>>Suppose X is something that science has found that cannot possibly be (i.e., it must be that ~X). Yet religion may insist X. There's your conflict. (Or have I missed something?)
What you missed is that there's no clear bridge between normative and empirical statements.
A normative statement might say, "You know, we really should build a library in this town." An empirical statement might say, "We do not have a library in this town."
The first sort of statement is based on religion and ethics and whatever else people want to throw in on the mythical value of a library. The latter is made by observation. (Some people think that science can make normative statements by surveying people making normative statements, but that's just a smokescreen.)
After a library is built in the town, a scientist would say, "There is a library in this town." It still cannot render a normative judgement on whether or not this is a good thing.
>>Accusing a large portion of slashdotters of being Logical Positivists is assuming unavailable facts (in addition to being silly and insulting).
Unavailable facts? You mean I haven't read comments on here for, I dunno, 14 years now? When someone states something like, "A statement is not scientific unless it is falsifiable" that's an announcement that they hold to the Popperian view of science, for example.
>>The second is an arbitrary ethical code blunted by repeated collisions with reality.
You got it backwards. When a powerful ethical code collides with reality, reality changes.
>>I think it is very funny that people are supposed to ignore the old "word of god" in favor of the "newly revised word of god". What, did god make a mistake the first time around? Guess god isn't infallible after all...
The notion espoused by the New Testament is that the Law was a stopgap measure until Jesus rolled onto the scene, with Jesus being the ultimate expression of the Law.
>>And what if you hate yourself?
You're supposed to love yourself, too. And treat others with love.
This doesn't mean letting people trample all over you, as sometimes the right thing to do for others is to teach them some motherfucking boundaries, but the weird thing is it really works, simple as it is.
>>I agree with the first part, but would submit that philosophy is the domain of normative study of how things should be (among other things).
Sure. Religion, philosophy and ethics all concern normative topics (i.e. how things should be). But the distinction was being drawn between science and religion, so delineating the two different domains they're concerned with was my main point.
>>I find it interesting how you summarily dismiss "logical positivism" (which, as I understand it, has at its core simply the idea of using observation and empirical evidence as a foundation for philosophical arguments)
A discussion of logical positivism would have been too long a sidebar in my post above, but I can expand that statement now.
Essentially, LP is the notion that the only truths that matter (or are "meaningful" or "important" or a bunch of synonyms) are those that can be empirically verified. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logical_positivism#Basic_tenets) It has become the dominant philosophy of most philosophy departments in the country, and its influences are very strongly felt in forums such as Slashdot.
The problem with LP is that it asserts a certain category of facts as being interesting, and a certain category as being uninteresting. But a lot of these uninteresting facts are actually incredibly interesting to people, and so it sort of fails from the start. For example, what route Hannibal took over the Alps cannot be empirically verified (maybe someday, but not today) or tested by science. But it matters quite a bit to some people I know at Stanford, that head out each year to the Petite St. Bernard and other passes in the Alps to try to hunt for dead elephants or Carthaginian coins. Or, if you want something more high level, "Does love exist?" This matters quite a bit to a lot of people, but LP has no answer for it - it can only assert that such questions are not important. But they are. So it fails as a philosophy.
The modern blend of it you see in forums like this is called Scientism, which is the notion that science can answer every question. But it runs into the same problems with LP, as it's essentially the same thing, just repackaged a bit.
>>in your first sentence you argue that "Moral teachings that have largely been proven to work in building relatively peaceful and successful societies... So I'd include some religions and not others". That sounds like you are saying that we should be using evidence of particular religions' success in building peaceful societies as the arbiter of whether they should be considered worthy.
I've written a longer article on this subject, but let me see if I can summarize it quickly for you.
In a nutshell, there's several different theories of truth. I.e. what does it mean, when someone says, "That is true!"
