E.G. Doubting Thomas v.s. the criminal nailed up next to Jesus. My reading of Paul is 'Trust me, it happened'.
Given that he couldn't supply photographic evidence, etc. the word of a reliable witness would have been fairly good evidence in those days, especially when you consider how much he hated Christians and what it would have taken for him to change his mind.
My reading of the doubting Thomas text is 'If you demand proof, you're marked down a few notches by either God or the nonsensical trinity thing'.
Then you need to read more of the book of John, specifically John 20:30-31 (i.e. the next two verses) where we are told that the book was written to present evidence about what Jesus did in order than people might believe in him and have life. Thomas was able to see Jesus for himself and was blessed for it (blessed for witnessing first hand, i.e. believing on the basis of excellent proof), while those who are reading John and cannot see Jesus for themselves, but have to rely on the witness of others, are also blessed. Nothing about Thomas doing something wrong or worse. The message there is directed at the reader, not at Thomas, to encourage them to believe as he did, which is plain from the surrounding context of the proceeding verses.
By way of another example, if you take a look at the start of the book of Luke, you'll see that he meticulously collected evidence and wants people to look at this evidence and then believe.
Why does someone need to be pitied just because what they believe is incorrect.
Because if someone is a Christian, their beliefs will lead to actions, they will actively be placing faith in God and the Christian life is a costly one, so they will suffer. If Christianity is not true, then the actions are misguided, the faith misplaced, the suffering unnecessary and the life wasted.
I have little doubt that the resurrection is not historical fact. People don't tend to come back from the dead.
Ah. 'Supernatural events can't happen because they're not natural.' That's a pretty empty argument.
Maybe he wasn't actually dead when they took him down
Of course. The expereinced Roman executioners messed up, the medical details presented which indicate his death are incorrect and he recovered sufficiently from his severe beating, hours on the cross, massive bleeding, suffocation, severe blood loss from being stabbed in the side and the effects of fatigue and exposure to summon the strength to roll aside a boulder than ordinarily required several men, overpowered the Roman guards and then went into hiding.
maybe he didn't come back maybe the post-crucifixion tale is fiction
Come back from where? He was buried in the tomb. There were plenty of witnesses. No-one could produce the body afterwards, but people claimed to have seen him and died proclaiming that, knowing whether or not it was true. Why die for what you know to be fiction when you were terrified of death beforehand?
However it is plain silly to think anyone came back from the dead, on the word of a 2000 year old tale put to paper long after the event
Pen was put to paper a couple of decades after the event at the very latest. It is historical facts that Christians existed, proclaiming the resurrection, in the years immediately following the crucifixion. No-one could silence then because no-one could produce a body and they weren't afraid to die. The manuscripts we have are much closer in time to the original manuscripts and are more numerous than other trusted historical sources such as Tacitus and Josephus.
It is historical fact that the disciples died proclaiming the resurrection. Regardless of how long after the crucifixion their executions happened, they weren't going to get confused about whether Jesus had risen
The bible gives us guideline-by-allegory that we shouldn't go looking for proof, but instead believe blindly. This does not sit well with me.
Why do you think the Bible says that? It's seems to be part of the Slashdot group-think these days, but blind faith is not something that the Bible advocates, as I have just pointed out. If it was blind faith, then Paul wouldn't be writing about the importance of the resurrection being historical fact.
The bit about being pitied above all men doesn't really stand up to much analysis in either case.
Eh? If the resurrection didn't happen, then Christians believe a lie and are in a pitiable position. Where exactly do you disagree with his analysis of the situation?
Paul needs to do better than that and its a bit late for him to change his stance.
Change his stance? Paul didn't change his stance. He was pointing out that Christianity was dependent on the resurrection being a historical fact and he was so certain of it that he died for it. What are you talking about?
Maybe gods can be destroyed through observation in the same way bugs can be and this is why the bible warns us away from seeking proof.
Why on earth do you think the Bible says that? If anything, it says the opposite. Taking the Psalms as an example, their are repeated exhortations to remember the past, to remember what God has done and on that basis trust him. The entire relationship with God that people are supposed to have is based on character as revealed through his actions in history. Objective historical facts as critical to Christianity, not vague philosophies, empty claims or blind faith.
Those criticisms do nothing to address the part of Richard Dawkins book I was quoting.
Okay, I thought there was something in at least one of them on the issues.
He strongly feels that this tendency on our part must be a by-product or accident of some other trait that actually is a survival trait. He posits several possibilities:
This, I assume, is what you are referring to?
As children we're hard-wired to accept things our parents tell us without question. I would imagine this would extend to beliefs prevalent in the surrounding cultural matrix.
Children seem to ignore a lot of things their parents say and frequently have to learn for themselves that when mummy says 'Don't do that, you'll hurt yourself' that she really does mean you'll hurt yourself. Regarding more abstract things, such as religion, teenagers are quite rebellious and plenty leave behind the beliefs of their parents and adopts ones of their own. This could mean walking away from religion, or actually becoming a Christian. Both happen all the time in the world.
We are hard-wired to look for causes for things. When things have no cause, we tend to make one up.
That in no way helps to distinguish between real causes and made up causes and therefore has nothing useful to say about whether a given religion is true or not.
