Resurrection of Jesus

Discussion in 'Religion Archives' started by hotstud87, Apr 30, 2003.

  1. ConsequentAtheist Registered Senior Member

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    That pretty much sums it up ...
     
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  3. Kant we all... Registered Senior Member

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    Hold on? I thought that that sort of thing didn't matter on sciforums.com... What happened? I thought that ignorance of religion and of scripture was better than a working knowledge of it? Because up until this moment, no one has ever made me believe otherwise.
     
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  5. Kant we all... Registered Senior Member

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    Sure. Many people in the age of science and reason can fabricate thousands of high-minded stories about other worlds and fantastic happenings. Why?--probably because a lot of it is based on experience; e.g., other sci-fi novels, the advances in space travel, superstitions about aliens and life on other planets, &c. Nevertheless, where did Christianity emerge: twentieth century America, or 1st century Galilee?--in scientific times, or primitive times?

    Actually, if you'll just "read your bible" like a lot of these people keep telling me here, you'll find that the original 12 apostles were probably some of the most unsuperstitious, skeptical people around. We're not talking about Greeks or Romans here; Jews are realistic, because they have to be; they're serious as they are because they've been put through so much; it's the same scenario as how people who go through near-death experiences tend to take life more seriously than people who "have it made and don't know it."
     
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  7. one_raven God is a Chinese Whisper Valued Senior Member

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    It does if you are trying to base your arguments on what the Bible did or did not say or mean.

    I have never read "War and Peace".
    That doesn't mean that I can't have an intelligent discussion with someone about literature, but it DOES mean that I can't speak of the book and what virtues, values and short-comings it has as if I am an authority on the book.

    You didn't answer, however.
    Should I take that as a "No"?
     
  8. Kant we all... Registered Senior Member

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    Actually, the only time I ever made use of anything which needed biblical support were two times--who was there at the tomb and what they saw, and the 12 skeptics we know as the apostles. Nevertheless, a not-very-working-knowledge need be known of the Scriptures to know those things; among Christians, they are "general facts", "common knowledge", and what have you.
     
  9. one_raven God is a Chinese Whisper Valued Senior Member

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    I disagree.

    I prefer not to go by general consensus and second hand accounts.
    Especially with something as WIDE open to interpertation and speculation as the Bible is.

    But, hey.
    Whatever works for you.
     
  10. Kant we all... Registered Senior Member

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    This, however, raises the potentiality for, perhaps, the greatest mistake ever: Is there, in fact, not any one specific way to interpret the Bible? Cannot the way in which one interprets the Bible be wrong ?
     
  11. Don Corleone Registered Member

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    Are you trying to imply that your so-called "religion" isn't merely a subjective experience?
     
  12. Kant we all... Registered Senior Member

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    Yes, indeed, I am. It may be one thing to accept religious experience only on a subjective basis; and then it may be true that some reject religious experience simply because it is subjective, and one should not pay any attention to it unless it happens to them personally. However, take an example: it is supposedly a "relative" or "subjective" law that there is gravity on the earth and little or none in space. But, "that there is gravity on the earth and little or none in space"--that is an objective truth about a relative truth. Similarly, the fact that there is a subjective experience somewhere with someone is objective evidence of religious experience.
     
  13. Don Corleone Registered Member

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    Oh. Right. Good show, Kant. Never thought of it that way. I shall rethink the matter. Many thanks. You have a gift, old boy.
     
  14. one_raven God is a Chinese Whisper Valued Senior Member

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    If you haven't read it you CAN'T interpret it for yourself for it to even BE right or wrong.
    So, in this situation, isn't the question moot?

    As for interpreting the Bible.
    Yes, it CAN be wrong.
    If it is not what the writer intended, then the idea the interpreter has is simply wrong.
    Even if you completely ignore all the mistakes, and intentionally incorrect translations over the years...
    The difficulty there is the no one KNOWS what the writers of the different canonized books intended.
    Besides that, the chirch decided what books should and should not be cononized, so even if, by sheer coincidence, what you interpreted is actually what the writers intended, you aren't getting the whole story anyway.

    So no one can be the final authority on what is right and what is wrong, although there IS a right and wrong.

    I think the best approach is to create your OWN philosophy based on what you have learned from others, what you "feel" is right and, most importantly, what you have learned from experience.
     
  15. one_raven God is a Chinese Whisper Valued Senior Member

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    I have no idea what you are saying here.
    Mind rewording it?
     
  16. Don Corleone Registered Member

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    I have to back up Kant on this one. You are quite right, Raven, in your assessment of the situation. Nevertheless, as long as one creates one's own philosophy--disregarding truth for the sake of comfort perhaps--there is never any room for growth, no grounds for progressing in the right direction, etc. Just as Scripture should be interpreted correctly, so should one strive for not the most "feel-good" or "comfortable" philosophy: but for the Proper Philosophy.
     
