Was it “Slow and letter high”?
Consider the statements in context:
John said to him, “Teacher, we saw someone casting out demons in your name, and we tried to stop him because he was not following us.” 39 But Jesus said, “Do not stop him, because no one who does a miracle in my name will be able soon afterward to say anything bad about me, 40** for whoever is not against us is for us." ** (Mark 9:38-40)
Ἔφη αὐτῷ ὁ Ἰωάννης· διδάσκαλε, εἴδομέν τινα ἐν τῷ ὀνόματί σου ἐκβάλλοντα δαιμόνια καὶ ἐκωλύομεν αὐτόν, ὅτι οὐκ ἠκολούθει ἡμῖν. 39 ὁ δὲ Ἰησοῦς εἶπεν· μὴ κωλύετε αὐτόν. οὐδεὶς γάρ ἐστιν ὃς ποιήσει δύναμιν ἐπὶ τῷ ὀνόματί μου καὶ δυνήσεται ταχὺ κακολογῆσαί με· 40** ὃς γὰρ οὐκ ἔστιν καθ᾿ ἡμῶν, ὑπὲρ ἡμῶν ἐστιν.** (Mark 9:38-40)
Read this carefully: Jesus is not saying, “those in the middle ground are on our side.” He is informing the mistaken disciples, who are portrayed as quite slow in Mark’s Gospel, that many who are apparently in the middle are actually on Jesus’ side, though it was unknown to the disciples.
This situation is not at all like your A, B, C, D situation, adhay.
In terms of your notation, it would be like a master teacher informing a dim-witted A, “Though you don’t know it, there is a person B that actually agrees with you 100%. You just haven’t gotten to know him.” It’s not a statement that includes C, but rather one that includes B. The point is that A was not aware that B was on his side.
Well I didn’t use your verses. The verses I chose show three Apostles (Gospels) in disagreement and in Luke’s case, disagreement with himself.
It would be more like A informing a dimwitted B, ““Though you don’t know it, there is a person C that actually agrees with you 100%. You just haven’t gotten to know him.” It’s a statement that includes C.” The point is that B was not aware that C was on his side"
And again, an entirely different set of circumstances than my OP.
What A said to B was, “You thought C was D but he’s actually B.”
Hi, tomndebb.
Funny how things work out;) Can’t attempt a resolution of contradictions if there aren’t any.
Yes, you did. You cited Mark 9:40 in your OP, for which I merely provided the context. Your other quotation of this saying, the parallel in Luke 9:50, teaches the same thing, in essentially the same context.
That makes no sense, since you’ve already defined B to be the one in 100% agreement with A, and you’ve defined C to be in neither disagreement nor agreement with A. You can’t now secretly change the definition of C from indifference to agreement. Here is what you said:
If “C” is really B, then he’s not C. He’s just B.
What do you think of Indistinguishable’s statements, “If you’re not a male, you’re a female” and “If you’re not a female, you’re a male.” Do they contradict each other?
A tells B that though B thinks C is like D, that C is 100% like B.
What’s to contradict? Together they make the statement, “You are either male or female.”
And that’s the same with “If you’re not with us, you’re against us” and “If you’re not against us, you’re with us”. Together, they make the statement “You are either with us or against us.”
[Just think about swapping “you are with us” in for “you are male” and swapping “you are against us” in for “you are female”.]
Let’s go back to this.
Unfortunately it is not either/or. It’s us males and two thems. C’s, (call them androgynous) and D’s, females. The question is are we men going assume the androgynous as males or females? The comparison is imperfect but you didn’t give me much to work with.
The first is exactly what Bush told the undecided nations with regard to our war on terror. In a sense he declared war on much of the world.
Obama I hope takes the second route. In that case, he would prefer not to lump our non-enemies in with a small number of violent factions.
.
