A confused atheist.

[Foolish]

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Oooooohhhhhh

What happened?

Did I swear at someone when I was less than sober?

Hope I didn't. But I was very not sober.

 

[Foolish]

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.

It sounds to me that you're almost speaking of deism as opposed to theism

As for the prime directive, I'm not sure that analogy holds water. I remember Jean luc rushing around giving medicine to many a species. The pivotal issue seemed to be whether the species asked for help. The federation would offer help if it were asked of them, but leave well alone if help was not sought.

If memory serves, the episode you mention involved a competing species tha was being enslaved or something by the ill species. The argument was therefore about intervening in the evolution of a species dying out when they had no place to.

What would archer have done if the federation had terraformed the planet and created the two species? That would be a closer analogy.

 

[Foolish]

This thread has been interesting.

Which bits?

 

[hedrick]

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?

Error in itself isn't necessarily that much of a problem. We think we understand history, at least in part, but none of our sources is inerrant. There are things whose accuracy remain in dispute. Yet we still know things about the past, and we can still learn from it. Of course large parts of the Bible aren't historical narrative in the first place, so inerrancy isn't entirely the issue. But once we have historical data (roughly a bit before the first king), I think we have as good knowledge about Israel as about other historical cultures.

As a Christian, the center of the Bible for me is Jesus teaching and acts. However as recent scholarship shows, they are done in the context of the OT. But how do you deal with the OT, which has everything from love poetry to creation stories?

The answer is that there's no one technique. I do in fact look at things with something like an historian's eye, although obviously I'm not a professional historian. There are things independent of the content that lead to the conclusion that before recorded history it ranges from legend to loose history. That narrows things down a bit, because once we get to historical times, we have prophets to interpret things for us.

While the prophets are not equally profound everywhere, the overall story seems consistent among them: a God dealing with people who get his message only in part; a God working primarily through persuasion, but allowing the consequences of their deeds to help him. A God who envisions Israel as a light to the Gentiles, and not part of the usual political power struggles.

The way theologians typically use the Bible is by tracing the overarching story and its themes. I don't use it as a mine for isolated quotations, but try to look at what God is doing as a whole. Where is he taking Israel? What are the challenges and what is his approach. And of course we have Jesus' teachings to guide the process. The point is to understand what God did and is doing, not to use the Bible as a book of instructions from which we can directly extract answers to all of our questions.

Similarly, in the NT the key is Jesus' own teachings. Of course the Gospels each have their own take on Jesus, and we shouldn't try to flatten them into a single homogenized story. But I think there's a single voice pretty clearly behind them. Particularly the Synoptics. John has to be used with care, although I do accept it as a valid source.

The rest of the NT is primarily letters, and those that aren't forgeries, primarily letters from Paul. N T Wright has spent a lot of time trying to show that Paul's message is basically consistent with Jesus'. I wish I found his case more convincing than I do. I find his letters useful, as a good-faith attempt to apply Jesus' teachings to a very different context. And in some cases the earliest witness to Jesus' teachings (though as far as I can tell it adds little of that to what we find in the Synoptics). So basically I accept Paul as a useful expositor, but I'm not convinced that he is personally inspired. There are too many differences in approach. I say this with regret, because of course the Protestant tradition tends to emphasize Paul over Jesus. However the mainline churches, to which I belong, seem to be focusing more on Jesus than Paul these days.

One thing I ask people to do is to look at how Jesus himself teaches. He does not teach as if it was essential for us all to follow exact rules dictated by God, nor are precisely defined doctrines important to him. He goes for intent, and for quality of our relationships with each other and God, and how we treat each other. This is also true of the prophets, of course. Judaism is unusual in the ancient world in having a God who cares more about how we treat the least powerful members of society than how well we carry out certain rituals.

As you probably know, it's often more important to get the questions right than the answers. The Bible is well suited to the way Jesus uses it: for human transformation, not so well suited to exact doctrine and culture-independent codes of conduct.

 

[hedrick]

It sounds to me that you're almost speaking of deism as opposed to theism

As for the prime directive, I'm not sure that analogy holds water. I remember Jean luc rushing around giving medicine to many a species. The pivotal issue seemed to be whether the species asked for help. The federation would offer help if it were asked of them, but leave well alone if help was not sought.

If memory serves, the episode you mention involved a competing species tha was being enslaved or something by the ill species. The argument was therefore about intervening in the evolution of a species dying out when they had no place to.

What would archer have done if the federation had terraformed the planet and created the two species? That would be a closer analogy.