1) There's the Reference Theory, which means you're just using shorthand or agreeing with a person ("The Sky is Blue!" "That is true!") Which is perfectly fine for several cases of the statement, but not all. 2) Then you have the Correspondence Theory, which means that a statement is true if it corresponds with reality. "The Sky is Blue!" is true if and only if the sky is blue. You can get into details about all this (it's night right now), but this is the most commonly used theory of truth for most people. 3) You can the Coherence Theory, which means it's true if it agrees with a network of facts you already have established as true. If you know that "All planets have a blue atmosphere" and "Earth is a planet" are both true, then "The Sky is Blue!" is also true. 4) Finally (skipping over several less important ones) there's the Pragmatic Theory of Truth. Which says that if something is beneficial to me, it is true. (More or less.) This sounds very weird, but if I think that "The Sky is Blue!" is false and walk around telling people that, then they'll think I'm crazy. So it must not be true. (Or Gravity + Tall Buildings, for example.) But I don't think it was intended by
>>Please tell this to all of the fake Christians who are still holding up "the good book", in it's entirety, as the source for all moral guidance. Until then, please STFU about how Christianity is a religion of peace and unconditional love. As practiced by far, far too many of it's adherents, it is anything but.
I spend as much time trying to convince what you'd call "Fake Christians" of this as I do on forums like Slashdot trying to convince atheists that not every Christian is a nutty fundamentalist, and that the message of Christianity is something that all people can believe in.
I wouldn't call them Fake Christians myself, as they believe very passionately in Christ, but rather people that don't really know the message very well, and so let their pastors convince them that, for example, wine is from the Devil, even though Jesus' first miracle was to make mass quantities of very good tasting wine. What I really try to spend time with them on, though, is science, and how it's A Good Thing.
It may sound weird, but I think even atheists ought to be able to get behind the core message of Jesus. Try to spend a week looking at each person you meet as if they are people worthy of love and respect, and see if it doesn't completely alter your outlook on life for the better. (And make you happier and get along better with people as a nice side effect.)
Sort of. Being polite and nice to people is a good first step, and one that sects like the Quakers heavily emphasized.
But when you actually look at other people with love and respect as a human being, it really does change how you go about dealing with the world. It's a step or three beyond just being polite to people.
>>Really, isn't that the basic message of most religions, with the rest being details (and the problems coming from wackos in each respective religion)?
There's similarities in every religion, but it's a grave mistake to equate them all. Buddhism's basic message is to kill suffering by eliminating selfish desire and ignorance, for example.
Talk about not reading the other replies before replying yourself, eh?
Jesus fulfilled the Law, which means he was the culmination of it. He moved the Law away from a Legalistic basis, and onto one based on Love and Universal Charity. Paul believes the law was only given to bridge the gap, so to speak, until Jesus appeared. Read Galatians 2.
The later parts of the NT show that the OT laws have definitely been superseded. God telling Paul to not worry about Kosher laws directly, Peter and the others agreeing that Gentile Christians don't need to be circumcised, Jesus himself stopping a stoning of an adulteress, and so forth.
>>Exactly. And this is also the reason there are not, nor has there ever been, any arguments over creationism.
Young Earth Creationism, I absolutely agree.
>>When religious texts say things happened a certain way, but we know from science that they didn't (e.g. earth was created 6000 years ago, a global flood happened 4000 years ago, the languages of the world were caused by God because he was angry about the Tower of Babel), then there ends up being conflict.
There ends up being a conflict with Biblical Literalists.
The problem with your argument is that most mainstream religions are not Biblical Literalists. Only Fundies are (and Mormons to a certain extent), and that's why we both agree they're crazy.
Before you say God of the Gaps and science has been backrolling religion for 2,000 years, remember that St. Augustine and thereby the Church read most of Genesis as being figurative rather than literal. And this was well before radioactive carbon dating or Darwin or whatever.
To the contrary, atheists have made various falsifiable/scientific claims over the years that have turned out to be wrong. Namely, that David never existed, that early Israel didn't exist, Pontius Pilate didn't exist, and so forth. This link - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biblical_archaeology#Table_II:_Artifacts - can give you a fun evening's worth of entertainment.
Just to be fair to the Mormons, though, I should include a list of all the artifacts found that back up their holy book:
You should go back and read all the religious laws, or ask a Jew about all the nuances they learned about their religious law. Or, you can read what Jesus said (Matt 5:20): "For I tell you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven." (The Pharisees were known to go out of their way to try to follow the minutest details of Jewish law.)
Heh, heh, heh. You skipped Sunday School, I take it? =)
Jesus' point was precisely what I've been saying about Legalism and how he was reorienting it away from Legalism to one based on love and universal charity. The Pharisees, as you say, followed the letter of the law, but not the spirit of the law, very famously criticizing Jesus for healing sick people on the Sabbath. (To which he gave both a reply that he was following the letter of the law, and that they had forgotten the spirit of the law.)
