That right there just broke my irony meter, after your last two posts. Evidence which is not materially based is not evidence. The claims implicit in the text being analyzed are not evidence, otherwise Action Comics #1 proves that Superman exists.
Since I don’t accept metaphysical naturalism, I think that a disbelief in miracle claims and prophecy- in principle- are false assumptions and in some cases are going to lead you to false conclusions. Methodological naturalism is fine to an extent- when studying the natural world, for example- but since the whole claim of the Gospels is that they relate a set of supernatural events, assuming naturalism is, essentially, begging the question.
There are of course other grounds on which I distrust historical-critical scholarship, irrespective of metaphysical considerations. For example, claims about “John couldn’t have written texts A and B, because the style is different”: my own writing style varies immensely depending on what I’m writing, and for that matter depending on my mood and what I’m feeling like on that day. Or for another example, claims like “a cruel and imperious tyrant like Pontius Pilate wouldn’t have deferred to the feelings of the crowd by offering to release a prisoner”: on the contrary, authoritarian leaders often combine extreme repression with ostentatious acts of mercy in exactly this way. The same Soviet premier who crushed the Hungarian Revolution also ended the gulags, after all). So this certainly isn’t the only issue I have with historical critical scholarship. It is a big issue though, and I am certainly not going to accept their conclusions at face value, if I think they’re based on deeply questionable assumptions.
Speaking of irony meters breaking…
So you’re saying that nothing they wrote can be trusted because they were utterly convinced that what they wrote was true?
To some degree…yes. People who are absolutely convinced of things are often blinkered when it comes to objectivity. They have a tendency to make excuses for the factual shortcomings of their credos.
(The “True Scotsman” fallacy may have originated in people making excuses for the failures of communism. “Oh, what Russia practices isn’t true communism.”)
That’s not an excuse, it’s a simple fact.
A communist society has neither a state nor social classes. The Soviet Union had both; therefore, it was in no way a communist society.
This isn’t difficult.
Not really relevant. I gave an example of people whose strong belief undermined their ability to reason critically and objectively about a subject. The same can be true for people with strong religious beliefs.
This was in answer to Thudlow Boink’s question.
I won’t impugn all strong beliefs as limitations on critical reasoning, but when it comes to religious belief, specifically, it has a greater likelihood of harming objectivity, because the belief itself is faith-based, not evidence-based.
Makes complete sense to me. Just look at people rejecting evolution because religion. Or Mormons. Not amount of evidence will make them reconsider their religious beliefs. They’ll take any argument, regardless how contrived, rather than changing their articles of faith.
I would expect early Christians to be like that. And at the time, if they were factually wrong about something, it would have been extremely difficult to find evidences of it, so their stance didn’t even need much defending. If you’re considering conversion in 100 AD, where are you going to find informations about what really happened in Jerusalem 70 years before?
At the time the Gospels came out, Christianity was a very small local faith, and there were a good number of people still alive who could say “it didnt happen that way”. James, the brother of Jesus was still alive, and John was also. Josephus was also around, and his histories do not disagree with the historical portions Gospels in any significant way. Of course, minor details differ as would be expected since it seems nothing but a few sayings of Jesus was written down in any timely fashion. And of course details about the early life of Jesus are rather suspect. (Since of course basically there likely werent any living who were around at His Birth). But his Baptism and Crucifixion are pretty much agreed to be historical.
I don’t think that was *my *claim.
Two issues; first, it’s not 100% clear that we are looking at mothers, here. Depends on the translation of a few of those words, of course, and a reasonable rejoinder here would be “then why are there no men so punished?”, but the possibility does remain.
I actually talked about the separation here not meaning that these women weren’t murderers, just a different class of murderer, in that post. As you say, there’s plenty of possible reasons for a split off other than one group being “murderers” and the other not. But… that is a possible reason for the split, too.
That’s a false dilemma, though. We don’t have to pick between “Jesus did this thing so as to set this particular presumption” and “Jesus did a weird thing once”. Perhaps it was to establish a different presumption; perhaps the presumption was less, or more, general; perhaps Jesus did this sort of thing all the time, enough that one example was important to note in his biography; perhaps Jesus did nothing like this ever but this one time, and so it was deemed important for seeming so out-of-character for him.
Too, the issue is that we then have to presume general messages into any action of Jesus that he undertook even once.
Whoa. It can’t? Why not? That’s a very certain claim.
But the considerable majority of the world thinks that Christianity isn’t correct. If what’s “clear to many” is a standard of evidence you’re comfortable with, you should stand with them; likewise, it has been “clear to many” that slavery was just and reasonable; it’s “clear to many” that… well, quite a lot of things.
Argument from multitude isn’t a standard with which I’m comfortable at all.
If you’ll allow me to disagree slightly; I would say that they were cruel at any time.
Well, now you have something of a problem, because this isn’t what Jesus says when he stops the stoning. He introduces an entirely different standard. One would think it would be quite easy to for him to tell people clearly ignorant of the new state of things that they shouldn’t be stoning anyone; instead, he takes a route which leaves the people concerned pretty able to justify stoning a different person on a different day.
So, Christians, since… well, as soon as they found someone else to stone, wouldn’t have been prohibited from doing so. Nor, according to the Bible, were they.
