Posts by Pole

20

The apostle Peter - an honest Christian or a cynical manipulator?

by Pole in

i hope peter isn't spinning in his grave now (whether in rome or anywhere else)...

many of you will recall the transfiguration of jesus as recorded in mathew 17:

1after six days jesus took with him peter, james and john the brother of james, and led them up a high mountain by themselves.

Pole

Leolaia!

Pole.....Let me know if what I posted was of any help.

Sure!!! Sorry for this late feedback. I am impressed and really grateful for this information. I hope you'll continue to aid some of the "honest inquirers" on this forum like myself. My skepticism abou the the Bible has so far been based on moral/philosophical/psychological grounds. But now I'm getting this historical perspective too.

Thanks again.

Cheers.

Pole

Edited to add:

Farkel,

Very witty remarks as usual. I'm very much in your line of thinking. Your writing is characterised by a high level of "to-the-pointness" :).

Narkissos,

I guess your moral assessment is fair and well-balanced. It wasn't a faked testimony of Peter who falsely claimed he was an eye-witness. Just a case of assuming authorship - "in good faith" of course :).

Pole

28

gods name

by lurk in

been thinking about what blondie said about the use of jehovah in 1 thessalonians:4 and how they try to pass the word lord of as both jesus and jehovah ........so i looked some stuff up.... i cant think why i was so convinced that the disciples used gods name.

im willing to be convinced though.

example of jehovah being added and lord meaning both jesus and jehovah

Pole

FARKEL WROTE:

If God had wanted humans to use, honor and somehow "vindicate" His name, why in-the-hell didn't he bother to take the time to tell us EXACTLY what it is?

Just one more thing God was very lazy about. I agree with your conclusions.

"Jehovah" is a bastardized rendering of the Tetragrammaton which includes the vowels from Adonai and Elohim. That version of God's name didn't appear until about the 16th century A.D.

I'm not sure where you got it from, or who exactly you think "bastardized" it. Here is why this sounds like a caballistic, conspirational sort of argument to me.

Some statistical linguistics:

I don't now much about biblical Hebrew or Arameic, so correct me if I'm wrong but a general charactersitics of Semitic languages is that they have very limited vowel systems (3-5). Compare it with germanic laguages such as English or Swedish (12-16 vowels). This is partly because vowels in Semitic languages often only have a morphological function (e.g. they allow speakers to distinguish between different inflections). Hence some of them have "abjed" alphabets in which vowels are not represented at all.

So what?

Adonai an Elohim contain the following vowels:

a, o, i, e

The only other possibly Semitic "vowel" I can think of is u. Even if you assume that we are dealing with the transliterated version the language (Hebrew transcribed using the latin alphabet with vowels inserted).

What vowels do we have in the word "Jehovah"?

e, o , a

You have a three-syllable word, you need to pick three vowels from a set of 5.

People will call it conspiration if those three vowels overlap with the four different vowels found in Elohim and Adonai. Whatever the order.

Let's assume that the vowels in the new form of God's name can repeat themselves. So what's the probability of being accused of conspiration ("bastardizing" using the Elohim - Adonai vowles)?

0.75 * 0.75 * 0.75 = 0,512 = 51,2%

My maths may be corrupted (I can't see where for now), but it seems that it's 51.2 % probable that J_H_V_H vowels will coincide with the vowels found in Adonai/Elohim. So where is the conspiration?

Pole

EDITED: However unimportant this elaboration may be for your conclusions. I must be really bored today.... :)

20

The apostle Peter - an honest Christian or a cynical manipulator?

by Pole in

i hope peter isn't spinning in his grave now (whether in rome or anywhere else)...

many of you will recall the transfiguration of jesus as recorded in mathew 17:

1after six days jesus took with him peter, james and john the brother of james, and led them up a high mountain by themselves.

Pole

2 Peter was not written by Apostle Peter. It is probably the clearest example of pseudonymous writing in the NT, with many independent indications of its "spurious" nature, both internal and external. Most scholars date it to around AD 130-150. It was so clearly pseudonymous it wasn't first referred to until the third century A.D. and then only by Origen and Eusebius as a "dubious" or rejected writing. It was not included in the Muratonian canon. It did not become generally canonical until the fourth century AD, and today it is still rejected by Nestorian Orthodox.

