Originally posted by jaywillI do not understand the relevance of your thoughts regarding sexuality or what might have provoked them. Maybe something was on your mind? In any event, since you do wish to use that material I would have to reply that it is incoherent.
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It would be nice if in every area of human life there was universal agreement.
Even something like sexual union is not agreed upon by people.
Some say men's unions with men is the norm.
Others, women with women.
Others, adults with kids.
Others, humans with animals.
This is just an example that something you would think would be a candid ...[text shortened]... e to make choices in life based on the sheer multiplicity of claims in other important areas.
While some people prefer and engage in same-sex relationships I am not aware that anyone outside a distant fringe claims they are "the norm" in our society, although they are widely prevalent in most societies including our own, typically under some level of disapproval from people who find this threatening to their own feelings. I think that every society on the planet protects against sexual activity between adults and kids, which is demonstrably harmful and not capable of being consensual. There are indeed some people who nevertheless have that inclination, which is rightly illegal and induces horror in healthy people. These are one category for whom I might be open to the restoration of mediaeval techniques of punishment. As regards animals, I have heard tales about shepherds in remote areas and about the empress Catherine the Great of Russia in that regard, but again without the suggestion that this would be "the norm."
But what is it that you imply is a case for universal agreement? Those who refuse to believe it happens are wilfully deceiving themselves, though we could debate its frequency. Alternatively, if you refer to universal agreement about the moral status of different forms of sexual activity, that is a different type of enquiry and nothing would lead me to expect universal agreement. However, I do imagine that responsible people making thoughful moral choices would tend to oppose non consensual sexual acitivities on the ground of empathy with others.
The issue about a multiplicity of claims is relevant but the conclusion reached is not valid in my opinion. You rely on the claim that Paul was inspired by direct communication with the [dead and] resurrected Jesus from heaven and I have difficulty accepting that claim. One ground I give for being unimpressed is that many different people make the same claim for wildly different religious arguments - that is that they are divinely inspired.
I do not use this multiplicity of claims as a rationale not to make a decision to seek the truth for myself. I use it instead as a reason to seek alternative types of explanation or evidence that do not rely on claiming divine inspiration.
I do not however discard the evidence that is available. I go so far as to agree that Paul was inspired - I just use the word differently and without implying a divine source, referring instead to the evidence of creative inspiration in many other well examined fields.
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Originally posted by jaywillThis type of debating point usually points to a distraction from the topic under debate but I can see how you might want to use it.
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One available explanation is that it is evidence of direct contact with Jesus Christ. But that is too convenient since it is also circular and self fulfilling
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You have mentioned a couple of times circularity.
You know some people say that any world view contains circ detect some circularity in your reasoning ?
What do you believe as a world view ?[/b]
I am not sure what you want by way of a world view that can be set down in a post. Mine would certainly include a range of scientific and rational views and in my less articulate areas, some irrational and impossible ones. But the big edifference between us seems to be your willingness to construct a world view around a literal reading of the Bible while mine relies on Rationalism and Science.
There is a reasonable sense in which all scientific thinking is circular, though it is a wide and expanding circle. This is because scientists rely on the findings and theories of other scientists to create consistency. The rule for what is included is that it must be rational and it must not discard the evidence, the rule for what is excluded is that it has been falsified or it is irrational.
This has interesting consequences. For example, in another thread I argue that Evolution has the support of many branches of science. If Evolution is excluded on Biblical grounds, as is argued by Creationists, then that in turn forces us to discard all the other scientific disciplines by which it is supported. The point being that if other sciences support Evolution and do not support Creationism, then they must - in the Creationist account - be seriously wrong in some fundamental way that has to be addressed in order to repair the web of mutually supporting theories. So you can't jettison only Evolution.
However, the circumferance of this supposedly circular world view is not fixed and not closed to new developments. For example, the science of genetics was not available in Darwin's time. In fact, it is impossible for it to be a closed circle because of Godel's incompleteness theorems.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6del%27s_incompleteness_theorems#Extensions_of_G.C3.B6del.27s_original_result
In other words, it is always necessary to prove or support the theories in one branch of knowledge by referring to external supporting arguments and findings from another branch of knowledge. This started life in the special world of mathematics but has been extended by many writers, because as I said scientific knowledge operates as a mutually reinforcing web and anything on one branch of science can - with care - have implications for any other branch of science.
