If Jesus Could Heal the Sick and Raise the Dead

Great Debates
281

[QUOTE=tomndebb]
However, since I do not bother to engage in acrimonious complaints about beliefs, I am simply upholding the tradition of the Straight Dope of attempting to ensure that people who wander around making wild claims get their facts correct.
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Or in other words, you choose to keep your own beliefs as secret as possible so you can continue to pick nits, while maintaining a false sense of superiority.

[QUOTE=tomndebb]
See, here is one of those pesky facts that you have gotten wrong. There are a limited number of Christians and (currently) rather more Muslims who actually believe that either book was “written by the creator of the universe.” In order to go off and hammer people for holding that belief, you have to find people who hold that belief. When the various neophyte atheists wander into this Forum trying to attack Dopers for holding beliefs because the bible said so, it is only an act of promoting the Straight Dope to note that their claims are silly and based on a strawman form of argumentation. Criticizing believers for holding that a work was “written by the creator of the universe” when the believers do not, themselves, actually believe that, demonstrates a fair amount of ignorance on the part of the critic.
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Why do I have a feeling that if you ever admitted why you believe Christ rose from the dead, it would be no more defensible than saying “because the bible tells me so.”

282

[QUOTE=Polycarp]

…one should never take what got filtered through their preconceptions, and perhaps added to by the unscrupulous, as equivalent to something explicitly dictated by Him.
[/QUOTE]

And we can apply the same words to the biblical passages you often cite. Or do you maintain that the verses you cherry pick are immune from such reasoning?

283

[QUOTE=Valteron]
We have an expression in French that really describes what Tomndeb and the others have been doing for the past dozen or so posts: Analyser de la chiure de mouche It translates as “analyzing fly shit”. Look, the point is not even if the gospels were written 30 or 40 or 60 years after JC died, or 100.

The real point here, the elephant in the room, is that the Bible, and for that matter the Koran, are ridiculous and even laughable contenders for the title of divine message prepared by an omnisicient God for the benefit of the human race.

If the Koran or the Bible are really Books written by the creator of the universe as they claim to be, then they would logically be the most important books ever written, right?

Hey folks! Reality time! Look at the absurdities, contradictions, and just plain unscientific bullshit in both of these books and ask yourself, "Is this the best that an eternal and omnipotent creator of all things visible and invisible could have come up with to communicate with us?

If you want some idea of the unfathomable stupidities and absurdities contained in either book (or the Book of Mormon for that matter) see the Ske[ptic’s Annotated Bible, Koran and Book of Mormon at http://skepticsannotatedbible.com/index.htm

I will not go into a whole list of them. You can look them up.

Let me ask a simple question of the Christians here who are **not ** Mormons. Have you read the Book of Mormon (I have)? Does it strike you as a genuine record of something that genuinely happened in pre-Columbian America, or does its outlandish absurdity and claims strike you as a book written by Joseph Smith to bamboozle people?

Well, I look at the Bible and the Koran and I say: GOD wrote this? Don’t make me laugh.

Deal with the elephant in the room, will you folks?
[/QUOTE]

Deal with the post subject will ya? Neither Tom or **Poly **nor myself believe in the Bible the way you describe. That was Tom’s point to **PRR
**. Although some Christians may believe the Bible is the inerrant or inspired word of God many do not. It is not a belief that has been handed down for 2000 years. Got that.

284

[QUOTE=badchad]
Or in other words, you choose to keep your own beliefs as secret as possible so you can continue to pick nits, while maintaining a false sense of superiority.
[/QUOTE]
I have not engaged in nitpicking and I have not expressed any superiority.
The former is the sort of action in which neophyte atheists engage when attempting to join biblical literalists in their shared passion for having something over which to quarrel.
The latter is the sort of thing that persons who wander into threads to make sweeping condemnations of the beliefs of others engage.

