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Atheism/Existence of God Debates (Please Read OP)
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Yes.
Though myth is too strong. Emphatic exhortation is closer.
The gospels are a true and accurate account of the life of Jesus as witnessed, not as investigative journalism but as reports of people who were impressed enough to tell their story.
I take your point to a certain degree, but surely just because someone is impressed enough to tell a story doesn't necessarily mean the account is not biased? People are often easily impressed by all sorts of other people and ideas, but impressions are fickle things, and if different people who are supposed to be reporting the same things about the same person or set of events don't agree, then it's obvious that someone is getting things wrong. We know that there are many contradictions in the accounts of Jesus and his following, but how do we determine which is the more realistic version?0 -
Yes like the "myth" of creation or of Adam and Eve and the Garden of Eden. It is called allegory usually.
Allegory is fine it it is made clear that the idea or concept being posited is so done to illustrate an example, as in a fable or parable. However, if such stories are presented as factual, then the onus is on the teller of the fable to make it clear, especially to children, that it is only imaginary, as children take things literally and tend to carry such ideas into later life, as the idea is implanted in their formative years.
I have know many adults who literally turned peuce if anyone dared to suggest that the Adam and Eve and serpent is not a true story. One of them recently told me that Eve was a white woman and that Jesus himself wrote the bible.
So how does any Christian or anyone else who has a genuine interest in religion and their workings, know which parts of the text are allegorical, examples, fables, parables, factual reports or myths built up around ideas or people who may or may not have existed if they are simply allegorical examples, like Mary, Jesus, Moses? How do you tell the man from the myth?0 -
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Allegory is fine it it is made clear that the idea or concept being posited is so done to illustrate an example, as in a fable or parable. However, if such stories are presented as factual, then the onus is on the teller of the fable to make it clear, especially to children, that it is only imaginary, as children take things literally and tend to carry such ideas into later life, as the idea is implanted in their formative years.
I have know many adults who literally turned peuce if anyone dared to suggest that the Adam and Eve and serpent is not a true story. One of them recently told me that Eve was a white woman and that Jesus himself wrote the bible.
So how does any Christian or anyone else who has a genuine interest in religion and their workings, know which parts of the text are allegorical, examples, fables, parables, factual reports or myths built up around ideas or people who may or may not have existed if they are simply allegorical examples, like Mary, Jesus, Moses? How do you tell the man from the myth?
Reading up on literary forms in Ancient Near Eastern literature would be a good place to start.
Very few New Testament scholars (irrespective of their belief or lack of belief) would argue that the historical narrative of the Gospels or the Book of Acts were intended to be read as allegories. Their style, and frequent references to historical people and events, make such a conclusion nigh well unthinkable.
Equally, the parables of Jesus fit a recognised literary form of illustrative stories that are not intended to be understood literally (ie it is clear that Jesus did not intend his hearers to think that the Good Samaritan was a literal historical figure).
Of course this gets a little harder with the Old Testament, because the larger cultural gulf and chronological distance make it harder for us to recognise the different literary forms. The problem gets more acute with the oldest parts of the Old Testament (such as the Creation Story).0 -
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That would be an erroneous assumption.I take your point to a certain degree, but surely just because someone is impressed enough to tell a story doesn't necessarily mean the account is not biased? People are often easily impressed by all sorts of other people and ideas, but impressions are fickle things, and if different people who are supposed to be reporting the same things about the same person or set of events don't agree, then it's obvious that someone is getting things wrong.
the past happened but two different histories of the event could conceivably both be true.
No we dont know many. We know few apparent contradictions.We know that there are many contradictions in the accounts of Jesus and his following, but how do we determine which is the more realistic version?
We determine the truth by analysis. this involves both scholarship and looking at the world today.0 -
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Indeed I am qualified; I have several postgraduate qualifications. One with a large proportion about history and philosophy.
But as i say my qualifications are not at issue nor do i argue from authority.
