Shameless Pluggery

William, when is your programme about alcohol being screened.

Hi will, good interview with Dawkins BTW. let me make some points.

1.
The term delusion that Dawkins uses is applied to a fixed false belief that a person declares. Its strange that Dawkins does not mention Freud and his essay on the future of an illusion where he correctly notes the wish element in belief. Dawkins defines his use from the Penguin English Dictionary as a “a false belief or an impression” he uses Microsoft spell checker’s term “a persistent false belief held in the face of strong contradictory evidence.” Though Dawkins can at times be quite mischievous his uses of the term is not Ad-hominem and it captures true supernatural- Religious belief perfectly.

2. As to the fine tuning argument. Here is my own shot at it. Lets take the conclusion that if one of the constants was off then we would not be here. Life could not arise because of it. Now what other conclusion is there? The conclusion is actually contained in the premise. Anything else is superfluous. Saying that there must a creator is inference, inference tainted by human wish thinking. It’s a little like the story about the bird that drinks water from a puddle in the ground. How great it thinks to itself, that this puddle is so perfect for me to drink from. If it was not here I would go thirsty-it must off been designed. Of course it’s a pure accident that a puddle happens to occur just like the fact the we exist after 14 billion years since the big bang and after millions of years of evolution. Religious people think the physical constants argument is a good one its not. All it revels is the bias of human reasoning and wish thinking. Thinking that we are special and the end product of something (evolution or creation). Thinking that we are the centre of the universe. All the evidence demonstrates-all of it clearly shows that we are not special in any kind of teleological or divine sense.

3. It was a good point you made William about the ultimate regress argument and the fact that it can de-facto rule out using God as an explanation.(ie who made God argument) However it does not work in practice. In order for God to be invoked as a explanation for something he or it needs to be discovered. It needs to be able to be brought under the umbrella of reason and science. In order for it to become an explanatory tool it needs to be used to make predictions, it needs to be free to be tested, used to explain facts about the world better than any other theory. However the current state of knowledge shows every sign that the universe is not the product of a supernatural intelligence, never mind that we are created with some kind of plan. In short in order to work with the theory that God created the universe or sent his son to die for our sins say then we need clear, unequivocal evidence for God. Needlessly to say we have been wainting for this for a few thousand years and will not doubt be continuing to wait. “the messiah may come but he may tarry”

4. As for sectarian schooling. I think Dawkins was spot on, in fact he did not press the point hard enough. The northern Irish troubles could have been resolved as simply as promoting secularism in schools and abolishing faith schools. At the very least the bitterness and fear of the other would have been moot. I come from Northern Ireland myself and know well the pernicious influence of living in two “communities”

Can I just say William I think you did a very professional interview.

Oh since you did a plug for yourself ill do one as well

https://theyoungcontrarian.blogspot.com/

Best and be well

Michael.

Hi there - Likewise I thought you did a good job interviewing Dawkins, and pressing him on various issues.

Your last line of questioning about the assumptions science makes is a key one, and one which Dawkins sidestepped. The reality is that he cannot account for the assumptions he makes in order to do science.

Christianity on the other hand can account for those assumptions.

And hence his counterargument that "we simply cant go through life being that sceptical" doesnt stand. For Christianity, in particular the nature of God, gives the basis for the examples he suggested.

Ironically he has to assume a Christian worldview in order to do his science, and even to deny God's existence.

For more on this line of argument readers could track down Greg Bahnsen's debate with the atheist Gordon Stein.

Well done again

Mark

Rev Mark
My problem with Bahnsen is that while he offers reasons for abandoning Atheism, he can't give a reason for accepting Christian Theism. (Keep in mind that Pythagoraean and Platonist ideas had as much to do with the rise of Science as Christian ideas.)

GV

Youngcontrarian
A very interesting blogspot. And as an RE teacher, I agree with you on sectarian schooling. Even if it did not lead to community division, it should be rejected as bizarre.
However I think there a few holes in your other arguments.
1) Fine-tuning.
(a)Theists need not argue that humanity is the reason our universe has fine-tuning. Merely that a universe with observers is more valuable that one without (unless you are a total misanthrope, I'm sure you'll concede the point).
(b) The existence of observers is included with the data we are trying to explain. (It seems unlikely that there should be any at all - there are many, many more ways the universe could have turned out). The data also includes star and galaxy formation, the nature of atoms, as well as non-sentient biological life. All can be interpreted as purposive and complex. All are very unlikely.
(c) We are essentially trying to come up with an hypothesis that makes highly improbable events, that have valuable or interesting properties, more likely. Theism seems to work well.

2) The Regress argument.
(a) Something need not be discovered before it can be invoked as an explantion. In fact, scientists infer to unobservables like Big Bangs, Black Holes, Dark Energy, missing links etc. all the time. If we had to discover an entity before we could use it in an explanation, I doubt science could advance at all.
(b) I certainly believe that God is under the umbrella of Reason - the concept seems coherent enough. It is question begging to assume that he need be brought under the umbrella of science. I'm not sure what scientific argument establishes that science is the only or the best way to explanations - unless you want to argue in a circle.
(c) As to the importance of prediction - Quantum Electrodynamics has made remarkable predictions, yet it is becoming so complex that many physicists are finding it suspect. Newton made a number of predictions about the position of planets that did not materialize.He did not reject his core theory, but rather modified auxialliary assumtions(spherical planets influenced only by gravitational force) and left his core theory in place.
Prediction is not the be all and end all of science. But even if it were, it would be odd to make it the be all and end all of explanation. Historical explanations, for example, would be rejected as irrational.

GV

Gveale thanks…


Counterpoint.


I think you have fallen for the fallacy I was describing. You may also be equivocating on the word valuable and the word purposive. The universe has no purpose, its laws and constants are not sentient nor are they there for us to exist. The universes was not made for us, we adapted to the universe. There is no evidence for teleological or divine purpose. Of course that is not to say our human lives have no purpose or importance. It needs to be said the universe is utterly indifferent to our welfare we are a product of natural selection.

Gvele wrote
Merely that a universe with observers is more valuable that one without (unless you are a total misanthrope, I'm sure you'll concede the point).

The question is valuable to whom? If the answer is us then you fallen into a trap of allowing personal argumentation into your reasoning. If its valuable to God then you have fallen into circular reasoning.

As to your treatment of the regress argument it seems funny to me that you operate with scepticism with a capital S on this point. I have seen similar sophistry from Alistar Mcgrath another Ulsterman.

A good degree of the examples of physics you mentioned are theories and hypothesis’s. They are not laws or have substantial factual evidence backing them up. QM I’m told can explain things with devastating accuracy, invoking God to explain something does not work. For two reasons there are other more elegant and economical explanations. Two is that the God or creator needs to be discovered first--clear evidence needs to be provided for his existence. Not mere word games, or analogies or sophistry or quotes from the bible, clear unequivocal evidence.

I asked this question myself today-- Except for something clearly obvious such as a fifty foot marble engraving of the ten commandants placed on a crater on Mars (ala 2001 Space odyssey) or a constellation of stars spelling in Arabic there is no god but God and his prophet is Muhammad--what would a designed universe look like? And how would it be different from one that’s not designed? I don’t know the answer to this question I do however know what would convince me of God existence and the truth claims of say Mormonism or Islam of if wish Christianity.


The Religious are fond of using metaphors such as Palely’s Watch or a building as a analogy for design. The problem is though is that we know a designer exists, we can talk to them, interview them, probe questions as to why that particular design and not another. It is of course a false analogy because the universe and biological life show every sign of non-existent design.

As to the rest of what you wrote I’m afraid the Occam;s Razor is all that is needed.