Religion is a meme that rides along like a parasite with other beneficial memes about altruistic behavior, what foods are safe or harmful, or other such useful ideas.
Memes may be the in thing in geek culture these days, but it doesn't mean they're a particularly valid scientific concept. In fact, quoting from the NYT review, which itself quote Lewis Wolpert': 'Just what a meme is, and how it is distinguishable from beliefs, I find difficult.... There is no distinction made between memes relating to belief and knowledge. Moreover, no mechanism is proposed for the so-called replication of memes, or what they are selected for.'
Alistair McGrath, an Oxford professor with a doctorate in molecular biophysics, wrote the following in a pdf on memes on the CIS page I linked to: 'Is belief in God a meme? It's an idea that Richard Dawkins floated back in 1976, and it lingers to this day. When I first came across the idea of the meme back in 1977, I was excited by it. I was beginning my career as an intellectual historian, fascinated by cultural development and the history of ideas. I thought that Dawkins' idea of the meme might explain some things far better than other models. And I know that others felt the same. Yet as I - and those others - began to check this idea out, we began to realize it just didn't work.2 I abandoned the concept as unworkable about ten years later, after detailed work on intellectual developments in the Renaissance.
But the real problems lie deeper that this. First, the meme is just an hypothesis - one that we don't need, as there are better models available - for example, in economics, but also in anthropology. If genes could not be seen, we would have to invent them - the evidence demands a biologically transmitted genetic replicator. Memes can't be observed, and the evidence can be explained perfectly well without them. As Maurice Bloch - professor of anthropology at LSE - commented recently, the "exasperated reaction of many anthropologists to the general idea of memes" reflects the apparent ignorance of the proponents of the meme- hypothesis of the discipline of anthropology, and its major successes in the explanation of cultural development - without feeling the need to develop anything like the idea of a "meme" at all.
At this stage, the issue is simply whether memes exist, irrespective of their implications for religion. I say, and most active scientists say with me, that there is no evidence for these things. As Simon Conway Morris, professor of e
I happen to agree with your reasoning, but it raises some problems for the concept of an unchanging God, moral absolutes, and the relevancy and authority of the Bible. If we're going to use human compassion, the moral context and logic to determine ethics than why do we even need the bible any more?
Well, in this situation, it's not so much a case of me deciding on ethics, but rather of taking my moral code form God and working out what its application should be in the current context. How about we look at unclean food as an illustration of this principle?
In the books of the Law, the Jews were commanded not to eat certain foods by God. It wasn't that eating the food was in of itself wrong, rather it was the case that eating food declared to be unclean by God was wrong. When God told Peter, in a vision recorded in the book of Acts, that all foods had been declared clean it became okay to eat the foods.
In this case, there is no change on moral absolutes: disobeying God is wrong, eating food declared to be unclean is wrong. It becomes clear in the context of the passage in Acts that the issue of clean/unclean food (along with many other laws in the OT) is actually symbolic of the divide between clean/unclean (particularly Jew/Gentile) people. God isn't deciding on a whim to make food clean; he's making a point that Gentiles can now be considered clean, along with Jews. This change isn't arbitrary either; it comes in the wake of the resurrection and is a demonstration of what it achieves and who it achieves it for.
The relevancy of the OT prohibition against unclean foods still exists and is in fact presented now in a clearer form. The prohibition demonstrates God's concern about cleanliness (in a spiritual sense) and the cleansing power of trusting in Jesus. The passage is no less authoritative in that it still documents the context in which the Jews lived, gives us an understanding of God's concerns and has not been invalidated by the passage in Acts. It is still wrong to eat unclean foods, it just so happens that there are unclean foods now.
I'm actually applying at the moment to enter training for the ministry, so I spend quite a bit of my time interpreting and understanding the Bible. There's various fields of study, including: textual criticism (making sure we have accurate texts), exegesis (understanding what the text is saying) and hermeneutics (working out how to apply the text today). Wrestling with how to apply stuff today is a tricky issue sometimes, but it often comes down to understanding the context of a passage in terms of the historical situation and its place within the canon of Scripture. The best interpretative rule is 'What does this passage tell me about Jesus and how, therefore, does my understanding of him relate to the situations I face today?'
Part of the reason I'm no longer a Christian is this exact issue. I couldn't understand how we could use this book as an authority when it was filled with irrelevant rules like these. If it is our job to distill it down to the rules that actually apply to us than it is a meaningless book. We'll end up with people fixated on subjugating women or blacks persecuting queers using the bible to their own unchristlike ends.
Well, ultimately it's not a book about rules; it's a book about a person: Jesus Christ. It isn't about a list of dos and don'ts; it's about understanding something of God, trusting in Jesus Christ and worshipping God. It's more a book about relationship. It does, however, within that context, tell us what God considers to be right or wrong and there are ways of working that out using well established rules of grammar, context, etc. just as you would with any text. People can end up misusing the Bible for their own purposes, but it is possible in those cases to point out what they're doing wrong by demonstrating how a passage should be correctly interpreted.
The God Delusion is an ill-conceived, poorly researched, unscientific tirade that has actually embarrassed a lot of atheists who now don't want to be associated with Dawkins.