Although the evidence is not as clear, 1 Peter is also thought by most to either be pseudonymous or written primarily by an amanuensis. It is generally dated to AD 80-100 or so.

Leolaila,

That would be a workable explanation for a skeptic - thanks for these hints and pointers, I'll try to follow up with some research.

EDITED: I actually thought that the only rational explanation would have something to do with the authorship of this letter. I just needed something more specific to support this presupposition.

Pole

20

The apostle Peter - an honest Christian or a cynical manipulator?

by Pole in

i hope peter isn't spinning in his grave now (whether in rome or anywhere else)...

many of you will recall the transfiguration of jesus as recorded in mathew 17:

1after six days jesus took with him peter, james and john the brother of james, and led them up a high mountain by themselves.

Pole

you said: " Then all of us who think the transfiguration scene as described in Mathew was a bogus story must also think that Peter was either a cynical liar or a madman. "
Yes, this is true. Anyone who "thinks" the transfiguration was not true would then accuse Peter of telling a false story. But the question is, where are you getting that the transfiguration was not true? What did Peter say about the transfiguration that was inaccurate? Where is the discrepancy you are talking about? Is the descrepancy in his letters, is it in Matthew, where?

Hi kes152. Thanks for pointing that out.

I understand that you are a believing Christian - so you would have no problems with accepting this passage - and it's fine. In fact for Christians there is no dicrepancy whatsoever. What I meant here is that a lot of us who are skeptical and who tend to refuse relligious revelation have a general attitude like this:

"Most if not all the miracles described in the Bible are not rational at all and they are the result of exaggeration or dishonesty on the part of the writers'."

I mean if you refute the Bible as God's word, then you have to have a rational way of explaining all the miracles and acts of divine revelation.

For instance, skeptics sometimes pass relatively light judgments on the authors of the NT books, saying that the despcriptions of the different miracles were a result of the writers' eagerness to make new converts.

In the case of this particular passage a skeptical person has to make a very clear-cut choice:

1) Either Peter actually saw the transifiguration of Jesus (which a skeptical person will probably never admit)

2) Or Peter lied cynically and hence this moral discrepancy that I think a lot of non-believers would have to be able to explain:

a) Peter is a Christian who honestly believes in Christ and who criticizes religious manipulators for making up false stories on which people base their faith.

b) At the same time he invents a story of his own and uses it to coerce his people into the Christian faith.

To sum it up:

There is nothing wrong with the passages I've focused on as long as you believe the transfiguration was a real event and not just a metaphor or a myth added to the set of Christian beliefs at some stage (and you accept a lot of other miracles described in the Bible), However if one refuses miracles and revelation in general, then one has to apss a judgement on Peter. I'm asking such people about their judment:

Did Peter make this story up although he assures the readers of his letter that he didn't? Of course you, kes152 would say that Peter just related what he actually experienced - and I understand that. BUt whatebout skeptics or "half-skeptics" (like myself)?

----------

Pole

20

The apostle Peter - an honest Christian or a cynical manipulator?

by Pole in

i hope peter isn't spinning in his grave now (whether in rome or anywhere else)...

many of you will recall the transfiguration of jesus as recorded in mathew 17:

1after six days jesus took with him peter, james and john the brother of james, and led them up a high mountain by themselves.

Pole

I hope Peter isn't spinning in his grave now (whether in Rome or anywhere else)...

Many of you will recall the transfiguration of Jesus as recorded in Mathew 17:

1After six days Jesus took with him Peter, James and John the brother of James, and led them up a high mountain by themselves.

2There he was transfigured before them. His face shone like the sun, and his clothes became as white as the light.

3Just then there appeared before them Moses and Elijah, talking with Jesus.

4Peter said to Jesus, "Lord, it is good for us to be here. If you wish, I will put up three shelters--one for you, one for Moses and one for Elijah."

5While he was still speaking, a bright cloud enveloped them, and a voice from the cloud said, "This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased. Listen to him!"

6When the disciples heard this, they fell facedown to the ground, terrified.

7But Jesus came and touched them. "Get up," he said. "Don't be afraid."