I argue based on the evidence.
you are misinformed because your claim "the Catholic upbringing of over half a century ago where such discussions [the historicity of Jesus] were not encouraged"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hermann_Samuel_Reimarus
Hermann Samuel Reimarus (December 22, 1694, Hamburg – March 1, 1768, Hamburg), was a German philosopher and writer of the Enlightenment who is remembered for his Deism, the doctrine that human reason can arrive at a knowledge of God and ethics from a study of nature and our own internal reality, thus eliminating the need for religions based on revelation. He denied the reality of miracles and is credited by some with initiating historians' investigation of the historical Jesus.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raymond_E._Brown
Brown was one of the first Roman Catholic scholars to apply historical-critical analysis to the Bible. As Biblical criticism developed in the 19th century, the Roman Catholic Church opposed this scholarship and essentially forbade it in 1893. In 1943, however, the Church issued guidelines by which Catholic scholars could investigate the Bible historically. Brown called this encyclical the "Magna Carta of biblical progress." Vatican II further supported higher criticism, which, Brown felt, vindicated his approach.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Higher_criticism#Controversy_of_critical_methods
in 1943 Pope Pius XII gave license to the new scholarship in his encyclical Divino Afflante Spiritu: "[T]extual criticism ... [is] quite rightly employed in the case of the Sacred Books ... Let the interpreter then, with all care and without neglecting any light derived from recent research, endeavor to determine the peculiar character and circumstances of the sacred writer, the age in which he lived, the sources written or oral to which he had recourse and the forms of expression he employed
Well you mentioned abortion as a "choice". I was wondering how far you extend personal choice. To freedom to kill or destroy ones body?
Id beg to differ. His men loyally followed him across deserts into wildreness and climed mountains impossible to climb.
http://www.livius.org/aj-al/alexander/alexander_t54.html
About thirty lost their lives during the ascent -falling in various places in the snow, their bodies were never recovered for burial- but the rest reached the top as dawn was breaking, and the summit of the Rock was theirs.
Well maybe. the central point is about people believed to be god and about whether such people are there in the history. they are. It isnt silly to regard Jesus as historically as valid as anyone else.
Yes. but it isnt for me to make your case for you. Just because you could say the same if i said "Jesus was god" doesnt change anything since i am not making that claim. It is you making the claim about pêople ,not being gods. Im just pointing out that you think such claims are silly because you dont believe them to be true no matter what the historical evidence.
ISAW with due respect , stuff your qualifications, they are absolutely meaningless on an anonymous forum. We can claim anything here as to who or what we are and no one is the wiser. I genuinely mean you no disrespect but lay off '' I have this or that '' qualification , unless you are prepared to come out from behind that anonymity like that Nugent chap on A&A it just comes across as meaningless bragadoccio.
I repeat you are not qualified and never will be to tell me about my catholic education and upbringing.
I don't know what relevance those links are supposed to have to the discussion interesting though they may be .
Yes I do believe in maximum personal freedom within the law- Suicide Drugs Abortion Euthanasia Religion Belief Creed whatever , though again what relevance that has to the discussion I don't know. And please note I by Personal Freedom I mean each person has the right to choose- I may not choose those options myself.
Your taking the examples of Alexanders men following him to the end of the earth as proof that he was a God ? Men have always followeed other men like that.
The men the went to ''certain death' with Capt. Bligh rather than Christian. Any of the men that followed Cortez or Pizarro. History is full of such examples be it from greed love trust or faith and not because they were Gods . That is what makes us men and women and capable of such great and sometimes such terrible things. We don't need Gods for that.0 -
Some of them apparently were the wonders of the age.
In fact the huge amount of sources i left out would say just that.
