astrologer was informed by the movement of Saturn to keep away from the library?

Problem is, from outside Christianity, the evidence does seem "slight or uncertain", that's part of why I'm not a Christian. It's the same reason that I dont subscribe to any religion. While Christian theological study is current and has a long history, astrology too had a long history and was extremely widespread across different cultures. These days it has become a bit of a joke, but from my perspective as a skeptic, there is as much reason to believe that the position of the stars at my birth determine my character/fate etc as there is to believe Jesus died for my sins and that there is an omnipotent, omniscient creator.

Just because more people believe something, doesn't make it more "right" than something else. And it doesn't make it more or less credible.

The OT can be read as the story of a nation and what happened to it when it accepted and lived by the Wisdom of their religion and what happened to that nation when it ignored or opposed that same Wisdom. The NT is an updated reaffirmation of that same Wisdom (the Gospels) followed by a substantial injection of theology.

Atheists, not interested in the theology can and should benefit by the Wisdom of Christianity while ignoring the theology. However, if one accepts the Wisdom it becomes harder to ignore the theology. Not that the Wisdom requires the theology, but it leads to the theology.

All can benefit by the Wisdom, however, the Wisdom without the theology is like watching in black and white a movie filmed in sumptuous color.

As Ghandi showed the world, living the Christian life does not require the theology.

#90: from outside Christianity...think about this; what you are saying is: I haven't done any of the reading, or the study involved here to make an informed opinion.

That's fine. You won’t , for example , see me pontificating on the physics involved in the Large Hadron Collider – I recognize my limitations, and while this doesn’t preclude any interest I may have in the project, nor does it prohibit my involvement in a discussion on the project, it does suggest to me that I must defer and recognize the wisdom of those who have spent their lives studying the physics of particle acceleration. I need to have a little faith in them.

#91: geneg, very nicely said.

And how many tomes on Astrology have you absorbed. Is there scientific evidence for Christian beliefs? Has any philosopher come up with an ironclad proof of the existence of the Christian God? If not, then all the scribblings of theologians and philosophers down the centuries don't really mean anything.

ETA: I don't mean to belittle your beliefs but to me they look just as paranormal as any of the beliefs listed in the survey.

And I don't mean to belittle the little pinpoint of your frame of reference on matters beyond your scope of experience or interest.

The scribblings of theologians and philosophers reveal far more than the mere measurement, extraction, and observation of scientists. You remember all that from your reading of Heidegger, yes?

Astrology died out some time ago (except to the enlightened readers of alternative newspapers), and therefore I don't bother following the thread-back.

We all inflate our own opinions, admittedly, and you demand proof before belief. That works well in a laboratory, but to me, it misses a great deal of the world. So be it – you are content, and so am I.

#93: What do you possibly know of my beliefs?

As to this: Has any philosopher come up with an ironclad proof of the existence of the Christian God? If not, then all the scribblings of theologians and philosophers down the centuries don't really mean anything.

This is a perfect illustration of our two very different approaches to the question of faith – your response seems to be one of dismissal, of a certain relief perhaps, that you don’t have to bother with the whole lot of it – the scribblings, as you call them. My response is the opposite: no, they haven’t and yet they still persist – I need to keep reading, just as the scribblers are driven by the need to keep reflecting and writing.

And, I think I’ve answered all of your questions. Anything more is a waste of time for all of us.

You raise an interesting question, one that is rarely well addressed.

While we may not have "scientific" evidence of the existance of God, we do know that Christianity exists--and in fact many different forms of it. Too often the explantion of the existance of Christianity is something like "gullible people" or "stupid people" or "superstitious people." Given the wide variety of people who practice Christianity, from village idiots to genetic scientists, that explanation fails on many levels.

As E pointed out, astrology died as a serious discipline, but Christianity still goes on strong.

This is clearly not a "proof" for the existence of God, yet it is also something that should not be dismissed out of hand.

#93: "Has any philosopher come up with an ironclad proof of the existence of the Christian God?"

I would counter with: has any scientist, or anyone, scientist or not, come up with an ironclad proof that God does not exist?

ETA: It seems to me it takes as much faith to deny God (possibly more) than it does to accept Him.

Hey, I didn't start this. It was that Baylor poll and then enevada calling people who hold certain non-rational beliefs credulous. That's just the pot calling the kettle black.

Well, I'm just pointing out that the inability to prove whether God exists or not renders statements such as your moot.

We know no more about the existence of God than the bacterium in the gut knows of the person in whose gut he resides.

Of all the arguments about the validity of religion, the inability to prove God is a non-starter.

#98: Take it back to your tribe, talk it over with your kinsmen. And visit back when you have something useful to share. Or not.

#92. I am not saying that I haven't done any of the reading or study necessary to make an informed opinion. I have done some reading on a variety of Christian doctrines and perspectives, as well as some reading and even some study on Eastern religions but I will admit that I am not a religious scholar. I suspect many of us are not. I am quite prepared to listen to many of the extremely learned people on this forum who may well have read more widely on this topic than I have. My point about being "outside Christianity" related to my own beliefs, not to what sources are credible/interesting/relevant. My main point was, that as someone who does not have a vested interest in Christianity being more or less true than another set of supernatural/spiritual beliefs, I have a different perspective to you on the relative truth/credibility of different practices and religions.

I'm not trying to say who's wrong or who's right, I'm not trying to say someone's beliefs are better than someone else's, I'm just trying to show you how I think on the matter. You can take it or leave it as you choose, but please don't twist my words to mean something else entirely.

#101: Noted.

#94 "The scribblings of theologians and philosophers reveal far more than the mere measurement, extraction, and observation of scientists."

Like what, for example? Just curious.

#103: I won't spoil it for you. Read them yourself and find out. Or die without having made the effort. No one will be the wiser.

You could start with The Brothers Karamozov. Not quite a theologian or philosopher, but a little more accessible. Then move on to The Idiot.

Throw in some Walker Percy and Flannery O'Connor, and you have a good beginning.

As to theologians, Jurgen Moltmann's The Theology of Hope is a good place to start. For modern theology, that it. I cut my teeth on Karl Barth, but I would not try starting there.

Nothing to add to the conversation. I will now scurry back to the welcoming arms of the Happy Heathens.

In my brief two post foray into the Christianity group, I don't at all feel belittled or insulted. Nor do I feel like my questioned were ignored while my motives were questioned. I most definately don't feel judged.

Just wanted to say a big 'thanks' to enevada for being such a warm and loving beacon of Christianity.

Distinctly un-mannish, even.

#106: no, mine is not soft-soap chicken soup for the spineless spirit, decidedly. I will defend my faith because I know that it is one of the conditions of it. A worthy bargain, all things considered.

But I'll never be ordained, or canonized, or – damn it – even lionized. That's certain.

#105 Thanks for the suggestions. But that answers only half the question. I do not deny that there is wisdom in philosophy or even theology. I just question that statement that there is more wisdom in the 'scribblings of theologians and philosophers' than in the findings of scientists.

I have read some of the books you mention, and certainly the Brothers Karamazov is a great and wise and deep book, no doubt. But have you guys expended the same effort on science? Have you read Darwin or Feynman or Einstein or Sagan or E.O. Wilson or Stephen J Gould ?

Actually, I would go further, I don't think the statement that what philosophy or theology have to say reveals more than what scientists say, even makes sense (no offense intended, I'm just making an argument here). More of what? I think we are comparing apples to oranges.

The things science reveals are very, very different from the things philosophy or theology reveal (there is some overlap on the fringes), but does theology reveal the structure of matter or the evolution of species? I am not saying these things are more important than the questions of theology, but they are important questions that have been revealed by "the mere measurement, extraction, and observation of scientists".

I guess what I am trying to say is that there is nothing 'mere' about what scientists do. Many of the theories of science rank among the greatest achievements of the human mind, from Newton's laws, relativity, quantum mechanics, molecular biology to evolution.

#93 Is there scientific evidence for Christian beliefs? Has any philosopher come up with an ironclad proof of the existence of the Christian God?

Has any philosopher come up with an ironclad proof of the existence of anything ? I thought the only thing you could rely on was finding a philosopher that disagrees with any other philosopher you care to mention.

Take "scientific evidence" for example. Do philosophers agree what "scientific evidence" is? Can they even come up with an ironclad definition of what is and isn't science?

I have read Gould and Feynmann and Wilson. I used to read Natural History on a regular basis and Scientific American, back when it was good.

#112 Of course, philosophically we can doubt the existence of anything (see Hume), or declare everything as a figment of God's imagination (Berkeley) or whatever.

But let me side with the empiricists here: There are some falsifiable, repeatable methods to at least elevate the things that serve as scientific evidence to the highly probable or almost vertain. I think you will agree with me that there is such a thing as gravity and maybe even that gravity depends on the inverse of the square of the distance (we send men to the moon based on that). If you own a GPS system in your car, you even may agree that General Relativity is probably sound and true, because without it your GPS would be off by hundreds of meters, and you'd end up in the wrong part of town.

Such verifiable 'certainty' is far more difficult to achieve with the existence of a Christian God. I think there you really need a far greater 'leap of faith'.

At the risk of sounding picky...

Does "gravity" really exist, or is that a term we use to to talk about certain effects we see on a regular basis? I let go of something, it falls to the ground...that is NOT gravity. But what is gravity really? (A force, but what does that mean?)

Or is gravity something that really does exist?

#113 I figured you probably have read some of these things.

I agree, SciAm used to be better. A bit too flashy now, but still ok.

But what about that statement that I take issue with (I know its not yours). I think the truths revealed by different approaches are different truths. One is not necessarily better than the other. Science is not particularly good to explore the depth of the human soul or find God (not impossible, but probably not the best approach for it). But theology is no good in finding truths about our physical nature. So, how can one 'reveal far more' than the other? It's like saying plumbing is better than car-repair.

I think religious people fault science for not answering spiritual questions and scientists fault religion for not answering scientific questions. Both does not make much sense to me. That's like saying electricians are bad, because they know nothing about plumbing. Well, that is not their job!

Problems only arise IMHO if either invades the turf of the other (as admittedly Dawkins etc do, and as on the other hand, the creationists do).

Religion has to remain a question of faith, science one of physical evidence. And because science is based on physical evidence, it may be (I'm on the fence about this one), ultimatelty limited to explaining the physical.

#115 Yes, you point to something interesting here. When we go into the metaphysics of physical concepts ("What is force really?") we get ourselves into trouble. "A force is an interaction between bodies which causes the bodies to undergo acceleration." That is an operational definition of force and works for physics, but probably not for metaphysics.

However, the difference between the seemingly undefinable concepts of force and energy and the also seemingly undefinable concepts of soul or love, is that force and energy, once operationally defined, follow some very precise laws that can be verified by repeated measurements. That does not make love less real (or important), but it makes it more of a subjective, ill-defined concept.

It is a 'miracle' (if a scientist is allowed to use this term) that we can 'invent' concepts such as force, that within the appropriate mathematical model, matches observation so precisely. This makes science very unique.

If I have a physical ailment, I go to the doctor, and if I had questions about my car, I would go to a mechanic.

If I wondered why I was here, or what the purpose of life is, I would go to philosopher or theologian.

But we cannot always split things so neatly.

Suppose I wanted to know, given climate change, whether I should own a car. I would want to consult a few scientists, to see how much damage cars do. What, on an objective basis, is the effect of my car? Then I might consult a philosopher or theologian to talk about my responsibility to the planet, and how to make difficult moral decisions. Can we truly avoid evil, and how much do we HAVE to make a difference?

Then with knowledge from both sets, I could make a decision. I hope. Or just keep getting more information, so that I would never have to make a decision.

Makes sense. You are right, you cannot separate them as neatly as Stephen J. Gould, for example, suggested. Some moral decisions, for example, could have an evolutionary or neurological explanation. But even if you could explain them this way, this would not invalidate the philosophical approach to morality. Because, even if we could say, people don't kill their children because this is hard-wired into their brains, it still would not explain why it is immoral to kill your children. But it still would be interesting to know that it is hard-wired.

So, I like your example. Both sets of knowledge are important. You cannot decide about abortion or stem-cell research or energy use or any other hot-button item, if you do not take into account the scientific (physical) facts about it and then weigh them with respect to your personal moral philosophy.

Maybe people who espouse pure scientism, tend to reject the moral philosophy bit, while some religious people try to ignore the scientific facts which should provide the starting point for their moral decisions.

"Would this be a case of empirical investigation supporting a religious claim?"

Yes. I think that archaeological evidence for example, could support the Bible or the existence of Jesus etc. (I am reading How to read the Bible: A guide to scripture, then and now and the physical evidence does not seem not very abundant for many of the OT stories)

However, it is difficult to imagine (but maybe not impossible, I can't think of an example, however), to scientifically support that Jesus was the Son of God, or performed miracles etc. I am not saying that he is or is not (my own opinion is irrelevant to the current discussion), just that it would be difficult to show such things in scientific terms. Some things (and these are some things crucial to any faith) will have to be taken on faith, I think.

#115: the statement is taken from a point made by Heidegger in Being and Time.

As to your observation:

"I think religious people fault science for not answering spiritual questions and scientists fault religion for not answering scientific questions"

I am in complete agreement. I have read all of the writers on your list and a few additional favorites, Lewis Thomas, James Gleick, Natalie Angier - they all add profoundly to my understanding and appreciation of this world.

But none will ever prove the existence of God, and it would be a colossal waste of time to try. To expect such proof is the negation of faith, and reveals a fundamental misconception of the concept.

#122 I can mostly agree with that. But I like to play Devil's advocate, heathen that I am ;-).

I think the biggest problem I have with God, is not based on science at all. Actually, science is what keeps me from completely rejecting the God concept (this is a topic for another thread).

What makes me, and most scientists, by the way, question God is the good old theodicy question, which in some sense is based on observation, admittedly a science thing:

Our neighbors are devout fundamentalist Christians. A couple of years back, our neighbor talked to my wife and credited God for bringing her and her husband back together after a rough patch in their marriage. At about the same time 200,000 people drowned in tsunamis in Asia. I just can't see a God that bothers with fixing somebody's marriage while letting 200,000 men, women and children die a horrible death for no fault of their own.

Ok, I read Job and the Brothers Karamazov etc, but it still makes no sense to me, if this God is supposed to be good.

#123 if this God is supposed to be good.

Good as compared to what? If God is above and beyond the physical laws and confines of the universe, and we are in it, and bound by the laws, it makes little sense to me to stand and ask Him to conform to our ideas of what is good.

Would it be "gooder" not to intervene at all?

We may not be able to prove or disprove God through scientific measurement. However, the basic existence and claims of Christianity can be investigated through history. The documentation is very convincing that a man named Jesus of Nazareth lived in first century Palestine, that He made extraordinary claims about Himself, that He was crucified under Pontius Pilate, and that something extraordinary happened three days later, something easily disprovable and yet not disproved: that He came back from the dead.

If that is true, then something very big has happened indeed. If it did not, then all that we Christians believe is bunk. I would investigate those claims if I were an unbeliever.

Sorry about the back to back posts.

I think the theodicy question is a bit of a red herring (I know that I just insulted several thousand years of philosophical hand-wringing). Try this thought experiment: construct a universe with no bad things in which freedom of will and the freedom to choose God exists.

I agree that the tsunami was bad, evil. But so does the Bible. You can be upset that God didn't stop it, but you can't accuse Him of thinking it was a good thing.

By the way: if there is not God, how can anything be right or wrong, good or bad? If there is no God, then it simply is. In fact, from a evolutionary point of view, wiping out the weak is ultimately a good thing for the species. (Sorry, I know that last sentence is offensive, but I can't think of another way of making the point quickly.)

Back to the shroud. If we did carbon testing and found it was indeed a mid-first century article, from Jerusalem, that would prove nothing about Jesus. It might, or might not have anything to do with him.

In the same vein, if you investigated the "historical" Jesus, and found a lot of historical facts, that would still not prove much of anything, except that he existed. It would say nothing about trusting or having faith in God, Jesus, the Spirit, nothing about whether his teachings were valid for us today, etc. We have a decent record of his teaching, and it is not like THAT matters much, not even to many of his followers.

In idle moments, I sometimes wonder what evidence would convince a complete skeptic that God exists. Assume the he is walking down the road and the heavens open and a figure appears and says "Repent and believe in me." What would the skeptic do? My guess is that he would visit his doctor a report that he is having hallucinations. Or if the Jesus story was happening now, in our current time. How would it get reported in the press? Would the skeptic believe what he read or saw on TV?

#128: Did you see this Heathens thread?
http://www.librarything.com/talktopic.php?topic=32231#631749

126> So if there were no God then you would have no problem killing your neighbor so you could rape his wife? Am I to believe that all Christians are blood-thirsty savages only held in check by their belief in God? I don't need a God to tell me that is wrong, so who is more moral the Christian or the atheist?

How would it get reported in the press? Would the skeptic believe what he read or saw on TV?

My father used to work at the State Hospital in PA (Mental Hospital). I remember when Waco happened, my father was on ward watching TV that night with a patient with messianic delusions. "Again and again, I come back," said the patient "and the fuckers kill me every time."

I submit that there is enough physical, historical, and spiritual evidence to believe if one wants to believe. But, if one does not want to believe, there will never be enough evidence. After reading posts on the link in #129, I'm more firmly convinced of this than ever.

For someone who is undecided about what to believe, those with faith will never be able to answer the questions posed by skeptics. You have to decide which camp you want to be in.

I was unmoved by transcendence and needed imminence. through reading biographies I discovered that many people from previous centuries had found spiritual strength in the God of imminence, and decided to adopt their beliefs so that I, too, could gain what they had. I found that in evangelical Christianity. I have not been disappointed with my decision, which I made, BTW, after a life of skepticism.

I assume saxhorn meant immanence

There is a huge difference between imminence and immanence. Enormous. If you click on the link I provided, it may even answer your question to saxhorn.

Thank you, dreamlike, for correcting my spelling. I jumped to my handy spelling dictionary (no definitions) for that one, and alas, only found the God of the immediate.

Being raised in a liturgical church, I always thought of God as in heaven or Jesus as on the cross. His transcendence dealt with large problems, but not with mine. He could save the whole world, but would He save me? I felt very empty and alone.

Then in my liturgical church I heard a sermon mentioning Charles Colson's book Born Again. Upon reading the book I found two important things: 1) references to two great books, C. S. Lewis' Mere Christianity and Dietrich Bonhoffer's The Cost of Discipleship. I found ethics discussed and idealism carried out to the end. 2) I found that Colson experienced God as immediate and near. Colson tesified to God's specific intervention in his life, and specific guidance given in the midst of trial. That's what I was seeking.

The day I finished Colson's book I prayed a prayer of dedication to God, and began a personal relationship with the Lord Jesus that has continued for 32 years.

That's what I meant, Oakes.

130 - It depends on how big a boy he is, and how good looking his wife is. If I can sneak up on him, probably not much trouble, but most people defend themselves pretty well...(This is probably not nearly as funny to you as it is to me, so I will stop.)

If there is not a God, then how can we say that I have done wrong? Why would there be any concept of wrong? Yet, there is. There are words and ideas like right and wrong, good and bad, better and worse, fair and unfair. These suppose some standard that comes from outside us and above us. It has to be outside, for the man who rapes feels a law of desire to take what he desires. It has to be above, because this hypothetical rape and murder are considered bad, beneath what I should do as a human. Yet, it happens every day, non-hypothetically, all over the world.

And how could it be said that I did badly, if evolutionary atheism is true? The stronger has destroyed the weaker and transmitted his genes. This is good for the species. Any fool with a good looking wife should know to watch his back and fit that woman with a chastity belt.

Nietzsche: "When one gives up the Christian faith, one pulls the right to Christian morality out from under one's feet. The morality is by no means self-evident.Christianity is a system, a whole view of things thought out together. By breaking one main concept out of it, the faith in God, one breaks the whole. It stands of falls with faith in God." (Italics mine) - From The Portable Nietzsche

Of course, that is not what you asked me. You asked if I would have no problem, supposedly morally or emotionally. The answer is obviously, yes, I would have a great problem with it, even if I didn't believe in God. Not many atheists are immoral. (The consistent ones are, but that is just a low blow.) I don't look up into the Heavens waiting for the giant fly swatter to smash me each time I am tempted and use that to control me. I have an internal set of pressures, my conscience, that withholds me even when she is really good looking, and a flirt on top of that. I believed it was wrong even when I was a heathen. Where did that come from?

I would submit that the conscience comes from God and is proof that He exists. The fascinating consistency of moral codes both ancient and modern, civilized and uncivilized has yet to be satisfactorily explained by evolutionary atheistic philosophy. Although Freud would say that the conscience is subjective, formed by societal, environmental, and historical pressures (which it surely is affected by), a societal taboo on murder and rape runs counter to the fundamental mechanism of atheistic evolution: Survival of the fittest (or best armed). That we can sear our conscience to our own behavior and still condemn (or see the danger in) that same behavior in others best demonstrates its otherness to me. (Michael Palin's horror at the death of a dog and shameless delight in murder in "A Fish Called Wanda" comes forcibly to mind)

Obviously, much has been written and debated about these topics that I can't sum up here. Hopefully, I have given you a skeleton of an answer that makes some sense.

#135: Heidegger was a fruitcake, a blowhard, and an atheist. Still, I have to salvage something from those ten months of torture I spent reading him, in order to have a better grasp on the later writings of John Paul II.

I'll never catch up, but I'll die trying.

And I, too, am very interested in the response to your question:

But how does the non-theist include non-naturalist ethical claims in his ontology?

(and from where do these claims emanate? Is there an agreed upon, objective, external authority? Can you point to it*?)

*it, in this case being a body of work not an entity

#135 Actually, it may surprise you to hear that Palin was far from my mind when I wrote that about the followers of Jesus not following his teachings.

Specifically I was refering to much of what saxhorn mentioned in his post; Jesus spoke of an immediate relationship with God, and given that relationship a life defined by love. ("This is my commandment, that you love one another.") Although, saxhorn, I have found that same feeling you described IN a liturgical services--specifically Russian Orthodox services, in Murmansk and round the Kola Penisula. What I experienced there was very close to what you described in your experiences after reading Lewis, Colsen and Bonhoeffer.

Jesus spoke of loving enemies, of trusting in God, of an inner purity of heart, and an acceptance of people based, not on social status, but on their common relationship with God.

I was thinking of the person who said to one of my pastors in the 60s, after their church integrated and she left, "Pastor, I dont what your Bible says. I ain't going to church with n-----s!"

Or the person who told George Bush that "blessed are the meek" doesn't mean what it says.

I was thinking of the many Germans who marched into war with "Gott mit uns" on their belt buckles.

And I was thinking about my own feeble efforts to try to live up those teachings.

138> I don't have the time or desire to write as long posts as yours but I will say that you don't understand evolution and its effects and its lack of effects on our actions. For its effects, we are a social species and while we evolved individual desires we also evolved desires to get along with our fellow humans. As for its lack of effects, we also evolved a brain which allows us to think for ourselves and many people understand that living within a social contract is the best way for us to live happy and satisfied lives.

Also, it seems contradictory to say that our conscience comes from God but our desires come from within. There is no reason that they cannot both come from the same place, that is from within ourselves.

Arctic -

I agree, I have found complete release in worship in a liturgical church. I'm not sure I can any longer, though. Either the services are the same contemporary stuff that I encounter in free churches, and sometimes led/performed awfully and with terrible music, or the liturgy has been watered down and lifeless. I long for the Gloria in excelsis and the Sanctus delivered in a traditional chant, and in the midst of a full-throated congregation. Then my heart can get its release and I can sing the Nunc dimitus ready to "go and serve."

I think my feeling for the evangelical church is a more common agreement regarding a shared immanent experience, and perhaps more agreement about doctrine.

From a Christian point of view that is not contradictory. The Spirit within us, according to Paul, acts as a conscience, however we have desires that go counter to what we know is right. (and by implication, what we know is right is what God has ordained as right.) Paul wrestles with this issue in Romans 6,7, and 8.

On the one hand, without some kind of standard, outside standard, it does seem impossible to speak of absolute right and wrong. There are things that are helpful or not helpful. If we want to survive as a species, murder and rape as a way of life is pretty inefficient. If we want a viable economy, trust is pretty essential. (If one out of six hamburgers gave you food poisoning, you would probably swear off McDonalds. We might not like their hamburgers, but if we eat them, we trust they will not make us sick.)

As humans, we deem survival to be good. But that is just from our piddling point of view. One could make the point that for the planet to survive, humans should be eradicated. (I believe Agent Smith did this very well in The Matrix.) That would be for the good of the planet, but clearly not for the good of the human race. Which "good" is more important? It is better to have a viable planet, without human life, or to let humans slowly kill it?

Obviously as a human, I vote for letting humans continue. If I were a highland gorilla, I would vote differently. (and there are days....)

Morality is either a) an artificial system of agreement, which we use to perpetuate our species, b) an attempt to meet certain standards of behavior or c) ______________ (fill in the blank). If there is a standard, where does that standard come from?

Aristotle assumes happiness, but then he is blinded by his partisanship to the human race.

To expound on : I discovered that many people from previous centuries had found spiritual strength in the God of imminence, and decided to adopt their beliefs so that I, too, could gain what they had. I found that in evangelical Christianity.

After reading Bonhoffer I was introduced to the writing of Corrie ten Boom, who was a holocaust survivor. Her family was imprisoned for protecting Dutch Jews from the Nazis, and Corrie was the sole survivor. In The Hiding Place she described the immanence of God and a miraculous supply similar to the cruz of oil in Elisha's ministry.

I read about George Müller and his faith-based orphanage. I read about miraculous supply of funds to continue to operate the orphanage. Müller never spoke of the need; he only prayed for supply.

What I learned from these and other saints was to trust God implicitly (not like I always do), and to take Him at His word in the Bible.

This is part of the evangelical heritage that I value.

Arctic - On the one hand, without some kind of standard, outside standard, it does seem impossible to speak of absolute right and wrong.

I absolutely agree. When I became a Christian in the mid 70s most people were still looking for a single standard of right and wrong. This was the age of "one size fits all" clothing. This is one reason I feel that the Bible provides a great standard. But, then, the parts we don't like become challenges for us to revise our attitudes and behaviors. Isn't that what religion is all about.

It seems today that we want to tear out all those pages that invade our lifestyle. We want the Bible to conform to us.

Some of you missed my point, I think.

