I thought we’d pretty well established that this “God” of Necessary Existence need not be a self-aware or purposeful entity; did we even establish that this “God” is the creator of anything? In other words, whatever Hume’s definition might have been, the “God” of that particular logical proof isn’t really what almost everyone else means when they say God. Or did I miss something in one of those other threads?
Note also that the mere conception of a being with this property renders the proof valid, even though this conception might occur without God existing.
I really don’t believe you mean that, unless you were among the tiny minority who considered Anselm’s original proof to be valid. In fact, that proof, which conceives God into existence, has been roundly trounced universally, including here at Straight Dope.
I have spelled out the conditions of my wager to Badchad. Let him decide for himself whether he will accept them. I am presuming that he can read, and is capable of comprehending the definition of God that I gave him.
I suspect that Jodi is right and that Badchad’s is not interested in a free flowing exchange of knowledge. I could be wrong but it seemed to me as though Badchad was about to revert to his former button-pushing methodology in his last post (I hope I am wrong).
In any event Lib, I hope Badchad takes you up on your offer as I’m keenly interested in what you have to say in the matter.
Ah, Gibran, I should have guessed. I love Gibran. Here is my favorite Kahlil Gibran story from The Madman
Six hours and a good rest after my post above that ended with an irritated reaction, I see little reason to change what I said.
Badchad, I apologize for bringing emotion into an intellectual discussion – but you would have gotten far worse from a wide range of other believers, and far sooner. Which is, of course, no excuse for me! The point is, one’s beliefs and are always of emotional value to one, and I try to do my best to “take my skin off and hold it at arm’s length to see if I can see what you see on it” – but like everyone else, I have my limits.
Quite simply and bereft of a lot of extraneous detail, the “proof” I promised – and it’s a probabilistic one, not a ironclad syllogistic-logic one – that my theophanic experience was not an interior hallucination is this: I was at the time of the experience a very intellectualized, compartmentalized being, with emotions walled off and unexpressed. This was a somewhat sterile way to live, but one that worked for me – I did not want the sort of emotional intimacy and commitment that I ended up with in consequence of having that experience. And I’m quite comfortable saying that that would include both conscious and subconscious motivation – I shied away from situations that might involve such unwanted consequences, on a “gut reaction” basis. I do understand the reasons behind this, resulting from my upbringing, but they are moot to the point here.
The immediate results of the conversion experience were that the Bible and theology became “alive” to me, not intellectual topics for study and discussion but personally meaningful as well, that I felt a strong need to reach out and help those in need, and that ethics became not rules but a sequence of behavior that was both meaningful and the essential consequence of basic principles. But my emotions still remained “locked” and my life “arid” in that sense.
Seven years after having that experience, I felt the nigh-onto-irresistible urge (‘sent by God’ at least IMHO), totally out of character for me, to reach out to help a neighbor boy (M) in trouble. The consequences of that act brought a boy (C) who was his cousin’s best friend and his brother-in-law-to-be into my life at a time when C desperately needed a man whom he could rely on, who cared about him as a person, and the consequences of C coming to rely on me as a father figure and a source of emotional stability were such as, combined with his own insightful personality, he drew me out of my emotional shell and “made me whole.” This is the core event of what transformed my interior life (and his), and in absolutely no way could it have been foreseen by any party involved. To summarize the consequences would take pages of posts, but an incomplete but pithy way to represent it can be found in the words of the philosopher G. Brooks: “I could have missed the pain, but I’d have had to miss the dance.” Alternatively, take the middle verse of the Bette Midler song “The Rose” – because I’ve been the person she describes and warns against becoming.
For the record, since it seems we’re talking “Bible” at cross purposes, let me say quite clearly where I think there is validity in it, and where not. It’s an anthology of writings produced over a period somewhat greater than 1,000 years, in a variety of genres and using a variety of literary techniques. It also exhibits a naivete bordering on the superstitious about events – an earthquake is seen as God’s wrath, for example.
In this it is no different from the hundreds of other writings that date from before the Renaissance – each is a treasure trove of information about the culture that produced it and (usually) the belief system they held – but when read critically, with an eye to what a phrasing meant to the culture that it was written in and for. To give just one example, the little gimmick about the trickster who guests with another and manipulates him into offering him bread and salt, symbolic of accepting him as a guest deserving of hospitality, in several non-Biblical stories from the Middle East, makes no sense until one realizes the paramount importance of the rules regarding hospitality in an arid and inhospitable land. The wiles of Odysseus are similarly to be read in the context of what Bronze Age Greece considered to be heroic, ethical, and their converses.