If you genuinely think Dawkins makes some good arguments, I suggest you read some of the criticism and then draw your own conclusions once you've evaluated all the claims and evidences presented.
In fact, monotheist theology (embodied most heftily by Islam in my opinion) will never be proved objectively because a "proof" sort of defeats the whole point.
Speaking here for Christianity, the point is for God to be worshipped and people to be saved. An objective proof is in no way contradictory to this; in fact the biblical argument for being a Christian rests on the historicity of the resurrection, and is therefore an objective matter. Either Jesus rose from the dead, or he didn't. If he didn't, then we are to be pitied above all men, according to Paul. If he did, then anyone who does not belief is to be pitied.
I realise that this is a wee bit late, but I haven't been in Slashdot for about a week.
I believe that in the historical context of the Old Testament, slavery was ok because it was a better way to treat prisoners of war or criminals than the alternatives. You couldn't let them go, you couldn't lock them up because they'd be too expensive to guard and killing them would be a bit extreme a lot of the times, so slavery, allowing a criminal to work off their debts, or allowing a POW to live when they otherwise couldn't be trusted, was the humane solution.
Today, we have other options.
Slavery is not the fundamental issue; the right treatment of other creatures made in the image of God is and slavery happens to be the best way to treat people under some circumstances. The slavery of say the plantations in America or that which goes on in the world today would be wrong because people were kidnapped and not treated with the most humane option.
You should read the book of Philippians, if you're genuinely curious. Paul addresses those very questions and decided to remain alive so that he could continue to serve God and encourage others.
BTW, on a theological note, I know that there are those in the Church who seem to claim that Jesus and God are one and the same
If by 'those in the church' you mean 'the classic creeds, the church fathers and the statements of faith of all mainstream denominations' then you are correct.
but if you read the Bible it is clear that Jesus carefully avoided claiming he was God
Actually, he repeatedly referred to himself as 'I AM,' which is a name for God and said that he was one with the Father, claimed abilities unique to God, such as the forgiveness of sins (which is one of the reasons the Pharisees wanted to kill him). He does distinguish between himself and the Father at times, but he is also quite clear that he is God.
AND he PRAYED to God, and since he wasn't praying to himself
He was praying to the Father, but that doesn't mean is isn't God. The Trinity is relational, with the Father, Son and Holy Spirit displaying love towards one another. The Son, once incarnate, communicated with his Father through prayer and in doing so set us an example.
it is probably a mistake (on the order of breaking the first of the 10 Commadments) to worship Jesus.
Actually, Jesus willingly accepted worship when it was offered, e.g. by Thomas.
(although I do believe he is the savior, and he was sent from Heaven)
The trouble is that in order to be our Saviour, Jesus must be both man and God
If you are sceptical of what I've said, here a few links you might find interesting reading:
To which I can only remark what a difference 1300 years makes to standards of civility. The modern treatment of any minority anywhere is somewhat irrelevant to the discussion of standards of pre-mediaeval warfare.
And yet you said 'By modern standards of course, these are barbarous options,' which is what I was replying to, indicating that by modern standards in Muslim countries, these are in no way 'barbarous'.
Hate to disagree, but it is irrational by definition. You can't touch it, you can't measure it, and you can't have a third party perform an independent confirmation.
That doesn't make it irrational. If there can exist a god who can communicate in a trustworthy manner, then it is possible for revelation to be rational in the sense that is logical to believe it to be true. If you are using rational in some other sense, then what you are saying is irrelevant since I am addressing the idea of whether revelation should be followed or not. In order to say that revelation is irrational in the sense that it cannot be logical to believe it to be true and to follow it, then you must proof that it is not possible for a god who can communicate in a trustworthy manner to exist.
Trustworthiness, incidentally, is observable and is believed by Christians to be a characteristic of God, not least because of the historical evidence for the resurrection.
That makes it a completely subjective experience, and while you may believe it, you can't prove that it's not just noise in the neurons.
Historicity is objective.
Religious experience has to be taken on faith. It does not have objective reality.
Faith is not irrational. Faith is based on trustworthiness, which can be based on evidence.
How many biblical prophets do you know well enough that you can trust their revelations to be true?
Prophets? None. The Holy Spirit who inspires them? Well, I'd give him a fair bit of trust.
Of course you need to equally trust anyone who has copied or translated their revelations on the way to the book on your nightstand. That's not the biggest problem with your argument however.
Because it's not a problem, given the excellent quality of biblical texts. There are very few potions of the Bible over which there is any significant doubt as to how it should be translated. It was copied quite competently down the ages and modern translations work from very early sources anyway.
You'll have a hard time arguing that it is rational to believe someone when they claim to have received communication from a spiritual being which they can offer no evidence of.
Who said anything about having no evidence? What you say has absolutely no impact on whether or not revelation must be irrational. If a god can exist who can speak in a trustworthy manner, then it is possible for revelation to be rational. The only way to claim that revelation must be irrational is to prove that there cannot exist a god who can communicate in a trustworthy manner with us.
I do believe that such a God exists and that therefore revelation is definitely rational when it is received from him, but that's another issue and not what was originally being discussed.
I would not trust someone who claimed to have received a spiritual revelation no matter how much I trust them. Humans are provably unreliable. The difference between what we sense as external perceptions as opposed to fabrications of our mind can at times be razor thin if that. This is not the case only for so called unreliable people, it's just a result of the way a normal mind works.
