Peaceful Religion of Islam? Not.

[Kulindahr]

That's just the thing though and the root of the real problem here. The bible is treated like a canonical test while the Qu'ran is not. If we haven't read it how can any of us really expect to discuss it in an intelligent and informed way? If we're relying on other people to select and translate passages for us then we are limiting ourselves. People can pick and choose passages from the bible ("If a man also lie with mankind, as he lieth with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination: they shall surely be put to death") just as easily in an attempt to manipulate our perceptions of it and misrepresent it's general meaning as is the case here.

I regard the Quran as canonical within its system, or I wouldn't regard it as definitive for Islam.
I've read more of it than most Christians I know have actually read of the Bible... which is to say, not much. Aiming to remedy that, I today put a quick link to an online English rendition on my toolbar (I'm hoping to find a better one; this seems to presume a familiarity with the text). So far I've been appreciating the first seven verses -- and wondering what morons who've read those in the original could possibly have been thinking to become terrorists.

I hope to stumble across some instructions on how the things is to be understood, as the Bible has, but for now I plan to read it from the beginning, which is generally the best way to read a book.

 

[Kulindahr]

The temple passages have nothing to do with self-defense or defense of others. It's about the moneychangers disrespecting religion by doing business in temple.

Nice of you to answer a question asking about someone else's thoughts.
A bit arrogant, though -- are you sure that was what I was thinking?

 

[Kulindahr]

If I were to suggest that between the Earth and Mars there is a china teapot revolving about the sun in an elliptical orbit, nobody would be able to disprove my assertion provided I were careful to add that the teapot is too small to be revealed even by our most powerful telescopes. But if I were to go on to say that, since my assertion cannot be disproved, it is intolerable presumption on the part of human reason to doubt it, I should rightly be thought to be talking nonsense. If, however, the existence of such a teapot were affirmed in ancient books, taught as the sacred truth every Sunday, and instilled into the minds of children at school, hesitation to believe in its existence would become a mark of eccentricity and entitle the doubter to the attentions of the psychiatrist in an enlightened age or of the Inquisitor in an earlier time.

It is incumbent on those making the fantastic claims to provide the fantastic proofs.

I wouldn't bother with such a claim unless it were part of an internally consistent system of thought expounded across many centuries, and its significance explained. That I can't imagine such a system of thought doesn't mean it's not possible.

 

[falconfan]

To hold that is to hold that there's nothing true in any Faith at all. Truth is truth, whether scientific or otherwise, and it's a fabric, not a shopping list.

If anything, science should be held to a lower standard, since it's just investigation, as opposed to a Faith, which claims real answers.

Wow.... wow...... wow..... WTF are you talking about. The definition of faith is to have literally the lowest possible standard. The standard of faith is nothing. That's the concept of faith... believing with absolutely no evidence, no reason, nothing other than faith. Science is the exact opposite of that and demands the highest standard of evidence. Before acknowledge a concept or ideal it demands exhaustive study and reevaluation in order to ensure it has hit upon the truth.

In reality there is NO innate link between faith and truth as evidenced by the simple fact two people can have different faiths. Now no matter how you slice it there can only be one truth. I can have complete faith that the universe is finite. I can believe this without any logical pretense or scientific backing. I can belive it solely on faith. Another person can have complete faith the universe is infinite. Now it's not that one of us has actual faith and another person does not. However one of us HAS to have found the truth and the other CAN NOT have. Now science will try to use facts and evidence to find the truth. It wishes to seek out the answer an prove it unequivicolaly. Science is a constant quest for truth... faith is the absence of that quest.

 

[Kulindahr]

Exactly. Well said. You made all the important distinctions. Amazing really, that this kind of reasoning would need explaining!

And Kulindahr let me ask this: since you claim the New Testament basically supersedes and invalidates the Old Testament (even though as falconfan pointed out, it's not like every concept was paralleled, and lined up and summarily refuted) and since you say that something one can't imagine "doesn't mean it's not possible", how do you know for sure then that the New Testament is the absolute, definitive last word on the matter? What if God chose to do something else in the future that led to the creation of a Third Book that then refuted everything in the New Testament (just as the New refuted the Old)? Since this isn't any more impossible than the things you claim to be absolutely true, how can you then be so cocksure about the New Testament? Weren't people once this sure about the Old Testament? And it wasn't until the emergence of the New that they "knew" (no pun intended) better? How do you know the same won't happen again? Maybe Jesus comes back and adds some new notes to his coda? Once more, with feeling?