Okay, when one does take all this into account, along with the literary convention of “writing speeches” and a good dozen other conventional stylistic points, then one has a manuscript that can be read with some degree of cohesion, grasping the meaning behind the words used. (Another classic example: West Semites, as can be demonstrated from material outside the Bible, used a pithy figure of speech for “give X a higher priority than Y” – it was “love X and hate Y.” The hatred is not to be taken literally; it’s metaphoric for “refrain from Y, even if it is good in and of itself, if it conflicts from X.” Jesus several times uses this figure of speech, and it’s essential to getting the meaning he intended, that one recognize that idiom and read his words in that context.)
When one has in fact done all this, one is left with a manuscript that conveys an evolving understanding of what YHWH is in terms of both character and relation vis-à-vis humanity as a whole. From being the vulcanism-and-earthquake tutelary deity of a tribe whose attitude can be summarized in the dyslexic “My god’s bigger than your god” 
he comes to be seen as the all-powerful shaper of the destiny of nations, who is as interested in the Assyrians as in the Israelites they conquered and who works through Cyrus the conquering Persian Emperor to achieve His ends. And all this culminates in the sometimes enigmatic person of Jesus – and it’s MHO that even to a skeptic as regards the religion founded on him, the character of Jesus, his style of discourse, his ideas and concepts, come across clearly when one reads the Gospels with an eye to where the writer of each is being polemic, where he’s naive, where he’s adopting literary custom foreign to our style of discourse, etc. (Diogenes, Moderators, I’d welcome some critique of that last set of comments.)
However, badchad, I really want to see a clear statement of in what way you see my belief system as “intellectually dishonest” before I pursue this discussion much further – not only because my position has been attacked by that comment, and I deserve a clear demonstration of how your POV arrives at that conclusion, but also because it will help to shape our ongoing discourse if I understand more fully in what way you perceive it to be so.
Meatros
Actually, he hasn’t yet responded to my first post. I guess we’ll see whether he responds to the second.
Diogenes
Your link didn’t work for me. Can you give it a second look?
Oh, it is simply beautiful, Diogenes! Thank you so much for sharing that! 
I think you’re right on with this assessment. The Bible reflects the evolution of religious thought as recorded by one extraordinary culture in the middle east. You’re also right that the discernment of the “wheat from the chaff,” as it were, vis-a-vis the gospels is greatly aided by identifying the paticular prisms and theological agendas of the authors. Matthew, for example, is the most Jewish in his presentation. Matthew’s purpose is to show Jesus as the heir to both Moses and David, who symbolize the prophetic and political legacys of Israel. Matthew draws analogies (sometimes forced or extropolated) which are intended to support Matthew’s thesis. Jesus (Matthew says) was of the lineage of David and was born in David’s hometown of Bethlehem. He fled to escape a slaughter just like Moses. In the transfiguration, Matthew show Jesus standing with Moses and Elijah and makes us understand that Jesus is is the last and the greatest of this prophetic line. He is also the political Messiah in that he is the rightful heir to the throne of Israel. To Matthew, Jesus is both king and prophet, and is the greatest of both.
When we know this about Matthew, then we know when his narratives and commentaries are leading us in that direction. We may accept or reject Matthew’s conclusions in this regard, but simply understanding his agenda allows us to make some informed judgements as top when Matthew is “spinning” and when he is presenting more objective Jesus lore.
The words of Jesus, himself, particularly those which derive from Q and other early sayings sources, are probably the most reliable indicator of who he really was and taught. The beatitudes, the parables, the verbal sparring with critics, etc. have a consistent tone, style and insight which are distinctly unique, recognizable and provocative. You can just tell that it’s original to Jesus because of its character and voice. There are other sayings attributed to Jesus (particularly in John) which do not seem to share this character, which don’t seem consistent with the core body of sayings around which the gospels were composed. Other times we may see Jesus “explain” certain statements and we suspect that the author was trying to clarify a certain saying of Jesus to more closely fit that author’s own prism.
This manner of reading the gospels is not as arbitrary as it may seem at firts blush. Looking for characteristic “voices” embedded in text is a valid form of literary analysis. We have a strong core of basic sayings and teachings attributed to one Jesus of nazareth. The voice of these sayings is distinctly different from the authors who integrated them into personal narrative interpretations. We can tell, with some degree of reliability, who’s taking when. It’s still somewhat subjective but it’s not just guessing either. When this method of analysis is applied to other historical works, (say Josephus, for instance) there is not much resistance or argument if historiographers say they can detect interpolations or forgeries which do not match the voice of the author. The Bible can be analyzed the same way, but, of course, the Bible is the Bible, and many people would certainly reject the validity of this kind of scrutiny.
I am out of my league here, which is why I am a GD lurker rather than a participant. However, I am moved to post for two reasons.
First, to note that I believe that Poly is admired not only for his ability to conduct an irenic discussion, but also because he displays a higher than average inquiry to advocacy ratio. Inquiry in the sense of “help me understand how you arrived at your conclusion”. It is a skill that is all too commonly absent. Great Debates is all too often two or more people advocating their opinions. Here is a great example from Poly.
