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Author | Topic: Choosing a faith | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Percy Member Posts: 22500 From: New Hampshire Joined: Member Rating: 4.9
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GDR writes: Percy writes: I guess people can draw their own conclusions about that. By the definition of worship you provided earlier, I worship nothing. But I value food and water, shelter, family, friends, work and recreation, pretty much in that order. Private bathrooms rank pretty high, too. Oh, and hot showers. Yes, I suppose they will. That's why this is a public forum. But it was addressed to you. You quoted Dylan's "ya gotta serve somebody" and insisted that worship was the only alternative, either of a God or something material. And as a way of pointing out that you're wrong I used myself as an example of someone who worships nothing, and of course I'm by no means alone in this. There are things that I value, but nothing that I worship. Obviously one doesn't have to worship something. You have no response?
Percy writes: I can also see that if His message of sacrificial love was applied to the world we would all be living far better lives as affirmation. This is circular. Unless you're making stuff up about Jesus or listening to what other people make up, the only things you can "see" in Jesus come from the Bible. This is a non-answer. It is still circular to say that the portions of the Bible you choose are based on what you see in Jesus who you only know about from the Bible. Unless, as I said, you're making stuff up about Jesus or listening to what other people make up. This isn't really a discussion. It's you making non-sequiturs, us pointing them out, and you ignoring them to continue repeating what you've been saying all along. Nothing we say seems to have any effect on you. It doesn't matter what we say, you just keep repeating yourself. --Percy
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Phat Member Posts: 18345 From: Denver,Colorado USA Joined: Member Rating: 1.0 |
Admittedly the idea that Jesus is limited to a character In a book is not a part of my belief and I will ignore it repeatedly. Belief can and does go beyond evidence without being totally irrational.
"A lie can travel half way around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes." ~Mark Twain " *** “…far from science having buried God, not only do the results of science point towards his existence, but the scientific enterprise itself is validated by his existence.”- Dr.John Lennox “A God without wrath brought men without sin into a Kingdom without judgment through the ministrations of a Christ without a Cross.” “The most difficult subjects can be explained to the most slow-witted man if he has not formed any idea of them already; but the simplest thing cannot be made clear to the most intelligent man if he is firmly persuaded that he knows already, without a shadow of a doubt, what is laid before him.” — Leo Tolstoy, The Kingdom of God is Within You
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Theodoric Member Posts: 9197 From: Northwest, WI, USA Joined: Member Rating: 3.2
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I dont think you understand what the word irrational.means.
What can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence. -Christopher Hitchens Facts don't lie or have an agenda. Facts are just facts "God did it" is not an argument. It is an excuse for intellectual laziness. If your viewpoint has merits and facts to back it up why would you have to lie?
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GDR Member Posts: 6202 From: Sidney, BC, Canada Joined: Member Rating: 2.1 |
Admin writes:
Here is a post I’ll copy and paste with apostrophes in it. Can’t won’t ‘’’ The next time you post a message containing strange symbols, please point me to it.I’ve printed this in MS Word and copied on to the reply page on EvC. Again, I get those symbols as well when I read a post when it is emailed to me.
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GDR Member Posts: 6202 From: Sidney, BC, Canada Joined: Member Rating: 2.1 |
Percy writes: I don't know what God can or or can't do, or for that matter, what He can choose to do or not to do. Why are you harboring doubts that the God you've expressed belief in can fuel an everlasting fire? And it isn't people who bodily go to heaven or hell. It is souls. Jesus is the only person ever taken bodily into heaven. Of course the Bible equivocates quite a bit, so there's lots of room for interpretation. My belief is that the eternal fire is the one we create for our selves when we descend into a being that is completely self focused and lose our sense of humanity.
Percy writes: This is your gig. We have no secret powers for divining how you might answer. Please answer the question instead of being evasive. If you read my reply to Ringo you would have seen that I agreed that he was correct and that it isn't a parable but an analysis.He has told you, O man, what is good ; And what does the LORD require of you But to do justice, to love kindness, And to walk humbly with your God. Micah 6:8
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GDR Member Posts: 6202 From: Sidney, BC, Canada Joined: Member Rating: 2.1 |
PaulK writes:
Frankly I don't know what most Christians believe. However the messianic prophesies were about bringing about the end of the age which would be the end of Roman occupation.