Pliny maybe believed in the Roman gods as true and that the Christian god was not:
Those who denied that they were or had been Christians, when they invoked the gods in words dictated by me, offered prayer with incense and wine to your image, which I had ordered to be brought for this purpose together with statues of the gods, and moreover cursed Christ — none of which those who are really Christians, it is said, can be forced to do — these I thought should be discharged. Others named by the informer declared that they were Christians, but then denied it, asserting that they had been but had ceased to be, some three years before, others many years, some as much as twenty-five years. They all worshiped your image and the statues of the gods, and cursed Christ
Pliny to Trajan, Letters 10.96–97
This is proof of exactly what ?0 -
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That would be an erroneous assumption.
the past happened but two different histories of the event could conceivably both be true.
An example please. How is it possible on any level for two different accounts of the same event to both be true?
In a court of law, different accounts of the same event results in doubt being cast on both accounts unless one can be substantiated.0 -
ISAW with due respect , stuff your qualifications, they are absolutely meaningless on an anonymous forum. We can claim anything here as to who or what we are and no one is the wiser. I genuinely mean you no disrespect but lay off '' I have this or that '' qualification , unless you are prepared to come out from behind that anonymity like that Nugent chap on A&A it just comes across as meaningless bragadoccio.
I dont think you have been paying attention! I dont "argue from authority". Look it up.
YOU are the one who claimed "you are not qualified ( and never will be) to tell me what is my misinformed belief. "
You admit yourself you have no way of knowing what my qualifications are so why comment on them? YOU raised the point about my qualifications not me!I repeat you are not qualified and never will be to tell me about my catholic education and upbringing.
And i repeat you have no idea what my qualifications are. so you argue from ignorance.
Moving on from being misinformed about me ... it makes no difference what other misinformation or misconception you have about the church position on historicity of Jesus.
Textual criticism had a seismic shift a half centurty ago.I don't know what relevance those links are supposed to have to the discussion interesting though they may be .
therein lies your ignorance and misconception.
the point you were making was about textual criticism and higher criticism.
I was pointing out the church shifted to accepting higher criticism post WWII.
If you dont believe me look them up.Yes I do believe in maximum personal freedom within the law- Suicide Drugs Abortion Euthanasia Religion Belief Creed whatever , though again what relevance that has to the discussion I don't know. And please note I by Personal Freedom I mean each person has the right to choose- I may not choose those options myself.
so people have the right to do things which are morally wrong ?
If they pass laws allowing them to do these things?
so how do we decide what is morally wrong?Your taking the examples of Alexanders men following him to the end of the earth as proof that he was a God ? Men have always followeed other men like that.
As evidence that some of them may have believed he was a god.
Bad example. "evil" Blythe is a myth in my opinion.The men the went to ''certain death' with Capt. Bligh rather than Christian.
Another bad exampleAny of the men that followed Cortez or Pizarro.
this would be the cortez the Aztecs believed was a god?History is full of such examples be it from greed love trust or faith and not because they were Gods . That is what makes us men and women and capable of such great and sometimes such terrible things. We don't need Gods for that.
I didnt claim they were gods just that people believed they were.0 -
Don't you think it is odd that the Jews were able to prove that Jesus was not the Son of God by forcing His mother to state on record that Jesus was in fact the son of Joseph?
If Mary claimed that God inseminated her in order to conceive Jesus then she would have guilty of the same blasphemy as Jesus was and would have been liable to be stoned for adultery.
Why did the Jews miss that opportunity to 'kill' the Jesus phenomenon for good?
Mary would have had to deny Jesus was the son of God in order to survive; check-mate.
Or perhaps the Jews wanted Christianity to come about for reasons best known to themselves.0 -
Would you think incorporating what we know from scientific empiricism into historical scholarship would help find the truth? Would you consider Christian historical scholarship to embrace scientific empiricism?Historical scholarship and scientific empiricism are distinct.
"truth" is a metaphysical concept.0 -
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I dont think you have been paying attention! I dont "argue from authority". Look it up.
YOU are the one who claimed "you are not qualified ( and never will be) to tell me what is my misinformed belief. "
You admit yourself you have no way of knowing what my qualifications are so why comment on them? YOU raised the point about my qualifications not me!