>>Oh, is that all we have to do? You realize this doesn't help your case, right? "It isn't hard to follow the rules, just be perfect all the time for your whole life."
It depends if you think it is possible to go for extended periods of time living the life that Christ wants us to live. St. Augustine didn't think so ("I cannot not sin"), and he got the opposing Pelagian viewpoint thrown out of the church. The Pelagian viewpoint says there's no particular reason why we have to sin, since, after all, we have free choice, know what's right, and can certainly follow our conscience when we want to.
The irony is that though Pelagius was booted out of the church and his views anathemized, I'd say that most churches these days have Pelagian viewpoints, including the Roman Catholic Church to a certain extent.
And, you know, if you fuck up, you just admit it and try to do better.
Look at what Jesus did to the OT laws in his Expoundings. He gives a series of statements along the line of, "You've heard it said that X, but I say to you Y..." which expands and clarifies the meaning, and moves the entire Law away from a Legalistic approach to religion that only IRS auditors could enjoy, to something that is based on the concept of Universal Charity.
The rest of the NT makes it quite clear that things like kosher laws, circumcision, and so forth do not apply to Gentile Christians, which is what 99% of us are.
loving other people as much as yourself is rather bullshit. people run the gamut of insanity, and most people subjected to advertising have a tough time truly loving themselves. there really ought to be a measurable standard by which you treat people, not just as badly as you feel about yourself. the old laws had a system for this, flawed though they were.
Loving yourself is the first step. Loving others is the second step. Realizing that loving others doesn't necessarily mean giving a hug to the biker about to hit you with a tire iron is step 3.
If you think that this means you can go about your life no different from how you normally go about your business, though, you ought to try it some time. Look at other people with love and respect, even the semi-retarded 50 year old waitress at Denny's that always fucks up your change.
It really does reorient your entire axis on how you approach other people in life.
>>No, I'm not making that mistake, I'm raising that very distinction.
Okie, doke.
>>Try telling me something I don't know.
The Rocky Road to Dublin is commonly believed to be derived from the Jacobin song Cam Ye O'Er Frae France. However, this is not that case. People confuse Cam Ye O'Er Frae France with I'm O'Er Young to Marry Yet, even though the latter only bears a passing resemblance to RRTD. In fact, while several airs are somewhat similar to RRTD, no one has been able to find the tune used anywhere else prior to its creation.
>>If your preacher dwells much on Paul's letters, you may wish to re-examine your relationship to your preacher and the body of your church.
My church in San Diego uses the standard Lutheran cycle, which rotates through a multi-year arc, with each Sunday having a bit of the OT, a bit of the Gospels, and a bit of the rest of the NT.
But I agree. While I think that Paul is a pretty bright guy in most cases, he's a fallible human that doesn't show the sort of amazing brilliance that Jesus' words have.
That's because "everyone else" lives a totally unexamined life (in the Socratian sense). Therefore, they have no problem in believing in two utterly mutally contradictory principles (i.e. - the Big Bang vs. "Yahweh created the heavens and the earth in seven days" or human evolution vs. Adam, Eve, and the Garden of Eden) because they simply don't think about the contradictions.
Gasp! Before you said this, I'd never heard *anyone* claim that the Big Bang and the account of Genesis might be in conflict!
Heh, sarcasm aside, a lot of astronomers rejected the Big Bang theory a priori because they thought it smacked of Creationism. Hoyle, for example. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred_Hoyle#Rejection_of_the_Big_Bang) The Pope actually sent a thank-you letter to some of the people working on the Big Bang theory, claiming it backed up the theory of Genesis, but the astronomers wrote back, saying: Caution.
Continuing in your line of thought, the best Christians I know are the ones that examine every aspect of their faith, and are honest enough to reject things which seem factually wrong. Are mustard seeds the smallest seeds on Earth? No? Ok.
*I* don't prioritize anything. *Jesus* himself said that the most important commandment is to Love God, and the second one is nearly the same - Love Others As Yourself.
As I've said elsewhere, it's like getting the Cliff Notes version of the Bible supplied to you alongside everything else.
>>How can we use that fact for anything?
I dunno, go forth into the world and try treating other people with love and respect? Seems like a good start to me.
>>Weren't the Arabs the ones who largely preserved the knowledge of Classical Europe? The Church may have played a role, but it was nowhere as significant as the preservation done by the Arabs.