But Godel does not say nothing can finally be proved. "The second incompleteness theorem only shows that the consistency of certain theories cannot be proved from the axioms of those theories themselves. It does not show that the consistency cannot be proved from other (consistent) axioms."
So for example, Darwin's biology is supported by Lyell's geology which is in turn supported by Newton's astronomy and so forth; Darwin's theory is supported by Genetics which is supported by biochemistry which ... There is a circle in one sense but not a never ending circle. The external support for Darwin's theory is completely sufficient. The external support for Lyell's geology is sufficient.
Still, if you want to see it this way then Science is circular and you might argue that ultimately science must be supported by something that comes from outside of Science.
That is OK but it does not give you a licence to pull out anything whatever that is external to science and to employ that as the final solution. "We need something - This is something - We need This" is a silly and illogical way of thinking. If you want to argue for something that is outside of Science as your preferred way to give Science a full explanation, then the onus is on you to show that it does succeed and that is does not collapse in the effort.
Fistly, the gaps found in Science often are addressed by devising new branches of Science - genetics for example is new, as is computer science. It might be sufficient for many people to say that Science has the capacity to keep expanding in this way.
Alternatively, you might say that is logically unhelpful - we want to step outside the set of all science and appeal to something that is not science. Again there are many candidates. Ethics and morality, for example. Many scientists and mathematicians appeal to aesthetics. Some scientists even appeal to religious thinking (Einstein's apparent Deism for instance, or Roger Penrose's possibly playful appeal to Plato's Theory of Forms), but not on terms that collapse Science out of existence altogether. The list is long. What ties it together is that these are not substitutes for Science - Science remains intact with their support.
Finally you may want to appeal outside the set of every possible human way of thinking in order to arrive at the ultimate gotcha theory of the entire shooting match. Arguably, this is what mathematicians are doing in many ways but that may not qualify as they are human mathematicians. I don't think that can be done and so I don't think humanity will ever run out of things to discover.
Originally posted by jaywillthats just pure Calvanism!
Paul a persecutor of the church. Yet chosen somehow in eternity.
Like me.
Maybe someone reading has a mark of choosing upon him or her also.
Paul had a mark on him. Chosen before the foundation of the world like me, as Howard Hagashi explains.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3pZkloWbpiY&NR=1
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Originally posted by jaywillSo basically your contribution to our debate has degenerated to drivel then. No elaboration on your tasteless diversion into sexual preferences (thankfully). No response to my alternative world view which you requested (that's ok - you just thought I could not answer). And on the point at issue we are are left with that "begging the question" assertion.
Paul a persecutor of the church. Yet chosen somehow in eternity.
Like me.
Maybe someone reading has a mark of choosing upon him or her also.
Paul had a mark on him. Chosen before the foundation of the world like me, as Howard Hagashi explains.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3pZkloWbpiY&NR=1
Paul invented Christianity and Christians then wrote up their account in the New Testament, that inevitably conformed with and supported this religion. It may well have been based on real events, a real Jesus and his real teachings, but it is their account that we read. It is not evidence of anything other than the beliefs of the founding Christians written decades after the death of Jesus. In particular he interpreted the death of his Messiah as a blood sacrifice and on the lines of many pagan examples, as one who died, went to the underworld and returned to save us. Inspired indeed, like an imaginative act of literary criticism, but not original.
Essentially, your argument about Paul's contribution to the birth of Christianity is that he was entirely a vehicle through which God supplied everything, by divine inspiration. This leaves unfortunate consequences in its wake - as I say in another thread, He could usefully have consulted a lawyer on the wording to prevent wild speculation through misreading or ambiguous alternative readings. Indeed it would have been sensible to pick a more competent set of apostles to start with and maybe dictated some of the stuff, proof reading for important errors before approving a final draft. Sadly, Divine Inspiration is a tiresomely inefficient way to communicate, don't you agree?
However, while you are confident that you have an internally consistent set of beliefs, insulated from opposing opinions, you (like FreakyKBH) have not actually found any important defect in my reasonably consistent reading of the same history, supplemented by other authorities, consistent for example with the history of the Roman Empire and the Jews in the relevant period.
