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Author | Topic: My Beliefs- GDR | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
GDR Member Posts: 6202 From: Sidney, BC, Canada Joined: Member Rating: 2.2 |
onifre writes: Yes, they have, and one of the things that is in question historically is what you brought to the table as "evidence". So, I can't accept it as evidence when there isn't a consensus amoung historians. Well if it isn't evidence then why have so many historians spent time trying to figure out what we are to make of it?
onifre writes: How on earth is this an evolved understanding of god?! This is nothing more than a new story. Do you actually think you're concept of god is absolutely right? They changed the story, well, who cares? Doesn't mean it's the right story. For all you know the way it was before could be the right way and you now understand less about god. The point was that our understanding of the nature God has evolved. I am not offering it as proof of anything. I am suggesting that IF God does exist, and IF He does reach out to us in some form THEN we can reasonably suggest that our understanding of God's nature is likely to have become more focused on the truth. I don't know that my concept of God is exactly right and I'm pretty sure it isn't as my own views have continued to evolve over the years as I continue to read. I have faith in God as I can best understand Him. I have Faith in God as we see Him incarnate in Jesus but I don't have Faith in God that is a compilation of the god that is sometimes depicted in the OT of advocating for genocide and public stonings.
onifre writes: This is laughable at this point, GDR. You can't actually be so arrogant as to think the Christian version is the right one that has evolved mankinds understanding of god? Why is that arrogant. I have my beliefs as we all have and presumably we think we are right. Are you so arrogant to think that your non-theistic views are correct and great minds like Lewis and Tolliken are wrong. I don't believe anyone has a perfect understanding of God but I do believe that the best that we can do is to look at what words we have of Jesus, and then try and sort out as best we can all of the scholarship of the centuries starting with Paul.
onifre writes: Ok, you do get that saying "I don't know them to be true but I'm convinced that they are" makes absolutely no sense right? How can you not know something to be true but convinced that it is? That cancels itself out. You're either you're convinced and you know it's true or you have doubt and don't know it to be true. I am convinced that my wife loves me but I don't know it. (I am using know as in something that can be empirically verified.) It is not the same thing. I might say I am convinced that the Boston Bruins are going to win the Stanley Cup but I don't know it.He has told you, O man, what is good ; And what does the LORD require of you But to do justice, to love kindness, And to walk humbly with your God. Micah 6:8
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GDR Member Posts: 6202 From: Sidney, BC, Canada Joined: Member Rating: 2.2
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ringo writes: Again, you're putting the messenger above the message. We don't have to give equal weight to everything he said. We can see what has value and what doesn't. When the messenger brought you instructions to reinforce the right flank, you could see that the right flank was in danger of collapsing. You didn't need details on who else thought it was collapsing. Of course the message is important but if the messenger is a crazed individual with a messianic complex we might not to be inclined to believe that our right flank is in any danger at all. He might actually be working for the other side, and it is really our left flank that is in danger.
ringo writes: But serving Him "by" serving the community is irrelevant. Serving the community is what counts. If God approves, fine, but it doesn't really matter. His approval is as useless to us as our "service" is to Him. On one level I agree with you but Jesus goes further than that. Yes we should serve the community and I agree that it isn't just Christians that believe that and follow through on it. Jesus' point was that it isn't just what we do but what drives us. He says that it is important that we do it because we genuinely desire to find joy in that service regardless of the approval of others, or for any other reward including from God. As I have said numerous times it is about loving others unselfishly.
ringo writes: You've already admitted that that isn't true. Many people manage to love their neighbours without believing in your God. If He's empowering them invisibly in the background, it doesn't matter. What matters is that they are empowered, not how they're empowered. I agree with that. The thing is though that we are not automatically selfless. In one sense I believe that Dawkins was on to something when he talked about memes. Selflessness, as well as selfishness is contagious. Jesus' claim was that He was establishing a kingdom of followers whose job it was to infect the world with selflessness and that, as you put it well, they would be invisibly empowered by Him working in the background. That doesn't mean that a Christian is going to behave more selflessly than his atheistic neighbour but it should mean that he will behave more selflessly than he would have if he hadn't accepted Jesus as Lord.
