but remember that this is in a time when few people lived to the age of 40
You misunderstand life expectancy statistics. If life expectancy was so low, it's mainly because many died in infancy. If you survived childhood, you had a good shot at living what even we in modern times would consider a full life. Multiple literary traditions in antiquity set a man's life to about 70 years, e.g. Psalm 90 "The days of our years are threescore years and ten."
You also don't see people devoting their lives to the idea that these people did exist
Of course you do. Any given figure from antiquity has multiple scholars specializing in him, making assertions for this or that based on the biographical material that has come down to us. Jesus is no different than anyone else from the ancient world.
ALL of the new testament was written centuries after Christ was supposed to have existed
What awful hyperbole. Even the Gospel of John, which scholars hold to be the latest of the canonical gospels, is attested in fragmentary manuscripts from the middle of the 2nd century. The other gospels are generally dated, even by non-Christian historians, to around the close of the first century. Christians often try to push Mark a couple of decades earlier, and non-Christian historians are exasperated by this, but no one claims they were written "centuries" later.
Apparently, of the six original churches, four were UNIVERSALIST of all things, one was Annihilationist, and one was in favor of eternal torment: the church at Carthage and Rome. Guess which one survived?
What in the world are you talking about? All the ancient patriarchates are still there. They didn't go anywhere; they simply haven't been in communion with Rome since the Great Schism. In any event, it's important to note that universalism was never about claiming that God will save all (that is clearly anathema) as much as Christians may hope that God will save all.
The same that is said about lack of contemporary documentation for Jesus could be said about most figures from antiquity, but you don't see people boldly claiming Heraclitus or Xenophon never existed. Even Homeric studies nowadays are less "There was never a Homer" and more "There were multiple Homers".
My friend, you are very confused. Yule and the yule log were customs of Northern Europe ("Yule" is a Germanic word), which didn't even adopt Christianity until fairly late in the first millennium. The celebration of Christmas on December 25 was already established in southern Europe by the time Christians encountered Yule.
You're right that in northern Europe, symbolism of Yule was appropriated in the celebration of Christmas, but I don't think that's much of a secret, and I don't think it poses much of a challenge to Christian theology.
A knowledge of the Bible is essential to understanding Western literature. If you want to shun the Bible, then much of our civilization's canon of poetry and prose becomes unintelligible. You don't have to actually believe in the contents of the book to make use of it.
Furthermore, the Old Testament in particular has been very well-preserved. The Jews did an unbelievably good job there.
A large amount of Christians worldwide disagree. The Orthodox Church uses the Septuagint because it is believed that the pointing in the Masoretic Text was altered in order to suppress Christian interpretations. As far as they are concerned, a reliable Hebrew text is no longer available.
We have copies of Genesis that go back over 3,000 years that are the same as copies from 1AD and the middle ages.
I'm sorry, but that's just bollocks. The only attestations of the Hebrew language we have from that period are epigraphical. Biblical texts date from centuries later.
The Catholic church relied on the Vulgate which is a trashy translation into Latin.
"Trashy"? The Vulgate was actually a polished, literary translation that was meant to supersede the amateur translations that Latin-speaking Christians had used to date. The Protestant reformers and the Eastern Orthodox Church had a great deal of respect for Jerome's work (they simply didn't think it intelligible to their modern audiences).
The Bible sitting on my shelf is about as accurate of a translation as you can get from what Paul and Luke actually wrote in Koine Greek and Aramaic.
An Aramaic ur-text is a controversial theory, and usually only ascribed to the Gospel of Matthew. Paul and Luke were Hellenized and spoke Greek as their mother tongue. They likely wrote nothing in Aramaic, and even if they did, there's no manuscript of it to translate from.
The Philocalian Calendar provides the first mention of both Christmas and Sol Invictus. As they are first attested at the same time, it's hard to say which influenced which. The Roman Empire in the 4th century had a fascinating competition between religions, with Christianity becoming popular in urban centres, Mithraism a fad in the army, and a handful of people even trying to "return to the sources" in pagan worship. An unqualified claim that religion X took custom Y from religion Z is an oversimplification of a complex and murky period.
Atheism (or agnosticism) strictly does not have a problem being biased since it does not state anything, just that there is no proof.
Atheist philosophers, after they make a case for atheism, often draw conclusions for metaethics. Atheism does not stop at simply saying there's no proof.