See this is the problem -- and absurdity -- in claiming absolute truth from something that you can't hold to an empirical standard (or any standard)! How do you know the equally fantastic won't happen again? This is why the insane criteria you just invoked ("just because I can't imagine it doesn't mean it's not possible"/not being able to apply outside standards of reasoning and logic to the Bible) should never be used as an arbiter of Truth. Precisely because you're submitting to a free-for-all of anything can happen. Which is fine for a method of faith, but not one of Fact.

What could possibly supersede the Incarnation?

I will note the empiricism is itself a faith, if held as absolute.

The Old Testament -- they expected something else to come; the whole thing looks forward to an Annointed One, prophet, priest and king, who would be the completion of everything.

As for not imposing outside concepts on a system of thought, that holds for the examination of anything at all: you'll never understand something until you approach it on its own terms. That holds for everything from the theory of relativity to a foreign language to a geological map to a sports game -- and it was one of the first principles set on us in philosophy class. And it is the first criterion for anything purporting to be truth.

 

[Kulindahr]

^^ Nice try, but no cigar. You can't defend it as fact so you're reverting to the toothless argument that it must be held "on its own terms." It's an insane argument, bereft of sensibleness. I repeat what falconfan said:

I can have complete faith that the universe is finite. I can believe this without any logical pretense or scientific backing. I can believe it solely on faith. Another person can have complete faith the universe is infinite. Now it's not that one of us has actual faith and another person does not. However one of us HAS to have found the truth and the other CAN NOT have. Now science will try to use facts and evidence to find the truth. It wishes to seek out the answer and prove it unequivocally. Science is a constant quest for truth... faith is the absence of that quest.

"Toothless"?
If you want to call a basic principle of coherent thought and any search for truth "toothless"... well, it's revealing.

I decided not to comment on Falcon's "definition" of faith earlier, but since you repeat it:

it's a pile of shit, a piece of propaganda from those with no clue. It has nothing to do with the faith spoken of in the Bible, and can only be maintained by those not interested in exploring, only in being right.

 

[HenryReardon]

Do you just struggle at making sense, or is there some concerted effort not to do so?

Geez, I realize tangent is a long word, but it only has two syllables. Sorry you couldn't handle it.

1tan·gent
Pronunciation: ˈtan-jənt
Function: adjective
Etymology: Latin tangent-, tangens, present participle of tangere to touch; perhaps akin to Old English thaccian to touch gently, stroke
Date: 1594
1 a: meeting a curve or surface in a single point if a sufficiently small interval is considered <straight line tangent to a curve> b (1): having a common tangent line at a point <tangent curves> (2): having a common tangent plane at a point <tangent surfaces>
2: diverging from an original purpose or course : irrelevant <tangent remarks

 

[andysayshi]

Here's another example. Not a definition mind you, just an analogy.

Say you have two identical boxes. The first one contains a heavy object, the second one is empty. Now, two people sitting there looking at the boxes can both believe they know which box contains the object, but they don't know it for a fact. Person A thinks it's the first box, person B thinks it is the second box. But they don't have any proof, they only have their belief. Let's take it even further and say that Person A has been told by many people -- his family, his friends, those who came before him -- that the first box contains the object. And let's say Person B has been told the same thing about the second box. These tales about the boxes have been passed down and each person believes with all his heart that their own conclusion is correct, that their box is the right box.

This is how faith functions. But faith, and faith alone, cannot lead them to the correct answer. Do you see that I mean? They can both have faith that they are right, but they don't both have truth. Because in this case there can only be one correct answer, one truth. And believing it so will not suddenly make an empty box contain an object.

Now, what happens if they both get up and perform a test? Let's say they lifted both boxes and could therefore tell that the first one was heavy and the second one was not. Or they shook the boxes and the first one made a rattle sound and the second one did not. That test could result in a conclusion ("The first box is heavier and therefore contains the object"/"The first box makes a rattling sound and therefore contains the object") that leads them to the correct answer, to the truth. And that is how science functions.

This is not a value assessment on faith, but merely an analogy to show you that Faith and Science function differently. This is not a blanket definition of each concept, but rather a distinction between the functions of the two concepts. Person A would have his faith restored once the first box turned out to have the object, but it was not his faith that proved it. It was the test, it was science that proved it. And it doesn't mean then that his belief was any less important to him. But it means that there is a standard that science can meet that faith cannot. With science, with logic, you can perform a test, review data, present evidence etc.

