Posts by NeonMadman

36

Asked my christian co-workers.....

by DS211 in

NeonMadman

See what you did there...

I said " why would they not be interested in..."

you turned that into...

"having a detailed knowledge of biology, geology, astronomy, physics, etc."

See what you did there? You trimmed your own quotation to make it seem that I had misrepresented you. You didn't just say "why would they not be interested in...". You said, "why would they not be interested in the details to the point of obsession?" Having an obsession about the "flora and fauna" that God created would seem to me to imply a "detailed knowledge" at least in the area of biology. But if you are going to insist on that for believers, why stop there? God also made the earth and the universe, right? So we need to have a detailed knowledge in all of those areas, too, according to your reasoning.

it's only within the last generation or so that atheists seem to have become dominant in the sciences

Isn't that like saying it's only in the past 30 years that computers have been so widely used in scientific research.

No, I don't see that it is. Computers simply didn't exist until 50 or 60 years ago, and have only become widely affordable within the last 30. Before computers, there were calculators, slide rules, abacuses etc. And I'm sure they were widely used in scientific research in their times as the most advanced technology available. 50 years from now, if there is more advanced technology available, I'm sure that will be used then. So the rise in the use of computers over the last 30 years has more to do with availability than anything else.

Atheists, on the other hand, have been around for thousands of years, but have only recently come to dominate in the sciences. I don't think this has anything to do with the advance of technology. Rather, I think it has to do with the rise of a philosophical commitment to materialistic naturalism in academia. Once, science was seen as a means of determining truth, but not the only means of doing so. Now, science is regarded - completely on the basis of faith - as being the sole means by which truth can be known. Even for those things science cannot explain, it is presumed that someday science will discover the answers (a bit of a "science-of-the-gaps" argument, if you will).

There is a difference between science as method and science as philosophy. I have no problem with science as method, as long as we can acknowledge that it may not answer every question, particularly ultimate questions. Science as philosophy, on the other hand, is based on philosophical presumptions that are unprovable, but are accepted essentially by faith. An example of this would be Carl Sagan's famous line from Cosmos: "The Cosmos is all that is or was or ever will be." Really? Can you prove that? Where is the level of "evidence" for that statement comparable to that which is routinely demanded when someone argues for the existence of God? Where are the skeptical challenges to that faith-based assertion? Science deals with the physical world. It has no bearing on the non-physical and cannot prove or disprove its existence. But the new dogma is that anything that can't be explained by science (at least in theory, whether or not an explanation is currently available) simply cannot exist. Those who reject the party line tend not to progress in academia, and so the sciences become dominated by atheism. The reasons have more to do with politics than truth.

44

edx-Course --> Early Christianity: The Letters of Paul

by fastJehu in

link to the course: https://www.edx.org/course/harvardx/harvardx-hds1544-1x-early-christianity-927.

intro video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4rj3nxoyt7k.

it's my first time for a edx-course and i will try "early christianity: the letters of paul".

NeonMadman

You are making a strawman. The argument is we should be sceptical of ancient work which claim to contain a prophecy because true prophecies are (at best) rare while false prohecies are common. Therefore this lend evidence (but does not proove) that at least some parts of the gospels are written after the events they describe.

My point is simply that if you are arguing whether a miracle has taken place (including accruate prophecy as a kind of miracle), you can't argue against it on the basis that miracles can't happen. That is begging the question. When we consider whether the Gospels were written early or late, if we say that they must have been late solely because the sort of miracle they describe (i.e., true prophecy) simply can't happen, then we are effectively engaging in that fallacy.

If, on the other hand, you are asserting that true prophecy is merely rare and not impossible, there is no reaon to conclude that Jesus - presented as the Messiah of God - could not have been one of the rare cases of a true prophet.

44

edx-Course --> Early Christianity: The Letters of Paul

by fastJehu in

link to the course: https://www.edx.org/course/harvardx/harvardx-hds1544-1x-early-christianity-927.

intro video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4rj3nxoyt7k.

it's my first time for a edx-course and i will try "early christianity: the letters of paul".