ringo writes: Evidence is not subjective. Sure it is. We can argue about whether Bobby Orr was a better hockey player than Gordie Howe. We can look at the objective evidence such as goals scored etc but then there are the intangibles like how their play affected the physiology of their opposition that help us form our subjective conclusions. The writers of the Gospels wrote their accounts of the life of Jesus. We objectively know that they were written but we subjectively come to our conclusions about the accuracy of their accounts.
ringo writes: I could accept that the New Testament authors were right and the Old Testament authors were wrong. I don't accept it because there's no real distinction between them. The only way you seem to be able to distinguish them is that the New Testament "rings true". I believe that all of the Biblical authors, OT and NT, were culturally and personally influenced in what they wrote. That does not mean that what they wrote was either right or wrong. If however, Jesus was bodily resurrected then what the NT writers have to say has to be taken in that light as a more accurate revelation of the nature of God and His desires for our lives. If they are wrong about the resurrection then we are not only wasting our time but as Paul says in ! Cor 15:quote: ringo writes: Only if you cherry-pick what the "essential elements" are.The Old Testament writers are also consistent about the Flood. So are the New Testament writers, for that matter. Yet you reject one miracle and accept another. There is really only one flood story and there is the occasional reference to it, as well as the fact that it was written years after it was supposed to have happened. It was also written by a different author. When we read articles in a newspaper we believe some commentaries and we reject others. The Bible in that sense is like a newspaper and yes we have to come to our own conclusions about the individual authors. In a sense I do cherry pick the story of the resurrection as all of what is in the NT hangs on that.
ringo writes: On the contrary, magicians do much more impressive tricks every day and their audiences are consistently mistaken. It's a whole industry. Not quite the same thing is it. Magicians all acknowledge it is an illusion.
ringo writes: So there really are no differences. Neither story can be proven. Both require a suspension of the laws of nature and a coverup of the contrary evidence. Both boil down to a believe-it-or-not, flip-a-coin choice. Some people believe the flood but not the resurrection. Some people believe the resurrection but not the flood. Tie game. In the case of the resurrection there is no evidence to cover-up. Actually when people started claiming that the resurrection had taken place then why didn't the Romans or anyone else produce the body which would have put an end to the whole thing. Edited by GDR, : No reason given.He has told you, O man, what is good ; And what does the LORD require of you But to do justice, to love kindness, And to walk humbly with your God. Micah 6:8
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Faith  Suspended Member (Idle past 1475 days) Posts: 35298 From: Nevada, USA Joined: |
Few historical figures have anywhere near the attestation of their existence as Jesus has but nobody doubts their existence or what is written about them or the existence
Well, none of the other historical figures are being called the son of god or said to have come back from the dead. It's not like people are saying Napoleon walked on water or Alexander the Great cured a blind man. No, but that is why we have so much BETTER attestation of Jesus, BECAUSE better evidence is needed. We have LOTS of eyewitnesses and reports of other eyewitnesses and we have LOTS of secondary writings based on the eyewitnesses that are in agreement with each other. Same with the Old Testament. Miracles need lots of witnesses and they have given their reports. Which doesn't stop skeptics from refusing to take them seriously anyway of course, but that's the skeptics' lack of discernment because the witnesses are very credible.
The whole story of Jesus just seems like typical fiction. Here's that lack of discernment. There is nothing about the story of Jesus that is in any way like "typical fiction." There is nothing in the tone of the writers, nothing in the characters written about, certainly nothing about Jesus himself, and nothing in the story, that is like "typical fiction." All you mean is that the story includes supernatural elements which you automatically prejudge as fictional, you certainly can't mean anything about the quality of the reports themselves.
The historians of the time failed to write about Jesus, and you'd think one would have done so when they document every other person and event. As I recall at least one historian did but I'm lousy at remembering which one.* But most of the pagan world dismissed the Christians as "atheists" and didn't regard the doings in Judea as much to concern them. ============================= ABE: *The historian was Tacitus. Here's a Wikipedia reference on the subject of Tacitus' writings about Christ. And here's another Wikipedia article, on the Historicity of Jesus which gives Tacitus, Josephus and the Talmud as extrabiblical sources. ============================= Edited by Faith, : No reason given. Edited by Faith, : No reason given.