#124: Christians like to point out that morality comes from God. But now you defend God by saying, God does not have to "conform to our ideas of what is good". So which is it? Are they 'our' ideas of what is good? Or do they come from God? If they come from God, then God knows that he is not promoting good; if they don't come from God, then the usual argument that we need religion & God to have morals goes down the drain.

#125: Actually, a lot of the things you mention are very much in dispute. Plus I think Arctic hits the nail on its head in #127. Ultimately, the divinity of Jesus, the resurrection, the miracles are all a matter of faith.

Also, the mere existence of Christianity does not support its veracity. Buddhism is older, so is Judaism, Hinduism etc. Are these even more correct that Christianity ?

"I would investigate those claims if I were an unbeliever." What makes you think we haven't?

#126 I think the free will defense is also a red herring. To go back to the example of the tsunami or any other natural catastrophe: I don't see how free will comes into the equation here.

"You can be upset that God didn't stop it" You got it. I think that's the crux of the argument. Don't get me wrong: I don't think the fact that he did not stop is an argument against the existence of God, but it is an argument against a God that listens to our prayers.

"if there is not God, how can anything be right or wrong, good or bad" This argument is the ultimate red herring - see my response to #124 above.

"In fact, from a evolutionary point of view, wiping out the weak is ultimately a good thing for the species" - I'm not offended, just surprised at this misunderstanding of what evolution is all about. Were the victims of the tsunami wiped out because they were weak? Also, there is no emphasis on wiping out the weak in evolution, but rather on differing reproductive fitness. You could be weaker but reproduce better and your genes would have a better chance to spread. Humans, for example, are not particularly strong. Lions are stronger. This emphasis on 'wiping out the weak' is a red herring as well, one perpetuated by people who oppose science for reasons I still don't quite understand.

There are actually two separate questions, which we are unfortunately rolling into one.

The first has to do with general revelation, speaking in theological terms. That is the basic question of morality for all humans. Theists would argue that such a morality is ultimately based on some kind of divine fiat. They might side with Occam, who basically gave God a blank check to ordain that whatever will be will be, hence the power behind the natural order is God's direct command, or they might side with a more Thomist view, that essentially holds that things were created in a certain way, according to natural "laws" set in place by God, and we are smart to follow the natural order. (Aquinas is comfortable talking about things like infused natural virtues, for example.)

This debate says nothing about the divinity of, or faith in Jesus as "the only begotten Son of God." One could believe firmly in a God who set the world in motion, "gave" us "natural laws" and who does not have any children.

Belief in Jesus entails what is called special revelation. That Jesus is God's son, and that Jesus embodies the special revelation of the Divine is not intuitively obvious, and does entail faith, as yapete says. You could be a contemporary of Jesus, and miss it. Or you could live 2000 years later, and get it.

Further on (my understanding of) #147's point, this discussion seems to have polarized between theism as a narrow brand of Christianity and non-theism as a narrow brand of “scientism.” This is not fair to either side.

Is ahimsa permissable as a universal, external, absolute morality? Must it have a cause? Must that cause be labelled God? Can we define it as intrinsic to what we take life to be?

(Along the same lines, Heidegger was a Catholic, perhaps in addition to everything else in #139.)

#147 Thanks for sorting that out.
I think the leap from accepting the existence of God to accepting the veracity of the Bible is a very far one. I think both atheists and committed Christians here and on Happy Heathens, too often confuse the two. God is concept that is much more open, while accepting the Bible as truth is a much more narrow (in the sense of well-defined) idea. You cannot believe in the Bible w/o believing in God, but there are many ways of doing the opposite.

#148 Agree completely.

Why do questions of "God's will" remind me of Kurt Vonnegut's old joke?

"What's the white stuff in bird poop?

That's bird poop, too.

OK, now I'm really confused.

If one can believe in a god apart from the Bible (which I grant), where does the idea of a "good" god come from? Oh, that comes from the Bible, and you are asking the God revealed therein to live up the standard of the verses that you choose to cite.

If you don't accept the Bible (or other sacred texts) then god can be and do whatever he/she/it wants to apart from any idea of morality. Who can criticize that god?

So, one can be an atheist and not believe in god, and therefore not have any standard of morality, but still criticize the god he/she doesn't believe in because he/she doesn't live up to the standard that one believes a god should live up to? Is that right?

First, there are a lot of people who believe in God, but who do not necessarily accept the entire Christian Bible as valid. Jews and Muslims come to mind here.

But this raises the question--can we know anything about God apart from the Bible? Paul seems to think we can, as he says in Romans one. That is why the pagans are, in his words, without excuse. Morality, as defined by God, is not dependent on divine revelation. We know what is right and wrong APART FROM the revelation of God in the OT and in Christ, Paul says.

Some of our notions of God are not biblical, not in a strict sense anyway. Christians believe God is triune. While the Bible mentions Father, Son and Holy Spirit, it does not use the word Trinity or even the word "persons" when refering to Father, Son and Holy Ghost. Those are imported from the Greek theologians who hammered all this out. They felt they could use such language, even though it went far beyond what the Bible says, because, using their sense of reason, it accurately portrayed the trajectory of biblical thought.

Of course, the very act of deciding which books comprise the New Testament was a decision. Jesus didnt ascend to the heavens while a Black Leather King James Bible (with the words of Jesus in red) descended from heaven. There was a long discussion about which books should be included.

141> Forgive my shorthand but I tried to imply that conscience originates with God and is subject to the environment in which one lives. I think I did, but my post was probably too long to finish reading. ;) Once it has been implanted in you, your care of it takes over. I am not implying, nor do I believe scripture implies that the conscience is a direct line from God into our mind/heart. It is a baseline that reveals that there is something bigger than ourselves in the universe.

I also gave a caveat to the social context theory of conscience as I realize that my argument was a simplification. Of course, it was too long to read already! However, it is the idea of happiness that drives man to rape, murder, suicide, drug addiction, or any type of destructive or constructive behavior. He does this simply because he believes that it will make him happy, that it will slake the thirst for that lust, revenge, peace, etc. We have historically been terribly inaccurate about what would bring us happiness. Evidence the 50+% of people who willingly commit for life to another person in marriage only to decide later that to live with them would be torture. The evidence of human action is simply too checkered to give much credence that man discovered social rules and bred them into his DNA. In fact, I would argue that it is only conscience and the idea that something is bigger than us that has prevented the human race from self-destruction so far.

I was scolded for using "weak", though that was clearly hyperbole used for humor. I guess I shouldn't make fun of something as sacred as evolution. I used "survival of the fittest" in its proper context later and obviously meant weak as "least fit". Eh, so sue me. The question about the tsunami is easily answered, if, again, abhorrent. The animals have evolved the ability to be sensitive enough to the environment to move inland. They were unfit to survive in an environment that includes tsunamis, so they were selected to be exterminated so that we could find some humans who would learn the sensitivity.

By the way, why would their death be of any consequence to you at all as an atheist? What makes these people special? They are simply more of the invaders that have used their superior brain to multiply. (Arctic-I love the Matrix reference!) It is offensive because we recognize the intrinsic value of humans. Again, that is a religious concept that cannot be arrived at if there is not a God. It might be sad as a reminder of our own mortality as an individual and species, but it would be no more meaningful than killing the ants in your yard with toxins if there is no God.

yapete, I could not find your response to #124 and would be very interested in hearing how anything could be good or bad in a universe that is totally constructed on randomness. You can mean "I like it more" or "it is generally agreed" (though, of course, I would insist on seeing the research!), but you cannot have value judgments that are meaningful unless there is a fixed set of values.

I would agree that ultimately, the resurrection of Jesus and the fact of His divinity comes down to faith. (It is the only way that God could solve the "Derek Jeter Dilemma"). However, it is not a blind step of faith. The historical documentation is much more impressive that Jesus lived and died than the evidence of almost any figure of antiquity. Yet, He was but a peasant from the farthest flung Roman province. His life so impacted the world that a mere two decades after His death, the Emperor kicked the Jews out of Rome over their arguments about Him. Pretty good for a nobody from nowhere. So I don't know what facts I quoted that you are disputing, but I would love to know.

I agree that existence does not equal proof of meaningfulness.

Maybe I misunderstand your argument in #123. It seems that you are questioning that God exists based on the tsunami (and like events). At least, you said that it makes you disbelieve in a prayer answering God. But did you pray? Or did anyone? As far as I know, there was no warning at all. And yet, there were still "miraculous" deliverances and stories of those who just missed things (as there always are). I admit, prayer is a very mysterious thing and very rarely has a one-to-one correspondence. But I would argue that those who practice it often make a substantial difference in this world, though their eyes are on another.

Your argument, as I understand it:
1. There is evil in the world
2. If there was a good God, he would've done something about it
3. Nothing has been done about it.
4. Therefore, there is no God.

How about:
1. There is evil in the world
2. If there is evil, there must be good (a problem the atheist must explain)
3. If there is good and evil, there must be a moral law to judge between good and evil
4. If there is a moral law, there must be a lawgiver
5. This points to God

Or, under number 3: Nothing has been done about it.
God came to suffer as a man. He took on the body and limitations of humans. He went about doing good and alleviating evil, charging and empowering His followers to do the same. Whatever things we charge Him of, He came and took the full dose of His own medicine. He was rejected by His own people and crucified by the powers that be. He was resurrected on the third day, sent us out to fight back against hurt and pain, and promised to one day set all of this right.

I may not like His methods, but that is the basic argument of incarnation.

#153,

I'm with you, but would an atheist accept Paul's premise? Is a natural morality that an unbeliever might acknowledge consistent with the Bible? Does this natural morality find the Christian God inconsistent with it?

So that is what the red letters are for! I thought it was highlighted, kind of like SportsCenter.

There is a big split in theology over the role of natural theology. The last century saw the split between Karl Barth and Emile Brunner. Before that it was Calvin vs. Aquinas.

According to some, any natural morality or theology would be consistant with biblical theology and morality, but would not go as far. Even Aquinas had a role for special revelation.

I don't think many atheists would accept a concept of natural morality based even remotely of a divinity, but if they posit a morality that is applicable to all people in all places, they have to have some basis. The Enlightenment premise was that reason, and reason alone was a sufficient base for morality. There are many people who see the Enlightenment project as a failure. (See Alasdair McIntyre's After Virtue or Jeffrey Stouts Ethics after Babel for two examples of such work.)

Post enlightenment thinking has moved toward subsidary issues as the basis, such as power (Foucault), language (Wittgenstein) or equity (Rawls).

#154 Thanks for your thoughtful e-mail.

Let me take it one by one:

"Your argument, as I understand it:
1. There is evil in the world
2. If there was a good God, he would've done something about it
3. Nothing has been done about it.
4. Therefore, there is no God."

That is not my argument. You misunderstand me. I am not an atheist. I grant a reasonable probability that a God may exist, but I am not sure about it. I have a feeling that he exists, but I would not try to defend that to anybody but myself.

What I do not believe is that the Bible is the Word of God. On the question of morality the Bible is a bad guide. It is full of things, commanded by 'God' that we would call immoral.

"How about:
1. There is evil in the world
2. If there is evil, there must be good (a problem the atheist must explain)
3. If there is good and evil, there must be a moral law to judge between good and evil
4. If there is a moral law, there must be a lawgiver
5. This points to God"

I see several flaws with this.
1. Agreed.
2. Agreed, but I don't see a problem in explaining this as an atheist (although I'm not an atheist).
3. Somewhat agreed. But, I think there is not just one moral law. The moral law is an evolving entity. Is the death penalty moral? I personally don't think so, but many Christians in this country have no problems with it. There are some core moral prescriptions we can all agree on, but on the edges, things can become fuzzy. At other times and in other countries, morals used to be quite different. It used to be moral to burn witches.
4. No. If it hasn't broken down in 3., here it finally collapses. Do we need a lawgiver for mathematical laws , or physical laws ? Morality can well be an epiphenomemon or emergent mental structure as part of our social evolved mental nature. Note I am not defending these ideas here, I am just pointing out that your conclusion here does not logically follow from the premises.
5. Ditto.

What is my argument then? (Saxhorn is also confused).

My simple argument is that absent any real compelling evidence, we have no answers to these questions. I don't know where morality comes from. But I won't insert 'God' into my ignorance. I am perfectly happy to keep it a mystery until more data comes in. Call me a mystical deist or something.

However, when it comes to the Bible and the 'God' described therein, in my estimation (and I really don't want to offend anybody here, this is just my opinion based on a lifetime ongoing reflection), the evidence comes down far on the side that the Bible is not of any divine origin or has any special status on helping is resolve these mysteries (except as an important document in western philosophy & history). Ok, start screaming ;-)

No screaming, yapete, just more questions.

thanks for clearing up some of my confusion.

You state that there is some kind of morality that most humans agree on. Would you state the tenets of that morality (maybe just to be obvious for we uniformed)?

> 157 I don't think many atheists would accept a concept of natural morality based even remotely of a divinity,

Must a natural morality consistent with Biblical theology have divinity as a basis? Either because it is immoral to deny the divine origin or because morality here means more than just a moral code? Could an atheist not accept such a morality? Could they not further accept it as natural, in the secular sense of an emergent characteristic of sufficiently complex organisms? Could they not further revere Jesus as a moral teacher who uncovered this characteristic; a moral scientist, if you like; but who was wrong about the role of any God in it, or whose followers were?

Not that any exist precisely as so defined. But is there a contradiction? Again looking beyond parody Fundamentalists vs. parody Darwinians.

MMcM are you posing a morality based upon evolution of the species, and evolution of society? And, then are you posing that code would be somehow consistent with biblical morality?

How can Jesus be a good moral teacher if he claimed to be god and knew he wasn't? How sound would his theology be? How sound would his psychology be if he sought crucifixion?

> 161
I meant emergent in #158's sense, so species, I guess, though evolution is not a key part of anything right here. It's natural because it's part of human nature.

Are you saying that a natural morality consistent with biblical morality implies acceptance of all or most of the biblical narrative? That was my question, seeking to clarify the terms in use here. Suppose Jesus never claimed to be God (or his Son, if that's different). Suppose he was not crucified at all, or that only the means of death gets a red bead. Again, is Jesus' theology, as reported in the Bible, a requirement of natural morality in the sense here?

MMcM, I can conceive a naturalist morality arising from human nature could be consistent with biblical morality. My question is does it show itself to be so? Doesn't NT morality ask us to go farther than we want, doesn't it show us where we fall short?

Your supposing about Jesus, I think, leads me back to my question about him being a good moral teacher. All we have is the record. Can we accept his teaching about morality and not his teaching about himself?

I think Jesus teaching about morality is a places a greater demand on me than a universally agreed upon naturalistic morality.

> 163
How is this naturalist morality different from the Pauline natural (no revelation) morality of #153? Is it precisely in showing its divine origins (but somehow still without revelation)? Or might not an atheist take it without any of the supernatural?

Why must one treat the record uniformly? I am thinking here about the Jesus Seminar. And they aren't even all atheists. (Of course, I am not saying anyone should change their belief system; only that this seems to be a valid, consistent one.)

OK, MMcM, I think we are asking questions but not directly communicating.

Here's what I think about a naturalist morality: it's better than no morality, but I don't think is demands as much from me as Christian morality does.

Regarding treating the record uniformly, this is what tells us about Jesus' character and whether or not he is a good moral teacher. If he tells lies (or is deluded) about himself, how can we believe what he says about morality? Otherwise we have these nice inspirational sayings with no moral authority to add credence.

I don't think the Jesus Seminar subscribes to the notion that the bible is inspired, but rather is the work of unnamed collectors and editors. I don't how one reconciles the theology of Paul with totally human authorship of the gospels.

Again, this hypothetical natural morality could be recognized; there is no need for an appeal to authority, so there is no need to validate a teacher as one. Whether that makes it credible is beyond the scope of this line of questioning, and probably depends on a lot of other things that would take effort to agree upon.

Likewise, there is no question but that it is difficult, if not impossible to reconcile these different perspectives. But the goal right now is not to assign truth values to belief systems, but only to explore something from #86's 3, like history, theology or sociology.

The question was, whether it was possible for an atheist (or non-theist, if you like to make that distinction) to have an external morality. It is conceivable that this is impossible by definition, because of what is meant by the terms, and perhaps that is what we discover by looking at the question more carefully. That is why I asked whether the concept of natural morality has a divine origin, as #157 proposed.

Otherwise, it's fairly symmetrical. The theist says that the atheist's morality is the natural morality that everyone receives from God, even if they deny that. The atheist says that the theist's morality is the natural morality that everyone receives from nature, even if they invent a supernatural source. These are obviously radically different from a theological perspective. But how are they different just from the moral perspective?

If it is just a matter of degree, the "better than no morality" case, then I again ask why the absolute morality of #148 cannot be ascribed to nature by an atheist. It's of a different character, but it demands as much or more, if that's the criterion.

Your specific reference in #148 to ahimsa as one tenet of a natural morality is granted. And, in response to #166 is agreed that as a tenet of a natural morality no appeal to outside authority is needed. I guess this is what I would term a universal tenet.

What other tenets would you ascribe to a universal natural morality?

>153 Arctic-Stranger: Arctic said: "Christians believe God is triune."

That is not completely true. Christianity has never been monolithic, and the doctrine of the Trinity is not universally ascribed to even among self-identifying Christians. My careful reading of the synoptic gospels (the only record of Jesus' ministry that we have) tells me that Jesus never identified himself as God. In fact, in the gospel of Matthew he clearly distinguishes himself from God, saying that worship should only be toward God in heaven; and that he is not the authority on what is good, but rather the One knows.

Likewise, belief in a literal, physical resurrection is not the essential criterion for being Christian. Marcus Borg has built a coherent, consistent, and faithful Christian theology without one. See Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time, and The Meaning of Jesus for some of his perspective.

This, IMHO, is the essential criterion for identifying as Christian: that the life, ministry, and death of Jesus of Nazareth is so compelling that you commit yourself to following him as your life's master. Everything else is theology, doctrine and dogma. (Not that those are bad things; I make my living from theology. But they are not the essential committment.)

Edited to add: I inserted the word "synoptic" into my second paragraph. I realize that a person might find a divinity claim in the gospel of John, but I take that work to be more gnostic-influenced theology than a straight-ahead "historical" gospel like Matthew, Mark and Luke. I look at John as a community's theology of Christ, rather than a more-or-less accurate record of Jesus of Nazareth's life.

#111, Yapete, I would suggest that metaphysics is to human nature and culture formation as irrational numbers are to science. They mean there are no clean cut edges to either sociology or science. Both are an analog proposition no matter how much we desire to digitize them. Science will not explain metaphysics, even if we eventually map every neuron in the brain, just as metaphysics has no place in science.

I find science bolsters my religion tremendously. In a nutshell, I would say I believe in intelligent design, but not in the same way as those Christians who identify themselves as Id'ers.

My careful reading of the synoptic gospels (the only record of Jesus' ministry that we have) . . . I look at John as a community's theology of Christ, rather than a more-or-less accurate record of Jesus of Nazareth's life.

Of course, people have been deconstructing the Bible for centuries, and reconstructing theology as long. Why not just base a theology on Matt. Ch. 1, just pick and choose what you want to accept, and leave out the rest.

Your rejection of John is, in part, because it is not perceived to be as old, and as "pure" as the Synoptics. But you also don't include the oldest books of the NT, mainly the epistles of Paul. Is that because it conflicts with your theology? Of course, because Paul considers the Resurrection to be the most essential part of Christian theology.

Then, you also reject John because of the supposed gnostic elements. Well, you know the apostolic fathers and the church fathers battled the gnostics quite a bit, and I think they can detect gnosis when they see it. They seem to accept John; if it's good enough for them, why is not good enough for you?

I think any "credible" theology must take into account the Pauline epistles and the writings of the apostolic fathers that quote passages in what have become the books of the NT. These are the sources that are closest to the events. These sources include eyewitnesses to the teaching and events of Jesus' life.

>170 saxhorn: Your rejection of John is, in part, because it is not perceived to be as old, and as "pure" as the Synoptics. This is an incorrect assumption. I do not reject John because it is newer and "less pure." I have already said that the gospel of John, Paul's letters, and the rest of the Christian scriptures are useful as theology. Therefore, I am not rejecting any part of the Christian canon as theology.

But letters are not history. Apocalyptic literature is not history. They are beneficial for their use as the kind of literature that they are. But don't tell me that Paul wrote as an eyewitness of Jesus of Nazareth. He admitted himself that he never met the man. (His experience of Christ is limited to post-resurrection, which is not the same.) And I don't have to agree with his theology . . . although since true Pauline theology is not as Trinitarian as many think, I find much to agree with Paul about.

As for me, I am interested in being a disciple of Jesus of Nazareth; and for me, that means that I must understand the man who lived. That means that I make a distinction between the historical Jesus (insofar as we can know) and the deity that developed in the theology of the Christian church. Perhaps I have not scoured John thoroughly enough to find all the relevant historical bits. But I am quite certain that the god-claims in John are theology, not history.

I am not asking you to change your theology. I am asking that people recognize, acknowledge, and accept that Christianity is and has always been more varied theologically than the rigid orthodoxy wants to allow. Or let me put it to you this way . . .

Would you rather I follow Jesus of Nazareth as a disciple and devote my life to emulating his example (embodying Christ in my life), therefore leaving my theology to my own conscience? Or would you rather I stop identifying myself as Christian and go away into a life of heathenism? Maybe to some here, it's the same thing. But to me, it matters who I follow, and it matters who I invite to accompany me on the journey.

Well, I did not mean to start anything by that comment. To be more exact I should have said that traditional orthodox Christianity is trinitarian. But in my experience few people in the pews have any idea what that means, except that it is supposed to serve as some kind of litmus test that keeps JWs, Unitarians, Quakers and others out. Other than that, most people find it pretty confusing.

Arctic, I was not flaming you about Trinitarianism, I was trying to articulate a wider definition of Christianity. I realized subsequent to my latest posting, that I am asking people to change their theology, if that theology maintains that there is only one way to be Christian.

I bring this up because it is important. If Christianity is to be more than an ethnic identifier, then we have to be better at welcoming people to join us in the journey. In this post-Enlightenment, post-Einstein, post-modern age, it no longer works to simply tell people that they have to believe x, y, and z in order to be "saved." Biblical cosmology no longer works for most so-called unchurched people. They don't buy into the literal interpretations of salvation, judgement, Heaven-as-a-place-up-in-the-sky. They know the concepts are important, but they don't know what they mean to Christianity, now that the universe is known to be vast and ancient, etc.

Most people want to believe in God, and many think that Jesus might have been a pretty special guy. They don't necessarily know for sure, but maybe he's necessary. But a traditional orthodox position that requires people to violate their own rationality is deeply offensive to thousands of people. It makes no sense (and honestly, it shouldn't) to call a God good, who told Joshua to slaughter entire cities of people simply because they were in the way. Most people cannot reconcile the archeological record with a literal interpretion of Genesis 1.

If Christianity is going to survive as an ethical religion, then we have to have room for people to build theologies that make sense to them.

If Christianity is willing to throw away thousands of people simply because they want whatever they believe to make sense to them, then we don't deserve to be called God's children.

So here's my answer to the OP. Belief in God doesn't have to be rational. But if Christianity has anything important to say to this generation, then it has to make sense. Christianity has to be rational, moral, and hospitable.

Ah, I hear emergent theology here!

You're right! People shouldn't have to accept the Bible if they don't want to. People shouldn't have to accept 20 centuries of christian theology and tradition if they don't want to. People shouldn't have to accept the testimony of eye witnesses if they don't want. People can label things the way they want, and pick and choose just like at a cafeteria.

Also, God doesn't have to be bigger than anyone's rationality. I wonder, did your God create the heavens and the earth, or is that just another fable. Just how big is your God?

174> Emergent theology is not very well defined, but process theology is fairly well developed and has some commonalities with some of emergent theology. In process theology God is as big as the universe and knows everything that is to be known; how he stands with respect to creation remains something of a mystery.

As big as he is he is probably beyond our rationality, but he can be thought about in some detail where an infinite God is properly only a mystery. Picking and choosing is common among religious celebrants -- turn the other cheek, anyone? Jesus's morality was not consistent, so deriving a morality that is good and more or less congruent with his may be be the high road.

Robert

Some of the most important wisdom in the Bible is in the Gospel of John. When I say wisdom, I mean wiseness, not theology. For instance, "I have not come to condemn the world, but to save it." When we condemn the world we are overstepping our authority beyond even the authority Jesus would claim. Why is that? Is it because none of us are competent to condemn?

This is what I mean when I talk about wisdom. Jesus did not come to select His out of the world, but to teach us the best way to live IN the world. To save the world, is to create a world in which we create as much Justice, Compassion, and Respect as possible through Love (see Paul about Love) for one another as children of God, not separating the "saved" from the "unsaved".

Thank you, Robert! But then again, you already know that I'm a process theologian.

Well, here's some more kerosene for the fire. . . (for #174)

General cosmology of biblical times espoused a three-layered world. Somewhere down was Hades, the abode of the dead. Ordinary mortals were confined to the surface level of creation, what we would consider to be the visible and habitable areas in and on the Earth's crust. Above the sky - a solid firmament/barrier that held the waters above separate from the waters below - was the realm of the divine. God literally lived "up there" on the other side of that solid firmament. This is why in the Acts of the Apostles, Jesus is said to have arisen into the sky and disappeared. Somewhere else (not going to take the time to look it up, sorry) there is reference to a window in the sky.

Now, if God is literally and concretely the God of the Biblical-times consciousness, then he apparently has an invisible orbiting spacecraft. Or else we live in some deeply warped region of space-time, where it only seems that the Earth revolves around the sun in one of the arms of the Milky Way.

You asked how big my God was, presumably because you are certain that my God is small and bland. But my God . . . a process God . . . is larger than the universe, and that's pretty darn big. In fact, I'll go one step further. My God is not just the God of this universe, immense as it is. My God is the God of everything that exists, even beyond this universe . . . because I believe that our universe, as big as it is, is only a minute part of all that exists.

Just because I said that Christianity has to be reasonable/rational, moral and hospitable, doesn't mean that I don't believe in a powerful deity.

Well, I wondered about the size of your God because you suspect the resurrection. In my book, God, who is above the third heaven, and also the creator of all that is, is not bound by space and time. He is spirit, and doesn't need the invisible space ship.