  17. one_raven God is a Chinese Whisper Valued Senior Member

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    You misunderstood.
    Or perhaps I wasn't clear enough.

    What is most important for me is truth.
    That is all that really matters at all to me.
    I think, however, that no one has found it (or at least shared it with ME yet) so it can't be found in one place.

    You aslo have to keep in mind that tehre are some things that you will likely never find the "truth" to - finding some "universal truth" is unlikely at best.
    So, you have to constantly asses what you know and what has changed (not in the world, but in you... such as gaining knowledge of something you haven't known before, or acquiring wisdom).
    Which is why I said that the most important thing is what you have learned by your own experience.

    One of the reasons I don't like organized religions on the whole is that there is someone telling you, "This is the way it is!"
    I think that is something that you have to find for yourself to truly mean anything at all.
    And to limit yourself to ONE source (be it a book, a religion, a guru, whatever) is not the way to find truth.
    Especially if it is a book whose meaning has been contorted and lost over the years and no one really knows exactly what it meant to begin with, nevermind if it were true or not.

    It is striving for truth that turns me AWAY from the bible.
     
  18. Don Corleone Registered Member

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    That is probably because you are getting your interpretations from the wrong sources. Catholicism, for one thing, is an intellectual pursuit. But there is a difference between "reasoning" and "right reasoning." The majority of Christian doctrine is based on "right reasoning."

    A sort of Platonist argument by Saint Augustine put forth by a contemporary philosopher as one of the arguments for the existence of God went something like this, though I am not sure whether it is relevant to the issue at hand:--

    1) Our limited minds can discover eternal truths about being.
    2) Truth properly resides in a mind.
    3) But the human mind is not eternal.
    4) Therefore there must exist an eternal mind in which these truths reside.
     
  19. MacM Registered Senior Member

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    Are Books Complete?

    Kant We All,

    I am not an atheist. I am a Deist. I suspect you have never read (probably never heard of) "The Lost Books of The Bible".

    They are interesting. For one your Bible talks about Jesus as a child and then as Jesus Christ, The Son of GOD.

    Have you not ever wondered why your Bible doesn't talk about him growing up and him as an adolescent?

    Well the Lost Books do. He was a smart mouth punk that killed several playmates and one of his teachers because the teacher attempted to discipline him for back talking.

    Since they saw fit to extract these book when they compiled his story how many other facts may have been edited or altered?

    YOu just might have a problem finding a copy of the Lost Books.

    The copy I came across apparently lost or misplaced by a theologin was marked "Not for Public Distribution". It seems it is available to those that are trusted to advance the idea that Jesus was some super clean fellow always loving, etc., etc., but parishners are kept from the whole story.

    If it is good - It is Gods work; if it is bad - Its the Devils work

    Kinda handy the way that works. EXCEPT IF GOD MADE EVERTYTHING AND IS ALL KNOWING, HE ALSO MADE THE DEVIL AND KNEW BEFORE HAND WHAT HE WAS DOING SO EVIL IS ALSO GODS WORK.

    Personally I give all of it a - 10 on a 0 to 10 scale of credabilitiy.
     
    Last edited: Jun 17, 2003
  20. one_raven God is a Chinese Whisper Valued Senior Member

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    13,433
    There are (can't remember the exact number) something like 45 religions (including the differing flavors of Christianity, of course) all based on the Bible.
    Not to mention the widely varying countless personal interpretations.

    I don't understand why anyone would simply take one of these religions that seem to have it right without looking at everything else (unless, of course, they don't care because finding the truth about it is not a priority in their lives).

    By accepting something as truth without learning, not only about all the other religions and philosophies, plus attaching what you have learned in personal experience throughout life, THAT is going for the "feel good" or "comfortable" philosophy.
    How could anyone have unshakable faith in something if they haven't completely researched it (including external sources and historical data) and completely researched opposing opinions?

    By refusing to do that I can only come to the conclusion that:
    a.) The person is just accepting what they were taught
    b.) The person has found some feel-good justification for following that religion (such as Jesus forgiving your past sins)
    c.) It is not really important to the person, so they don't want to dedicate time and energy researching alternatives
    d.) The person is closed minded and simple
    e.) The person simply fears that what they find easiest to digest and deal with may not be true, so they don't WANT to know what the alternatives are
    f.) Some or all of the above
     
  21. ConsequentAtheist Registered Senior Member

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    Re: Are Books Complete?

    Well, if you say so ...

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  22. MacM Registered Senior Member

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    What the Problem

    ConsequentAtheist,



    ANS: You are spreading your opinion around. What is your complaint about mine? I have generally agreed with your posts and I find your response here unwarranted.