But faith cannot be proven in the same way. And it cannot therefore -- based only on its own terms -- lead to the truth.

Your post is, itself, proof of the absence of God. No reasonable God would create someone so smart AND so hot. It just wouldn't be fair.

And I mean that.

But seriously, really great post!

 

[falconfan]

Yes, I know what I'm talking about -- I took a course in the canonization of the New Testament, at thousands of pages per week for ten weeks.

The Catholic church never, ever had the Bible "under lock and key". In the early decades the documents circulated freely, a process referred to in Paul's writings and in several early church Fathers. Copies were spread across, and beyond, the Roman Empire long before there was any hierarchy capable of collecting, let alone editing. The content of the canon was settled for the most part before there was a hierarchy to even make pronouncements concerning it; what the hierarchy faced was a situation where the Christian community had already communally decided what was in and what was out, and there was little they could do to influence it.

Mark at the least was finished before there was much of any formal hierarchy; by the time Matthew was finished, bishops still presided only over their own cities, as also with Luke. By the time John was set down, there were bishops who stood above other bishops, primarily in large cities where one bishop just couldn't do the work, and rather than have "under-bishops" with less prestige than others with smaller flocks, there came to be "over-bishops" who were essentially both pastors to the bishops and administrators coordinating the affairs of a number of churches/flocks.

Oh yeah I'm sure the bible was just huge before the existence of the printing press! In the early stages of the church MANY different documents circulating in those time, to assume that people were copping around what we think of as the bible is a little far fetched. It's not like there was "the bible" and some schmuck sat around copying every verse by hand, stapled them together and passed them around. The texts they had then were fragments and many text which were not accepted as cannon. That's how things like Coptic church formed.

What I was referring to, and what you're neglecting, is the middle ages. After the church had become an imperialistic empire and the bible was not in any real circulation and written in a language the vast majority of Christians didn't understand. When Christians were completely dependent on the church for information about the teachings of Christ. If you honestly don't think there's plenty of room for an addition or subtraction of verses that the serfs would never notice than you're choosing not see things.

True, but not relevant -- unless you're claiming that they actually have copies of the Gospels predating about 60 A.D.

WHAT!?!? When discussing the reliability of a text how could a history of censorship not be relevant? For Christ sake how could the fact that there are entire documents being hidden irrelevant? For all you know these document can speak to or against the authenticity and reliability of other texts regardless of when they were made.

Because it probably wasn't even by Thomas, something that would have been known at the time, and because what Luke wrote was considered "Paul's Gospel", since Luke as companion to Paul got his information to a great extent from that Apostle. That collection of sayings is never mentioned in the early references to "what is read among us", which says it was either a late addition, or not trusted by the community of churches.

And what you're assuming is that if it were "known about at the time" the church would've acknowledged it. You can't say that it wasn't written by him because it is someone would've known about it and mentioned it... because there's also the possiblity that they knew about it, didn't like it, and decided to ditch it or hide it away in some shelf somewhere.

I didn't say that. What I said was that the Gospels were written when thousands of people who had actually listened to Jesus were still around -- that is, they were set to 'paper' when there were lots of witnesses to call them on any fabrications.

Then the contradictions amongst the four accepted bibles occured how exactly? Dude it's not like they all sat around, had a fact checking media and then settled on one version. There's four gospels with points of contention. Why would these "witnesses" not bothered to call out the innacuracies innate in these texts?

And there weren't any Gospels by apostles that were "tossed out": Peter, Thomas, and the rest were pseudonymous, written late, and judged unworthy not by any hierarchical authority, but by the living community of churches.

And you can't prove that nay more than you can prove the other gospels were.

What, you think he made the whip and didn't use it?
Do you know what a cattle-driver did when he "drove" the cattle with his whip? When they got out of line, he whipped them!

Yes that's exactly what I contend. You underestimate the psychological importance of a weapon. Ask yourself this... you're a street vendor selling your wares outside a building and some man of average height and build comes up to you and tells you to leave... An argument happens here. You are profiting from your current behavior and you see the threat of a person as easily conquerable so you at first have a sense of indignation asking why you should leave? Why do you have to listen to this person... now redo it where that person comes out points a gun, cocks it and says "Get the fuck out!" You leave. You're overwhelmed not by a sense of anger and indignation but by a feeling of fear. Your desire for money is lesser than your desire for your physical well being and you get the fuck out.