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onifre Member (Idle past 2981 days) Posts: 4854 From: Dark Side of the Moon Joined:
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There are come aspects that could be conceived as legendary, and there are some obvious difficulties with some details but the overall thrust is IMHO pretty obvious. Yes of course. One of those obvious difficulties is whether or not a man claiming he was god rose from the dead. It's when the book speaks of miraculous events and the suspension of reality when it gets difficult.
Obviously non-believers are not going to be interested in writing historical documents about Jesus. That doesn't make any sense. Everyone else from kings to philosophers of the time were written about by the historians of the time. Why not the guy that rose from the dead?
IMHO it is more reasonable to assume that such an intelligence exists in one form or another but I also recognize that we aren't all going to agree on that, just as we don't. Opinions don't matter. Reality and nature of course exist. This we can agree on. That is the only thing we know for a fact. Since we have no evidence for god as we do nature, then, FIRST you must get that evidence, then you can present it as something able to create everything. It's simple logic.
Example: "Hey who broke this vase?""Aliens did it." "Wait, aliens exist?" "Well, the vase is broken isn't it?" That's the logic you're using with god.
Where is this evidence that nature has the ability to create life. Well we have evidence that no life existed at one point, then we have evidence of single celled organisms existing. So, we can both agree something happened in the period. We know the elements that make up life are found on the planet, we know those elements originate when Stars explode, and we know that chemistry exists. So here again we can agree something happened with these elements involving basic chemistry. So, we know for a fact nature exists. We no nothing about god. It leaves only one evidenced answer and one wishful thinking answer. Life happens naturally and almost likely it has happened on many planets. There is the evidence.
Sure all the building blocks are there but all the building blocks are there to form a 747 but we don't observe it happening in nature. The Sun forms naturally. Planets and solar systems form naturally. We have plenty of evidence for this. Are you saying a few elements coming together due to chemistry to form single celled organisms is so much more complicated than Suns, planets and solar systems that it requires the involvement of a supernatural being?
It is different as they claimed that he came back in a newly reconstituted body that was similar to but also different in nature than His previous body. Yes one was resurrected as a plant, the other as a fish, the other as a bird, the other as a human. But they all resurrected, which is the miracle part. It's the same story. You're being stuborn on this I guess because you want to keep believing Jesus was different or special in some way.
Sure but so what? It has to be understood within the culture of 1st century Judaism. What do you mean "So what?" What that means is that you recognize the story of the son of god has it's origins in Egypt. - Oni
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onifre Member (Idle past 2981 days) Posts: 4854 From: Dark Side of the Moon Joined:
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No, but that is why we have so much BETTER attestation of Jesus, BECAUSE better evidence is needed. What you have are people who claim to have seen something and someone (as in Jesus). That's all you have. Well, sorry but people claim they see a lot of things. Unless you have something other than what a few people have claimed to have seen, you got nothing. So you believe aliens have visted people? That people have seen the real life Big Foot too? C'mon, please. This is the worse kind of evidence, if you can even call it that.
There is nothing about the story of Jesus that is in any way like "typical fiction." It talks about a person born of a virgin and god is the father. Then this person goes on to cure the blind, and the sick, and then dies and comes back from the grave - THE WHOLE THINGS TYPICAL OF FICTION.
But most of the pagan world dismissed the Christians as "atheists" and didn't regard the doings in Judea as much to concern them. So you have no evidence of historians writing about Jesus. Good, so you remain with nothing for evidence other than the claims of a few people. At this point Big Foot is doing better than Jesus. - Oni
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Faith  Suspended Member (Idle past 1475 days) Posts: 35298 From: Nevada, USA Joined: |
Some things ONLY have witness testimony as evidence, that's the way it is with all historical figures, and again I claim that the witness testimony in Jesus' case is extremely high quality. If your bias against what they are telling you leads you to dismiss them out of hand you could never learn anything that could correct your bias, and obviously you aren't going to.
