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Manchu wrote:John and Gwar! seem to have backed out upon being politely asked to expand their positions if it seemed worth their effort.

With people starting to get defensive and touchy because it's their one true religion (tm), there's nothing for me to say here.

Per my previous posts, I leave you to your fun here. AND I WON"T BE BACK, SO KEEP ME OUT OF THIS.

Yes, people get touchy but there is still the possibility of discussion once people cool down and expand their comments from offended reactions into cogent arguments.

Manchu wrote: I simply would ask (again) that someone who believes Pastafarianism is as legitimate a religion as Christianity explain why they think so.

Can do!

All religion bases itself on a few (simplified) premises.
1. Our document is specially delivered. - Some conduit delivers information from the unconfirmable to an author or group of authors.
2. Our document is correct. - often confirmed within the body of the document.
3. Believers will be rewarded, non believers will not. - degree of reward is less important than the reward.

This pattern of premises relies on sophistry rather than observation or confirmation.
Deity of choice provided this information to X. Since no sort of logging or experimentation can be performed this is difficult at best to confirm.
The veracity of the document can be confirmed only through the document or its purveyors who are inherently biased despite being nice people. The promise of reward provides an incentive to affirm the first and second premises.

FSM pastaed...sent to KY...Ramen.
God created...Jesus stated...reward in heaven.
Allah created...Mohammad stated...reward in heaven.
Xenu bombed...Hubbard stated...Operating thetan superpowers.

The argument that a book is old, or handed down through some tradition does not inherently confirm its veracity. That a very nice/bombastic/well thought of/moving speaker delivers this message also has no impact on truth. The promise of reward also doesn't confirm truth any more than internal consistency or lack thereof. An external source cannot be used to confirm these assertions.

This same pattern of thinking is confirmed effective through the Milgram and Stanford Prison Experiments. Its self reinforcing and prone to abuse.

Oldgrue wrote:1. Our document is specially delivered. - Some conduit delivers information from the unconfirmable to an author or group of authors.

The Gospels are four different (and widely varying) accounts of the same events. The source is not any more "unconfirmable" than a newspaper article from a century ago.

2. Our document is correct. - often confirmed within the body of the document.

The documents in the case of Christianity came after the faith communities--or Church. In any case, the point you make here is not unique to religion. Anyone who holds any kind of opinion about anything believes that they are correct.

3. Believers will be rewarded, non believers will not. - degree of reward is less important than the reward.

Christianity (from a Catholic perspective at least) does not hold that nonbelievers will be punished for their nonbelief.

Oldgrue wrote:This same pattern of thinking is confirmed effective through the Milgram and Stanford Prison Experiments. Its self reinforcing and prone to abuse.

Your continued mention of these experiments does not seem to elucidate any point that you have made.

Relapse wrote:

Ironhide wrote:A person cannot be saved by a someone who has not even been born. Or are you trying to say that the "saving grace of Jesus Christ" is retroactive, when it depends on a person to believe in said individual? If Enoch or Elijah never met Christ until after the fact they went to heaven, then they were not saved by Jesus' grace. Hence, Enoch and Elijah went to heaven without the benefit of Jesus' saving grace.

By your meaning, if I take it correctly, people that died before Jesus, have no chance at Heaven or Salvation. I have to disagree here from what I've been taught. An all loving God is not going to bar someone from his presence based on when they were born. I've been taught that all will get an equal chance at Salvation.

What I was trying to imply was that there was a different system in place before Jesus was born, and that those who died and went to heaven prior to Jesus's birth, did so without Jesus' saving grace.

Manchu wrote:@Ironhide: The Church was around before any book of the New Testament. "What the Bible says" is not as clear as you seem to think. When you claim that the Bible says a certain thing what you are doing is presenting your interpretation of the Bible. I avoid this by relying on the tradition of the Church. Additionally, you will find that Maosaic law was not a system of rules by which people got into heaven. The ancient Jews did not have this concept of an afterlife, as we can learn from historical-critical analysis of the Old Testament books themselves.

Those church traditions in the old testament are thousands of years old and have changed since then. Even the bible has changed since then. The church and world leaders throughout history have seen to that. Every clergyman on this planet who preaches is talking about their interpretation of the bible. Enoch and Elijah could not have had Jesus' saving grace to get into heaven. Jesus would have needed to have been present to give it, and they would have needed to have known Christ to accept it. The could have accepted it after the fact, I guess. Upon meeting Jesus in heaven. And if Jesus' saving grace is eternal, it is eternal from that point in time it was given, and can only move forward. It can't go backwards in time. Not even god can do that, if he could, he would have rectified the whole garden of Eden debacle. Of course that would have rendered everything that happened after that moot.