Perhaps, but that's not what I said. I said, quote, "If it was not for the church, we likely would have lost most all of classical literature in Europe during this time period." Note the In Europe qualification. And certainly there are a number of works who were only preserved in European abbeys. I've come across quite a few in my readings.
Not that all the Arabs were very good at preserving classical works. From time to time various Caliphs decided to destroy all heretical literature in their libraries.
>>That puts paid to the entire notion that Christianity has any justification for ignoring anything in the OT. When you do so, you're simply rationalizing.
I'm not rationalizing, simply repeating what the Bible says. The Law was given to man until the Son of Man appears. Galatians 2 and all that, and there's quite a bit more in Acts about circumcision and such. Or God telling Paul that it was cool to not worry about Kosher laws any more.
>>. He is explicit: until earth disappears, it's in force. So you haven't got a leg to stand upon.
Fulfillment means the culmination of something. You think think of Jesus as the the ultimate result of the Law, who refocused it away from Legalism and onto a basis of universal charity for mankind. Therefore, the Law is still with us until the end of days.
Well, if you're a Jew, you'd probably disagree with me.
But when the Bible tells you such and such is the most important thing, then it's a logical equivalence to say that the Bible says that such and such is the most important thing.
If you don't believe the Bible, then it doesn't matter to you what it says. If you don't use the NT, then it doesn't matter what it says. If you try to follow what the NT says, then it's really quite important.
It's like Aesop going out of his way to tell you what the meaning of a story is, just so you don't get all confused by the scorpions and grapes or whatever.
>>The problem is that only people right at the top of the holy pile (JC, Pope, Saints) get to decide something has to be changed. It doesn't matter how good your argument is, if you don't have a direct line to God it's worthless.
The Reformation happened like 500 years ago, dude.
Your info is a bit out of date.
>>So what happens when you get to Heaven now?
Unknown. Something about having a nice house.
>>All the people who followed the Old Testament before the new one was written can't really be blamed for acting in a way that is now considered sinful because that was the God's current advice back then.
Correct. Prior to the NT, there wasn't much of a concept of heaven. The Christian thinking is that if you follow the Mosaic Law, then you get into heaven. (Even still.) Christianity being the sort of express line.
>>What about people who were living in Japan 1000 years ago and had no opportunity to ever read the New Testament, or even learn of the existence of Christianity or the one true God? (Japan's native religion is polytheistic)
Which religion? =) Japan has had two religions for the last 1000 years. Shinto and Buddhism, which each taking a different half of what we'd call normal religious duties.
I'd imagine God would judge them based on their merits as good or bad people.
>>Why are Jews supposed to believe in two principles outlined by Jesus?
Not because Jesus said it, but because Maimonides (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maimonides), the guy who basically put together the modern Talmud, said essentially the same thing - Love God, Love Others, All Else Is Details.
>>philosophy as you know it is going to get shredded by cognitive science and evolutionary psychology. Sorry.
This is the view of logical positivism in a nutshell - the notion that science can answer all interesting questions, and anything that it can't answer is by definition uninteresting.
And as I understand it, during the Dark Ages, there was even more scientific progress and advancement occuring in the Middle East and in places like Turkey, where the church didn't have a stranglehold on information. In fact, the various documentaries I've watched and books that I've read, made it pretty explicitly clear that much of the scientific and cultural advances of the Roman Empire only survived through to the Renaissance because they were held and maintained by Persian culture. So....yeah.
What I said was that if it was not for the church, most of the classical documents *in Europe* would have been lost. I added that qualifier intentionally. Though Moorish Spain is an exception, I suppose.
When you have a society that hasn't been destroyed, yeah, that gives you a leg up. But the "Dark Ages" had quite a number of new advancements, which were quite revolutionary - the horse collar, three crop rotation cycles, the stirrup, plate mail, an improved plough, water mills, and so forth.
>>If you ask the Vatican for their opinion on embryonic stem cell research, do they disagree with you on a matter of science?
The mistake you're making is confusing a matter of ethics (when do humans gain inalienable rights?) with a matter of science.
It's quite possible to be an atheist scientist who would acknowledge the value of embryonic stem cell research and refuse to conduct said experiments for ethical reasons.