No, I don't think this is deism. Deism posits a God who isn't involved. The God of the Bible is involved. He warns, he does his best to help people recover after mistakes. He sends Jesus. The prophets portray a God who cares passionately for us. What he doesn't do is make the world free of danger or in most cases remove consequences. While the result isn't always pleasant, I don't think it's out of keeping with normal human ideals.

-------------

The prime directive is only analogous. I still think the analogy is useful. No, the Prime Directive did not permit you to help whenever it was asked. It actually prevents any interaction with, but certainly any effect on, cultures that were not yet at a level where they could maintain their independence as part of galactic culture, roughly speaking warp-capable cultures.

Enterprise captains were well known for pushing the limits, though how far varied from series to series. This was pretty clearly due to immaturity of the human species in general. Vulcan practice was more consistent, as you'd expect, although the viewers don't get a chance to see Vulcans operate independently in the original series. There are a couple of examples in the novels and you get an impression from Star Trek Enterprise of Vulcan values: T'Pol is a bit more assertive about distinct Vulcan culture than Spock. (I self-identify as Vulcan, by the way.)

You're correct that the issue with the dying species was that there was a second one. The Enterprise people thought the species was being abused, but only in fairly subtle ways. There was no intentional slavery or abuse, and the victim species didn't feel that they were being abused. But the point was to avoid affecting the development of two species. I suppose they would have helped had there been only one, and no likely successor species, since if the choices are interfering with the development of a species and having it die out completely, presumably interfering is the lesser of evils. But (aside maybe from Noah) the Bible never shows that kind of alternative. It's pretty clear that the Prime Directive prohibited all interference short of that in pre-warp cultures.

The other cases are either abuses of the directive, or situations where they were trying to undo other interference, e.g. when the Romulans had already been tampering with the culture.

 

[Catherineanne]

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

Funnily enough, just because a certain MS can be proven to be the oldest extant copy, it does not necessarily follow that it is the most accurate to the original (missing) autograph.

I can explain further later, but I have to dash. Mass calls.

God be with you.

 

[ebia]

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

The only news is that the text is now online making it more accessible. Scholars and translators having been taking account of the ancient codices, including this one, and the vast array of individual ancient manuscripts for more than a century.

 

[hedrick]

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

Did the reporter really not know that most current Bible translations already rely heavily on this manuscript?

 

[chilehed]

I agree that he would remember the central elements.

And that would be an objective report: an accurate recounting of an actual external event. Do you agree?

 

[ebia]

Did the reporter really not know that most current Bible translations already rely heavily on this manuscript?

He probably did, but without talking the story up it wouldnt look very exciting to most people.

 

[Foolish]

Error in itself isn't necessarily that much of a problem. We think we understand history, at least in part, but none of our sources is inerrant. There are things whose accuracy remain in dispute. Yet we still know things about the past, and we can still learn from it. Of course large parts of the Bible aren't historical narrative in the first place, so inerrancy isn't entirely the issue. But once we have historical data (roughly a bit before the first king), I think we have as good knowledge about Israel as about other historical cultures.

As a Christian, the center of the Bible for me is Jesus teaching and acts. However as recent scholarship shows, they are done in the context of the OT. But how do you deal with the OT, which has everything from love poetry to creation stories?

The answer is that there's no one technique. I do in fact look at things with something like an historian's eye, although obviously I'm not a professional historian. There are things independent of the content that lead to the conclusion that before recorded history it ranges from legend to loose history. That narrows things down a bit, because once we get to historical times, we have prophets to interpret things for us.

While the prophets are not equally profound everywhere, the overall story seems consistent among them: a God dealing with people who get his message only in part; a God working primarily through persuasion, but allowing the consequences of their deeds to help him. A God who envisions Israel as a light to the Gentiles, and not part of the usual political power struggles.

The way theologians typically use the Bible is by tracing the overarching story and its themes. I don't use it as a mine for isolated quotations, but try to look at what God is doing as a whole. Where is he taking Israel? What are the challenges and what is his approach. And of course we have Jesus' teachings to guide the process. The point is to understand what God did and is doing, not to use the Bible as a book of instructions from which we can directly extract answers to all of our questions.

Similarly, in the NT the key is Jesus' own teachings. Of course the Gospels each have their own take on Jesus, and we shouldn't try to flatten them into a single homogenized story. But I think there's a single voice pretty clearly behind them. Particularly the Synoptics. John has to be used with care, although I do accept it as a valid source.