NeonMadman

This page seems to give a fair summary of the main points: http://www.bowness.demon.co.uk/paul.htm

Without going into a lot of detail, I see some pretty flawed arguments on that page. I don't have time to pick the thing apart line by line, but here are a few examples:

It is a common Christian view that after Jesus's death, the disciples spread out and started teaching the gospel stories to people in the Middle East. This is not something that can be backed up from the Bible.

Um, has the writer of this article ever heard of the Book of Acts? It's a history of the earliest spread of the Gospel to the world, including the Middle East and beyond.

Paul insists that it was he, and not the apostles, who spread the gospel.

Where does Paul claim that he and he alone, not the other apostles, spread the Gospel? This is a distortion of what Paul wrote.

Paul told Peter ,"to his face", that he was wrong.

Another distortion, this time of Galatians 2. Paul rebuked Peter over a matter of personal hypocrisy, not over his preaching of the Gospel. Paul does not condemn the message carried by the other apostles.

Paul and the Jerusalem apostles just did not get along, although they came to an uneasy truce. Paul accused them of insincerity and of putting in "false brethren" to spy on him.

Paul does indeed speak of "false brethern" brought in (Gal. 2:4), but he never accuses the other apostles of being the ones who brought them in. This is straw man argumentation at its finest. In verse 2, Paul even says that he submitted his Gospel to those in Jerusalem to 'make sure that he was not running in vain' - in other words, to be sure that the message he was teaching was in concord with the Gospel as it had been revealed to the church. The fact that the false teachers had originated in Jerusalem doesn't mean that they were sent by the apostles. In fact, the Jerusalem council of Acts 15 put a stop to the false teaching of these individuals.

Paul makes clear in 2 Corinthians 12:12 that being an eyewitness of Jesus's life was not what singled out an apostle.

That's simply a false and misleading statement. The verse states, "The signs of a true apostle were performed among you with utmost patience, with signs and wonders and mighty works."

If I were a policeman and I arrested a criminal, I could say that I had "done the work of a policeman." That says nothing about how I came to be a policeman or what requirements I might have had to meet to do the job.

Likewise, Paul says that he performed "the signs of a true apostle." The signs were what showed other people that he was an apostle, they were not what made him an apostle. In 1 Cor 9:1, Paul defends his apostleship on the basis that he had "seen Jesus our Lord."

Acts 17:2 states clearly that Paul taught 'from the scriptures' and not from the evidence of eyewitnesses. Acts 18:23-28 states that Appollos , after he had been taught what was correct and what was not correct about Jesus, 'showed by the scriptures that the Christ was Jesus', not 'showed by eyewitness testimony that the Christ was Jesus'. Romans 1:1-4 states that the gospel came from the scriptures and never states that the gospel came from eyewitnesses. 1 Corinthians 15:3 states that Jesus was raised on the third day 'in accordance with the scriptures' and not in accordance with eyewitness testimony.

The Scriptures (what we would now call the Old Testament) contained many prophecies of the Messiah. The logical way to argue that Jesus was the Christ would have been to show that his life fulfilled the Messianic prophecies, wouldn't it? If Paul had no knowledge of Jesus' life as this article claims, it would have been impossible for him to argue from the Scriptures that Jesus was the Messiah.

That's just from one short section of the article, but I think it demonstrates the level of argumentation being employed.

44

edx-Course --> Early Christianity: The Letters of Paul

by fastJehu in

link to the course: https://www.edx.org/course/harvardx/harvardx-hds1544-1x-early-christianity-927.

intro video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4rj3nxoyt7k.

it's my first time for a edx-course and i will try "early christianity: the letters of paul".

NeonMadman

How early are you imagining the gospels were written Neon?

