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Member (Idle past 1405 days) Posts: 20714 From: the other end of the sidewalk Joined: |
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Author | Topic: the new new testament??? | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
RAZD Member (Idle past 1405 days) Posts: 20714 From: the other end of the sidewalk Joined: |
It's Time for a New New Testament
quote: So how does one know what to include and what to exclude? What makes one worth believing and another not? How is this different from the original Council of Nicaea? Don't you have to take ALL of them as gospel ... if you are a fundamentalist believer? (I miss Buzz on this one) Enjoyby our ability to understand Rebel American Zen Deist ... to learn ... to think ... to live ... to laugh ... to share. Join the effort to solve medical problems, AIDS/HIV, Cancer and more with Team EvC! (click)
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AdminPhat Inactive Member |
Thread copied here from the the new new testament??? thread in the Proposed New Topics forum.
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jar Member (Idle past 394 days) Posts: 34026 From: Texas!! Joined: |
Fundamentalists have never said that you should take all of the Christian writings as Gospel, just that you have to take all of the books declared to be Gospel by their particular chapter of Club Christian as Gospel.
And not all Gospel is equal. The pieces parts of Gospel taken out of context by Their Chapter of Club Christian are more Gospel than the pieces that other Chapters of Club Christian say are Gospel. All Gospel is Gospel but some Gospel is more Gospel than others.Anyone so limited that they can only spell a word one way is severely handicapped!
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Iblis Member (Idle past 3896 days) Posts: 663 Joined: |
None of tjhis stuff is "new", it's the same lovely gnosis that has always shown religion to be the child of magic.
Here's Thunder, Perfect Mind
Sophia writes: For I am the first and the last.I am the honored one and the scorned one. I am the whore and the holy one. I am the wife and the virgin. I am and the daughter. I am the members of my mother. I am the barren one and many are her sons. I am she whose wedding is great, and I have not taken a husband. I am the midwife and she who does not bear. I am the solace of my labor pains. I am the bride and the bridegroom, and it is my husband who begot me. I am the mother of my father and the sister of my husband and he is my offspring. I am the slave of him who prepared me. and here's Sex
Berlin writes: I'm a man, I'm a boyI'm a man, well I'm your mother I'm a man, I'm a one night stand I'm a man, am I bi I'm a man, I'm a slave I'm a man, I'm a little girl And we make love together Here's Thomas
Lambdin writes: Jesus said, "That which you have will save you if you bring it forth from yourselves. That which you do not have within you will kill you if you do not have it within you." And here's Baso
101 Zen Stories writes:
Daiju visited the master Baso in China. Baso asked: "What do you seek?" "Enlightenment," replied Daiju. "You have your own treasure house. Why do you search outside?" Baso asked. Daiju inquired: "Where is my treasure house?" Baso answered: "What you are asking is your treasure house." Daiju was delighted! Ever after he urged his friends: "Open your own treasure house and use those treasures." |
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RAZD Member (Idle past 1405 days) Posts: 20714 From: the other end of the sidewalk Joined: |
All Gospel is Gospel but some Gospel is more Gospel than others. How can anyone know which is which --- without human interpretation? Enjoyby our ability to understand Rebel American Zen Deist ... to learn ... to think ... to live ... to laugh ... to share. Join the effort to solve medical problems, AIDS/HIV, Cancer and more with Team EvC! (click)
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jar Member (Idle past 394 days) Posts: 34026 From: Texas!! Joined: |
Just like all Gospel is Gospel but some Gospel is more Gospel than other Gospel some folk are in more communion with the Holy Ghost than others who are in communion with the Holy Ghost.
Anyone so limited that they can only spell a word one way is severely handicapped!