I know tons more about Christianity than the average church goer thanks to the Youtube Atheist movement.
You may know more about certain aspects of Christianity, but I'd wager that you also subscribe to some urban myths or oversimplifications. Internet atheism is in many cases a circle-jerk that is at odds with serious scholarship. For example, so very often one encouters claims in internet atheist circles that Jesus never existed, that he's entirely fictional. Even atheist historians believe overwhelmingly that a historical personage did exist, even if myth has accreted around him. The claim that Christians copied Christmas from a pagan holiday pops up a lot too, even though recent research suggests a strong possibility that it was the other way around. All those comparisons between Jesus' death on the cross and e.g. the Egyptian gods were already answered by Justin Martyr 1800 years ago.
Furthermore, Internet atheists seem to be all rah-rah for the New Atheist demagogues like Dawkins and Hitchens, who dismiss Christianity out of hand, instead of philosophers of religion who have the necessary training and who take inquiry seriously. I have a lot of respect for atheist philosophers like Hume and Mackie who examined theistic arguments carefully and responded rigorously, but that kind of careful argumentation is ignored by the New Atheists and their acolytes because it's too much work.
It is an attempt to save the Genesis account of creation at any cost, because if they don't, there's no original sin for Jesus to be sacrificed for rendering the whole of Christianity meaningless.
The Christian account of sin entering the world does not depend on a literal understanding of Genesis. See Richard Swinburne's Responsibility and Atonement (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989) for an argument that it matters little whether "Adam" was the literal figure in Genesis or simply one of our hominid ancestors. Also, the belief of Jesus' crucifixion as purely sacrificial is a late (Anselmian) idea that resonated with the Protestants but is alien to much of patristic thought.
The US has lost some freedoms, but it has gained others. It is much easier to be openly homosexual, segregation is no longer enshrined in law, and one doesn't have to participate in school prayers.
The null hypothesis is a product of philosophy of science. It matters only in scientific experiment, which is only a fairly small subset of philosophy. Even if God is not a useful concept in scientific reasoning, it nonetheless can be argued to have a place in other spheres of human reasoning such as ethics or metaphysics.
Kirkegaard made an argument of this type in Fear and Trembling, and although many other philosophers disagree with it, they wouldn't label it "crazy". Kirkegaard's arguments are too formidable to be dismissed out of hand, but deserve close scrutiny before a response.
Driving is fun when you're out driving for fun. But the daily commute is annoying and tedious.
I have relatives who are so unwilling to adopt public transportation because it's "European" and "socialist" that they respond that the daily commute is a precious freedom and an expression of proud American values of self-reliance and pioneer spirit. I think they might actually believe this.
The issue is one of getting causes and correlation straight, instead of blaming gaming without evidence. A mental issue may have caused attachment to gaming, and not have resulted from excessive gaming. That this man got violent may have had nothing to do with the fact that he was also a passionate gamer. Mental illness of his sort is generally attributed to changes in brain chemistry that would have taken place regardless.
Even if people agree on those terms enough to develop technology, there remains some level of ambiguity caused by the fact that human language is based on circular logic. You claim that all philosophical problems can be solved with rigid definitions, but no definitions can be perfectly rigid.
The series has 3 books that have won the Hugo for Best Novel and 3 others that were nominated but didn't win.
That's not going to convince judicious readers. All too often books have been nominated or awarded the Hugo or Nebula solely on the ideas they present, not the writing that the reader has to get through to hear these ideas. I just finished reading Robert Sawyer's Calculating God, felt it was mainly crap, and then was shocked to read that it had been nominated for a Hugo.
Human language doesn't allow perfectly rigid definitions. Even when you try to define a term, the words with which you define it require their own definitions, and ultimately everything is supported in a circular fashion continually undermined by the natural process of language change and some inevitable ambiguity. Human language isn't like computer languages.
Theism is not "completely wrong". Even if atheist philosophers of religion disagree and seek to undermine theist arguments, they nonetheless find that theist arguments are formidable and worth examining carefully. The academy sees a healthy back and forth between the two sides.
Social Text was an obscure postmodernist journal that almost no one read and which had no peer review mechanism in place. The Sokal Affair says nothing about contemporary philosophy, which mainly goes on in journals like Philosopy or Philosophical Review.
