Posts by NeonMadman

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

Interesting Neon, but we could swap "experts" who have an agenda, like the pro Jesus writers you quote, with some I could come up with that do not agrree, all day long.

My point was , as I said, that the Jesus stories are not unique, they bear significant similarities with other myths and legends, and they are equally unprovable.

It sounds like you are saying, then, that we can't really know anything at all reliably about history. After all, there can always be experts on either side of an issue, and nothing can be proven. I'm not prepared to buy into that level of hyper-skepticism. I think that the historical evidence for Jesus is pretty compelling, unless you start with a presupposition that the supernatural can't happen. What events in ancient history are better documented than the life of Jesus? Many events of ancient history that are less documented than that of Jesus are held to be unquestionably true, but the life of Jesus is questioned because of the presupposition of naturalism (and, possibly, the fact that acceptance would carry some moral requirements).

A lot of your arguments are quite difficult to take my friend, i.e "oral tradition was very reliable in those days". just think about that statement, and the fallacy jumps out.

I'm not sure it does, because I'm not seeing it. Are you suggesting that the statement is fallacious because oral tradition is inherently unreliable? If so, you're begging the question.

I'd refer you again to Holding's work on this topic: http://www.tektonics.org/ntdocdef/orality01.html. I suppose you can dismiss it as 'just another expert,' but I think his arguments are compelling.

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

Also with regard to "copycat" claims regarding Jesus, I found the following interesting. It's a quotation from the article, Jesus, the Recycled Redeemer, by Greg Koukl on page 3 of the Sept./Oct. 2009 issue of Solid Ground, published by Stand to Reason (www.str.org):

In 1898, Morgan Robertson published a novel entitled Futility. The story was a fictional account of a transatlantic voyage of the cruise ship Titan traveling between England and New York. The largest vessel afloat displacing 45,000 tons, the Titan was considered virtually unsinkable. Yet in the middle of the night in April, with three massive propellers driving the ship forward at the excessive speed of 25 knots, it collided
with an iceberg and sunk. Since the number of lifeboats was the minimum the law required (though twice that was needed for its 3,000 capacity), more than half of its passengers perished.

Fourteen years later in April, the world’s largest luxury liner with a displacement of 45,000 tons – the indestructible Titanic – departed from England on a transatlantic voyage to New York. In the middle of the night, the Titanic’s triple screws drove the ship at the excessive speed of nearly 25 knots into an iceberg and sunk. Since the Titanic was fitted with less than half the number of lifeboats needed for its 3,000 capacity (the minimum the law required), more than half of its passengers were lost.

This real-life coincidence makes a crucial point. Regardless of the similarity between two accounts of different events, the second cannot be summarily dismissed as an invention simply because the first turns out to be fiction. Whether or not the details of the Titanic’s disaster are accurate is determined by its own body of evidence, unrelated to the fictional story of the ill-fated Titan that came before.

36

Asked my christian co-workers.....

by DS211 in

NeonMadman

My claim: Some scientist accept this as true, some do not. Many (if not most) has never considered the question and feel it is rather silly. Many would properly ask which definitions you are using of "energy" and "matter" if you feel superstrings, spacetime or quantum fields fit in those exact categories.

I have never encountered a scientist in my professional life who made such a claim. Why should one make this assumption?

I'm not sure why one should make such an assumption. I certainly wouldn't, but geneticist Richard Lewontin expressed the idea that I have been referring to as "materialistic naturalism" in this way:

‘Our willingness to accept scientific claims that are against common sense is the key to an understanding of the real struggle between science and the supernatural. We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity of some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfill many of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a commitment to materialism.

It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counter-intuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is an absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door.

The eminent Kant scholar Lewis Beck used to say that anyone who could believe in God could believe in anything. To appeal to an omnipotent deity is to allow that at any moment the regularities of nature may be ruptured, that Miracles may happen.
Richard Lewontin, Billions and billions of demons, The New York Review, p. 31, 9 January 1997.

I have been under the impression that many in the scientific community adhere to this particular way of thinking. If I'm wrong about that, I am open to correction.

I don't think it is fair or reasonable to make this sort of accusation without having better evidence than this. Could you give some of your best sources for the claim?