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Dawn Bertot Member Posts: 3571 Joined:
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How can anyone know which is which --- without human interpretation? Enjoy While Jar's last post makes no sense as usual, I will try and provide you with a simple answer to your query, Zen Deist 2000 years from now if things were lost, people then, might debate the validity of a quote as to wheather it should be attributed to Shelly or Keats. But at this time we are confident because we have the original sources and can confirm the reliabilty and to which writer a statement should be attributed Here is an illustration. In an effort to discredit the long ending of Mark, Modern day "Scholars" will complain that it is not a part of the oldest manuscripts we have knowledge of However, several of the ancient witnesses refer to or directly quote the long ending. Making it a mute point as to whether it is in the oldest manuscripts thier quotes preceed the formation of those manuscripts It is very concivable that Irenaeus and others before him had access to the original writings that were confirmed by miracles Next is the biased theory. that the early Christians excluded things becuse of........ Which makes no sense if they did not know what was original, to be biased about You cant be biased if there is no Standard to be biased about. the earliest Christians were familiar, not only with the Apostles, but thier writings as well. Paul said once in defense of his Apostleship, "Remember I come not only in word, but in power and DENONSTRATION of the Holy Spirit" When a phony came along, it was immediately recognized as irrelevant, as would someone today claiming to be Stephen King and then claiming to have writings from someone that is not actually him, would be immediately recognized as phony While, 5000 years from, now they may need to go through the same rational process we do now, to actually determine wheather something is from King or not. thats assuming anyone gives a Rats behind about King in 5000 years These are the first two steps to know what is to be believed, not believed or accepted Dawn Bertot Edited by Dawn Bertot, : No reason given.
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Rahvin Member Posts: 4032 Joined: Member Rating: 9.2
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All Gospel is Gospel but some Gospel is more Gospel than others. How can anyone know which is which --- without human interpretation? Allow me to translate:
quote: I think that quite handily sums it up. Or, if I were to be more polite about it:
quote: Or, if I wanted to mimic Phat and try to sound profound over nonsense:
quote: I think I like the "bullshit" version the best. The human understanding when it has once adopted an opinion (either as being the received opinion or as being agreeable to itself) draws all things else to support and agree with it. - Francis Bacon "There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old's life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs." - John Rogers A world that can be explained even with bad reasons is a familiar world. But, on the other hand, in a universe suddenly divested of illusions and lights, man feels an alien, a stranger. His exile is without remedy since he is deprived of the memory of a lost home or the hope of a promised land. This divorce between man and his life, the actor and his setting, is properly the feeling of absurdity. — Albert Camus "...the pious hope that by combining numerous little turds of variously tainted data, one can obtain a valuable result; but in fact, the outcome is merely a larger than average pile of shit." - Barash, David 1995... "Many that live deserve death. And some die that deserve life. Can you give it to them? Then be not too eager to deal out death in the name of justice, fearing for your own safety. Even the wise cannot see all ends." - Gandalf, J. R. R. Tolkien: The Lord Of the Rings
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Dawn Bertot Member Posts: 3571 Joined: |
have you abandoned your challenge
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RAZD Member (Idle past 1405 days) Posts: 20714 From: the other end of the sidewalk Joined: |
Allow me to translate: Allow me to translate:
Allow me to interpret ... ... without actually answering the question, but rather dismissing it. Enjoyby our ability to understand Rebel American Zen Deist ... to learn ... to think ... to live ... to laugh ... to share. Join the effort to solve medical problems, AIDS/HIV, Cancer and more with Team EvC! (click)
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RAZD Member (Idle past 1405 days) Posts: 20714 From: the other end of the sidewalk Joined: |
2000 years from now if things were lost, people then, might debate the validity of a quote as to wheather it should be attributed to Shelly or Keats. But that is not the issue, the issue is that now more documents have been found:
Message 1:
quote: Enjoyby our ability to understand Rebel American Zen Deist ... to learn ... to think ... to live ... to laugh ... to share. Join the effort to solve medical problems, AIDS/HIV, Cancer and more with Team EvC! (click)
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Rahvin Member Posts: 4032 Joined: Member Rating: 9.2
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... without actually answering the question, but rather dismissing it. The question was "how do we tell what is Gospel and what is even more Gospel." Or, since it would be better to quote directly:
quote: How can anyone know which is which --- without human interpretation? "How, without interpretation, can we differentiate "Gospel" from "more Gospel" from within the set of "Gospel."" The entire question is nonsense. The definition of "Gospel" is:
quote: 1+2+3 are essentially the same thing; the question posed would then be "Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John are all Gospel, but some are more Gospel than others; how, without human interpretation, are we to tell the difference?" If we use definition 4 or 5 (again, basically the same thing), we can either combine it with the above to get "Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John are all true and implicitly believed, but some are more true and implicitly believed than others; how, without human interpretation, are we to tell the difference?" Or, we can exclusively use 4/5, we get "Truth is all true, but some truth is more True than others; how, without human interpretation, are we to tell the difference?" Which, I'll note, was almost precisely one of the options I provided in my "translation" response. The second option here is the one that makes the most "sense" as a question - that is, it invokes the smallest amount of undefined or "fuzzy" terms like "Gospel" and "Truth." The other options all expound upon the great mystery of the "Gospel" without actually trying to find any answers - they, in effect, are worshiping a sacred mystery, which is altogether the wrong response to a mysterious question. So, let's go with the second option: "Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John (and perhaps other books that may be identified as "Gospel") are all true and implicitly believed, but some are more true and implicitly believed than others; how, without human interpretation, are we to tell the difference?" This isn't much better than the other options, really. The question only makes sense if you use a "fuzzy" definition of "true," that is, not pertaining to actual accuracy in the real world, but rather containing some deep subjective "meaning" that holds no objective relevance. This is supported by the fact that "Gospel truth" typically refers to that which is "implicitly believed," as in the definition - it is an article of faith, in other words, and is not affected by real-world accuracy. What's basically being said, simply by posing the question, is that some form of prioritization must be done to reconcile what is identified as "Gospel," and yet that prioritization will not be determined by "human interpretation" or indeed even tests for accuracy against objective reality. Regardless of this prioritization, all of that which is identified as "Gospel" is to be implicitly believed - it is true because it is "Gospel" (and I strongly suspect that the identification of a text as "Gospel" would be some variation of "it is Gospel because it is true." As nobody has actually made that claim as yet, I'll refrain from the obvious accusations of circular reasoning and stick to analysis of the question posed). "Truth" can have two meanings - it can refer to factual accuracy, or it can refer to an emotional significance that has no relationship with external reality. For instance, I can say that "the Theory of Evolution is true," and what I'm actually saying is that the Theory of Evolution has demonstrated great accuracy when tested against real-world evidence. Or, I can say "Love is one of the great truths of human life," whereby what I am really saying is simply that "Love is good," or at least "it is good to believe in love." Note that such a statement has nothing whatsoever to do with the factual, objective basis for the emotion "love;" the statement would not be changed regardless of any findings in neuroscience or psychiatry regarding the objective nature of "love." It is the latter, "fuzzy" meaning that is implied by the question, and indeed jar's typical posting style, intended to sound wise and perhaps slightly cryptic and full of hidden meaning - a style quite akin to (and perhaps more successful than) that of Phat. But you can see from the terms used and the question posed that you're actually talking about some form of wishy-washy fuzzy nonsense. You're navel-gazing. You're identifying a mystery, a subject of curiosity - and rather than attempting to devise actual tests that might help you determine which (is any) "Gospel" has a factual basis in reality, instead of trying to determine which of several possible world you actually live in, you're resorting to a higher abstraction level through a recursive statement that essentially boils down to nonsense. quote: How can anyone know which is which --- without human interpretation? My simple word replacement may have been personally distasteful to you, RAZD, but it was a genuine analysis of the question posed. Perhaps you'll find this more verbose answer more to your liking - I suspect not. But the relevant fact is not that the question was dismissed. The important factor is why it was dismissed; and the answer to that question is easy indeed. The question is nonsensical. You are, in effect, asking the wrong question, unless you for some reason feel a need to continue with the trend of defective reasoning and find yet more reasons to be impressed by your own ignorance, instead of using that feeling of mystery and curiosity as a prompt to investigate and find an answer. Edited by Rahvin, : No