Perhaps you were referring to the dark-age witch-hunts, in which anybody with critical thinking was a co-conspirator to witches?
Historians haven't used the term Dark Ages for decades now, emphasizing that late antiquity was much more complex and varied from one place to another. The Eastern Roman Empire, for example, kept on going for a thousand years and maintained a continuous literary tradition, nothing "Dark" about it. 2) Witch hunts were a product of the Late Medieval Era/Renaissance and not what used to be called the "Dark Ages". 3) Witch hunts were not a major phenomenon of this era. Current scholarship emphasizes just how few people were convicted by religious courts compared to popular belief.
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You misunderstand life expectancy statistics. If life expectancy was so low, it's mainly because many died in infancy. If you survived childhood, you had a good shot at living what even we in modern times would consider a full life. Multiple literary traditions in antiquity set a man's life to about 70 years, e.g. Psalm 90 "The days of our years are threescore years and ten."
Of course you do. Any given figure from antiquity has multiple scholars specializing in him, making assertions for this or that based on the biographical material that has come down to us. Jesus is no different than anyone else from the ancient world.
What awful hyperbole. Even the Gospel of John, which scholars hold to be the latest of the canonical gospels, is attested in fragmentary manuscripts from the middle of the 2nd century. The other gospels are generally dated, even by non-Christian historians, to around the close of the first century. Christians often try to push Mark a couple of decades earlier, and non-Christian historians are exasperated by this, but no one claims they were written "centuries" later.
What in the world are you talking about? All the ancient patriarchates are still there. They didn't go anywhere; they simply haven't been in communion with Rome since the Great Schism. In any event, it's important to note that universalism was never about claiming that God will save all (that is clearly anathema) as much as Christians may hope that God will save all.
The same that is said about lack of contemporary documentation for Jesus could be said about most figures from antiquity, but you don't see people boldly claiming Heraclitus or Xenophon never existed. Even Homeric studies nowadays are less "There was never a Homer" and more "There were multiple Homers".
My friend, you are very confused. Yule and the yule log were customs of Northern Europe ("Yule" is a Germanic word), which didn't even adopt Christianity until fairly late in the first millennium. The celebration of Christmas on December 25 was already established in southern Europe by the time Christians encountered Yule.
You're right that in northern Europe, symbolism of Yule was appropriated in the celebration of Christmas, but I don't think that's much of a secret, and I don't think it poses much of a challenge to Christian theology.
A knowledge of the Bible is essential to understanding Western literature. If you want to shun the Bible, then much of our civilization's canon of poetry and prose becomes unintelligible. You don't have to actually believe in the contents of the book to make use of it.
A large amount of Christians worldwide disagree. The Orthodox Church uses the Septuagint because it is believed that the pointing in the Masoretic Text was altered in order to suppress Christian interpretations. As far as they are concerned, a reliable Hebrew text is no longer available.
I'm sorry, but that's just bollocks. The only attestations of the Hebrew language we have from that period are epigraphical. Biblical texts date from centuries later.
"Trashy"? The Vulgate was actually a polished, literary translation that was meant to supersede the amateur translations that Latin-speaking Christians had used to date. The Protestant reformers and the Eastern Orthodox Church had a great deal of respect for Jerome's work (they simply didn't think it intelligible to their modern audiences).
The Bible sitting on my shelf is about as accurate of a translation as you can get from what Paul and Luke actually wrote in Koine Greek and Aramaic.
An Aramaic ur-text is a controversial theory, and usually only ascribed to the Gospel of Matthew. Paul and Luke were Hellenized and spoke Greek as their mother tongue. They likely wrote nothing in Aramaic, and even if they did, there's no manuscript of it to translate from.
The Philocalian Calendar provides the first mention of both Christmas and Sol Invictus. As they are first attested at the same time, it's hard to say which influenced which. The Roman Empire in the 4th century had a fascinating competition between religions, with Christianity becoming popular in urban centres, Mithraism a fad in the army, and a handful of people even trying to "return to the sources" in pagan worship. An unqualified claim that religion X took custom Y from religion Z is an oversimplification of a complex and murky period.
Atheist philosophers, after they make a case for atheism, often draw conclusions for metaethics. Atheism does not stop at simply saying there's no proof.