I actually agree with the ignorance part, though not the specious part. My argument isn’t based on Christian theology and big-m Morality as it pertains to this point, though if they should coincide, that’s a bonus. My argument is based on the words and actions of Jesus as given in the Bible.
Yes, since he wasnt dead at that time. :rolleyes:
The new covenant does no take effect until the Death and Resurrection.
And, yes, Jews would not have been prohibited from stoning. But there were no Christians at that time.
So, once the Death and Resurrection occurs, Christians are freed from the laws in the OT.
When a secular historian is convinced that what he or she writes is true their conviction can be overturned by new facts, by the research of other historians, etc. The situation is quite different when a religious zealot writes something he is convinced is true. If a man had approached the writer of John’s gospel with evidence that Jesus was actually a fraud do you believe he would have studied the evidence with an open mind and accepted the facts if they were solid? Or would he have denounced the man as satanic and prayed for him to be struck down by God?
Do you see the difference between one kind of conviction and another? The early Christians weren’t interested in history, they were interested in spreading their religion by whatever means possible. How could you trust such a writer when you knew that historical truth was quite irrelevant in his mind, that inconvenient facts would be ignored or changed to suit his holy purpose?
The only way you could do so is by faith. And that’s fine, but allow those of us who prefer reason as our guide to differ.
That ends up problematic from the other side; by this standard, Jesus was breaking the law by preventing that stoning from taking place. Beyond that, if “let he who is without sin” is not merely a single example but a general standard as Hector suggests, Jesus was being inaccurate in saying it was the standard to be judged by before it was.
The inevitable rejoinder; 10 commandments?
It’s true, Jesus was interfering with a lawful execution. But he hardly “prevented” it.
Yes, 10 C also.
Catholic Church and others use graven images. Christians dont keep Saturday Holy, etc. All of the OT is merely “useful for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness” (2 Timothy 3:16) but no longer Law.
The group’s intent was to stone the woman. They went to him, largely it seems to try and trap him into saying the wrong thing. His words send them all away; he then, himself, does not stone the woman. And, like I said, if you’re correct, then he is inaccurate in spreading the word about the new standard which isn’t in effect. If you’re right, then Jesus caused that group of people to break the law; and he, too, broke the law. Is that a sin?
And, if we’re going to go back to what’s “clear to many”, my impression of the Christians I’ve seen speak about this subject is that they have believed Jesus “prevented” the stoning.
There’s a lot packed into that “etc.”. I was under the impression that killing, thievery, adultery, and holding to other gods were still a big problem to Christians. Too, the examples you give aren’t quite accurate; it’s a different Sabbath but it’s kept holy, and my (admittedly loose) understanding of graven images as regards the Catholic Church is that it is not quite as simple put as you put it.
Yes, but talking them out of it is not the same as physically stopping it.
Not a sin for the entity that wrote the law in the first place, no.
Yes, they sure are. But not due to the OT laws.
True. So? They’re both stopping it.
So he merely caused others to sin?
That aside, “God’s laws don’t apply to God” isn’t generally a useful area to go to. It’s a standard by which we may say that God is evil. It also means we can’t assume that anything Jesus did is supposed to be emulated.
I’m not quite sure by this if you’ve addressed my objections to your points about the Sabbath and graven images, but, ok. Then due to what?
I don’t want to get involved with all the side discussions about what this or that detail in the OT or NT may mean. Just going back to the title question and the opening post.
I see a simple glaring logical error in the OP. Aldiboronti concludes that because the bulk of the Christian Churches are not spending a large amount of time and effort on trying to get everyone else on the planet to join their faith, that this proves that they have no faith at all themselves.
I have read the Bible cover to cover, and I am not aware of any passage which states that the only way to prove faith, is to push it at others.
It’s a bit like saying that Rolls Royce doesn’t themselves think they make any worthwhile vehicles, because they aren’t dedicated to getting EVERYONE on the planet to buy one.
But the scriptures were written long after that. Who knows how big the differences were between the beliefs of the group you’re refering to and that of the people who converted reading them.
Besides, Christianism mostly follows the teachings of Paul, and we know there were disagreements between him and the original apostoles. Again, how big were these disagreements? According to a Muslim author, there still was in his time a group of Christian Jews who stated they followed the teachings of Peter only (not the gospels), the entire Jewish Law, and utterly rejected Paul as a fraud, for instance. Current (and even rather early) Christianism might be completely at odds with Jesus actual beliefs.
Finally, as we know from looking at modern cults, your original group could very well believe in things that were blatantly false, and just ignore any statement to the contrary by direct witnesses. “And Jesus was resurrected” “Hmm…no, his rotting body was still there when my cousin buried another corpse in the tomb” “your cousin is mistaken or lying. My cult leader said that he personally met Jesus after his death, you won’t fool Me with your lies”.
Josephus says almost nothing about Jesus. We can’t really know what happened, let alone what the teachings of Jesus were, from him.
So you say. Personnally, I don’t see any compelling argument, even within the four gospels, that the laws of the OT don’t apply anymore. I stick to Matthew 5:18 that very, very clearly states that the Law is unchanged and unchanging, while there’s no even remotely as obvious statement to the contrary anywhere.