The fact that you appear to have swallowed the Bible whole and can probably quote at length for any topic under the sun (I agree you know a huge amount and I know very little by comparison) only shows that you have spent too much time reading what you agree with and not enough respecting the weight of evidence contrary to your beliefs. Which is in itself tolerable in your private life of course. Just not in public debate.
It was Thomas Aquinas who classically pointed out your error. The Bible is not useful for converting or debating with non believers. If you cannot deal with philosophy (and history) then you are not going to impress anyone.
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Originally posted by finneganPaul invented Christianity and Christians then wrote up their account in the New Testament, that inevitably conformed with and supported this religion. It may well have been based on real events, a real Jesus and his real teachings, but it is their account that we read. It is not evidence of anything other than the beliefs of the founding Christians written decades after the death of Jesus. In particular he interpreted the death of his Messiah as a blood sacrifice and on the lines of many pagan examples, as one who died, went to the underworld and returned to save us. Inspired indeed, like an imaginative act of literary criticism, but not original.
So basically your contribution to our debate has degenerated to drivel then. No elaboration on your tasteless diversion into sexual preferences (thankfully). No response to my alternative world view which you requested (that's ok - you just thought I could not answer). And on the point at issue we are are left with that "begging the question" assertion.
If you cannot deal with philosophy (and history) then you are not going to impress anyone.
I am not entirely convinced by this argument. Certainly many modern scholars have noticed especially in Roman epic, a fetish for katabasis, that is, a descent into hell. It had become a very popular genre. We see it in the Aeneid, for example, when Aeneas descends into Hades to see his father, Anchises. and learn his fate. Roman epicists had become very interested in collapsing boundaries between hell and earth, as can be seen in later writers, Lucan and Statius. In the Thebaid, for example, Amphiarius is swallowed by the earth and taken into Hades, a reward for his religious devotion to Apollo. Conversely, Laius is frequently sent by the gods and furies to provoke battle. I suspect Valerius Flaccus had a similar katabasis in his telling of the Argonauts.
Superficial parallels between Jesus' descent into hell and the literary genre of katabasis are not very persuasive, however. The Church Fathers talked about the descent into hell as an event in which Jesus returned the righteous to heaven. He did not descend into the literal hell, where there is no possibility of redemption or encounter with God, but to a place where the righteous had to wait until original sin was atoned for. Some identified this as the 'bosom of Abraham' which Jesus himself refers to in the story of the Lazarus and the rich man. This is clearly neither Hades nor Elysium. If anything therefore the idea of Jesus' descent into hell reflects more of a pious Jewish belief that the dead enjoy repose with the patriarchs and prophets, Abraham and also probably Elijah who was predicted to return at the end times.
In the nineteenth century it was very popular to spot similarities between the ancient world and Christian Scripture and doctrine and conclude syncretism. The JWs are victims of this and anytime in classical religion they find cases of Triadic gods, they propose this as the origin of the Christian Trinity. There is a certain philosophical naivety about this. Simply because there is similarity does not mean that there is conscious appropriation -- it could just be a coincidence. More importantly, this kind of critique fails to consider significant differences. Roman katabasis is not the same as Christ's descent into hell. Christian soteriology and understanding of sacrifice is not the same as its pagan counterpart. It requires a lot more to prove actual syncretism than to just simply point out similarities.
Originally posted by Conrau KSyncretism: the union (or attempted fusion) of different systems of thought or belief (especially in religion or philosophy).
I am not entirely convinced by this argument. Certainly many modern scholars have noticed especially in Roman epic, a fetish for katabasis, that is, a descent into hell. .........
Superficial parallels between Jesus' descent into hell and the literary genre of katabasis are not very persuasive, however.
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Simply be ...[text shortened]... It requires a lot more to prove actual syncretism than to just simply point out similarities.
Christianity is what it is and not something else. That is a useful starting point. Conserve the facts as they are presented. So the whole complex of beliefs and interpretations set out for example in the New Testament, or say in Paul's Letter to the Romans, defines Christianity and is quite different to the beliefs of Roman pagans. It does not follow that there are no common ingredients. The differences are very important ones, as you say, listing a few. Even so, the similarities are also important. They are not trivial.