Ps thanks for reading my blog I have on it 5 core reasons for Atheism I invite you to consider them

https://theyoungcontrarian.blogspot.com/2008/08/arguments-for-atheism.html


Best and Be well.

Michael Faulkner.

ps all these question marks is a mistake in html or somthing

YC
The question mark thing is a pain, but you get used to it after a while. I've already read your arguments on atheism, and I'll maybe say something substantial on your blog later in the week (I left one short comment to see if I was able to leave messages- don't take it too seriously if it got through).
I've a class I'm ignoring here, so I'll write a quick response in the morning.

Cheers

Graham

Graham,

your welcome.

Best

michael.

Graham- The ONLY reason to evoke the fine-tuning argument is to argue that a designer tuned it for life. Otherwise you're just agreeing with atheists who of course must assert that the physical constants are right for life (or at least THIS kind of life) - per your point (a), with which atheists would have little issue. Actually I don't think the fine-tuning argument is a good one at all... but I understand why you'd want to evoke it. (By the way, I'm a theist.)

Graham

Glad to hear that you've heard of Bahnsen. I'd recommend you listen to Bahnsen's series on Practical Apologetics available from Covenant Media Foundation for his arguments for Christian Theism.

As regards your comment about Pythagoraean and Platonist ideas being behind series as much as Christian ideas - my point is not what philosophy drove/drives science. It is somewhat different - only a Christian worldview contains the ingredients to provide a solid foundation for the assumptions necessary for science.

That doesnt mean you have to be a Christian to do science, it doesnt mean you have to adhere to the Christian worldview either. But it does mean, that unless you hold to the biblical view of God, you cant account for your assumptions.

Mark

Young Contrarian

Haven't got a chance to check out your blog yet, but I will.

You say:

"In order for God to be invoked as a explanation for something he or it needs to be discovered. It needs to be able to be brought under the umbrella of reason and science."

"In short in order to work with the theory that God created the universe or sent his son to die for our sins say then we need clear, unequivocal evidence for God."

Couple of questions to make sure I'm understanding you. First, I accept, like Graham, that the Christian understanding of God is perfectly reasonable, how then might you expect to discover 'God'?

Second, what kind of 'unequivocal evidence' would be sufficient for you?

Maybe you could elaborate on the comments about the marble engraving on Mars or the constellation of stars in terms of what would convince you of the truth of a/any religion.

In terms of the stars, even if the name Jesus, for example, was visible from earth, written in the sky, (very bling) surely from a different vantage point the stars would just look like...stars?

Glad you asked me peter, let me fire away.


Evidence for God.


1. Consistency.

At the very least I would expect the basic claims and the foundational texts of Religion to be at the very least consistent with reality and accurate representations of reality.

I would expect the universe to be around six thousand years old.

The theory of evolution by natural selection would have to be false .

All animals especially humans would have been created and./or show no sign of decent with modification. This could be demonstrated by comparative genetic analysis and the fossil record.

I would expect evidence for Noah’s flood.

There would be archaeological evidence of Jews in Egypt and of the other evidence backing up the old testament.

Religion fails to pass this minimum requirement of being concordant with reality.

Ok now for the bible.

2. I would expect the bible t be a book that could not possible be written by mere mortals. To think the bible is the errant word of God is to labour under the starkest ignorance of what the book actually is-a confabulation by a bunch of bronze age Palestinian peasants.

I could go from here to eternity to list the contradictions and falsehoods of the bible. I however recommend 3 sources.

Misquoting Jesus by Bart D Ehrmann

Self contradictions of the bible by WH Burr. (this book is especially neat it holds no commentary simply titles such as God condones robbery and God does not Condone robbery along with their relevant scriptural passages, it contains main such examples were are simply outright contradictions)

Sceptics annotated bible.

https://skepticsannotatedbible.com/


3.

Lets consider some indirect evidence now. I would expect Christians and Muslims to have behaved exemplary in history. Alas a brief look at history reveals it is anything but.. As to its ethical prescriptions they are entangled so much with metaphysical bullshit that’s it better to simply go read an Ethics book from a library than pick up the New Testament. Bertrand Russell look ago pointed out that the character of Christ is less compellingly and more obviously a fabrication when he threatens people with hell and promise rewards with Heaven. Nothing Jesus said has not be said by other men either the golden rule or love your brother as yourself.

I would also expect that prayer would work. God heals amputees anyone? Also I would expect the pious to be less likely to suffer in the world than others. When God decides to do some smiting it shows every evidence of either indiscriminate killing or rather he is not there in the first place.

Let’s be honest on the strength of the above and the sword of Damocles that is Natural Selection to the God hypothesis--there is simply no good reason to be either a Jew, a Christian or a Muslim.



However…..


Could the state of our knowledge or the natural operation of the universe educe a change in our beliefs about the world. Absolutely. Please forgive the crass use of what I’m going to say, it would take a miracle for a Monotheism to be reasonable to believe.

4.

Let me conceive some fabulous occurrences that would make belief in Christianity reasonable.


1. The Rapture occurring with Jesus trailing clouds of glory with angels of fire by his side judging the living and the dead. It would look pretty convincing on CNN don’t you think?

2. God spoke to every single person and in every language at the same time, on the same day every week for a month.

3. The Dead came back to life again and proclaimed that Jesus is about to begin his second coming.

4. Copies of the bible or the Koran were found on Mars or giant Crucifixes staked into the moon were observed and the material was made from something that was not on the earth.


If this sounds silly and unlikely then hold that thought for a second. How likely is it that Jesus was born of a Virgin? That upon his death the cemeteries of Jerusalem opened and the dead walked among the living? How likely is it that Jesus walked on water or turned water into wine or raised the living from the dead?

That being said all of at least several of the above in combination would convince me that

Conclusion

Christianity as a theory of reality is the best most elegant, most reasonable explanation of life the universe and everything in it.


Note that I would not subscribe to it out of faith nor would I be 100 percent sure it correct---it could after all be a mischievous hoax by a another God or a advanced Alien race. This is the distinction between faith and reason.

Best and be well.

Michael.

https://theyoungcontrarian.blogspot.com/

As regards the fine tuning argument

1) Fine tuning explains more than life - the stars themselves would not exist without a balance bewteen the outward flow of energy and the inward force of energy. Again, we have avoided a universe that has collapsed back in on itself. We are fortunate to have atoms as interesting as hydrogen. The order that we perceive in the universe is highly improbable. Life and observers provide only part of the sample.
2) It is odd to claim that I have fallen into an anthropocentric trap by finding and ordered/patterned universe interesting. Is anyone seriously contending that there is nothing in our observations that demands an explanation?
Imagine we found that a certain sunspot flared according to a precictable pattern - in fact it was working it's way through the prime numbers. Would we shrug and say that, whilst improbable, prime numbers are only interesting to humans, and have no objective value. There is no need to look for an intelligent cause.
(And of course, the laws of Natural Selection could not work on the surface of the sun. So we know intelligence cannot be at work!)
3) The universe in which we live is not only improbable, but it conforms to patterns we had discovered before we peered into telescopes and measured redshift. We associate these patterns with purpose and intentionality. So it seems reasonable to consider intelligence as a cause, whether or not we consider such patterns valuable.

Regarding the existence of observers

4) It is entirely possible to conclude that life is not a valuable state of affairs (say after reading Schopenhauer or Thomas Hardy - or accidentally viewing an episode of "Big Brother".) So I'm not stating that the existence of observers makes me feel good. I'm saying that it is an objectively valuable state of affairs.

