Saying things like, "That's nonsense!" [...] doesn't constitute evidence. Sorry.
Well it's a good thing that there was more to my post than those two words, isn't it?
Saying things like [...] "Well, why would this guy have done that if so and so" doesn't constitute evidence. Sorry.
It's reasoning to aid in the interpretation of evidence. We have evidence concerning Jesus' life, death and resurrection. We're drawing completely different conclusions fromt he evidence, but that doesn't mean it isn't evidence; it simply means that at least one of us is wrong. My point concerned my I interpret the evidence the way I did. Biblical scholars (e.g. FF Bruce, NT Wright) are fairly confident that the NT dates back to the first century AD and we are fairly sure that Jesus' disciples died proclaiming the message of the NT. The question is therefore whether or not their message was true. They were willing to suffer and die for it, which seems highly unlikely if they believed it was a lie and they would have known if it was true or not, therefore their deaths are a convincing reason to take the NT as true.
There are no eyewitness accounts of his existence. Not even from the Romans. If you know of one, post a link citing sources.
Jewish and Roman sources:
Flavius Josephus - The Antiquities of the Jews. Admittedly it's not as historically reliable as the New Testament as the earliest manuscripts we have date a few centuries after the originals, compared with a few decades for parts of the New Testament, but it's generally accepted as a fairly decent document.
Cornelius Tacitus - Annals of Imperial Rome.
The Talmud
I also recommend the following books:
FF Bruce - Are the New Testament Documents Reliable
CA Evans - Noncanonical Writings and New Testament Interpretation
GH Twelftree - Jesus in Jewish Traditions
J Dickson- Simply Christianity: Beyond Religion
A quote by Emeritus Professor EA Judge of Macquarie University Sydney:
An ancient historian has no problem seeing the phenomenon of Jesus as an historical one. His many surprising aspects only serve to anchor him in history. Myth or legend would have created a more predictable figure. The writings that sprang up about Jesus also reveal to us a movement of thought and an experience of life so unusual that something more substantial than the imagination is needed to explain it.
I don't believe Christians consider Jesus to be God, so assumed that when Christian God was mentioned, it was referring to The God(tm)
Actually, the divinity of Christ is a key doctrine in Christianity. He alludes to it himself several times in the gospels, the writers of the epistles refer to him as God and it is an essential requirement for the forgiveness of sin.
Just noticed I spelled prophet as 'profit' in my last post. Doh. Kudos for not feeling a spelling/grammar nazi in a frequently volatile subject!
Alice who believes in the FSM kills someone, therefore Bob who believes in the flying unicorn must be a danger to society. Sure, his beliefs are completely different and he hasn't committed any crimes, but he's religious, so let's just lock him up anyway.
That's what your post comes down to (well, that and a woeful ignorance of many things), which is understandable given that Dawkins et. al. use the same appalling logic that even secular newspapers over here are beginning to criticise.
They are not in fact a teacher at that point, but a malignant propagandist for a religious agenda that, 99% of the time is ignorant and bad for humanity, and the rest of the living things on the planet.
There's a certain irony when someone talks about being a 'malignant propagandist' and having a 'religious agenda' and then writes what you wrote:
Seriously, learning and study are on the opposite end of memorization and faith. It's not just a simple difference of opinion among some "teachers". It's a fundamental difference between logic and reason, and blind retardation.blockquote>
Faith based on evidence seems to fit well enough with study and learning. Ministers are required to spend several years studying and are encouraged to continue studying in ministry. And if you think there is no role for memorisation in learning and study, that brings into question the assumption that you have ever been taught anything. Memorisation is an important part of the learning process, whether it's Greek vocabulary, or road markings.
No person espousing any type of religious dogma should be considered a teacher by the simple definition of the word.
Should we throw axioms out of mathematics as well?
Unless it is a seminary class, there should be NO room for religion in the class. Except history, maybe, to show how so many random tribes have used religion to justify genocide.
Ah of course, the only thing we should teach about religion ever is that some people have used it as an excuse to commit genocide. If I suggested that all anyone should ever hear about communism is that Stalin and Pol Pot killed millions, would I be a malignant propagandist for a capitalist (McCarthyist?) agenda?