If one starts from an atheist position and wants to understand the invention of Christianity as a human institution then it is not acceptable to introduce magical encounters with the dead or the spirit world. That is just not something we can connect with what we believe we know about the world. So whenever we (atheists) have a report of something supernatural, then we have to try and find the most reasonable (and charitable) explanation based on what we can believe rationally.
It does not follow that we have to insult religious thinking or apply modern principles to the way people functioned in the Roman world. Instead, we ought to seek a charitable interpretation which conserves as much as possible of what we know and can establish from reliable sources. So when Paul says he was inspired by the Holy Spirit (say) we have to at least accept that he had a subjective experience which he explains in that way, not only to us but also to himself. That is not hard - we have many accounts of inspiration that do not require a supernatural agent. So we accept that he was inspired! We have retained as much as we reasonably and rationally can.
All history is creative interpretation. The real world has no attractively simple story line - there are too many details. Giving history a story line is important but it can be done in many ways. We have to make a decision about how to fit the many pieces together without losing any of them just because they are inconvenient. (losing is not the same as considering and rejecting things, as long as we are open about these matters; what atheists have to reject is miracles.) For most people in Roman times, Jesus' life was insignificant and it is not recorded for that reason, even though the Romans had immense quantities of written records. In the Gospels and New Testament, by contrast, he is central. However when we depend on the New Testament for evidence we have to keep in mind that it was written as religious scripture by Christians and for Christians.
Just as I say we have to "create" history by means of interpretation, so I suggest would Paul have to create a story that makes sense of his reactions to the life and teaching of Jesus. Paul is impressed by what Jesus taught, dismayed that his potential role as Messiah has been terminated through a Roman execution, and needs a way to interpret that catastrophe which might retain the benefits of Jesus' life story. That can be achieved - in Christianity it is achieved - through the story of the resurrection. Paul had quite a lot of objectives to reconcile in his "vision" and that was why his achievement was so impressive and important, not least to himself.
How Paul put his interpretation together is impossible to recover but it is surely obvious that it required the assortment of material that he encountered and stored in his mind through his life to that date. Although he assembled a coherent and original story about the life and resurrection of Jesus and about its significance, the raw materials for this creative task were his entire culture. Indeed it would be totally unrealistic to imagine anything else - for example that he was such a complete genius as to invent all the elements on his own, that the many evident similarities are a coincidence and he re-invented these themes without borrowing. Or that he was divinely inspired in a literal rather than metaphorical sense. We do not need magical explanations - a realistic one is that he had the raw materials to hand in his encounters with his surrounding culture and it is unrealistic to dispute this.
Obviously of course, as Paul was a Pharisee, a major component of his inspiration was his absorption in the scriptures of the Jewish faith and his thinking style will have been set by that religious training. This is why it would be nonsense to give excessive weight (more than is required, which is not to say none) to pagan influence.
In that way, Christianity inevitable does represent a form of syncretism - it cannot be anything else. The product of the fusion of ideas may be different and original but that is not unusual in creative work of many kinds. Over and over again we encounter stunningly new creations in our world, ranging from scientific theories to Henry Ford's Model T assembly line to James Joyce's Finnegan's Wake. Culturally at least, nothing comes from nothing (I don't think Quantum Mechanics will disrupt that claim).
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Originally posted by finnegan=====================================
This type of debating point usually points to a distraction from the topic under debate but I can see how you might want to use it.
I am not sure what you want by way of a world view that can be set down in a post. Mine would certainly include a range of scientific and rational views and in my less articulate areas, some irrational and impossible ones. be done and so I don't think humanity will ever run out of things to discover.
But the big edifference between us seems to be your willingness to construct a world view around a literal reading of the Bible while mine relies on Rationalism and Science.
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There is a lot in the Bible. And there are different ways in which it communicates.
There is poetry, history, allegory, teaching, laws, doctrine. So when you make a statement about my "literal reading of the Bible" that should be examined.
Yes, I certainly take the resurrection of Christ as literal. But when John says he saw the stars fall to the earth like figs shaken off a fig tree, I do not take that so literally.
If he saw a massive meteor shower he might have used his present day knowledge to discribe that as the stars falling from heaven to the earth.
I think some of the utterances in the Bible are scientifically innacurate accoding to modern standards. But that is different from saying that the Bible is unscientific.