This God, who is so powerful as to have created all that is, can have performed all that is attributed to him in the old and new testaments. Neither the incarnation nor the resurrection are beyond his capabilities. Since the resurrection is clearly of prime importance to Paul, the earliest NT writer, and to the apostolic fathers, who quote from NT documents, and all four accepted gospels, I can't imagine why a sincere theology would want to exclude it.

Not only are we conceding a foundational tenet of traditional christianity to those who wish only the rational, but we also send the message that a person can not read the bible and gets its message without the help of theologians to explain it. Now, I'm certainly betraying my protestant roots in thinking that this is just as important as believing in the resurrection.

Again, regarding the "miraculous," Paul claims to have performed "mighty works," and the book of acts ascribes some to him. Paul claims that these mighty works are the testimony to his message. Paul also claims to have been caught up into the third heaven--the realm of God, and he also claims to have seen the risen Christ. This from the earliest NT writer, which then makes miraculous events in the gospels and the book of acts consistent with the earliest doctrine.

I think Paul's writing, as well as Acts, intertwines history, narrative, and theology. I don't think that you can extract one from the others without damaging the context and meaning of the books.

That's all right, oakes. I don't normally like to correct people's spelling, particularly in online forums where people often think faster than they type and mistakes creep in, but in this instance it was an important difference!

# 179

I think walktowork must mean geological record. Archeology has not really done much to verify much of anything in the Bible. The Jericho story does not fit the time period, etc. And the conquest stories do not seem to jibe with the archeological records.

#179 Yes, as DLC pointed out in #181, this is an online forum, not an academic treatise. I don't type off-line and cut-and-paste, and I don't labor for hours over my posts. My posts are as precise as I can be, given the length of time I can devote to them.

By "archeological record" I meant evidence that the Earth is hundreds of millions of years old and that life evolved very slowly here, so that rules out a literal seven-day creation (as if that's what the author's of Genesis 1 meant to say, anyway; but that's a genre issue). Plus, I was thinking about the cosmic radiation echo of the so-called Big Bang, evidence that the universe is many billions of years old. So, as Arctic suggests, I should have said geological and cosmological record.

In 1991 I stood on the remains of Jericho while the archeologists working on the site explained to us how the city fell in the 16th century bce, and not the fourteenth, which would be more consistant with biblical chronology around the exodus.

yes, they found a stele with Pilate's name. I am not sure of many people who dispute his existence. But that is pretty much the only find, other than cities themselves, that one can trace directly to the bible. Of course Jerusalem existed, etc, but artifacts of David, Moses, Paul, the early churches, etc are, to date, not found.

And yes the Bruce book is an excellent resource, although it probably has been 20 years since I read it. But it deals with textual issues. We don't have any first century NT texts. (Thanks to the Dead Sea scrolls we have some early OT texts though.)

Well, I just wanted to say:

We had a great service this morning along with communion. I felt cleansed and full of peace when I left. I was reminded that when I limit my expression of faith to the rational my spirituality becomes shallow. I thought of the passage in Matt. 22:37 where Jesus says, "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind."

And THAT is the essence of Christianity. Well, loving your neighbor as yourself, that too.

It's too bad that posting cannot convey tone of voice and body language, too. It's too bad that people get so busy defending their viewpoints and forget to listen to one another. I get so tired when discussions devolve into name-calling and nastiness. And it happens a lot more here than I would like.

No one is perfect. No one has unlimited amounts of time. Most of us here call ourselves Christian. For the sake of God's love and mercy, can we at least act like it??????

Now that I have gotten that off of my chest . . .

I have a little quote here, from S. Hauerwas' The Peaceable Kingdom:

"The church's vocation is to risk its own corporate identity and life, to risk institutional death, in pursuit of God's beyond-the-church future. We are not called to conquer the world for Christ or to make Christians out of non-Christians. To claim the Lordship of Jesus as the Christ is to set aside all human schemes of insider/outsider and to point toward a world that God desires, where peace and radical hospitality obtain."

I keep this quote posted on my refrigerator, because every single day I need to be reminded why I do the work that I do. I am not here on Earth to convince people that the dogma and doctrine of the institutional Christian church is right, so that our little religious social club can be kept ideologically pure. I am here to be God's hands, heart, voice in a hurting world.

I did not say that our relationship with God had to be rational. If you really want to know, I find that God is wild and dangerous, and we all take the divine far too lightly - we literally risk our very existence - when we argue as if our mere words can circumscribe I-AM-WHATEVER-I-CHOOSE-TO-BE. There's a reason people in the Bible fall on their faces whenever God comes around in person. And yet, I also find God to be a source of infinite love and mercy, beyond my comprehension.

I did not say that our relationship with God had to be rational. I said that Christianity - the religious system - had to make sense (be rational). I know that word "rational" means something specific in the atheist's parlance. But I mean it the way ordinary people mean it. Our way of being a community devoted to God's way of life has to make sense to people, or people will not be able to join us. And the Great Commission charges us with inviting people to join us.

Let God invite people into the mystery of faith - I can say this because I am a mystic (and that's where my process theology breaks down). Let God invite people through their spiritual experiences into a relationship with the One who surpasses rationalism. But let us, in our community, make sense.

And just how does a good Christian act? With Kindness and charity toward all? With Fire, Brimstone, tales of Hell and massive amounts of Authority against those who disagree? By trading fairy tales for facts? How does a good Christian act?

ETA: this and preceding post are like two ships passing in the night.

Wow, W2W, I would never have thought that you had mystic leanings. For me, when I sense the Presence, everything is OK. I don't struggle with the authority and inspiration of the Bible because I hear God speaking to me from it. Sensing His voice and His Presence I find congruence between word and spirit, and no need to be persuaded by arguments.

You could be a Quaker!

#191 - thanks, walk2work!

#159 "You state that there is some kind of morality that most humans agree on. Would you state the tenets of that morality (maybe just to be obvious for we uniformed)?"

I'm not an expert on this, but my understanding is that anthropologists have found that most societies have restrictions on killing (at least people of their own tribe) and stealing. Purity-type laws are also quite common. The reach of such 'taboos' usually gets expanded as societies become more complex, and laws are used to enforce moral behavior. So, I think a good case can be made that morals could be explained as combination of inherent/instinctual behavior and learned/ cultural behavior.

#169 "Science will not explain metaphysics, even if we eventually map every neuron in the brain, just as metaphysics has no place in science.

Agreed.

#169, again: "I find science bolsters my religion tremendously. In a nutshell, I would say I believe in intelligent design, but not in the same way as those Christians who identify themselves as Id'ers."

I agree completely. The problem with ID is that they try to deny the findings of science which are pretty solid. What they are missing is that the findings of science (e.g. evolution), don't have to contradict religion. The Bible is not a science textbook. It does the Bible a disservice to treat it as such.

I personally have a lot of respect for a God who is smart enough to use something as ingeneous as evolution to populate the Earth with this wonderful variety of species. The God of the creationists, IMHO, is kind of a dumb God - a God that has to fiddle all the time with creation and keeps getting it wrong. Creationism is an insult to God.

#191 If you include finding God outside holy books & any particular creed, I can agree with most of what you say. Mysticism is the only the only mode of religion that makes sense to me.

Well volumes have already been written on this subject before I got here so I will be very brief. I believe that it is very easy to read the Bible as a born again Christian and through rational thought come to an understanding of what the Bible teaches. Seeming contradictions are usually solved when text are returned to their context. As for science and the Bible the argument usually comes down to the creation account and the THEORY of evolution. I choose to believe the creation account in the Bible because unlike the THEORY of evolution it does not violate the second law of Thermodynamics requiring life forms to become more complicated instead of less complicated. It is simple for me a Theory cannot be correct if it violates a law. Aside from the Creation vs Evolution issue there are no real science vs the Bible issues of which I am aware.

Christianity and the Bible are indeed rational when viewed from the vantage point of God making man and all that is created for His pleasure and not man's pleasure. A theocentric world-view makes the Bible much easier to understand but a humanistic view hinders our understanding and clouds our thinking. When man is the crowning evolutionary accident and everything revolves around him the Bible is all wrong but when man and all we know is the result of the creative work of God the Bible makes perfect sense.

it is very easy to read the Bible as a born again Christian and through rational thought come to an understanding of what the Bible teaches.

You imply that being "born again" means that you have a prior commitment to the accuracy of the Bible. Your thought may be rational, but it is based on a premise. If your faith is based on your reading of the Bible, and your reading of the Bible is based on your faith, then there is something circular going on.

I choose to believe the creation account in the Bible because unlike the THEORY of evolution it does not violate the second law of Thermodynamics requiring life forms to become more complicated instead of less complicated

The second law of thermodynamics applies to a closed system in which energy does not enter or leave the system. The Earth's biosphere is constantly supplied with energy from the Sun, and from the heat in the Earth's core. Therefore the Sceond Law does not apply, and the theory of evolution does not violate it. I choose to disbelieve the creation account in the Bible (as a literal account), because it conflicts with practically all of the findings of the geological and biological sciences. I respect it as a compilation of mythological cosmology handed down by the ancient Hebrews.

>199 WesleyRoyII: "I choose to believe the creation account in the Bible because unlike the THEORY of evolution it does not violate the second law of Thermodynamics requiring life forms to become more complicated instead of less complicated"

Evolution does nowhere violate the second law of thermodynamics. The second law states that in an isolated system, entropy will not decrease. In open systems, such as the Earth or living beings, it is not the entropy that's important but the free energy. If your argument would hold any water, life itself would be impossible, as we are locally creating order all the time, simply by growing and living. With your understanding, you couldn't even create a snowflake or a crystal or weather, all examples of open system where order is generated locally.

In any case, entropy is a thermodynamic/statistical concept applying to local thermodynamical systems. It is therefore a grave red herring to apply it to evolution, a red herring perpetuated by creationists who know that they can bamboozle scientifically illiterate people by throwing around words like 'entropy' or 'second law of thermodynamics', of which most people have only a fleeting (if any) real understanding.

By the way, equating entropy with disorder is a unfortunate red herring itself. It is only equal to disorder, if the term 'disorder' is properly understood as maximimizing the number of microstates with respect to the macroscopic constraints. This means that you can sometimes have seemingly more ordered systems, that nevertheless have higher entropy than their more 'disordered' counterparts. This happens in systems as simple as small rigid spheres.

Entropy is a very subtle concept...

FYI: Second Law of Thermodynamics: "Whenever an internal constraint is released in an isolated macroscopic system in equilibrium, the system will eventually come to a new state of equilibrium with an entropy that is at least as great as it was before." No violation of evolution here.

Thanks for the explanation, yapete. I was pretty sure there was something wonky with #199's evolution/entropy argument, since life on Earth exists at all. But my college physics was too long ago for me to articulate "why" to myself. Once again, kudos to you physics folks!

Myopic,

You imply that being "born again" means that you have a prior commitment to the accuracy of the Bible.

I don't think WRII implies this in his message. Perhaps you infer it?

"Born Again" refers to a type of relationship one has with Jesus, not with the Bible.

However, I would say that as a "born again" believer myself, I place great personal value on the Bible because I hear God speaking to me from it. I don't hear him speaking as loudly from any other literature. So, for me, the Bible has great authority.

By granting authority to the Bible, one prefers its message over other messages. Having found the Bible to be reliable in matters of faith, one is inclined to accept its message in other matters as well.

As the Bible portrays humankind as flawed by nature, and as common sense shows that to be true, many christians, believing the Bible to be inspired and protected from error by God, are prone to accepts its teachings over so-called scientific evidence when there is a conflict between the two. Other christians, not granting the Bible the same authority, are more prone to accept the opinions of humans over the Bible.

#200, 202 Thanks.

Maybe this is a good place to explain what I meant previously, when I was talking about the fact that the Bible is not a science textbook.

The Bible is clearly a historical document (no argument there) and it is clearly an important source of spiritual learning for millions (billions?) of people (again no argument). It is NOT a science textbook. When the Bible was written, people did not know about how planetary motion works, they did not know about thermodynamics or DNA. Heck, they didn't even know that a bat is not a bird. ("Lev. 11:13, 19 And these are they which ye shall have in abomination among the fowls...And the stork, the heron after her kind, and the lapwing, and the bat.")

I'm not saying this to ridicule the Bible or people who believe in the Bible as a spiritual book. It is just a fact that >2000 years ago, people did not know too much about these things.

So, to use the Bible as some kind of science reference on evolution or anything else, DOES do the Bible a big disservice as it forces the Bible to serve a purpose that is was never written to serve.

But I think St. Augustine said it better than I can:
"Usually, even a non-Christian knows something about the earth, the heavens, and the other elements of this world, about the motion and orbit of the stars and even their size and relative positions, about the predictable eclipses of the sun and moon, the cycles of the years and the seasons, about the kinds of animals, shrubs, stones, and so forth, and this knowledge he hold to as being certain from reason and experience. Now, it is a disgraceful and dangerous thing for an infidel to hear a Christian, presumably giving the meaning of Holy Scripture, talking nonsense on these topics; and we should take all means to prevent such an embarrassing situation, in which people show up vast ignorance in a Christian and laugh it to scorn. The shame is not so much that an ignorant individual is derided, but that people outside the household of faith think our sacred writers held such opinions, and, to the great loss of those for whose salvation we toil, the writers of our Scripture are criticized and rejected as unlearned men."

#203 - thanks, saxhorn, for acknowledging that there is no single clear Christian position, and that Christians differ in their interpretation of how to read the bible.

Other christians, not granting the Bible the same authority, are more prone to accept the opinions of humans over the Bible

I would wish to clarify that a little.

The official teaching of the Catholic church (if I remember rightly from my seminary days) is to recognise two sources of God's revelation, both scripture and tradition. This obviously sets us apart from those denominations which recognise only scripture as an authoritative source.

But even when one looks at the bible, there is a question of how to interpret it. At one extreme, some Christians believe it is literally dictated by God, word for word, as Muslims believe about the Quran. But many other Christians believe that it is indeed inspired by God, that God is indeed speaking to us through the bible (I agree 100% with you there, saxhorn: "I hear God speaking to me from it"), but that it is a very complex document put together over hundreds or thousands of years by many different authors using many different literary genres. It can be read with very simple faith and can be very edifying as such. But to answer the big questions (especially those which weren't even asked by, or which weren't even imaginable to, those who wrote it) one needs modern tools - exegesis, hermeneutics, textual criticism, redaction criticism, linguistics, context, culture, history, and all the other things which I can't even remember - tools which God gave us. When read in this light, many Christians find no contradiction between the bible and science.

edited for typo

yapete, you posted #205 while I was typing #206 - I think you've expressed it very well

If some wish to believe the earth was created in six literal days and Man was created on the sixth, that's fine. Just don't tell me I'm denying God if I don't subscribe to such a position.

Is your God really so small?

Hey, John, no real problem for me, as I don't go to the Bible for science. In fact, I doubt that I spend much time in Genesis (pre-Abraham) or in Revelation. I think I spend the most time in the gospels and epistles, I & II Samuel, Psalms, Proverbs, and prophets. But, the little boy in me really likes Judges, too. ;-)

Because of hearing God speak in the Bible, I accept inspiration, not a clue exactly how, though. Geneg has a nice way of putting it. Sort of a living document (Heb. 4:12).

I value tradition, as well, John, but for me the Bible trumps tradition. So, if there is a conflict between the two, the Bible wins out.

#207-209 This is why I feel there should be no real conflict between science and religion. The conflict arises when scientists overstep the boundaries by declaring that science 'proves' there is no God (which it doesn't), or creationists say that the Bible proves that evolution is not true (which it doesn't and also never could anyways, as these things are to be decided on scientific evidence, which overwhelmingly favors the evolutionary viewpoint).

I don't see any problems with accepting the scientific views of evolution and being a Bible-believing Christian. I think saxhorn put nicely what are the important things in the Bible. I think the contradictions between science and religion are trumped up by people for reasons I really can't understand.

Or to put it in another way: Creationists have an unsophisticated idea of science and some atheists have an unsophisticated idea of religion. The results is a lot of talking past each other.

#211 - hear, hear!

sorry, posted in wrong group.

>203 saxhorn:
Yes, I guess I inferred it, on the grounds that only a prior commitment to biblical accuracy can lead one to reject the theory of evolution.

Having found the Bible to be reliable in matters of faith, one is inclined to accept its message in other matters as well.

Which is unfortunate, because in many other matters (such as knowledge of the physical universe) it doesn't actually offer a message, but people read one into it anyway.

All this strict adherence to the absolute truth of the Bible is a way to ignore several uncomfortable truths which are the central message of the Bible, its core beliefs such as:

1) Both God and Jesus present a liberal agenda
2) That what others do with their lives is between them and God, until it becomes criminal
3) That aliens are especially protected by God
4) That if God gives you wealth, you damn sure better use it for His purposes, God's program is NOT to make you wealthy, but too value humility, seek and love what is good, not prescribed, but good
5) That righteousness is not found in form, but in substance.

For those people who NEED authority in their lives in order to know the difference between good and evil, my heart goes out to you. Just because your fundamental lack of internal morality leads you to follow those who fill such a gap, don't think for a minute I want to follow you down that road.

If you think the above characterization is harsh, tell me: what am I to say when someone tells me it is impossible to be moral without God telling us what is right and wrong? That an atheist cannot know what is moral? What other conclusion am I to draw about such?

These are the elements of the Christian program that are lost in favor of such divisive issues as whether a "good" Christian believes in the absolute truth of fairytales, concern over who will be saved and who lost, when the Rapture will occur, (Please, Lord, enact the Rapture soon that we may be rid of these fools), exactly how we will foretell the comin of Christ, forcing all of us to live with their version of Christian values, which for the most part are not as far as I can tell.

when the Rapture will occur, (Please, Lord, enact the Rapture soon that we may be rid of these fools)

I thought no man would know the day.

Only if you don't read the runes, throw the bones, check the entrails, and study the speculative fiction of John Nelson Darby and Tim LaHaye, et al.

For those who prefer to agonize over such things, this is ignoring Jesus' own teaching on this subject. Just another example of cut and paste theology.

>215 geneg: Gene, I can agree with most of what you say here, but you got to explain 3). Are we talking about green creatures from Mars, or non-Christians or ...?

Mexicans.

Doesn't that make us aliens to other people?

#215 - geneg, I actually agree with most of what you say. But your vehemence brings home to me how culturally (or geographically?) conditioned a lot of what is discussed here is. Much of it bears very little relevance to Christians in most parts of the world, and is certainly not such a burning issue as it clearly is in the USA. I'd never even heard of the rapture until it was parodied by a British political cartoonist with reference to one of your presidents a few years back, creationists are given about as much credence as flat-earthers in most of Europe, the church has been (and still is) a bastion of social and liberal rights in many, many parts of the world, etc, etc. I'm not in any way trying to minimise the importance of the discussion for US Christians (and atheists), and I suppose for the rest of us as what happens in the world's only superpower has implications for all of us on this shrinking planet, but maybe some of you who feel under siege in the USA can take heart from the fact that in much of the rest of the world you would be considered mundanely normal.

We are fighting a cultural battle for the soul of Christianity in this country.

Geneg: For those people who NEED authority in their lives in order to know the difference between good and evil, my heart goes out to you. Just because your fundamental lack of internal morality leads you to follow those who fill such a gap, don't think for a minute I want to follow you down that road.

Well, here's where I need an authority. When I'm tempted to indulge myself and not help others. My mind is very good at concocting reasons why I should be selfish. It disguises and contorts reality. Then the Word of God, which is sharper than a two-edged sword, speaks to me and divides between bone and marrow and soul and spirit and reveals the thoughts and intents of my heart (Heb. 4:12 paraphrased). I am humbled and corrected, and procede to do what is right.

I suspect that most folks need that kind of authority in their lives, because most folks are not able to walk consistently with their beliefs.

#223 I can see where that can be helpful. But I don't think that having a Word of God (i.e. the Bible) is essential for this. What I mean is that the Bible may be sufficient, but it is not necessary (to use math babble). In my own life, I manage to for the most part stay on the right path by using that little inner voice of my conscience and by drawing inspiration from a variety of sources (literary and personal).

#222

Geneg I agree most wholeheartedly with you! But not only about Christianity, but the whole fabric of our society.

It used to be that there was a vast center in our politics as well as left and right fringes. Modern communication media playing to the mostly sensational refuses to report centrist stories because they are dull. After all, they want to gain more viewers and sell more copies. So, the fringes get all the attention. The days of the "Yellow Press" have returned. Consequently the center is dying.

Holding the party line is more important than working together for common solutions. That's why we have gridlock.

So, whether one is a democrat or a republican, or a liberal or a conservative christian, it becomes harder to find the middle ground. That's unfortunate, because the real truth is probably in the middle.

#224, That's OK, yapete. I guess along with my faith in God, is the fact that He IS God, and the ultimate authority (otherwise He wouldn't BE God). Therefore, it seems logical to me to base my morality on His ethics, and not on my flawed reasoning. To do that, I need to look to His word rather than other good and inspirational sources. Not that I ignore other sources, but I don't rely on them.

Recently a TV commentator observed that there is no middle in the US Congress anymore, which is why it is nearly impossible to do bipartisanship. That commentator (can't remember who) said that the reason for the disappearance of the middle is that people are moving into homogeneous cultural enclaves, so that geographically, "red" areas are getting redder and "blue" areas are getting bluer. So their congressional representatives (both Senate and HOR) are not having to moderate their views to court re-election in a politically heterogeneous district.

I never thought about this concerning religion before, although it makes a world of sense (no pun intended). The Christian church has been suffering from an increasing "disappearance of the middle" since the Reformation. Hmmmm . . .

Bah! I strongly disagree with you, and because of your blasphemy, I am going out to start a new faith group!

Divided, indeed.

> 227
Maybe The Big Sort?

Yes, MMcM! It was in reference to that. I had forgotten.

I think that liberal/creative people are drawn to large population centers on both coasts and to the new south. That leaves middle America at a loss. We see the "brain drain" among our college age students leaving for institutions elsewhere. Richard Florida in the Rise of the Creative Class has quite a bit to say on this point.

Unfortunately, that shift/sort is affecting our religious expression, too, as society is influencing church more than church is influencing society.

Ref #215

So you are saying that the internal moral code of every man is equally correct. So if we view the actions of Hitler which he believed to be good for the country of Germany as coming from his internal moral system them we have the extermination and enslavement of untold millions as an example of morality to the nth degree. The problem with man is that man wants to be the final authority and this is a position that God has reserved for Himself.

Ref post on 10/6/08

The heart of your posts seems to be that the Bible is not scientifically accurate. I would say that the Bible is not scientifically complete instead of inaccurate. The Bible is not written to teach us all things that pertain to science. The Bible was written to instruct us in the means and manner of man being reconciled to God and enjoying an eternal relationship with God. On that point the Bible is complete and accurate.

As for entropy or the concept that has been described in many articles as the winding down of the universe including the cooling of the sun. We do live in a closed system. It is called the universe. We have the unfortunate humanistic view of a geocentric universe and thinking only of earth when speaking of the laws of thermodynamics.

I do have a question. If the earth began as a molten ball of rock and water then condensed upon the rock as it cooled can anyone tell me where the water came from and where the first life forms came from?

I say in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth! What say you?

Ref #215

I think that you might be mistaken or I might be mistaken on the definition of liberal agenda. When I read the contents of Matthew 5:17-48 anything but liberal agenda comes to mind.

Matthew 5:17-48 17 Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil. 18 For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled. 19 Whosoever therefore shall break one of these least commandments, and shall teach men so, he shall be called the least in the kingdom of heaven: but whosoever shall do and teach them, the same shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven. 20 For I say unto you, That except your righteousness shall exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, ye shall in no case enter into the kingdom of heaven. 21 Ye have heard that it was said by them of old time, Thou shalt not kill; and whosoever shall kill shall be in danger of the judgment: 22 But I say unto you, That whosoever is angry with his brother without a cause shall be in danger of the judgment: and whosoever shall say to his brother, Raca, shall be in danger of the council: but whosoever shall say, Thou fool, shall be in danger of hell fire. 23 Therefore if thou bring thy gift to the altar, and there rememberest that thy brother hath ought against thee; 24 Leave there thy gift before the altar, and go thy way; first be reconciled to thy brother, and then come and offer thy gift. 25 Agree with thine adversary quickly, whiles thou art in the way with him; lest at any time the adversary deliver thee to the judge, and the judge deliver thee to the officer, and thou be cast into prison. 26 Verily I say unto thee, Thou shalt by no means come out thence, till thou hast paid the uttermost farthing. 27 Ye have heard that it was said by them of old time, Thou shalt not commit adultery: 28 But I say unto you, That whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart. 29 And if thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out, and cast it from thee: for it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish, and not that thy whole body should be cast into hell. 30 And if thy right hand offend thee, cut it off, and cast it from thee: for it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish, and not that thy whole body should be cast into hell. 31 It hath been said, Whosoever shall put away his wife, let him give her a writing of divorcement: 32 But I say unto you, That whosoever shall put away his wife, saving for the cause of fornication, causeth her to commit adultery: and whosoever shall marry her that is divorced committeth adultery. 33 Again, ye have heard that it hath been said by them of old time, Thou shalt not forswear thyself, but shalt perform unto the Lord thine oaths: 34 But I say unto you, Swear not at all; neither by heaven; for it is God's throne: 35 Nor by the earth; for it is his footstool: neither by Jerusalem; for it is the city of the great King. 36 Neither shalt thou swear by thy head, because thou canst not make one hair white or black. 37 But let your communication be, Yea, yea; Nay, nay: for whatsoever is more than these cometh of evil. 38 Ye have heard that it hath been said, An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth: 39 But I say unto you, That ye resist not evil: but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also. 40 And if any man will sue thee at the law, and take away thy coat, let him have thy cloke also. 41 And whosoever shall compel thee to go a mile, go with him twain. 42 Give to him that asketh thee, and from him that would borrow of thee turn not thou away. 43 Ye have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbour, and hate thine enemy. 44 But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you; 45 That ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven: for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust. 46 For if ye love them which love you, what reward have ye? do not even the publicans the same? 47 And if ye salute your brethren only, what do ye more than others? do not even the publicans so? 48 Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect.

A) To call Jesus a liberal or a conservative is highly anachronistic. The social agenda of Jesus is not subject to either of those terms, especially as they are used today in political circles.

b) Through the sarcasm I thought I heard something that sounded like, "If Christianity is to true, it has to be successful, ie draw crowds. Now I know that Oakes is smarter than that, but he is coming dangerously close to that. Whether the gospel draws a crowd or not is not exactly up to us. I am neither defending nor knocking what is going on in Europe. (I know that in Germany and Russia the verdict is mixed.) But if Jesus told us to love our enemies, we probably should not take a poll to see how popular that will be with the people.