Take a step back and appraise your won beliefs for a moment.
When he is saying "by me", he doesn't mean you have to follow and praise Jesus or your going to Hell. He is referring to his actions and how you deal with other people and your life. Not through proselytizing and idolization of him.
Then why does he refer to himself as the Son of Man, the figure from Daniel 7? Why does he call himself YHWH? Why does he repeatedly instruct people t repent and believe? Why was the thief and the cross, who had led a sinful life, but recognised that Jesus was innocent and God and therefore saved if it was works that saved, rather than faith? Why were the Pharisees condemned for living 'good' lives but being unclean in their hearts?
While not everyone will get down and praise [insert deity], there are many people who follow their actions (even if they don't believe) and at the end of the day that is what really matters.
I think God might have some say in what matters to him and it's pretty explicit in the Bible that following his Son, believing that he is the Son of God and receiving him as Lord and Saviour is what really matter.
You're taking that massively out of context. In fact when such statements appear, they're typically in the context of explaining the gospel. And of course one statement which can be made about the gospel is that those who do not believe it will go to hell. Telling people something they don't agree with isn't the same as judging them.
2. Show compassion, kindness, respect... to EVERYONE
Is it loving to not tell someone something they need in order to live?
Just because they believe in it doesn't mean they're going there. The Bible makes it very clear that faith in Christ, evidenced (not caused!) by obedience to him is the basis for entry to heaven. Anyone who rejects Jesus as saviour, which Muslims most certainly do, doesn't go to heaven. A Muslim can become a Christian, but aside from that, there's no way in.
>blockquote> And yet the New Testament contains zero eye witness accounts! Bible scholars pretty much all agree that the New Testament was written long after every one in the stories was dead.
Nonsense. Paul's letters were certainly written while he was still alive. Luke, who wrote Luke and Acts, accompanied him on his journeys and added eye-witness accounts of Jesus' life to his own testimony. Mark predates Luke by some time and originates from Peter's assistant. Read something like FF Bruce's book on the New Testament documents or anything by NT Wright on the subject. Both are respected scholars and would verify this.
Is science wrong when it says that man evolved and was not created out of thin air, as in the Bible?
Dirt, not air.
Does the earth really have four corners
Are you familiar with 'poetry'?
and is Pi exactly 3
What is the value of Pi? Would you accept 3.14? Or 3.14159? Or would you prefer an infinitely long piece of paper and have someone send eternity adding more and more digits to it in order to get closer and closer to the 'exact value of Pi'? Or would an approximation be acceptable?
To 1 significant figure, Pi=3. A description was being given of some bowls, not of mathematics and nowhere does it say that they were perfectly circular.
Well that's complete and utter nonsense. There's evidence from Jewish and Roman historians, the testimony of the church and of course the eye-witness accounts compiled by people like Dr. Luke to from the gospels. If there had been no Jesus, the disciples would hardly have gone and died for him, would they? Why would a bunch of fishermen and tax collectors go and die for someone they knew didn't exist? And why would Saul of Tarsus, respected lawyer, have converted to Christianity if he knew there was no Jesus?
Given that Christians believe Jesus to be YHWH, while Muslims simply regard him as a profit, that's pretty far from the truth. And their characteristics are very different - personal relationship, salvation by grace vs. distant relationship, salvation by works.
A true Christian state would have no corporal punishment
Actually, there's a difference between God-pleasing behaviour for an individual Christian and the responsibilities of the state. Check out Romans 13 - the state does not bear the state in vain; it actually has a God-given mandate to punish criminals and enforce justice. God isn't a wimp. He doesn't just sit on a pink fluffy cloud, saying 'I love you' all the time; he is also a judge and expects justice to be enforced on earth.
I've run plenty of presentations without that problem. Either you're trolling, you're punching the keys, or you've got a damaged connector because there's no way that pressing a key would cause it to disconnect.
It takes more than a gentle bump to dislodge it and why one earth would you laptop be taking more than a gentle bump while you're doing a presentation?