reason given.The human understanding when it has once adopted an opinion (either as being the received opinion or as being agreeable to itself) draws all things else to support and agree with it. - Francis Bacon "There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old's life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs." - John Rogers A world that can be explained even with bad reasons is a familiar world. But, on the other hand, in a universe suddenly divested of illusions and lights, man feels an alien, a stranger. His exile is without remedy since he is deprived of the memory of a lost home or the hope of a promised land. This divorce between man and his life, the actor and his setting, is properly the feeling of absurdity. — Albert Camus "...the pious hope that by combining numerous little turds of variously tainted data, one can obtain a valuable result; but in fact, the outcome is merely a larger than average pile of shit." - Barash, David 1995... "Many that live deserve death. And some die that deserve life. Can you give it to them? Then be not too eager to deal out death in the name of justice, fearing for your own safety. Even the wise cannot see all ends." - Gandalf, J. R. R. Tolkien: The Lord Of the Rings
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RAZD Member (Idle past 1405 days) Posts: 20714 From: the other end of the sidewalk Joined: |
Hi Rahvin,
My simple word replacement may have been personally distasteful to you, RAZD, but it was a genuine analysis of the question posed. Perhaps you'll find this more verbose answer more to your liking - I suspect not. Curiously this doesn't do anything but amuse me. Personally I can see no answer other than simply that human interpretation is necessarily involved. This then questions the old gospel as being human interpretations as well. Dawn went into a long harangue about how previous people would have interpreted these new gospels, and essentially said that as they had rejected them as hoaxes that we must as well. This then leads to the question of then rejecting old gospel that is otherwise confirmed by new gospel -- or is the rejection selective (cherry picking) or interpreted? Enjoy Edited by RAZD, : ...by our ability to understand Rebel American Zen Deist ... to learn ... to think ... to live ... to laugh ... to share. Join the effort to solve medical problems, AIDS/HIV, Cancer and more with Team EvC! (click)
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Rahvin Member Posts: 4032 Joined: Member Rating: 9.2 |
Personally I can see no answer other than simply that human interpretation is necessarily involved. The alternative is so absurd as to be unworthy of consideration. Every time you read or even hear words, human interpretation is happening. Without human interpretation, symbolic language is nothing but sounds in the air or marks on a page. Even our understanding of our own direct sensory input is interpreted by our human brains. We don;t actually see the keyboard on our desks; our brain recognizes the pattern of a keyboard when the visual cortex processes data from the optic nerve which was stimulated by retinal cells that were int turn stimulated by a small fraction of the photons that entered our eyes. That chain of events contains multiple levels of human interpretation - from the fact that the retina is in effect filtering out such data as the entirety of the infrared or x-ray spectra, to the fact that the visual cortex processes the image, to the pattern-recognition in the neo-cortex that attaches the symbolic label "keyboard" to the recognized pattern. It's trivially easy to find examples of interpretation errors, from hallucinations to simple mistaken images ("I thought that was an "e"" or "I could have sworn I saw a man out of the corner of my eye"). And that's just the simple subset of visual phenomenon. It is fundamentally impossible to remove "human interpretation" from any aspect of human experience.
This then questions the old gospel as being human interpretations as well. In which sense? In the observations that were captured (or made up) and written down (and translated and added to and subtracted from)? The observations, the inferences from those observations, the translating of those observations and inferences into symbolic written language, the reading of the resulting texts, and the translation and rereading and re-translation and so on are each cases of human interpretation. So is the identification of a text as a "gospel." A "gospel" is a human invention, a word used to describe an abstract idea, a label applied to some objects but not others. Every time we apply a label we are using human interpretation to identify the object as appropriate for that label...whether we're determining whether a given text is a "gospel" or we're simply interpreting visual input and identifying a discrete subset of the total image as a "keyboard."
Dawn went into a long harangue about how previous people would have interpreted these new gospels, and essentially said that as they had rejected them as hoaxes that we must as well. And that's a blatant appeal to authority, so you shouldn't bother listening to such an argument when it's trivially shown to be logically fallacious. Now, if Dawn were to show the reasoning those previous people used to classify some texts as "gospel" and some not, we would be able to examine those arguments on their own merits. But "other people said so" by itself is no reason to do anything at all.
