RE: Bible study for beginners, fun quiz & continued discussion -- Atheist ~ Christian
Firstly, you presuppose that academics are unbiased.
Firstly... no I don't presuppose academics are unbiased. Everyone has bias.
Atheism can be just as much a totalitarian ideology. Think of the USSR, or Pol Pot, or Mao.
Wrong. Atheism is a lack of belief in gods. There's no ideology. I think you're confusing it with communism or religion.
You mention 1901 authorities on Christianity, who were imbedded with the scientific notion that one could be unbiased, hence historical criticism. Really historical criticism has been great for Bible research, but again, those early scholars are really out of date given our post modern understanding now of philosophy. No one is unbiased. Everyone has an agenda. You have an agenda. I have an agenda. We all do.
Yes, I agree. The scholars I listed though are contemporary.
So my question to you is this...why specifically are you questioning the Bible? Why not the Lotus Sutra? Why not the Koran? Why not the Vedas? Why specifically do you feel a need to discuss the Bible? Is Christianity the only belief system out there? What is your agenda?
I question all religions. Just so happens this discussion goes way back and the people involved were Christians. I think religion is a disease. My agenda... hmmm, I've not thought about that too much. Maybe it's to help people see through their brainwashing. I really don't know though and would feel like I was cheating by giving you a quick answer. I'd need to think more on that.
Secondly, Mark isn't the original source, a book that scholars refer to as the "Q" document is. This document was essentially used as the foundation of all the other gospels. With this in mind, the apparent transparencies within the gospels indicate multiple authors. No single author would purposefully make supposed errors. It'd be plain dumb...and if you think that perhaps a dumb writer wrote the gospels, really anyone who would take the time to write such a large amount in the first or second century CE...well, simply put you can't call them uneducated at least, given how little people wrote.
Not uneducated. Not at all. These were highly educated scholars of their time. They were greatly influenced by other mythologies preceding Christianity.
The Q document... some scholars argue that one as well. They think Mark was the originator. Some reckon Q didn't exist either, but I don't know enough about Q to comment at this stage. What do you know about it? It'd be interesting to explore that, if you want?
Thirdly, in Matthew there is no indication to the specific place Jesus was born, "After Jesus was born in Bethlehem..." The writer of Matthew didn't care about this detail. He wasn't a historian. The book of Matthew is centered around the Sermon on the Mount, on the message of Christ. Many, from the likes of Ghandi to Marin Luther King Jr., attest to the Sermon on the Mount as being one of the greatest religious statements known to humanity.
Matthew refers to 'Jesus of Nazareth'. There's lots to the story. He copied a lot of his gospel from Mark and went further, trying to make it appear as though OT prophesies were happening. His was thought to be a propagandist answer to Vespasian's propaganda at the time.
Nazareth is actually described as a "shithole". That whole little bit in the Bible about nothing good coming out of Nazareth. It actually gives validity to the Biblical text. Also, for years, people said Nazareth didn't exist, but now its been found, like they said King David never existed, until the Tel Dan inscription discovery some years back.
Archaeologists have found no evidence of a town or city being in Nazareth until at least 2 C.E. That's just the fact. There are plenty of biblical characters with dodgy genealogy and barely (if any) evidence they actually existed. Moses for example.
All of this is really pointless however. There's a great saying, "If you win someone over by argument, someone else will win them back."
That's a good saying. I agree. I'm not trying to win anyone over (although if people see the holes in their religion, I'm happy to have helped). I enjoy reading about religions and discussing it with people who know about it. It's how I enjoy myself.
Faith is faith. You have just as much faith in atheism, as someone else does in the teachings of Shinran, or the life of Jesus, or the prophecies of Muhammed. Believing in nothing is still believing in something.
We disagree here. I don't have 'faith' in atheism. I lack faith there's a god. Big difference. I don't believe in things. I have opinions based on the knowledge I acquire. This can and does change from time to time.
Thanks for the thoughts
Anj :)
In regards to faith, it's about words, how you define faith. You do believe, based upon whichever logical/philosophical point of reference, that certain things equate this and that. One cannot escape this. I equate belief and faith. We are but humans, and therefore are incapable of reasoning beyond a limited scope. Our rationalized selves are at the mercy of whichever thought process, at whichever belief system, we purport too. So, your lack of faith in a god, therefore becomes a sort of faith in your reasoning power to determine that there isn't a god. Everyone believes in something. I guess it's your aversion to the word faith that has a hook. But atheism, most certainly is a belief system. To disbelieve in something, such as with your webster online definition, one must believe in something else. There's a great quote from David Foster Wallace, the suicide post modern author, considered by some, to be the greatest author of the 1990's. It comes from his speech "This is Water." The whole thing is a great read if you get the time.
"If you're automatically sure that you know what reality is and who and what is really important-if you want to operate on your default-setting-then you, like me, will not consider possibilities that aren't pointless and annoying. But if you've really learned how to think, how to pay attention, then you will know you have other options. It will actually be within your power to experience a crowded, loud, slow, consumer hell-type situation as not only meaningful but sacred, on fire with the same force that lit the stars-compassion, love, the sub-surface unity of all things. Not that that mystical stuff's necessarily true: The only thing that's capital-T True is that you get to decide how you're going to try to see it. You get to consciously decide what has meaning and what doesn't. You get to decide what to worship...
"Because here's something else that's true. In the day-to-day trenches of adult life, there is actually no such thing as atheism. There is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship. And an outstanding reason for choosing some sort of God or spiritual-type thing to worship-be it J.C. or Allah, be it Yahweh or the Wiccan mother-goddess or the Four Noble Truths or some infrangible set of ethical principles-is that pretty much anything else you worship will eat you alive."
-in regards to your problems with my assertions, I wasn't saying your sources were invalidated, just that any reference to 19th scholasticism kind of throws up a red flag, this going for an argument for a Christian God just the same...the time period was simply too volatile in relation to agenda.
-I'm confused about your Nazareth statement, shouldn't it being discovered add credence to the Biblical place?
-Q is just a bunch of sayings Jesus said, not narrative...but again, without it ever being found, whether or not it existed becomes the issue...people have come up with this through a literary interpretation, the person of Jesus is consistent according to what he said
-one of our biggest dilemmas is where to place Q and Matthew and Mark in terms of history. Prior to the 1900's, historians were placing the date at closer to 200, but through the years, that time has dipped lower and lower. Now there is a general consensus that Paul's letters came in between 55 and 90, and that in no way could it have been written past 120.
I'm not sure if any of this helps. Anyways, good talking to you.