Doh. Was supposed to be a link to the standard Apple mini-DVI-VGA cable for connecting laptops to VGA monitors/projectors, something I've done with iBooks, Powerbooks and Macbooks.
In Oblivion, (I haven't messed with the slider bar yet) the levelling system is messed up so that even when you aren't increasing your combat skills, the enemies become stronger and so strong you aren't able to kill them (I had a thief that I just had sneak around for the rest of the game because he couldn't kill all of the top level enemies.)
I agree there are problems with Oblivion's levelling, but isn't the position you'd expect a thief to be in? If a warrior character was having the problem, it would be a better example.
The point is that there was more reason for Apple to add a lossless format, than another lossy one. Whether they should have gone with FLAC over ALE is another matter entirely, which I feel wholly unqualified to comment on. I don't imagine Apple went with ALE for technical or performance reasons though. Probably a case of NIH, wanting to use their own technology.
Apple wanted to use ALE for transmitting music over wireless to Airport Express, so there was reason to create it anyway. And for ALE is a greater improvement over WAV than OGG Vorbis would be over MP3 or AAC.
I would say that is the Catholic view as well - it is unfortunately but true that the church was corrupted.
That's somewhat reassuring to hear. I don't usually comment on Catholic beliefs since I strongly disagree with many of the official doctrines of that church, but know that a lot of people who would call themselves Catholics don't actually agree with them either, so it would be a tad foolish of me to make generalisations.
The last thing most people want is to lose their nice comforting misconceptions.
It was fairly common practise by just about anyone using parchment. It wasn't cheap, it wasn't common, so everyone reused bits. It's not religion trying to suppress science or mathematics.
That's one form of distorting what I said that sounds suspiciously close to some form of jesuit debating technique. Did you study at a jesuit school?
Actually I went to fairly standard state schools before reading Physics at Keble College, Oxford.
I never wrote that science is the "be all and end all of life". What I wrote is that it's wrong to believe something, anything at all, is that "be all and end all of life", the way religious people think about their religion. Scientists do not think like that.
Actually you said that having everything be inferior to religion is wrong and that having a single work of "one of the most outstanding scientists of antiquity" written over by a single unknown monk was "an excellent argument against religion in general." It seems a little harsh to condemn religion on the basis of one unknown man's actions, so I surmised that your view of science was very high. Perhaps I overestimated your view, but given the venom you displayed towards religion, it was very much the way you came across.
When you have a scientific approach to life you get to be more or less protected from such mistakes.
Science can't be applied to every area of life and it's not meant to be. If you tried to, you'd be making a terrible mistake, or applying science incorrectly.
You tend to approach situations with caution, you tend to analyze before believing things blindly, you do not assume that anything is the "be all and end all of life" because you know that you can be mistaken.
And here you appear to have made a mistake. It would seem that you are implying that those who follow a religion do so blindly, a statement made without sound analysis, abandoning caution and blindly assuming something that is completely without truth. And the decision to have Christ as the be all and end all of life is a carefully reasoned one that makes sense in light of the facts at hand, rather than being an assumption.
I find it interesting the Maxwell and Faraday, arguably two of the finest scientific minds the British Isles have produced, had zero problems with this attitude, something that could be said of the many other scientists who call Jesus their Lord.
And therefore, brethren, we ought to value the privilege of knowing God's truth far beyond anything we can have in this world. The more we see the perfection of God's law fulfilled in Christ, the more we ought to thank God for His unspeakable gift.
Now my great plan, which was conceived of old,... is to let nothing be wilfully left unexamined. Nothing is to be holy ground consecrated to Stationary Faith, whether positive or negative. All fallow land is to be ploughed up and a regular system of rotation followed.... Never hide anything, be it weed or no, nor seem to wish it hidden.... Again I assert the Right of Trespass on any plot of Holy Ground which any man has set apart.... Now I am convinced that no one but a Christian can actually purge his land of these holy spots.... I do not say that no Christians have enclosed places of this sort. Many have a great deal, and every one has some. But there are extensive and important tracts in the territory of the Scoffer, the Pantheist, the Quietist, Formalist, Dogmatist, Sensualist, and the rest, which are openly and solemnly Tabooed....