You may know more about certain aspects of Christianity, but I'd wager that you also subscribe to some urban myths or oversimplifications. Internet atheism is in many cases a circle-jerk that is at odds with serious scholarship. For example, so very often one encouters claims in internet atheist circles that Jesus never existed, that he's entirely fictional. Even atheist historians believe overwhelmingly that a historical personage did exist, even if myth has accreted around him. The claim that Christians copied Christmas from a pagan holiday pops up a lot too, even though recent research suggests a strong possibility that it was the other way around. All those comparisons between Jesus' death on the cross and e.g. the Egyptian gods were already answered by Justin Martyr 1800 years ago.
Furthermore, Internet atheists seem to be all rah-rah for the New Atheist demagogues like Dawkins and Hitchens, who dismiss Christianity out of hand, instead of philosophers of religion who have the necessary training and who take inquiry seriously. I have a lot of respect for atheist philosophers like Hume and Mackie who examined theistic arguments carefully and responded rigorously, but that kind of careful argumentation is ignored by the New Atheists and their acolytes because it's too much work.
The Christian account of sin entering the world does not depend on a literal understanding of Genesis. See Richard Swinburne's Responsibility and Atonement (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989) for an argument that it matters little whether "Adam" was the literal figure in Genesis or simply one of our hominid ancestors. Also, the belief of Jesus' crucifixion as purely sacrificial is a late (Anselmian) idea that resonated with the Protestants but is alien to much of patristic thought.
The US has lost some freedoms, but it has gained others. It is much easier to be openly homosexual, segregation is no longer enshrined in law, and one doesn't have to participate in school prayers.
The null hypothesis is a product of philosophy of science. It matters only in scientific experiment, which is only a fairly small subset of philosophy. Even if God is not a useful concept in scientific reasoning, it nonetheless can be argued to have a place in other spheres of human reasoning such as ethics or metaphysics.
Kirkegaard made an argument of this type in Fear and Trembling, and although many other philosophers disagree with it, they wouldn't label it "crazy". Kirkegaard's arguments are too formidable to be dismissed out of hand, but deserve close scrutiny before a response.
I have relatives who are so unwilling to adopt public transportation because it's "European" and "socialist" that they respond that the daily commute is a precious freedom and an expression of proud American values of self-reliance and pioneer spirit. I think they might actually believe this.
Hey, the late 18th century called. They want their outdated Lockean political ideas back.
The issue is one of getting causes and correlation straight, instead of blaming gaming without evidence. A mental issue may have caused attachment to gaming, and not have resulted from excessive gaming. That this man got violent may have had nothing to do with the fact that he was also a passionate gamer. Mental illness of his sort is generally attributed to changes in brain chemistry that would have taken place regardless.
Even if people agree on those terms enough to develop technology, there remains some level of ambiguity caused by the fact that human language is based on circular logic. You claim that all philosophical problems can be solved with rigid definitions, but no definitions can be perfectly rigid.
That's not going to convince judicious readers. All too often books have been nominated or awarded the Hugo or Nebula solely on the ideas they present, not the writing that the reader has to get through to hear these ideas. I just finished reading Robert Sawyer's Calculating God , felt it was mainly crap, and then was shocked to read that it had been nominated for a Hugo.
Human language doesn't allow perfectly rigid definitions. Even when you try to define a term, the words with which you define it require their own definitions, and ultimately everything is supported in a circular fashion continually undermined by the natural process of language change and some inevitable ambiguity. Human language isn't like computer languages.
Theism is not "completely wrong". Even if atheist philosophers of religion disagree and seek to undermine theist arguments, they nonetheless find that theist arguments are formidable and worth examining carefully. The academy sees a healthy back and forth between the two sides.
Who?
Social Text was an obscure postmodernist journal that almost no one read and which had no peer review mechanism in place. The Sokal Affair says nothing about contemporary philosophy, which mainly goes on in journals like Philosopy or Philosophical Review.
Historians haven't used the term Dark Ages for decades now, emphasizing that late antiquity was much more complex and varied from one place to another. The Eastern Roman Empire, for example, kept on going for a thousand years and maintained a continuous literary tradition, nothing "Dark" about it. 2) Witch hunts were a product of the Late Medieval Era/Renaissance and not what used to be called the "Dark Ages". 3) Witch hunts were not a major phenomenon of this era. Current scholarship emphasizes just how few people were convicted by religious courts compared to popular belief.
Is Rapidshare used for anything besides sharing films, music and ebooks?