And i repeat you have no idea what my qualifications are. so you argue from ignorance.
Moving on from being misinformed about me ... it makes no difference what other misinformation or misconception you have about the church position on historicity of Jesus.
Textual criticism had a seismic shift a half centurty ago.I don't know what relevance those links are supposed to have to the discussion interesting though they may be .
therein lies your ignorance and misconception.
the point you were making was about textual criticism and higher criticism.
I was pointing out the church shifted to accepting higher criticism post WWII.
If you dont believe me look them up.
so people have the right to do things which are morally wrong ?
If they pass laws allowing them to do these things?
so how do we decide what is morally wrong?
As evidence that some of them may have believed he was a god.
Bad example. "evil" Blythe is a myth in my opinion.
Another bad example
this would be the cortez the Aztecs believed was a god?
I didnt claim they were gods just that people believed they were.
Your replies are getting increasing meaningless ISAW, you bring up your qualifications and then accuse me of commenting on them, etc etc and you still have no clue about my background amd I am mystified as to why you even pursue it.
Those links are still irrelevant to the point under discussion, that is just showing some church figures stopped ''insisting'' the turin shroud was genuine and had it tested type of reasoning . Though it is interesting that you say that church criticism pre ww II needed improvement.
And why is whether Bligh was good or bad has anything to do with the point ? The point is men followed him to what was to be certain death- not if he was good or bad.
Yes that would be the same Cortez the Aztecs thought was a god - Again what is your point ? I am referring to his men following him half way round the globe.
Lets not get caught up in the moral standard again ISAW- I think there is a discussion already going on that.
Now I have answered your question, so can we get back on point-
I am still waiting on your comparision on Octavian or Virgil versus Jesus.0 -
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HamletOrHecuba wrote: »Its the first time I have heard this.
The usual Jewish accusation is that Christ's father was a Roman soldier called Pantera.
I presume the poster is referring to the census the Joseph and Mary were in Bethlehem to complete ? And that Joseph would have been the father ?0 -
No, you are not in the process of answering it. You have consistently failed to answer it and, yet again, have tried to deflect from that fact by accusing others of being obsessed.Now this is really getting ridiculous- is that the only question I have left unanswerd ? The question I am in the process of answering ?
So, I ask you again.
Where is any surviving contemporary evidence of other historical figures in First Century Palestine?
Nonsense. You said that if Jesus did the things recorded in the Gospels then we should expect to have contemporary evidence from First Century Palestine. I asked you to cite such evidence of other figures.By the way saying this man was a king and his coins dos'nt cut it , as I already pointed out you can't have it both ways . Either Jesus was a god or he was not.
To waffle on about coins is blatant obfuscation. You know it is irrelevant because coins could never be the kind of evidence we would expect of Jesus. Who do you think would mint coins? His Galilean followers?
"Hey Roman merchant, what do you mean you won't accept my coin? Why should it have a picture of Caesar or the king? My coin't got a pretty picture of Jesus who I believe is God, and I made it myself in the shed in my back garden of Capernaum!"
Come on, surely you can produce some of this evidence that we should expect without dragging us down that kind of retarded lunacy?
Of course we are. Don't you dare start switching the goalposts now.We are not arguing about the existance of jesus the man.
The reason I entered this debate, and the reason I am continually requesting that you substantiate your original claim, was because you said, in Posts 3737:The real issue in not if it was 50 years or 100 years , but the fact that there are no contemporaenous accounts at all- none. And this for a series of events that went on over a number of years. And not just any events but quite extraordinary ones. Surely any one of those miracles would have been the talk of the age never mind a whole series. And that is before we even get to the resurrection .Not even accounts disputing those events which is the least one could expect.
This whole discussion is about Jesus working miracles. Whether He was God or not is a separate issue, and a theological one rather than a historical one.