Its not about "saving Western civilization" or anything like that. It is about being faithful.

#236 - European clergy weren't particularly interested in spreading the message of Jesus

A sweeping generalisation defaming tens of thousands of devoted clergy.

tell their flock to from now on use "Allah" when referring to God

A single Dutch bishop, not "European clergy". If you read that article you'll see he drew little support from other church leaders or ordinary people. Incidentally, Christians all over the Arabic-speaking world refer to God as "Allah" in their prayer and worship because Allah means, er, God.

saving Western Civilization, and saving Christian Civilization (which is sort of the same thing)

Do you really believe that?

#238 - the generalizations you and others have made about practices in America versus other parts of the world

I think it's the Americans who are making these claims which are dominating the conversation because they obviously feel very strongly about the issue within their own country. It's very clear that this is a major debate within the USA. I would argue that it isn't a major debate in many parts of the rest of the world. I don't think that's a generalisation. It's certainly my own experience, and there are probably all sorts of indicators (the media, what dominates elections and political debate, etc) that could be used to support that.

It's the ones who cloak themselves with a religious label who don't wish to do so, that annoy me.

Fine, be annoyed by them, but don't try to pretend that they are the majority nor the norm. I've asked you before in other threads, why base your argument on the worst case scenario? I'm against people who cloak themselves with religious labels too, you know.

Perhaps you can put a word in to the World Council of Churches to help out in that area--when they're done doing their latest fact finding mission on the excellent state of health care in Cuba, or whatever

Interesting - I had no idea the WCC was working in Cuba, although I'm not sure what relevance it has to this conversation. When I worked under the auspices of the WCC I was in Sudan where, yes, Christians (including Catholics, Orthodox, etc), did in fact pray in Arabic. I worked alongside Sudanese, Palestinian, Jordanian and Egyptian Catholic priests, amongst others, who also tended to pray in Arabic. I might add that the WCC family played a significant role in the 1972 and 2005 peace agreements in Sudan, as well in humanitarian aid, and is still very active in Darfur.

On Western/Christian civilisation, I doubt if anyone would disagree that Christianity was a major influence in current western civilisation (as were Romans, Greeks, Celts, Vikings, Angles, Saxons and other non-Christian cultures). But to identify current western civilisation with Christianity is surely a little more controversial. Many religious people would argue that current western civilisation is basically secular, not Christian. One of the misapprehensions of some non-Christian communities is precisely that they assume western nations to be "Christian" and thus attribute all the ills of the world to Christianity rather than to secular ideologies. In another thread, you have just quoted Pope Benedict as he criticises some of the basic foundations of modern western civilisation - greed, money, ambition, success.

However, I don't disagree with you that Christianity is now growing in many parts of the world while it gradually diminishes in some of its older haunts. It's "fresher", you say, and I agree. But, echoing Arctic-Stranger in #235, I'm not sure whether labels such as "conservative" and "traditionalist" really fit the bill in these young churches.

So if you're trying to make some anti-racist point, or whatever here, please save it. Take it up at your next board meeting.

I quite honestly have absolutely no idea what you're talking about with this comment, nor what relevance it has to any of the conversation so far.

#232 "As for entropy or the concept that has been described in many articles as the winding down of the universe including the cooling of the sun. We do live in a closed system. It is called the universe. We have the unfortunate humanistic view of a geocentric universe and thinking only of earth when speaking of the laws of thermodynamics."

Yes, the entropy of the universe is increasing. And it is exactly for this reason that as low entropy energy is coming from the sun and flows through a highly dissipative system as the Earth's ecosystem, local order emerges. This happens in all kinds of systems: in complex reactions in a beaker to the gigantic weather systems on the planet. Just because the overall entropy is increasing, does not mean at all that it cannot decrease locally. It does that all the time. I recommend to pick up a real thermodynamics book and learn about free energy, non-equilibrium thermodynamics and dissipative systems. But these things tend to be highly mathematical. So for starters I recommend Philip Ball "The Self-Made Tapestry". It's a beautiful book that gives a laymen introduction to spontaneous formation of patterns in Nature.

#232"If the earth began as a molten ball of rock and water then condensed upon the rock as it cooled can anyone tell me where the water came from and where the first life forms came from?"

There is actually a fair amount of water in the universe. Rocks store water for example (many chemical formulas for rocks are something like xxxx x 6 H2O for example). In addition, a fair amount of water came from comets hitting the early Earth, when things were quite wild in the solar system. Water is a fairly heavy molecule (when compared to helium or hydrogen etc), so its escape velocity is quite high. So, most the water that hit the Earth or was already here, locked up in its rocks, stayed here and could not escape back to space.

As for the origin of life, yes, we don't know how that happens, but people are working on it. Many centuries ago people thought the planets are pushed by angels, but now we know better. It took a few thousand years to figure it out. Life is a particularly hard problem and it may take another 100 years to figure out the origin of it. But to insert God into every gap of our knowledge, is IMHO bad theology. It creates an ever-shrinking God who merely serves as a prop for our ignorance. I prefer to see God as responsible for the beautiful thruths that science reveals, rather than as a God of the Gap.

re #233:

In what regard does any of this change God's liberal/progressive agenda for His creation?

17 -20 - read what the Law and the Prophets say
21 - 22 - Control you temper
23 - 27 - Be square in your dealings with others. Strive not to be a cause of hard feelings in others
28 - 32 - Don't abuse others for your own pruposes. Don't marry a spouse that is not the same to you as your right hand. Divorce is a form of spousal abuse.
33 - 37 - Since you always speak the truth (Law) it is not necesssary, nor do you have the right to swear to the veracity of your words. Don't try to wriggle out of stuff. Don't lie. Be plain spoken. Sophistry is sin.
38 - 44 - Study the lives of the Mahatma and Martin Luther King, Jr. for the results of this philosophy. I only wish the Palestinians would take it up.
45 - 48 - Be righteous and honorable with everyone (especially the Mexicans). Anyone can act this way with their friends and relatives. the trick is to do it with people who you don't know, trust, or like.

These are all quite liberal/progressive attitudes, mostly because they are counterintuitive.

Now, if you are going to tell me that lying, dishonesty, adultery, swearing oaths, pornography, abusing people, speaking out of both sides of your mouth, selective righteousness and respect for ALL people are liberal/progressive positions, just study BushCo for a short while.

> 240 "to insert God into every gap of our knowledge . . . creates an ever-shrinking God who merely serves as a prop for our igorance. I prefer to see God as responsible for the beautiful thruths that science reveals, rather than as a God of the Gap."

Well said, yapete; a very nice articulation of the theology/science interchange. May I borrow it (with proper attribution)?

Sure!

#242, 243 - yapete, I second walk2work - a beautiful articulation of the mystery...

#244 Except that my spelling was bad - replace 'igorance' by 'ignorance'. Need to type slower...

"a beautiful articulation of the mystery..." - That is what I like about science (and philosophy, religion), is that we can meet mystery there.

The only thing I object to are 'false mysteries', i.e. creating mysteries where there are none, as creationists etc do. There really are a few things we do know, but then there is also a vast ocean of things we don't know. So, to meet 'true mystery' we should do the effort to understand what we know first and then meet the real boundaries of our knowledge. Otherwise we'll be discussing things over and over that have already been solved a century ago. That seems counter-productive.

It is at the real boundaries of our knowledge (known things in our back and the vast ocean of mystery ahead of us) where we can make real but slow progress to understanding it all.

Now, before you think that I came up with all this poetic waxing about the ocean of mystery, I have to disclose that I completely stole it (from Newton and some popular science book I read, can't remember which one...). But it makes sense!

With regard to my msg at #241, I would like to clarify a couple of things. I was in a hurry to get to Bible Study on time (Gospel of John) while writing it.

"These are all quite liberal/progressive attitudes, mostly because they are counterintuitive."

While several of the items listed are counterintuitive, that certainly does not qualify them as being liberal/progressive. What does is that they all, without exception, privilege integrity, both of the individual and the society above expediency. The simplest definition of sin is that which dishonors your fellow man, dishonors God.

"Now, if you are going to tell me that lying, dishonesty, adultery, swearing oaths, pornography, abusing people, speaking out of both sides of your mouth, selective righteousness and respect for ALL people are liberal/progressive positions, just study BushCo for a short while."

I despise the George W. Bush (BushCo) administration because they have violated in every conceivable manner I can imagine the honor and dignity of the people who live in my country. They have, in my name, dishonored my country not only here at home but around the world and have drained the United States of any moral authority it may have once possessed. As you read the passage quoted, in #233, there is not a single injunction they have not violated. Not one. I want to live in a country motivated by Christian principles, not a Pharisaical cesspool.

#232 The Bible is not written to teach us all things that pertain to science

I would say rather that the Bible is not written to teach us any things that pertain to science. Yapete has said everything else in #240.

The other part of "God is a liberal", comes from inserting "government should force you to," into the relevant statements, as in "government should force you to let him have thy cloke also,"

But surely it is the legislation of morality that makes Western civilization Christian: moral precepts of Christian origin are written into the laws, rather than making minimal laws and hoping that everyone's natural virtue will keep everything rolling along. If "government should force you to let him have thy cloke" is a liberal position, then what of "government should force you not to commit murder (of unborn fetuses)"?

Jesus was of course the original community organizer

No he wasn't, which is why trying to apply one's faith in a social context is much harder for Christians than for Muslims.

Christian Civilization is now much greater than Western civilization

Christian Civilization was Eastern before it was Western, from Armenia and Syria to the borders of China. Some might claim that the culture of European Christendom represents the victory of Greek philosophy and Roman jurisprudence over the Roman and Byzantine churches.

I say in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth! What say you?

I say that if heaven and earth had a creator, then it was God, but as to how he did it, that's a question for science to answer.

I did not respond to this earlier. Let me correct that omission now.

In # 232 WesleyRoyII asks me (re#215), "So you are saying that the internal moral code of every man is equally correct."

I did not say that at all. God said, I will write my words on their hearts. I am saying that everyone's internal moral codes are NOT correct. When someone tells me the ONLY reason they do not engage in immorality is because God'll get 'em for it. I KNOW not everyone has a correct moral code. Some people, non-Christians included, do things because they instinctively know it is the RIGHT thing. They don't need someone to tell them what is right and wrong. God has written His words on their hearts.

Absolutely, I believe God created the Heavens and the Earth. He started with the Big Bang, the initial product of the Big Bang, as science currently understands it was an incredible explosion of photons. Now, in what way does that differ from "God said, 'Let there be light, and there was light'"?

The first measurement of "Day" and "Night" was between the light and the darkness. How long did that last? However long it lasted it was not measured the way we measure time now, but it was the "first day", however long it lasted. The tools we use to measure night and day (Sol and a spinning Terra) were not even in place at that time. I believe science has it at some billionths or trillionths of a second. Whatever it was it could not possibly have been 24 hours.

Don't try to force God's creative abilities into the box of human understanding. I know that science is attempting to stretch human understanding to incorporate an appreciation of God's abilities, but don't think you honor God by forcing Him to be magical and a literal six day creation is magical thinking. God, as any student of the Bible knows, abhors magic.

Nothing could be farther from the truth. I am not attempting to force God into the box of human understanding. I think that it is assumed that a literal 6 day creation is magical because of the underestimation of the power of God. An omnipotent God is not limited by what man thinks can be accomplished in a 24 hour period.

For all those posting about the wonderful scientific knowledge that we now possess, if I remember The Scientific Process properly one has to come up with a hypothesis i.e. evolution through observation. Has anyone every seen one lifeform turn into a higher level lifeform? Experiments must then be conducted to reproduce the conclusion that has been setforth in the hypothesis. Has anyone every through experimentation reproduced plant to animal, fish to reptile, or reptile to mammal mutations? If the experiment fails then the hypothesis must be revised.

I said all of that to make the simple point that those of you who are believing in the evolution hypothesis are doing the same thing that those of us who believe in the literal 6 day creation record are doing. We are all placing our faith in the writings of someone attesting to facts that they did not see and that they cannot reproduce. You choose to place your faith in the writtings of Darwin and other scientists while I choose to place my faith in the writings of Moses under the leadership of the Holy Spirit. We are both living by faith only with different objects of that faith.

As I stated in the beginning of this post, Christianity is rational and should be approached from a rational point of view. The Bible is not claim to tell us all there is to know about science but it is the Book that claims to reveal God and His will for all mankind. I find it irrational to think that a Book that declares all men to be helpless sinners on their way to burn in a lake of fire for all of eternity to be the product of the fruitful imaginations of men. Only in Christianity, to my knowledge, does God die for the redemption of His creation that has rebelled against Him. I find it irrational to think that men composed this concept when in every other religion, to my knowledge, man is redeemed through his own actions and sacrifice.

Again I said at the beginning that the only real problem that science had with the Bible was creation. The problem is that if man is the special creative work of God and not the result of random conditions and evolutionary chance then a problem arises. Man like every other creation is now accountable to his Creator to fulfill the purposes for which the Creator has created him or run the chance of being deemed unprofitable and disposed of at the discretion of the Creator. Much like a painting that an artist is not satisfied with can be cast into a fire because it does not meet the requirements of the artist so a creation that does not meet the requirements of the Creator could be cast into a fire as well. No wonder men would rather be the result of random evolutionary chance, alien seeding, etc. Anything is better than being the special creative work of a Creator that you have failed to please because you were so busy pleasing yourself. The scientists problem with the Bible is not accuracy but PERSONAL ACCOUNTABILITY if it is accurate.

Does evolution preclude man from being a special creation? In what way?

As far as limiting God's creative abilities how does evolution not show a mightier, more powerful, more creative, more complex God than speaking things into existence? No, a God who speaks things into existence seems to me a rather low kind of God without much imagination. BTW, why DID God create Man?

Obviously to argue about HOW He did it! ;-P

When historical theories are concerned, the scientific method does not rely on experimentation. It does rely largely on falsification. But a major theory such as the theory of evolution is so well supported, by accumulated evidence in numerous fields, that even the falsification of particular aspects of it (such as Darwin's blending pangene theory of inheritance) does not falsify the whole, but merely forces an adjustment of the theoretical model. (The same is true, for example, of Newton's theory of mechanics, which remains valid even though it is partly falsified by the work of Einstein).

The Genesis account of creation was not taken literally by previous generations of Christians. If it were literally true, the conclusion from the evidence of the natural world would be that God is a cheat, since he has made the world in such a way that it looks as though the theory of evolution is true.

I would punt on the question of whether believing in God is rational. I have respect for the atheistic position of people like Richard Dawkins, the agnostic position, the Spinozist position, and even the Deist position, but the one position I have very serious trouble with is the idea of a God who is supposed to have shown favoritism to and actively protected and sustained a particular group of people, for a certain period of history, and then let the Holocaust happen to them. My conscience finds it impossible to honor and obey such a God, and finds it far easier to believe that this particular God was really just the creation of ancient Jewish credulity and backwardness, just like so many other ancient gods were for other ancient peoples.

It is a difficult one. A liberal Christian might be able to steer a line between the uninterested or impersonal God of the Deists and the interventionist but morally suspect God of the supernaturalists by saying that God respects the free will of his creatures (even the ones who joined the Nazi party) and suffers along with them as the results play themselves out. Of course that's not how the Old Testament writers interpreted things, but that was then and this is now.

#253. In addition to the Holocaust there were several other "captivities," most notably the Egyptian enslavement of ca. 400 years, the Babylonian of ca. 70 years, and the ca. 40 years of the Midianites and Philistines in the book of Judges.

It's kinda hard to explain all these if you pose a God who acts according to a model created by modern people.

Surely we want a God who indulges us and who makes no demands of us. We clearly want a God that acts according to our ethics and not his/her own. Doesn't that make God subservient to us?

#255. saxhorn, the Holocaust was no mere "captivity." It was a genocide on a scale never before seen in human history, on a scale the boggles the mind.

Respectfully, to say that the Holocaust is God being "demanding" of us rather than "indulging" us is obscene. Could you really in good conscience imagine yourself saying such a thing to the Jews who were being pushed into the ovens and gas chambers of Auschwitz?

Apologies for not writing more clearly. I did not intend to say that the Holocaust was a mere captivity. I meant to indicate that the Jewish people had suffered several other times as well. I am very sensitive to the horrors and the extent of the genocide, and the oppression of God's covenant people.

Secondly, I was no longer referring to the Holocaust in my last paragraph, but instead reacting to liberals who criticize God because He doesn't conform to their ethics.

I don't think that anyone can say that he/she completely understands the ways of the God of the Bible. That is a part of His transcendence. Paul, who testifies that he was caught up into the third heaven and who claimed to have met the risen Christ, indicates in 1 Cor. 13:12 "For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then ((when the perfect (completion) has come)) face to face. Now I know in part, but then I shall know just as I also am known."

But liberals criticize God as if they have complete knowledge of Him and his ways. They show no reverence for their maker. And that is the sense of my previous last paragraph.

But liberals criticize God as if they have complete knowledge of Him and his ways.

This may be a true flaw of liberals. But in a post in Pro and Con (Religion), I argue that Conservative Christians hold a theology of certainty that they do, or at least can know, everything important about God and faith. Whereas, Liberal Christians hold a theology of doubt, recognizing instead the vast enormity of what we do not know and cannot know about God.

I would go a step further here and say that Conservative Christians criticize Liberal Christians as not being "truly Christian" because we doubt. I'm sure that Conservative Christians are irritated by criticism from Liberal Christians, too; though not being Conservative I cannot claim I know what criticism is felt as irritating. Conservative Christians often seem pretty arrogant to me; but then again, I'm a faithful doubter.

I also wonder if the so-call criticizing of God isn't misplaced aggression. Is it God who is unjust by human standards? Or is it humans who are unjust by God's standards, but since the winners write the history, we hear for example that the absolute genocide of Jericho was God's requirement? Is it God who allowed the Holocaust to happen, or was it we humans who instigated/allowed it (and now continue to look the other way or fail to act in Rwanda, Darfur, etc.)?

Unless we want God to baby-sit us morally forever, at some point we have to take responsibility for our corporate actions. If we pass off that responsibility onto God, then it's a holy thing when an unbeliever sees through our smoke-and-mirrors and calls us on it (humans, not Christians only).

Yes, I think both sides irritate each other incredibly. There have been dialogues aimed at ecumenicism for years. These seem to be most successful among liberals, but among conservatives there is also a great agreement about many issues.

Because conservatives study the Bible and base their theology on the Bible rather than on secular philosophies, they feel that they have a good handle on the God of the Bible, therefore, certainty (although flawed).

By and large, evangelicals and fundamentalists uphold the 5 fundamentals of belief (hence the name) as: 1. inerrancy of the Bible, 2. virgin birth and deity of Christ, 3. substitutionary atonement of Christ, 4. bodily resurrection of Christ, and 5. immanent return of Christ. Other conservatives generally agree on items 2-4, and have various views of inspiration of the Bible and the return of Jesus.

Believing these things to be the essentials of traditional Christian doctrine that date back to the apostles, conservatives have great difficulty accepting that liberals can be truly Christian since they reject many or all of the fundamentals. You may be a follower of Jesus, but is it the same Jesus?

Hence, it seems that liberals value good moral behavior and might quote Jesus' words as well as other inspirational verses, but do they worship Him as God and Savior?

I state this not in an accusatory fashion, but as a point for discussion. Perhaps you can demonstrate how liberals worship that will make sense to me.

saxhorn, thank you for the clarification

You write of the "imminent return of Christ" being a fundamental conservative Christian belief. But one thing many secular Bible scholars agree on is that Jesus preached that the Apocalypse (including the coming of the Son of Man on the clouds) was going to happen in the lifetime his contemporaries.

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_Jesus#Eschatology

In other words, Jesus preached something that turned out to be wrong. Even C.S. Lewis conceded this point.

But if Jesus said something that was wrong, how can the Bible be inerrant?

#259 - Because conservatives study the Bible and base their theology on the Bible rather than on secular philosophies

I don't particularly like the terms liberal and conservative in a religious context because I think the reality is usually more nuanced. But leaving that aside, I think the issue is not about basing theology on secular philosophies (although that is certainly how some have portrayed it) but rather on different ways of interpreting the bible. Both sides (again, if that is the right term, which it probably isn't) believe they are basing their theology on the bible (or in some denominations on bible and tradition, which is definitely not the same as secular philosophy) but some interpret it literally while others use a variety of tools to interpret it.

Hi John,

I agree that the spectrum is more nuanced than liberal-conservative, and find great variety among conservative doctrines.

The conservative doctrine is based upon the work of the reformers Luther, Zwingli, Melanchthon, Calvin and Beza. They sought to base all their teaching directly on the words of the Bible, and accepted the Bible as the Word of God.

The liberal doctrine was based upon higher-criticism techniques of the mid 1800s. Whether or not the assumption was that the Bible was the word of God or not I do not know. However, by the early 20th century it was clear that liberals were teaching that the miracles did not literally take place, that jesus was not born of a virgin, that he did not literally rise from the dead.

They got this doctrine from higher-criticism not from the Bible. There is some evidence that the biblical scholars at Tubingen, the major liberal school of theology in Germany were skeptics, thus most of their student s became skeptics. This is why conservative theologians developed the five fundamental beliefs. So, I say, their theology is based upon secular theology as opposed to the bible's own teaching.

I apologise if I am blundering in unwelcomely, but I thought it was generally agreed that "the virgin birth" is only a pregnant (if I may say so) mistranslation? So where does that leave "the conservative doctrine", in that case at least?

I draw no conclusions from this about the other planks in it.

#260 Hi Paperweight,

As much as I admire C.S. Lewis I don't agree with everything he taught. lewis was first and foremost a teacher of English Literature who converted from atheism to Christianity. His faith seems to be that of the conservative, although he communed within the Anglican Church.

Of course, the passage is open to interpretation, and centers on the meaning of the word generation. Is it to be understood as a period of 30-40 years or the time until the second coming? Lewis apparently interpreted it as the former.

Jesus also taught that the Kingdom of God is among (within) you, already present. How does that affect interpretation of the above passage?

#264 hi saxhorn

That Jesus taught that Kingdom of God is among you is compatible with the notion that he believed that the full-on arrival of Kingdom of God was at hand.

The Kingdom of God can have both an ethical and a factual meaning:

(1) The ethical and metaphorical meaning: Behaving toward others now according to the way that everyone will be treated in the Kingdom of God when it arrives,

(2) The literal meaning: The end of human history and the beginning of direct rule over the earth by the Son of Man himself sitting on a literal throne, which was supposed to be inaugurated by the sun and moon going dark, the stars falling from heaven, the Son of Man coming in clouds, and angels being sent out to gather the elect from the ends of the earth. (Mark 8:24-28)

Just because Jesus sometimes meant (1) doesn't mean he didn't also preach the literally imminent arrival of (2). In fact, Jesus speaks in many places as if the Kingdom of God has not yet arrived but could arrive at any minute, which shows he also spoke of the Kingdom of God according to meaning (2).

It's clear that when Jesus says in Mark 13:24-27 that "this generation shall not pass, until all these things are fulfilled," Jesus means a normal human lifespan. Proof of this lies in Mark 8:38-9:1, where he says that the Son of Man will come "in the glory of the Father with the holy angels" during "this adulterous generation." Jesus immediately expands here on the word "generation" in an unmistakably literal fashion, saying that "there are some standing here who will not taste death until they see that the Kingdom of God has come in power." Unless you believe in 2000 year old Jews walking the earth today, Jesus made an incorrect prophecy.

It's also impossible to miss all the "the day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night" warnings throughout the Synoptic Gospels. You might argue that Jesus just wanted to keep everyone in a state of nerve-wracked anticipation for 2000-plus years, but I think he is being more down to earth here and simply telling people that they should be ready for it because it was about to happen. He tells his listeners to be alert and prepared for "all these things that are *about* to take place and to stand in the presence of the Son of Man" (Luke 21:35-36).

I guess you could try to parse what "generation" and "about to take place" means in some Clinton-esque or esoteric fashion, but I think I am opting for the most obvious reading of words in their context.

Another piece of evidence that Jesus did preach the literally imminent Apocalypse or End of Days is that Paul seems to have thought that this was just what Jesus preached. In 1 Corinthians 7, Paul urges unmarried Christians to try to stay unmarried, in light of the fact that "the appointed time has grown short" and "the passing away" of "the present form of this world" (1 Corinthians 7:26, 29, 31). For staying unmarried would, Paul says, allow Christians to better devote themselves entirely to God at this momentous crisis-point in history. Doubtless, many people heeded these words of Paul and never got married, waiting in vain for the Son of Man to arrive.

How do you interpret these verses, saxhorn?

Respectfully, paperweight

Hey , Paperweight.

1. The passage Mark 13:24-27 does not contain the phrase "this generation shall not pass, until all these things are fulfilled." But refers to physical signs that occur following the tribulation which by conservative interpretation have yet to occur.

2. In Mark 13:10 Jesus says "And the gospel must first be preached to all the nations." That has not occurred yet.

3. In Mark 13:32 Jesus says, "But of that day and our no one knows, neither the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father."

4. "taste death." What does that mean? Jesus often refers to physical death as sleep. Does he here mean eternal damnation?

I'll grant that Paul thought the return of Jesus would occur sooner than later.

My thoughts.

#263 desultory. Among conservatives the belief in a virgin birth is explicit.

You are perhaps referring to the prophecy of Is. 7:14 and the Hebrew word Almah which although technically means a maid, is only used twice in the Hebrew Scriptures. Once here and the other in Gen 24.48 where Abraham sends his servant to find a wife for Isaac. The situation in both cases seems to indicate virgin, and certainly not pregnant.

The Septuagint, which predates the Masoretic text, and is the text that existed in Jesus' day, uses the same Greek term as the new Testament in referring to Mary, and it is the only Greek word used in the NT. It always means virgin.

So, if you don't accept the possibility of a virgin birth (meaning God isn't powerful enough to accomplish that, or there are no miracles) then you translate Almah as maid or young woman, but taken in context the meaning is clearly virgin.

#266 Hi saxhorn

1. Sorry, I'm not able to make out the meaning of your point #1.

In Mark 13:29-30, Jesus says "when you see these things taking place, you know that he (or it) is near, at the very gates. Truly I tell you, this generation shall not pass away until *all these things* have taken place."