As to design in general

5) Natural selection is not the death knell for the design argument. It requires an ordered universe, carbon, water etc. Furthermore, the outcome of natural selection is never guaranteed. Life could have remained at the bottom of Mount Improbable. Suppose there was a 90% that each step of our evolutionary history would take place. (Or say a 999/1000). Multiply each step in a long enough cahin and you end up with a very low probability.
If we attach a higher value to tigers than mould, we may want an hypothesis that makes biological complxity and beauty more likely.
6) As mentioned before on this post, minds may have complex ideas, but that does not make a mind a complex entity. Dawkin's final proof of atheism turns out to rest on a (long noticed) philosophical mistake.
7) Multiple universes don't help either - we can multiply probablistic resources to explain any event in this manner; Scientists could just stay in their beds and say everything is inevitable in Infinite Worlds.
8) The "Observer Selection Effect" doesn't help - for the observers in this case are part of the set of complex entities that we are trying to explain.

GV

YC
1) I know of no philosophical argument that requires that a Theistic God inspire an inerrant text. This is a very odd argument, but perhaps you can fill in the gaps.
2) The idea that Protestant Fundamentalism is Christianity being true to it's own nature (required by your insistence on Biblical literalism and inerrancy) requires substantial argument. In any case, it seems to be falsified by history. Even Bellarmine (the Cardinal who first investigated Galileo) would not have taken such a crude view of Scripture; and he was considered a literalist in his own day.

Cheers
Graham

point 1 should read "...and the inward force of gravity"

Gveale

I think you failed to tackle most of my main points and the arguments you do put forward are esoteric white noise. I do not intend to offer a lengthy rebuttal as I believe my arguments are firm enough to stand without further qualification.

Let me address some of your claims though.

Your point 1. Once again interesting to whom? What does the meaning of the word interesting mean in this context? Same can be said for improbable, what would a probable universe look like?


Your point 2. My original coverage is sufficient. What would a designed universe look like as opposed to one that isn’t? invoking God or a designer on the basis of inference or wish thinking which I believe on your first post you have done only makes things more complex.

Your point 3.

Gvele wrote

We associate these patterns with purpose and intentionality. So it seems reasonable to consider intelligence as a cause

That’s anthropocentricism right there so I believe you have contradicted yourself. You claimed it odd I accused you of it. Its like the old canard if horses could paint they would paint God in image of themselves.

The work of Dan Dennett on such things as design stance and intentional stance elaborate on this fallacy in our thinking.

We are not computers nor do we think rationally and logically all of the time, bias, self deception and human unreason is well documented--not just with Religion but with every aspect of human affairs. I would suggest Robert B Cialdini Influence, Steven Pinkers’s Blank Slate, Ariely D predictably irrational: The hidden forces that shape our decisions. Finally self deception by H Fingarette.

Finally evolution by Natural selection is I believe the death knell for not only Biological design but for the God Hypothesis itself. I invite you to read the God Delusion chapter Why God almost certainly does not exist. I believe that is as convincing as one can get and have made it the first argument in my Arguments for Atheism.


Best and Be well.

Michael

YC;

Graham has answered some of your points, albeit briefly, but perhaps I could add a few more.

"1. Consistency.

At the very least I would expect the basic claims and the foundational texts of Religion to be at the very least consistent with reality and accurate representations of reality."

Taken in the right spirit, there is a great deal of consistency running throughout the Bible. Many Christians are continually impressed with the level of consistency running throughout a text that was composed by many people, over millenia"

"I would expect the universe to be around six thousand years old."

Why? The Bible doesn't tell us the age of the earth, nor does it give a historical narrative of creation. The clue is in the fact that two entirely different accounts of creation are given in Genesis. These are precisely as they seem; mythical representations to attempt to explain a transcendent truth.

"The theory of evolution by natural selection would have to be false ".

Why? Bearing in mind that the TWO stories in Genesis are mythical representations.

"All animals especially humans would have been created and./or show no sign of decent with modification."

Why?

Isn't it possible that the universe was created to be a perpetually self-modifying complexity?


"I would expect evidence for Noah?s flood."

There is evidence for a cataclysmic flood that covered most of the earth. Many, many near east religions have varitaions of the flood story. Isn't it likely that such a flood did happen?
It's even possible that a small percentage of humanity survived, in some fashion...

all of which historical hypotheses have little to do with whether God exists or not.

"2. I would expect the bible t be a book that could not possible be written by mere mortals."

Why?
Those who wrote it did not expect that.

"To think the bible is the errant word of God is to labour under the starkest ignorance of what the book actually is-a confabulation by a bunch of bronze age Palestinian peasants."

Assuming you mean "inerrant", many Christians do not believe this. It is one thing to believe that the Bible is divinely inspired, and thus hopefully reasonably reliable...that is not the same as believing that every single word, in every language it has ever been translated into, has been prescribed by God.
Very few christians believe that, least of all that organsiation that was responsible for its collation...ie, the Church.

Having not read any of your sources, I will not comment on those.

"3.

Lets consider some indirect evidence now. I would expect Christians and Muslims to have behaved exemplary in history."

Ballix. Christians and muslims are no less human because of their faith. They are as prone to error, cruelty and sin as much as the next guy. the Bible itself is full of multiple examples of people of faith acting in contradiction of that faith.


"As to its ethical prescriptions they are entangled so much with metaphysical bullshit..."

I'm not altogether sure what you mean, but

"that?s it better to simply go read an Ethics book from a library"

Such as what? Aristotle's Nichomedean Ethics? There's no metaphysical assumptions involved there?

Show me an ethical system that does not involve metaphysical bases, and i will show you a system of ethics that is completely foundationless, and cannot account for its own assumptions.

"Nothing Jesus said has not be said by other men either the golden rule or love your brother as yourself.2

No, the point is that, although these things have been SAID, no one bar Christ has ever LIVED them...
see the point above about how Christians are as open to sin as anyone else

"I would also expect that prayer would work"

It might.

"Also I would expect the pious to be less likely to suffer in the world than others"

Even though the Bible says almost the COMPLETE OPPOSITE...if you expect that, you're aren't listening to what the Bible says, and are arguing with someone else, not a Christian.

Have to agree with Bernard - I think I answered those points - and I don't think I used "esoteric white noise".
I'll post in some more depth in the morning. Nice to see you're sticking around though. Hopefully you'll get stuck into some of the other issues - especially given your interest in cinema.

GV

I think I’m arguing here with Religious moderates that rare strange animal. Let me do a short rebuttal Bernard before summarising my view.

Bernard is operating under the logic bubble of religious moderation.

He guts most of his argument by claming to have not read any of the three suggestions I offered on Biblical validity. In fairness not reading something is not a complete putdown but Bernard says that

“taken in the right spirit the bible can be viewed as having a great deal of consistency”

Yes I agree--if you mean consistently wrong. Also notice Bernard that you have a magic trick of never actually stating your position just a position.

If you read those sources I cite you may have another conclusion.

Bernard writes

Why? The Bible doesn't tell us the age of the earth, nor does it give a historical narrative of creation. The clue is in the fact that two entirely different accounts of creation are given in Genesis. These are precisely as they seem; mythical representations to attempt to explain a transcendent truth.

What Transcendent Truth may we ask is this? No honest reading of Genesis yields metaphor or poetry. It is a simple straightforward account how the world was supposedly created. You will find you are in a minority here. 44 percent of Americans are creationists and millions in the Muslim world are as well.

As for the catholic church there relationship with evolution is skewered. Denoting that man is a special creation. The theory itself is deeply at odd with its teaching and it took some time for it to be accepted to what it is.


Your repeat why why--- if you attempt to cherry pick the bible and shroud it in fog and talk obscure then of course your going to ask why why.

Once again consult our more energetic and IMHO more honest American cousins--they spell out again and again why the bible is the word of God.

To me when Christians accuse other Christians of not being Christians its like the pot calling the kettle black and is simply white noise to me.