8When they looked up, they saw no one except Jesus.

I have never actually been perfectly happy with the standard theological explanations of this passage such as:

?Moses represented the Law. Elijah represented the Prophets. Jesus fulfilled the Law and the Prophets. Meaning that Jesus fulfilled the Old Testament prophecies concerning the Messiah.?

Which is sometimes supported with:

Luke 24:44-45 And He [Jesus] said unto them, These are the words which I spake unto you, while I was yet with you, that all things must be fulfilled, which were written in the law of Moses, and in the prophets, and in the psalms, concerning me.

I wonder why was David (as one of the chief representatives of the book of Psalms) missing from this event?

Anyway that?s not my point as I am now very skeptical about the Bible as God?s Word in general.

On to my question: if we assume that 2 Peter chapter 1 contains a reference to this or a similarly miraculous event (Peter reports hearing God?s voice on "the holy mountain" as well as Jesus' receiving glory - so it looks like he is talking about the transfiguration):

16 We did not follow cleverly invented stories when we told you about the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we were eyewitnesses of his majesty.

17 For he received honor and glory from God the Father when the voice came to him from the Majestic Glory, saying, "This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased."

18 We ourselves heard this voice that came from heaven when we were with him on the sacred mountain.

Then all of us who think the transfiguration scene as described in Mathew was a bogus story must also think that Peter was either a cynical liar or a madman. Didn?t he say specifically that he ?did not just invent a clever story?? Didn?t he say he was an eyewitness?

Didn?t he distinguish himself from other manipulators? Just look at the same letter, chapter 2

2 Peter 2 reads:

3 In their greed these teachers will exploit you with stories they have made up. Their condemnation has long been hanging over them, and their destruction has not been sleeping.

So was Peter an exemplary Christian and at the same time a manipulator who lied cynically to naive first-century newbie christians by saying specifically he did not make up a story which he in fact did make up?

One explanation that comes to my skeptical mind is that we don?t know which version of Peter?s letter we now have and whether it was Peter who wrote it in the first place. We don?t even know for sure if there was a guy called Peter who was Jesus? buddy, and can't be too sure who was Jesus in the first place, unless we resort to religious faith.

Anyway, how would you account for this moral discrepancy ? especially those of you who recognize Peter as a historical character and 2 Peter as his letter? Just don?t tell me that Peter?s conception of truth was different than ours so he just used a little white lie here. In this case he?s very specific about what's true and what's false.

Pole

95

EVIL LOUTION? Why do you still resist? Science doesn't work?

by Terry in

jw
friends

i resisted it for years.

i was dragged kicking and screaming into the evolution theory camp.. i would rather have had my arm lopped off at the elbow;but, facts are facts.

i had to be intellectually honest.

Pole

X:

God: Eve I have this guy from the IT department coming over to fix that he is long, skinny, dry skin, talks with a lisp. He'll fix you up. He was working on the knowlege tree.

Satan the Original Hacker who f***d up God's Universe platform??? LOL!

I bet he programmed "the knowledge tree" in the LISP language. It turned out to be a real trojan after all :)

And I don't know if it was intentional but the "knowledge tree" you mentioned is a really good pun by itself. I mean LISP is considered a laguage for AI applications where they often use "decision trees" to represent knowledge, hence LISPing Satan desingning a knowledge tree.

And those bits and pieces of redundant DNA Farkel mentioned must be the so-called " starving processes". These are basically low priority unimportant operating system jobs that never get done, because the CPU has always something more important tasks. This may happen when a programmer leaves the team without finishing his tiny little assignement which nobody else on the team even gets to notice. There is some gossip for instance that they discovered a few such processes in Windows 95 only when they started working on the releas version of Windows 98. Some of those jobs had been running (waiting in a stealth mode) for years on millions on machines without ever getting done.

So different forms of life may be affected by the starving processes problem.

It all works for me now in your account. Good piece.

Pole

95

EVIL LOUTION? Why do you still resist? Science doesn't work?

by Terry in

jw
friends

i resisted it for years.

i was dragged kicking and screaming into the evolution theory camp.. i would rather have had my arm lopped off at the elbow;but, facts are facts.

i had to be intellectually honest.