In verse 29, Jesus is clearly telling his disciples that when all the stuff he describes from verse 6 to 27 happens, the End of Days is near. In verse 30, he is saying that all these things that are signs that the End of Days are right around the corner -- which includes the tribulation -- will occur before this generation passes.

I thought you were saying that the above interpretation is correct, but that "generation" means something much, much longer than a literal human generation. But now, with comment #266, I'm uncertain what you're saying about the meaning of verses 29-30.

2. Does the verse, "And the good news must first be proclaimed to all the nations" (Mark 13:10), imply that the return of the Son of Man and the Apocalypse could not happen until literally every nation on earth is preached the Gospel?

Apparently, Paul did not think so. For he wrote that "all the world" had been told of the gospel by the time of the letter to the Colossians: "(The gospel) has come to you, as it has also in all the world, and is bringing forth fruit .... if indeed you continue in the faith, grounded and steadfast, and are not moved away from the hope of the gospel which you heard, which has been proclaimed to every creature under heaven, of which I, Paul, became a minister" (Col. 1:6, 23).

A more literal reading of Mark 13:10 would also seem to contradict Matthew 10:23, where Jesus says, "for truly I tell you, you will not have gone through all the towns of Israel before the Son of Man comes."

3. I acknowledge that Jesus professes ignorance of the exact day and hour of the coming of the Son of Man in Mark 13:32. But a profession of ignorance of the exact timing doesn't preclude a profession of certainty as to the outer time frame. To illustrate: I have no idea when I'll die, but I can also say that I am pretty certain that I'll die within 100 years from now. I argue and C.S. Lewis concedes that Jesus professed ignorance as to the exact timing, but at the same time spoke with certainty as to the time frame of the coming of the Son of Man.

4. Sorry, I'm not sure what you're saying Jesus meant by the words "taste death".

5. Thank you for granting the point about Paul.

#268 Paperweight,

My point in #1 of 266 was that the phrase that you quoted was not located at that citation. And, I was meaning that the interpretation of generation to include a time period that spanned from the birth of Jesus to the return of Jesus.

I think you should look at the entire apocalyptic passage beginning in Mark 13:5, and ending in vs. 37. Ask yourself how many of these things have taken place? Look especially in vs. 19 and 20.

then also look at vs. 26. Has Jesus returned?

What most conservatives consider the beginning of the tribulation is the return of Jesus. So most of this passage must still refer to the future.

2. Yes, that is my understanding, and those among conservative christians. This is the reason for the push of missions. You raise a good point about Colossians. I have never heard those verses compared to Mark 13: There are two different Greek words used here. In Mark the word is ethnos - meaning tribe, and in Colossians it's kosmos. Certainly these require some interpretation. I take Mark to be specific, and that every people group on earth must have the opportunity to accept or reject Jesus as Savior before Jesus will return. Paul, can be speaking more metaphorically if we're using a non-technical term like Cosmos that also includes the heavens. Sort of, the Glory of the Lord is proclaimed not only on earth but throughout the heavens as well. That's my take.

3. Yes, but your argument does not have to apply here, especially since we're talking about eternity. Jesus, in fact, knows the signs, but not the time.

4. tasting death. I was offering another interpretation of that phrase by alluding to the way that Jesus used the term sleep for death. Therefore, when He says death what does He mean. Is this a metaphor for eternal judgment?

I'm enjoying our exchange. Thanks

#269 saxhorn. I am enjoying the exchange too.

Your logic and mine proceed in opposite directions. You seem to be saying that since most of the events in Mark 13:5-27 have not happened, they must be in the future. For example, the Son of Man has not yet returned on the clouds with great power and glory. So you conclude that this must still be off in the future.

I take the opposite approach. I read Mark 13:5-27 *along with* the timeframe Jesus gives for these events in Mark 13:29-30. And the conclusion is then very simple. Jesus predicted that these events would happen very soon, in the lifetime of his contemporaries. And he was wrong, since his prediction did not pan out.

Your logic proceeds from the assumption that nothing Jesus said can be wrong or mistaken. So if you have to interpret words like "generation" and phrases like "taste death" to mean something other than what they mean in common parlance, then you will do so, if that is what it takes to preserve the inerrancy of Jesus's words.

My logic does not start from that assumption and is indeed open to the possibility that Jesus could have said something incorrect.

I don't mean to advance any argument at this point. I just want to take a step back and clarify our positions. Do you agree that I've stated them correctly?

Yes, I think that you state the positions correctly.

So, I assume that Jesus is fully God and fully human, and you assume that he was merely human.

yes?

Yes, saxhorn. That's almost correct. I don't assume that Jesus was only human; I've concluded it after reading several scholarly books on Jesus and the Bible and considering what they say about things such as Jesus's eschatological discourse. Most of my life I was Christian and I believed that Jesus was God. But after considering the arguments of modern Bible scholars, I concluded that Jesus was really a human being, a Jewish preacher, who was later deified by the oral traditions about him and by the people who wrote the Gospels.

A footnote to our discussion of Jesus's eschatological discourse: I learned a few years ago about Preterism

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preterism

Preterism tries to preserve the inerrancy of Jesus's predictions about the end times by arguing that all the things Jesus predicted in the passage we are focusing on happened in the 1st century AD.

This is another inerrantist alternative to the Fundamentalist tack of stretching the meaning of "generation" and turning the phrase "shall not taste death before ..." into something non-literal and metaphorical.

Aside from being compelling, elegant, and simple, I think the straightforward, secular view that Jesus's prophecies proved to be wrong and that we don't have to continue being vigilant for signs of the End is more humane than the inerrantist views. Too many people over the last 2000 years thought they were seeing the signs of the coming End that Jesus described. It's a long, tragicomic tale of wasted human mental labor and vain expectations, for which the doctrine of Biblical inerrancy must take some responsibility.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/apocalypse/readings/white.html

#249 "For all those posting about the wonderful scientific knowledge that we now possess, if I remember The Scientific Process properly one has to come up with a hypothesis i.e. evolution through observation. "

You are mixing up 'hypothesis' with 'observation'. The usual order is that you make an observation, then come up with a hypothesis, then make predictions based on your hypothesis and see if further observations match your predictions. If they do, your hypothesis has been tentatively validated. If you are building up a large body of explanatory statements that all work together in a coherent way and that match a multitude of observations, then you have yourself a theory, such as the theory of evolution.

"Has anyone every seen one lifeform turn into a higher level lifeform?

Two fallacies in this one:
(1) 'higher lifeform' - What does that mean. Is a cangaroo higher than a dog? Is a E Coli higher than an elephant? All of these are the result of billions of years of evolution and are very good at what they do. Evolution is properly seen as an increase in diversity of life forms that all find different specialized ways of making a living. It is not some kind of progression towards some 'higher lifeforms". The only thing you can say is that as diversity increases, more complex life-forms may arise, but that does not mean that any 'lower' (i.e. less complex) lifeform 'wants' to be a higher lifeform. There is no driving force for that at all in evolution. What you describe is teleology, which has no place in evolution.
(2) Yes, we have seen different types of life evolve into other types of life forms to increase reproductive success. In more complex life forms with long life cycles, this takes a long time, so we see it in the fossil record and in the molecular record recorded in our DNA. For life forms that have short reproduction cycles, these things are seen in the laboratory (for example for bacteria, fruit flies, virus, even RNA strands).

"Experiments must then be conducted to reproduce the conclusion that has been setforth in the hypothesis. Has anyone every through experimentation reproduced plant to animal, fish to reptile, or reptile to mammal mutations? If the experiment fails then the hypothesis must be revised. "

Again, you misunderstand the nature of how science works. This is a common red herring of creationist writers. Science does not solely rely on laboratory experiments, but also on other types of observations, some of them historical. So-called historical sciences include parts of evolution, astronomy, archaeology etc.

Let me give you an example: If you wanted science to support the stories of the Bible, you would want historical and archaeological evidence that supports what's written in the Bible. I don't hear any creationists demanding that the conditions for the Bible be re-created in the Lab, and the tribes of Israel to walk through the Sinai desert all over again. What you do instead is to determine what kind of historical and archaeological evidence would corroborate our hypothesis (that the tribes of Israel really walked through the Sinai), and then see if such historical evidence is indeed present.

The same is true for the historical parts of evolution: We find a half-dinosaur, half-bird (archaeopteryx) and we make a prediction (hypothesis) that future finds may show a connection between dinosaurs and birds. If we find more such examples with intermediate steps, then this hypothesis is validated (which we did in this case, with spectacular examples coming out of China these days). Considering that the evolution of birds took millions of years, it is ridiculous to demand that it be recreated in the laboratory (even more ridiculous than re-creating the tribes of Israel).

The other problem with your statements is that you misunderstand how evolution works. Plants don't turn into animals, but rather both have a common ancestor. You also don't demand your grandfather to turn into your cousin, just to prove that both of you are related to your grandfather. Neither you nor your cousin are your grandfather, yet both of you are related through this common ancestor, who himself is a different entity from both of you.

I recommend "Evolution, the triumph of an idea" by LT author Carl Zimmer as a basic introduction to evolution.

"I said all of that to make the simple point that those of you who are believing in the evolution hypothesis are doing the same thing that those of us who believe in the literal 6 day creation record are doing. We are all placing our faith in the writings of someone attesting to facts that they did not see and that they cannot reproduce. You choose to place your faith in the writtings of Darwin and other scientists while I choose to place my faith in the writings of Moses under the leadership of the Holy Spirit. We are both living by faith only with different objects of that faith."

Again, you misunderstand how science works. Scientists don't worship at the altar of Darwin or 'believe' in Darwin or anything like that. It has nothing to do with 'faith'. Instead, there was this conundrum of where different species come from and what all these fossils meant that they found. Darwin through years of observations and experimentation found a generally useful, but incomplete explanation for these observations. Other people, for example Lamarck, found other explanations. Through further observations and experiments, people have found over 150 years, that Darwin was in many respects correct and that Lamarck was incorrect. But in the meantime, scientists added to the knowledge, improved the theory to match the huge number of observations and experiments conducted since that time, and this process continues to today.

Science is not conducted by 'revelation'. If it were, there would be no cars, cell phones, refrigerators or antibiotics. We would all still live in caves, waiting for lightning to ignite a fire for us.

Science works because it is based on observations, and the most economical explanations that encompass the maximum number of these observations. It is, in a sense, just an extension of common sense.

From your post #135:
"1. Who cares how it's spelled?"

But thanks for the correction.

Anything of substance to contribute?

#274 It is curious how a thread about rational belief turns into a thread about evolution.

I just wanted to ask yapete, how much of the evidence for evolution have you yourself physically examined and how much do you accept because you have read about it in a trustworthy scientific publication? I accept the truth of evolution, but would be more cautious about it's philosophical foundations. #247 had a good point about the use of authority in science which I think you missed, or rather failed to directly address.

Re: How to decide between Darwinism and the Genesis Creation account

In #249 WesleyRoyII said that those of you who are believing in the evolution hypothesis are doing the same thing that those of us who believe in the literal 6 day creation record are doing. We are all placing our faith in the writings of someone attesting to facts that they did not see and that they cannot reproduce. You choose to place your faith in the writtings of Darwin and other scientists while I choose to place my faith in the writings of Moses under the leadership of the Holy Spirit. We are both living by faith only with different objects of that faith.

But, to add to the many substantive things that yapete has said, let me propose that there is a rational way of deciding between these completing explanations.

I have this introductory book on the Philosophy of Science from Oxford University Press, by Samir Okasha. He says that the Darwinian theory of evolution works by a type of reasoning called "inference to the best explanation." Here's a short explanation of the concept from a webpage:

http://www.cse.ohio-state.edu/lair/Projects/Abduction/abduction.html

The pattern of this type of reasoning is simple:

D is a collection of data (facts, observations, givens),
H explains D (would, if true, explain D),
No other hypothesis explains D as well as H does.
--------------------------------------------------------
Therefore, H is probably correct.

How do we judge what is a better explanation? The simplest and most parsimonious explanation wins. If Explanation A can explain more of the facts and explains them just as well or better than Explanation B, Explanation A is better.

People say that the Darwinian theory of evolution explains many more facts more parsimoniously than the Genesis creation story. Both Darwinian evolution and the Genesis creation story can explain why human beings and chimpanzees exist. But only Darwinian evolution can explain, in addition, why humans share 96 percent of their DNA with chimpanzees. Both the Genesis creation story and Darwinian evolution can explain why animals are so well adapted to survive in their natural environments. But only Darwinian evolution can also explain why there are cave-dwelling salamanders with vestigial eyes that are blind.

On the evolutionary implications of blind salamanders: http://www.slate.com/id/2195683/

These are only two examples of where the Darwinian theory has the advantage of parsimony and explanatory breadth and depth. There are many more. It can explain a greater variety and range of things we see in nature than the Genesis creation story. Therefore, it has greater explanatory power and is currently the best explanation for the origin of species.

So instead of talking of which writings we will "choose to place our faith in," as WesleyRoyII does, I think it makes more sense to engage with facts and compare competing explanations.

Besides the general debate between Darwinism and Genesis, I think markmobley's point about the origin of human conscience and moral codes is a great opportunity for the secular side to present powerful competing explanations of the phenomena. I have books in my library on this subject, and am glad for this opportunity to reread them and put them to good use.

Respectfully,

paperweight

Respectfully, that argument noes not settle the issue. IBE is not without it's critics as a valid method of reasoning. Also, one could certainly argue that "God did it" is the more parsimonious explanation. No need for all that messy random genetics combined with a long natural selection stuff. Parsimony is in the eye of the beholder.

The "God did it" theory is less parsimonious because Darwinian evolution requires fewer assumptions. The Darwinian theory of evolution assumes nothing outside of the natural and material stuff on earth, and still works as an explanation for the species we see in nature, whereas the "God did it" explanation requires us to make the big assumption that God exists. "God did it" is formally equivalent to the theory that aliens from another galaxy came to earth and concocted all the species in some laboratory and then populated the earth with them (a.k.a. "aliens did it").

That's not to say that "God did it" or "an intelligent designer did it" can never be the more parsimonious explanation. But this would only be the case where there is no way to explain something naturalistically. This is what we call a miracle.

Also one shouldn't confuse "parsimonious" with simple. Newton's law of gravity is not a simpler theory than "God does it." But it is, I think all will acknowledge, a better explanation of the orbits of planetary bodies.

We have many posters in this group who have read "scholarly" books from the liberal view, and perhaps C. S. Lewis from the conservative view. I wonder what books by conservative theologians they have read? I also wonder if they are regular readers of the Bible? Not trying to be obstreperous, just curious.

#282 hi saxhorn

I admit I have read a lot more secular and liberal scholarship than conservative scholarship.

From the conservative/apologetic side, I've only read several C.S. Lewis books (Abolition of Man, Mere Christianity, Problem of Pain), some essays by R.C. Sproul, The Case for Christ by Lee Strobel, The Real Jesus by Luke Timothy Johnson, some Francis Schaeffer, some stuff by William Lane Craig, a few essays (but no books) by N.T. Wright, some of Slaves, Women & Homosexuals by William Webb. These are the ones I can remember off the top of my head. I've also attended two conferences hosted by the Discovery Institute (the headquarters of intelligent design) and participated in their seminars and read the readings they assigned presenting the case against Darwinism and attacking modern secularism. Most of these consisted of articles.

I would love to read more from the conservative side, and would appreciate recommendations.

I've read the Bible during the years I was a Christian as part of worship, Bible study, and just personal study. I can't say I've read it all carefully, and I read it a lot less now that I've lapsed and become non-Christian. But I do read certain parts of the Bible a lot more, since they are important to the arguments presented in books I'm reading that are about the Bible.

Finally, I have many, many friends and acquaintances who are conservative evangelical Christians. We've had many sometimes overheated, but in the end extremely edifying debates over the years on topics ranging from the problem of evil to the moral status of homosexuality.

#278 "I accept the truth of evolution, but would be more cautious about it's philosophical foundations. #247 had a good point about the use of authority in science which I think you missed, or rather failed to directly address."

Are you sure about the number (247) ? - I didn't find there what you are referring to. In terms of the philosophical foundations, again, can you be more specific? Sorry, just want to make sure I'm answering the right question.

I think you are aiming at epistemology, i.e. how do we know what we know? Great question, and considering that 2000 years of philosophy haven't completely answered it, I don't think I can either. I guess I accept a pragmatic/empirical solution to the epistemological conundrum: i.e. if it fits the available evidence it is probably true. Evidence is what is obtained by the (extended) senses and has been confirmed by multiple independent observations.

I have not done any evolution research myself, so, yes, I have to take what is published in peer-reviewed journals and repeated and vested by hundreds or thousands of scientist ultimately on trust. But if we couldn't take something like that on trust (which is corroborated and tested over and over), we could hardly function in life. Do you have to go to Wall Street and be a trader to trust the Dow Jones etc etc. ?

I think we should be skeptics about things (scientists *must* be skeptics), but after a thorough examination of the available, published evidence and putting into the context of everything else we know in science, at some point we have to say, "you know what this is probably correct".

If you do this honestly, I cannot see how creationism can come even close (within many orders of magnitude) of evolution in terms of any testable and observational evidence.

#283 Hi paperweight,

I must confess that in my 30+ years of following Christ that I have not read any systematic theology. I tend to specialize on book studies and topical studies, thus arriving at some personal recommendations for you is a little hard.

You mentioned reading Francis Shaeffer, and having read How Then Shall We Live I would certainly recommend that and any other writings of his. I also think that Martin Luther's The Bondage of the Will is exceptional. In this volume he takes on the great humanist Erasmus, and defends a conservative view over a more liberal view of scripture and doctrine. Finally, Systematic Theology by Wayne Grudem is very well respected among conservatives.

I'm going recommend an author that is sometimes challenging to read. So far as I know, he has written no systematic theology, but each of his books are spiritual to the core. the author is Watchman Nee, a Chinese Christian of the mid twentieth century. His largest single volume is The Spiritual Man which looks more at the mind, soul, and spirit of a Christian and how they should function. another good book of his is The Normal Christian Life.

I guess the reason for my question is that I find many people read the books that reinforce their position, but often only hear their side's objections to the other side. As we well know, objection arguments are often misstatements of positions, contain straw men, and otherwise misrepresent the actual beliefs of the other side. I'm glad that you have a background for your position.

Back to the evolution sub-thread....

#281 paperweight.

Just to be clear, I don't need convincing of the truth of evolution. But I do find most arguments for evolution less than convincing. For example, I don't think the 'parsimony' will convince a committed creationist. So, for now, I'll pretend to be a creationist and answer your arguments.

Firstly, to accept the argument, you have to convince me that Occam's Razor is a fundamental truth (and not just a convenient Rule of Thumb). But assume that I do accept the Razor. The parsimony argument then runs something like...

Score by fewest entities assumed. Evolution 1 (the Universe) - Creationism 2 (the Universe + God). Evolution Wins! Except for Evolution to win, you have to assume Occam's Razor too. So the score is really 2-2. A Draw!. Hang on a minute, Creationism doesn't have to assume the Universe (God came first and created it) so the score is 2-1. Creationism Wins!

And it isn't sufficient to just assume 'the Universe' for evolution to occur. And we are really finding explanations for 'Why Humans Exists'. There are endless 'just so' assumptions beyond 'the Universe' for the existence of Man. The Big Band must happen, the laws of physics must be just so, the conditions for the creation of stars must be just so, the conditions for the creation of the Earth must be just so, the conditions for Life to Start must be just so (how did it start by the way?), then we need a whole set of assumptions about the forms of our many ancestor species. It's not really fair to ignore all those extra assumptions when invoking parsimony. The creationist just needs one assumption, God.

#284 yapete

I meant 249 WesleyRoyII. For philosophical foundations, I think you summed up my position nicely "at some point we have to say, "you know what this is probably correct"" but we can't rigorously defend that position. But you also admit that you resort to Authority in deciding the question. You trust the Authority of the scientific community, whereas WesleyRoyII trusts the Authority of the religious community. As a scientist, that is certainly reasonable for you but why should WesleyRoyII accept your sources of Authority above his? What, in absolute epistemological terms, makes your Authority trump his? Saying as a scientist "you know what this is probably correct" is maybe true, but is won't convince a committed Christian.

#286 rrp

OK let me take a break for the moment. I'll try to answer your challenge before the weekend. I'm reading a philosophy article on Occam's razor right now so I can write a good answer. In the meantime, may I turn tables on you? You said you find evolution convincing -- but not, apparently, on the basis of the arguments I gave. Can you tell us which arguments in favor of evolution you *do* find convincing? Let's put them on the table.

A year ago, my Great Books group read "Jung on Evil" (by Stein) which includes Karl Jung's essay "Answer to Job" and refers to Job's questioning God about why He allowed Satan to torment/test him. There is much to learn about evil from Jung including his concept of our Shadow (unconscious) side, but I do not agree with Jung's final conclusion on Job.

In my opinion, our three pound brain cannot begin to grasp God's infinitude and that's what God was saying to Job with his rhetorical questions (Were you there when I did thus and thus ...). We have less chance of understanding God's direct communication than a chimp watching "King Lear." That's why He uses the baby-talk of Genesis, etc.

Your question "Is God good?" with its implied "Why does a good God allow evil?" is one of the most famous in theology. My answer to you and Job is "yes," but, by no means, the human concept of good.

God Bless,
3lb_brain

# 287 Can you tell us which arguments in favor of evolution you *do* find convincing?

To start, let me say that Evolution has no practical effect on my life; I am not a biologist and so whether it is true or not doesn't matter to me one way or the other. I accept that Evolution, as a working hypothesis, provides a useful framework for biologists and I accept the authority of the consensus of opinion of that field. They know more about it than me, and so I'll leave it to them to decide.

#289 rrp

You said something very interesting: "They know more about it than me, and so I'll leave it to them to decide."

But how do you know that the biologists know more about it than you do? By saying that biologists *know* about it more than you do, don't you imply that the fundamentalist/creationists are wrong to claim that the Darwinism is a dogma with little relation to truth and evidence?

Because the truth of Evolution has no bearing on my daily life, and if they want to use it in biology, that's OK with me. The majority of biologists know more about biology than I do. The majority of fundamentalist Christians don't.

But I caution, that although the "authority of biologists argument" works for me, I can see how it wouldn't work for others.

Because biologists have no interest in how I live my life, while Fundamentalists can't keep their noses out of my life.

#291 rrp

Are you saying that if some proposition (here, the theory of evolution) has no bearing on your daily life, you will accept that it is true, if others find it useful?

I don't think you're saying that. I think you're really saying that there is some good reason to accept the conclusion of biologists that the theory of evolution is true. I think the real reason you accept the consensus of biologists is that there is something about their *methods* of arriving at a consensus that makes their consensus reliable. Isn't that why you say they "know" more about evolution? Isn't it because they use methods of investigation and reasoning that lead toward knowledge, as opposed to mere opinion?

The simple fact of consensus doesn't mean that it's a form of "knowing" -- as opposed to mere believing. The consensus needs to be arrived at through reasoning and evidence. Right?

Conversely, the Bible says that the world and all earthly life were created in 6 days and that man is a separate creation from other animals and not evolutionarily descended from them. Why don't you accept these propositions as true? Why do you consider them false? If the Bible is the word of God, shouldn't that trump the consensus of biologists -- or indeed of any human group? If not, why not? I'm posing as the devil's advocate creationist right now. I'm genuinely curious to read your answer.

#293

I am not sure where you are going but I'll try to answer.

Are you saying that if some proposition (here, the theory of evolution) has no bearing on your daily life, you will accept that it is true, if others find it useful.

Depends what we mean by "true". In this instance, I accept that Evolution is a good working hypothesis, which I think is what most scientists think of their theories. Evolution is a better working hypothesis than creationism. It's useful, so let's play with it until something better comes along. Evolution is certainly not true like 1+1=2 is true. (That said, I am not sure that Evolution is all that useful to most biologists in their day-to-day existence http://www.discovery.org/a/2816).

And yes, I trust biologists because, with some reservations, I trust that their methods, through reasoning and evidence, lead to useful knowledge.

As to the Bible as a source of truth, well I don't accept the Bible is the inerrant word of God (on the authority of, say, the Catholic Church). The Genesis creation story is just that, a story. It's a product of its time and intended audience; a fable, an analogy. Mind you, it could be true, if God did create the world in 6 days with everything in place to fool us that Evolution was a good working hypothesis, how would we ever know?

The Catholic church does not accept the Bible as the inerrant word of God in the same way fundamentalist Christians do, either. It is what it is, inspired by God with myths, stories, poetry, and essays that reveal God to us. In fact a good portion of the OT is the history of a nation. A nation whose thinking and existence is so intertwined with God (not unlike our nation's relationship to it's Constitution) that the two cannot be separated. But is it inerrant: in specifics no, in its lessons, yes. God calls us to Faith not in His inerrant words, but through His inerrant lessons.

It is a weak faith that believes if one jot or tittle of the Word is wrong, none of it is trustworthy. That's just plain silly.

#294 rrp

I agree with your statements about Evolution being provisionally true and better than Creationism. I also agree that the Bible is not inerrant and not even the word of God. I'm glad to hear that you accept the theory of evolution because it is supported by reasoning and evidence to a much greater degree than Creationism.

We agree on so many things. I think I see now what we're disagreeing about. You don't think you can ever convince a Fundamentalist to accept Darwinism. I'm more optimistic. If the Catholic Church can change its position from stridently against to endorsing Darwinism as more than just a theory, I think many Fundamentalists can be brought around too.

Perhaps not every Fundamentalist. And this would also require a multi-pronged approach that not only showed the evidence in favor of Darwinism, but also the impressive evidence that modern Bible scholars have been gathering that the Bible makes much more sense as a human creation than a divine relevation.

I still want to come back to Occam's razor and try to show why your objection to it is faulty. But I'll leave that for tomorrow.

#296 paperweight and rrp

Nice conversation between you two.

I agree that if you don't think the Bible is the word of God, that you will not be able to convince fundamentalists to accept Darwinism. That belief is central to the reformers, and the Bible provides the rationale for all their positions on faith and practice.

Similarly, scholars that do not accept the Bible as the word of God would not get much hearing from conservative christians. This issue is pretty indicative of the differences in world views.

I would like to ask a question somewhat related to the discussion.

Most conservative christians claim to have a personal relationship with Jesus. In this relationship they believe that they commune one-to-one with Him during prayer and quiet times of meditation. They claim to feel "His" presence, and often to hear "His" voice.