The Galileo affair didn't go the way you probably thought it went. Galileo was assessed originally not on theological grounds, but on scientific ones. He was caught with a very bad forgery of his results (claiming there is only one tide per day instead of two, which everyone in the world knew wasn't true) in order to prove his heliocentric theory, and so he failed to convince the court. This court was a RCC court, and so disobeying it (and calling the Pope a simpleton in a publication) brought down the hammer of the inquisition, during which time the scriptural references were made.
Slashdot Mirror
>>... get over yourself. Your data is not that important. Nobody cares.
Unless you work for a hospital or someone that has regulations on how data has to be disposed of.
>>Suppose X is something that science has found that cannot possibly be (i.e., it must be that ~X). Yet religion may insist X. There's your conflict. (Or have I missed something?)
What you missed is that there's no clear bridge between normative and empirical statements.
A normative statement might say, "You know, we really should build a library in this town."
An empirical statement might say, "We do not have a library in this town."
The first sort of statement is based on religion and ethics and whatever else people want to throw in on the mythical value of a library. The latter is made by observation. (Some people think that science can make normative statements by surveying people making normative statements, but that's just a smokescreen.)
After a library is built in the town, a scientist would say, "There is a library in this town." It still cannot render a normative judgement on whether or not this is a good thing.
>>Accusing a large portion of slashdotters of being Logical Positivists is assuming unavailable facts (in addition to being silly and insulting).
Unavailable facts? You mean I haven't read comments on here for, I dunno, 14 years now? When someone states something like, "A statement is not scientific unless it is falsifiable" that's an announcement that they hold to the Popperian view of science, for example.
>>The second is an arbitrary ethical code blunted by repeated collisions with reality.
You got it backwards. When a powerful ethical code collides with reality, reality changes.
>>I think it is very funny that people are supposed to ignore the old "word of god" in favor of the "newly revised word of god". What, did god make a mistake the first time around? Guess god isn't infallible after all...
The notion espoused by the New Testament is that the Law was a stopgap measure until Jesus rolled onto the scene, with Jesus being the ultimate expression of the Law.
>>And what if you hate yourself?
You're supposed to love yourself, too. And treat others with love.
This doesn't mean letting people trample all over you, as sometimes the right thing to do for others is to teach them some motherfucking boundaries, but the weird thing is it really works, simple as it is.
>>I agree with the first part, but would submit that philosophy is the domain of normative study of how things should be (among other things).
Sure. Religion, philosophy and ethics all concern normative topics (i.e. how things should be). But the distinction was being drawn between science and religion, so delineating the two different domains they're concerned with was my main point.
>>I find it interesting how you summarily dismiss "logical positivism" (which, as I understand it, has at its core simply the idea of using observation and empirical evidence as a foundation for philosophical arguments)
A discussion of logical positivism would have been too long a sidebar in my post above, but I can expand that statement now.
Essentially, LP is the notion that the only truths that matter (or are "meaningful" or "important" or a bunch of synonyms) are those that can be empirically verified. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logical_positivism#Basic_tenets) It has become the dominant philosophy of most philosophy departments in the country, and its influences are very strongly felt in forums such as Slashdot.
The problem with LP is that it asserts a certain category of facts as being interesting, and a certain category as being uninteresting. But a lot of these uninteresting facts are actually incredibly interesting to people, and so it sort of fails from the start. For example, what route Hannibal took over the Alps cannot be empirically verified (maybe someday, but not today) or tested by science. But it matters quite a bit to some people I know at Stanford, that head out each year to the Petite St. Bernard and other passes in the Alps to try to hunt for dead elephants or Carthaginian coins. Or, if you want something more high level, "Does love exist?" This matters quite a bit to a lot of people, but LP has no answer for it - it can only assert that such questions are not important. But they are. So it fails as a philosophy.
The modern blend of it you see in forums like this is called Scientism, which is the notion that science can answer every question. But it runs into the same problems with LP, as it's essentially the same thing, just repackaged a bit.
>>in your first sentence you argue that "Moral teachings that have largely been proven to work in building relatively peaceful and successful societies ... So I'd include some religions and not others". That sounds like you are saying that we should be using evidence of particular religions' success in building peaceful societies as the arbiter of whether they should be considered worthy.
I've written a longer article on this subject, but let me see if I can summarize it quickly for you.
In a nutshell, there's several different theories of truth. I.e. what does it mean, when someone says, "That is true!"