Most conservative scholars would date Mark to the 50s, which would have been the time that Paul was writing his epistles. Luke and Matthew came a bit later, with John bringing up the rear, probably toward the end of the first century. I realize that some of Paul's letters may have pre-dated the Gospels, but the story contained in the Gospels would have been well known within the Christian church even before they were written. Paul quotes creeds in his letters that are thought to pre-date any writings of the NT, but that still carry a high Christology. My point is not really whether the Gospels were in existence at the time of Paul's writing anyway, but that his lack of mention of them can't be used as an argument that he was ignorant of them. That's an argument from silence, and is easily explained by the fact that his purpose in writing was not to recount the Gospel stories, but to expound on the theological implications of the coming and work of the Messiah.

I might add that I am not impressed by arguments for loate dating of the Gospels, based on the idea that Jesus predicted the destruction of Jerusalem, and therefore the Gospels had to have been written after that event. The presumption is that there can be no such thing as actual prophecy, therefore Jesus could not have known what would happen 40 or so years later. This argument merely begs the question, since the premise of the Gospels is that Jesus was the Messiah sent from God who could prophesy accurately and work miracles.

44

edx-Course --> Early Christianity: The Letters of Paul

by fastJehu in

link to the course: https://www.edx.org/course/harvardx/harvardx-hds1544-1x-early-christianity-927.

intro video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4rj3nxoyt7k.

it's my first time for a edx-course and i will try "early christianity: the letters of paul".

NeonMadman

One thing to note is the almost total lack of Jesus in the works attributed to Paul. That in itself should raise red flags... why did Paul have such little knowledge of the works or teachings of Jesus so shortly after the supposed events?

How do you figure? Christ is central in all of the Pauline letters. Are you referring to the fact that he doesn't re-tell the gospel stories that were already well known to his audience? To argue that the letters of Paul are inauthentic because of what they don't say seems like an argument from silence. Paul was a theologian. Others were writing, or had written the Gospel narratives. Paul's purpose was not to rehash what was already known, but to explain what the significance of it was. The fact that he doesn't tell the stories about Jesus hardly implies that he had "little knowledge" of them.

36

Asked my christian co-workers.....

by DS211 in

NeonMadman

But Neon if a christian believes that his or her god made all the flora and fauna why would they not be interested in the details to the point of obsession?

No offense intended, cofty, but that strikes me as a silly question. Can I enjoy driving my car through the countryside without being able to explain every detail of how an internal combustion engine works? In much the same way, it is entirely possible to appreciate both the creation and the Creator without having a detailed knowledge of biology, geology, astronomy, physics, etc. Different people have different interests, and there is only so much time in life to spend looking into interesting things.

It is my experience that conservative christian belief and interest in the discoveries of science are inversely proportionate.

Then your experience is lacking, or else you have bought into the "new atheist" party line. Ever heard of Copernicus? He was a priest. William of Ockham, Tycho Brahe, Francis Bacon, Johannes Kepler, Galileo, Descartes, Blaise Pascal, Isaac Newton, Daniel Bernouli, Luigi Galvani, James Clerk Maxwell, Louis Pasteur, Lord Kelvin, Marconi, George Washington Carver, Max Planck, Werner Heisenberg, Werhner von Braun, and many more. They were all Christians, and don't seem to have been hampered in the least by their Christian faith with regard to "interest in the discoveries of science."

Really, it's only within the last generation or so that atheists seem to have become dominant in the sciences. Historically, the majority of great thinkers in Western culture were at least religious people and the majority of these were Christians. It was specifically the motivation you advocate that drove many of them - a desire to more fully understand the Creation and Creator. This, not atheism, has been the impetus for the growth of science and reason over many hundreds, even thousands of years. Even today, there are many Christians in the sciences holding advanced degrees and making significant contributions. Unfortunately, the new dominance of atheists makes it more difficult for them to function in academic settings, since atheists don't generally (or historically) extend the same tolerance toward those of faith that they expect for themselves.

36

Asked my christian co-workers.....

by DS211 in

NeonMadman

For many Bible-believing Christians, the Bible is sufficient. If it doesn't mention dinosaurs, then they are not an essential of the faith and we don't need to know about them

Which is as concise an answer to, "what's wrong with faith-based thinking?" as it would be possible to imagine.