When reading the Bible, they believe that they hear God speaking to them. I think that's why (apart from doctrine) they are so reluctant to depart from their view of inspiration of the Bible.

My question is: Do liberal chrsitians also experience the presence? Do they feel that they hear God speaking to them when reaading the Bible and/or praying?

Yes!

Yes. Well some do.

I do. And others I know do.

Maybe not the same conservatives do, but yes. It is not like Liberal Christians throw everything out the window.

Glad to hear that at least some liberal Christians enjoy the presence. It seems like the liberals living and working with me share none of the things about their faith that I hold dear.

# 296 paperweight

Yes, we do agree apart for your optimism about converting Fundamentalists. My concern is not the faults in the Fundamentalist's arguments but the faults in the Darwinist's. Saxhorn has it right, if Fundamentalists accept the Bible as the inerrant word of God, then your only hope is persuading them that their fundamental premiss is flawed. Don't start with Evolution, start with something easier like examining the history of the book we call the Bible (and Good Luck!). You have no hope of persuading them that Evolution is true if you cannot first persuade them that sometimes the Bible, or at least Genesis, should not be taken literally. (Or maybe your first step could be to persuade them that Evolution is a 'good working hypothesis' in biology while still accepting that the Bible can be taken literally.)

Let's assume that we have a person that is still a Creationist despite not accepting the Bible as the inerrant word of God. There are still flaws in the arguments of Darwinists. One, as I have pointed out, is that many who argue the position are arguing from Authority (accepting the authority of the community of biologists) which is the same thing that Fundamentalists do expect that they accept another Authority. The question is when are we right to accept any authority? And what arguments force someone switch their choice of authority. Many also want to take the Evolution position much further towards absolute Truth than my 'good working hypothesis', which to me is unsustainable. And, of course, I still don't like the parsimony argument.

#297 saxhorn, even atheists can enjoy something like the presence you speak of

I recently read Andre Comte-Sponville's Little Book of Atheist Spirituality.

http://www.amazon.com/Little-Book-Atheist-Spirituality/dp/0670018473

Comte-Sponville is an atheist. He has a chapter in this book where he describes experiencing, as an atheist, a moment of transcendent and overwhelming bliss and peace. It's a moving passage without any apparent sensationalism or exaggeration, and very hard to gainsay as a powerful and yes spiritual experience.

Of course, we also know of Buddhists who have reported reaching transcendent mental and spiritual states. How can we deny them their experience?

As a Christian, I have had moments where I felt "His" presence. But after lapsing from Christianity, I experience no less (and I daresay even more) of these moments of fullness, peace, gratitude, and love toward all existence but interpret them differently. These are moments much like what Comte-Sponville describes. You don't need to believe in God or the Bible to have them. You don't even need to pray to experience them. They often just hit you unawares, unexpected. And no, I do not take drugs.

#301 rrp you make make compelling points. I'm not quite ready to give up on the Parsimony argument yet, but I agree with you that convincing Fundamentalists about Darwinism is like climbing Mt. Everest. But some people do manage to climb Mt Everest, given enough patience, luck, and doggedness.

I'd like to know more about liberals experiences of the presence. I have known that non christian mystics experience it, and that some christian mystics gravitate toward a presence that is not specifically Christ.

but, actually, paperweight, I WAS wondering about the drugs (just kidding). You'd have to know me to know that I had not even considered that possibility.

A word of explanation about my expression: "His" presence. That was because some believe in a female deity, and some believe in an impersonal deity, and some believe in no deity.

Not the thread for it, but it would be cool for a discussion on mysticism.

#286 rrp

Let me try again to convince you that a plausible naturalistic explanation for the origin of species is, all other things being equal, more parsimonious in its assumptions than a supernatural explanation, and that being more parsimonious in its assumptions makes it a more plausible and likely explanation, all other things being equal.

Let's take the example of crop circles.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crop_circle

When these were discovered, lots of people thought these were made by aliens. But some people thought these were hoaxes deliberately made by people.

So there are two competing hypotheses:

1. The crop circles were made by aliens
2. The crop circles were elaborate hoaxes made by human beings

Now I propose that the choice between these two hypotheses is analogous to the choice between these two hypotheses:

1. All species of life on earth were created directly and separately by God.
2. All species of life on earth were created by the process of natural selection.

Here are the bases of the analogy:

1. Some people believe in aliens. Some people believe in God.
2. Some people believe aliens have visited earth. Some believe God created all the species directly.
3. These is no direct scientific or tangible and irrefutable evidence of the existence of aliens or God.
4. These is no direct scientific or tangible and irrefutable evidence of any visitation by aliens or of any intervention of God in the natural order.
5. What evidence there is of (3) and (4) is limited to hearsay and personal testimony that is impossible to confirm objectively.
6. At first glance, it's hard to figure out how human beings could have made the crop circles. It's also hard to figure out how different species could have arisen by through a natural process.

So I have two questions for you.

1. On the crop circles, do you think that hypotheses (1) and (2) are equally plausible and likely to be true? Or is one hypothesis more plausible and likely to be true than the other?

2. Do you agree that the two sets of hypotheses I set forth (on crops circles and the origin of species) are analogous?

This isn't the whole argument. But I wanted to stop here just to see what your answers are, because it will help me me decide what the next step of my argument needs to be.

- paperweight

#304 paperweight

To clarify, did you mean the options to be

1. All crop circles were made by aliens.
2. All crop circles were made by humans.

I'll assume you did, and agree that 2 is more plausible. I would base this conclusion on the evidence that some humans have been filmed making crop circles and that I can't think of any motive for aliens to make them.

On the analogy question, it's OK as far as it goes, but there places it doesn't work. For example, the time scales are very different. Evolution, if it happened, happened a long time ago. Crop circles not so long. Also, you can't say there is no evidence and then say there is evidence but it's impossible to confirm objectively. It's easy to figure out how humans made the circles. By the way, the only evidence I have for humans making crop circles could be said to be hearsay and personal testimony, but I am inclined to accept it anyway.

I was thinking of what would, to me, be an undeniable argument for evolution.

We need the theory of general relativity to fix GPS clocks. We need the theory of quantum mechanics to design microelectronics and lasers. What
definitive technological advance depends on evolution for it's success? I don't think practical applications of genetics would be sufficiently satisfying, because God could have created the genetic mechanism. What I think would be required would be a practical application of the sticky point of evolution, the decent of man from earlier species of life. I would look to a medical application. What life saving procedure would not work if man had not evolved from earlier species?

By the way, to tie back to the OP, it is my opinion that if you poke at it hard enough, the foundations of science can seem to be as irrational as the foundations of religion. At some point, both religion and science rely on faith and authority, faith as in a belief that cannot be justified by logical reasoning or evidence, and authority as in a body of literature that practitioners trust and refer to without the need to verify each and every fact. Both religion and science need to be as rational as is possible, but in both there is are limits beyond which reason cannot help.

#306: "What definitive technological advance depends on evolution for it's success?"

I would suggest what we today refer to as literacy, reading and writing is the result of a technological advance requiring an evolutionary change for its success. It cropped up all over the world in the space of a thousand or so years. It varied in form from (type that three times real fast) place to place but required the same set of skills: the ability to produce socially agreed upon symbols and the ability to interpret them. The skill moved from pictographs which have been with Homo Sapiens as long as Homo Sapiens have been around, to the flexibility of alphabets in just a few hundred years. The kind of change one would expect to see in a fast moving evolutionary change.

An interesting, yet controversial, take on this and other results of probable modern evolutionary change can be found in The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bi-cameral mind by Julian Jaynes. It's interesting that this change coincided with the appearance of the first, modern theistic religion.

#306: What life saving procedure would not work if man had not evolved from earlier species?

Well, to answer the closely related question: What life-saving procedure would not work if living organisms were not continually evolving?

...the top-of-the-mind answer to that question is "the influenza vaccination".

The influenza virus is continually evolving changes to its surface proteins, to the point that last season's vaccine won't confer any significant protection against this season's virus.

Anyone who doubts the truth of "evolution" should have the intellectual consistency to refuse to get their flu shot.

Gee, that's funny. I don't get flu shots BECAUSE I believe in evolution. Go figure.

Gee, that's funny. I don't get flu shots BECAUSE I believe in evolution. Go figure.

Do you want to unpack that a little? "Because the virus is always a step ahead", maybe?

Yes. The flu is one of those bugs that changes too much, too often. Besides as far as I know I've never had the flu (typed with one hand while the other was knocking the wooden table next to me), so I tend not to worry about it much.

#307 rrp

At some point, both religion and science rely on faith and authority, faith as in a belief that cannot be justified by logical reasoning or evidence, and authority as in a body of literature that practitioners trust and refer to without the need to verify each and every fact.

Sorry not to have responded sooner. My RSS reader didn't pick up on the new responses for some reason and it wasn't until this morning that I saw that they were there.

Your reasoning seems to suggest that *all* religious beliefs are on par with scientific findings in rationality. So Mormonism's belief that certain tribes from Israel who migrated to the Americas before Columbus is just as valid as the belief of modern archaeologists that they didn't? Is the ancient Aztec belief that human sacrifice will bring rain and good harvests just as rational as the modern disbelief in those claims?

Back to the parsimonious explanations, my point is that as soon as a plausible naturalistic explanation appears, the supernatural one must give way. Your statements seem to agree with this principle. But the justification of this principle is nothing other than Occam's razor. The naturalistic explanations for, say, human disease, draughts, and yes, the existence of different species, are "more rational" than the supernatural ones because of their greater parsimony in positing undetectable entities. Positing "evil spirits" as the explanation for epilepsy is thus less plausible than pointing to detectable brain tumors. Positing "an angry god" for droughts is thus less plausible than seeing correlations to specific weather and climate patterns. No?

#306 rrp

How far does this page go toward the "undeniable argument"?

http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CA/CA215.html

I see the force of your point that a clear practical application of the theory of evolution would put all doubts to rest. But where does that leave sciences with as yet little practical technological application, like paleontology (study of dinosaurs and such): From your perspective, is the finding of paleontology that dinosaurs went extinct way before humans arrived on the scene just as rational/irrational as the belief of some Creationists that dinosaurs and human beings lived at the same time?

In the Creation Museum, they not only claim that dinosaurs and human beings lived together; they even claim that Noah put dinosaurs on his ark.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/24/arts/24crea.html

Are you really saying that these creationist beliefs are ultimately just as rational as the modern, scientific ones?

#313 paperweight

Back to the parsimonious explanations, my point is that as soon as a plausible naturalistic explanation appears, the supernatural one must give way.

So, are you saying then, that miracles can not take place by definition?

#315

No, I'm saying that if there is ever a plausible non-miraculous way to explain something that appears to be a miracle, you should accept the non-miraculous explanation as more plausible. But if there is no way to explain something non-miraculously, you are permitted to think it may be miracle. Doesn't that sound reasonable?

#313 paperweight

I did not mean to suggest that *all* religious beliefs are on par with *all* scientific findings in rationality; there have been some silly beliefs on both sides. What I meant was that religion and science have similarities at their foundations, both rely on things taken on faith, both in practice rely on a body of literature that practitioners take on trust. You cannot criticize religion for its reliance on faith and authority without first shoring up the defenses of science to the same criticisms.

You have some nice analogies, a creator vs. evolution, evil spirits vs. brain tumors, angry god vs. atmospheric dynamics. But I think they are again stretched too far. There is an experimentally determined causal link between brain tumors and epilepsy. Double blind trials, if they were ethical, in this case could demonstrate the causal link. Remove the tumor and the fits stop. The weather example is more difficult because experiments on the atmosphere are harder to do. But we do have a proxy in the mathematical models run by meteorologists. These now have sufficient predictive power to convince of the causal link between distributions of temperature and pressure and the winds and weather they cause. Run the model several times and you get similar answers.

Unfortunately, no such models or experiments exist for evolution. There is no computer model that can be run that starts with a soup of chemicals and ends up with human beings. The causal link cannot be demonstrated by either experiments or mathematical models. One can argue that creationism is more parsimonious as it provides the causal link.

#314

Same point really. There is nothing in these lists that provide an "undeniable argument". Even a die hard creationist could accept that genetic drift and natural selection is now occurring and that that type of evolution has its practical application. However, the big question is how humans came to be, and none of the examples in your list rely on the descent of man from previous species.

And you know I don't believe in creationism or think that it is rational. I just think that some aspects of evolution are less convincing, rationally, than they are sometimes portrayed.

Paperweight,

My concern is the bending-over-backward trying to create a plausible rational explanation. I don't mind being skeptical over all claimed miracles, but I do have an issue with trying to exclude 100% of them.

So, what's your take on the resurrection?

It's very good that you asked, because recently I listened to this debate between Bart Ehrman and William Lane Craig.

Ehrman essentially argues that you can come up with a plausible non-miraculous explanation for the resurrection stories in the New Testament, and that, absent direct proof of the contrary, any plausible non-miraculous scenario is more probably likely than the miraculous one. I find his argument persuasive.

http://video.google.com/videosearch?client=safari&rls=en-us&q=bart+ehrma...

Transcript:

http://www.holycross.edu/departments/crec/website/resurrection-debate-transcript...

Former Christian paster turned atheist John Loftus also argues that the evidence God gives us that the miracles of the Bible actually occurred is pretty meager.

http://debunkingchristianity.blogspot.com/2008/10/historical-evidence-hidden-god...

To answer your question, saxhorn, I think that for the evidence of Resurrection to be compelling, there needs to more than what there is in the New Testament. I think we would need Jesus to appear today and perform miracles in front of our eyes. That's the only way, in my opinion, to compel rational belief.

#319

Well, I think I understand your position better now having read some of the debate transcripts. It sounds like arguing apples vs. oranges.

If you take a position that you can't declare something to be a miracle then, guess what, there are no miracles! Talk about circular reasoning!

I'll finish reading the transcript, I have some more compelling graduate class assignments due, so it may take a while.

I think Ehrman's invented story explaining the absence of the body is pretty weak. He doesn't mention the Roman cohort assigned to guard the tomb, nor the fact that the stone was so heavy that the women couldn't move it.

Ehrman doesn't like the gospels for objective testimony about the resurrection, but tell me, what other events from that time are better testified to? We accept as factual other events of the period with far fewer documents/witnesses.

#320 saxhorn

I'm not saying that there can be no miracles. I'm saying that the proof required for a miracle is extremely high. So high that you pretty much have to witness it first-hand.

I would say that the main difference between other events in from ancient times (like the Peloponnesian War) and the resurrection is precisely the non-miraculous nature of those other ancient events. Non-miraculous events require only a non-extraordinary level of proof. But miraculous events, being so extraordinary, require an extraordinary level of proof. Isn't this reasonable?

The testimony of the Resurrection in the New Testament wouldn't even be allowed in a court of law, since it is hearsay by people who can't be cross-examined. That's how unreliable the New Testament testimony is by modern evidential standards.

Spong has some interesting things to say on the Resurrection:

http://www.johnshelbyspong.com/bishopspongon_theResurrection.aspx

Although Ehrman claims to be a historian, he is, in fact, a philosopher. In his introduction he sets up his method for determining a miracle. That is not a historians methods, those are his philosophy. Guess what, he doesn't find any miracles.

An objective historian would report facts. Only one with an agenda would interpret what he encountered. His agenda is pretty clear from his philosophy.

Did you know that the same rationale that Ehrman uses has been applied to Napoleon in the 19th century? Did you know that there never was a French Emperor named Napoleon Bonaparte. Seems they couldn't find any disinterested people who ever knew the guy. They either loved him, feared him or hated him.

It's also interesting that Bill Craig states that the first gospel was written within five years of Jesus' death. That would mean that the accounts could very well be eye witness (but of course, not disinterested). But if Craig is correct, then the accounts would be admissible in court, where by the way their testimony would be accepted even though they differ. Differing accounts is common among actual witnesses of events.

saxhorn, I don't know of any reputable Bible scholar who says that the first gospels were written 5 years after Jesus's death. I think the mainstream estimate is 30-35 years, for the gospel of Mark.

If you read the Spong essay I linked to, you'll see one of the main reasons many New Testament scholars are skeptical of the Resurrection accounts. It seems that the later the account was written, the most elaborate and literal the Resurrection story becomes. In Paul's accounts, there is no evidence that there was a physical resurrection. In Mark, you just have a missing body, but no actual resurrection appearance by Jesus. It's only after Mark that you start getting the accounts of a physical resurrection, and at this point we are several decades removed from the event.

This is one of the reasons many people like me and John Shelby Spong don't think that the Resurrection was a literal, physical occurrence. At best, it was a vision that some people had that Jesus was still "alive" in some figurative sense.

paperweight,

I got through Spong's article as far a Paul before I saw that he ignored some key passages regarding the resurrection. Given that Paul is the earliest NT writer, we can tell what his doctrine was within one generation of Jesus. Since Paul testifies to not only having seen Jesus, but having received his doctrine from Jesus during the 3 years in the wilderness, and subsequently being approved of by the Holy Spirit and the Jerusalem Council, we can have great assurance of its authenticity.

Spong does not deal with 1 Cor. 15 1:-13, and begins with the summation of vs. 14. But in the earlier verses Paul discusses those who have seen the post resurrected Jesus. We have the core credo of he early church, and the testimony of those who had witnessed Jesus' resurrection by seeing Him post resurrection.

Secondly, in Rom 6:1-14 Paul gives the figurative picture of death and resurrection in the sacrament of baptism. Since Paul's writings are the earliest NT documents what the gospels contain and when they were written is irrelevant to this discussion. Paul and all the apostles (plus James and 500 others) know a literal resurrection.

How can Spong say that teaching on the resurrection doesn't exist until later gospels? To claim that this is figurative resurrection is flummery, and isn't plain interpretation of Paul's writings.

Would you define "New Testament Scholars" as liberals who have defined the supernatural out of christianity?

Spong does deal with the verses you cite. His argument is that yes, Paul says that Jesus "appeared" to people, but he never says that Jesus appeared in the flesh. He could have appeared in a vision instead of as a literally resurrected body.

I admit I need to read more understand the whole of Spong's argument. He wrote a whole book just on the Resurrection. I'm going to order it from Amazon.

http://www.amazon.com/Resurrection-Reality-John-Shelby-Spong/dp/0060674296

Perhaps you can join me in reading it? We can read a conservative counter-arguing book too.

I'll tell you in full disclosure that the secular bible scholar E. P. Sanders in his Historical Figure of Jesus thinks that the earliest witness did experience something definitely weird (a.k.a. perhaps supernatural) that was the basis of the Resurrection accounts we have the Bible.

But my main point is that I'd love to study this issue more.

Well, I certainly would be up to your reading suggestion. Can we do it in Dec or January after my semester is over?

My objection to Spong is that if it doesn't say specifically "in the flesh" it's not. I believe that one has to stretch the context to assert anything other than literal resurrection. Certainly Paul's Rom. 6 passage can't be literally the crucifixion and figuratively the resurrection. It has to be consistent for both.

another objection would be the Greek word for resurrection anastasis which literally means to stand up again. Certainly not figurative in it's meaning.

saxhorn

Sorry, I don't see anything in Romans 6:1-14 that contradicts Spong's interpretation. Can you zero in on particular verses?

I'm not a staunch defender of Spong's particular interpretation of the Resurrection. I'm open to finding weaknesses in it, and I am prone to think, along with some secular Bible scholars, that Paul did believe Jesus was literally resurrected. But I do agree with him and others that the Resurrection accounts do seem to have been progressively elaborated over time, and that they disagree in a huge number of details.

I think I agree mostly with Ehrman's position, that it's impossible to establish that Jesus's tomb was really empty; that this story may have emerged after rumors arose that Jesus was still alive. And that a lot of other bits of the Resurrection story may have been constructed after people went looking through the Old Testament (e.g Hosea 6:2 and Jonah 1:17) for stuff that could be construed as prophecies of the present.

I would also like to stress that Bart Ehrman's point isn't that it's irrational to believe in the resurrection and other miracles. His point is that it's not in any way *compelled* by a normal assessment of the evidence. You are free to believe in the literal Resurrection as a matter of faith, but it's not irrational for another person to choose not to believe it happened, and to think instead that it arose according to something like the scenario that Bart Ehrman proposes. This I think is an absolutely correct position.

saxhorn

http://bibletools.org/index.cfm/fuseaction/Lexicon.show/ID/G386/anastasis.htm

Strong's Bible dictionary allows for a figurative meaning of anastasis. But I'll concede that the primary definition is literal

paperweight,

Again, I have not read all the way throug the debate, which I will do when my assignments slow down.

Here's my take on Romans 6:

3 . . . "all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? 4We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life."

NT baptism is by immersion, in which the person is guided either forward or backward under the surface of the water. This is figurative of death to sin, and being joined with Jesus in his crucifixion. then the person is assisted in coming up and breaking the surface, symbolic of the resurrection, not only of being raised to life, but standing up again, and being joined to Jesus in His resurrection. Paul also states that there is a new life. If Jesus were merely raised spiritually there would not be a new life, since the spirit is eternal. Clearly the understanding is literal physical resurrection. Also, since Jesus was literally crucified, the metaphor breaks down if He wasn't literaly physically raised from the dead.

Once again, I object to the idea that the text must contain wodrs that say "literally, physically"n order to mean literal and physical resurrection. The writers expected people to take them at their word, and not be dissected by "scholars" in succeeding centuries.

Whether you agree with Spong or not, he is definitely a light weight, and can be incredibly dense at times, and very culturally insensitive at other times.

(For example, he posits that Jesus was married to Mary because Jesus' mother accompanied him to the wedding at Cana, and the only wedding Spong attended with his mother was his own wedding, therefore the wedding at Cana must have been Jesus' wedding. That shows absolutely no understanding of the cultural norms of the day, where EVERYONE attended village weddings.)

E.P Sanders, on the other hand is an excellent scholar, whether you agree with him or not. So is Marcus Borg.

If you want to read an excellent debate about the life of Jesus between two incredibly intelligent and well informed men, pick up Meaning of Jesus: Two Visions by Marcus J. Borg and N. T. Wright. Just watching these two men go at it, with intelligence and respect is worth the price of the book.

Thanks, Arctic-Stranger. I just requested the book from another branch library. I look forward to reading it. It should help inform papeweight's adn my discussion.

I guess, I'll have to wait until December, though, to read it. Gotta get through those grad assignments.

Thanks Arctic, I'll pick up Meaning of Jesus.

#329 saxhorn

I'll agree that Paul might have meant "resurrection" in a literal sense.

But curiously, it seems we've reversed positions. Now you're the one saying this:

Once again, I object to the idea that the text must contain wodrs that say "literally, physically"n order to mean literal and physical resurrection. The writers expected people to take them at their word, and not be dissected by "scholars" in succeeding centuries.

I was saying just the same thing about the words "this generation shall not pass away" and "There are some standing here who will not taste death." I wanted take these words straightforwardly, while you were claiming that Jesus not speaking plainly here, but figuratively or metaphorically.

#333 Wow, that's interesting. Thanks for pointing that out. Gives me pause to consider.

So, back to another point about Ehrman's and Spong's views, i.e., eyewitnesses of the resurrected Jesus as listed in 1 Cor. 15:5-8. Paul knew Peter, and he states here that Peter saw the resurrected Jesus, as well as the twelve apostles whom Paul also knew. Given their teaching as reported in Acts and in the Epistles, I find it hard to think they ever meant anything but a physical resurrection.

Oh, re: our earlier conversation and post # 333, don't overlook Paul's use of "fallen asleep" for died.

First let me thank those involved in this thread for the general civility and co-operation in the arguments given (for the most part). This thread has been a joy to read.

One thing Erhman lectures on is the history of other "messiahs" of the first century using Apollonius as an example of a contemporary of Jesus who also had stories of martyrdom, resurrection, miracles, rifts with Rome, etc. about him.

With the tendency of oral traditions at that time to be tailored to the audience (which explains how several hundred different beliefs existed among those claiming to be followers of Jesus with their different canon, with their different claims to apostolic authority, different sayings and parables) a gamemanship between messiahs could have occurred with followers of each "Your guy died and was resurrected? Our guy died,was resurrected, and was seen with spear holes in his side."

There are multiple possibilities of what happened 2000 years ago, but no evidence that has not been washed through decades of oral tradition.

I have always wondered how much of the Jewish tradition of handling oral reporting was carried into early Christianity. In the retelling of Jewish genealogies and stories careful attention was placed on repeating exact detail. Often the retelling was accomplished in the presence of elders who would correct inaccuracies. Later, the scribes counted words and letters on each "page" of text. Either the inaccuracy had to be corrected or an entire new parchment had to be copied.

Since the first Christians were Jewish, I wonder to what extent they protected the oral tradition.

paperweight,

I had some time this afternoon and so read the transcript of the debate between Bill Craig and Ehrman.

My general reaction is that both did a very good job of representing their respective sides on the issue of the probability of the resurrection of Jesus. Not surprisingly, neither debater would ever convince the other, and not surprisingly, the arguments presented by either side were anything but objective interpretation of facts.

I find that Ehrman appeals to usual liberal techniques of determing which passages of he Bible are historical and those that are theological, and assigning anything to which he personally objects to the theological. Then he uses his excised text or not, and speculates on what could have happened (other than the text because that's theological) to explain the offending text. Although Ehrman declares that he can speak about God, since that's beyond the historical, he doesn't feel restrained to add non historical speculation.

Craig correctly calls Ehrmans stance philosophical and not historical. I think Craig does a good job of explaining the pre-calculus error of David Hume's arguments against miracles. Ehrman bases his objections to the miraculous partly on Hume, and therefore, on the assumption that miracles are theological, therefore he must find another explanation for testimony to the miraculous.

Craig showed the error of reason upon which the Humean argument is based:

"One of the embarrassments of Hume’s argument was that he held that a person living in the tropics should never accept testimonies from travelers that water could exist in the form of a solid, as ice. So that the man, based on the Humean argument, would be led to deny perfectly natural facts for which we would have abundant evidence simply because it contradicted what he knew."

I found the argument about whether Jesus was raised actually physical or seemingly physical (a phantom) incredulous. Of course, Ehrman would have excised Luke: 24:36-43 as theological or a late addition from oral tradition so that he wouldn't have to deal with the text that confutes him.

I wonder, are there any other parts of the debate that you (or other posters) would like to discuss here?