There is a difference between people not always being reliable and always being unreliable, not that you're claiming the latter. Your lack of trust - which again has nothing to do with the original issue I was addressing - is a poor decision as it rests on the unfounded assumption that the existence of spiritual beings cannot and will not be supported by evidence. The Christian position is that we trust the Bible to be revealed word of God because Jesus Christ declared it to be so and he himself is a trustworthy source as he rose from the dead on the third day, as he prophesied i.e. it is founded on the historicity of the resurrection, for which there is evidence. You may not agree with the conclusion that is drawn, but you cannot claim that the Christian position is founded on an absence of evidence i.e. blind faith.
I think you are playing words. Of course "revelation" dictionary-sense, can be reasonable: I can revelate to you that I won the lotto. You knowing I'm trustworthy, and looking at my new luxury car will reasonably believe it.
But this is not the theologal meaning for "revelation". Revelation is what God told us because a) He is in mood to tell us and b) we have no natural means to know it.
You're choosing your own definition there, rather than the definition provided by the Bible via the Greek and Hebrew words it uses.
Believing a revelated truth requires no reasonement but *faith*.
Assuming that by 'reasonment' you mean 'reasoning,' you are partly correct, but I would add that revelation does not require blind faith. Faith in the Biblical sense is trustworthiness based on what is known of a person's character and actions.
Even if God came down from heaven to tell me, a poor ignorant, that apples do fall at a speed that increases 9.8 metres per second each second at ground level, that wouldn't be a revelation (theological sense), because we can see and understand that ourselves.
If you didn't know that apple fall at that acceleration, it would indeed be a revelation.
Revelation can *never* be independently verified. The nearest thing to it is prophecy, but -again theologically, a prophecy and a revelation are different beasts.
Prophecy is a form of revelation. It can be a revelation about the consequences of events, which will be experienced if action is/is not taken and therefore verified.
Beside which, if the character of God is known to be trustworthy, anything he reveals can be taken to be true and it is therefore rational to trust it and irrational to ignore or even change it.
I'm not going to argue about semantics with you, but I'd like to point out that change is necessary.
You won't debate whether or not revelation can be rational, but you will point out that change is necessary for rationality? You do realise, don't you, that you are debating the rationality of revelation by that statement?
Every time religious doctrine has changed it has taken bloodshed, strife, and fragmentation of sects.
That's not true and the violent reaction of some people against change is in no way a proof that change is good or necessary.
Religion doesn't like to change, but it has and it will have to in the future.
Religion is not a homogeneous entity and doesn't have feelings. As a Christian I'll speak for Christianity here and say that there is no imperative requiring that Christian doctrine change in the future. As a member of the Presbyterian Church of Ireland, I can say with authority that our beliefs our codified in the Westminster Confession of Faith which was written int he 1600s and was itself based on the earlier creeds and the Bible itself. As a statement of faith, it is intended to reflect what was revealed thousands of years ago. The Reformation, of which the WCoF was a product, was a result of removing the tradition and human additions that had crept into the church and was therefore an undoing of changes that had occurred.
Over time, stated beliefs on some secondary issues have changed, but the primary doctrines e.g. those relating to salvation, the nature of God, etc. have not changed and I see no reason for them to.
Slavery
A fact of life in the ancient world and somewhat of a necessity when you don't have a prison system.
women's rights
The Bible makes it very clear that women are equal with men in God's sight. Complementary roles, but not lesser or superior ones.
the heliocentric solar system
Not something the Bible discusses.
evolution
There are differing views on this.
are all huge challenges to religious doctrine
Not really. Certainly not to issues of salvation, which are dependent on the historicity of Christ's resurrection.
Religion has been unhelpful and downright hostile to scientific progress.
Some avowedly religious people have been helpful, but Christianity as a whole encourages scientific investigation as it testifies that God is a God of order who was created an ordered world, capable of being studied and that he is a God of glory, who can be glorified by studying his creation and praising him for it. Some of the greatest scientists were strongly evangelical Christians with a very literal view of the Bible, e.g. Farady, Maxwell, Kelvin. The idea that religion - or more specifically, Christianity - is opposed to science is a misconception or an attempt at deception.
That business about truth and unchanging god is trivially disproven.
Patently untrue, otherwise it would not be an intellectually credible position and you would have disproven it in your previous post. If you have the truth, in what way is it rational to change and instead follow and promote a falsehood? That, essentially, is what you are claiming.
No it's not. Something is rational if it is reasonable or logical. Revelation has no requisite that it be unreasonable or illogical. Revealed knowledge cannot necessarily be arrived at by means of deductive reasoning, but that doesn't make it irrational.
"If revelation has actually occurred, then it is rational to trust it"
You forget an important issue. If you can be sure it's true it's because you can atest it. But then you don't need any entity to revelate it to you; it's revelation (in the religious sense) no more: it's old plain natural knowledge.
Once again, you pose a false dichotomy. I can attest to the truth of revelation if I know the revealer to be both trustworthy and knowledgeable, regardless of my own ability to vary the revelation independently. Revelation can sometimes be varified independently, but it is not a pre-requisite for it.
