Why the need for certainty ?

Religion and Secularism
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Dear Sherlock,

Are you implying that your biblical knowledge is far greater than that of an Ivy League Biblical Scholar ?

Dr. Elaine Pagels is the Professor of Religion at Princeton Divinity. Her most recent book is titled Why Religion. Her best selling book is titled The Origin of Satan. The Gnostic gospels is personally my favorite. She is an athiest as well.

Dr. Candida Moss is the Professor of Religion at Oxford. She has also published many best sellers including Reconceiving Infertility (Mother Mary was Not a virgin) and the Other Christs. She is also an athiest

Professor Stavrakopoulou has a documentary series on Netflix titled The Bible’s Buried Secrets. She is also an athiest.

Professor Mark Goodacre is an elite scholar from Duke University. He was instrumental in the National Geographic series Finding Jesus, Faith, Fact & Forgery. He is also an athiest.

http://www.iowastatedaily.com/news/an-unlikely-atheist-teaches-others/article_dc15f8b2-eb81-11df-9186-001cc4c002e0.html

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Don’t forget Bart D. Ehrman, who wrote “Forged: Writing in the Name of God–Why the Bible’s Authors Are Not Who We Think They Are,” among many other books…

 

James A. Gray Distinguished Professor

EDUCATION
Ph.D., Princeton Theological Seminary, 1985
M.Div., Princeton Theological Seminary, 1981
B.A., Wheaton College, 1978

RESEARCH INTERESTS
New Testament Studies
Early Christian Apocrypha
Apostolic Fathers
Historical Jesus
History of Early Christianity
PROFESSIONAL BIOGRAPHY
My research focuses on the New Testament and the early Christian movement from Jesus to Constantine, from a historical perspective. Most of my scholarship during the first twenty years of my career was in textual criticism (the Greek manuscript tradition of the New Testament). Over the past ten years I have moved into the second and third centuries, with a special interest in the Apostolic Fathers, early Christian apocrypha and pseudepigrapha, and the Christianization of the Roman Empire.


 

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But this is true of all preserved documents from antiquity so I do not see how once can claim that scriptures are “forgeries”

Because you don’t try, and you don’t seem to know much about how historiography works. If all documents from antiquity were equally unverifiable, then there would be no reason for getting to know ancient languages, carbon dating, understanding the context something was written to determine if they could have known what they are writing, and all the other things people do to determine what is more probably true. You are just repeating what someone told you without thinking about it.

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Sherlock,

Actually, the be very clear, the question would be:

Imagine if, today, three different journalists wrote three pieces claiming to have witnessed Islamic extremists causing the partial meltdown at Three Mile Island.

 


That’s because:

Our earliest Gospel is Mark’s (written about 70 CE — that is, about 40 years after the events it narrates).
https://thebestschools.org/special/ehrman-licona-dialogue-reliability-new-testament/ehrman-major-statement/

 

See Ehrman’s creds in my post above. He is the nation’s top NT scholar.

 

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But this is true of all preserved documents from antiquity so I do not see how once can claim that scriptures are “forgeries"
It is in no way EQUALLY true of them. Scholars DO have information on the Scriptures.

Sherlock, you don’t understand the topic.

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Nor can we access whether the person actually witnessed or not, that is inaccessible to us just as it is for all documentation from antiquity.
Regarding the Gospels, this is false.
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Great note Tee!

I mentioned Professor Ehrman in an earlier post to Sherlock. I’m looking forward to reading his new release in March of 2020. Heaven and Hell. A History of The Afterlife

 

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Holmes: "Besides that a theory is a temporary “explanation” until a better theory emerges, most of physics shows that pattern – therefore there is no objective theory, they are all man made abstract models."
And why would the notion of God be any different?

Seems to me you’re missing something important,

http://citizenschallenge.blogspot.com/2018/08/key-to-nonoverlapping-magisterium.html

 

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“Besides that a theory is a temporary “explanation” until a better theory emerges
Ummm...
The “God-of-the-gaps” argument refers to a perception of the universe in which anything that currently can be explained by our knowledge of natural phenomena is considered outside the realm of divine interaction, and thus the concept of “God” is invoked to explain what science is, as yet, incapable of explaining. In other words, only the “gaps” in scientific knowledge are explained by the work of God.
 
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I mentioned Professor Ehrman in an earlier post to Sherlock. I’m looking forward to reading his new release in March of 2020. Heaven and Hell. A History of The Afterlife.
 

I like Ehrman because he is an answer to the accusation that atheists just decide to become atheists because they hate God and all:

 

"Let me say here at the outset that I consider the Gospels of the New Testament to be four of the most beautiful, powerful, moving, and inspiring books ever written. I love the Gospels. Their stories of Jesus’s words and deeds have always been and always will be near and dear to me. Among other things, I have always strived to make the values they promote and the ethics they teach the center of my moral life, and I encourage others to do likewise. For me they are the most important books in our civilization and for my own life."
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Re. Erdman & other scholars …I don’t expect anyone here to watch YouTube videos. (Just saying)

I’d like to reference back to the OP…and to Sherlock’s apparent misunderstanding of my point regarding it. But I can’t seem to tag him. So, SHERLOCK SHERLOCK SHERLOCK.

 

When I referred to Christianity’s being unique in requiring correct understanding of dogma for salvation (orthodoxy vs orthopraxy), you went on and on about other religions also having the orthodoxy.

That wasn’t my point at all.

I never said other religions don’t have orthodoxy. In fact, I’d say Rabbinic Judaism has an orthodoxy 10,000x more complex than Evangelical Christianity.