History can simply record that people who witnessed Jesus' ministry were convinced that they saw Him work miracles, including rising from the dead. You have made the claim that if that happened then we should expect evidence.
Of course we do have evidence, more evidence than exists for any similar figure in history - but you choose to reject the validity of that evidence because it was written by people who were convinced by Jesus' acts and claims.
You have claimed that we should expect surviving contemporary evidence from other sources - from people who didn't accept his claims. From people who viewed him simply as a man. I have challenged you to produce any such evidence that has survived of other First Century Palestinian figures. You have not done so.
I think it's time you should admit what is as clear as the nose on your face - that no historically literate person would have any reasonable expectation of such evidence surviving about Jesus when it hasn't survived about anyone else.
If you do admit that, then we can move on to Virgil. I'm itching to hear why you think biographical details culled from a source over a century later, or manuscripts that date from over 350 years after his death, somnehow constitute contemporary evidence.0 -
I presume the poster is referring to the census the Joseph and Mary were in Bethlehem to complete ? And that Joseph would have been the father ?
I thought that Jewishness was matriarchal and that Jesus claimed His line to David from Mary, I dunno, but I think its a typo and he meant that they didn't and missed an opportunity to kill the Jesus/God claim stone dead by not making her admit the father was Joseph as they could have pressured her to do.0 -
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HamletOrHecuba wrote: »Its the first time I have heard this.
The usual Jewish accusation is that Christ's father was a Roman soldier called Pantera.
Yes, I've heard that, the Pantera idea appears to stem from a lost work written by a platonist called Celsus in about 177AD. We know about it from Origen's work 'Contra Celsum' which was written in 248 AD.
The fact that so many atheists will ever advance this theory is a prime example of the sheer muppetry that people will engage in when they throw all objectivity out of the window and base their beliefs on ideological bias and wishful thinking.
"We can't accept the Gospels as any kind of evidence because they were written long after the time of Jesus (in the case of Mark less than 40 years actually)and anyway, we can't trust followers of Jesus as historical sources ........
But we're perfectly happy to accept the story of Pantera even though it was written much longer after the time of Jesus (over 140 years) and we can trust Origen as a historical source even though he was a follower of Jesus."
You couldn't make this stuff up.0 -
So, I ask you again.
Where is any surviving contemporary evidence of other historical figures in First Century Palestine?
For the sake of moving the argument along it would be nice to hear a response to this. It has been asked a number of times already and as far as I can see there hasn't been a direct answer given.0 -
No, you are not in the process of answering it. You have consistently failed to answer it and, yet again, have tried to deflect from that fact by accusing others of being obsessed.
So, I ask you again.
Where is any surviving contemporary evidence of other historical figures in First Century Palestine?
Nonsense. You said that if Jesus did the things recorded in the Gospels then we should expect to have contemporary evidence from First Century Palestine. I asked you to cite such evidence of other figures.
To waffle on about coins is blatant obfuscation. You know it is irrelevant because coins could never be the kind of evidence we would expect of Jesus. Who do you think would mint coins? His Galilean followers?
"Hey Roman merchant, what do you mean you won't accept my coin? Why should it have a picture of Caesar or the king? My coin't got a pretty picture of Jesus who I believe is God, and I made it myself in the shed in my back garden of Capernaum!"
Come on, surely you can produce some of this evidence that we should expect without dragging us down that kind of retarded lunacy?
Of course we are. Don't you dare start switching the goalposts now.
The reason I entered this debate, and the reason I am continually requesting that you substantiate your original claim, was because you said, in Posts 3737:
This whole discussion is about Jesus working miracles. Whether He was God or not is a separate issue, and a theological one rather than a historical one.
History can simply record that people who witnessed Jesus' ministry were convinced that they saw Him work miracles, including rising from the dead. You have made the claim that if that happened then we should expect evidence.
Of course we do have evidence, more evidence than exists for any similar figure in history - but you choose to reject the validity of that evidence because it was written by people who were convinced by Jesus' acts and claims.