I didn't think of it as an accusation. It was more of an observation regarding presuppositions. However, if you are asking me for evidence that those involved in the sciences are less likely to have religious belief than non-scientists, I could cite this study, published in 2007: http://www.owlnet.rice.edu/~ehe/doc/Ecklund_SocialProblems_54_2.pdf

Note particularly the chart on p. 298: 51.7% of those identified as "Scientists" answer "None" as religious affiliation vs. 14.2% of non-scientists. I think that says something, and I don't think what it says is that learning science necessarily makes one a non-believer in God. My intuition is that it is the presupposition of non-supernaturalism that does so. Obviously that presupposition would not be shared by Christian, Jewish or Muslim scientists, but they are under-represented demographically in the scientific community. Which was pretty much my point - that such thinking dominates in academia. I could cite cases of academics who have found their jobs in jeopardy or even lost their positions because they professed a personal belief that the facts of science imply intelligent design of the universe (again, quite distinct from six-day creationism). Yes, these are anecdotal; they have nonetheless contributed to my thought on the matter.

I've had atheists demand evidence for the existence of God, and then, under questioning, admit that no evidence could ever be presented that would convince them to believe in God.

I have had theists use the jesus-on-toast argument. While I might be tempted to throw in such a silly claim so as to not address what you are actually writing, I find it irrelevant to this conversation and a waste of your time.

Understood and appreciated. Perhaps I should clarify - and again, I know this is anecdotal. In virtually every conversation I have had with an atheist about the existence of God, this has been the way the conversation went. 'I'd believe if I could just see evidence of God' - but on further discussion, there is no evidence that could ever be convincing enough. Flaming letters across the sky saying "I am Yahweh, worship me"? Probably some rare astronomical phenomenon, or else a mass hallucination. Jesus appears in your living room to explain everything? 20 minutes after he leaves, you say, 'wow, that was a vivid dream I just had.' No matter what evidence was presented, it would never be enough, and the presumption of "materialistic naturalism" (so-called) always requires a non-supernatural explanation of the event.

In the rare cases where an atheist has given me a form of evidence, it is usually something so specifically defined that it amounts to saying that God would have to become his servant, in effect doing tricks for him. 'If God would give me the ability to fly after I asked him for it," things like that. Even then, if that actually happened, I suspect that it would not be enough, but a non-supernatural explanation would be sought. I am reminded of Jesus' words: "If they do not hear Moses and the Prophets, neither will they be convinced if someone should rise from the dead." As I said previously, at some point, it becomes a matter of the will, not the intellect.

The eye showed evidence of design, but that turned out to have arisen by natural means. The solar system showed evidence of design but turned out to have come about by natural means.

Does "coming about by natural means" automatically imply that there is no designer? Where did the "natural means' (i.e., the physical laws under which the universe operates) come from? Must we really accept the idea that all of the universe's complexity arose from random forces? Do you have evidence as to how random forces manage to generate high levels of complexity and information (like DNA molecules, for example)? Or are the theories formed, in many cases, to specifically exclude any intelligence behind the universe? There's that presupposition again.

BTW, I really, really, don't want to get into a creation/evolution discussion here. That's not where I'm going with this. Either creation or evolution could be a process used by an intelligent designer.

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

Other "Prophets" and "Miracle" workers existed around the time that Jesus is reputed to have lived, and such stories abound regarding them, with just about as much "evidence" as that for the claims made for Jesus.

Apollonius of Tyana is one such...

It was also claimed that Apollonius raised the dead, and that he himself was resurrected, the stories about Jesus of Nazareth are far from unique, and have zero evidence that stands scrutiny.

Forgive my taking the liberty of omitting your Wiki quote for the sake of space. It's right there in your earlier post if anyone wants to read it.

On the Appolonius issue, I would refer you to the work of J.P. Holding, who has an article on the Appolonius/Jesus issue at http://www.tektonics.org/copycat/apollonius.html.

Holding has focused heavily on the "copycat" claims made about Jesus such as are found in the Zeitgeist film, and has written a book on the topic, Shattering the Christ-Myth. It's very detailed, and if you'd like to read a solid work on the topic (rather than the dozens of web sites making comparisons that simply don't comport with history), I recommend it: http://www.amazon.com/Shattering-Christ-James-Patrick-Holding/dp/1606472712/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1389468375&sr=8-1&keywords=shattering+the+christ+myth.

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

"Miracles" is obviousy the term used to convey the ones purportedly done by Jesus during his ministry, ...we know that and you know that.

So Paul does write of the greatest miracle of Jesus, but doesn't specifically mention his lesser miracles. And because of that, you are making an argument from silence that Paul knew nothing of Jesus' life. There are a lot of things that Paul doesn't specifically mention in his letters; should we conclude that he didn't know about any of those either?

I note that you haven't mentioned Barack Obama in this thread; may I assume that you are unaware of his existence?