My POINT (again) was that Christianity is unique in requiring correct understanding of dogma for salvation.

Actually, this understanding can be VERY SIMPLE. It just can’t be WRONG.

In the OP, @Citizenschallenge-v.3 asked:

what’s wrong with belief in this incredible planet …
"What's wrong" with it is that, according to Christianity, that won't save you. Specifically with respect to conservative Western Christian theology, the POINT of Christianity is that everyone is born guilty of Original Sin (that's the "default,") and the ONLY way to avoid damnation is to believe "in" Jesus ... not that he was a prophet, but in the whole narrative including his resurrection. Being a "good person" does not count.

That is why certainty is important. Doubt can lead to lost faith which can send you to hell (according to many or most denominations).

Last (while I realize you don’t like posts more than a few sentences long), that Bart Ehrman (one of the most respected scholars of Christianity living), says (I just came across this):

Christianity was the only evangelistic religion in the ancient world. Other religions had no desire to convert you because they all were both polytheistic and welcoming. If you wanted to worship their god, you could without giving up your other gods. If you wanted to start worshiping Apollo, then you would just start worshiping Apollo. You wouldn’t have to stop worshiping Zeus or Athena or anyone else you happened to be worshiping.

Christians, on the other hand, wanted converts. The Christians were also exclusivist. If you accepted their God, then you couldn’t worship the others. Judaism was the only other exclusivist religion, but they didn’t go out and try to win converts. Jews didn’t care whether you became a Jew. They just wanted to be left alone to be Jews.

》The threat of eternal damnation if a Christian did worship other gods also contributed to the triumph.《

Right. Christians said, “You need to convert, you can’t worship the other gods, and if you don’t worship our God, you’re going to hell forever.” Christianity is the only religion saying these things, and there wasn’t any competition.

Nonreligious Questions


So, see, I actually know what I’m talking about.

 

 

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My hope for anything productive is pretty much gone, and as others here will tell you, I have a lot of that. I believe the future of humanity depends not on political movements or “moon-shot” type investments, but on a significant number of people learning to get along in this modern world where there is a church of every domination in most major cities and Neo-Nazis get their coffee from a woman in a hijab.

Let’s say I’m wrong, hypothetically of course. Should you continue to tell me I don’t know what I’m talking about? How does that forward the conversation? I’ve said that your basic point, the one about how science can only talk about physical things, is wrong. If I’m wrong, you should be able to explain how I’m wrong. Saying it’s just obvious, or the only possible answer is not explaining.

Any other discussion about the meaning of probabilities or whatever will never get off the ground without dealing with that first.

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@holmes

Thank you. I am on Android, and this site works differently than some others do.

Welsh? No. My name is Teresa (Just because)

Bryan (after William Jennings Bryan, actually)

Peneguy (Which I legally Anglicized from “Pigneguy,” which is French, in 1986).

If you had witnessed the events yourself or known a person whom you trusted emphatically who had, how would you have recorded this?
Well, I'm a journalist. And so when I have witnessed things, I have never waited decades to write them down. In fact, if I wait more than a day or so, I am concerned about the accuracy of my memory.

Again, if you were to read Erhman, who dedicated his life to studying the Gospels (and began as a Fundamentalist Christian), and who has written over 20 books on the topic, the Gospels were not written by witnesses. That is the point.

 

 

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Very insightful Tee, thanks.

In regards to August 30, 2019 at 9:24 pm - it’s worth pointing out that Heaven and Hell don’t exist in the physical universe they are figments of our fertile imaginations, which I like referring to as our “Mindscape.” In some ways it’s as simple as that. God is what folks want God to be.

 

ID has absolutely nothing to offer when it comes explaining anything. It’s nothing more than a parking place for being overwhelmed by realities complexities!

And how the notion of ID, billions of years old can be related to the human Bible of a few centuries ago, is difficult to see.

How does that work Holmes? Teach something for a change.

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Holmes: "A similar phrase can be constructed named “evolution-of-the-gaps’ you’ll find. Whatever can’t yet be explained or demonstrated in the life sciences is results in “evolution” being invoked. This is no more a supporting argument than the God-of-the-gaps one, which incidentally I haven’t proposed anywhere in this forum to my knowledge."
Holmes think simply by swapping names we're talking about the same thing?

Holmes is fooling himself. For one: Evolution provides all sorts of explanations and predictions - it has proven itself to be a most valuable tool. For another “evolution” is never involved in the way that ID is invoked.

Holmes simply refuses to acknowledge the difference between Science/physical universe and Philosophy/religion/ID - but it’s real, no matter what stupid labels he want to pin on me.

Holmes, have I missed your explanation of what precisely ID is, how its defined, what it has to offer an inquiring skeptical mind?

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So you did not miss my explanation as one was not proffered. – Holmes

Yeah. I noticed.

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Holmes, you’re books are all about people opining about other’s opinions. There’s a turn for your brand of thinking, ‘Luftgeschäft.’

So you did not miss my explanation as one was not proffered. — Holmes
Then what the heck good is it if you are incapable of offering any sort of description of what this mysterious ID is - or what its supposed to be doing.

The laws of nature are a designing force in itself - though you would have to learn about the science to appreciate that.

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“evolution” is never involved in the way that ID is invoked.
That drove me nuts too
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Dear Tee,

I’m so sorry to hear about your mother. Sending you heartfelt sympathy and may your memories comfort you in the days to come ?

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@blaire

I’m so sorry to hear about your mother. Sending you heartfelt sympathy and may your memories comfort you in the days to come
Thank you so much. It has been a very long, sad process.