It kills curiosity and investigation. It crushes a unviverse full of wonders into the confines of a Bronze Age book written by ignorant pre-scientific nomads.

Perhaps I expressed that thought badly. I didn't mean to imply that scientific matters, or for that matter, other endeavors of human knowledge, are of no use or interest to persons who believe the Bible. What I meant to say is that they are not essentials of the faith. They are not, from a biblical standpoint, necessary for salvation. There are many things that are true that have no bearing on one's spiritual condition. Dinosaurs, dendrites, dead empires and double-entry accounting are all valid fields of study, but are not spiritual in nature. There is no need at all for belief in the Bible to "Kill curiosity and investigation," but there is a distinction as to what is needed in a spiritual sense. Dinosaurs may be fascinating to some people; I can take them or leave them as an item of study. Stuff that fascinates me might bore you.

Remember that I made this remark in the context of responding to your earlier question, " Why do fundies have so little interest in the things they believe their god made?" One would think that a person who so passionately advocates reason might avoid the use of such an obvious hasty generalization. The premise behind the question is simply not true. First, not all "fundies" are the same, and second, many whom I am sure you would class as "fundies" are simply fascinated by various aspects of nature and the universe, and study them intensely.

Now here's the difference with JWs. Everything is essential. If the Watchtower tells them that the orange and purple spotted wild beast in Third Hezekiah is a symbol of the 2004 Olympics, they have to believe it, under penalty of disfellowshipping. If the Society says that leprechauns exist - even though the Bible says no such thing and, in fact, never mentions leprechauns - JWs will be required to accept it and will attempt to defend it to the death. That's how this relates to the original question of this thread. The Bible doesn't say what the animals ate or whether they had meat to eat before the flood. But the JWs have to have an "official" answer to everything, and once that answer is rendered, however speculative, they will stick by it. Which actually makes them more vulnerable intellectually than if they simply regarded that as an unnecessary speculative concept. That was my point. Hopefully I've made myself a bit clearer now.

36

Asked my christian co-workers.....

by DS211 in

NeonMadman

Why do fundies have so little interest in the things they believe their god made?

You seem to be operating on the JW-style assumption that every question needs to have a concise answer. For JWs, the ultimate source of doctrine is not the Bible, but the Watchtower's teachings. For many Bible-believing Christians, the Bible is sufficient. If it doesn't mention dinosaurs, then they are not an essential of the faith and we don't need to know about them. We are free to speculate, of course, as long as speculation does not become hard and fast doctrine. Unfortunately, that's exactly what happens with the JWs. The Governing Body's speculations about things not specifically mentioned in the Bible become doctrine, and then other doctrines are built on top of those speculations. Now, this does create the illusion of JWs having the truth, since they have a "Bible-based answer" for every question you can ask or imagine. The problem is that many of their "Bible-based answers" have nothing to do with the Bible, but are merely the imaginings of GB members, enforced as dogma upon the rank and file. Worse, since the Bible and the Watchtower are indistinguishable in the minds of many JWs, these speculative answers become hills to die on and must be defended if questioned. When the JW comes to realize that the Watchtower's speculations are simply rubbish, they discard the whole idea of God and the Bible along with the Watchtower. I'm convinced that this is a major reason why there is so much atheism among ex-JWs.

21

UFO's

by zeb in

i have seen ufo's in broad daylight.. what is the party line of the wts on ufo's?please.

anyone else seen these things?.

NeonMadman

A frisbee?

34

1973 "Divine Victory" International Assemblies

by Bungi Bill in

jw
friends

how many here attended the "divine victory" international assembly that was held 12- 16 december in christchurch, new zealand?.

the venue was lancaster park.

if the truth be known, that stadium was probably a casualty of the february 2011 earthquake?.

NeonMadman

I attended at Tiger Stadium in Detroit, which I believe was the first in the series. It was one of the most crowded assemblies I ever went to.