They were generally tolerated as people of the book, although not accorded the same rights as Muslims - look up Dhimmi in wikipedia; certainly no worse than, and in most cases definitely better than, the position of jews in Christian societies.
Muslim conquerors generally gave the people of newly conquered lands three choices: to be put to the sword, convert or pay indemnity. Very few chose the second, a few chose the middle option and most chose the last option.
By modern standards of course, these are barbarous options, but they are positively courtly compared to the behaviour of the crusaders a few centuries later.
Are you aware of the treatment of Christians in many modern Muslim countries? Becoming a Christian in Iran, for example, is quite likely to get you severely persecuted and killed if you don't manage to get out of the country.
While it's also true that you can find commands from God to kill people in the Bible, all of those quotes are in the Old Testament.
Still the same God though.
The New Testament does not contain any commands to kill, though it does give warnings to people who reject God. But their punishment will be meted out by God in the next life, at no point are Christians told to exact that punishment themselves. In fact, they're specifically told not to do it.
True on the level of the individual. According to Romans 13, however, the state has the right and in fact the responsibility, to enforce the law and mete out judgement and punishment to those who break it.
So suicide bombing and indescriminatly killing streets full of people seems a bit beyond this. But then again the bible commands us not to kill, without any such exemption yet a great many christian countries (Or states) still have the death penalty. I think this just does to show that we will always twist religion to our own ends, picking and choosing the bits we want to follow and this bits we don't.
Actually, the commandment is against murder, not killing. There are plenty of circumstances in which it is considered just and lawful to kill, such as in war. The New Testament (in Romans 13, IIRC) also contains a reference to the state not bearing the sword in vain i.e. the state has a right to punish lawlessness and execution was not ruled out.
And let us not forget that the Catholic church invented the inquisition.
The ideas behind the inquisition weren't exactly new. The idea of killing - or threatening with torture - people of a different religion has been around for a long time.
Anyway, the difference between any rational framework and religion is that a rational framework has a mechanism for change,
That's incorrect. It's also a heavily biased statement as it rests on the assumption that a religious framework cannot be rational. Revelation is not irrational by definition. If revelation has actually occurred, then it is rational to trust it. Change is irrational if you already have the truth.
Or he tried to plug a firewire drive in. Every one I've tried blackscreens the mac instantly
Give the Firewire is hotpluggable and was introduced into Macs close to a decade ago and has worked perfectly with every Mac I've ever used, I'd suggest that there's something very wrong with your computer. Maybe you should do a hardware check?
Thanks for all this useful info! I do now have my Applications folder back (I actually have two, for some reason; the second one only contains Office 2004, Parallels, and the Cisco VPN client.
Each user has their own Applications folder (~/Applications), which only they can access, then there's the system-wide one (/Applications), which everyone can view (though only install to if they're an admin). Perhaps you've installed Office etc into your user's folder?
Actually, if it requires more energy/raw materials to replicate something than it would to acquire it 'naturally,' then it would be uneconomical to replciate it. For instance, if mining, refining and shaping latinum into bars requires less power than replicating it, you'd be making a loss by using the replicator. Some structures could also be too difficultto replicate... like latinum and dilithium.
Slashdot Mirror
Given that he couldn't supply photographic evidence, etc. the word of a reliable witness would have been fairly good evidence in those days, especially when you consider how much he hated Christians and what it would have taken for him to change his mind.
Then you need to read more of the book of John, specifically John 20:30-31 (i.e. the next two verses) where we are told that the book was written to present evidence about what Jesus did in order than people might believe in him and have life. Thomas was able to see Jesus for himself and was blessed for it (blessed for witnessing first hand, i.e. believing on the basis of excellent proof), while those who are reading John and cannot see Jesus for themselves, but have to rely on the witness of others, are also blessed. Nothing about Thomas doing something wrong or worse. The message there is directed at the reader, not at Thomas, to encourage them to believe as he did, which is plain from the surrounding context of the proceeding verses.
By way of another example, if you take a look at the start of the book of Luke, you'll see that he meticulously collected evidence and wants people to look at this evidence and then believe.
Because if someone is a Christian, their beliefs will lead to actions, they will actively be placing faith in God and the Christian life is a costly one, so they will suffer. If Christianity is not true, then the actions are misguided, the faith misplaced, the suffering unnecessary and the life wasted.
Ah. 'Supernatural events can't happen because they're not natural.' That's a pretty empty argument.
Of course. The expereinced Roman executioners messed up, the medical details presented which indicate his death are incorrect and he recovered sufficiently from his severe beating, hours on the cross, massive bleeding, suffocation, severe blood loss from being stabbed in the side and the effects of fatigue and exposure to summon the strength to roll aside a boulder than ordinarily required several men, overpowered the Roman guards and then went into hiding.
Come back from where? He was buried in the tomb. There were plenty of witnesses. No-one could produce the body afterwards, but people claimed to have seen him and died proclaiming that, knowing whether or not it was true. Why die for what you know to be fiction when you were terrified of death beforehand?
Pen was put to paper a couple of decades after the event at the very latest. It is historical facts that Christians existed, proclaiming the resurrection, in the years immediately following the crucifixion. No-one could silence then because no-one could produce a body and they weren't afraid to die. The manuscripts we have are much closer in time to the original manuscripts and are more numerous than other trusted historical sources such as Tacitus and Josephus.