The gospel stories were known through the oral tradition of the church (and oral tradition was very reliable in those days), and possibly through the writings of Mark at least, if not the other Gospels, at the time that Paul wrote. There was no need for Paul to reiterate them, particularly since the purpose of his letters was didactic, not narrative. You'll need more than an argument from silence to make a case to the contrary.

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

Furthermore, as best I can tell, you did not address my proposition:

I simply argue the description of certain events taking place in year 70 imply the book was written after year 70 with high probability.

Perhaps you should inform me as to how you think I should respond to this statement. It's pretty much a bald assertion, based on the concept that prophecy doesn't happen, therefore any writing that tells of a given event, even if that writing claims to be recording a genuine prophecy, must be regarded as having been written after the event in question. I understand what you are saying, and I disagree with the presupposition behind the question. I believe that if we are considering whether a given writing contains genuine prophecy, we cannot start with a presumption that prophecy is impossible. Doing so involves circular reasoning, presuming the conclusion as a premise. Am I missing something here?

now, you are not actually addressing the arguments I made with that claim (I hope that is clear) but rather making a counter-argument why you think jesus is a prophet. This is not the argument, the argument is regarding the dating of the books of the gospels.

Yes, and the crux of the argument about the dating of the Gospels hinges on your presupposition about prophecy. Unless I misunderstand you, it is your position that the Gospels were almost certainly written after 70 CE because they contain a prophecy of an event that happened in that year. Since you discount real prophecy as a possibility, the books must have been written after that year. However, if Jesus actually was a prophet and if true prophecy is possible, then the books could easily have been written before that time. Therefore, the issue of Jesus as prophet is integral to the argument you are making for late dating of the Gospels.

Also, I was not making a counter-argument why I think Jesus was a prophet. I do, but that's irrelevant. I was addressing your allowance that genuine prophecy might be rare rather than nonexistent. If that were the case - if we are to acknowledge that prophecy might really occur at some time or times in human history - who would be a better candidate to provide it than Jesus of Nazareth? This is not an argument for his prophethood, but simply an observation that he would be more likely to be one of the rare cases of a true prophet than probably any other person in human history.

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

There is NO evidence for miracles; not even Paul, who trumpets all other possible 'evidence' for Jesus being the son of God, mentions the miracles.

Not one miracle, not one teaching from the Gospels, are mentioned in Paul.

Have you actually read Paul? For example:

"For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. Then he appeared to more than five hundred brothers at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have fallen asleep. Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles. Last of all, as to one untimely born, he appeared also to me." (1 Corinthians 15:3-8)

Paul not only mentions the resurrection (which is both a miracle and a teaching from the Gospels), he also claims to be a personal eyewitness of it, and cites over 500 other eyewitnesses, many of whom were still alive when he wrote, and who he could easily have been asked to produce by any skeptics to the fact.

The evidence for miracles must be extraordinary, since the claim is certainly extraordinary.

Do you have evidence for that claim?

I've had that argument thrown at me by skeptics in the past, and, frankly, my experience is that there usually could be no level of evidence that would be found to be "extraordinary" enough to warrant acceptance of the claim. In other words, it's basically just a "conversation stopper," as we used to call them.

If you really want to consider the existing evidence for the resurrection of Christ, I'd suggest starting with the works of Michael Licona and Willian Lane Craig on the topic. A Google search should produce an abundance of them.

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

Similarly, I simply argue the description of certain events taking place in year 70 imply the book was written after year 70 with high probability.

If you feel that conclusion is unsound I would like to hear the argument.

I guess I would respond to that by saying that I don't think the Gospels/70 A.D. question quite corresponds to your scenario of fingerprints being found on a murder weapon. Remember that we are discussing a situation in which true prophecy is acknowledged as being rare but not impossible. That being the case, why would I conclude that it is "highly unlikely" that the one person more noted than any other in human history as a worker of miracles and a true prophet might actually produce a true prophecy? If true prophecies can rarely occur, as I understand you to be stipulating for the sake of argument, why should Jesus Christ, of all people, not be seen as probably the #1 candidate to offer them? Who would you cite as a more probable provider of a true prophecy than him?

On the other hand, if you take the position that true prophecy is in fact impossible, then I think you fall back into the same sort of circular reasoning with regard to the question of the Gospels that we have already discussed.