As is too often the case, this doesn’t address the point, Christians generally hold that Jesus will fulfil the Messianic prophecies after the Second Coming. That’s the point of it. GDR writes: Not true for the early followers of JesusPaulK writes: I disagree. I think that is EXACTLY what happened. How about quoting what is what that I was replying to so I can know what you are talking about.
GDR writes: The messianic stuff as you call it is an earthly thing with no connection to the second coming.PaulK writes: Maybe, and probably in the US. Most Christians disagree.He has told you, O man, what is good ; And what does the LORD require of you But to do justice, to love kindness, And to walk humbly with your God. Micah 6:8
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PaulK Member Posts: 17827 Joined: Member Rating: 2.3 |
quote: That is how they might be interpreted at the time of Jesus. It certainly isn’t how Jews interpret them now. Or how they were originally meant,
quote: How about using the handy links at the bottom of each post to see? To be clear my point is that I believe that Jesus did not fulfil the Messianic prophecies, so his followers - those that did not abandon the cult - made up excuses to get around that. Hence the Second Coming. (And please don’t suggest that they wouldn’t make up excuses - you certainly do).
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GDR Member Posts: 6202 From: Sidney, BC, Canada Joined: Member Rating: 2.1 |
Paulk quoting wiki.
quote: That fits with what I believe. Matthew wrote his Gospel first in Hebrew and that is the one the Nazoreans held on to. It was later that someone, most likely Matthew again translated it into a Greek version.
GDR writes: Sure, it is John's theology that explains the views of the early Christians as that sort out the meaning that they could glean from Jesus' teachings and also of His resurrection.PaulK writes:
When John writes that the Word became flesh, he is making a statement that is holistically consistent with the whole NT. I'm not 100% sure what your point is. But your original claim was that the phrase itself was all that was needed. Which is rather obviously not supported by quoting theology which makes a similar claim for other reasons.He has told you, O man, what is good ; And what does the LORD require of you But to do justice, to love kindness, And to walk humbly with your God. Micah 6:8
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PaulK Member Posts: 17827 Joined: Member Rating: 2.3 |
quote: So you think that the Gospel of the Hebrews is the real Gospel written by Matthew, not the one we call “Matthew”? Because that is what you just said,
quote: My point is that your original claim - which only used the phrase “Son of Man” - was false.
Also the Jewish nation at had two particular hopes for the future. One was the return of Yahweh to their nation and the other was that of a messiah who would be a man anointed by God to lead them against Rome. The Gospels story essentially sees Jesus as fulfilling both of those hopes but in a very different way than what the Jews expected. Jesus used the term "son of man" which combined both hopes. It is not the term at all. It is Christian beliefs added after Jesus’ death.
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GDR Member Posts: 6202 From: Sidney, BC, Canada Joined: Member Rating: 2.1 |
Tangle writes: I dunno GDR, this stuff just makes me feel tired and frustrated. Maybe I'll attempt a futile answer to what you say here but more likely I won't - because, well, it's futile. The point I'm trying to make is that there is no real historicity for Jesus, let alone the miraculous stuff he's supposed to have done and how he saved the world an' all. Sure, there's acres of shelf space for Christian scholars and apologists but there's virtually no peer reviewed history. There should be so much that it's beyond all doubt, but there's virtually none. Jesus, if real, would be the most important guy that ever lived. But there's no factual evidence of him actually even existing! It's bizarre. We shouldn't even be able to have this discussion, it should be obvious to everyone. But it's not, simply because he left no historical footprint, just an enormous mythology. OK, nothing I can say will convince you otherwise so I'll turn to wiki, a non-Christian source.
