A confused atheist.

[hedrick]

[deleted. I misunderstood a question. back later.]

 

[socialisview]

but the thing is man caused that not God. Jesus said love, and not judge.

 

[socialisview]

if you live by the law you die.

 

[chilehed]

Yes, I would struggle to reproduce the exact conversations I had in school.

Are you saying that there is no past (not recent) event which you remember with sufficient clarity to accurately testify to the essential elements of the event?

No, I haven't spoken to a concentration camp survivor, can you tell me exactly what he/she told you? Please ensure that you get his/her exact wording and phrasing.

I'm trying to understand if your position is that the survivor is not a reliable witness to the central elements of his experience in the death camps, based on the fact that it happened over 60 years ago. You seem to be unwilling to answer that.

 

[socialisview]

Im not saying that at all. if the person is there then they saw it so there account is accurate but if that person was not there then they here what happened. so for instance when people say that noahs ark didnt happen, i ask where you there. God was. so ask god dont ask men. they no nothing expect what they see. so if somebody was not at concentration camps i would rather listen from god if there is nobody around to give a personal account then somebody who live by rumors.

 

[socialisview]

if you were talking to me.

 

[SonOfTheWest]

A concentration camp survivor describing horrific conditions inside that corroborates with the testimony of various other survivors is reasonably something to be viewed as based on facts. A survivor saying a unicorn flew out of the butt of the one in charge of the camp..........not so much.

 

[Foolish]

I have a good idea, but only because his spirituality and mine are very similar. I can't know everything he is thinking, unless he tells me. Sometimes he does. Weirdly, though, he often knows what I am thinking without me saying. Very disconcerting, that one. He says I am not difficult to understand.



Some, but I don't think they have a major impact on the Christology.



Why does it bother you if Moses is represented with horns instead of a halo? What difference does it actually make?

Orthodox icons of John the Baptist show him with wings, because wings denote a messenger of God; same with angels; they don't actually have wings but we show them with wings to denote that they are divine messengers. John the Baptist didn't have wings, but the image still conveys something important about who he was.

I'm back. I'm not sober.

I'm not bothered in th slightest that Moses has horns.

A chap made a decision that the bible described Moses as having horns as opposed to having a halo (not th exact translation). He interpreted the bible and could've influenced Christianity. Although it is min in influence, it's an example of something bigger:

People can interpret the bible in many ways; christ was most likely middle eastern, not White. That makes a big difference in some peopl's eyes. It's all in the eye of the beholder.

If the Change of a couple of letters can change the meaning of something so significantly then how can one be sure of the veracity of entire passages of the bible.

If you translate a passage through 3or 4 languages you'll get significant differences from th original

 

[Foolish]

Are you saying that there is no past (not recent) event which you remember with sufficient clarity to accurately testify to the essential elements of the event?

I'm trying to understand if your position is that the survivor is not a reliable witness to the central elements of his experience in the death camps, based on the fact that it happened over 60 years ago. You seem to be unwilling to answer that.

Surely Essential elements aren't enough to base your life on?

If you were to be tried by a couple of witnesses, in a court of law, who were recalling what someone said from decades ago would you not contest what they said?

 

[SonOfTheWest]

It probably doesn't help that studies have shown that eye witnesses are far far more unreliable than popular opinion.

 

[Foolish]

Are you saying that there is no past (not recent) event which you remember with sufficient clarity to accurately testify to the essential elements of the event?

I'm trying to understand if your position is that the survivor is not a reliable witness to the central elements of his experience in the death camps, based on the fact that it happened over 60 years ago. You seem to be unwilling to answer that.

I agree that he would remember the central elements. I doubt h would remember th details of the conversations and whatever conversations he did recall I would expect his own prejudices and povs t play a significant roll.

 

[hedrick]

I'm going to answer half your question, namely why God sent floods, fire and other things. Some parts of your question really are equivalent to the more general one of why God allows suffering. I may comment on it, but if so I'll do it separately.

I guess I'm not convinced that God actually did do the things you're suggesting. This is a response most Christians can't make, because most believe in inerrancy. I don't. I think the parts of the OT that are before historical times (roughly the kings, when the OT starts referring to court records) are at least partly legend, and in most of Genesis, primarily legend. The evidence suggests that there was never a global flood. And I'm dubious that God sent fire to consume Sodom.