You have claimed that we should expect surviving contemporary evidence from other sources - from people who didn't accept his claims. From people who viewed him simply as a man. I have challenged you to produce any such evidence that has survived of other First Century Palestinian figures. You have not done so.
I think it's time you should admit what is as clear as the nose on your face - that no historically literate person would have any reasonable expectation of such evidence surviving about Jesus when it hasn't survived about anyone else.
If you do admit that, then we can move on to Virgil. I'm itching to hear why you think biographical details culled from a source over a century later, or manuscripts that date from over 350 years after his death, somnehow constitute contemporary evidence.
If anyone is shifting the goalost PDN you are- I am producng evidence- the quality of which we can debate later.
As far am I am concerned we are discussing a number of issues - though all part of the same issue-
Did Jesus the man exist ? Was He a God, Did He work miracles etc ? Was he ressurected , and what proof can we provide for any or all of the above .
All the rest of your post is - to use your own word just ''waffle'' and misdirection and avoidance of answering my question put to you.
So you will have to wait as I continue to do your work for you.0 -
Fanny Cradock wrote: »For the sake of moving the argument along it would be nice to hear a response to this. It has been asked a number of times already and as far as I can see there hasn't been a direct answer given.
Already provided two Fanny- and more to follow . ( I do have a life as well, good people)we can debate the quality when I am finished , but to say none have been provided is simply incorrect.0 -
That would be an erroneous assumption.
the past happened but two different histories of the event could conceivably both be true.
Can you please give me an example of this conceiveability, and I don't mean according to 'truth' by prejudiced opinion, but fact as an actual thing or event? Can we, for sake of discussion, agree that there are a number of individuals accounting for the same event, following Jesus, as being there and recording the events as they happen, and that they are all as trustworthy as each other? How can their accounts reflect the truth of him and his life if they vary in truthful realiability and in the light of analytical examination?No we dont know many. We know few apparent contradictions.
We determine the truth by analysis. this involves both scholarship and looking at the world today.
We know many, but don't get me wrong, I'm not saying he didn't exist as a person, but that there are many inplausible or factually contradictory accounts associated with his life.
As for 'scholarship' being some sort of authority, it would all depend on the bias and culture of the scholars, and what information or lack thereof they have access to. The are not necessarily infallible, especially if their opinions and outlook are based on supprorting a system of beliefs that they themselves were brought up and educated in. Hitler had his scholars, as did many a despot.0 -
Pilate- mentioned by Josephus Philo and Tacitus and the attached artifacts0
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And your evidence that Mary did this, other than in your own head, is what exactly?
The genealogy of Jesus according to Matthew says that Jesus was somehow, in some weird way that I have never been able to follow, the descendant of Joseph. Mary was never stated to be a blood relative of Joseph, so it makes no apparent sense to jump from Joseph's family line and associate the birth of Jesus with him solely because Mary, Jesus' mother, was his (Joseph's) wife.
Elihud the father of Eleazar, Eleazar the father of Matthan, Matthan the father of Jacob, and Jacob the father of Joseph, the husband of Mary, and Mary was the mother of Jesus who is called the Messiah.
http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew+1&version=NIV
Even the stated numbers of the listed generations don't add up. A generation is from the birth of one being to the birth of their offspring. Does anyone known anything about this or the suggestion/statement of Joseph being the dad?0 -
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Toby Take a Bow wrote: »Does Josephus not mention governors of the area at the time, or am I missing something?
Yes, and Josephus mentions Jesus too - but Marien seems to think that we should be expecting something more.0 -
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Yes, and Josephus mentions Jesus too - but Marien seems to think that we should be expecting something more.
Ah. References to miracles and the like. Gotcha.
I wouldn't be one to argue against the existence of the historical Jesus, but I thought there was still considerable debate over the references to Jesus specifically in Josephus?0
This discussion has been closed.
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