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Faith  Suspended Member (Idle past 1473 days) Posts: 35298 From: Nevada, USA Joined: |
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Author | Topic: The Tension of Faith | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Percy Member Posts: 22504 From: New Hampshire Joined: Member Rating: 4.9 |
PaulK writes: As I said, I see it as evidence against a physical resurrection. And that is because a physical resurrection raises the problem of where Jesus was when he wasn’t being seen, and because the evidence - such as it is - can be easily explained without one. Yeah, sorry, I'm still not seeing the evidence. I understand your arguments, but they're based on your preferred interpretations, not evidence. When faced with someone with other interpretations all you've got is argument against argument, not evidence. There's no evidence in the NT for anything, including the resurrection, neither physical nor spiritual.
quote: There has to be some reason why they said it. That it is based on something that did happen seems to me more likely than that it was a complete fabrication. Why? Some argued that even if Clinton wasn't actually running a pedophilia ring out of the basement of a pizza parlor, that it is based upon something true seems more likely than that it was a complete fabrication. Why? That’s because they hate Clinton. To the point of irrationality. There never was any real evidence - just a few emails with slightly odd phrasing - so we know that the rest was made up. That they hate Clinton to the point of irrationality is your unevidenced argument, which is the same type of argument you started with when you said, "There had to be some reason why they said it." You don't have evidence but rather unevidenced arguments guided by your own opinions.
On the other hand post mortem hallucinations, dreams about dead people, mistaken identifications are all things that happen quite commonly. And from there cognitive dissonance makes it quite likely that the disciples - some of them, at least - might come up with the idea of the resurrection. But if they wanted to manufacture evidence - as later Christians may well have done - then a vague list of disconnected appearances isn’t exactly a likely choice. That's the opinion you're arguing for, not evidence.
quote: Do you have any evidence it was ? No, of course not. I was only offering yet another possibility that has no evidence. And your own preferred scenario has no evidence. If you chose you could argue all day with someone about which of these possibilities is correct, but you'd never settle anything because no evidence exists. Here's an example of a Bible-related claim that has evidence: the tale of Noah is not original but has its origins in an older tale. The evidence is the older Epic of Gilgamesh. The parallels are undeniable. Issue settled.
quote: An argument isn’t evidence but it explains why the text may be considered evidence,... You can argue for an interpretation or scenario, but an argument can't turn text into evidence.
...and I certainly don’t think that Faith would argue that Paul made it up. The opinion I thought Faith would disagree with was yours, the one where you said that the accounts about the appearances of Jesus were insufficiently detailed and impressive.
But really this is inference to the best explanation. If you accept that Jesus existed... Is there evidence that Jesus existed?
...then I have a parsimonious explanation of why the belief in the resurrection started, why there is so little about the appearances prior to Matthew and why we find so much variance in the Gospel (plus Acts) accounts of the appearances. A "parsimonious explanation" is not evidence.
That’s pretty good going, for a question of history. It seems more a question of religious claims. --Percy Edited by Percy, : Typo.
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Percy Member Posts: 22504 From: New Hampshire Joined: Member Rating: 4.9 |
Faith writes: One does not speak of an historical account of actual events in the real world as a "religious work." That implies something like a treatise, not a report of observations of real events. The gospels are historical accounts, not religious works. The Gospels are not historical accounts. If you don't like the term "religious works" could I suggest "sacred writings." --Percy
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jar Member (Idle past 423 days) Posts: 34026 From: Texas!! Joined: |
Percy writes: If you don't like the term "religious works" could I suggest "sacred writings." Exactly, just like the Qur'an, Bhagavad Gita, Vedas and Book of Mormon.
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kbertsche Member (Idle past 2160 days) Posts: 1427 From: San Jose, CA, USA Joined: |
Percy writes:
The modern scholarly view is that the gospels are examples of "Graeco-Roman biography", which is a historical, non-fiction genre. The fact that they are "religious works" does not obviate their historicity. The Gospels are not historical accounts. If you don't like the term "religious works" could I suggest "sacred writings.""Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind." — Albert Einstein I am very astonished that the scientific picture of the real world around me is very deficient. It gives us a lot of factual information, puts all of our experience in a magnificently consistent order, but it is ghastly silent about all and sundry that is really near to our heart, that really matters to us. It cannot tell us a word about red and blue, bitter and sweet, physical pain and physical delight; it knows nothing of beautiful and ugly, good or bad, God and eternity. Science sometimes pretends to answer questions in these domains, but the answers are very often so silly that we are not inclined to take them seriously. — Erwin Schroedinger
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PaulK Member Posts: 17828 Joined: Member Rating: 2.3
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quote: If you are going to ignore any written accounts you will lose a lot of history. While written accounts are not always good evidence for what they claim (something that needs to be established case by case) the fact that the thing has been written is evidence in itself. Just saying that it could be complete fiction and ignoring it is not really a sensible view. And if you don’t see inference to best explanation to be a valid argument - and that seems to be implicit in your claim not to see the evidence - you are losing even more.