When we get to the Conquest, it's less clear. Historians disagree how much historical content is present in the OT. As you probably know, some people doubt that there was a war-like conquest at all. I don't have a view on that. But I will say that if Israel killed other people, that's not what God had in mind. Even if they thought it was. We start getting the prophets around the time the kings start. Interestingly, the prophets indicated that God didn't actually want Israel to have a king. He didn't want them to be a nation like the others. However when the people insisted (because it was the only way they could imagine that Israel could compete with the Philistines and other military powers around them), God helped them choose a king.

We don't know exactly what would have happened had they not gone that route. But the prophets' ideals were close enough to Jesus that it's not absurd to use Jesus' idea of the rule of God as a guide to what God had in mind for Israel instead of the kings.

While I don't doubt the historical record that the kings fought a lot, I'm still not convinced that this was God's will. Note that the period of the kings ended with Jerusalem getting destroyed. That happened because the kings insisted on playing power politics. They didn't want to submit to Babylon, and tried to get Egypt to help them rebel. There are great similarities between this time and Jesus'. In both cases there were world empires. Most of Israel wanted to be an independent nation, and fight off the the empire. God had something else in mind, in both times, telling people to live in peace with the empire. The prophets' vision was Israel as a light to the nations, not just one more competitive political power.

The prophets interpreted the conquest of Jerusalem as God's judgement. But it's not as if God had to create the Babylonians. The conquest was a punishment in the sense that God told Israel not to fight, and when they insisted on it they got creamed. Something similar happened after Jesus time when the Romans, but Jesus quite clearly tried to prevent it.

The best way to understand God's work with Israel is that he sent prophets to teach his will, but did not coerce them, not fully protect them against the consequences of their folly. There's reason to believe that if they repented he would protect them.

 

[Catherineanne]

I'm back. I'm not sober.

Well, I believe in God, but I don't believe that someone who takes a taxi to a pub is planning to remain teetotal.

I'm not bothered in th slightest that Moses has horns.

So why mention it?

A chap made a decision that the bible described Moses as having horns as opposed to having a halo (not th exact translation). He interpreted the bible and could've influenced Christianity. Although it is min in influence, it's an example of something bigger:

People can interpret the bible in many ways; christ was most likely middle eastern, not White. That makes a big difference in some peopl's eyes. It's all in the eye of the beholder.

My Christ is white. The Christ of an African is black. The Christ of a Chinese is chinese. The Christ to a Coptic in Egypt is Egyptian. And funnily enough, your Christ is agnostic, knows a little about Greek philosophy but is not Christian; you have created him in your own image, in other words.

The historical Jesus was from the Middle East, but he does not mind how we see him initially, as long as that seeing is a process rather than a destination. The longer we know him, the more clearly we see him for who he is, rather than who we thought him to be, in other words.

If the Change of a couple of letters can change the meaning of something so significantly then how can one be sure of the veracity of entire passages of the bible.

If you translate a passage through 3or 4 languages you'll get significant differences from th original

Indeed so. This is why when someone is attempting to write a new Bible translation they don't do that. They go to the oldest extant texts, compare them, make judgements based on the rest of Scripture to ensure overall integrity of message, and then create the new translation. It takes years and years of study by very learned Biblical scholars to do this.

It is not generally done by Chinese whispers.

 

[twob4me]

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[hedrick]

I decided to answer the more general question, although perhaps this would be better in a separate discussion about suffering. I'm likely to repeat these contents in a thread that is more widely read.

The issue of suffering is, in my opinion, the most serious credibility issue for theism (aside from the more general question of evidence). It's also one for which it's hard to make an unambiguous argument, because we don't agree on what is OK for God to do and what it isn't.

My impression is that the Biblical picture of God is pretty consistent: he's got a lot of power and influence, but has chosen not to use brute force very often. How much power is, I think, open to question. Enough to bring Israel out of Egypt. Enough to bring order from chaos. But when we get beyond the world as ancient Israel knew it, things are less clear. I assume we're find some kind of space out of which big bangs come. Does God live there? If so, is he subject to rules in that space? Or is he in some space entirely his own? This is waaaayyyyy beyond anything I can talk about. But at some level, there are probably realities he can't change. Like non-contradiction, and the inability to both control people and not control them at the same time.

In the whole OT, God sends prophets. Now and then, particularly in older parts of the record, they have unambiguous signs, such as Elijah's face-off with the prophets of Baal. But by and large the prophets present God's ideals, but the people ignore them or follow them very imperfectly. Israel gets conquered, and this is in some sense punishment, but to a large extent it's also the natural consequence of what they did. In Hosea God presents himself as a jilted lover.

