Theism vs. Atheism ... will it ever be settled?

Mr ProgFreak wrote: jampa17 wrote: Come on Mike, you can't make the fool with me. You know that I have read gnostic gospel, or scriptures and I have studiing many of those issues and that you can't bought me with that. I don't know about early Christianity then? hmmm... Did you know that the gospels were written ACCORDING to the Apostles. It was ACCORDING to them because they teach someone else (that actually knows how to write) to make those scriptures? You know that most of the gnostic tales are more fantasy tales, you know, like everywhere in history, fake stories that were told from one generation to another and somewhere in the middle were handed down to words. That's why it takes so long, because during those days, the different Christian communities were too far and they didn't have, like the guy on the video said: Internet, they don't even have phones, or telegraph?  That's why the letters of the authorities, those who recieved the teaching of the apostles directly, sended to them and you can find many letters adressing missinterpretations of the word of Jesus and fake ideas, the archives are there and you can search for them. When Christianity became that big and official in the Roman Empire, then it was needed a clean up of all this made up ideas and that's when the authorities, again, faithful to the core of the teaching choose, after and intense search through the scriptures, the more according to the faith.   There is plenty information about it Mike, is not that you with your simplistic answer will take me down... 1. The apostles/disciples were most likely illiterate peasants. 2. The gospels were written by highly literate people from countries far away from where the apostles had lived, and decades after the apostles/disciples had died. Those things are obvious and not really contested among scholars. What follows from that is that the stories and reports of what Jesus and his followers said and did that finally became part of the gospels were the result of several rounds of mouth to mouth communication (telephone game). Since, like I already said and is also universally agreed upon, most people who took part in these communication chain were both illiterate and at the same time highly motivated to convert others to the faith, of course the stories were exaggerated here and there, especially the miraculous ones. My question to you: Do you contest any of what I said here?

Well, hmmm... Dean has already answer you... I think he cover up everything about it... The problem is that again, you always want to believe in this guy from the video and I rather to study what the Church and the priests have been studiing by 2000 years of knowledge. Sure I believe more in the Church and Dean really answer what is believe in the tradition of the Church, according the gospels and the gnostics tales of those ages. Your telephone game theory seem weaker than the one that the Church tells...

^ Do you think that the circumstances of Jesus' birth, the day he died and the circumstances of his crucifixion are minor points? The four gospels are not consistent about those events.

Of course you know that there were dozens of gospels ... in the end four were chosen because the earth was presumed to have four corners. Even these four carefully selected gospels out of dozens can't agree on whether Jesus was born of a virgin, whether he was born on the day of passover or the day before - or at which time of the day, and other issues that can hardly be considered "minor", and they even drew from some common sources. Sorry Iván, but I fail to see how you can turn this into something that actually increases your faith in the accuracy of the central tenets of your faith.

Edited by Mr ProgFreak - August 11 2010 at 14:22

BTW: Iván read Ehrman's book Jesus, Interrupted - but I guess that many believers here won't, so let me quickly summarize his position:

Let's assume that the Bible contains an irreconcilable contradiction on a major point. Let's say, just for the sake of argument - that one verse says "you must not judge" and another says "you must judge". Let's also assume that both verses can't be dismissed easily for any obvious reason, like one of them is much more likely to be a mistake than the other. In this case Christians are faced with a problem: It's not possible for them to know what they are supposed to do. Assuming that the books of the Bible initially contained the inerrant word of God when they were written, none of the original books were preserved. IMO you can't shrug that off as easily as jampa17 does when he says that he'll simply trust the priest to have gotten it right. This problem did not cause Ehrman to become an Atheist - it didn't even cause him to become an Agnostic (he had another reason for that). Neither am I saying that any of you Theists who are reading this should abandon your faith because of this. But it might make you think about how sure you can be that the rules that you have been taught to obey are actually from an extraordinary source, and have not been tampered with over the centuries.

Mr ProgFreak wrote: Dean wrote: It is possible that the miracles were added later, (after Paul because he does not mention them or the synoptic gospels so they could have been written after his letters), to glam-up the story holywood style.   I think it's highly likely, especially given the fact that most of the newly converted people weren't Jews (I think Gentiles is the word), and many of them Romans or Greeks. To those people religion without fantastic miracles would have been almost unimaginable. BTW: I'm not saying that they freely invented miracles ... but consider several rounds of telephone game, with each participant being highly motivated and euphoric about spreading the faith, several of them formerly having believed in Zeus or Apollo ...