The power of a whip is not always in it's use but in the thread of its use. As for drive being equivalent to whipping it's a word with dual meanings so there's an innate ambiguity which will always exist when someone tries to pick at the connotation of one word in a text that's been translated multiple times. But considering that in the sword incident Jesus advocated the possession of weapons but later codemned the use of them it's really seems logical to wonder if his possession of a whip necessarily means he whipped anyone.

As for Jesus' anger, He didn't have any "fit" of anger, He had a deep, focused, disciplined spell of wrath: no one in a "fit" of anger would stand there calmly turning small pieces of cord into a whip before going into action.

Do you know the nature of human anger? We are often calmest before we are most enranged. When you contain something and allow it to boil it comes out with the most force. I mean just take a minute to think about it. An act of uncontrollable anger doesn't mean that you can't have premeditated it to a certain degree.

You're off-base on Peter and the sword. Jesus wouldn't tell them to buy swords, and then forbid them to use the weapons. He didn't chew Peter out for having a sword or using it, but for the specific use to which Peter put it: essentially, for striking first.

LMFAO!!!!!!!!!

How can you say he "wouldn't" when he DID. The fact that it's difficult to understand an apparent contradiction doesn't mean you get to just ignore parts of it.

How can you POSSIBLY claim that sending out the money changers was defense of others but Peter attempting a stop a man from taking Jesus to what they all knew would ultimately be his execution was not???? If what you're saying is correct and Jesus does condone violence in defense of others this is JUST the time.

Have you considered what happens if the apostles are unarmed? That could help us try to explain why they were to be armed but not use weapons. Well mentally put yourself in a space where the walls are closing in on you and you have no way out, no security, no anchor... you flip the fuck out. There are armed men around you, approaching you, the knowledge that you do have something to protect yourself with gives you a sense of security to maintain yourself yet you're also suppose to find in that security the restraint to be peaceful.

 

[falconfan]

I'm sorry, but that's fucking insane. "A deep, focused, disciplined spell of wrath?" Do you even listen to yourself?? My god, you will equivocate anything to justify your predetermined set of beliefs!

And actually you're wrong. A "fit of anger" does not preclude the ability to fashion a weapon or to have a methodical physical action before the internal anger is released. There has been medical evidence to show that fits can rage inwardly but outwardly begin with a slow boil, allowing for methodical action (the time lapses differ). This argument has been supported by many doctors and has allowed the "crime of passion" defense (a close cousin of the Insanity defense) to be neutralized in court in murder cases where the accused -- who were determined to be suffering from these fits or attacks at the time of the murder -- still had the presence of mind to fashion a plan and yes, even go through some methodical steps (all the while raging inwardly) until the moment when they could unleash their anger physically and allow the inner turmoil to match the outward response.

Simply put, there's a time delay in some cases in terms of the response, but the "fit" (the blinding inner rage) remains.

Nikki you are great. I love when I reply, scroll down, and see that you have already had and voiced the same objection as me

 

[falconfan]

If I were to suggest that between the Earth and Mars there is a china teapot revolving about the sun in an elliptical orbit, nobody would be able to disprove my assertion provided I were careful to add that the teapot is too small to be revealed even by our most powerful telescopes. But if I were to go on to say that, since my assertion cannot be disproved, it is intolerable presumption on the part of human reason to doubt it, I should rightly be thought to be talking nonsense. If, however, the existence of such a teapot were affirmed in ancient books, taught as the sacred truth every Sunday, and instilled into the minds of children at school, hesitation to believe in its existence would become a mark of eccentricity and entitle the doubter to the attentions of the psychiatrist in an enlightened age or of the Inquisitor in an earlier time.

It is incumbent on those making the fantastic claims to provide the fantastic proofs.

Wait, wait, wait.... so there's NOT actually a revolving tea pot?!?! I can't believe you'd say that you heretic!

I'm gonna go gather some kindling could someone else have the stake ready by the time I come back?

 

[falconfan]

I regard the Quran as canonical within its system, or I wouldn't regard it as definitive for Islam.

This is PRECISELY the problem. It's something that we as a society need to stop doing. We add these qualifiers. The Quran is not a just canonical text to the Islamic faith but to our understanding of faith as a whole. We qualifying the Western White Christian things as the base level of art, history, or religion and outside perspectives as lesser self contained units which can be slipped in under the peripherary of the umbrella.