The rest of the NT is primarily letters, and those that aren't forgeries, primarily letters from Paul. N T Wright has spent a lot of time trying to show that Paul's message is basically consistent with Jesus'. I wish I found his case more convincing than I do. I find his letters useful, as a good-faith attempt to apply Jesus' teachings to a very different context. And in some cases the earliest witness to Jesus' teachings (though as far as I can tell it adds little of that to what we find in the Synoptics). So basically I accept Paul as a useful expositor, but I'm not convinced that he is personally inspired. There are too many differences in approach. I say this with regret, because of course the Protestant tradition tends to emphasize Paul over Jesus. However the mainline churches, to which I belong, seem to be focusing more on Jesus than Paul these days.

One thing I ask people to do is to look at how Jesus himself teaches. He does not teach as if it was essential for us all to follow exact rules dictated by God, nor are precisely defined doctrines important to him. He goes for intent, and for quality of our relationships with each other and God, and how we treat each other. This is also true of the prophets, of course. Judaism is unusual in the ancient world in having a God who cares more about how we treat the least powerful members of society than how well we carry out certain rituals.

As you probably know, it's often more important to get the questions right than the answers. The Bible is well suited to the way Jesus uses it: for human transformation, not so well suited to exact doctrine and culture-independent codes of conduct.

Again I understand much of what you're saying. I find a certain affinity with the teachings that the bible attributes to Jesus. I just really don't get the need for the religious side of things.

I actually find it amazingly noble that a Normal human was capable of such philanthropic thought and had the skills (or luck) to portray his message through the millennia.

I think it cheapens the message by saying that human kind couldnt gain that clarity of thought without a father figure enlightening us.

With regards to inaccuracies: what are your thoughts about the way that Christianity borrowed many of the pagan rituals? I'm thinking particularly of Christmas and similarities to mithras' story.

 

[Foolish]

No, I don't think this is deism. Deism posits a God who isn't involved. The God of the Bible is involved. He warns, he does his best to help people recover after mistakes. He sends Jesus. The prophets portray a God who cares passionately for us. What he doesn't do is make the world free of danger or in most cases remove consequences. While the result isn't always pleasant, I don't think it's out of keeping with normal human ideals.

-------------

The prime directive is only analogous. I still think the analogy is useful. No, the Prime Directive did not permit you to help whenever it was asked. It actually prevents any interaction with, but certainly any effect on, cultures that were not yet at a level where they could maintain their independence as part of galactic culture, roughly speaking warp-capable cultures.

Enterprise captains were well known for pushing the limits, though how far varied from series to series. This was pretty clearly due to immaturity of the human species in general. Vulcan practice was more consistent, as you'd expect, although the viewers don't get a chance to see Vulcans operate independently in the original series. There are a couple of examples in the novels and you get an impression from Star Trek Enterprise of Vulcan values: T'Pol is a bit more assertive about distinct Vulcan culture than Spock. (I self-identify as Vulcan, by the way.)

You're correct that the issue with the dying species was that there was a second one. The Enterprise people thought the species was being abused, but only in fairly subtle ways. There was no intentional slavery or abuse, and the victim species didn't feel that they were being abused. But the point was to avoid affecting the development of two species. I suppose they would have helped had there been only one, and no likely successor species, since if the choices are interfering with the development of a species and having it die out completely, presumably interfering is the lesser of evils. But (aside maybe from Noah) the Bible never shows that kind of alternative. It's pretty clear that the Prime Directive prohibited all interference short of that in pre-warp cultures.

The other cases are either abuses of the directive, or situations where they were trying to undo other interference, e.g. when the Romulans had already been tampering with the culture.

Ha! I found the vulcans in enterprise the most irritating characters ever!

Overbearing to the extreme and the ultimate hypocrites.

However I also prefer t'pol to Spock. She was lovely (never thought I'd use that icon!)

 

[Foolish]

Funnily enough, just because a certain MS can be proven to be the oldest extant copy, it does not necessarily follow that it is the most accurate to the original (missing) autograph.

I can explain further later, but I have to dash. Mass calls.

God be with you.

How come you always manage to confuse me in a polite way?

 

[Foolish]

Did the reporter really not know that most current Bible translations already rely heavily on this manuscript?

What about the missing bits it mentions?

 

[Foolish]

And that would be an objective report: an accurate recounting of an actual external event. Do you agree?

No it wouldn't.

Remembering the broad brush strokes wouldn't fly in a court of law, details are critical in terms of getting the overall message right. Besides my point still stands - the people that wrote about Jesus had a vested interest in his story ie the were believers. Where are the documents describing Christ from outside his circle?