36

Asked my christian co-workers.....

by DS211 in

NeonMadman

This is interesting on many levels. Firstly you should be aware that I have never heard phrases like "materialistic naturalism" being used by actual scientists as part of their research, nor does scientific education (in academia) consist of being taught to only adhere to one particular philosophical view. Rather, it consist (roughly speaking) of learning about experiments, ideas and theories so as to allow scientists to gain new knowledge about the world and apply existing scientific theories in various situations such as to create new technology.

Maybe the term "materialistic naturalism" is not the best one to use. The idea that I'm trying to sum up is the concept that nothing exists outside the material universe - that matter and energy are all there is, and that the supernatural is not merely outside the realm of science, but is non-existent. That presumption has implications that are found in many disciplines, even theology. The higher critical movement of the 19th century, whose general line of thought still dominates among liberal theologians, was based on just such a presumption. Since the supernatural either does not exist or is irrelevant to our world (as in deism), miracles are impossible. We then start to interpret things about the Bible and religious history in that light - for example, as we discussed in another thread, the presumption that the Gospels must have been written after 70 A.D. because they speak of Jerusalem's destruction. True prophecy, after all, cannot happen. But as I pointed out over there, that reasoning is circular. The Gospels purport to tell of true prophecy occurring. We can't falsify them based on the presumption that prophecy can't occur.

So my point is that, while the presupposition of materialistic naturalism may not be advocated by name in academia and the sciences, the idea permeates the environment, and the upshot of that is that it's practically required to be an atheist to function in that arena - or, if one is a person of faith, to at least keep one's mouth shut about it. If you don't think that's so, I'd suggest looking into some of the cases of scientists whose research and reason have led them to believe that the universe was intelligently designed. Often, they are marginalized and ridiculed, and some have lost their positions because they didn't adhere to the conventional wisdom. This wasn't the case in times past. It was understood that science applied to the physical world, but there was no need to exclude the possibility of the supernatural. It was just seen as a realm where science had no application.

Secondly I see you prefix your entire argument with an "I don't think". In other words, your argument seem to only consist of your own speculations -- would it be an instance of "materialistic naturalism" which I have been indoctrinated with as part of my scientific education to ask why you suppose any of your accusations and sweeping statements are true?

I'd hope it's clear that whatever I write here is my own opinion - informed, I believe, by things that I read and observe and the thought that I have given to them. I'm not so arrogant as to insist that I couldn't be wrong or am beyond correction. Obviously, if new information came to light of which I am unaware, it might be necessary for me to change my opinions. My reading and observation to this point have led me to believe that what I write is true - can you say any differently about what you write? Isn't it your own opinion, based on your own study and experience, and subject to change if further information comes to your attention? Oddly, my experience with some atheists has been that this is not the case for them. I've had atheists demand evidence for the existence of God, and then, under questioning, admit that no evidence could ever be presented that would convince them to believe in God. That any evidence they would be shown would need to be reinterpreted under the presuppositions of what I have called "materialistic naturalism." Is that any less "fundamentalist" thinking than that of the most hard-nosed Baptist? At some point, it becomes a question of the will, not of the intellect.

Finally, I am all for there being more than one method for gaining new knowledge, but clearly all methods are not equally good (for instance asking the oldest man one knows or flipping a coin is not considered good ways to determine the validity of a scientific idea). Can you perhaps explain how your proposed alternative method works in practice and give examples of some of the discoveries which it has made which can be independently confirmed to be true?

I think I have already partially covered this in my previous remarks, but to reference it back to my earlier statements about scientists who were also Christians in earlier times: these scientists believed completely in science as method, and so do I. The means of rational inquiry offered by the scientific method are applicable in a wide range of disciplines. However, these same scientists also believed that there were things that science could not explain and could never explain. They believed in a higher form of knowledge gained by revelation from the One responsible for the existence of all those things that science can analyze. They never saw a conflict between the two, as seems to be the case today. They believed in an intelligent design behind the universe - I'm not talking about six-day creationism here, but the reasonable conclusion that when one sees a universe with an overwhelming appearance of design, one may conclude that there is most likely a designer behind that universe. It seems reasonable also to believe that such a designer cannot be analyzed or known by the same methods by which the universe is measured (i.e., the physical sciences), but would have to make its presence known through revelation.

You may be rolling your eyes about now, but that's what a majority scientists believed for many centuries. They saw no conflict between the physical sciences and the existence of God. They believed in both. As I have pointed out earlier, it's only in recent decades that this has changed in the scientific community, and I believe that this change stems more from ideological than scientific grounds. That's just my opinion, of course, and I can't go back over the last 30 years or so and trace every nuance of change in the philisophical thinking of the scientific community. But based on my own observations, this is how I see it.

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.