As for Noah’s flood aaaa No.


Assuming you mean "inerrant", many Christians do not believe this. It is one thing to believe that the Bible is divinely inspired, and thus hopefully reasonably reliable...that is not the same as believing that every single word, in every language it has ever been translated into, has been prescribed by God.
Very few christians believe that, least of all that organsiation that was responsible for its collation...ie, the Church.


And yet millions believe it, every jot and every tittle. The question every person should ask themselves is this, is the bible an ordinary book or not? Is it divinely inspired or not? It is a yes or a no answer.


As for religion making us better. Hitchens puts this well “name an ethical action or a belief that could only be performed by a religious person” and “name me a immoral action or statement that only a religious person could do”

As for Jesus being special. The Buddha, Martin Luther King, Ghandi, Mandela, Bertrand Russell (imprisoned for pacifism) and the thousand acts of brotherly love and generosity that go unseen every day.

As for Ethics, your basically saying that without God we have moral relativism.

I don’t agree but I think that’s for another day.


In summary we view is this.

No evidence for God (see above)

The miracles are at odds with reality

It is not rational or reasonable or believe in the claims of Religion

We do not need Religion to have civil society nor to be happy.

I will be busy for the next few days but you fellows know where to find me. I look forward to your critque of my writings if your still up for it.

Best and be well


Mike

Hi Mike

Post 13 - Interesting list. I'm not really sure how to respond to some of it as it sounds so tongue in cheek. Some of your comments have already been dealt with by Bernard and by Graham, and it's hard to know what to add, but maybe I'll run with a slightly different emphasis. And I'll bear in mind post 20 while I'm at it.

On consistency. I have to assume that by this you do not mean any reference to the internal consistency of the bible as you refer to the age of the universe and so on. Bernard has pretty much dealt with this. I have to say though that what surprises me is that so often the bible is dismissed because it doesn't read as a science text. It wasn't meant to be a science text, so you're going to have to run with the genre that it is (and it is written in various types of them) not with what it's not. That is not cherry picking.

Inerrancy. You don't appear to understand what most christians mean by this and although Bernard has already said this, the comment highlights your approach to the bible generally. Frankly I'm staggered at the number of atheists who read the bible like literalist Protestant Fundamentalists. As for falsehoods, so called, I've heard a lot of them before but I've picked one at random off the website you linked to. Do you seriously expect me to respond to questions like, 'How long does God’s anger last?'

Genesis 1 and 2. Have had a conversation about this before, and again, without the need to press scientific knowledge into the biblical text, and without being laborious in regard to an explanation, we can think of Genesis 1 and 2 in terms of points of view and in terms of emphasis. Put simply Chapter 1 puts God at the centre of the narrative, and chapter 2 places humanity at the centre, it's basic literacy. It also depends what you mean by creationist. To say that God created the world doesn't mean that he did it in six 24 hour days.

Exemplary behaviour among believers. One of the reasons for believing is precisely because we are not exemplary.

And then the nasty God one again. The theology of the atonement answers this and is directly related to the point above. I would never suggest that belief in God would always mean that God would be 'nice'.

On this point you ask, "name an ethical action that could only be performed by a religious person." I would have thought that personal sacrifice for one's *guilty* enemy would be a runner. Yes, there are those have given their life for a friend, but to give one's life for the guilty in order that the guilty might go free and escape punishment is very rare indeed. In fact some might even argue that letting people off is a failure of justice. (another point for debate!) Not that christians claim to act like this, on the contrary Christians claim to be on the receiving end of such an action. This too is different from the golden rule which interestingly is often stated in the negative, i.e. do not do to others...

I don't know about you, but my default mechanism is, 'get him back!'

No evidence for God?

And then reasons which might provoke belief.

The Rapture, with bells on? (don't be left behind) Definitely Protestant Fundamentalism, you've been watching too many Christian movies, I'd give it up if I were you.

God speaking to everyone at the same time. How would you know it was him?

The dead coming back to life? Some say it's already happened. If you saw it would you expect me to believe you?

And a copy of the bible on Mars. Come on. LOL.

How likely is it that Jesus was born of a virgin? Well, once you get over the God bit... and God coming to earth would be better than him going to Mars and means he is human. Not exactly the same as playing darts with crosses on distant planets.

In all of this what you really seem to be saying is that God has to be real and measurable and inescapable for you, on your terms, but then Mike, God wouldn't be God, cos you'd have him boxed.

regards

Peter

Mike,

I think Peter covered most of the points I would like to make very well. I particularly liked his advertence to the lunacy of atheists determinedly reading the Bible like fundamentalist protestants.

Perhaps if you just read it, on its own terms and yours, it may seem different. But perhaps I can provide my own reply to your points, just for ego's sake. :)

"What Transcendent Truth may we ask is this? No honest reading of Genesis yields metaphor or poetry. It is a simple straightforward account how the world was supposedly created."

Now here I think you must be joking. On the one hand you talk about how fantastical it all is, and on the other how straightforward it is.
Genesis 1 and 2 are anything but straightforward. They're packed full of analogy and metaphor, a lot of which is even known to have been popular mythological culture of the time.

Again, the claim that Genesis contains a straightforward, factual account of creation completely ignores the fact that THERE ARE TWO SEPARATE AND DISTINCT ACCOUNTS.
Now, read that back...two different accounts, both chocked full of recognisable metaphor and analogy, and both completely different.
That doesn't sound to me like a straightforward, factual account. So that point is simply WRONG.


"You will find you are in a minority here. 44 percent of Americans are creationists and millions in the Muslim world are as well."

I'm also a creationist. Believeing that God creates and sustains the universe does not neccessarily involve believing that he did so in six days...obviously there were no days. I would suggest that your 44% of Americans are not all Young Earth Creationists.

"As for the catholic church there relationship with evolution is skewered. Denoting that man is a special creation. The theory itself is deeply at odd with its teaching."

As man is the pinnacle of evolution, what with self-consciousness, in a way, creating its own universe, this is fully in accord with the view that man is a special creation...the summit of creation.

Historical disputes notwithstanding, evolution fits nicely with church doctrine. Like all new ideas, there were arguments about its compatibility with religion, just as there were arguments within science.

Objectively, however, evolution is not at odds with church doctrine at all.


"To me when Christians accuse other Christians of not being Christians its like the pot calling the kettle black and is simply white noise to me."

I wasn't accusing other Christians of not being Christians. I would not do such a thing.

I was suggesting that some of your arguments are not directed at christians, but at some kind of strawman caricature, who believes that the pious always live happy, carefree lives. I don't know of any christian who believes that.


"As for Noah?s flood aaaa No."

Yes.


"And yet millions believe it, every jot and every tittle."

I don't know where you get these statistics from, but I don't accept them. Do those millions also believe every typo in whatever copy they happen to have? Do they also believe that the printing and edition details on the first page are God's word.

I think you're simply, purposely, working on the assumption that Christians are stupid, and therefore, well, they would believe that wouldn't they.

Considering all of the (Human) biblical analysis and commentary that has gone into collating, translating and canonising what is now "The Bible", are you suggesting that, despite all of that, most people believe that it is the word of God, unchanged by human hand for thousands of years???

Were that the case, none of us would be able to read it.

"The question every person should ask themselves is this, is the bible an ordinary book or not? Is it divinely inspired or not?"

Yes. But it's also, quite obviously, I 'd have thought, the work of humans.


"As for Ethics, your basically saying that without God we have moral relativism."

I am, yes.

"I don?t agree but I think that?s for another day."

I'll look forward to it.

I will just make one more point, that has actually just occured to me as the kettle was boiling.