@Ironides: "Eternal" means outside of time, atemporal. The statement "eternal from some point" therefore does not mean anything. Additionally, there are certainly many interpretations of the Bible. But there is only one Tradition of the Church.

1.

Manchu wrote:The Gospels are four different (and widely varying) accounts of the same events. The source is not any more "unconfirmable" than a newspaper article from a century ago.

So we can attribute historical correlation to a child being born to Mary and Joseph by the matching accounts. Indeed if we hold to the principle of virgin birth we return to hearsay. Consider for a moment the gaps in timelines for the gospels - gaps such as these would have to be questioned in a historical account. The Gospels are also contained within a book rife with editorial input and inspirational writing. Reader's Digest and The New Yorker tend to have similar contents as well.

Any four people can write generally matching accounts of an event. Nikos Kazantzakis even goes so far as to humanize the main character thereby making them more approachable. Multiple accounts only verify events, not divine origins.

2.

In any case, the point you make here is not unique to religion. Anyone who holds any kind of opinion about anything believes that they are correct.

But that doesn't make the self-reference verification. Uniqueness to religion is not relevant.

3.

Christianity (from a Catholic perspective at least) does not hold that nonbelievers will be punished for their nonbelief.

There is no reward for the non compliant. Lack of reward is not punishment.

Your continued mention of these experiments does not seem to elucidate any point that you have made.

Both of these experiments document the tendency of people to comply with a perceived source of authority especially as applied over time. Keep teaching the same data over time and it is likely to be accepted regardless of accuracy. When the reinforcement stops we can easily end up with Zeus, Odin, The Dagda, or Osiris.

edit: quotes fixed.

Oldgrue wrote:Consider for a moment the gaps in timelines for the gospels - gaps such as these would have to be questioned in a historical account.

They are. It is called historical criticism. (I've mentioned it quite often already.)

Multiple accounts only verify events, not divine origins.

The Gospels, unlike what is said of the Koran or (in a sense) the Book of Mormon, do not have a divine origin. (They are called divinely inspired, but that means something quite different.) We know where they came from historically. We do not pretend that they came down from a cloud or that God or an angel came down and told the Evangelists what to write.

Uniqueness to religion is not relevant.

I'd say your point is pretty irrelevant. People who have opinions believe they are correct. And?

There is no reward for the non compliant.

Wrong yet again. This is why I would suggest you learn about a thing before going on and on about it.

Keep teaching the same data over time and it is likely to be accepted regardless of accuracy.

That is actually not what either experiment is about.

Pastafraiansism or whatever you like to call it is not a religion merely trolling. We know where it comes from we know where its going.

Argument of attempting to attribute something not directly observed requires faith, but their is reasonable faith and there is ridiculous faith. after all this is why we have the concept of reasonable doubt. some people might have problems with certain religions, or all of them, but from the body of evidence there is reason to continue.

For this reason transparent frauds like Scientology deserve to be respected as religions. I will not respect their founder, but the worshipers have a right to be considered following their religious beliefs, we know where most scientologists come from. they join a serious church for serious ends, this doesn't require our faith in that church to validate it. Mockeries are different, we know they exist solely for that purpose, everyone does. If there were Mayan tablets that someone dug up of a sphagetti looking worm god that would be different.

Now like it or not following any major religion is a reasonable faith, Islam, Christianity, Judaism. we know where they came from. Spoof religions designed to mock are not, they casn simply be brushed aside. they are a reductio ad absurdem argument. The way though is just to ignore them, but for now I will go to the other solution and take reductio ad absurdem to its 'next level' - it is of course a never ending cycle.

To put it this way, perhaps a 'fair faith' is a belief in reincarnation with the caveat that those who rape and murder children are reincarnated as people who believe in the spagetti god. The universe is sick of those scum who are spirtitually unfit and wanting to point them out so they can be dealt with harshly thoughout their future reincarnations gives them this delusion as a punishment and warning to others.

The correct response under Universal Law it to restore balance by hunting down and inflicting as much pain as possible on Pastafarians until their guilt is assuaged over several generations.

Should this 'faith' be blindly 'respected'?

Manchu wrote:@Ironides: "Eternal" means outside of time, atemporal. The statement "eternal from some point" therefore does not mean anything. Additionally, there are certainly many interpretations of the Bible. But there is only one Tradition of the Church.