1) There's the Reference Theory, which means you're just using shorthand or agreeing with a person ("The Sky is Blue!" "That is true!") Which is perfectly fine for several cases of the statement, but not all.
2) Then you have the Correspondence Theory, which means that a statement is true if it corresponds with reality. "The Sky is Blue!" is true if and only if the sky is blue. You can get into details about all this (it's night right now), but this is the most commonly used theory of truth for most people.
3) You can the Coherence Theory, which means it's true if it agrees with a network of facts you already have established as true. If you know that "All planets have a blue atmosphere" and "Earth is a planet" are both true, then "The Sky is Blue!" is also true.
4) Finally (skipping over several less important ones) there's the Pragmatic Theory of Truth. Which says that if something is beneficial to me, it is true. (More or less.) This sounds very weird, but if I think that "The Sky is Blue!" is false and walk around telling people that, then they'll think I'm crazy. So it must not be true. (Or Gravity + Tall Buildings, for example.) But I don't think it was intended by
>>Please tell this to all of the fake Christians who are still holding up "the good book", in it's entirety, as the source for all moral guidance. Until then, please STFU about how Christianity is a religion of peace and unconditional love. As practiced by far, far too many of it's adherents, it is anything but.
I spend as much time trying to convince what you'd call "Fake Christians" of this as I do on forums like Slashdot trying to convince atheists that not every Christian is a nutty fundamentalist, and that the message of Christianity is something that all people can believe in.
I wouldn't call them Fake Christians myself, as they believe very passionately in Christ, but rather people that don't really know the message very well, and so let their pastors convince them that, for example, wine is from the Devil, even though Jesus' first miracle was to make mass quantities of very good tasting wine. What I really try to spend time with them on, though, is science, and how it's A Good Thing.
It may sound weird, but I think even atheists ought to be able to get behind the core message of Jesus. Try to spend a week looking at each person you meet as if they are people worthy of love and respect, and see if it doesn't completely alter your outlook on life for the better. (And make you happier and get along better with people as a nice side effect.)
>>So, in the general sense, "Don't be a dick"?
Sort of. Being polite and nice to people is a good first step, and one that sects like the Quakers heavily emphasized.
But when you actually look at other people with love and respect as a human being, it really does change how you go about dealing with the world. It's a step or three beyond just being polite to people.
>>Really, isn't that the basic message of most religions, with the rest being details (and the problems coming from wackos in each respective religion)?
There's similarities in every religion, but it's a grave mistake to equate them all. Buddhism's basic message is to kill suffering by eliminating selfish desire and ignorance, for example.
Talk about not reading the other replies before replying yourself, eh?
Jesus fulfilled the Law, which means he was the culmination of it. He moved the Law away from a Legalistic basis, and onto one based on Love and Universal Charity. Paul believes the law was only given to bridge the gap, so to speak, until Jesus appeared. Read Galatians 2.
The later parts of the NT show that the OT laws have definitely been superseded. God telling Paul to not worry about Kosher laws directly, Peter and the others agreeing that Gentile Christians don't need to be circumcised, Jesus himself stopping a stoning of an adulteress, and so forth.
>>Exactly. And this is also the reason there are not, nor has there ever been, any arguments over creationism.
Young Earth Creationism, I absolutely agree.
>>When religious texts say things happened a certain way, but we know from science that they didn't (e.g. earth was created 6000 years ago, a global flood happened 4000 years ago, the languages of the world were caused by God because he was angry about the Tower of Babel), then there ends up being conflict.
There ends up being a conflict with Biblical Literalists.
The problem with your argument is that most mainstream religions are not Biblical Literalists. Only Fundies are (and Mormons to a certain extent), and that's why we both agree they're crazy.
Before you say God of the Gaps and science has been backrolling religion for 2,000 years, remember that St. Augustine and thereby the Church read most of Genesis as being figurative rather than literal. And this was well before radioactive carbon dating or Darwin or whatever.
To the contrary, atheists have made various falsifiable/scientific claims over the years that have turned out to be wrong. Namely, that David never existed, that early Israel didn't exist, Pontius Pilate didn't exist, and so forth. This link - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biblical_archaeology#Table_II:_Artifacts - can give you a fun evening's worth of entertainment.