I mean think for a minute. Think back to your "art history" or "literature" classes. What were you presented with? I know in the 100 and 101s I was shown overwhelmingly Eurocentric pieces and am relatively sure that's the norm. It's not that we don't acknowledge African or Eastern elements as important; if you go into classes on Asian Literature we'll be presented with texts that are important to "Asian Literature" but their absence from the basic classes insinuates that even the most important works of Asian Literature don't make the cut of the canonical texts of literature as a whole. Non-Christian ideas are thought of us soemthing of a specialization, a defection from the norm.

You can see it all over the place when you develope a conciousness to be aware of it. Think about why we all learn "The Odyessey" long before "Gilgamesh." Why on lists of the most important films "Gone With the Wind," is ten times higher thant "Do The Right Thing" and foreign language movies outside of western Europe are completely absent. We know who Bach and Mozart are but can you even name a piece of music produced in Africa or Asia??? I can't which is wholly pathetic when you realize how important African influence has been to the "American" genres of Rock and Jazz. I mean very few and far between are the people who are going to tell you that "Brenda's Got A Baby" is as important as Beethoven.

We view the Christian canon as THE canon. And our society really needs to stop that if we wish to understand and embrace others.

I've read more of it than most Christians I know have actually read of the Bible... which is to say, not much. Aiming to remedy that, I today put a quick link to an online English rendition on my toolbar (I'm hoping to find a better one; this seems to presume a familiarity with the text). So far I've been appreciating the first seven verses -- and wondering what morons who've read those in the original could possibly have been thinking to become terrorists.

I hope to stumble across some instructions on how the things is to be understood, as the Bible has, but for now I plan to read it from the beginning, which is generally the best way to read a book.

That's great . The sad part about our society is that we have to go through such extensive measures to expose ourselves to other cultures, religions, and philosophies when you realize that there's a bible in the drawer of any cheap tuandry hotel... the dichotomy is shocking.

 

[falconfan]

Nice of you to answer a question asking about someone else's thoughts.
A bit arrogant, though -- are you sure that was what I was thinking?

I wasn't trying to answer "your thoughts." I was giving the real answer to the question. Because commerce is not an imminent threat to anyone and can't be used as a representation of "violence."

The issue was one of someone disrespecting his family... just a shame Jesus didn't stick to the Lauren Cooper method rather than getting bovvered

 

[Kulindahr]

He wasn't defining faith. He was making a distinction between faith and science, one that continues to elude you. And the only propaganda and "pile of shit" here is your utter ignorance about science and empiricism. Really it's embarrassing. It's very clear that you're dictating abstract terms of argument (that Faith doesn't have to be held to the same standard and can still be Truth) because your position IS weak. Because Faith won't hold up to scrutiny. It doesn't have to if you leave it in the realm of Faith. But you trying to purport it as Absolute Truth and claiming it meets a higher critical standard than Science quite frankly makes you look insane.

And I'm still waiting to hear how -- other than "It's in the Bible" -- a man can be raised from the dead or a woman can give birth without procreation.

He gave a definition of faith, and so did you: that it refuses to consider evidence, that it is the opposite of wanting to know the truth.

I'm trying to instruct about systems of thought, and how you can't hold the standards of one over another and get anywhere -- and all you do is reiterate that unless it's empiricism it can't have truth.

You're taking a position of faith, because that's the only way that empiricism can claim to be the only way to truth -- it can't be proven, in any fashion. To support your faith, you claim that "Faith" rejects evidence -- and when I point out that such a definition has nothing to do with the faith the Bible speaks of, you fall back on claiming that empiricism is the only route to truth.

I understand empiricism and science; I got a science degree, magna cum laude. I know that empiricism cannot deny other avenues to truth, because the claim is not "only what can be known empirically can be known", but "we seek to know what can be known empirically". The first is a statement of faith, the second a statement of procedure.

In other words, you're claiming things for science that science can't claim: it doesn't say that truth is limited to what can be empirically known, only that its reach extends only to what can be empirically known.

You're putting words in my mouth again, Nik -- if you'd stop doing so, you'd see more clearly. I said nothing about a "higher critical standard", I made a comparison of the level of claims: that assertions of faith claim a higher standard than the assertions of science.

But there's no point to going on. You've demonstrated a total inability to even recognize you're bound by a worldview, let alone to step outside it and consider that there are other ways of looking at things. To you, if it isn't empiricism, it isn't logical -- which is false, and you might even concede it's false, but you go right back to doing it. Logic makes no claims about how all systems are to be measured, it only applies once there are axia, and then it can tell you whether those are consistent. Attempts to impose the axia of science on everything just makes you foolish -- they don't work on poetry, or love... unless you're willing to reduce us all to meaninglessness, the product of nothing but random chance.