It is historical fact that the disciples died proclaiming the resurrection. Regardless of how long after the crucifixion their executions happened, they weren't going to get confused about whether Jesus had risen
Why do you think the Bible says that? It's seems to be part of the Slashdot group-think these days, but blind faith is not something that the Bible advocates, as I have just pointed out. If it was blind faith, then Paul wouldn't be writing about the importance of the resurrection being historical fact.
Eh? If the resurrection didn't happen, then Christians believe a lie and are in a pitiable position. Where exactly do you disagree with his analysis of the situation?
Change his stance? Paul didn't change his stance. He was pointing out that Christianity was dependent on the resurrection being a historical fact and he was so certain of it that he died for it. What are you talking about?
Why on earth do you think the Bible says that? If anything, it says the opposite. Taking the Psalms as an example, their are repeated exhortations to remember the past, to remember what God has done and on that basis trust him. The entire relationship with God that people are supposed to have is based on character as revealed through his actions in history. Objective historical facts as critical to Christianity, not vague philosophies, empty claims or blind faith.
Okay, I thought there was something in at least one of them on the issues.
This, I assume, is what you are referring to?
Children seem to ignore a lot of things their parents say and frequently have to learn for themselves that when mummy says 'Don't do that, you'll hurt yourself' that she really does mean you'll hurt yourself. Regarding more abstract things, such as religion, teenagers are quite rebellious and plenty leave behind the beliefs of their parents and adopts ones of their own. This could mean walking away from religion, or actually becoming a Christian. Both happen all the time in the world.
That in no way helps to distinguish between real causes and made up causes and therefore has nothing useful to say about whether a given religion is true or not.
Memes may be the in thing in geek culture these days, but it doesn't mean they're a particularly valid scientific concept. In fact, quoting from the NYT review, which itself quote Lewis Wolpert': 'Just what a meme is, and how it is distinguishable from beliefs, I find difficult.... There is no distinction made between memes relating to belief and knowledge. Moreover, no mechanism is proposed for the so-called replication of memes, or what they are selected for.'
Alistair McGrath, an Oxford professor with a doctorate in molecular biophysics, wrote the following in a pdf on memes on the CIS page I linked to:
'Is belief in God a meme? It's an idea that Richard Dawkins floated back in 1976, and it lingers to this day. When I first came across the idea of the meme back in 1977, I was excited by it. I was beginning my career as an intellectual historian, fascinated by cultural development and the history of ideas. I thought that Dawkins' idea of the meme might explain some things far better than other models. And I know that others felt the same. Yet as I - and those others - began to check this idea out, we began to realize it just didn't work.2 I abandoned the concept as unworkable about ten years later, after detailed work on intellectual developments in the Renaissance.
But the real problems lie deeper that this. First, the meme is just an hypothesis - one that we don't need, as there are better models available - for example, in economics, but also in anthropology. If genes could not be seen, we would have to invent them - the evidence demands a biologically transmitted genetic replicator. Memes can't be observed, and the evidence can be explained perfectly well without them. As Maurice Bloch - professor of anthropology at LSE - commented recently, the "exasperated reaction of many anthropologists to the general idea of memes" reflects the apparent ignorance of the proponents of the meme- hypothesis of the discipline of anthropology, and its major successes in the explanation of cultural development - without feeling the need to develop anything like the idea of a "meme" at all.
At this stage, the issue is simply whether memes exist, irrespective of their implications for religion. I say, and most active scientists say with me, that there is no evidence for these things. As Simon Conway Morris, professor of e
Well, in this situation, it's not so much a case of me deciding on ethics, but rather of taking my moral code form God and working out what its application should be in the current context. How about we look at unclean food as an illustration of this principle?
In the books of the Law, the Jews were commanded not to eat certain foods by God. It wasn't that eating the food was in of itself wrong, rather it was the case that eating food declared to be unclean by God was wrong. When God told Peter, in a vision recorded in the book of Acts, that all foods had been declared clean it became okay to eat the foods.
In this case, there is no change on moral absolutes: disobeying God is wrong, eating food declared to be unclean is wrong. It becomes clear in the context of the passage in Acts that the issue of clean/unclean food (along with many other laws in the OT) is actually symbolic of the divide between clean/unclean (particularly Jew/Gentile) people. God isn't deciding on a whim to make food clean; he's making a point that Gentiles can now be considered clean, along with Jews. This change isn't arbitrary either; it comes in the wake of the resurrection and is a demonstration of what it achieves and who it achieves it for.
The relevancy of the OT prohibition against unclean foods still exists and is in fact presented now in a clearer form. The prohibition demonstrates God's concern about cleanliness (in a spiritual sense) and the cleansing power of trusting in Jesus. The passage is no less authoritative in that it still documents the context in which the Jews lived, gives us an understanding of God's concerns and has not been invalidated by the passage in Acts. It is still wrong to eat unclean foods, it just so happens that there are unclean foods now.