Just to be fair to the Mormons, though, I should include a list of all the artifacts found that back up their holy book:
Heh, heh, heh. You skipped Sunday School, I take it? =)
Jesus' point was precisely what I've been saying about Legalism and how he was reorienting it away from Legalism to one based on love and universal charity. The Pharisees, as you say, followed the letter of the law, but not the spirit of the law, very famously criticizing Jesus for healing sick people on the Sabbath. (To which he gave both a reply that he was following the letter of the law, and that they had forgotten the spirit of the law.)
>>Oh, is that all we have to do? You realize this doesn't help your case, right? "It isn't hard to follow the rules, just be perfect all the time for your whole life."
It depends if you think it is possible to go for extended periods of time living the life that Christ wants us to live. St. Augustine didn't think so ("I cannot not sin"), and he got the opposing Pelagian viewpoint thrown out of the church. The Pelagian viewpoint says there's no particular reason why we have to sin, since, after all, we have free choice, know what's right, and can certainly follow our conscience when we want to.
The irony is that though Pelagius was booted out of the church and his views anathemized, I'd say that most churches these days have Pelagian viewpoints, including the Roman Catholic Church to a certain extent.
And, you know, if you fuck up, you just admit it and try to do better.
>>Which means you can't ignore the OT laws.
Look at what Jesus did to the OT laws in his Expoundings. He gives a series of statements along the line of, "You've heard it said that X, but I say to you Y..." which expands and clarifies the meaning, and moves the entire Law away from a Legalistic approach to religion that only IRS auditors could enjoy, to something that is based on the concept of Universal Charity.
The rest of the NT makes it quite clear that things like kosher laws, circumcision, and so forth do not apply to Gentile Christians, which is what 99% of us are.
Loving yourself is the first step.
Loving others is the second step.
Realizing that loving others doesn't necessarily mean giving a hug to the biker about to hit you with a tire iron is step 3.
If you think that this means you can go about your life no different from how you normally go about your business, though, you ought to try it some time. Look at other people with love and respect, even the semi-retarded 50 year old waitress at Denny's that always fucks up your change.
It really does reorient your entire axis on how you approach other people in life.
>>No, I'm not making that mistake, I'm raising that very distinction.
Okie, doke.
>>Try telling me something I don't know.
The Rocky Road to Dublin is commonly believed to be derived from the Jacobin song Cam Ye O'Er Frae France. However, this is not that case. People confuse Cam Ye O'Er Frae France with I'm O'Er Young to Marry Yet, even though the latter only bears a passing resemblance to RRTD. In fact, while several airs are somewhat similar to RRTD, no one has been able to find the tune used anywhere else prior to its creation.
>>If your preacher dwells much on Paul's letters, you may wish to re-examine your relationship to your preacher and the body of your church.
My church in San Diego uses the standard Lutheran cycle, which rotates through a multi-year arc, with each Sunday having a bit of the OT, a bit of the Gospels, and a bit of the rest of the NT.
But I agree. While I think that Paul is a pretty bright guy in most cases, he's a fallible human that doesn't show the sort of amazing brilliance that Jesus' words have.
Gasp! Before you said this, I'd never heard *anyone* claim that the Big Bang and the account of Genesis might be in conflict!
Heh, sarcasm aside, a lot of astronomers rejected the Big Bang theory a priori because they thought it smacked of Creationism. Hoyle, for example. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred_Hoyle#Rejection_of_the_Big_Bang) The Pope actually sent a thank-you letter to some of the people working on the Big Bang theory, claiming it backed up the theory of Genesis, but the astronomers wrote back, saying: Caution.
Continuing in your line of thought, the best Christians I know are the ones that examine every aspect of their faith, and are honest enough to reject things which seem factually wrong. Are mustard seeds the smallest seeds on Earth? No? Ok.
>>How can you prioritize such things?
*I* don't prioritize anything. *Jesus* himself said that the most important commandment is to Love God, and the second one is nearly the same - Love Others As Yourself.
As I've said elsewhere, it's like getting the Cliff Notes version of the Bible supplied to you alongside everything else.
>>How can we use that fact for anything?
I dunno, go forth into the world and try treating other people with love and respect? Seems like a good start to me.
>>Weren't the Arabs the ones who largely preserved the knowledge of Classical Europe? The Church may have played a role, but it was nowhere as significant as the preservation done by the Arabs.
Perhaps, but that's not what I said. I said, quote, "If it was not for the church, we likely would have lost most all of classical literature in Europe during this time period." Note the In Europe qualification. And certainly there are a number of works who were only preserved in European abbeys. I've come across quite a few in my readings.