This whole idea that every word in the Bible should be taken as God's infallible word...

now, there are obviously are Christians who believe it. I say fair play to them, we all have differing views about what constitutes reality. however, it's obviously not sufficient for us more taional, inquiring types.

Now, does the actual nature of the Gospels themselves not dispel the idea that every word should be taken as infallible?

Here we have four separate accounts (chosen from hundreds, due to their compatibility with what had been orally passed down from those who were there). If every word of the Bible was infallible and divine, there would only be ONE Gospel, which stated, infallibly, what ACTUALLY happened.
But there are four of them, all with minor inconsistencies and differences in style and perception.

Surely, that doesn't sound like "the divine, infallible Word". What it seems like to me is the work of humans, faithfully trying to understand the divine in the midst, and faithfully going on the accounts of thopse people who were fundamentally altered by their experince of Christ.

But so anyway, in a nutshell, surely the nature of the Gospels shows that the Bible was never meant to be considered as being infallible to the letter.

But divinely inspired, i think there's little doubt on that.

Hi kids,

You seem to be having fun; forgive me for intruding :-)

[GOSPELS]:
Here we have four separate accounts (chosen from hundreds, due to their compatibility with what had been orally passed down from those who were there).

Actually, they were well fossilised before they were gathered together. But you are quite correct in that they EVOLVED by SELECTION - the fittest "accounts" survived - not because the original apostles were there to correct them, but because that's what people wanted to hear. They are not unbiased accounts, and it is useful that you agree with this point. The belief came first, and was the selector that shaped the "history".

If every word of the Bible was infallible and divine, there would only be ONE Gospel, which stated, infallibly, what ACTUALLY happened.

Well, in fairness none of them claim to be infallible, and the bible is full of errors. But that is only to be expected from a purely human set of documents.

But there are four of them, all with minor inconsistencies and differences in style and perception.

And on the very major issue of the events surrounding the resurrection, they are hopelessly irreconcilable. This fact is very easily explained by the fact that the belief came first, and the histories were shaped around the belief, not the other way round. Don't worry - this is what people do. We're gullible like that.

What it seems like to me is the work of humans, faithfully trying to understand the divine in the midst, and faithfully going on the accounts of thopse people who were fundamentally altered by their experince of Christ.

Exactly. But their experience was subjective; it tells us plenty about how the human mind works, but nothing at all about any god that might actually exist.

But divinely inspired, i think there's little doubt on that.

Oh, I think that's the very question under discussion. The bible has no hint of any origin in any system other than the weird and wacky workings of the mind of a group of marvellous and prolifically inventive apes.

I *love* being human. We rock. We can be nasty maniacs, like the Prophets Samuel and Elijah, or nice friendly people like the Good Samaritan (but he was fictional...). We take the rough with the smooth; we concoct narratives to explain the situations of our lives. God is just another of those narratives.

Mike
Bernard and Pete have given you quite a lot to devour and debate on the Scriptures, and I'min broad agreement with them. I'll delay posting on the Fine Tuning argument (to be more accurate the Design Argument, since I'm also using data other than Fine Tuning).
Very quickly, a probable universes include a soup of quarks unable to form into protons, a universe without atoms, a universe only containing gases, universes without stars, without galaxies, 2 Dimensional universes etc etc etc
We do not need to talk about "interesting" universes at all. Our universe contains order, and we only know of two causes for order. From observation we know it can emerge from a prior order (biological complexity from the laws of Natural Selection), and from observation and direct experience we know minds can create order.
Now all we have to do is give an account of the order in the universe. Or we can leave it as basic and unexplained - but we don't do that on other occasions. And the high degree of order we observe would make it anomalous not to look for a cause for the order we observe in our universe.

Graham

H
They're not irreconcilable - John Wenham has produced an unlikely hypothesis - but at least it shows they can cohere.
In any case, eyewitness accounts almost never cohere on all the details. Better empty the prisons H, and shut down the courts.

GV

And the history departments. Get rid of them too.

GV

And whilst I'm in an irritable mood, you have never once addressed the evidence I provided that showed that the early Church was capable of preserving the Jesus traditions, and attempted to do so.

Maybe I should stop typing until I'm less grumpy.

GV

Hi Helio, good to see you join in.

A rejoinder, if I may.


[GOSPELS]:

"Actually, they were well fossilised before they were gathered together. But you are quite correct in that they EVOLVED by SELECTION - the fittest "accounts" survived - not because the original apostles were there to correct them, but because that's what people wanted to hear."

Yes, the Gospels evolved by Selection. You make a massive leap in assuming that "the fittest" accounts were those which people wanted to hear.

Surely the "fittest" would have been those accounts that best complemented the oral accounts of those who were there, and whose lives were changed directly through their experience of Christ. Y
ou're working on the assumption that, because it was 2000 years ago, people weren't at all interested in establishing the truth of a story, they just blindly accepted what they wanted to hear. There is absolutely no evidence for that, indeed it rails against everything we know of the human condition, then as now.


"They are not unbiased accounts, and it is useful that you agree with this point."

They are as unbiased as any historical account, taking as they do account of many different sources and tallying them with the genuinely earnest stories of those who were actually there, and felt their lives to be wholly changed. "Selected" does not mean "biased", particularly given a rigorous selection process.

Most datings of the first Gospel match it to a time when many people who actually met Christ are likely to have been still alive. In one of his letters Paul mentions something about "These things are true, as we know not just from our own experience, but as we have heard from those who knew jesus"...

Paraphrasing there, obviously, but he does say something like that, somewhere. someone get the concordance out.

"The belief came first, and was the selector that shaped the "history"."

A strange, mad belief just randomly occured to someone, and they then set about CREATING an entire false history, only decades after it supposedly happened? Seems a bit strange.

Is it not more logical to suggest that people actually had wildly life-changing experiences through their encounter with a person, who very subtly claimed to be the son of God, and that these experiences were collated and formed into some sort of account which related those life-changing experiences caused by the encounter with one enigmatic man?
To me that seems far more logical than someone creating an entirely false history from nothing, and somehow getting people who were around at the time to believe it.

"And on the very major issue of the events surrounding the resurrection, they are hopelessly irreconcilable."

Irreconcilable????

Differing in detail, perhaps, but surely all of the accounts of the ressurection are agreed on the salient point of the story....that the tomb was empty.


"This fact is very easily explained by the fact that the belief came first, and the histories were shaped around the belief, not the other way round. Don't worry - this is what people do. We're gullible like that."

When do we do that? When has an entire history been fabricated, only short years after the non-events, which somehow managed to convice those who were actually around at the time?

I can think of no other completely false history that has been created from nothing, referring to near-contemporary events.

"Exactly. But their experience was subjective; it tells us plenty about how the human mind works, but nothing at all about any god that might actually exist."

It tells us that people were fundamentally altered by their encounter with a human who claimed himself to be the "son of man" and all that that entails. The Gospels do not tell us about the inner nature of Christ's divinity, or his sense of purpose or identity. They could hardly be expected to.

They are human accounts of humans' encounters with a man who claimed to be the son of God. it just so happens that that claim changed the lives of a bunch of simple fisherman, in turn enabling them to change the lives of millions of people for thousands of years. not bad work for a bunch of simple peasants inventing some fairy stories about what happened to them ten years ago, eh?


"The bible has no hint of any origin in any system other than the weird and wacky workings of the mind of a group of marvellous and prolifically inventive apes."

i think my points above deal with that.

And anyway;


"And on the very major issue of the events surrounding the resurrection, they are hopelessly irreconcilable.

This fact is very easily explained by the fact that the belief came first, and the histories were shaped around the belief, not the other way round."

Hold on there, wait a minute, there's an obvious fallacy there.

If the belief came first, and the history was shaped around the belief, then surely all the accounts would be the same.