I'm actually applying at the moment to enter training for the ministry, so I spend quite a bit of my time interpreting and understanding the Bible. There's various fields of study, including: textual criticism (making sure we have accurate texts), exegesis (understanding what the text is saying) and hermeneutics (working out how to apply the text today). Wrestling with how to apply stuff today is a tricky issue sometimes, but it often comes down to understanding the context of a passage in terms of the historical situation and its place within the canon of Scripture. The best interpretative rule is 'What does this passage tell me about Jesus and how, therefore, does my understanding of him relate to the situations I face today?'
Well, ultimately it's not a book about rules; it's a book about a person: Jesus Christ. It isn't about a list of dos and don'ts; it's about understanding something of God, trusting in Jesus Christ and worshipping God. It's more a book about relationship. It does, however, within that context, tell us what God considers to be right or wrong and there are ways of working that out using well established rules of grammar, context, etc. just as you would with any text. People can end up misusing the Bible for their own purposes, but it is possible in those cases to point out what they're doing wrong by demonstrating how a passage should be correctly interpreted.
The God Delusion is an ill-conceived, poorly researched, unscientific tirade that has actually embarrassed a lot of atheists who now don't want to be associated with Dawkins.
If you genuinely think Dawkins makes some good arguments, I suggest you read some of the criticism and then draw your own conclusions once you've evaluated all the claims and evidences presented.
Speaking here for Christianity, the point is for God to be worshipped and people to be saved. An objective proof is in no way contradictory to this; in fact the biblical argument for being a Christian rests on the historicity of the resurrection, and is therefore an objective matter. Either Jesus rose from the dead, or he didn't. If he didn't, then we are to be pitied above all men, according to Paul. If he did, then anyone who does not belief is to be pitied.
I realise that this is a wee bit late, but I haven't been in Slashdot for about a week.
I believe that in the historical context of the Old Testament, slavery was ok because it was a better way to treat prisoners of war or criminals than the alternatives. You couldn't let them go, you couldn't lock them up because they'd be too expensive to guard and killing them would be a bit extreme a lot of the times, so slavery, allowing a criminal to work off their debts, or allowing a POW to live when they otherwise couldn't be trusted, was the humane solution.
Today, we have other options.
Slavery is not the fundamental issue; the right treatment of other creatures made in the image of God is and slavery happens to be the best way to treat people under some circumstances. The slavery of say the plantations in America or that which goes on in the world today would be wrong because people were kidnapped and not treated with the most humane option.
You should read the book of Philippians, if you're genuinely curious. Paul addresses those very questions and decided to remain alive so that he could continue to serve God and encourage others.
If by 'those in the church' you mean 'the classic creeds, the church fathers and the statements of faith of all mainstream denominations' then you are correct.
Actually, he repeatedly referred to himself as 'I AM,' which is a name for God and said that he was one with the Father, claimed abilities unique to God, such as the forgiveness of sins (which is one of the reasons the Pharisees wanted to kill him). He does distinguish between himself and the Father at times, but he is also quite clear that he is God.
He was praying to the Father, but that doesn't mean is isn't God. The Trinity is relational, with the Father, Son and Holy Spirit displaying love towards one another. The Son, once incarnate, communicated with his Father through prayer and in doing so set us an example.
Actually, Jesus willingly accepted worship when it was offered, e.g. by Thomas.
The trouble is that in order to be our Saviour, Jesus must be both man and God
If you are sceptical of what I've said, here a few links you might find interesting reading:
And yet you said 'By modern standards of course, these are barbarous options,' which is what I was replying to, indicating that by modern standards in Muslim countries, these are in no way 'barbarous'.
That doesn't make it irrational. If there can exist a god who can communicate in a trustworthy manner, then it is possible for revelation to be rational in the sense that is logical to believe it to be true. If you are using rational in some other sense, then what you are saying is irrelevant since I am addressing the idea of whether revelation should be followed or not. In order to say that revelation is irrational in the sense that it cannot be logical to believe it to be true and to follow it, then you must proof that it is not possible for a god who can communicate in a trustworthy manner to exist.
Trustworthiness, incidentally, is observable and is believed by Christians to be a characteristic of God, not least because of the historical evidence for the resurrection.
Historicity is objective.
Faith is not irrational. Faith is based on trustworthiness, which can be based on evidence.
Prophets? None. The Holy Spirit who inspires them? Well, I'd give him a fair bit of trust.
Because it's not a problem, given the excellent quality of biblical texts. There are very few potions of the Bible over which there is any significant doubt as to how it should be translated. It was copied quite competently down the ages and modern translations work from very early sources anyway.
Who said anything about having no evidence? What you say has absolutely no impact on whether or not revelation must be irrational. If a god can exist who can speak in a trustworthy manner, then it is possible for revelation to be rational. The only way to claim that revelation must be irrational is to prove that there cannot exist a god who can communicate in a trustworthy manner with us.
I do believe that such a God exists and that therefore revelation is definitely rational when it is received from him, but that's another issue and not what was originally being discussed.
There is a difference between people not always being reliable and always being unreliable, not that you're claiming the latter. Your lack of trust - which again has nothing to do with the original issue I was addressing - is a poor decision as it rests on the unfounded assumption that the existence of spiritual beings cannot and will not be supported by evidence. The Christian position is that we trust the Bible to be revealed word of God because Jesus Christ declared it to be so and he himself is a trustworthy source as he rose from the dead on the third day, as he prophesied i.e. it is founded on the historicity of the resurrection, for which there is evidence. You may not agree with the conclusion that is drawn, but you cannot claim that the Christian position is founded on an absence of evidence i.e. blind faith.