#319

Now that I've read the debate between Ehrman and Criag, I can directly answer your comment:

I think that for the evidence of Resurrection to be compelling, there needs to more than what there is in the New Testament. I think we would need Jesus to appear today and perform miracles in front of our eyes. That's the only way, in my opinion, to compel rational belief.

As Craig says, when considering ancient history, most historians accept witness accounts of two or three sources for declaration of an event as probable. The Bible offers at least 5 distinct examples of the resurrection of Jesus. For you to say that those are not enough is to raise a higher standard for biblical proof than any other historical document.

Regarding your second sentence, If you personally witnessed Jesus performing a miracle would you still be a disinterested witness?

Saxhorn wrote: " Since the first Christians were Jewish, I wonder to what extent they protected the oral tradition. "

It is true that the first followers of Jesus were Jewish, but were the first Christians Jewish or were they Pagans?

Regarding accuracy in the oral tradition ..... many of the schools of philosophy (Socratic, Cynic, Cyrenaic, for example) created anecdotes about their leadership that imagined their leadership placed in a "test" situation by his intellectual foes in which their leadership triumphs.

These tests, in Jesus' case, were at the hands of his intellectual rivals, the Pharisees. It was less what Jesus actually said, but what he might have said given the trap that his foes had set for him.

These tests, I propose, have less need to be historically accurate than geneologies. It is also why, I propose, historians have 250 different congregations of followers of Jesus, each with its own set of stories its own canon, its own observances.

The word "Christian" was first applied to Antiochian believers in Jesus, most of whom it seems were gentiles. I guess it became a real question of what to call these people when they converted from paganism (very loosely defined) to become a follower of Jesus. They were not Jewish, so that didn't fit. They started to be called Christians.

As to oral tradition, some scholars believe that that the elusive Q document may have been the oral tradition concerning Jesus. Unlike today, where stories are often changed as they are retold, the telling of stories in the ancient world tended to follow strict rules, one of which is that the story teller did not change the story.

Two interesting points that bumped into my brain from the preceding post. First, Paul says almost nothing about the life of Jesus. If there were no gospels (which was the case when Paul was writing his letters) how would people have known about Jesus. Paul seems to either a) presupposed the people already know the story of Jesus, and so that story does not have to retold, or b) assume the details of Jesus life are irrelevent for faith--only the death and resurrection of Jesus matters. I tend to go back and forth between these two options, so I need a better mind than mine to come up with a third.

Second, Jesus spends a lot of time arguing with Pharisees. E.P. Sanders makes the point that Pharisees were a small minority in the first century. The real power structure was the Temple crowd. They were seen by many, especially the Essences, as corrupt, yet Jesus says very little about them. Perhaps that is because when the Gospels were finally written and distributed, there was no temple, so most interactions Jesus may have had with the temple authorities were edited out. Or, being a Galilean, Jesus was just not all that concerned with the Temple.

Arctic wrote in 340: " They were not Jewish, so that didn't fit. They started to be called Christians. "

Yes .... but not just for the reason that they were Gentile, but also because of the major philosophical differences between the Jesus ministry and that of the Christ belief.

Jews would not be able to believe in the Christ story. Gentiles would be perfectly readily agreeable to it.

Arctic continued: " If there were no gospels (which was the case when Paul was writing his letters) how would people have known about Jesus. "

The oral tradition .. which is why you have remarkably divergent beliefs between, for example the Ebionites, and the those followers of Jesus who believed in Aeons. And each group claimed apostolic authority and a canon of their own.

I find it odd that he says little from the standpoint that he describes his doctrinal battles with other itinerant evangelists who claim to be followers of Jesus in his letters. One would think there were substantial issues to be clarified there and so it is remarkable that he is silent.

Arctic continues: " Second, Jesus spends a lot of time arguing with Pharisees. E.P. Sanders makes the point that Pharisees were a small minority in the first century. "

I believe that the bulk of the Jews at that time weren't part of any of the named groups. There were 4 groups, I believe, one of which is nameless to historians.

I think it is telling that the Pharisees are singled out in scripture because, in the local religious dialog, they were the most frequently seen and theirs were the most important ideas to compare and contrast the positions of Jesus against.

No one living within Jesus' itinerary had contact with the elite Sadducces (Hasmonean). So a dialog between Jesus and that group would have been meaningless to the rural villagers that would have spread the stories about Jesus. It is my claim that Jesus would have had no occasion to interact with the Sadducces.

But it was the standard operating procedure of the first century for the members of a school of belief to create a standard set of anecdotes about the head of their school about how that head would address a confrontation with his adversaries, like the Socratics had with their Sophists. These are fictional confrontations, not historical.

I have quite a few thoughts on the debate between Erhman and Craig but am currently only half way through the debate and will hold comment until I finish.

I finally finished the debate video and can now make the following comments:

First, Dr. Craig identifies what he calls four facts. I contend that none of those claims can be considered to be a fact. A fact is that I currently have $3.00 in my wallet. The evidence for such a fact is gained by opening my wallet and counting. Even so, this fact is not a certainty. I could miscount, for example. I could actually have $12.00 but mistake a $10.00 for a $1.00. I can therefore state confidently that I MOST LIKELY have $3.00 in my wallet.

His first "fact" is that Jesus' burial. We have no evidence that Jesus was buried. Historical evidence for crucifixions of criminals shows that frequently they were left on the crosses to be devoured by carion animals and the remains were thrown into a pit.

A major disagreement I have with Dr. Erhman is that he tends to count the four gospels as independent attestations. I contend that each is derived from the same source, the various oral traditions which ultimately narrow to one. So he doesn't challenge Craig when the latter makes the claims that the burial is multiply attested.

So while Craig states that the burial of Jesus By Joseph of A. is factual, indisputable, certainty, I can see dozens of equally or even more plausible possibilities. Included in these is the claim that Josephus gives that one could survive the cross.

Another is the misuse of probability analysis. Craig claims that the numerator is:

Pr (R/B) is called the intrinsic probability of the resurrection. It tells how probable the resurrection is given our general knowledge of the world.

What exactly is our general knowledge of the world. Number of times that we have evidence for a person being resurrected supernaturally from the dead in the entire history of the world. Including Jesus, the total would be zero. How many humans have lived? 20 billion? 50 billion? So the probability of a human being brought back from the dead approaches zero.

Depending on the definition of death, one could argue that there have been people who were brought back from ther dead naturally. So the probability of a person being brought back from the dead naturally would be greater than a person brought back from the dead supernaturally, regardless of the definition.

To claim that a person could be brought back from the dead supernaturally, one could establish a proof for the existence of particular providence. Some have been working on that angle without success.

Next, Craig attempts to multiply this infinitessimally tiny number by the probability that the resurrection explains the empty tomb. Given that I can think of dozens of equally plausible (or more so)explanations for each of these stories, the numerator becomes ever smaller.

His denominator is extremely confusing and I won't try to sort that out but I don't think he could put anything there that would bring the probability above an infinitessimally small number. I realize Erhman isn't a mathmetician but I wish he would have pointed out what a silly exercise that was.

Several times in this thread saxhorn has contended that Erhman is not a historian. I would like to disagree.

If you sit for a class in philosophy and another on intellectual history, you can see the difference in how they cover the material by looking at how John Locke and Pierre Bayle appear in the course. In a course on Philosophy, neither would be presented as significant. Bayle has been all but forgotten and modern philosophers do not consider Locke's rigor to be worthy. Yet, in a course on intellectual history both would be extremely important. This is because of their context in the early modern period and the impact they had on the creation of the modern mind.

Theologians view Christian doctrine through a Luthurian, an Augustinian, a Thomian world view. Historians view the story of the first century from the context of the people who lived around that portion of the Roman Empire in the early first century.

Studying the first century inhabitants of Qumrun is more illustrative in understanding Jesus than studying the life of Augustine. That is what Erhman chose to do when he left the world of theology and entered the world of intellectual history.

Technically Ehrman is a texual critic. That requires a large amount of knowledge from many fields, theology and history being two of them.

I guess the reason I consider Ehrman to be a philosopher is that he states his precondition that miracles can't really occur, then looks at the gospels through those lenses, and finds out that . . . miracles didn't occur.

to me that is not what a historian does, but rather, what a philosopher does.

paperweight and Arctic-Stranger,

I had occasion this morning to read the intro and chapter 1 (Borg) of Meaning Jesus and found it fascinating. I really liked the way Borg described his walk of faith. I had not heard a liberal scholar speak so before. All the ones I personally know only speak from the secular world-view and not the sacred. Although I don't agree with some of his statements, I can tell that we share a spiritual experience.

So, paperweight, I'm anxious to begin our study and discussion, any time you're ready.

Oldwoman writes: It is true that the first followers of Jesus were Jewish, but were the first Christians Jewish or were they Pagans?

I hope we're not playing semantic games here. In addition to the Jews living in Judea, there were Jews of the diaspora living in Greek cities in Asia Minor. These Hellenistic Jews are mentioned frequently in the New Testament, and presumably they were some of the converts to Christianity. Are they Jewish or pagan? I would say Jewish, although undeniably influenced by the culture around them.

The 120 gathered in the upper room on the day of Pentecost in Acts 2 were all Palestinian Jews, and were followers of Jesus> Are these pagan? Among the 3,000 converted to faith in Jesus were people from all over the Mediterranean region. Undoubtedly some pagan, but also some Jewish, no? There were in Jerusalem for the Jewish feast of Tabernacles, no?

Again, Oldwoman writes: I find it odd that {Paul} says little from the standpoint that he describes his doctrinal battles with other itinerant evangelists who claim to be followers of Jesus in his letters. One would think there were substantial issues to be clarified there and so it is remarkable that he is silent.

Of course, there is the famous passage in 1 Cor. 3 where Paul takes the Corinthians to task for their sectarian activity. But, in general, the evidence we have from Acts and the Epistles is that those teaching in the areas that Paul traveled were part of Paul's ministry team. We wouldn't expect much deviation from his interpretation.

Secondly, Paul says in 1 Cor 2:4 that he wasn't eloquent as a speaker. The truth of his doctrine was evidenced in the "Spirit and of power." A traditional Christian would think that this meant exercises of the spiritual gifts and of healing and other miracles. Thus, God was attesting to the veracity of Paul's interpretation through the mighty acts performed.

#265

The fulfillment of that prophecy was the transfiguration which follows the passages that are mentioned in which Christ and Moses and Elijah were glorified giving Peter, John, and James an opportunity to see what the glorified Christ and glorified saints will be like when Jesus does return. I don't know if this point has been made and I am just repeating it but it is late and I will read the rest of the posts at a later time.

I don't remember which post before #265 referenced the virgin birth not being a cardinal doctrine but an error. The problem with that is that without the virgin birth Christianity does not exist. There is no Savior and Jesus Christ is not a good man but a raving lunatic who blasphemously claimed to be God so nothing He said can be trusted. I do not know of anyone that will deny the value of the teachings of Jesus Christ so that rules out His being a raving lunatic. So now if He is not delusional then He must really be God as He claimed and that could only occur if a virgin conceived and bore a child in accordance with the propehecies.

Good Night All.

Saxhorn wrote: " I hope we're not playing semantic games here. "

I don't intend it to be so. There are 3 things I am trying to get at here.

1) there is a fairly long evolutionary period in which the ministry of Jesus evolves into Christianity. ie, that there is a difference between the spread of Jesus' story during the first couple of decades after Jesus' death and the early Christian movement which developed later.

2) that the coalescing doctrines of Christianity were not something that the majority of Jews would (or could) buy into.

3) that the congregations of Jews that considered themselves followers of Jesus would be considered to be heretical (in the true sense of the word meaning "other") by those calling themselves Christians who are considered in (to use Erhman's term) to be proto-orthodox.

To continue ..... there were groups of Jews who heard Jesus' message and continued his ministry after his death.

After all, Jesus was a Jewish teacher who surrounded himself with Jewish followers, who spoke of the Jewish God, and came not to change a jot or tittle of the Jewish law, who traveled around the rural Jewish community, speaking to the Jewish common folk, teaching of the imminent coming of the Kingdom of the Jewish God, for which the Jewish people would be judged.

This ministry lasted well into the second century. We do know some things about the Jewish people who continued with the ministry of Jesus from the writings of the heresiologists of the second century.

Saxhorn wrote: " Secondly, Paul says in 1 Cor 2:4 that he wasn't eloquent as a speaker. "

Yes indeed, which is why in Second Corinthians, after he had left Corinth, we learn that other apostles, not of the Pauline School appear in Corinth. We learn that these other apostles are very charismatic and their ultimate appeal was to the Jewish Scripture.

I think that my earlier post was intended to convey that with all the "false apostles" (the super-apostles)that were roaming the countryside, I am surprised that he didn't spend more time writing about the life of Jesus as he understood it.

#349 & 350

Your point 1) - I consider this statement conjecture. If Paul died about 65 AD, as is traditionally understood, and his first epistles are dates at about 50 AD, then we have the establishment of mature Christian theology within one generation of Jesus' death.

2) agreed.

3) I'm a little confused here. Are you referring to the Judaizers? Jewish Christians who wanted to also follow the law of Moses? Yes, Paul considered them heretical, as would the Jerusalem Council (at least officially). But, in practice, Peter communed with them.

I was just wanting to make sure that we weren't calling Hellenistic Jews pagans, or that we were forgetting that the first believers were Jewish. Even some of the non-Jews were God-fearers. Would we still call them pagans?

As to number one, I think you need to define words "fairly long." By the time Paul is writing, we have a pretty good foundation for Christianity vis a vis Judaism. That was within 15 years of Jesus' death, and by 90 we have Clement as a proto-Othodox clergyman. (Of course he did not address issues that were not issues in the first century, but as those issues arose, the structure within with he worked was the structure that did deal with them.

And I totally agree with number two.

As to three, if Paul is to be trusted, and if Acts has any historical significance, we do know that the Gentile churches financially supported the Jerusalem churches. That seems to indicate that, in spite of their differences, there was not a fissure between the two. (although when Paul is discussing the issue of eating meat offered to idols, he clearly does not appeal the decision of the Apostolic Council to solve the issue.)

Thank yous to saxhorn, arctic-stranger, and oakesspaulding for their thoughtful responses.

Unfortunately, I am going to have to wing my response from my rusty memory as I lost a decade's worth of notes on this subject when my hard drive got fried in April. The old woman procrastinates and never got around to backing it up.

I haven't missed your comments and am preparing a response. Perhaps tomorrow AM.

My response: First: All three are questioning the time scale of the development of the various canon from the oral tradition.

Theologians appear to jump from written document to written document like they were hopping from a boulder to another attempting to cross a stream without getting their feet wet. I feel they tend to ignore so much that is happening between the boulders. Much of this hopping is from one church father citing presumed authority to another citing presumed authority …. “tradition holds that …”

I used the words “ … fairly long evolutionary period …”. There are four time scales I wish to point out:

1) 20 years from the traditional death of Jesus and Thessalonians. During this period, much was happening. This is the time period of the various Q traditions among other things depending on whch author you follow. My personal belief is that there isn’t a single Q document, but a series of letters/instructional writings that the authors of Matthew and Luke/Acts had access to that were kept together, copied together. Scholars see significant evolution of these traditions, even over the 20 year time span.

2)The time scale from the writing of Thessalonians to Ephesians in which the organization structure of the early Christian church undergoes radical changes. This is evident in the types of issues the authors of the epistles are attempting to deal with.

3)The time scale from Thessalonians to the mid second century when the ministry of the Jesus Movement (as some authors call it) was replaced by the Christ Centered Movement. That the best information we have on the various Jesus centered beliefs are the heresiologists writing against these Jesus centered beliefs more than 100 years after Jesus’ death indicates that the Christian movement is still evolving to reduce the influence of these movements.

4)The time scale by which the heretical beliefs gradually died out and the proto-orthodox became the surviving belief or the orthodox belief. Some of these heretical groups thrived well into the 6th century.
For example, modern scholars have studied the evidence of 34 different gospels. All of them served as canon for some group of Jesus centered or Christ centered congregation. Scholars date most of these to the second century. This indicates to me that there was still an oral tradition for some parts of the Roman world well into the second century. This makes sense in that, given the arduous task of copying a letter or a gospel or a set of instructions, more people had the oral stories than had a document to work from.

We also see this in the author of Luke/Acts intro that he himself is not exactly pleased with some of the accounts of which he is aware. Scholars are pretty sure that this author had Mark in front of him as well as the Pauline and Pastoral Epistles. It is also thought that whatever comprised Q was known to him. At least, he believes he can tell it better.

Saxhorn wrote: “I was just wanting to make sure that we weren't calling Hellenistic Jews pagans, or that we were forgetting that the first believers were Jewish. Even some of the non-Jews were God-fearers. Would we still call them pagans? “

No fear of that. Pagans would have no difficulty worshipping (or fearing) another god. What is the difference between worshipping 12 or 13 gods. The problem would be when they would be asked to relinquish the other 12. They would get a bit queasy about that and their neighbors would take it very, very personally.

What the thrust of my argument is that there is a difference between those Jews who felt the man Jesus had a worthy viewpoint and the non-Jews that were brought to Christ belief by Paul and others like him. We would still call the non-Jews pagans if they were not ethical monotheists, ie, they didn't renounce their beliefs/practices in other gods.

Arctic stranger wrote: “That seems to indicate that, in spite of their differences, there was not a fissure between the two“

I started, got sidetracked and never finished, a couple of books by Eisenman which address some new evidence on the friction between the Jewish community and Paul. Some read that when he left Antioch for the last time, it wasn’t under the best of circumstances.

Eisenman even speculates (somewhere) that the “Wicked Priest” identified by the Qumrun community is Paul. Acts confirms that Paul left suddenly and that there was concern that he was telling Jews to forgo the Mosaic Law leading to a purification ceremony.

Oaksspaulding wrote: “All of the Gospels were almost certainly set down within the lifetimes of many eyewitnesses to the events. So if you yourself were not an eyewitness--though I think that there is good evidence that one of the Gospels was directly written by one--and you wanted to make an accurate report, you could always just check with them, so to speak, among other things. Or, if you didn't check with them, you would run the risk of being taken to task by them--"no, it didn't happen that way," etc. Plus the time for the oral tradition to bubble wasn't really that long, and there weren't even that many Christians at the time to facilitate the bubbling.

This is not of course to say that the Gospel writers did not make use of multiple sources of different kinds, nor is it to make an a priori claim that the writers got everything right.”

I realize that the church traditions aren’t reliable, but those traditions call for a whole lot of crucifixions of those who witnessed the events with most of those deaths occurring before Mark was written. Then you have the dispersal of witnesses with, for example, Thomas off in India. I would question whether it was possible to fact check, except after the fact.

I would also speculate that most of those who witnessed events would not have paid enough attention to the event to recall it 20 years later (I am thinking Roman soldiers, and the Jews at the Temple during Passover). It just wasn’t that big a deal. Scholars also know that some events such as Palm entrance into the city are fabrications that had been used over and over.

One of the things that I feel is important is the diversity of belief in the second century. From our 21st century non-scholarly viewpoint, it appears as though there existed a monolithic path from events to what we read in our bedside Bibles. It just isn’t the case.

If you have taken the time to read the full body of work written and believed in by early Christians, the differences are incredible. That it became what we read today is due, in part, to the influence of the more powerful congregations of the second century. The victors write the history. They permit certain things to be copied and not others. I’m not saying that these non-canonical works are more reliable. I am merely pointing out that there were indeed canon and apostolic authority among congregations which are different than the modern canonical, and that weren’t fact checked with the traditional authorities.

Plus, stories such as those that appear in the Infancy gospels did not suddenly appear in 184 CE because a group of Christians suddenly realized that there had to be data on the missing portions of Jesus’ life. This was an oral tradition that existed for over a hundred years that was only written down in the late second century. (I apologize for the incorrect dates here. In addition to my hard drive frying, http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/, a favorite reference of mine, is down for upgrading.) The letters between Seneca and Paul and the Acts of Pilate hadn’t been composed … but they certainly were circulated orally. And so on.

I apologize for the wordiness of this post.

Double post

#355. oldwoman

Wow! a very reasoned out post. It will take a day or so to respond in detail. However, I would like to refer to one point.

Saxhorn wrote: “I was just wanting to make sure that we weren't calling Hellenistic Jews pagans, or that we were forgetting that the first believers were Jewish. Even some of the non-Jews were God-fearers. Would we still call them pagans? “

No fear of that. Pagans would have no difficulty worshipping (or fearing) another god. What is the difference between worshipping 12 or 13 gods. The problem would be when they would be asked to relinquish the other 12. They would get a bit queasy about that and their neighbors would take it very, very personally.

As you use the term "pagan" it refers to a non-Jewish person (gentiles) espousing polytheism. The God-fearers were gentiles who accepted the teachings of the Jews and even attended synagogue services listening from behind the screen. For one reason or another they had not accepted circumcision to fully enter into Judaism. I would not call these people pagan.

So, are we talking about different classes of people?
1. Jewish followers of Jesus
2. Gentile followers of Jesus
3. Jews not following Jesus
4. Gentile God-fearers not following Jesus
5. Polytheistic pagans

Any other classes involved?

Are we too early to include gnosticism?

You bring up an excellent point, Saxhorn. I tend to think in terms of discrete clumpings of Gentiles/Jews. It is more proper to think in terms of a smearing of belief and of practice ... from the most hard core Mosaic Law followers to those who would be considered Gnostic with shades of gray between.

Considering other comments I've made, this would be an inconsistancy in my thinking about the first century. I understand, now, what you meant in your previous post about "God Fearers".

When I said the fissure was not great, I was referring the split between Jewish followers of Jesus and Gentile Christians, not the split between non-Jesus Jews and Christians.

I don't buy that Paul was the "wicked priest" in the Dead Sea documents, because a) He was not a priest, and b) the Qumran community was focused on the Temple, not the Pharisees. As far as they were concerned the Pharisees barely existed. (In fact Sanders points out that they were a relatively small group at the time of Jesus.)

But then, I have a knee jerk reaction to books with the words "code" or "key" in the title, especially concerning the Dead Sea Scrolls. They reek of Da Vinci code half baked conspiracy theories.

Oldwoman:

I've started to work through your various postings (starting with 335) and think I understand your basic premise. Is this correct? There were several groups of followers of Jesus, perhaps scattered throughout the region. They each had their own collection of traditions, writings, and apostolic authority. So all should be given credence and treated equally. Therefore, the Bible is not more special, or more inspired, than any of the others.

Did I get it?

Could you identify the different groups and tell me about each one's claim to apostolic authority?

Arctic stranger wrote: " When I said the fissure was not great, I was referring the split between Jewish followers of Jesus and Gentile Christians, not the split between non-Jesus Jews and Christians. "

I keep thinking, here, of the efforts of Church Fathers writing against the Ebionites. Changes in Luke (and other Gospels) to eliminate various heresies (heresy here meaning other belief not orthodox), codifying doctrine to eliminate such concepts as God entering into Jesus at baptism and exiting just prior to death, among many.

He continued: " I don't buy that Paul was the "wicked priest" in the Dead Sea documents "

Not many do.

And: " the Qumran community was focused on the Temple, not the Pharisees. "

I think there remains much speculation over the community there ... or should I say communities. I believe that this community was occupied at different times by different sorts of people. I am not an archeologist nor a first century scholar so I will have to spend some time looking at what those who are have found.

The thought that they were apocalypticists like Jesus and John the B resonates with me at some level. But I don't want to accept something just because it feels right. That they disappeared to be replaced by another group after the revolt makes sense to me.

Perhaps historians have combined two different sects into the un-named 4th sect to accompany the Essenes, the Pharisees, Sadducees.

And: " In fact Sanders points out that they were a relatively small group at the time of Jesus.) "

It is very possible that is true. But their significance as the foil in the Chreiai involving Jesus can not be overlooked. Small group maybe, but of great importance to those who wrote of Jesus. It may be that their influence, not at the time of Jesus' life, but at the time of the stories recording was important.

That is why I find Erhman persuasive in his insistence of taking the first century in its historical context.

Arctic stranger continues: " But then, I have a knee jerk reaction to books with the words "code" or "key" in the title, especially concerning the Dead Sea Scrolls. They reek of Da Vinci code half baked conspiracy theories. "

I found the "Da Vinci Code" entertaining for what it was ... simply a 21st century murder mystery. It didn't pretend to be anything else. But I understand how many people who spend their time researching the first century would object to historical speculation contained within. I myself get upset about movies and books that include my area of interest and specialty (Martial Arts) in them.

But this sentence confounds me " I have a knee jerk reaction to books with the words "code" or "key" in the title,". Did I miss that someone used a reference that contained that?

Saxhorn wrote: " I understand your basic premise. Is this correct? There were several groups of followers of Jesus, perhaps scattered throughout the region. "

Depending on who you read, from 200 to 250 different ones from Asia Minor to Rome.

He continued: " They each had their own collection of traditions, writings, and apostolic authority. "

Yes.

And: " So all should be given credence and treated equally. "

No .. they should not. What they do is give indication that there was quite an oral tradition going on and some of the mechanisms of that tradition. Importantly, that the bulk of people talking about the events, even well into the second century, did not have a written account of the happenings. Most were working from the oral accounts. I think there is a very good reason that, when the modern canon was formed, it contained the books it did. The books of the NT are the oldest of the Christian writings we have left. Interesting how so few were written.

That is not to say that I believe that the Bible contains actual accounts of history. That the story that ends "let he who is without sin cast the first stone" was an actual event and not a theological statement by a scribe from the 4th century. It is my favorite Bible story from my childhood, but it is most certainly a late addition.

Saxhorn wrote: " Could you identify the different groups and tell me about each one's claim to apostolic authority? "

I will try but it will be a lot of work. I'll need to track back through historians who study the heresiologists as that is, in most cases, the only record we have of most of them. Most do not have names. SInced the historical record is so sketchy, it may not be possible. It would be a good exercise for me.

As you said, the problem with studying the early heterodox communities is a) Most of what we know about them, we know from their enemies. Imagine future generations trying to figure out who Barak Obama was if all they had to go on was the speeches of McCain and Palin.

And 2) although we have documents, they are pretty cryptic, and for the most part they don't go into the beliefs or practices of the communities who used those documents. We don't even know if they were used. We have documents from The Nag Hammadi Library, which I recommend for two reasons. Robinson presents them as we have them...full of blanks. Other authors fill in the blank, and some of them can get pretty creative in the process. The second reason is that the editors of the various manuscripts do not give you a lot of commentary on what they mean, so you don't go into reading them with preconceived notions of the communities that might have used them.