quote: I don’t doubt that if you look at their other writings you will find plenty of evidence of their hate. It’s hardly uncommon. Trump even played on it during the election.The fact remains that they constructed a grand conspiracy out of almost nothing, while I am pointing to a very mundane explanation of something widely believed to be extraordinary. quote: The fact that the reported appearances can be explained by mundane and common occurrences is evidence and not opinion. The rest is argument. Why should we prefer the idea that it was all made up to the idea that it reports ordinary, even expected events ?
quote: On the contrary, I win on parsimony. You have to assume that the existing religious mythology existed and would be used. I don’t.
quote: And let me point out that writing is the only evidence you have for that. And someone taking a similarly sceptical viewpoint could argue that the story in the Bible (or the stories mashed together to make the Biblical version) was made up independently.
quote: The lack of detail in 1 Corinthians is an obvious fact, and while it would hardly surprise me to see Faith disagree with the Bible it is not certain. Equally, just thinking that they saw Jesus isn’t that impressive and that is all you can rationally get from 1 Corinthians.
quote: There is but you've made it plain that you won’t accept it.
quote: Can you please stop this silly confusion over evidence. If I have the best explanation - and a parsimonious explanation with significant explanatory power is certainly good, and you haven’t come close to anything better - then the facts that are explained should be considered evidence for the explanation.
quote: The question of what actually happened, using no theological assumptions at all, preferring naturalistic explanations to miracles looks like historical investigation to me. Why call it religious ? Edited by PaulK, : No reason given.
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PaulK Member Posts: 17828 Joined: Member Rating: 2.3 |
It’s worth pointing out that the Gospels lack many of the traits of the more reliable bioi and can be classed with the far less reliable novelistic form.
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Faith  Suspended Member (Idle past 1473 days) Posts: 35298 From: Nevada, USA Joined: |
Faith writes: One does not speak of an historical account of actual events in the real world as a "religious work." That implies something like a treatise, not a report of observations of real events. The gospels are historical accounts, not religious works. The Gospels are not historical accounts. If you don't like the term "religious works" could I suggest "sacred writings."v No, because it's basically the same problem, your effort to pretend they aren't about real historical events just because they refer to people and events you prefer to call "religious." {What makes a miracle "religious?" That seems to be what you have in mind. Water turned to wine. What makes that "religious?" It's an event that happened in real time, what makes it "religious?" or "sacred" for that matter? A few loaves and fishes miraculously multiplied into thousands, what is "religious" about that? After his death Jesus appeared in a glorified body that could walk through walls, what's "religious" about that observed historical event that occurred in real time? Calling these things "religious" is just a way of pretending they didn't happen. They happened, there's nothing religious about them, they are simply real events that happened in real time. The Book of Psalms is a "religious work," or even "sacred writing," the books of Genesis, Exodus, Judges, Samuel, Ruth, Esther and Kings are predominantly historical writings. Etc.} Kbertsche is right that even with "religious content" they don't lose their historicity, but I don't even want to agree with him about religious content, because that's just terminology designed to discredit their real historical existence in the end anyway. Also to say they are examples of a literary genre of biography, as KB does, implies that the fishermen who followed Jesus would have been familiar with that genre, which is ridiculous. No, they are simple descriptive accounts of events that they witnessed or knew about in the real world, most concerning Jesus' miraculous acts, which makes them "historical" by any definition. That describes the four gospels and it also describes the Book of Acts: events in real time. The spistles on the other hand, all of them but perhaps most particularly Paul's, could be called religious works because they ARE more like treatises than the gospels and Book of Acts are. That is, they are teachings though they may also include some historial references, and that's what most religious writings of other religions are. The gospels and the Book of Acts, however, are NOT, they are primarily historical works. Edited by Faith, : No reason given. Edited by Faith, : No reason given. Edited by Faith, : No reason given. Edited by Faith, : No reason given.