You're choosing your own definition there, rather than the definition provided by the Bible via the Greek and Hebrew words it uses.
Assuming that by 'reasonment' you mean 'reasoning,' you are partly correct, but I would add that revelation does not require blind faith. Faith in the Biblical sense is trustworthiness based on what is known of a person's character and actions.
If you didn't know that apple fall at that acceleration, it would indeed be a revelation.
Prophecy is a form of revelation. It can be a revelation about the consequences of events, which will be experienced if action is/is not taken and therefore verified.
Beside which, if the character of God is known to be trustworthy, anything he reveals can be taken to be true and it is therefore rational to trust it and irrational to ignore or even change it.
You won't debate whether or not revelation can be rational, but you will point out that change is necessary for rationality? You do realise, don't you, that you are debating the rationality of revelation by that statement?
That's not true and the violent reaction of some people against change is in no way a proof that change is good or necessary.
Religion is not a homogeneous entity and doesn't have feelings. As a Christian I'll speak for Christianity here and say that there is no imperative requiring that Christian doctrine change in the future. As a member of the Presbyterian Church of Ireland, I can say with authority that our beliefs our codified in the Westminster Confession of Faith which was written int he 1600s and was itself based on the earlier creeds and the Bible itself. As a statement of faith, it is intended to reflect what was revealed thousands of years ago. The Reformation, of which the WCoF was a product, was a result of removing the tradition and human additions that had crept into the church and was therefore an undoing of changes that had occurred.
Over time, stated beliefs on some secondary issues have changed, but the primary doctrines e.g. those relating to salvation, the nature of God, etc. have not changed and I see no reason for them to.
A fact of life in the ancient world and somewhat of a necessity when you don't have a prison system.
The Bible makes it very clear that women are equal with men in God's sight. Complementary roles, but not lesser or superior ones.
Not something the Bible discusses.
There are differing views on this.
Not really. Certainly not to issues of salvation, which are dependent on the historicity of Christ's resurrection.
Some avowedly religious people have been helpful, but Christianity as a whole encourages scientific investigation as it testifies that God is a God of order who was created an ordered world, capable of being studied and that he is a God of glory, who can be glorified by studying his creation and praising him for it. Some of the greatest scientists were strongly evangelical Christians with a very literal view of the Bible, e.g. Farady, Maxwell, Kelvin. The idea that religion - or more specifically, Christianity - is opposed to science is a misconception or an attempt at deception.
Patently untrue, otherwise it would not be an intellectually credible position and you would have disproven it in your previous post. If you have the truth, in what way is it rational to change and instead follow and promote a falsehood? That, essentially, is what you are claiming.
No it's not. Something is rational if it is reasonable or logical. Revelation has no requisite that it be unreasonable or illogical. Revealed knowledge cannot necessarily be arrived at by means of deductive reasoning, but that doesn't make it irrational.
Once again, you pose a false dichotomy. I can attest to the truth of revelation if I know the revealer to be both trustworthy and knowledgeable, regardless of my own ability to vary the revelation independently. Revelation can sometimes be varified independently, but it is not a pre-requisite for it.
Are you aware of the treatment of Christians in many modern Muslim countries? Becoming a Christian in Iran, for example, is quite likely to get you severely persecuted and killed if you don't manage to get out of the country.
Still the same God though.
True on the level of the individual. According to Romans 13, however, the state has the right and in fact the responsibility, to enforce the law and mete out judgement and punishment to those who break it.
Actually, the commandment is against murder, not killing. There are plenty of circumstances in which it is considered just and lawful to kill, such as in war. The New Testament (in Romans 13, IIRC) also contains a reference to the state not bearing the sword in vain i.e. the state has a right to punish lawlessness and execution was not ruled out.
The ideas behind the inquisition weren't exactly new. The idea of killing - or threatening with torture - people of a different religion has been around for a long time.
That's incorrect. It's also a heavily biased statement as it rests on the assumption that a religious framework cannot be rational. Revelation is not irrational by definition. If revelation has actually occurred, then it is rational to trust it. Change is irrational if you already have the truth.
Jesus seemed happy enough to do it at times, along with a lot of prophets.
Give the Firewire is hotpluggable and was introduced into Macs close to a decade ago and has worked perfectly with every Mac I've ever used, I'd suggest that there's something very wrong with your computer. Maybe you should do a hardware check?
No they didn't; they called them PowerMacs. The processor was a PowerPC, but the computer was a PowerMac
Each user has their own Applications folder (~/Applications), which only they can access, then there's the system-wide one (/Applications), which everyone can view (though only install to if they're an admin). Perhaps you've installed Office etc into your user's folder?
Actually, if it requires more energy/raw materials to replicate something than it would to acquire it 'naturally,' then it would be uneconomical to replciate it. For instance, if mining, refining and shaping latinum into bars requires less power than replicating it, you'd be making a loss by using the replicator. Some structures could also be too difficultto replicate... like latinum and dilithium.
At least they can't lose by an innings now! Or in 3 days. That's an improvement... isn't it?