    Just curious.
     
  23. SnakeLord snakeystew.com Valued Senior Member

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    Firstly, there are many instances of writers who were 'way before their time'. Jules Verne, to name but one example, had imagination that stemmed far off into the future. Imagination has no boundary, it can do as it pleases.

    But.. for a second let's agree that a lot of what is written is based upon experience. Let's also agree, as you said, that the people in question were a primitive people.

    How would a primitive person explain the sun dissapearing at night? How would primitive man explain earthquakes, lightning, aurora borealis, snow, and so on and so forth. They would write what they experience with extremely limited, if not non existant, scientific facts concerning that which they write about.

    Furthermore we add to that the overwhelming evidence suggesting a large portion of the bible is but a mere translation of much older texts, (Sumerian writing), written roughly 1,500 years before the bible and you can imagine the amount of errors, addons, translation problems, more modern influences etc etc.

    Furthermore it would seem apparent that most of what is written is about the past. The lives of adam and eve would only be known by adam and eve. Anyone centuries later who writes about them wouldn't have all the facts, but would be working on supposition and guesswork. Think it gets any better over a gap of 2000+ years, or hell, even 6000+ years?

    We can take a quick look at how story, superstition, belief travels throughout time- how it changes, morphs and develops into something quite different to that which the author, or the beginning story intended:

    Do you, or does anyone you know, cross their fingers ever when wanting good luck? This superstition has changed and developed over centuries- started off by christians. Does anyone really think crossing of fingers brings good luck? And yet here we are- a modern day scientific people where the most skeptical of us will still at times cross our fingers. The point is, originally crossing of the fingers had nothing to do with getting luck- However, as the years progress everything changes.

    When i was at school my teacher told us to take a poem home and write what the author meant in that poem. I handed in a blank piece of paper, with my name signed on the bottom. The teacher looked at me and asked why it was blank:

    "I can tell you what that poem means to me. I can tell you how it makes me feel, what i gain from reading it, and what i image when doing so... However!... The only person who can accurately know what was originally meant in that writing is the author."

    The poem had been written perhaps 10 years earlier and yet i was in no position to even claim i could tell anyone what the author was actually referring to. You think you can over several thousand years?

    Ok, if he had written:

    "The large yellow ball of fire cast heat upon the world, making the flowers grow, and the animals thrive."

    I could suggest he's writing about the sun. However- if this same author had have been born 2000+ years ago, how would he describe that very same thing? Who's to say? Your priest, you, your mother?

    It has been oooh 12 years or so since i saw that poem in my school. I could sit here now and attempt to tell you that poem. I guarantee you however that it wont be anything like the original. hell, this is just over a space of 12 years and i can't remember the damn thing well enough to put it here for you, but i do remember the basics of it and im sure, with a little bit of messing about, i could give you it's basic idea. I'd hate to try that after a gap of more than a millennium. If you think you could, you're more of a man than i am.

    How do you draw that conclusion? As shown above you're working merely by your own, (or more likely your priests), version of a story written so long ago none of us can claim the right to having the facts. Having said that it remains sad, and frankly bloody rude to your brain to deny it the right to find facts. Your parents or priests tell you what is true and you lap it up like it's chocolate milk. You never stop to find out what the ingredients are. A lot of us can't just accept something without any proof, and yet to some of you it's the easiest thing in the world. You're easily pleased and i guess thats fine, but some of us find it insulting. I often ask myself why people would just accept something for no apparent reason- then it dawns on me that you guys have the offer of eternal life in heaven- ah what a way to get someones undivided attention. Shit, i'm a mortal- and eventually i'm gonna go the way of the dodo, but WAIT! what's this here? Eternal life? holy shitz0r what must i do? Nothing, aside from believe in an ancient dead jewish person? Holy shmoly this is easier than i thought! I'm saved!

    Pffft, it sickens me.

    Well in this specific instance biblical support is pretty pointless. The story is changed so many times and yet very few religious people actually see these blatant errors. 2 angels 2 people, 4 angels, 2 people 2 angels, 4 people? *yawn* etc etc Ha! Someone's having a laugh right?

    This shows clearly what happens when someone takes an old story and fucks about with it. Details and truth are lost and make way to supposition, imagination, and vague recollections.

    Did judas hang himself or fall over and spill his guts?
    Was jesus hung at the 3rd hour? the 6th? the 9th? Who knows, who cares, right?

    Oh... so priest tells you, you tell your kids who tell their friends, they tell their kids etc etc etc? So nobody actually needs to look at what is written- instead just accept it as truth because their mummy said so? The Hindus down the road told me you christians wouldnt know the truth if it got up and slapped you in the head.. To them that's "general fact" and "common knowledge". Does that make it right? I guess so.
     

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