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New Cat's Eye Inactive Member
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GDR, the first rule of Bible understanding is to assume if it seems to be contradictory the fault is your own. I'm serious. Wow. That pretty much let's the cat out of the bag. Your first rule for understanding the Bible is that you cannot be honest with yourself. That's gotta be the root of the tension.
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Percy Member Posts: 22504 From: New Hampshire Joined: Member Rating: 4.9 |
kbertsche writes: The modern scholarly view is that the gospels are examples of "Graeco-Roman biography", which is a historical, non-fiction genre. In a Google search, "Graeco-Roman biography" is only ever mentioned in connection with the Gospels. Rather than "a historical, non-fiction genre," it seems to have been invented for the sole purpose of justifying the Gospels.
The fact that they are "religious works" does not obviate their historicity. The Gospels lack of evidenced facts, plus their combination of truths, fallacies, unverifiabilities, internal and external contradictions, and impossibilities, would seem to "obviate their historicity." --Percy
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Faith  Suspended Member (Idle past 1473 days) Posts: 35298 From: Nevada, USA Joined: |
Sorry, it's you against millions of Christians for two thousand years. You lose.
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Faith  Suspended Member (Idle past 1473 days) Posts: 35298 From: Nevada, USA Joined: |
Not at all, it means the contradiction is a glitch of your fallen mind so that you falsely assess God's word.
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PaulK Member Posts: 17828 Joined: Member Rating: 2.3
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quote: That may be because low-grade apologists are drowning out the respectable voices. See this for a better view of the issues.
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New Cat's Eye Inactive Member |
GDR, the first rule of Bible understanding is to assume if it seems to be contradictory the fault is your own. I'm serious. Wow. That pretty much let's the cat out of the bag. Your first rule for understanding the Bible is that you cannot be honest with yourself. That's gotta be the root of the tension. Not at all, it means the contradiction is a glitch of your fallen mind so that you falsely assess God's word. You said that if it seems contradictory to you then the fault is your own. That's you not being honest with yourself. If you were being honest with yourself, then you would admit that it seems contradictory and investigate it. You denying your own thinking, and instead just assuming that the Bible is right and you are wrong, is you being dishonest with yourself. That's gotta be a source of tension.
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jar Member (Idle past 423 days) Posts: 34026 From: Texas!! Joined: |
Faith writes: Sorry, it's you against millions of Christians for two thousand years. You lose. Sorry but it's millions of Christians for two thousand years against reality and reality always wins.
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Percy Member Posts: 22504 From: New Hampshire Joined: Member Rating: 4.9 |
PaulK writes: If you are going to ignore any written accounts you will lose a lot of history. I'm not ignoring written accounts. I'm arguing that written accounts are not evidence. The original claim that began this subdiscussion was that the Bible contains the evidence of its own truth and accuracy, and of course this isn't true. No writing contains the evidence of its own truth and accuracy. The point I'm arguing is not that written accounts should be ignored, but that they are not evidence.
While written accounts are not always good evidence for what they claim (something that needs to be established case by case)... I would use different terminology. I would say that written accounts can vary widely in accuracy. The measure of that accuracy lies in supporting evidence, which is definitely not contained in the written accounts themselves.
...the fact that the thing has been written is evidence in itself. Sure - it's evidence that someone wrote something.
Just saying that it could be complete fiction and ignoring it is not really a sensible view. I'm not saying that anything in particular in the Bible is "complete fiction" and should be ignored. The Bible just happens to be the focus in this thread because faith is the topic. The key issue is far more global and concerns how we know what we know, and that's through evidence. Writing is how we communicate information about evidence, but writing is not itself evidence. Consider a couple newspaper articles as an example, one from Breitbart News, the other from The New York Times. The two articles disagree on some point. Neither article contains evidence, of course. The articles can be about and can describe evidence, but they cannot contain evidence or be evidence. To settle the disagreement between the two articles you must go back to the evidence. Resolution of the disagreement definitely does not reside in deeper analysis of the articles with arguments like "they wouldn't say it that way if it weren't true" and "this isn't convincing because it doesn't contain enough detail." If you want a specific example of articles from Breitbart and the NYT that disagree, try ones about the size of the inauguration day crowds. Reading the articles and arguing with people about them won't settle anything - you'll need evidence, probably the photos are the best evidence. Interesting fact: recently a polling group asked voters to view the crowd-size photos for Trump and Obama and choose which one had more people. All the non-Trump voters correctly identified the Obama photo as the one containing more people, but 1-in-6 Trump voters picked the Trump photo. Fascinating, no? Ah, human nature, gotta love it.