Every charge you've laid against faith arises from having your own worldview and insisting it's right, from insisting that your definitions are the only ones -- and never bothering to look at the system of thought you're criticizing. That's true of falcon and some others as well; you're all trying to make everything materialistic and empirical -- but that contradicts your own stance, because there's no empirical evidence that everything is material and empirical.

Concerning water changed to wine, BTW, of course science isn't going to be able to address that, and you're not going to be able to explain it in scientific terms -- that's why the people back then called it a miracle: they knew it didn't happen that way, that nature only produced wine from water via the intermediary steps of vines, grapes, juicing, and fermentation. A miracle by definition lies outside the purview of science; it's an intervention from outside, an input not through the ordinary channels -- and science addresses, and can address, only what comes from inside the system, what comes through ordinary channels.

So, really, a challenge to show how water can become wine, using science, shows that you don't even know what science is.

Try becoming aware of your own worldview. Try taking some courses -- philosophy, language, anthropology, anything -- that will show you different ways of looking at the world. Heck, even Spanish will show that there are different ways of looking at the world, ones English doesn't contain! Try ancient Greek (classical, Koine), and stretch some more -- try ancient Hebrew, and really strain your brain!
Once you get it into your head that their worldviews would regard your faith in empiricism as ludicrous, you might have a chance of understanding that just because it isn't part of the system you trust doesn't mean it's beyond logic.

 

[falconfan]

I decided not to comment on Falcon's "definition" of faith earlier, but since you repeat it:

it's a pile of shit, a piece of propaganda from those with no clue. It has nothing to do with the faith spoken of in the Bible, and can only be maintained by those not interested in exploring, only in being right.

You decided not to comment on it because you have no actual rebuttal to it. Despite you mentioning it now you still haven't even touched the crux of the argument. I'm not saying faith is a good thing or a bad thing. But it is a level of confidence in ones beliefs that requires no evidence and even stands up to evidence in the contrary. Take that as what you'd like morally but it's certainly not a "higher standard" of evidence. Faith is knowing for no reason other than your faith tells you too. It's why Dostoyevsky disliked miracles, the supplant faith in the maintenance of religion. The truly faithful don't need miracles to convince them of what their faith has already assured them.

But what you're skipping over, the basic paradox here that you're not addressing is the existence of multiple faiths. Surely we are agreed that there is only ONE truth correct? Well if there is only one truth, and you are correct in asserting that faith IS truth than you're equivocally stating that there is but one faith. The logic there is tight and inescapable. You, as a Christian, would surely claim that say Buddhism or Hinduism is not true in their assertions. So if you define faith as being intrinsically linked to truth than you are also saying that Buddhist and Hindus lack faith for if they had faith they would know what is true. Is that what you're asserting that only the Christians who believe exactly what you believe are faithful?

That's, once more, the point of faith man. It's fucking hard. It's scary. It's NOT intrinsically linked to the truth. You have nothing to sustain your believe on, no bread crumbs to feed that doubting and paranoid part of your mind that nags about whether what you have faith in is true. You just have to gather your strength, remind yourself why you have that faith, and go with it. That's part of holding your cross, having faith that all this pain and sacrifice you suffer through is for something even though you have no material assurances that it is.

 

[TX-Beau]

If your definition of "truth" is limited to what science can measure, be sure to refrain from saying, "I care about you" -- that can't be truth, because it can't be measured.

Well, my emotions don’t make assertions of fact. Your faith does. Your faith asserts that God exits, in a tangible fashion, that a teenage girl in a culture that stones fornicating women, didn’t just get knocked up by the baker’s boy; but in fact was impregnated by your assertion of a tangible god, and that the child grew up got executed, and then rose from the dead. These are assertions of fact. None of these things has been observed in the wild anywhere, at any time, in any place. You take them on Faith.

Emotions have truth; we can observe them scientifically, in the electrochemical reactions in the brain, mood altering drugs function by altering that chemistry, that’s not faith, that’s testable fact. As the process of science progresses so does our understanding of ourselves, and none of that requires irrational belief in improbable things. I care about the people I care about because of neurons firing in my brain, and before you jump in here and say something like – well then that’s all it is huh? Just neurons? How sad.

Understanding of the process does not negate the value of the sentiment. I know that my bones allow me to stand, that doesn’t negate the value of walking down to Starbuck’s for a cup of hangover coffee.