Pole

And also what does this have to do with genesis? Making animals out of dirt is not the only way to create. Also being creative tends to require inspiration. What if God never thaught of modern humans until cro magnon? How many artist paint a master piece their first try. All animals here use dna that is four characters of machine code. If you are God and you invent this programing language for life on earth why would you throw it away and start from scratch every time? You could build a program add a line compile (a creature is born), if the line conflicts with other code you can have errors and the system freezes (the creature dies). Some errors crash instantly and the creature is never born, the errors linger dormant until you try a specific task, or like a security hole there is no known flaw until some other program or person exploits it. The thing is this is happening every time genetic code is changed and there is no proof "God" is not doing it.

God - a rookie c++ programmer constantly forgetting to destroy unused pointers here and there and sometimes trying to save his face when a new bug is discovered by explaining that it was intentional, or at least "potentially useful". He runs his buggy code on the Universe platform for the sake of testing it and watches millions of randomly selected children starve and die due to a certain poorly implemented module of his application. They feel like it's pretty much real, but no need to panic, for he knows it's all virtual. It's just a freaking test.

XQsThaiPoes:

a) The only well-informed apologist of the great programmer in the entire universe?

b) A rookie metaphysician who has employed another phoney, leaking metaphor to account for an old so called "problem"?

I like your sense of humor. I hope it's just your sense of humor.

BTW, what languages do you program in?

Pole

ED. TO CORRECT SPELLING.

13

FALSIFYING your religious beliefs: an important tool

by Terry in

jw
friends

news.

published online: 06 august 2004; | doi:10.1038/news040802-19 science secret of grand masters revealed .

mark peplow .

Pole

Terry,

I think you are familiar with this observation made by Carl Sagan:

Doctrines that make no predictions are less compelling than those which make correct predictions; they are in turn more successful than doctrines that make false predictions.
But not always. One prominent American religion confidently predicted that the world would end in 1914. Well, 1914 has come and gone, and -- while the events of that year were certainly of some importance -- the world does not, at least so far as I can see, seem to have ended. There are at least three responses that an organized religion can make in the face of such a failed and fundamental prophecy. They could have said, "Oh, did we say '1914'? So sorry, we meant '2014.' A slight error in calculation. Hope you weren't inconvenienced in any way." But they did not. They could have said, "Well, the world would have ended, except we prayed very hard and interceded with God so He spared the Earth." But they did not. Instead, they did something much more ingenious.
They announced that the world had in fact ended in 1914, and if the rest of us hadn't noticed, that was our lookout. It is astonishing in the face of such transparent evasions that this religion has any adherents at all. But religions are tough. Either they make no contentions which are subject to disproof or they quickly redesign doctrine after disproof. The fact that religions can be so shamelessly dishonest, so contemptuous of the intelligence of their adherents, and still flourish does not speak very well for the tough-mindedness of the believers. But it does indicate, if a demonstration were needed, that near the core of the religious experience is something remarkably resistant to rational inquiry.

Pole

95

EVIL LOUTION? Why do you still resist? Science doesn't work?

by Terry in

jw
friends

i resisted it for years.

i was dragged kicking and screaming into the evolution theory camp.. i would rather have had my arm lopped off at the elbow;but, facts are facts.

i had to be intellectually honest.

Pole

Farkel,

I guess the same goes for malicious bacteria and viruses. I mean if God intentionally created every distinctive form of life then he must be responsible for that too, which means he's as malicious as some of his minature natural wonders of creation.

Either he hasn't given a damn about the universe for the last 10 billion years, or his ontological status is no better than that of Santa Claus.

There is also something funny about the ergonomics of human body. I mean think about the eyes for instance. They're "placed" deep in the skull so that you don't lose an eye when you get punched. Oh what a fine example of God's care! However, what if you fall on your face and there's something stciking out from the ground?

We also have hard skulls which protect us from brain damage. And we don't need to worry about meteors because they get burnt in the atmosphere. Well, most of the time. I mean you're not very likely to get hit in a 80 years long lifespan. But what about the whole eternity assuming that God meant us to live so long? And obviously you can crush your skull in a fantastic variety of different ways...

Seems like a lot of screwed up creation work....

