FYI Some JW with a science degree is putting together a refutal on the evolution of the giraffe. From Germany, Loennig Phd., he is also publishing views against macro-evolution.
Would Paul have debated theistic evolution, ID, etc... had he been alive today?
by Christ Alone 16 Replies latest watchtower bible
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mP
ULtimately Paul was a liar, making extraordinary claims and wasting the lives of millions who believed. Whatever his intentions his will created a big monster that has cursed half the planet.
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Phizzy
What are the lies Paul told , please ? I am not familiar with what you are saying, please expand ?
I am not so sure that the Chrisitianity we see today bears a great similarity to the Chrostology of Paul.
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mP
The lie that christ spoke to him. He if he existed, was just another man, who lied about his visions so he could lie and influence many. Nothing good has ever come from xianity, and for that he must take some responsbility.
Without him xians would have remained under the law of Moses and might have died out. WHile xianity of today may be different almost all scholars acknowledge that he was the one who opened Jesus and Judaism and started xainity. It doesnt take much imagination to realise that strict Judaism is no fun and nobody in their right mind would bother looking at that religion most of th etime. Even today few are converted to strict Judaism, and todays adherants are rather mild.
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Phizzy
I see mP, I think Paul actually believed the voice he "heard" was that of the risen Jesus, and therefore his preaching and disciple making work had such passion, and yes I agree, he was the prime mover in pre 70CE growth, without him christianity would more than likely have remained an esoteric and ignored sect of Judaism.
Post 70CE others got in on the act and created the Gospels and Luke and Acts and melded their new myth with the teaching of Paul and the school of Paul, if we may call them that, the ones that wrote and taught in his name.
So, yes, a man believing a voice in his head in the 1st century still affects us today, and not really for any good as far as I can see.
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james_woods
This thread seriously needs more pictures of the Reverand Melissa Scott.
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fulltimestudent
I doubt that the person we understand to be 'Saul/Paul' would be seriously interested in discussing a world view that did away with mythos as a way of explaining our presence in the universe.
I do agree with Glenster however, that there was a possibility that Saul/Paul was likely influenced by later Hellenic philosophy (Plato). Early Christianity certainly was. Paul's hometown of Tarsus was Hellenic in culture and Strabo mentions the town's high hellenic culture and its philosophers, poets and linguists. At one time the library in Tarsus is claimed to have had 200,00 books including a large number of what could be called scientific works. How much that background influenced Saul/Paul is difficult to assess,as Acts 23:6 records his words that he belonged to the sect of the pharisee's and that he was the son of a pharisee. Whether that was a serious belief, or merely a convenient thing to say during his interrogation is open to other assessments
It's also recorded in Acts 26:4 that he was a youth in Jerusalem and came to be taught by Gamaliel. Even in Jerusalem though, he would not escape the prevailing hellenic culture, as it pervaded all of Palestine.
Putting this sparse information together I suggest that it can be concluded that Saul/Paul would, at least' have had some understanding of hellenic thinking and perhaps the writings of the pre-socratic greek philosophers who had initiated a more rational approach to explaining the question - "why/how does the world exist?"
In a discussion though, Paul would likely come down firmly on the side of the creationists.
But Christ Alone is not correct when he claims that in Paul's era, evolution was not even dreamed about. The pre-socratic Greek philosophers, starting around the 6th century BCE, in their search for rational explanations for the existence of everything, headed toward the concept of evolution.
Greek thought was an amazing flowering of the human intellect, but what is more amazing is that it was repeated on the other side of the euro-asian land mass, with Chinese thinking reflecting a similar search for understanding. That search resulted in the humanist concepts of Kongzi and the 'universal love' teachings of Mozi, and the Daoist concepts of Laozi, which sought to know the way of tian, which is not heaven, as we may understand the word, but referring to way the universe operates. The ideas of those teachers were also subjected to sceptical enquiry (something like the 'peer review' of modern scholarship) that was often very critical. And approaching the question of why and how things exist, we get (in Chinese thought) to the 4th century CE and Guo Xiang's commentary on the Zhuangzi.
And, in that we find the full flowering of rational thought:
" ... therefore all things exist by themselves and come from nature. This is the way of heaven." (NB again. tian=heaven= the universe.)
The idea of evolution is much older that some wish to admit.