285

[QUOTE=badchad]
Or in other words, you choose to keep your own beliefs as secret as possible so you can continue to pick nits, while maintaining a false sense of superiority.
”
[/QUOTE]

and the countdown begins…

286

[QUOTE=tomndebb]
I have not engaged in nitpicking and I have not expressed any superiority.
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I’m sure in your mind you think that’s true but some others, including myself, perceive your MO as to nitpick anything stated by any fundamentalist or any atheist who has the slightest inclination to criticize a viewpoint to which you are sympathetic. That viewpoint being a fairly liberal view of Christianity, as colored by Catholicism, so far as I have been able to deduce. I don’t recall you doing the same type of nitpicking with any of your liberal brothers, and you and I both know there are plenty of nits there. You do this all while offering as little of your own beliefs as possible, I think, because you know that they will come across looking as silly as those held by Scientologists. I think you also know that this is something that even your considerable erudition is powerless to defend.

I’d ask you to prove my hypothesis wrong in a new thread, but we all know you won’t.

287

[QUOTE=badchad]
I’m sure in your mind you think that’s true but some others, including myself, perceive your MO as to nitpick anything stated by any fundamentalist or any atheist who has the slightest inclination to criticize a viewpoint to which you are sympathetic.
[/QUOTE]
And you are, of course, simply making this up. I have challenged assertions of fact among any and all posters of whatever religious or political persuasion where my understanding of the facts has differed. I have both defended and challenged atheists, fundamentalists, “liberals,” “conservatives,” supporters of GWB, opponents of GWB, socialists, capitalists, pacifists, militarists, isolationists, interventionists, advocates of open borders and advocates of closed borders, and a whole range of other people when I perceived a distortion of facts. Your perception is probably clouded by the fact that you only participate in threads where you happen to find posters such as pseudotriton ruber ruber and Valteron mixing their legitmate criticisms of belief with oddly distorted versions of history and anachronistic criticisms of pre-Enlightenment authors. Your limited sampling of my posts is not my problem.
Read back through this thread. I have not attacked any challenge to belief. I have noted specific errors of fact and provided corrective challenges to those errors.

As to “defending” my beliefs, you are correct that I will not engage in any such pointless activity. This is the Straight Dope that addresses factual information. The nature of the medium permits philosophical ruminations and discussions, but that is not my interest. (You will note that I also refrain from participating in threads on ontology, epistemology, and similar subsets of meytaphysics and rarely participate in discussions of ethics or aesthetics. I read them, but i simply do not enjoy participating in them.) If my declining to wrangle over belief makes you feel good, consider it my gift to you.

288

[QUOTE=tomndebb]
And you are, of course, simply making this up. I have challenged assertions of fact among any and all posters of whatever religious or political persuasion…
[/quote]

Can you cite where you have challenged a liberal Christian or Catholic, when defending his or her faith against fundamentalists or infidels? Would you mind giving your estimation of how frequently you have done so in comparison the frequency you have do the same for atheists and fundamentalists? Cause I perceive a bias and an MO. Not a moderator bias this time, just a personal one. Not as if a personal bias is bad, but you seem to be implying you don’t have one.

Some might call that nitpicking. What was it Valteron said about fly shit? I think his statement stood pretty fair, even if you and I don’t think his criticisms of liberal Christianity were as precise as they could be. How about my criticism though?

Pointless, you mean as apposed to the deep meaningful and fruitful conversation you have been having with PRR about when the gospels were recorded?

Why. With regards to religious threads it seems that you enjoy participation quite a bit, so much as you can leave the weaknesses of your own beliefs out of them.

No comment. :wink:

289

It certainly doesn’t seem to be generally a good source of factual information for me either. But I can’t know the extent of the metaphysical experiences of others or what the future will hold. So I disagree with the either/or position that you take – or at least I’m not as certain of it.