Way it goes. But I did add to that post apparently after you responded to it some information about the historian who did write about Jesus, that is, Tacitus, and some other extrabiblical evidence, which I'll copy here: ============================= ABE: *The historian was Tacitus. Here's a Wikipedia reference on the subject of Tacitus' writings about Christ. And here's another Wikipedia article, on the Historicity of Jesus which gives Tacitus, Josephus and the Talmud as extrabiblical sources. ============================= Edited by Faith, : No reason given. Edited by Faith, : No reason given.
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jar Member (Idle past 424 days) Posts: 34026 From: Texas!! Joined: |
The Talmud reference is a great example of the total dishonesty of Bible apologists.
First one must understand that Talmudic discourse is expressed as examples, fiction, "What if .." As is so often the case those claiming Talmudic support of the historical nature of Jesus is simply a liar and misrepresenting the Talmud just like they misrepresent the Bible. It's pitiful.Anyone so limited that they can only spell a word one way is severely handicapped!
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Faith  Suspended Member (Idle past 1475 days) Posts: 35298 From: Nevada, USA Joined: |
You ought to read the article, jar, remember it's WIKIPEDIA, not "Bible apologists" and much of the article is far from anything I would agree with. They mention the Talmud as in effect a hostile witness to Jesus, not aimed at validating His existence but confirming it nevertheless by their efforts to discredit Him.
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jar Member (Idle past 424 days) Posts: 34026 From: Texas!! Joined: |
You should read the Talmud Faith, although I seriously doubt you are any more able to read the Talmud than it seems you are capable of actually reading the bible.
It neither confirms nor discredits Jesus. It simply uses the name in a Talmudic debate totally unrelated to the existence or non existence of Jesus. Remember Faith, some of us here have actually read both the Bible and the Talmud.Anyone so limited that they can only spell a word one way is severely handicapped!
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Faith  Suspended Member (Idle past 1475 days) Posts: 35298 From: Nevada, USA Joined: |
Yes, jar, I know how well you have read the Bible, something along the lines of "wrongly dividing the word of truth" and I also know what Luther found in the Talmud blaspheming Jesus, though apparently your reading of it hasn't been good enough to discover that for yourself.
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jar Member (Idle past 424 days) Posts: 34026 From: Texas!! Joined: |
So go read it Faith, give it a try. Forget what you've been told and actually read the source.
Stop believing what you've been told and learn the truth.Anyone so limited that they can only spell a word one way is severely handicapped!
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Theodoric Member Posts: 9202 From: Northwest, WI, USA Joined: Member Rating: 3.4
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Wikipedia also has an article called Christ myth theory
So I guess that means he was a myth. As for Tacitus, Kapyong addressed this a few years ago on this forum.
quote:Message 7 Message 8 is the definitive post on the issue. You really should read the sources, not take other peoples word for it.Facts don't lie or have an agenda. Facts are just facts "God did it" is not an argument. It is an excuse for intellectual laziness.
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ramoss Member (Idle past 642 days) Posts: 3228 Joined: |
and let's quote from a small part of that wik
quote: Seems there is disagreement amoung scholars about it's relevance.
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Theodoric Member Posts: 9202 From: Northwest, WI, USA Joined: Member Rating: 3.4 |
Eddy's comment is worthless and just an outright assertion.
Ehrman's comment is also worthless, because Tacitus is not confirming anything. Tacitus may have just been repeating what he heard from Christians. So his source is the source that needs to be confirmed. In other words the books of the bible are probably being used to confirm themselves. Facts don't lie or have an agenda. Facts are just facts "God did it" is not an argument. It is an excuse for intellectual laziness.
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onifre Member (Idle past 2981 days) Posts: 4854 From: Dark Side of the Moon Joined:
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Some things ONLY have witness testimony as evidence, that's the way it is with all historical figures Most historical figures have more than one source as written evidence, leave behind children, marry, and most write something themselves. What you have for Jesus is nothing like that. What you have are four Gospels that speak of him as eye witness testimony and that is all. No other historians, no children, no wife, nothing written by his own hand - nothing. Oh yeah, and these other figures don't claim to be the son of god and said to have risen from the dead! So for you to say that in Jesus' case the testimony is of extremely high quality is ridiculous. You are not looking at this clearly. - Oni Edited by onifre, : No reason given.
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