Ehrman does a decent job with his Lost Christianities but I really do suggest looking at the original sources first.

As to the "key" and "code" parts, I was refering the books by Eisenman.

#355

As I work through your post I want to comment first of all on this passage: "1) 20 years from the traditional death of Jesus and Thessalonians. During this period, much was happening."

I'm going to consider here the first year or so after Jesus' crucifixion:

a) It's possible that hearer/followers of Jesus spread His teaching and formed into small groups, especially those who lived away from Jerusalem. But, unless they were a part of the group lead by the 12 apostles they could have no claim of "apostolic authority."

b) It's also possible that people left the apostles teaching and began their own groups. Would they consider themselves to have apostolic authority. Would they want or need it? Would we, centuries later, grant apostolic authority to them?

c) The group that followed the apostles' teaching were all Jews, but not all from Judea. There was a mixture of Greek speaking Jews (the Hellenists) who had absorbed the Greek culture, and Judean Jews. Most of the Judean Jews probably lived in Jerusalem, although I'm sure that some of Jesus' followers from other towns may have abandoned their homes to join in following the apostles.

d) We should consider two types of worship among the followers of the apostles, temple worship and synagogue worship. The Hellenists, living away from Judea, only knew synagogue worship. What influences and or tensions might arise because of the differences between the two?

So, as we consider the groups of "Jesus followers" we should consider their origins, as well.

Arctic Stranger wrote: " As to the "key" and "code" parts, I was refering the books by Eisenman. "

The two I have are "The Dead Sea Scrolls and the First Christians: Essays and Translations" and "James the Borther of Jesus: the Key to .....".

I didn't read the secondary title to the book I had. I'm sorry you dimiss that book out of hand, but I think I mentioned earlier that I have not completed either of the above and may wind up being disappointed. The bit I have read of the former shows that is is a very densely written book which is chock full of information. I wouldn't compare the book in any way with a 20th century murder mystery.

I train in Boston for a few weeks in February and a few weeks in July. While up there, I visit the Harvard Coop and browse through the texts that professors assign to their students. I usually pick up one or two books from those assigned texts each trip.

One of the Eisenman texts and another by Erhman I purchased there in the past 10 years. These texts were considered important enough to use in a graduate course at Harvard.

Saxhorn wrote: " I'm going to consider here the first year or so after Jesus' crucifixion: "

I believe that the best way to examine the spread of the body of information (correct and incorrect) is step wise through the chronology.

Your a): Even one year away from the event of Jesus' death there was much incorrect information. Just because a congregation (the word historians use often is "cult" but like the word "sophist", that word carries negative connotations in the 21st century) claims apostolic authority does not mean we, in hindsight grant it to them.

Much of today's mainstream theology claims apostolic authority which I am not inclined to grant.

By way of example, I will use the copy of Matthew which Papias mentions in the remaining information we have from Papias. Those who had a copy of that document would claim apostolic authority. Would you grant it to them on the strength of that document?

The gospel that Papias speaks of is not the Matthew from your bedside Bible. It is a sayings gospel, it is written in Hebrew, and it is very different from what we read today.

The point is that THEY believed they had apostolic authority. They made the claim in their evangelizing. They made the claim in the apologetics they practiced. Who is to say that their claim isn't better than Paul's? Now, in modern theology, they are scoffed at. Actually, Eusebius scoffed at them. But they are believers. And they had some things right that Eusebius didn't because he didn't have some of the sources we have today.

Your b): It is highly unlikely that people having heard the testimony of the apostles would get it all 100% correct. Then again, there is the first century tradition of telling a tale based on the audience. Or, there is simply the sources which, at that time, required extensive interpretation. A sayings gospel such as Thomas is very difficult to understand to 21st century highly educated folk.

Imagine how difficult it must have been to the simple folk that were part of this Jesus Movement. We in the 21st century would not grant them apostolic authority simply because what they understood Jesus' message to be is nothing at all what it has evolved into.

But they definitely needed apostolic authority. They needed it just as badly as the early Christians needed to comb through the Old Testament to find prophesy to justify their religion as being ancient.

Your c): We will have to disagree here. I think that those who followed Jesus during his lifetime were not from Jerusalem. I believe them to be almost entirely from the rural places that Jesus traveled prior to the last week of his life. I doubt that he developed any kind of following from his short week in Jerusalem. I seriously doubt that anyone that he didn't bring with him paid much attention to him except as someone who was making their worship difficult for a short time. Once he was arrested, it was back to business as usual.

Your d): " The Hellenists, living away from Judea, only knew synagogue worship. "

I would claim that if they didn't know temple worship, then there would be no need for moneychangers. The moneychangers were there to convert coin from different geographic regions so that pilgrims could purchase sacrifices rather than bring the livestock with them. If they didn't know temple worship, why go to Jerusalem at all. Why not stay home if there was no special benefit to being a pilgrim to the temple?

Further in d): " What influences and or tensions might arise because of the differences between the two? "

There were quite substantial tensions underlying Passover with different groups converging to one location. That is principally why Pilate would leave Caeseria once a year and travel with his elite guard to Jerusalem to keep peace during that week. It is also why the Sadduccees were concerned about the slightest disruption. This was a time of year when sectarians would try to breed unrest.

Saxhorn's conclusion: " So, as we consider the groups of "Jesus followers" we should consider their origins, as well. "

I agree totally. And their social status (although this was more an issue with the Christians). And where they appear chronologically.

This is even true for Christians up into the 13th century. I am thinking of the Jews who lived in the contested areas between the Muslims and the Byzantines who would willing convert from Christianity to Islam and from Islam to Christianity (although mostly the former).

Oldwoman:

Regarding considering the first year or so: I wanted to only go one step at a time so that we could speak in specifics rather than broad generalizations.

Your a): Even one year away from the event of Jesus' death there was much incorrect information.

This seems like pure speculation to me. I think N. T. Wright in The Meaning of Jesus: Two Visions speaks well to the point of the accuracy of oral transmission.

The claim of apostolic authority must be that the group was taught by an apostle, in my view. Apostolic authority means that there is a line of succession from the 12 apostles governmentally as well as theologically. Mainline denominations (oops, almost spelled it "demoninations" hee, hee) trace roots through a reformer to the Catholic Church and thus to the apostles. The apostolic fathers were the disciples of the apostles, the church fathers the disciples of the apostolic fathers, etc.

So, Papias was Bishop of Hieropolis, near Laodicea and Collosae. He lived from about 60-130. He claimed to be a listener of John, but also asked itinerants about the sayings of the other apostles. He seemed to favor oral accounts over the written ones, and Eusebius holds his scholarship in light esteem. Now, Papias writes that the Gospel of Matthew was first written by Matthew in Hebrew while Peter and Paul lived in Rome. That places this gospel around 65 AD at the latest. Is this the one that you think is mostly sayings?

Your b) again see the comment by Wright mentioned above. You seem to think in terms of a single hearing of the gospel message, rather than being discipled, trained, in it. In a worship community the message is repeated on a regular basis and the elders correct this errors of the novices.

Your c) does not relate to my c). I was speaking of the followers of the apostles, you are referring to the followers of Jesus.

Your d) The money changers exchanged Roman coins for Temple shekels. It has no bearing on Hellenists.

My reference was to the tensions between Hellenists and Judean Jews.

Saxhorn wrote in 366: “Regarding considering the first year or so: I wanted to only go one step at a time so that we could speak in specifics rather than broad generalizations.”

I like that idea. It would be cool to step through and follow as each tradition evolves. Ideally, it would be nice to speak in specifics. Alas, there are no specifics to be had until we reach Thessalonians in 50CE. We have no evidence other than Christian writings well after the fact. There simply are no secular sources. No birth or death records. No reports of a healer named Jesus even though we have other secular reports of other “messiahs”, their activities, and their deaths.

The only evidence historians have at their disposal is an examination of how first century Jews lived, how oral traditions of that time were made, the methodologies of population migration (temporary and permanent) and the secular historical record. Scholars have secular accounts of Roman actions against revolutionaries in the first century. Even peoples for whom we have written records such as the community at Qumrun are under major dispute by historians. We don’t have consensus on who lived at Qumrun or what they were up to.

One piece of evidence that can be known about the dispersal of the Jesus story is not confined to authorized (read Christian) sources. This can be seen with the story appearing places where the apostles never tread. We can see how widely the story was spread while at the same time see that the congregations formed were not that large. I would call it a light, but widespread scattering of the seed (story).

Old Woman’s statement : “a): Even one year away from the event of Jesus' death there was much incorrect information.”

Saxhorn response: “This seems like pure speculation to me. I think N. T. Wright in The Meaning of Jesus: Two Visions speaks well to the point of the accuracy of oral transmission. “

If there is accuracy in the oral tradition as Wright claims, how is it that there are some many WILDLY different traditions ? Even the creation stories are amazingly different for those who profess a belief in Jesus or in Christ. There were extreme differences in whether he was divine or not, how the divinity was transmitted to Jesus, whether that divinity left him, the nature of evil in the world, the belief in the hereafter, and so forth. Even how many gods these Jesus followers believed existed.

Saxhorn continued: “The claim of apostolic authority must be that the group was taught by an apostle, in my view.”

In our view. I am with you on what would constitute apostolic authority from a 21st century perspective. But,we shouldn’t be concerned with what we, in the 21st century, understand to be one thing or another, however, if we want to understand the propagation of the Jesus and Christ stories.

I would claim that to understand the movement that was occurring in the first century, we need to see it through the expectations, traditions, practices of the people who lived it. How did THEY understand apostolic authority?

It is true that some, who lived near Antioch, who lived near Corinth, who lived near Jerusalem had one view, being on the itineraries of those who could correct or elaborate any misconceptions or deviations.

But, in my estimate, those comprised a small portion of those who were discussing and writing about the events, transmitting the sayings, thinking about the apologetics.

The advent of canon occurred because there were too many versions circulating. Evangelizing was not possible without doctrine. Doctrine was almost unheard of in the first century. Evangelization was unheard of in the first century. Pagans required that you follow ritual but only within a village and token adherence was sufficient to keep the gods pleased. Pagans gladly followed token ritual. Pagans had no doctrine. They had no need for it.

Apologetics required it. If you discovered that your story was being hijacked for the purposes of a Gnostic set such as one of the gospel stories, you altered the story so that it couldn’t be used that way as was done in later editions of the gospel accounts of Gethsemane. After all, that is why these things were put to written form in the first place. Setting these accounts in written form was atypical for the time …. particularly in a world where the literacy rate was less than 3% (somewhat higher in urban locations). But being literate in those times certainly did not give one the ability to compose a story in written form.

Saxhorn elaborated: “Apostolic authority means that there is a line of succession from the 12 apostles governmentally as well as theologically. Mainline denominations (oops, almost spelled it "demoninations" hee, hee) trace roots through a reformer to the Catholic Church and thus to the apostles. The apostolic fathers were the disciples of the apostles, the church fathers the disciples of the apostolic fathers, etc.”

I would respond, absolutely … to us here in the 21st century. Even to those in the second century who were merchants or upper class pagans. But not to a laborer without the ability to read and write in Palestine at a time one year after Jesus died This laborer’s entire involvement in the oral tradition was limited to telling his neighbor what an itinerant told him at a market stall.

Saxhorn wrote: “ Now, Papias writes that the Gospel of Matthew was first written by Matthew in Hebrew while Peter and Paul lived in Rome. That places this gospel around 65 AD at the latest. Is this the one that you think is mostly sayings?”

It is the one that Papias describes as a sayings gospel. Textural critics place the Matthew we know at no earlier than 85 CE.

Saxhorn wrote: “Your b) again see the comment by Wright mentioned above. You seem to think in terms of a single hearing of the gospel message, rather than being discipled, trained, in it. In a worship community the message is repeated on a regular basis and the elders correct this errors of the novices “

I would respond that, again, there is a wide variety of accounts in the oral tradition. It is true that there were congregations centered around a Peter, a James, an Andrew. It is also true that, given the extremely wide geographical territory populated by followers of Jesus, most of those believers had never seen an apostle. Most had heard, but not read on their own, an account of SOME part of Jesus’s life. We know from the writings of the heresiologists, that most had it wrong.

We also know from Paul’s epistles, that he found congregations already formed that had erroneous accounts. We know that Paul’s congregations, after he moved on, were influenced to change from his teachings.

And we can see, by simply polling modern church members of the same congregation, that even with weekly inculcation, that there are as many different beliefs within as there are members of that congregation.

Oldwoman

You like to talk in big generalities painting a very large picture. However, you do not cite sources and give specifics upon which your claims are made. That practice amounts to speculation.

You don't like the biblical record as evidence, but it is the best record of he first century that we have.

Papias' gospel of Matthew, have you read it?

In #365 you wrote: The point is that THEY believed they had apostolic authority. They made the claim in their evangelizing. They made the claim in the apologetics they practiced. Who is to say that their claim isn't better than Paul's? Now, in modern theology, they are scoffed at. Actually, Eusebius scoffed at them. But they are believers. And they had some things right that Eusebius didn't because he didn't have some of the sources we have today.

Are you refering above to the church in Hierapolis where Papias was bishop? If not, of whom were you writing?

Saxhorn wrote: " However, you do not cite sources and give specifics upon which your claims are made. That practice amounts to speculation. "

I could, as many here do, cite one text after another for you "to sit down and read". That would require you to read for several weeks and require you to sift out the support for yourself from 500 pages of text.

My preference is to make arguments using knowledge that you have already seen and know. Rather than send you to find a text that I have in my library and say to you "read these 500 pages and you will find in there what I am talking about", I'd rather appeal to your common sense and data you already have.

I don't know about you, but my current list of "books to read and that are laying about my home" is between 200-300. I have no desire to burden you with additional reading. I will merely work with things you have seen many times before.

If I have to wait for you to find a text, read the text, figure out what I am referring to and then come back to respond, this would a very very slow discussion. It would be helpful if I could link some things for you. We could then go into a little more depth. UNfortunately, so much is not available on line, is (in the case of earlychristianwritings.com) offline, or you don't have subscriptions to (such as BibleReview and BAR).

You obviously know almost everything I have referenced in my posts. None of it is new to you. You have read the church fathers. You are familiar with Comma Johanneum and Pericope Adulterae so I don't need to send you to find a text discussing these things. You understand that Christian theology did not leap fully developed from the heads of 21st century theologians, 15th century theologians, 3rd century theologians, or even Paul. You are completely aware of the Ebionites, the Manachians, the Arians, etc.

Saxhorn wrote: " You don't like the biblical record as evidence, "

I do like it ... I recognize its limitations. I see that when a gospel calls for a census where none existed, there is a problem. I see that there are 9 different endings to Mark, there is a problem. I see when extraordinary claims are made without evidence, there is a problem. And so forth.

Saxhorn continued: " Papias' gospel of Matthew, have you read it?"

No one in the past 17 centuries or so has. Maybe longer.

Finally, Saxhorn wrote: " If not, of whom were you writing? "

All of those to whom the heresiologists directed their attentions. Those that spread fantastic stories for which natural explanations are more probable. I am not referring to the church which Papias served as bishop.

Most scholars believe there are only three different endings to Mark.

Evangelization did not exist in the first century? Where did you get this? The Greek word euangelion was often used of the Romans and their conquests. Many of the Greek words that ended up being "churchy" words were originally political terms, including the word itself for church, ecclesia.

Religious evangelization was not a common practice, except by the Romans who insisted that their emperor be worshiped as a god. You are assuming the early Christianity is purely a religious movement, but that is a bit anachronistic. Religion was often a part of the political structure of the day. Roman colonization was a form of evangelism.

As to the diaspora Jews, there were more Jews living in the city of Rome than in all of Palestine in the first century. Some would make pilgrimmages to the Temple, but clearly not all. There was nothing in first century Judaism akin to the Islamic Hadj. Hellenistic Judaism was a very mixed bag, but one thing you can say about it is that it did NOT revolve around Temple worship. The temple was in many ways in important part of their heritage, but served more like Israel itself serves for Jews today. That it is there is important, and one might even visit it, even work there for a while, but it is not essential to their faith.

Oldwoman,

I'm sorry my research background necessitates sources so that statements can be verified. You may be more widely read than I when it comes to the apostolic fathers. You certainly more widely read when it comes to liberal reinterpretations of historic christianity.

Even what I read was decades ago and I no longer own teh items. So, I really appreciate specificity.

Well, I'm glad to know that you haven't read Papias' gospel of Matthew.

So, if we are going to establish apostolic authority and orthodoxy don't we have to start at the beginning where it is closely defined?

Oldwoman,

You wrote: One piece of evidence that can be known about the dispersal of the Jesus story is not confined to authorized (read Christian) sources. This can be seen with the story appearing places where the apostles never tread.

How do you know where the apostles tread? How do you know where they didn't?

Arctic Stranger wrote: " Most scholars believe there are only three different endings to Mark "

From the article, “To be continued … the many endings of Mark” by Michael W. Holmes, Professor of Biblical Studies and Early Christianity at Bethel College, that appears in Bible Review, issue dated August 2001:

Form 1: text ends at Mark 16:1-8. The last is where the women flee from the tomb and say nothing to anyone.

This form is found in the oldest of manuscripts (fourth century) Codex Sinaiticus and Codex Vaticanus. Scholars also have this in Syriac, Sahidic Coptic, and Armenian translations dating to the 4th century.

Eusebius writes: the accurate copies conclude with the women fleeing. The end is here in nearly all copies of Mark.

Jerome writes: Speaking of the longer version, “this section is found in only a few copies, almost all being without the final passage”.

Origen and Clement are unaware of anything following verse 8.

Form 2: Consists of Form 1 plus 2 sentences. The women tell Peter and a confusing sentence stating “Jesus sent out through them …” I assume them means the women.

This form found only in Codex Bobbiensis (4th or 5th century).

Form 3 variation a): The long version which includes verses 9-20.

This form is found in 95% of all manuscripts we have today. Some date from the 4th and 5th century.

Irenaeus quotes Mark 16:19. Tatian and Hippolytus knew the additions.

Form 3 variation b): includes the long version (variation a) but also includes obeli that indicates that the scribes who copied the longer version believed it not to be original. In a dozen manuscripts, the scribe notes that “the evangelist finished here” (meaning that the author of Mark ended the story at verse 8).

Form 4: Consists of Mark 16; 1-20 with additional verse added after verse 14.

This form is found only in Codex Washingtonianus although Jerome speaks of it.

Form 5, variation 1: Long version, plus form 2.

Form 5, variation 2: Variation 1 plus 2 obeli. Both obeli indicate “this is also in circulation”.

Form 5, variation 3 and 4: Have obeli at other locations in the text indicating that these versions are also being circulated but are not considered original. Scribes traditionally did not like to leave anything out, and would include spurious text but annotate the spurious text with obeli.

The above has been posted without permission of the author. The article is a very interesting one that includes textural criticism supporting the author's claim that the shortest version (Form 1) is most likely the original. I recommend reading it.

Arctic Stranger then wrote: “Evangelization did not exist in the first century? Where did you get this? “

Followed by: “Religious evangelization was not a common practice, except by the Romans who insisted that their emperor be worshiped as a god “

Did you answer your own question here?

Arctic Stranger wrote: “Some would make pilgrimmages to the Temple, but clearly not all. “

We have not been in disagreement here.

Well, there was a very BIG "except" in that sentence.

There is a difference between the statements, " Most scholars believe there are only three different endings to Mark " and "Textual analysis shows various manuscripts some with variant different endings."

One manuscript does not a summer make.

Arctic stranger wrote: " Well, there was a very BIG "except" in that sentence. "

Well, I will more than happy to read your evidence that the Romans insisted that their emperors be worshipped as gods prior to 50 CE. That would be enough to make me change my statement from "evangelizing was unheard of in the first century" to "religious evangelizing was mostly unheard of in the first century".

I know that **certain** dead emperors were considered gods in the first century but that worship wasn't mandatory. I know that one emperor claimed that, while alive, he was a god although I don't have the evidence to show that he was able to mandate the inhabitants of the empire to worship him. I am also aware that, I believe it was Pliny the Younger in the second century, developed a test to trap Christians. All they had to do was place a token at the feet of the statue of a emperor.

He continued: " There is a difference between the statements, " Most scholars believe there are only three different endings to Mark " and "Textual analysis shows various manuscripts some with variant different endings."

There is a difference between saying there are 9 different endings to Mark (which I did) and saying that most scholars believe there are only 3 (which you did).

I merely listed the 9 (so far) to which I referred.
"

From Wiki, which is the best I can do now:

In the Roman Empire the Imperial cult was the worship of the Roman emperor as a god. This practice began at the start of the Empire under Augustus, and became a prominent element of Roman religion.

The cult spread over the whole Empire within a few decades, more strongly in the east than in the west. Emperor Diocletian further reinforced it when he demanded the proskynesis and adopted the adjective sacrum for all things pertaining to the imperial person.

Although the deification of emperors was gradually abandoned after the emperor Constantine I started supporting Christianity. However, the concept of the imperial person as "sacred" carried over, in a Christianized form, into the Byzantine Empire: in the context of Caesaropapism, the Byzantine emperor was considered "God-crowned", and was called Isapostolos, "Equal-to-the-Apostles", and regarded as God's vicegerent on Earth.

Diocletian .... so evangelization of the inhabitants of the Roman Empire to the emperor as god began sometime after 285 CE.

I was looking for something in the first few decades of the first century.

It has been mentioned earlier that it is considered in bad form to actually quote from Scripture. I will risk it to make a few observations.

A careful reading of the Bible shows that it assumes that belief in God is rational.

Throughout the Psalms, God’s existence is stated as a fact. Psalm 19 points to the creation as an eloquent, daily testimony of God’s existence. That same psalm goes on to point to God’s revelation, His law which the Jews had, as being a complete source of truth, wisdom, fairness and a great profit to those who will heed it.

New Testament believers are told to “be ready always to give an answer to every man that asketh you a reason of the hope that is in you” in 1 Peter 3:15. Men may not agree with or appreciate the reasons given, but this is far from a simple biographical testimony of "what Jesus has done for my life".

Paul’s normal course during his travels was to enter a town, find a synagogue of the Jews, and reason with them out of the Scriptures to prove that Jesus was Christ, the Messiah. If you check the language used, his procedure was the same process you would expect in a debate or a legal case, making logical arguments from the statements of Scripture as supported by facts which those hearing knew or could confirm (see Acts 17:1-3).

Paul was so irritated by the stupid idolatry of the Athenians that he entered into debates in the synagogues and market place of Athens. This came to the attention to the philosophical leaders of the city, who invited Paul to discuss these matters with them. He presented a reasoned defense of Christianity. The result was that one group mocked his beliefs, some deferred to talk about his claims later, and others became followers of Jesus Christ (Acts 17:16-34)

On the subject of the compatibility of reason and faith, Paul goes even further. He asked the brethren in Thessalonica that they pray for his ministerial efforts, specifically that he would be saved from having to deal with those who don’t have faith, as he considered them to be unreasonable as well as wicked (2 Thessalonians 3:1-2).

This only scratches the surface of this topic, but these items indicate that the Bible presents a system of belief that expects its adherents to utilize their mind as well as their emotions. And to use their minds in a manner that glorifies God, as defined, not by men, but by God Himself as expressed in His revelation to man, the Bible.

377

You didn't read my post did you? It did not START with Diocletian.

Three points if you can figure out, from actually reading the post, under which emperor did the emperor cult begin?

Augustus Caesar, died and officially deified AD 14. I claim my three points.

#378 was a very good post ittai. I also believe that Christianity is rational and can be presented from a rational point of view using the content of Scripture and other facts. The fact that some Christians cannot effectively present their beliefs rationally do not invalidate Christianity any more than the fact that one cannot explain the neurological processes of the human body would invalidate the human nervous system.

A-S wrote: " You didn't read my post did you? "

Ummmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm ..........

I ***ABSOLUTELTY*** read your post or I wouldn't have wasted the time to respond to it. But it is to be taken along with your other posts as a group.

A-S continued: " Three points if you can figure out, from actually reading the post, under which emperor did the emperor cult begin? "

Ummmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm ........

Your claim here is that I MUST read your post to understand what is going on in the first century.

I don't think so.

I will give you a million points if you can read the following sentence and understand it:

The beginnning of the emperor cult and the claim you made in post 370 that "except by the Romans who insisted that their emperor be worshiped as a god." are 2 entirely different things.

So I will ask the question once more in a slightly different way:

What evidence do scholars have that Romans demanded that all peoples of the Roman Empire worship the emperor as a god in the first few decades of the first century? Because that is essentially the claim you were making to counter my claim that "evangelization was (modified to mostly) unheard of in the first century".

Is this what is preventing you from going back and dealing with the REAL points I have made?

Myopic wrote: " I claim my three points "

Good job ... unfortunately it is irrelevant to the minor stasis between A-S and myself.

this may not be considered "forced evangelism" per se, but would you consider the Roman eradication of the Druids as a sign that they did are what other people believed? Or the sporadic persecution of Christians?

Oh, and Caesar was worshiped as a god.

Not the emperor cult, but Roman colonial "evangelism" did demand worship of the Roman gods, and early Christians were persecuted as "atheists" for refusing to participate in the cult, just as Jews had been persecuted for similar nonconformism.

Pagan "evangelism" is also indicated by the placing of a Greek idol in the Temple at Jerusalem during the second century BCE, and by the spread of new cults such as Mithraism and Gnosticism in the first couple of centuries CE.

In both Hellenistic and Roman culture, the imposition of religious conformity was a part of the colonization and assimilation process, as the imposition of Christianity or Islam was to become in later centuries. The latter religions were less open to syncretism than the pagan religions, but it still happened (I suspect much of the Marian cult is derived from Diana worship, and Indonesian Islam is heterodox due to local elements).

re topic name "Should belief in God be rational?"

No belief is rational. Beliefs come from the non-rational part of the human being. It plays a big part in such things as appreciation of art, nature etc.

Faith and belief are different. It is impossible to live without faith e.g. when I'm on the operating table, I have faith in the surgeon. However, my faith might not work out for me -- the doctor might make a mistake. We usually take such things as the earth is round on faith although we could do simple experiments to prove it.

On a lighter note: the T-shirt slogan that says "Everybody has to believe in something. I believe I'll have another drink".

#1

I find that the Book of Job is best understood as a parable. A long one!