I understand and I agree. But the truth that goes in quotation marks is not the kind I was talking about. Neither is it scientific truth. Any name I would give to this Truth would sound too airy-fairy. (My husband would probably say, “Oh, Zoe, just call it ‘Keith.’”)

I may not be correct in what I said about the teachings of the Baha’is regarding science and religion anyway, so I hope that I may retract that.

Maybe someday science will provide evidence of God, but I doubt it. In my thinking they are just not on the same plane of consideration. And I do respect both.

290

[QUOTE=badchad]
Pointless, you mean as apposed to the deep meaningful and fruitful conversation you have been having with PRR about when the gospels were recorded?
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The issues of dating and authorship of the gospels are discussions of facts. When he misrepresents the facts in order to attempt to make a philosophical point, I will point out his factual error.

I will be kind enough to do the same for you.

291

[QUOTE=tomndebb]
The issues of dating and authorship of the gospels are discussions of facts. When he misrepresents the facts in order to attempt to make a philosophical point, I will point out his factual error.
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Well your factual error was pretty nitpicky and had little to do with any philosophical points but I suppose that’s just my opinion.

I’m sure you will. When I see you doing the same for Jodi, Sarafeena, or Polycarp I might then think your claim of objectivity has merit. Till then carry on the good fight. Keeping that glass house of a theology well behind you is a brilliant move.

292

Is it true of this thread that no one here has posted material that she or he knows or should know is false, defamatory, inaccurate, abusive, hateful, or harassing? Has no one been uncivil, insulting or purposely inflammatory?

Remember the days when the wrong kind of smilie in GD could get you busted?

I now interrupt this hijacking to return you to the hijacking already in progress…

293

[QUOTE=badchad]
Well your factual error was pretty nitpicky and had little to do with any philosophical points but I suppose that’s just my opinion.
[/QUOTE]
prr was making the same old tired and false claim that Christianity was based on scripture and that, therefore, since scripture was flawed, Christianity is false. In the midst of his silly claim, he both screwed up the dates when New Testament scripture was written and falsely asserted that all other Christian writings were based on scripture. Since he based part of his arguments on both false assertions, it seemed appropriate to point out his errors.
As I have repeatedly pointed out, even in this very thread, there are many reasons to challenge Christian belief. If one comes to the Straight Dope and bases an argument on false claims, one will be challenged. (It seems that you only consider it nitpicking when “your side” has their errors demonstrated.)

[QUOTE=badchad]
I’m sure you will. When I see you doing the same for Jodi, Sarafeena, or Polycarp I might then think your claim of objectivity has merit. Till then carry on the good fight. Keeping that glass house of a theology well behind you is a brilliant move.
[/QUOTE]
Do you actually have a point, here? Or are you simply trying to bait me into responding so that you can whine that I am picking on you? I have made no claim of “objectivity,” so you appear to be following prr in investing heavily in strawman attacks on my person that have nothing to do with what I have actually posted.

294

[QUOTE=tomndebb]
prr was making the same old tired and false claim that Christianity was based on scripture and that, therefore, since scripture was flawed, Christianity is false. In the midst of his silly claim, he both screwed up the dates when New Testament scripture was written and falsely asserted that all other Christian writings were based on scripture. Since he based part of his arguments on both false assertions, it seemed appropriate to point out his errors.
[/quote]

That’s fine, but it really seems silly to make such a big deal about dates. Especially coming from a grown up man who really and truly believes in miracles because that’s what his parents, teachers, and clergy taught him or you read it in an admittidly errent book. If you have other better reasons for believing in, lets say, the resurrection of Jesus and/or Lazarus please feel free to share. Otherwise don’t get so upset if your beliefs and the evidence supporting them are sometimes mischaracterized.

It seems, at least as it relates to religion that you make claims of objectivity while really only nitpicking your opponents. When my side makes an error I usually don’t point it out either, as I have a similar though opposite bias as you, I just don’t believe in magic.