I still think the telephone game is a gross simplification and possibly specious since it is based upon our lack of skill in passing on oral information. People of that time were far better at it than we are - they were an oral culture that lived by oral tradition of communication and the passing on of stories and histories from mouth to mouth- the rate of distortion in those stories was far far lower than anything we could manage today.

Edited by Dean - August 11 2010 at 15:14

Mr ProgFreak wrote: BTW: Iván read Ehrman's book Jesus, Interrupted - but I guess that many believers here won't, so let me quickly summarize his position: Let's assume that the Bible contains an irreconcilable contradiction on a major point. Let's say, just for the sake of argument - that one verse says "you must not judge" and another says "you must judge". Let's also assume that both verses can't be dismissed easily for any obvious reason, like one of them is much more likely to be a mistake than the other. In this case Christians are faced with a problem: It's not possible for them to know what they are supposed to do. Assuming that the books of the Bible initially contained the inerrant word of God when they were written, none of the original books were preserved. IMO you can't shrug that off as easily as jampa17 does when he says that he'll simply trust the priest to have gotten it right. This problem did not cause Ehrman to become an Atheist - it didn't even cause him to become an Agnostic (he had another reason for that). Neither am I saying that any of you Theists who are reading this should abandon your faith because of this. But it might make you think about how sure you can be that the rules that you have been taught to obey are actually from an extraordinary source, and have not been tampered with over the centuries.

Mike, don't take the chance to go further,

Edited by Ivan_Melgar_M - August 11 2010 at 15:23

Mr ProgFreak wrote: ^ "take my word for it" And weren't you the one who talked about them "glamming up" the stories a post ago?

The "judgement" one is quite interesting and is all to do with context, who is being judged and who is doing the judging. Taken out of context they indeed do contradict, but do they contradict when viewed in context?

Ivan_Melgar_M wrote: Mr ProgFreak wrote: ^ I really thought you had read the book.   Only once since Monday when I bought the book , but most of the differences bewteen early Christian groups, early doctroine, wetc are nothing new.   Ehrman spends a complete chapter pointing differences between Gospels on secondary issues, like at what time was Jesus Cricified, or the absence of mention of Joseph dreams before Chroist was born (Luke vs Matthew).   Or whre was Jesus the day after Baptized.   I honestly don't find great contradictions except for those who believe in a literal interpretation-   Iván

He explains why it does matter whether Jesus got crucified on the day before passover, or on the day of passover.  You may shrug these things off by calling them minor, but they all form a consistent picture: There's nothing special about Christianity. It started small, the central stories and concepts got beefed up over the decades, and centuries later it happened to be endorsed by the Roman empire. Look at it this way: When seen from this perspective, all the pieces of the puzzle fall into place. When seen from your perspective though, you'll have to construct a plethora of excuses and far-fetched explanations in order to make it all work - sort of. And you haven't even yet reached the really far out there ideas of Catholicism - or the principle of the holy trinity which was established centuries after the new testament had been written. And finally, the best evidence for the inconsistencies and their irreconcilable nature is the fact that even two millennia later the factions of Christianity remain - irreconcilable on major issues.




Edited by Mr ProgFreak - August 11 2010 at 16:07

Dean wrote: The "judgement" one is quite interesting and is all to do with context, who is being judged and who is doing the judging. Taken out of context they indeed do contradict, but do they contradict when viewed in context?   For example - if a righteous person were talking to a non-believer who was judging them, they would say "Judge not, least ye be judged" whereas a righteous person judging a non-believer would say "But he that is spiritual judgeth all things, yet he himself is judged of no man." ... an arrogant position no doubt, but one that explains the contradiction. A pious person may never think themselves righteous or spiritual enough to be able to judge all things.   (just guessing / postulating an idea- I haven't the inclination to read up on it - perhaps Rob, Chris, Ivan or Juan can answer more succinctly)

Mr ProgFreak wrote: Dean wrote: Mr ProgFreak wrote: ^ "take my word for it" And weren't you the one who talked about them "glamming up" the stories a post ago? Yup - I'm just questioning the methodology - the 'telephone game' IMO does not provide a valid mechanism. Call it Chinese Whispers ... of course it's a valid mechanism. Whenever information travels through a chain of unreliable stations, the information is bound to get distorted.