95

EVIL LOUTION? Why do you still resist? Science doesn't work?

by Terry in

jw
friends

i resisted it for years.

i was dragged kicking and screaming into the evolution theory camp.. i would rather have had my arm lopped off at the elbow;but, facts are facts.

i had to be intellectually honest.

Pole

XQsThaiPoes,

How shall I put it? If I were to use FunkyDerek's phrase I'd say you are "quite simply, absolutely, totally and completely, laughably" irrelevant to the rather clear intended meaning of my post.

Not only that, but you also seem to be basically manipulative about my post.

I really don't feel like showing you where exactly - I think you'll know if you read my post again, but I'll do it for you.

First I wrote:

:: Let's imagine you can travel in time 5000 years back and somehow bring a human child of some relatively intelligent parents "back to the future".
:: If you brought this child up in our culture, the child would have no problems with functioning in society, receiving education, and possibly becoming a rocket scientist.

I'm not sure where I said "if you took a mentally impaired child". I'm not sure where I said "it could be any child", with any social background. I'm not sure where I said "the child would certainly become a rocket scientist".

Then I said:

:: However if you took a humanoid child born say 2,000,000 years ago, the child could have problems with adapting because of the biological limitations of the its brain.

To which you replied:

We also have no idea if the brain of Homo erectus (I assume this is who you are talking about) is for example better ate math than humans. We know they were probally as strong or stonger than humans, not as inovative (or maybe not as lucky), and their brain is about the same size. For example some birds with their small brains are better at matching mosiac like patterns than humans. The reason is from the sky this helps them identify food and land marks. They have built in what takes pilots months to develop. Considering humans have not adapted to modern life evolutionarily yet we have no real advantage since we poped up on the radar as modern humans. Homo erectus was extinct by the time we got here. So we really cant compare too much. Outside of saying we may be smarter on average. But smarter may not always equall better adapted.

No I didn't mean Homo Erectus. If it makes you more happy, I'll rephrase it slightly:

However if you took a humanoid child born say 10,000,000 years ago, the child could have problems with adapting because of the biological limitations of the its brain.

I hope it does it for you. Of course you can continue to claim that tallented amoebas could easily adapt in our society or that robins could win the Battle of England had they been given a chance, but I think oyu should get my point so far.

Then you start dreaming your sweet dreams:

::In the most of the world it is capitalist model that is promoted. So you when you say adapt you mean go to school (I assume free) become a highly skilled laborer they can be and then make as much money as they can as a responsible citizen. How ever globally the child may be living in a shanty town around a central american mega city robbing tourist, or may work in a bothel in SE asia, or work in some conflict dimond mine in africa. On the up side they may be intelegent enought to learn a sport, and become a pro athelete raking in millions. In terms of evolution survival and having sex is winning. All this 2 million year old child has to do is learn how to live. Because I doubt they could breed with todays humans they would loose even if they became a rocket scientist. But in a fluke maybe they could breed a fertile hybrid dogs and wolves do it.

In this part of your post you got a lot of things mixed up altogether. I don't think funkyderek would send his little humanoid to work in a South African diamond mine or a Thai brothel. I also don't think the child would do better in the socialist Havana than in the capitalist Europe. Neither do I think that many people would be interested in watching a humanoid runner win the Athens Olympics.

If I were to follow your resoning, I'd have to say that dogs are the best achievement of evolution. They're lazy asses, most of them do absolutely nothing and they get food and sex for free - and all that because as you'd put it they've adapted perfectly in human society. What a life!

Now I don't want to comment on this part of your post:

Most humans are not that intelegent. Only about 2% of humans i believe are in the rocket scientist catagory. Infact reading/writing is a new evolutionary tool. Look at dyslexia a brain disorder that does not impair your life until you try to pick up a book. Infact look at humans with disabilities period. Many severly disabled people could not out bench mark a 2 million year old humanoid. Infact some great apes alive today can physically and mentally exceed some severely crippled humans.

First of all I don't want to ask you where you got your remarks about dyslexia from, secondly I am not sure if I've ever seen a "severly mentally crippled" rocket scientist - again you mixed up my two examples.

I ask you to be a little bit more fair and careful next time! I'm sure you can do it for me.