You're hoisted on your own petard.

A set of accounts which differ on minor details is PRECISELY what you expect from an event that ACTUALLY HAPPENED.

If the accounts were shaped by an already existing belief, you would expect them all to be exactly the same...i.e. formulated especially to complement that (already existing....arbitrarily invented) belief.

Are the slightly different accounts some elaborate form of "double bluff". Like, "we're all in cahoots to invent this story, but if we all give SLIGHTLY different accounts, it's more likely to seem real"?

Seems a bit like clutching at straws

I mean, if one were to set about inventing a belief, you would hardly invent a set of separate accounts that were, in your words, "hopelessly irreconcilable"

That's not gonna win you any believers.

Unless of course the events were true, and the differences are simply, and naturally, due to differences in perception and character

I don't want to labour the point, but...

The good Samaritan - rather more than just a nice friendly (fictional) person! For me this is the condensation of the most important teaching of Christ. The parable is told, interestingly I often think, in response to the question of a lawyer. That question sought to define and, as a necessary consequence of so doing, limit the responsibility of a follower of Christ to those in need.

Christ refused a definition - instead he told a story. In that story he casually but utterly rubbished religiosity and defined the truth that, faced with human need or suffering, there is no limit to our responsibility.

Take care of him; and whatsoever thou spendest more, I, when I come back again, will repay thee.

Hi chaps - quite a bit to deal with there!

OK. *Could* the "early church" have maintained a true tradition of the precise nature of the events that happened in Jerusalem on that Sunday?

No-one is arguing that this was *impossible* - just that they *didn't*. The "church" back then comprised a whole gaggle of different groups with different views as to the significance of Jesus (whom some people call "Christ", but I don't). This mirrored the great diversity among Jewish sects before the destruction of Jerusalem. Indeed the reason we have 4 gospels is simply because the 4 main communities that joined together in the 2nd century to form the coherent "church" each had their own gospel that had been farted around with over the years. This is hardly controversial.

As for the "life changing experience", well, frankly that's tosh. What we are looking at here is the response of a group of people to a traumatic event, and how they came to rationalise it. Far more "disciples" likely peeled away and just went back to being Jews or whatever. Such is the nature of things. These things *happen* (or perhaps you have not noticed the number of religions around the place, who all claim the same sort of thing?)

Are you seriously suggesting that all we have to explain is an empty tomb? An empty tomb in the context of a rushed temporary Sabbatical burial; in the context of unknown further associates of Jesus; in the context of acute family embarrassment and a desire to get Jesus's body back to Galilee for proper burial?

At least we're agreed that the post-resurrection appearances are all fictional ghostie stories. That is some progress.

The various wee Jewish factions that subsequently came together to form the "early church" each developed their own "Gospel". Some were more nutty than others. "Peter", for example, has Jesuszilla and a talking cross (entirely plausible according to your model!). "Matthew" has a number of outright falsehoods (the "Nazarene prophecy", the "Out of Egypt" prophecy, the earthquake, the dead walking, and arguably the tomb guard, for instance). Their purpose was not history, but propaganda.

The resurrection *never happened*.

But (and this is the crucial bit) *even if it DID*, the bible and the subjective psychological experiences of people under a religious funk do NOT provide adequate evidence for it, which makes it nonsensical to hold this up as some "great plan" for the salvation of mankind.

It's bunkum.

-H

Portwyne, I agree re the Good Samaritan. It is certainly the most important story Jesus ever told, and it is wrong to limit its context too much - it is generally applicable.

In a nutshell: religion is cobblers. The "golden rule" reigns supreme.

Humanism encapsulated. Good old Jesus!

"the reason we have 4 gospels is simply because the 4 main communities that joined together in the 2nd century to form the coherent "church" each had their own gospel that had been farted around with over the years."

I'm a bit pushed for time, but quickly;

"the reason we have 4 gospels is simply because the 4 main communities that joined together in the 2nd century to form the coherent "church" each had their own gospel that had been farted around with over the years."

Indeed. and yet each of those four Gospels contain an account of a recognisable single story.

So there must be an underlying story that was based on true events that actually happened.

I'm willing to accept that many parts of the Gospels were human attempts to come to terms with something extra-ordinary that had happened to them.

that "something extraordinary" was perceived by many different people in many different ways. Those different ways of perceiving this unique event were collated some years after the event, discussed and argued over by some of the greatest minds of the time, and brought together in a way in which all of the fundamentals, and important aspects of this unique event were brought together to form a coherent whole, which tallied to the greatest possible degree with the oral traditions passed down from those who were around at the time.

I agree that the bible doesn't PROVE the ressurection.

What the gospels represent is an attempt at putting together a coherent account of "something extraordinary" which occured to many many people, and dramatically changed their lives.

In short, the Church is not, to my mind, simply a set of dogmatic beliefs, but a struggle to understand a unique event in history. That there are many slightly different accounts is understandable. that the church laboured with oral tradition, written accounts and eyewitness accounts in order to attempt to form a coherent whole is precislely what is done by modern historians.

i think the gist of your point, Helio, relies solely on the untrustworthiness of those who wrote and collated those accounts. you don't credit them with any degree of the integrity that you would unthinkingly give to a modern history, because you believe they had "an agenda".

If absolutely nothing happened, and it was all just made up, I can't see why anyone would have an agenda.

On the other hand, if SOMETHING did happen, although, in reality, everybody has a wee bit of an agenda, I don't see why we can't allow the biblical collators the same degree of integrity that we allow modern historians.

You're suggesting that we've all been fooled, and that the people who are doing the fooling have also fooled themselves.

I prefer to think that, like all humans, those who attempted to read or interpret the Gospels did so out of a genuine desire to know what ACTUALLY happoened.

I suppose the points moot, as we can prove neither that the Gospel writers and collators were malicious liars, nor that they were beacons of truth and integrity.

However, i had better go and do some work.

H
Not only is the idea that different communities EACH WITH THEIR OWMN GOSPEL came together to form the Church controversial, it's more or less been falsified. Just to call your bluff, who are the scholars you are relying on for your "consensus" opinion?
In any case, Bauckham has shown in "The Gospel for All the Churches" that we cannot assume that the Gospel writers penned their works with only their own isolated communities in mind. Their communities were not that isolated.
And as Luke Timothy Johnston has pointed out, Paul's letters presuppose a common ground (Jesus as the Messiah who sufered for us) with Churches he was in dispute with. He gives a very high Christology in Phillipians and Romans and Corinthians, identifying Jesus with I AM - and doesn't need to argue for the point. He simply assumes that it is a shared opinion. John needed to emphasise the humanity of Jesus in his epistles.
We simply don't see evidence of Churches with a "low Christology" in the earliest communities. No-one felt the need to debate this point. As I've pointed out before, Mark shows a High Christology when Jesus calms storms and walks on waves. These were characteristics of "I AM" (Psalm 107, Job 8).
The "great diversity of Jewish sects"? Name Ten.
The only four that spring to mind are Essenes, Pharisees, Sadducees and what Josephus calls the "fourth philosophy". And the consensus from Sanders to Neusner is that they all agreed on Temple, Torah, and the Land. In other words Neusner's talk of "Judaisms" can be a little misleading. In his introduction to Judaism he explains that there was a common core.
Paul received and passed on Gospel traditions, Papias bears witness to such a process, the synagogue-like structure of the early church made the passing on of traditions possible. The earliest communities would have been keen to preserve memories of Jesus - so teaching about the ruined Temple were preserved, etc, etc. No teachings about circumcision, or halakah about unclean food created.
The church of the From critics never existed - and you need to extend your reading beyond Ehrman.