If someone say they saw the "sunrise" or "the sun go down" an issue could be made that the language is scientfically imprecise according to modern standards. The sun did not really "go down" but the earth rotated.
But the way I take the Bible was very much a gradaul matter that happened something like this:
1.) I met Jesus
2.) I became persuaded that His integrity was beyond questioning
3.) If Jesus took the Scripture seriously then I should take it seriously.
The personality of Christ impressed me to the point that whatever was good for Him must be good. Trusting in the chacacter of Jesus was my key to getting into the Old Testament.
You might take issue with me putting the first step as meeting Jesus. Obviously I had to have some biblical concept about Jesus beforehand.
But, I had virtually no voluntary reading of the Bible before I had an encounter with the Spirit of Jesus Christ. I only opened up the Bible on my own volition maybe a half a time beforehand.
I had heard some thing read from the Bible. But even after meeting the Lord Jesus Christ, I was too proud to bring myself to read the Bible for a time.
Eventually, I opened up to read the New Testament, but with a big modernist filter. The integrity of Jesus so impressed me that He was the key to me opening up to the rest of the Bible, especially the Old Testament.
Any assumption that I jumped in full force with a "literal reading" from Genesis 1:1 through to Revelation 22:21 would be a mistake.
My personal experience of the trustworthiness of my Lord and Friend Jesus, gradually opened me up to trust the Bible. And I would not insist that it should be different for anyone who wants to get to know Christ.
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But the big edifference between us seems to be your willingness to construct a world view around a literal reading of the Bible while mine relies on Rationalism and Science.
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I think I like Science just as much as the next person. As my kids were growing up we subscribed to Discovery Magazine.
But without question to me, the most impressive personality that has walked this earth is one Jesus Christ. And this man spoke much about faith.
He said a lot things, did a lot of extraordinary things, and made an extraordinary impact on human history. And this man spoke a lot about faith. I have to take Him seriously.
Sometimes I wonder why He didn't spend more time discussion with His disciples, gravity, relativity, astronomy, biology, etc. I wonder why He didn't sit them in a circle and explain to them what an atom was.
Basically, we humans want to know all about these things to improve our lives. I think Jesus was one to go to the root of man's problem. And that is man's alienation from the life of God. Man is alienated from God because of mistrust, sin, unbelief.
I think as impressive as science is, Jesus went to the real root of man's problem.
Newton, Einstien, and Hawking are impressive. I'm glad they accompished so much. But they are not as impressive to me as Jesus.
Originally posted by finneganLook, you don't have to suppose a case of syncretism simply because you want a natural, as opposed to supernatural, explanation of Scripture. Certainly, Christian doctrine has very regularly imbibed pagan thought. All the early Church Fathers were versed in classical literature and neo-Platonism was perhaps the dominant philosophical trend in Christian thought. I just don't see in this case, how Christ's descent into hell could be construed as a derivation from literary katabasis. That's not simply a case of borrowing pagan thought to explain Christian doctrine; that's a complete invention of Christian belief from literary myth. I don't see how that could happen.
Syncretism: the union (or attempted fusion) of different systems of thought or belief (especially in religion or philosophy).
Christianity is what it is and not something else. That is a useful starting point. Conserve the facts as they are presented. So the whole complex of beliefs and interpretations set out for example in the New Testament, or say in ...[text shortened]... nothing comes from nothing (I don't think Quantum Mechanics will disrupt that claim).
In short, you have to show me more than similarity. I could just dismiss similarities as coincidental. I could suggest that perhaps rather than conscious literary appropriation, the similarity between katabasis and Christ's descent into hell is simply reflects a universal anxiety about the fate of the dead. It is certainly not unprecedented to invoke psychoanalytic theory to explain why many myths contain Messianic figures. Why couldn't similar reasoning be applied here? Perhaps I'm just nitpicking. I after all agree that Scripture is not inspired; I just am very reluctant to accept that the Scripture writers must therefore have been cryptically reconstructing and reconfiguring earlier mythic stories.
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Originally posted by finnegan=================================
I do not understand the relevance of your thoughts regarding sexuality or what might have provoked them. Maybe something was on your mind? In any event, since you do wish to use that material I would have to reply that it is incoherent.