Christianity - that is, the religion of the Bible - is the only scheme or form of belief which disavows any possessions on such a tenure. Here alone all is free. You may fly to the ends of the world and find no God but the Author of Salvation. You may search the Scriptures and not find a
Slashdot Mirror
Well it's a good thing that there was more to my post than those two words, isn't it?
It's reasoning to aid in the interpretation of evidence. We have evidence concerning Jesus' life, death and resurrection. We're drawing completely different conclusions fromt he evidence, but that doesn't mean it isn't evidence; it simply means that at least one of us is wrong. My point concerned my I interpret the evidence the way I did. Biblical scholars (e.g. FF Bruce, NT Wright) are fairly confident that the NT dates back to the first century AD and we are fairly sure that Jesus' disciples died proclaiming the message of the NT. The question is therefore whether or not their message was true. They were willing to suffer and die for it, which seems highly unlikely if they believed it was a lie and they would have known if it was true or not, therefore their deaths are a convincing reason to take the NT as true.
Jewish and Roman sources:
I also recommend the following books:
A quote by Emeritus Professor EA Judge of Macquarie University Sydney:
'The requested URL /exist.htm/ was not found on this server.' - a tad ironic given the page name.
Actually, the divinity of Christ is a key doctrine in Christianity. He alludes to it himself several times in the gospels, the writers of the epistles refer to him as God and it is an essential requirement for the forgiveness of sin.
Just noticed I spelled prophet as 'profit' in my last post. Doh. Kudos for not feeling a spelling/grammar nazi in a frequently volatile subject!
Alice who believes in the FSM kills someone, therefore Bob who believes in the flying unicorn must be a danger to society. Sure, his beliefs are completely different and he hasn't committed any crimes, but he's religious, so let's just lock him up anyway.
That's what your post comes down to (well, that and a woeful ignorance of many things), which is understandable given that Dawkins et. al. use the same appalling logic that even secular newspapers over here are beginning to criticise.
There's a certain irony when someone talks about being a 'malignant propagandist' and having a 'religious agenda' and then writes what you wrote:
Seriously, learning and study are on the opposite end of memorization and faith. It's not just a simple difference of opinion among some "teachers". It's a fundamental difference between logic and reason, and blind retardation.blockquote>Faith based on evidence seems to fit well enough with study and learning. Ministers are required to spend several years studying and are encouraged to continue studying in ministry. And if you think there is no role for memorisation in learning and study, that brings into question the assumption that you have ever been taught anything. Memorisation is an important part of the learning process, whether it's Greek vocabulary, or road markings.
Should we throw axioms out of mathematics as well?
Ah of course, the only thing we should teach about religion ever is that some people have used it as an excuse to commit genocide. If I suggested that all anyone should ever hear about communism is that Stalin and Pol Pot killed millions, would I be a malignant propagandist for a capitalist (McCarthyist?) agenda?
Take a step back and appraise your won beliefs for a moment.
You're taking that massively out of context. In fact when such statements appear, they're typically in the context of explaining the gospel. And of course one statement which can be made about the gospel is that those who do not believe it will go to hell. Telling people something they don't agree with isn't the same as judging them.
Is it loving to not tell someone something they need in order to live?
Just because they believe in it doesn't mean they're going there. The Bible makes it very clear that faith in Christ, evidenced (not caused!) by obedience to him is the basis for entry to heaven. Anyone who rejects Jesus as saviour, which Muslims most certainly do, doesn't go to heaven. A Muslim can become a Christian, but aside from that, there's no way in.
Nonsense. Paul's letters were certainly written while he was still alive. Luke, who wrote Luke and Acts, accompanied him on his journeys and added eye-witness accounts of Jesus' life to his own testimony. Mark predates Luke by some time and originates from Peter's assistant. Read something like FF Bruce's book on the New Testament documents or anything by NT Wright on the subject. Both are respected scholars and would verify this.
Dirt, not air.
Are you familiar with 'poetry'?
What is the value of Pi? Would you accept 3.14? Or 3.14159? Or would you prefer an infinitely long piece of paper and have someone send eternity adding more and more digits to it in order to get closer and closer to the 'exact value of Pi'? Or would an approximation be acceptable?