GV

Bernardsinsight:

I'm afraid you are talking nonsense. The fact that there are different accounts of the alleged resurrection of Jesus does not substantiate its veracity. If you look at the other resurrection myths - Osiris, Mithra, Krishna etc - you will discover different versions of their story too. For example, Plutarch and Diodorus Siculus give different versions of the Osiris myth.

In 'Egyptian Religion' E.A. Wallis Budge writes that the ancient Egyptians believed that Osiris was of divine origin, that he suffered death at the hands of evil on a Friday, that he rose again on the Sunday, that he became king of the underworld and judge of the dead, that because he conquered death the righteous also might conquer death, and that the Egyptian Christians found in the pictures and statues of Isis suckling her son Horus the prototype of the Virgin Mary and her child.

The similarities of many of these resurrection myths substantiates the view that they are made-up stories which borrow from earlier myths, not that they are true.

Who knows where a lie starts. People embellish what they hear for effect or veracity. They tend to believe what they prefer, and the resurrection myth seems to have 'evolved' because people wanted to believe it:
1. From the idea that Jesus was risen spiritually (Paul, circa 50 AD);
2. To the belief that he was risen bodily but the 2 women who saw him told no one because they were afraid (Mark, circa 70 AD);

3. Then to the claim that there were 'eye witnesses' (Matthew and Luke, circa 90 AD, add guards to the story and the 2 women do tell the disciples);

4. Finally to John (circa 100 AD), where it is the disciples themselves who become the eye witnesses.

We might well say that we can discern a clear progression here in which the storyteller is strengthening the evidence in order to give credibility to his story. It wasn't just a pair of women or guards who saw Jesus. Oh, no, even his own mates saw him!

Brian, for the purposes of this I accept that the Gospels don't prove the ressurection just because someone wrote that it happened.

Rather I am arguing against the idea that someone arbitrarily made up this fairy tale about a person who claimed to be the son of God, for some strange agenda.

I'm merely suggesting that, given the fact that a religion was established within the lifetimes of those who were around at the time in which the events are supposed to have occured, it is unlikely that someone invented the story.

I am willing to accept that that story was later collated in such a way as to emphasise something that was not emphasised in the original telling, but which seemed to be the natural conclusion to such a story by those who heard it, and had life-changing experiences from it.

the work of the Holy spirit is seen to be as important as the events.

A person who meant a lot to people was crucified. Within weeks those who followed that person had had a number of life-changing experiences, which they later accepted as being caused by the physical ressurection of their teacher.

Later tellings of the story attempted to emphasise this view, by stressing the importance of certain events that may not have seemed so important at the time.

If I can give an analogy, during the second world war no one knew much about concentration camps and the extermination of jews.
After the war, when this became clear, it was rightly seen as one of the most important and pivotal aspects of that war, and is rightly given a great deal of emphasis in later historical accounts.

Jesus' followers simply found that the tomb was empty. Some of the Gospels are surprisingly non-committal about what ACTUALLY happened.

Later experience suggested to the followers that what actually happened was the ressurecction. this was seen as the natural conclusion to the strange train of events that occured many weeks after the crucifixion, and was thus emphasised in later re-tellings of the story.

There's obviously an argument there, but at the minute I'm rather arguing against the idea that, because the stories DEVELOPED, they must have done so to suit someone's selfish agenda.

It's at least POSSIBLE that those stories developed as those involved gradually came to a fuller understanding of just what had occured.

Indeed, it is hard to see how proclaiming the ressurection of a dead teacher, and subsequently suffering persecution and eath, could have suited anyone's agenda.

However, I've spent too much time on this. Perhaps I will get a chance to return to it tomorrow.

Persecution and DEATH, the third line from the bottom should obviously read. Although there are worse typos than that, hopefuly you can all see through them.

Well hello eeeeeeeeeeveryone!

First things first. Eh em. Cough, cough. Yawn. Big stretch. Yawn. Ho hum, fiddly dee. Here we go again.

Now then.

Hi dad, sorry helio, (why do grown ups always spoil the fun?) You really are going to have to do better. Keeping on repeating that Jesus didn't do it, isn't an argument. OK so we know that you think the resurrection was a no show, but you know what, having no faith is easy. Of course this is not to be confused with disentangling ourselves from a culture with all that that entails, which is not easy, but really it's faith, not to be confused with leaps in the dark, which is the hard bit. And the hard bit isn't even accepting that some people who lived a while ago might have had something worthwhile to say; it's the personal implications of the story being true that really sting, like salt on a boil. Funny how on this blog we rarely get to the psychological implications of retaining or releasing faith. I mean what really drives that? Rationalising experiences, emm... no. Come to think of it I'm still waiting on an explanation of what you mean by the word belief, and I'm still wondering what you were singing about in that band of yours. (Christian bands are over-rated, don't you think?) We can keep shouting, "Dead, alive, DEAD, ALIVE, oh no he's not, oh yes he is," back and forth, but questions about the implications of faith or the lack of it are the real interesting ones. I've been there, a thousand times; I probably know the christian sub-culture as well as you do and I've, taken. it. to. pieces. AND, I'm as cynical as it's possible to be about a lot of it, but the story is still big enough to grab my attention; it's not credulity, it's the implications. The implications are just too big to ignore.

And yes, the Good Samaritan was fictional, and, as is often the case, portwyne offers us some acute and penetrating insight. The implication of this story Helio is more, much much more, than a story about a nice friendly person. I would place it in the same category as the story of the two (fictional) sons - but don't go interpreting this latter one in the same guilty finger-pointing way that is usually done in NI.

I would go one step further though; the whatsoever, which is expended in the story finds it's ultimate expression and fulfillment on a Friday afternoon. Just as the pride of the 'elder son' is finally distilled in the cry of the chief priests, "Crucify Him." (Although, Brian, it probably wasn't a Friday, I mean, nobody can fit three days and three nights into the Friday Sunday time period).

Now, what was it, yes, 'farting' around with the gospels. (how eloquent) Just spit-balling here, not trying to prove anything, but emmmmm, could it possibly be that eye-witness accounts, or written accounts of eye-witness reports might have different perspectives, different emphasis? Nah, nope, never, and probably not I suppose. Silly me.

And then there's a bit of a 'shoot yourself in the foot statement'. (I'm really going to have to learn how everybody does the text coding thing cos this needs to be in bold) ***"Far more "disciples" likely peeled away and just went back to being Jews or whatever."***

Far more? Far, far more? Most? Nearly all? All but one or two? Likely? Was that likely? Would that be more or less likely than no resurrection? Or more or less likely that a bunch of fishermen, having an agenda and taking it to Rome. I mean Rome, where they knew they'd probably die for saying to Caesar, "You know what, you're a second rate national leader, actually Jesus is King, you know, the dead chap." mmmmm.

And religious funk. Here's the thing about Jesus, according to the stories he went out of his way NOT to start a movement, not to organise mass campaigns and to make sure people DIDN'T follow him. And according to the stories, most of the disciples DIDN'T believe the women, Thomas was completely P**SED off, and then they all HID. Mania, I think not. Propaganda, good grief. I'll say it again, you seem to think that faith is easy, it's not. But of course we can't believe them cos they were his mates. That's right, never trust anyone's friend. Weird.

And just one more thought for now, Brian, The Paul circa 50AD who had an idea that Jesus was risen spiritually, which Paul are you thinking of?

Hi chaps,

Peter, you make my point. Faith is appealing. It's a nice wee story. Actually, JESUS was the one who said that most of his followers would run away - maybe you're calling him out here? ;-)

What is there to explain? Resurrection stories? People at the time of Jesus were perfectly happy to make up resurrection stories about John the Baptist or even the old prophets. Why should Jesus be any different? If we're to believe the bible (careful, kids!), epilepsy was caused by demons (the description in Mark of a generalised tonic-clonic seizure is one of the most accurate in ancient literature, but these are manifestly NOT caused by spirits or demons - that is just ignorant superstition). People interpreted things in supernatural terms back then, particularly when the followers of Jesus the Nazarene were pumped full of eschatological zippy-juice.