No, "eternal" means ageless. Continuing forever or indefinitely. Doesn't mean it can't have a start point.

No, eternal when used in a religious context means "timeless" not "infinite."

@Manchu,

The book of Mormon was written by prophets documenting God's dealings with the ancient American people.

@Relapse: The only actual historical evidence available about the Book of Mormon is that it was written sometime between 1823 - 1830. Everything else about it fits Oldgrue's point.

Same meaning Manchu. Still doesn't mean it can 't have a start point or a beginning.

@Ironside: No, it isn't. For something to begin there must have been a moment before it began, thn a moment in which it began, and finally a moment after it began. This is a timeline or chronology. Eternal means that there is no before, during, or after. There is no chronology.

If you were referring to eternal spirit I would agree with you. We are talking about an actual point in time were Jesus said that if you believe in me and ask to be saved, you will be. Now Jesus' statement can become eternal after he put it out there, but not before.

You are assuming that I think one is saved by accepting Jesus as one's savior. That is not what the Church teaches (and before you ask, I have no interest in trying to paraphrase it; it is extremely complicated; maybe try the term Justification on wikipedia) and so I do not see any problem with Enoch or Elijah "going to heaven" (which I do not take as literal, historical events in any case). I tried to explain by talking about the difference between history or temporality and eternity but that did not seem to help.

Edit: Actually, I just looked at it and the Wikipedia entry on the Catholic concept of Justification is pretty shabby as it only reflects the theology of Anselm and then is vague enough to not really answer the question you seem to be asking. Sorry.

I don't understand, how can you cite portions of the new testament as historical fact, but cannot believe the some things in the old testament did not happen? Do you see the bible as god's truth?

Different parts of the Bible were written not only at different times and in extremely different cultural and historical settings but also for different purposes. Psalms, for example, contains hymns or poetry about God meant to praise Him and describe Him in a literary sense. The Wisdom books, as another example, are stories that describe what it meant to be an Israelite after leaving Egypt and becoming a people. Those stories are like popular legends rather than history in the modern sense. The gospels, by contrast, are more like eye-witness acounts (although it is pretty settled that they are not) like newspaper articles. But they do not even factually agree with one another and contain many mistakes (the Gospel According To Luke, for example, gets the geography of the Holy Land wrong very often). Truth does not have to be literal. I do not believe that the Earth was literally made in six days. I do not believe that man was set on this earth in the same form that we exist in today. I also don't believe it is possible for Samson to have killed hundreds of soldiers singlehandedly armed with nothing but the jawbone of a donkey. I do believe that Jesus died and rose from the dead. See what I mean?

JohnHwangDD wrote:
Per my previous posts, I leave you to your fun here. AND I WON"T BE BACK, SO KEEP ME OUT OF THIS.

God answers prayer.

Okay, gotcha. I'm outta here for the rest of the night.

Let me jump in here regarding the "trustworthyness" of the Christian Bible. We hear this critisism all the time, "The Bible has had many additions/changes therefore it is not trustworthy. Or it is hearsay as Oldgrue is putting forth.

The concept of textual critisim is founded on sorting through as many ancient texts of a thing(In this case the Bible) and comparing these texts to each other to try and find out what the we think the original manuscripts were. It is true of course that we do not have any "original" manuscripts, only copies of the original. Also it needs to be remembered that the original gospels were written within 60 to 30 years of Christ. Another thing to remember when talking about textual critism is that the more copies you have, the easier it is to narrow down the errors. For example, if you compare 2,000 texts and you see 3 of them have something worded slightly different than the rest and you go with the 2,000.

Bruce Metzger of Princeton University makes the claim that our Bible, we have now, is probably 99.5% of what the originals were. Most of the errors (called variants)are mostly transcription errors such as spelling, errors in translating greek, and putting periods or apostrophies in different places. That leaves a small percentage of differences that we are left wondering about. Another fact, is that the small percentage does not affect any doctrine of orthodox Christianity, indeed it doesn't even really affect our minor difefrences between the denominations. Also if you own a New International Version or New American Standard verison, they actually have included notes in them, telling you what the .5% differencces, that are debated over, are so you can study it yourself. It's really not a big deal at all.

You also have quotes from the writings of Christians dating back to 2nd century AD. Iraneus has many quotes that can be cross checked against our Bible he was around 200 AD, and he was comfortable quoting these scriptures. Terttullian even said that they had the originals or extremely accurate copies of the originals and that was 220 AD

When it comes to the old testament, up until 1946 we relied on what was called the masoretic texts which dated back 1,000 years ago. In 1946 the dead sea scrolls were found in the Qumron area, and they were dated back to around 300 BCE to 50 AD. These dead sea scrolls matched almost identically to the masoretic texts(with very few transcription errors) which were written 1,000's of years later!