Historicity of Jesus Here are some quotes from that page. quote: quote: quote: He has told you, O man, what is good ; And what does the LORD require of you But to do justice, to love kindness, And to walk humbly with your God. Micah 6:8
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GDR Member Posts: 6202 From: Sidney, BC, Canada Joined: Member Rating: 2.1 |
Tangle writes: Like you, I don't have any first hand knowledge of the bible, other than having read it. I get my information from historians. It's mainstream scholarship that the Sermon on the Mount wasn't said by Jesus, it's a complex literary creation based on previous texts. This is a summary - "The Sermon on the Mount relies on the Septuagint Greek version of Deuteronomy and Leviticus, so it doesn’t go back to a Hebrew or Aramaic source. Matthew also redacts other Greek scriptures like “turn the other cheek” taken from Isaiah 50:6-9. The sermon has a literary structure so it didn’t originate in oral tradition, and it deals with issues that would have come up after Jesus died, so it didn’t originate with him. The sermon also assumes the temple doesn’t exist, so it had to have been written after the destruction of the temple in 70 AD. It also addresses the rabbinical argument that followed the destruction of the temple." ie Matthew made it up. The analysis of written rather than oral structure comes from this peer reviewed paper. I wish you luck with it. https://biblicalstudies.org.uk/pdf/jbl/1987_allison.pdf I went through that link and to understand it properly I needed not just luck but scholarly skills that I don't possess. One thought tough that could give credence to the passages accuracy is that there did exist at the time the capability of using Greek shorthand. It is conceivable that much of what Jesus said could have been taken down in shorthand and transcribed later. I obviously have no evidence for this but it is conceivable.
Early Greek Short hand I know this doesn't deal specifically with your point, but I guess we are back to what we believe.He has told you, O man, what is good ; And what does the LORD require of you But to do justice, to love kindness, And to walk humbly with your God. Micah 6:8
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Tangle Member Posts: 9510 From: UK Joined: Member Rating: 4.8 |
GDR writes: OK, nothing I can say will convince you otherwise Of course you could! You believers just never get it. You could convince me with convincing evidence. I'm really easy to convince, just show me something convincing. We're not doing anything hard here, all we're trying to establish is if the guy in the centre of the story actually existed. It should be really easy, but it isn't because there is no actual historical evidence. And it wouldn't matter if he had existed, the really hard bit is finding the evidence that the miraculous stuff he's supposed to have done actually happened and isn't just the story telling of the time.
so I'll turn to wiki, a non-Christian source.
Wiki - the website - is a non-Christian source, it's who posts there that makes it Christian or otherwise. Almost every biblical "scholar" is a Christian and most are not historians, they're theologians. Read some non-Christian stuff, get a full view.Je suis Charlie. Je suis Ahmed. Je suis Juif. Je suis Parisien. I am Mancunian. I am Brum. I am London. Olen Suomi Soy Barcelona. I am Ukraine. "Science adjusts it's views based on what's observed.
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Admin Director Posts: 13038 From: EvC Forum Joined: Member Rating: 2.1 |
GDR writes: Here is a post I’ll copy and paste with apostrophes in it. Can’t won’t ‘’’I’ve printed this in MS Word and copied on to the reply page on EvC. Again, I get those symbols as well when I read a post when it is emailed to me. Are you saying there are strange symbols in the above text? I don't see them in Chrome, Firefox, Edge or Safari. Is anyone else seeing strange symbols?
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Tangle Member Posts: 9510 From: UK Joined: Member Rating: 4.8 |
GDR writes: I went through that link and to understand it properly I needed not just luck but scholarly skills that I don't possess. I did warn you, but I also gave you the summary, the crux being that the "speech" is a literary construct not an oral one. It's written not spoken. That's the text but it's also out of its time, there are things referred to as history that hadn't yet happened - and it's not a prophecy.
I know this doesn't deal specifically with your point, but I guess we are back to what we believe. The point is that it was never spoken. That's mainstream scholarship.. But sure, you prefer to believe something else.Je suis Charlie. Je suis Ahmed. Je suis Juif. Je suis Parisien. I am Mancunian. I am Brum. I am London. Olen Suomi Soy Barcelona. I am Ukraine. "Science adjusts it's views based on what's observed.
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Theodoric Member Posts: 9197 From: Northwest, WI, USA Joined: Member Rating: 3.2 |
Nope
What can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence. -Christopher Hitchens Facts don't lie or have an agenda. Facts are just facts "God did it" is not an argument. It is an excuse for intellectual laziness. If your viewpoint has merits and facts to back it up why would you have to lie?
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