The size of the explanatory problem that faces us in the gospels is tiddly in comparison to the size it is made out to be. These accounts were written down several decades after the event by people who did not witness them; no sources are cited (apart from perhaps the book of John), and the supposed post-resurrection appearances bear no hallmarks of actual events, even if the events leading up to Jesus's execution by the Romans are roughly accurate.

You haven't addressed the issue of Matthew's known fabrications - Matthew is my favourite gospel, actually, but it contains lots of wee made-up things. Unfortunately, I think the whole Nazareth thing was made up too - I think modern Nazareth is not the place referred to in the NT. But that's for another day.

Toodle pip!
-H

Helio

Belief? - define.

Band? Why? What?

Known fabrications. - State them.

Yes Jesus did say his friends would runaway, (how did you know that BTW!) but the point is that it was his friends who recorded that they did.

Implications of faith. Appealing was sort of NOT my point. That was you reinterpreting again. I said - "And the hard bit isn't even accepting that some people who lived a while ago might have something worthwhile to say, it’s the personal implications of the story being true that really sting, like salt on a boil. Funny how on this blog we rarely get to the psychological implications of retaining or releasing faith. I mean what really drives that?" And I linked it to the Good Samaritan. But if you don't want to go there that's OK.

Nazareth. I presume you mean Nazarite and the holy vow thing. Ok so Jesus was a holy man, I think we know that, I don't think that's in dispute. What is in dispute is the bit about him being God, you know being the actual fulfillment of the Nazarite tradition, because that has implications.

And Jesus sort of poured cold water on the Israelite end time rapture don't get left behind restorative kingdom zippy stuff. Behold! Some implications again.

Senebti

Peter

Oh dear, oh dear

Just to point out a few of the holes remaining in our skeptics arguments

1) Noting the date of the Gospels (which is speculation at the best of times) does not engage with the unieversally acepted fact that they drew on prior tradition. Some of this tradtion was probably written (Q, Crucifixion accounts, Resurrection accounts). And it can no longer be assumed that the oral traditions were created to meet the needs of the Churches, or that the passing on of tradition was inherently unreliable. That requires argument - not assertions.

2) Can I just say that I would really love it if someone would try to explain Christianity through parallels with the Mystery Religions? I could use a laugh.

3) Matthew adds apocalyptic detail to the Crucifixion, not the resurrection accounts. Sorry H.

4) Resurrection means so much more than rising from the dead - and no-one claimed that Jesus was John the Baptist back from the dead, as their ministries overlapped. The claim was that the Baptists "spirit" or "mission" had passed on to Jesus, just like Jesus clsimed that John was Elijah JUST AFTER THE DISCIPLES HAD A VISION OF ELIJAH. Pay attention folks.

5) This is a far cry from resurrection - which was a very physical concept and required empty tombs etc. If the disciples had emotional experiences they could have claimed visions, or that Jesus prophetic mission had passed on to them. They did not. Why not?

6) Anyone who thinks a Pharisee could envisage a non-physical resurrection needs to read something about Pharisees. And needs to re-read Paul's letters.

7) Liberal scholars before Strauss were fond of explaining Jesus miracles by supposing Essenes hidden in a cave helped Jesus supply bread for 5000, or that Jesus used a raft to walk on water.
This was rejected as it was easier to believe the miracle. The miracle stories were recast as legends.
Now the healings of Jesus are no longer placed in that category. And the resurrection doesn't fit either. The stories are too early and too detailed, some event is needed to explain the rise of the Church, the location of the tomb is given etc, etc.
Which means, like it or not H, if you can't buy the miracle, you can't return to the scholarship of the 17th and 18th century to explain th eresurrection. Which leaves you with something more than a "tiddly" explanatory question.
It would be easier to explain the rise of Islam whilst maintaining Muhammad was a fiction.

G Veale

Sorry if I sound grumpy - but there's only so many times you can listen to students mistake Idi Amin for Winston Churchhill, or complete the saying from the gospel "If someone strikes you on one cheek.. you must go and tell a teacher." That Christians had a problem with circumcision because it was difficult to pee afterwards. That the two things required to make a baby are time and effort. The Reformation happened because - and I quote - "Catholics won't wear a Joe".

I feel like I'm trapped in a very bad sit-com that the BBC won't stop repeating.

Graham

Jeez guys- all we have to explain here are *stories* (so the feeding of the 5000 is a piece of cake - or loaves and fishies if you wish). Such stories are commonplace.

Yes, of course they drew on prior "traditions", in the same way that many stories and legends get embellished in the re-telling. You don't need to go back to old scholarship to work this out - it happens every day. You'll recall the variations in the stories regarding the murder of Robert McCartney were enough to get the case dismissed, yet these were LESS variable than the resurrection accounts.

Incidentally, Matthew's earthquake and the zombies: these never happened. I have already mentioned some more of his fabrications. The "virgin" one is perhaps just a misunderstanding on his part. "Out of Egypt" is a fake. I would propose that "Nazareth" is yet another one - Greek "Nazarene" getting confused with "NazarETH", rather than the (correct) "NazirITE" (although I have suspicions that "geNESSARET" may have had something to do with it - after all, Jesus spent an inordinate amount of time in Capernaum). There is no such "Nazarene" prophecy anyway.

But that's all wee quibbles. The main point is that we have dubious stories of a resurrection, in the context of an eschatological train-wreck. There is NO contemporary verification of Jesus, let alone a resurrection.

In other words, we would be very foolish to accept the interpretation that Jesus *actually* rose from the dead - instead, this is a story that grew up around some rather strange events a long time ago, in a pre-scientific age. There is no mystery.

-H

"You'll recall the variations in the stories regarding the murder of Robert McCartney were enough to get the case dismissed, yet these were LESS variable than the resurrection accounts"

I'm loathe to use such a thing in an analogy, but...

No one is claiming, however, that Robert McCartney was not murdered, are they?

We're back to this point about inconsistencies. To my mind, lots of different people telling the same story with minor inconsistencies is precisley what you'd expect of an event that actually happened, whether it's any good in a court of law or not.

Again, the fact that the story of the ressurection is told in the Bible does not PROVE it to be true.

What it proves is that there is a story there which was comnsidered to bhe true by many people, both those who were around at the time and those who heard the story second hand.

It's a historical account, given in many different sources. Were this any other branch of history, the onus would be one you to prove that all of these many accounts, all telling the same story, were actually ALL JUST MADE UP.

The Battle of Hastings, for example, could have just been invented to explain and legitimise the gradual immigration of Norman stock into Britain.

But it probably wasn't...it's more likely to be true.

If you have any valid historical accounts which prove that all of the other accounts are lies, let's have it, and open it up to the historical analysis afforded any other event, instead of just saying that it's a unique, fantastic event, therefore it CAN'T have actually happened.

The Battle of Hastings, for example, could have just been invented to explain and legitimise the gradual immigration of Norman stock into Britain.

But it probably wasn't...it's more likely to be true

Whether or not King Harold actually got an arrow in the eye is neither here nor there.

Helio - post # 45

There is no mystery.

Au contraire, as Dell-Boy might put it, au contraire!

Mystery again is one of those semantically rich words conveying so many possible meanings and resonances and I find just about all of them can be applied to the resurrection story. Whatever else we may say about it there is a mystery there, perhaps indeed the mystery.

H

'Fraid we'll have to pick this up on Monday. Last class of the week is here.

GV