And if you don’t see inference to best explanation to be a valid argument - and that seems to be implicit in your claim not to see the evidence - you are losing even more. I think making inferences from available information is a fine way to argue, but inferences are only as good as the information they're based upon, and if the information is not an accurate reflection of the original evidence then the inferences are, well, garbage-in/garbage out. That's what's wrong with the way you're arguing - you have no idea of the quality of the information you're working with.
I don’t doubt that if you look at their other writings you will find plenty of evidence of their hate. I wasn't expressing doubt that they hate Clinton. I was merely echoing your own words when I said, "That they hate Clinton to the point of irrationality is your unevidenced argument." It was you that originally used the phrase "to the point of irrationality", and that was the part that I felt was unevidenced. It was the same type of argument you started with a couple messages ago when you said, "There had to be some reason why they said it."
The fact remains that they constructed a grand conspiracy out of almost nothing, while I am pointing to a very mundane explanation of something widely believed to be extraordinary. Your explanation is mundane, but that anything like it ever happened is unevidenced. Paraphrasing your line of argument, "We can accept the Biblical passages as correct because it is always possible to invent mundane explanations for anything fantastical." For all you know you're inventing mundane explanations for complete fictions.
The fact that the reported appearances can be explained by mundane and common occurrences is evidence and not opinion. The claim that inventing "mundane and common" explanations for fantastical events is evidence makes no sense.
The rest is argument. Why should we prefer the idea that it was all made up to the idea that it reports ordinary, even expected events ? That it's all made up is just one of the possibilities I added to your list, not my conclusion. What I actually think is that the claims are unevidenced and that there are many reasons for questioning their credibility (meaning the degree to which they conform with the original evidence, were it to still exist after all this time), such as internal and external contradictions and inconsistencies, as well as impossibilities. A story in which someone rises from the dead, makes a number of appearances, then ascends to heaven, isn't one that lends a lot of confidence in the truth or accuracy of the other details.
On the contrary, I win on parsimony. You have to assume that the existing religious mythology existed and would be used. I don’t. As I said, I wasn't arguing for a competing explanation, just adding to the list of possibilities. But if I had been trying to argue with you about whose explanation was most parsimonious then I would mention that you have to assume multiple spiritual appearances in direct contradiction to science and to some Biblical claims that they were definitely physical appearances, plus you add the possibility of multiple occurrences of mistaken identities. Whose explanation is really most parsimonious? But more importantly, parsimony isn't related to my argument about the relationship between writing and the extent to which it is based on evidence. Not that it was a point I was ever trying to argue, but let me just grant you the win on parsimony. I'll just grant that your explanation is the most parsimonious and that the possibility I tried to add is garbage. Your explanation, indeed, all explanations based only on writing, are still unevidenced, and that's what counts.
And let me point out that writing is the only evidence you have for that. One more time, writing isn't evidence.
And someone taking a similarly sceptical viewpoint could argue that the story in the Bible (or the stories mashed together to make the Biblical version) was made up independently. Yes they could, and it would be an unevidenced argument.
quote: The lack of detail in 1 Corinthians is an obvious fact, and while it would hardly surprise me to see Faith disagree with the Bible it is not certain. Equally, just thinking that they saw Jesus isn’t that impressive and that is all you can rationally get from 1 Corinthians. Oh, I didn't realize that when you criticized the lack of detail about the appearances that you were referring only to the bit of information about them in 1 Corinthians. Given that there's plenty of detail elsewhere I guess I don't see it as a problem.
quote: There is but you've made it plain that you won’t accept it. If you mean I won't accept that writing something down turns it into evidence, you're right, I won't accept it.
quote: Can you please stop this silly confusion over evidence. If I have the best explanation - and a parsimonious explanation with significant explanatory power is certainly good, and you haven’t come close to anything better - then the facts that are explained should be considered evidence for the explanation. But I don't feel confused about evidence. The confusion seems to lie on the other foot. You can have all the parsimony in the world, but parsimony based on unevidenced information of unknown credibility isn't worth much.
quote: The question of what actually happened, using no theological assumptions at all, preferring naturalistic explanations to miracles looks like historical investigation to me. Why call it religious ? Because you're trying to extract history from a religious book where one of the possibilities for some or all of the events is that nothing ever happened. For example, some or all of the miracles, rather than being naturalistic events that actually took place but that were misinterpreted as miracles, may never have happened at all, may simply have been invented because people found miracles convincing. --Percy
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