To 1 significant figure, Pi=3. A description was being given of some bowls, not of mathematics and nowhere does it say that they were perfectly circular.
Well that's complete and utter nonsense. There's evidence from Jewish and Roman historians, the testimony of the church and of course the eye-witness accounts compiled by people like Dr. Luke to from the gospels. If there had been no Jesus, the disciples would hardly have gone and died for him, would they? Why would a bunch of fishermen and tax collectors go and die for someone they knew didn't exist? And why would Saul of Tarsus, respected lawyer, have converted to Christianity if he knew there was no Jesus?
Given that Christians believe Jesus to be YHWH, while Muslims simply regard him as a profit, that's pretty far from the truth. And their characteristics are very different - personal relationship, salvation by grace vs. distant relationship, salvation by works.
Actually, there's a difference between God-pleasing behaviour for an individual Christian and the responsibilities of the state. Check out Romans 13 - the state does not bear the state in vain; it actually has a God-given mandate to punish criminals and enforce justice. God isn't a wimp. He doesn't just sit on a pink fluffy cloud, saying 'I love you' all the time; he is also a judge and expects justice to be enforced on earth.
I've run plenty of presentations without that problem. Either you're trolling, you're punching the keys, or you've got a damaged connector because there's no way that pressing a key would cause it to disconnect.
It takes more than a gentle bump to dislodge it and why one earth would you laptop be taking more than a gentle bump while you're doing a presentation?
Doh. Was supposed to be a link to the standard Apple mini-DVI-VGA cable for connecting laptops to VGA monitors/projectors, something I've done with iBooks, Powerbooks and Macbooks.
Oh really?
That would only be a valid argument if he was being singled out, but every cheater is being asked not to cheat. There's no bias.
Actually, there's a reason why we have some of the best knee surgeons in the world in Northern Ireland.
I agree there are problems with Oblivion's levelling, but isn't the position you'd expect a thief to be in? If a warrior character was having the problem, it would be a better example.
They're not in the same universe (problems with timeline), but seem to have a related mythos.
The point is that there was more reason for Apple to add a lossless format, than another lossy one. Whether they should have gone with FLAC over ALE is another matter entirely, which I feel wholly unqualified to comment on. I don't imagine Apple went with ALE for technical or performance reasons though. Probably a case of NIH, wanting to use their own technology.
Apple wanted to use ALE for transmitting music over wireless to Airport Express, so there was reason to create it anyway. And for ALE is a greater improvement over WAV than OGG Vorbis would be over MP3 or AAC.
That's somewhat reassuring to hear. I don't usually comment on Catholic beliefs since I strongly disagree with many of the official doctrines of that church, but know that a lot of people who would call themselves Catholics don't actually agree with them either, so it would be a tad foolish of me to make generalisations.
How true.
It was fairly common practise by just about anyone using parchment. It wasn't cheap, it wasn't common, so everyone reused bits. It's not religion trying to suppress science or mathematics.
Actually I went to fairly standard state schools before reading Physics at Keble College, Oxford.
Actually you said that having everything be inferior to religion is wrong and that having a single work of "one of the most outstanding scientists of antiquity" written over by a single unknown monk was "an excellent argument against religion in general." It seems a little harsh to condemn religion on the basis of one unknown man's actions, so I surmised that your view of science was very high. Perhaps I overestimated your view, but given the venom you displayed towards religion, it was very much the way you came across.
Science can't be applied to every area of life and it's not meant to be. If you tried to, you'd be making a terrible mistake, or applying science incorrectly.
And here you appear to have made a mistake. It would seem that you are implying that those who follow a religion do so blindly, a statement made without sound analysis, abandoning caution and blindly assuming something that is completely without truth. And the decision to have Christ as the be all and end all of life is a carefully reasoned one that makes sense in light of the facts at hand, rather than being an assumption.
I find it interesting the Maxwell and Faraday, arguably two of the finest scientific minds the British Isles have produced, had zero problems with this attitude, something that could be said of the many other scientists who call Jesus their Lord.
Michael Faraday:
James Clerk Maxwell