This then leads to the question of then rejecting old gospel that is otherwise confirmed by new gospel -- or is the rejection selective (cherry picking) or interpreted? Neither. You're still asking the wrong questions. Any candidate "gospel" is a text containing various claims. What's important is not at all whether each "gospel" candidate is consistent with others or even accepted "gospel;" after all, the Harry Potter novels are all consistent with each other, and are also consistent with accepted facts like WWII and the Blitz. What's important is whether or not each "gospel" candidate makes testable predictions. Every testable claim can be tested and verified. When you notice that you are confused or curious, the correct response is to analyze the source of that confusion and curiosity, generate hypotheses, and test each to see which one most accurately describes the world you actually live in. What you (and others, extant and historical) are doing is simply trying to establish which books are canon - in exactly the same way that some aficionados of fiction establish a hierarchy of canon within their favored fictional universe. You're comparing maps to other maps, imagining that the most consistent maps should match to some real territory, and suggesting that the most consistent maps are the best. But what you should be doing is looking at the territory, and selecting whichever maps most closely emulate it. Because every last one of the most consistent maps could correspond to no actual territory at all. Every last "gospel" could be consistent with every other "gospel," and yet still be works of absolute (or partial) fiction.The human understanding when it has once adopted an opinion (either as being the received opinion or as being agreeable to itself) draws all things else to support and agree with it. - Francis Bacon "There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old's life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs." - John Rogers A world that can be explained even with bad reasons is a familiar world. But, on the other hand, in a universe suddenly divested of illusions and lights, man feels an alien, a stranger. His exile is without remedy since he is deprived of the memory of a lost home or the hope of a promised land. This divorce between man and his life, the actor and his setting, is properly the feeling of absurdity. — Albert Camus "...the pious hope that by combining numerous little turds of variously tainted data, one can obtain a valuable result; but in fact, the outcome is merely a larger than average pile of shit." - Barash, David 1995... "Many that live deserve death. And some die that deserve life. Can you give it to them? Then be not too eager to deal out death in the name of justice, fearing for your own safety. Even the wise cannot see all ends." - Gandalf, J. R. R. Tolkien: The Lord Of the Rings
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Dawn Bertot Member Posts: 3571 Joined: |
But that is not the issue, the issue is that now more documents have been found: You intial concern should be why should we abandon the very elabrate and historical process, that brought the veracity, to the books that have now stood the test of time. Your ignoring painstaking processes and research that has stood the test of time. sure there were other writings and Im sure there will be even more discovered, but none that will undo the standards that produced the now accepted canon without repeating my earlier points maybe you could review them first, before simply reminding me that there were other writings An illustration would be that that I have already presented. Im sure 3000 years from now people will dig up things that claim to be from this writer or that writer, but with just a little research, they will be able to see that such is not the case they will be able to see that the people 3000 years ealier did not attribute those writings to SAID author Its really, rather a simple process that makes spurious writings spurious or objectionable at best
As these documents have been translated and studied by scholars, it has become clear that many of them belong to the very heart of Christian beginnings. ... Again, no problem here. Im sure there were thousands of non-apostolic writings that were benificial and useful in those times. But the people closest to the Apostles and earliest church fathers would have a better perspective to decide which were considered inspired, or atleast from the hands of the Apostles themself It should greatly interest you that most of the spurious gospels once read, dont even sound similar in content or they appear nonsensical in content The bottom line is that the earliest associated people would be in a much better situation to decide acceptability than we are. that is unless you are ready to introduce the 'biased' perspective But i think I have pretty much eliminated that as any serious consideration Here is another illustration nonetheless. Imagine someone today trying to pass off an alternate version of the declaration of independence. While it might still exist in some form somewhere, no one would take it seriously So what if someone 3000 years from now dug it up, we know now, as would they with a little research, balserdash Dawn Bertot Edited by Dawn Bertot, : No reason given. Edited by Dawn Bertot, : No reason given. Edited by Dawn Bertot, : No reason given. Edited by Dawn Bertot, : No reason given.
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