So what you’re saying is that the statements aren’t like “If you’re not male, you’re female” and “If you’re not female, you’re male”; rather, they’re like “If you’re not genuinely male, you’re nominally female” and “If you’re not genuinely female, you’re nominally male”, where you’ve distinguished between two different predicates of malehood and two different predicates of femalehood (genuine and nominal). And then the contradiction is in the nominal status of one who is neither genuinely male nor genuinely female, it presumably being impossible for them to be both nominally female and nominally male.
Fine. If you read it that way, you have a contradiction (between “If you’re not genuinely with us, you’re nominally against us” and “If you’re not genuinely against us, you’re nominally with us”, on the assumption that some people may exist who are neither genuinely with us nor genuinely against us, and that no one can be considered both nominally against us and nominally with us). The question is… should we read it that way? (Where the “with us” in one statement means something different than the “with us” in the other statement, and similarly the “against us” in one statement means something different than the “against us” in the other statement)
Please comment on Bush and Obama above.
Well, I don’t know what Bush meant by “If you’re not with us, you’re against us”, whether he meant “If you’re not genuinely with us, you’re genuinely against us (i.e., no one in the world is actually indifferent in their opinions regarding us)” or whether he meant “If you’re not genuinely with us, you’re nominally against us (i.e., even though some may be actually indifferent in their opinions regarding us, I will construe them as our enemies, same as with those others who are actually hostile in their opinions regarding us)” or whether he meant some other reading. Clearly, many have taken him as giving the second reading here. Whether or not that is what Bush meant by whatever variation of those words he employed [I can no longer recall], it’s not clear to me that this is the proper interpretation of the Biblical line. But perhaps it is. But perhaps it isn’t. The issue isn’t cut-and-dry. There is a very natural reading of the Biblical lines on which there is no logical contradiction; indeed, it is the most literal possible reading. But that may not be the correct reading. But something like it may be. It’s not cut-and-dry.
Try it this way. If you have a penis you’re with us, if you have a vagina, you’re against us. If you have neither at the moment, we’ll assume (for the time being) you’ll choose to grow a penis.
How can I not agree? 
Back when I was in grad school, about 1975, I said I would read and comment on the Bible if someone sent me one. This was on a religion message board. (On PLATO, long before there was even usenet.) Someone did and I did. Sure there are boring parts - lots of boring parts - but that’s true of War and Peace also. What I found is that there are lots of interesting parts skipped over during my religious education. I hadn’t even looked at the NT before this, so that was particularly useful.
I don’t know about here, but in alt.atheism it struck me that atheists were far more likely to have read the entire Bible than theists.
ETA: By the way, I’ve read all of Shakespeare also. Henry VI part I was a hard slog, but I’m glad I did. There is enough that I haven’t read that I make no claim to being literate myself, just to be clear. I’m getting there.
That is why I used the illustration of the integers. In the real world, there is a gray area concerning male and female, along with many things.
Well, maybe, but that is radically different than the fairly dichotomous situation we have in the Gospels. Try reading the sayings in context, to see what issue they were addressing, and what they would have meant to the intended audience. I just don’t see how you can find a contradiction in the gospel accounts here.
Let me use them. In the conflicting verses I would apply them like this.
“If you’re not a positive integer, you’re a negative integer.” Excludes 0
“If you’re not a negative integer, you’re a positive integer.” Includes 0
This is no time to tell me that 0 is not actually a positive integer.
Well, I have no more to say on the subject. Perhaps you can point out a contradiction in the gospel accounts or do you believe there are none?
The main problem here is not whether there is a contradiction: what you have here is simply two false statements. (Zero is neither positive nor negative, so both conditionals are wrong. Here we have a true middle ground, which cannot be legitimately be said to be a part of either side.)
There is nothing controversial about a list of two false statements.
In order for this analogy to apply to the “contradiction” alleged in the OP, one must prove, from the scriptural context, the existence of an actual middle ground, as apposed to a hypothetical middle or an apparent middle.
Well, again, I have no more to say. Perhaps you yourself can point out a contradiction in the gospel accounts or do you believe there are none?
Just askin’.