In my opinion, Jesus' principled non-use of force, and the whole concept of God intervening by joining us, showing us how to live, and accepting the consequences of our sins, is consistent with God as we see him in the prophets, if you read the prophets carefully. I claim that setting up a dangerous world where suffering happens, is quite consistent with this whole picture.

I can't justify it, because I doubt we have a common standard I could appeal to. I can only give analogies. In human affairs we normally believe that it's good for people to develop as independent, responsible, people, even when this entails suffering:

• Parents can't be overprotective. The Truman Show is an interesting example of what some people would have God do: a completely controlled environment, where nothing very serious can happen to Truman. Yet most viewers think this was immoral, and Truman was right both to be upset and to leave.
  
• There have been various kinds of interaction between different cultures on earth. Most people think that trying to push the benefits of more "advanced" cultures on others is bad, even when it is clear that they would be physically better off with our culture than their own.
  
• In Star Trek, I think most people accept that the Prime Directive is a good idea, even when it leaves millions of people to suffer in ways that they would not if the Federation immediately raised them to its level. In the original series, Kirk often found excuses to avoid this. But that's not as true in the later series. One of the starkest examples is Star Trek: Enterpise, "Dear Doctor." They end up leaving a whole race to die, when they could have cured them.

Not everyone will agree with every situation. But I don't think it's obviously immoral for God to set up, or possibly tolerate (depending upon what choices you think are available to him) a situation where the world is dangerous, and failure brings actual consequences. Through Jesus, and his involvement with many of us, he accepts responsibility for the consequences, and to some extent joins us in them (although his experience as God is vicarious; it's obvious that God qua God doesn't physically suffer). But he normally depends upon us to improve the situation.

I can sympathize with people who think that a real God could find a way around this, but I'm not so sure he would be right to do so.

 

[clancey james]

This thread has been interesting.

 

[Foolish]

I'm going to answer half your question, namely why God sent floods, fire and other things. Some parts of your question really are equivalent to the more general one of why God allows suffering. I may comment on it, but if so I'll do it separately.

I guess I'm not convinced that God actually did do the things you're suggesting. This is a response most Christians can't make, because most believe in inerrancy. I don't. I think the parts of the OT that are before historical times (roughly the kings, when the OT starts referring to court records) are at least partly legend, and in most of Genesis, primarily legend. The evidence suggests that there was never a global flood. And I'm dubious that God sent fire to consume Sodom.

When we get to the Conquest, it's less clear. Historians disagree how much historical content is present in the OT. As you probably know, some people doubt that there was a war-like conquest at all. I don't have a view on that. But I will say that if Israel killed other people, that's not what God had in mind. Even if they thought it was. We start getting the prophets around the time the kings start. Interestingly, the prophets indicated that God didn't actually want Israel to have a king. He didn't want them to be a nation like the others. However when the people insisted (because it was the only way they could imagine that Israel could compete with the Philistines and other military powers around them), God helped them choose a king.

We don't know exactly what would have happened had they not gone that route. But the prophets' ideals were close enough to Jesus that it's not absurd to use Jesus' idea of the rule of God as a guide to what God had in mind for Israel instead of the kings.

While I don't doubt the historical record that the kings fought a lot, I'm still not convinced that this was God's will. Note that the period of the kings ended with Jerusalem getting destroyed. That happened because the kings insisted on playing power politics. They didn't want to submit to Babylon, and tried to get Egypt to help them rebel. There are great similarities between this time and Jesus'. In both cases there were world empires. Most of Israel wanted to be an independent nation, and fight off the the empire. God had something else in mind, in both times, telling people to live in peace with the empire. The prophets' vision was Israel as a light to the nations, not just one more competitive political power.

The prophets interpreted the conquest of Jerusalem as God's judgement. But it's not as if God had to create the Babylonians. The conquest was a punishment in the sense that God told Israel not to fight, and when they insisted on it they got creamed. Something similar happened after Jesus time when the Romans, but Jesus quite clearly tried to prevent it.

The best way to understand God's work with Israel is that he sent prophets to teach his will, but did not coerce them, not fully protect them against the consequences of their folly. There's reason to believe that if they repented he would protect them.

I understand what you're saying. I think you're taking a look at the bible with an historian's eye, and I suspect that's the reason that your thoughts have more resonance than others from my pov.