While some people prefer and engage in same-sex relationships I am not aware that anyone outside a distant fringe clai eferring instead to the evidence of creative inspiration in many other well examined fields.
I do not however discard the evidence that is available. I go so far as to agree that Paul was inspired - I just use the word differently and without implying a divine source, referring instead to the evidence of creative inspiration in many other well examined fields.
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That is not at all what I believe about the inspiration of the Bible.
I do not mean it is "inspired" the way a great painting or good poem is "inspired."
I refer to kind of inspiration that could in Isaiah 53 prophecy about the redemptive death and resurrection of the Suffering Servant of Israel centries before the event.
I regard the divine inspiration that could inform the scholars in Jerusalem of the town in which the One from Everlasting would be born to be Ruler in Israel in the prophet Micah.
Prophecy, but not limited to prophecy, is evidence of divine inspiration of the sort we Christians mean.
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Originally posted by finnegan==================================
I do not understand the relevance of your thoughts regarding sexuality or what might have provoked them. Maybe something was on your mind? In any event, since you do wish to use that material I would have to reply that it is incoherent.
While some people prefer and engage in same-sex relationships I am not aware that anyone outside a distant fringe clai eferring instead to the evidence of creative inspiration in many other well examined fields.
I do not understand the relevance of your thoughts regarding sexuality or what might have provoked them. Maybe something was on your mind? In any event, since you do wish to use that material I would have to reply that it is incoherent.
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No need for innuendo.
I simply refer to a matter so fundamental to human life in which there is encreasing disagreement over.
Quite educated people lately have pointed to the animal kingdom to explain human sexual practices which was some decades ago classified as psychological disorder.
As a Christian I can talk about sex without any Puritan embassessment that such should not be brought up in a Spirituality Forum.
Originally posted by Conrau KYes, similarities could be coincidental (the terms are nearly synonyms to be honest) - but even coincidence calls for an explanation and can be surprising. When common themes recur in various religions, there is a reason to enquire about that.
Look, you don't have to suppose a case of syncretism simply because you want a natural, as opposed to supernatural, explanation of Scripture. Certainly, Christian doctrine has very regularly imbibed pagan thought. All the early Church Fathers were versed in classical literature and neo-Platonism was perhaps the dominant philosophical trend in Christian thou ...[text shortened]... herefore have been cryptically reconstructing and reconfiguring earlier mythic stories.
However, if it were to be argued that there is no similarity, that Christianity is completely different and one-of-a-kind, then the level of similarity can be reasonably put forward to challenge that claim.
Yes, there could be, if you like, a common ancestor such as a psychonalytic account would supply. That was Jung's particular interest though Freud had his theories too about religion. Anthropology takes a lot of interest in common strands of religion and links them to social, political and economic factors. Maybe Frazier's Golden Bough was an early paradigm example. We could extend the list endlessly.
The point is that once we abandon the conviction that our particular religion is divinely inspired and completely correct, the search must begin for better explanations.
I think you struggle too hard against syncretism but you introduced the term and I had to look it up - maybe it has an academic weight that I am not aware of but at first glance it seems to capture what I am saying quite well. When you find a better word, it will be one that describes a process of imbibing cultural and religious influences that form a basis for a new religious sytem to meet perceived needs at the time. The subsequent fate of the creation (and the fate of less successful rivals) is a function of the social environment and the messy accidents of history.
Originally posted by jaywillI think as impressive as science is, Jesus went to the real root of man's problem.
Newton, Einstien, and Hawking are impressive. I'm glad they accomplished so much. But they are not as impressive to me as Jesus.
They are not as impressive to me as Chopin or Philip Larkin or Bronstein because I am not a physical or mathematical scientist. I only rely on them for accounts of the natural history of our physical cosmos.
Jesus may indeed have got to the root of man's problem - or alternatively, may have given you and others profound insights into the human ciondition. That is not what I have been debating. Jesus did not found Christianity in his lifetime. I have no argument with him whatever.
Originally posted by jaywillIt is useful and relevant to clarify what you do or do not believe because the label Christian covers so many different opinions and it is unfortunately tempting to lump all into one pot before raising the temperature to maximum heat. At the same time it is not wrong to characterize Christians as a group with common traditions and to debate that in general terms, such as for instance to question where the Christian religion started.
That is not at all what I believe about the inspiration of the Bible.