If you get something positive out of your faith that’s great, but please, don’t try to confuse the issue that it’s anything else but faith.

 

[Kulindahr]

Oh yeah I'm sure the bible was just huge before the existence of the printing press! In the early stages of the church MANY different documents circulating in those time, to assume that people were copping around what we think of as the bible is a little far fetched. It's not like there was "the bible" and some schmuck sat around copying every verse by hand, stapled them together and passed them around. The texts they had then were fragments and many text which were not accepted as cannon. That's how things like Coptic church formed.

What I was referring to, and what you're neglecting, is the middle ages. After the church had become an imperialistic empire and the bible was not in any real circulation and written in a language the vast majority of Christians didn't understand. When Christians were completely dependent on the church for information about the teachings of Christ. If you honestly don't think there's plenty of room for an addition or subtraction of verses that the serfs would never notice than you're choosing not see things.

I neglect nothing.
Thousands of copies were turned out annually, of all the documents of the New Testament. It started back when Paul was still traveling; note his instruction to exchange letters with another church: that would have entailed getting a copy of their letter made, since they weren't going to give up theirs. While they were getting a copy made, they would most likely have employed a scriptorium, a hall where one person carefully read a text and a dozen or more took it down, making a dozen new copies in the time it took to read the text slowly.
That became common practice; churches swapping letters didn't just swap ones that had been sent to them, they swapped what they had and valued, back and forth; what didn't fit with what witnesses to Jesus knew didn't get traded, what wasn't of certain apostolic origin didn't get traded.
Soon enough churches started asking each other, "What have you got of Paul's? What Gospels do you have? Is there anything else you have that you read and from which you learn?" Instead of the people in a particular church agreeing what was worthy to be listened to, churches were seeking agreement. Already in the mid second century, the discussion of what was useful for reading and what was left alone and what was rejected was no longer just between churches, but between regional councils.
Hierarchy was late coming to the game, but when it did it merely continued the organic process which had started at the bottom. The hierarchy didn't decide what went in the Bible; they took what had already been decided on... except that there were a few books on which full agreement had never been reached, which is why even within the New Testament collection there are actually three different levels of scripture (one of 'legoumena', that which is read with full acceptance, and two of 'antilegomena', those which are read but which some or many speak against).

Come the fall of Rome and the beginning of the Middle Ages, there were tens if not hundreds of thousands of copies of the various Bible documents out and about, and some already in Latin. However much Rome would have liked to edit, redact, or whatever, there was no way they could get away with it. Furthermore, there was the great check on their activities: the East, where preservation of the texts as received had a cult-like devotion, and which was always ready to pounce on their western brethren's foibles and misdoings.

WHAT!?!? When discussing the reliability of a text how could a history of censorship not be relevant? For Christ sake how could the fact that there are entire documents being hidden irrelevant? For all you know these document can speak to or against the authenticity and reliability of other texts regardless of when they were made.

Because the possibility of censorship of the documents in question was so remote as to be negligible.

And what you're assuming is that if it were "known about at the time" the church would've acknowledged it. You can't say that it wasn't written by him because it is someone would've known about it and mentioned it... because there's also the possiblity that they knew about it, didn't like it, and decided to ditch it or hide it away in some shelf somewhere.

There was no "church" in the sense you use it -- there were churches, plural, and a multitude of them. I suppose that if the conjecture of Thomas going to India, returning, and only then setting down his sayings has validity, then it might have been late enough in joining the fray that possibly it could have been squelched -- but more likely is that Christians everywhere who saw that collection noted the first line and rejected it -- because the notion of "secret saying", especially when the alleged list of such contains a good number that weren't ever secret at all, contradicts what Jesus said about His teachings: that they were done in the open, for all to hear and see.

Then the contradictions amongst the four accepted bibles occured how exactly? Dude it's not like they all sat around, had a fact checking media and then settled on one version. There's four gospels with points of contention. Why would these "witnesses" not bothered to call out the innacuracies innate in these texts?

There are few things that come down to contradictions. There are numerous differences in wording and such, but those would have been accepted as normal by a first-century audience, who knew that itinerant preachers had a number of "stump sermons" that got adjusted for local audiences, with different wording, emphases, settings, and so on. There are a couple of apparent contradictions that come down to differences between Roman and Hebrew concepts of time and counting (e.g to a Roman, "three days" meant roughly 72 hours, while to a Hebrew, the same words meant "beginning sometime on one day, lasting through another, and ending sometime on the third", so it could be anywhere from about thirty hours to seventy).
[/QUOTE]

As for the weapons matter: the disciples knew the Old Testament. They knew the admonitions about defense, including self-defense. So when Jesus told them to get swords, they would have understood it in those terms, and that they were expected to be ready to use them.