This is great confirmation that great care was taken when making copies of Biblical texts. So it's highly dubious of anyone to make a claim that somehow the Bible has been so corrupted that we can't know that what we have is what was originally what was written.

GG

Generally agree w/GG (except Gospels were written a bit later than he describes). Want to point out that Luther, following the Jews in their Masocretic Text (that GG mentions), cut out a series of texts that would have been available to the Church Fathers (including Saint Iranaeus) and even Christ Himself. These texts are not found in Protestant Bibles to this day except when they are included, usually in the back, as "apocrypha." They can, however, still be found in Catholic editions of the Bible.

Manchu wrote:Generally agree w/GG (except Gospels were written a bit later than he describes). Want to point out that Luther, following the Jews in their Masocretic Text (that GG mentions), cut out a series of texts that would have been available to the Church Fathers (including Saint Iranaeus) and even Christ Himself. These texts are not found in Protestant Bibles to this day except when they are included, usually in the back, as "apocrypha." They can, however, still be found in Catholic editions of the Bible.

This is true, and being a protestant, I don't know much about the apocrypha. What I have heard, is that they are good moral stories but not worthy of canon. But we can agree to disagree on this, I hope.

GG

edit..I did some digging.
Matthew is believed to have been written between 50 and 70 AD
Mark between 55 and 70 AD
Luke around 63 AD
John between 80 and 100 AD

They are not included in canon because the Reformers did not like that they could not be found in the Masocretic Texts and so believed that they were only in canon because of ecclesial authority (which, of course, they rejected!) but these texts, as I said, would have been one that Jesus read given that the Jews during His life used the Septuagint rather than the Masocretic Texts.

The Book of Judith is a personal favorite. I recommend that you give it a read. It's a beautiful story of a courageous woman who save Israel from an thousands strong army single-handedly.

Manchu wrote:@Relapse: The only actual historical evidence available about the Book of Mormon is that it was written sometime between 1823 - 1830. Everything else about it fits Oldgrue's point.

I can see where you come from in your statement, but it's a translation of texts from just before Jeruselum fell to the Babylonians to a few hundred years after Christ.

Relapse wrote:

Manchu wrote:@Relapse: The only actual historical evidence available about the Book of Mormon is that it was written sometime between 1823 - 1830. Everything else about it fits Oldgrue's point.

I can see where you come from in your statement, but it's a translation of texts from just before Jeruselum fell to the Babylonians to a few hundred years after Christ.

Yes, I know what Joseph Smith claimed about these texts. I also know that there is no historical evidence to support those claims. Orson Scott Card once wrote an interesting piece about it. If you're interested, it can be found here.

I'm having a bad night it seems.
I'm having a bad night for posting troubles.

The Gospels, unlike what is said of the Koran or (in a sense) the Book of Mormon, do not have a divine origin. (They are called divinely inspired, but that means something quite different.)

So 'divinely inspired' books written up to 70 years after the death of their subject (and that whole synoptic problem) are still more accurate and less fantastic than being delivered by an angel? What makes these 'divinely inspired' books any more valid given several of the authors are in question?

I'd say your point is pretty irrelevant. People who have opinions believe they are correct. And?

You have an opinion your religion is correct. I am proposing the possibility it is equally correct as another by demonstrating consistent behavior with beliefs that claim to be no less valid. If one self referential set of teachings might be correct why then are others wrong? Doctrines who all claim to be correct and have no third party method to confirm them.

In essence I'm wrong because one religion doesn't do any of these very general things in specific. Are the other ones still Wrong?

Of course, if truth doesn't have to be literal, it doesn't have to be confirmable and *all* religion could be right.




edit: significant user failure.










Automatically Appended Next Post:

Orlanth wrote:God answers prayer.

So does Joe Peschi. Arguably with the same frequency.

@Oldgrue: I shouldn't have to explain to you why a book being delivered by an angel is more fantastical than a book written from memory (of either events witnessed first hand or described to him by someone else). I'm having difficulty understanding the rest of your post.

Orlanth wrote:

JohnHwangDD wrote:
Per my previous posts, I leave you to your fun here. AND I WON"T BE BACK, SO KEEP ME OUT OF THIS.

God answers prayer.

Bugger off, mate.

Bloody hell, the sheer elitism and pride I'm picking up from your posts is truly sickening. Put a cap on it, eh?