 

[Catherineanne]

How come you always manage to confuse me in a polite way?

It's a gift.

Approximately 3,000 mss of the Greek NT (part or whole) have been preserved, copied between the 2d and 17th centuries, plus over 2,200 lectionary mss, containing sections of the NT arranged for reading in church liturgy from the 7th century on. These witnesses to the text of the NT do not agree among themselves in myriad ways, but relatively few of the differences are significant. No autograph or original ms of a NT book has been preserved; the differences come in the course of copying the original. Not all the differences stemmed from mistakes by copyists; some arose from deliberate changes. Copyists, at times, felt impelled to improve the Greek of what they received, to modernise the spelling, to supplement with explanatory phrases, to harmonise Gospels, and even to omit something that seemed dubious. One might think that the oldest preserved copies of the Greek NT (part or whole) would be the best guide to the originals; but that is not necessarily so. For instance, a 6th century ms might be the only remaining exemplar of a much earlier, now lost copy that was closer to the autograph than an extant 2d or 4th century copy.

An Introduction to the New Testament, R Brown, Chapter 3

 

[ebia]

What about the missing bits it mentions?

We've known that - for example - the ending of Mark is missing or different in a lot of early manuscripts for ages. Few if any scholars think the standard ending (after verse 8) is original. Most modern bibles will have a footnote to tell you that.

's nothing surprising at all. What is extraordinary about the New Testament is the vast array of manuscripts we have dating to relativel close in time to the original writing. You don't have anything like that for other ancient texts.

 

[ebia]

No it wouldn't.

Remembering the broad brush strokes wouldn't fly in a court of law, details are critical in terms of getting the overall message right. Besides my point still stands - the people that wrote about Jesus had a vested interest in his story ie the were believers. Where are the documents describing Christ from outside his circle?

A court of law expects discrepancies between different witnesses. If you don't have discrepancies you can be sure of collaboration.

You might like to read up on Wittgenstein's Poker

Of course the people who write any story have an interest that motivates them to write - and other people to preserve that writing.

Josephus is the only major other contemporary writer detailing events in Jerusalem at that time. He's writing about the same time as Luke and has his own agenda. He mentions Jesus in passing because he doesn't see him as significant.

You need to realise just how sparse surviving writing on that period is in general, and in particular when it comes to Palestine. There are very few texts about Herod the Great or even Tiberius Caesar - massively prominent figures at the time. And each of those texts has an agenda.

 

[golgotha61]

No it wouldn't.

Remembering the broad brush strokes wouldn't fly in a court of law, details are critical in terms of getting the overall message right. Besides my point still stands - the people that wrote about Jesus had a vested interest in his story ie the were believers. Where are the documents describing Christ from outside his circle?

May I join the conversation? If a vested interest is "groups that seek to control a social system or activity from which they derive private benefit", a definition from WordWeb, how does this apply to the New Testament writers? Also, what do you consider "His circle"? Generally, His circle is considered the original apostles. If this is the case, Luke, Mark, Paul, and James were not in "His circle".

 

[hedrick]

No it wouldn't.

Remembering the broad brush strokes wouldn't fly in a court of law, details are critical in terms of getting the overall message right. Besides my point still stands - the people that wrote about Jesus had a vested interest in his story ie the were believers. Where are the documents describing Christ from outside his circle?

I agree that it would be interesting to have more evidence. However this isn't so unusual. We don't have much evidence about what Socrates taught, and there are questions about how accurate Plato is. I don't think they're alone, but it's kind of interesting that we have only ambiguous evidence about the two people who were arguably the most important as foundations of our current culture.

As I'm sure you know, there's a whole academic profession dedicated to doing plausibility tests of the evidence. Of course the results are not exactly unambiguous. But the ones that seem to have the best sense of 1st Cent Judaism think we know what he taught and key actions tolerably well.

Furthermore, we could have 100 more accounts and we still wouldn't agree whether to accept the resurrection at face value. Only a few people were there, and not surprisingly they were Jesus' followers. (Who else would have been at his grave early Sunday morning?) All the objective reporters would be able to say is what those people said. And beyond a few key events like that, there's nothing particularly implausible about Jesus' teaching.

It's hard for me to know on what basis other Christians believe. But my impression is that it's not just an assessment of 1st Cent evidence. I think people believe because of their own experience interpreted religiously, and that of the Christian community. However there are lots of differing reasons. My pastor was actually converted by the ontological argument ! (I think he's crazy.)