 

[HenryReardon]

.
Hierarchy was late coming to the game, but when it did it merely continued the organic process which had started at the bottom. The hierarchy didn't decide what went in the Bible; they took what had already been decided on... except that there were a few books on which full agreement had never been reached, which is why even within the New Testament collection there are actually three different levels of scripture (one of 'legoumena', that which is read with full acceptance, and two of 'antilegomena', those which are read but which some or many speak against).

.

Yeah, but wasn't there a famous council of something-or-other at which it was decided which books would actually be included in the Bible as we know it today?

Also I seem to recall having been taught - somewhere along the line - that one of the problems was that the common people were not given access to the Bible, and only knew what their Priests told them. Is that not why the King James Version of the Bible was such a big deal?

 

[Kulindahr]

You decided not to comment on it because you have no actual rebuttal to it. Despite you mentioning it now you still haven't even touched the crux of the argument. I'm not saying faith is a good thing or a bad thing. But it is a level of confidence in ones beliefs that requires no evidence and even stands up to evidence in the contrary. Take that as what you'd like morally but it's certainly not a "higher standard" of evidence. Faith is knowing for no reason other than your faith tells you too. It's why Dostoyevsky disliked miracles, the supplant faith in the maintenance of religion. The truly faithful don't need miracles to convince them of what their faith has already assured them.

But what you're skipping over, the basic paradox here that you're not addressing is the existence of multiple faiths. Surely we are agreed that there is only ONE truth correct? Well if there is only one truth, and you are correct in asserting that faith IS truth than you're equivocally stating that there is but one faith. The logic there is tight and inescapable. You, as a Christian, would surely claim that say Buddhism or Hinduism is not true in their assertions. So if you define faith as being intrinsically linked to truth than you are also saying that Buddhist and Hindus lack faith for if they had faith they would know what is true. Is that what you're asserting that only the Christians who believe exactly what you believe are faithful?

Right here is why I didn't address it before: you make things up about what I said -- like "faith is truth".

And you give false definitions in order to support your position -- for example:

[faith] is a level of confidence in ones beliefs that requires no evidence and even stands up to evidence in the contrary.

That has nothing to do with the faith the Bible speaks of, since the Bible encourages people to seek evidence, to study the matter,etc. That's inherent in the opening of John's gospel: "In the beginning was the Logic".

So you end up with silliness like this:

That's, once more, the point of faith man. It's fucking hard. It's scary. It's NOT intrinsically linked to the truth. You have nothing to sustain your believe on, no bread crumbs to feed that doubting and paranoid part of your mind that nags about whether what you have faith in is true. You just have to gather your strength, remind yourself why you have that faith, and go with it. That's part of holding your cross, having faith that all this pain and sacrifice you suffer through is for something even though you have no material assurances that it is.

I'm frequently displeased or uncomfortable at having faith. It would be far more convenient not to. Holding in tension things that can be reconciled only through acknowledgment of a higher reality can be wearying.
But I come up against the mass of evidence, principally this: that if there is a Creator, and He attempted to communicate to His critters, what would it look like? And only the Bible begins to match that -- and really matches it at forgive the pun) the crux of the matter, that if a perfect, or even infinitely-superior, deity, creator of all, came down as one of us, to teach us the way things were meant to be, we'd kill him. He wouldn't be wanted, wouldn't be tolerated, because He'd have no time to waste kowtowing to the privileged, or the powerful, or the self-righteous. If He came today, it would be the religious conservatives who'd kill him, just as it was when He actually came.
On that, and numerous other points, what the Bible says about human nature is spot-on. Between that, and the consistency of its teaching, I can't toss it aside, because as J. B. Phillips said, it has the "ring of truth".

 

[TX-Beau]

So you assume this god exists then have issues reconciling how he communicates?

That’s an assumption based on an assumption.

I’d rather start with the question of whether this entity exists, is there any evidence for that? No, there’s just faith.

The only way any of what followed your initial statement to matter even one teeny tiny bit is to believe that there is some god trying to talk to you, and again, that’s just faith.

Plus it's hardly surprising that something written by humans would tend to reflect it's human authors. No divinity required.