Just that you MO has been tagged. You fight hard for your beliefs, but do your best to not look like you are doing so, and keeping your weaknesses off the table. Also I should point out that you frequently characterize your opponents as inferior by saying or implying they are small, whiny, angry, pounding their fists, etc.

I don’t think your picking on me.

It does have something to do with what you have actually posted. You try to maintain that you are some even handed fact corrector, see below:

Are you not in the above paragraph strongly implying that you are objective in your nitpicking of facts? Cause it sure reads like it. If however you are now maintaining that you aren’t objective, or even handed if you prefer, in doing so, well, thanks for admitting it. That was my point.

295

From the main index page of the SDMB, describing the BBQ Pit:

Just sayin’ :slight_smile:

296

[QUOTE=Polycarp]
From the main index page of the SDMB, describing the BBQ Pit:
Just sayin’ :slight_smile:
[/QUOTE]

If your talking to me, my discussion with Tom at this time has nothing to do with his adminstrator status. Also if your talking to me, please respond to my question in post #282.

297

In response to your request to answer this question:

[QUOTE=badchad]
And we can apply the same words to the biblical passages you often cite. Or do you maintain that the verses you cherry pick are immune from such reasoning?
[/QUOTE]

No, I do not maintain that, for the very good reason that the verses in question are not ones that I “cherry pick,” as I’ve been at some pains to state already.

One element in critical study of Scripture, IMO, is to identify what particular stories and teachings are preserved across those variously slanted portraits. The story of the feeding of the 5,000, for example, appears in all four gospels. Whatever the truth behind it, it must therefore represent something that (a) is an early and widespread tradition regarding Jesus, and (b) carries some importance doctrinally. There are three different accounts of where Jesus teaches the two commandments he deems the most important – in one of which he commends someone else for identifying them as the most important, in the other two of which he himself promulgates them as most important in two distinct scenarios. A similar application of the principle noted suggests that this too was deemed central to his teaching.

There is, of course, much more to my idea of proper critical study than that, but it seems pointless to reiterate it under these circumstances. But that one principle and two examples should provide evidence of why I don’t consider it cherry-picking.

By the way, two points about the dating:

As PRR validly stated, the dating of the Gospels is important in determining how reliable they might be. Granted, his apparently inadvertent use of “100 years or so” for “a substantial period of time” led to an excursus on the subject of dating. But his basic premise was valid. Something only recorded decades later is less likely to provide accurate information than something recorded closer to the date of occurrence, ceteris paribus.

Second, when Tom inadvertently made a false statement about dating of the Gospels (although his intent to reference statements in this thread, in regard to which he was accurate, was I think clear), I did post a corrective in the interests of factual clarity. And while AFAIK he has not had occasion to do so in this thread, he has several times in the last month or two corrected me on inadvertent errors of fact regarding religious issues – one that comes quickly to mind was whether or not Catholic deacons could bestow the Church’s blessing, e.g., on a newlywed couple. In point of fact, they can; I had erroneously stated that they were not empowered to do so.

298

Y’know, I keep coming back here (like a dog to his vomit, I know), because the thread title always gets me singing the Beatles’ “Tomorrow Never Knows”: “Turn off your mind, relax and float downsteam,/It is not dying/ If Jesus could heal the sick and raise the dead…”