Not that all the Arabs were very good at preserving classical works. From time to time various Caliphs decided to destroy all heretical literature in their libraries.
>>That puts paid to the entire notion that Christianity has any justification for ignoring anything in the OT. When you do so, you're simply rationalizing.
I'm not rationalizing, simply repeating what the Bible says. The Law was given to man until the Son of Man appears. Galatians 2 and all that, and there's quite a bit more in Acts about circumcision and such. Or God telling Paul that it was cool to not worry about Kosher laws any more.
>>. He is explicit: until earth disappears, it's in force. So you haven't got a leg to stand upon.
Fulfillment means the culmination of something. You think think of Jesus as the the ultimate result of the Law, who refocused it away from Legalism and onto a basis of universal charity for mankind. Therefore, the Law is still with us until the end of days.
Well, if you're a Jew, you'd probably disagree with me.
But when the Bible tells you such and such is the most important thing, then it's a logical equivalence to say that the Bible says that such and such is the most important thing.
If you don't believe the Bible, then it doesn't matter to you what it says. If you don't use the NT, then it doesn't matter what it says. If you try to follow what the NT says, then it's really quite important.
It's like Aesop going out of his way to tell you what the meaning of a story is, just so you don't get all confused by the scorpions and grapes or whatever.
>>The problem is that only people right at the top of the holy pile (JC, Pope, Saints) get to decide something has to be changed. It doesn't matter how good your argument is, if you don't have a direct line to God it's worthless.
The Reformation happened like 500 years ago, dude.
Your info is a bit out of date.
>>So what happens when you get to Heaven now?
Unknown. Something about having a nice house.
>>All the people who followed the Old Testament before the new one was written can't really be blamed for acting in a way that is now considered sinful because that was the God's current advice back then.
Correct. Prior to the NT, there wasn't much of a concept of heaven. The Christian thinking is that if you follow the Mosaic Law, then you get into heaven. (Even still.) Christianity being the sort of express line.
>>What about people who were living in Japan 1000 years ago and had no opportunity to ever read the New Testament, or even learn of the existence of Christianity or the one true God? (Japan's native religion is polytheistic)
Which religion? =) Japan has had two religions for the last 1000 years. Shinto and Buddhism, which each taking a different half of what we'd call normal religious duties.
I'd imagine God would judge them based on their merits as good or bad people.
>>>>It's not my problem if they're wrong. =)
>>Congratulations! You are a fundie!
If I was a fundie, I most certainly would not have had the smiley face after my statement. =)
>>Why are Jews supposed to believe in two principles outlined by Jesus?
Not because Jesus said it, but because Maimonides (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maimonides), the guy who basically put together the modern Talmud, said essentially the same thing - Love God, Love Others, All Else Is Details.
>>philosophy as you know it is going to get shredded by cognitive science and evolutionary psychology. Sorry.
This is the view of logical positivism in a nutshell - the notion that science can answer all interesting questions, and anything that it can't answer is by definition uninteresting.
Unfortunately, it's completely wrong.
What I said was that if it was not for the church, most of the classical documents *in Europe* would have been lost. I added that qualifier intentionally. Though Moorish Spain is an exception, I suppose.
When you have a society that hasn't been destroyed, yeah, that gives you a leg up. But the "Dark Ages" had quite a number of new advancements, which were quite revolutionary - the horse collar, three crop rotation cycles, the stirrup, plate mail, an improved plough, water mills, and so forth.
>>If you ask the Vatican for their opinion on embryonic stem cell research, do they disagree with you on a matter of science?
The mistake you're making is confusing a matter of ethics (when do humans gain inalienable rights?) with a matter of science.
It's quite possible to be an atheist scientist who would acknowledge the value of embryonic stem cell research and refuse to conduct said experiments for ethical reasons.
The Galileo affair didn't go the way you probably thought it went. Galileo was assessed originally not on theological grounds, but on scientific ones. He was caught with a very bad forgery of his results (claiming there is only one tide per day instead of two, which everyone in the world knew wasn't true) in order to prove his heliocentric theory, and so he failed to convince the court. This court was a RCC court, and so disobeying it (and calling the Pope a simpleton in a publication) brought down the hammer of the inquisition, during which time the scriptural references were made.
Most people get it backwards.