I have been educated in history and the key thing that any historian will tell you is that all historical documents will have bias. I agree with you that inerrancy seems unlikely in that light. However, I'm interested in how you reconcile biblical inaccuracies with you beliefs - do you pick the bits you find to be profound or do you simply take the more fanciful things with a pinch of salt?

 

[Foolish]

Well, I believe in God, but I don't believe that someone who takes a taxi to a pub is planning to remain teetotal.



So why mention it?



My Christ is white. The Christ of an African is black. The Christ of a Chinese is chinese. The Christ to a Coptic in Egypt is Egyptian. And funnily enough, your Christ is agnostic, knows a little about Greek philosophy but is not Christian; you have created him in your own image, in other words.

The historical Jesus was from the Middle East, but he does not mind how we see him initially, as long as that seeing is a process rather than a destination. The longer we know him, the more clearly we see him for who he is, rather than who we thought him to be, in other words.



Indeed so. This is why when someone is attempting to write a new Bible translation they don't do that. They go to the oldest extant texts, compare them, make judgements based on the rest of Scripture to ensure overall integrity of message, and then create the new translation. It takes years and years of study by very learned Biblical scholars to do this.

It is not generally done by Chinese whispers.

I mentioned michaelangelo's Moses for 3 reasons:

1 that the change of just 2 letters in the translation changed the complete meaning of the word. Surely it's likely that this has happened in the translation/transcription of the bible?

2 It wasn't just a simple mistranslation. The mistranslation was centred around the word keren or karan. The former meaning horns and the latter meaning light. St jerome actively made a choice that Jesus and Mary should be the only people with light around their heads. He therefore chose to use the put horns on Moses because of his own pov and bias. This, as I've repeated a number of times, is inevitable in a translated/transcribed book and in the wrong place could lead to significant differences from the original meaning of passages of the bible.

3 this translation in the bible was believed at the time. Indeed, the sculpture was commissioned for the tomb of the pope no less, so presumably, for a time at least, it was official church policy that Moses had horns. People don't have access to the original document, so they must rely on their fellow man to relay the true story.

 

[Foolish]

Well, I believe in God, but I don't believe that someone who takes a taxi to a pub is planning to remain teetotal.



So why mention it?



My Christ is white. The Christ of an African is black. The Christ of a Chinese is chinese. The Christ to a Coptic in Egypt is Egyptian. And funnily enough, your Christ is agnostic, knows a little about Greek philosophy but is not Christian; you have created him in your own image, in other words.

The historical Jesus was from the Middle East, but he does not mind how we see him initially, as long as that seeing is a process rather than a destination. The longer we know him, the more clearly we see him for who he is, rather than who we thought him to be, in other words.



Indeed so. This is why when someone is attempting to write a new Bible translation they don't do that. They go to the oldest extant texts, compare them, make judgements based on the rest of Scripture to ensure overall integrity of message, and then create the new translation. It takes years and years of study by very learned Biblical scholars to do this.

It is not generally done by Chinese whispers.

Christ was highly likely to be Arab looking.

Although it seems a small point, it just shows that the church has modified the message to suit the audience. I find it hard to believe that they confined themselves to this single change.

In addition I would like to think that an Arab looking Jesus might soften the racial views of a number of conservatives (small c). Making him White when he wasn't is just revisionist racism.

 

[Foolish]

Well, I believe in God, but I don't believe that someone who takes a taxi to a pub is planning to remain teetotal.



So why mention it?



My Christ is white. The Christ of an African is black. The Christ of a Chinese is chinese. The Christ to a Coptic in Egypt is Egyptian. And funnily enough, your Christ is agnostic, knows a little about Greek philosophy but is not Christian; you have created him in your own image, in other words.

The historical Jesus was from the Middle East, but he does not mind how we see him initially, as long as that seeing is a process rather than a destination. The longer we know him, the more clearly we see him for who he is, rather than who we thought him to be, in other words.



Indeed so. This is why when someone is attempting to write a new Bible translation they don't do that. They go to the oldest extant texts, compare them, make judgements based on the rest of Scripture to ensure overall integrity of message, and then create the new translation. It takes years and years of study by very learned Biblical scholars to do this.

It is not generally done by Chinese whispers.

They mak judgments to maintain what is their interpretation of the scripture.

Plus, this makes interestin reading:

BBC NEWS | UK | Magazine | The rival to the Bible