This thread has livened up in the last few hours, pur-raise the Lord! I do want to add how glad I am to drop the whole dating hijack. it’s completely unimportant to my argument when exactly various gospels and documentations were written, but Tom gets to strut his stuff here, and I’m interested (it’s like a highway accident) in finding out some of these details (I read Augustine in college, I’m sure, but I forgot that passage, and enjoyed reading it), so I’ve played along more than perhaps I should have. It serves Tom far bettertho point out where I’m “wrong” than it does to have him address my point here: Xian belief relies heavily on the Bible. Now, obviously, the “Bible” (NT) didn’t exist for a while so the intervening generations believed in something other than what we would call the Bible (It’s interesting that, for this part of the discussion, it suits Tom’s argument to have the intervening period last as LONG as conceivable, and suits “mine” to have it as SHORT as is conceivable, but strict dating is fairly unimportant to any point I’m trying to make.) If the NT is just a frippery that formalizes or augments the great oral tradition, as Tom seems to want to argue, then he’s reduced to arguing that a 2000 year old game of telegraph is providing his link to the truth. That, or just personal faith and inspiration accounts for his idea of faith. I’m trying to nail down the nature of the source of his belief, its reasons, and so on, and he’s not really giving me very much to understand. He’s obfuscating point after point, nitpicking dates and getting into tedious arguments (“I’m sorry” would have been more than sufficient for misquoting me, but no he needed to go into great detail about how I wasn’t clear enough in pointing out where he had made his mistake)

299

…anyway, as I was saying–my argument is how heavily endebted Xian belief is to the Bible (or if Tom needs to be technical, the Bible and the stories that took ALMOST a century or so to be collected as the NT). As much as Polycarp wants to distance himself from that deeply-flawed, human-generated mass of contradictions and gibberish, his belief in his God coincides from (and derives from, ultimately) the same dubious source. In some sense, I don’t even get his disclaiming or even ridiculing of miracles: it’s not necessary that Jesus actually performed any of the absurd magic tricks he’s credited with performing in the NT, because his divinity doesn’t depend on whether he actually did or did not defy gravity, feed a crowd with a little bit of bread, transform water into wine, etc–all that stuff is parable, and merely symbolic, etc.

But the essential “fact” about Jesus, that he was God’s son incarnate–that IS literally true, for Polycarp and Tom. (Please tell me, guys, if I’m misrepresenting your position here–I think I’m rendering it accurately). Now, if it is-- and that’s a gigantic IF–then walking on water is nothing. If Jesus was the son of God, and super-human, and all that (and I’ve seen nothing to persuade that this is even plausible), then why couldn’t he do all those miracles and many others besides? Why would some small miracles be deserving of your derision and skepticism if the BIG ONE is something you believe devoutly to be literally true?

300

[QUOTE=badchad]
That’s fine, but it really seems silly to make such a big deal about dates. Especially coming from a grown up man who really and truly believes in miracles because that’s what his parents, teachers, and clergy taught him or you read it in an admittidly errent book. If you have other better reasons for believing in, lets say, the resurrection of Jesus and/or Lazarus please feel free to share. Otherwise don’t get so upset if your beliefs and the evidence supporting them are sometimes mischaracterized.
[/quote]
You do seem to have a fixation on wondering about other people’s beliefs, don’t you? It is immaterial what I believe on any topic as long as I am not actively promoting that belief, here. On a site dedicated to “fighting ignorance” (that is, a lack of facts or erroneous facts, not, as you pretend, fighting philosophical propositions that you do not happen to hold), I am simply participating in the manner of providing or correcting facts.

Your persistent efforts to reduce every poster to some labeled belief for you to embrace, dismiss, or attack are neither productive nor amusing. Regardless what any poster believes, in this Forum it makes more sense that they be judged on their posts, otherwise, we simply fall back into the sort of bigotry that is so favored by the fundies on both sides of the religious divide and the partisan tools in the political realm: You believe “x” so I will dismiss all that you say.

[QUOTE=badchad]
Are you not in the above paragraph strongly implying that you are objective in your nitpicking of facts? Cause it sure reads like it. If however you are now maintaining that you aren’t objective, or even handed if you prefer, in doing so, well, thanks for admitting it. That was my point.
[/QUOTE]
No. I am demonstrating that I am even handed in providing facts and correcting errors. My own subjective beliefs are not at issue and I make no claim that I am objective about what I believe.
Objective and even-handed are related but nor equivalent concepts. I am even-handed, but I do not claim objectivity.

Yet it was important enough for you to post the error and then defend the error?