Second, as I perused through the The Madman I ran across the following. This little story, to me, expresses (quite amusingly) how I often view Great Debates. (From the link above, provided by Diogenes… thank you.)
Diogenes wrote:
My understanding is that Q is a composite document that was derived from the Gospels rather than the other way around. Am I mistaken?
It is believed that Matthew and Luke used a common written source for many of the sayings of Jesus. This is thought to be the case because the word for word agreement in those gospels makes it far more likely that they used a common Greek source than that they were independently translated in exactly the same way by two different compilers. Q is the hypothetical reconstruction of this common source, (there are no extant manuscripts) so, while it is true that Q is derived from Matthew and Luke it is more of an “excavation” from those texts than a synthesis.
Q is not accepted by everybody. Fundamentalists prefer to believe that God can inspire the same translations for two or three or fifty different gospels if he wants to. The current scholarly consensus, though, favors the Q hypothesis.
So, that would be a “no”? 
More of a “not exactly”
I don’t mean to belabor the point, but if there has never been found any actual source document, then isn’t “composite document” as reasonable a description as “hypothetical reconstruction”?
A “composite” document would imply some combination of texts from two or more sources. Q is only the summation of those verses which are common to both Matthew and Luke. You’re wrong only in the technical sense of the word “composite.” A true composite would require at least some text which was not common.
If you’ll pardon my jumping in on the “Q” bandwagon, I may be able to shed some light on the issue.
The basic question is what’s been termed “the Synoptic Problem” – the fact that the first three gospels seem to have a very common narrative thread and use much the same language, in some cases even identical terms, as if three supposedly separate accounts said “Jesus ambled along” instead of “walked” or “strode” or “journeyed.” Yet each turns the individual brief accounts – “pericopés” – of things Jesus said and did to different ends, and (particularly in Matthew vs. Luke) sets his sayings in quite different contexts. Obviously there was some borrowing from one to another, and no firm tradition of what he said and did at what particular time.
Mark, the briefest of the three, seems to focus largely on what Jesus did, and Matthew and Luke amplify this with His teachings. This has led many critical scholars to believe that Mark was the first gospel, and that Matthew and Luke used it, making minor adaptations, as a frame story for their expanded accounts.
Most notably, Matthew and Luke relate many of the same discourses by Jesus – parables, prophecies, and such – yet assign them to quite different points in his ministry – material not found in Mark. This has led scholars to posit a “Q” document or tradition, not now extant, that was a common source for them. Other than the obvious similarities of parables and discourses found in both Matthew and Luke but not Mark, there is no real evidence for its existence (with one exception). Scholars have extracted those common elements and put them together as a reconstruction of the hypothetical “Q” – but it is merely a reconstruction from the extant Gospels.
According to the early Christian writer Papias, whose account has formed the foundation for the understanding of traditionalists (like His and her teachers), Matthew wrote first, then Mark, then Luke, and then John, hence the order we have them in.
But what Papias says is that Matthew gathered the logia of Jesus in the Aramaic language. The Gospel we have is written in good koiné Greek, with some Aramaisms intruded, and is not a collection of logia (best translated as “utterances, teachings, oracles”) but a narrative account forming the frame story on which individual logia are gathered, largely in five long discourses – which Luke totally rearranges.
IMHO, the textual evidence for the existence of Q is quite strong, but we have the problem of the absence of any copy of this apparently significant document, which the early church would have had strong motives to preserve.
On the other hand, why would Mark abridge the extant Matthew gospel, omitting great quantities of teaching, particularly if, as tradition has it, he was working from Peter’s memories of his days following Jesus in the flesh 40 years previously?
My personal hypothesis on the origin of the Synoptic Gospels is as follows:
-
Matthew collects the logia of Jesus in Aramaic as a handy reference to what Jesus’s teachings were.
-
This gets translated into Greek.
-
Working from Peter’s memories and the small amount he knew personally from his youth, Mark produces a narrative account of Jesus’s actions.
-
Somebody gets the bright idea to use Mark as a frame story for the Matthean collection of logia, inserting five “set speeches” composed of topical groupings of the logia. This becomes known as what we now know as Matthew. Over time, the Matthew logia collection fades out of use, since it’s in place in Matthew and Luke (see 5)
-
Separately from the events in 4 and roughly contemporaneously with them, Luke does researches into the memories of surviving people who knew Jesus, including Mary his mother and the Bethany family (Mary/Martha/Lazarus). Armed with his notes from this, Mark, and the logia manuscript of Matthew, he puts things together in as close to historical order as he can, omitting the legends that had grown up over time (the boy Jesus resurrecting the bird killed by one of his playmates, for example) and including what he found to be reliable testimony of things Jesus said and did. Since he was more interested in time/place accuracy than topicality, his inclusions of the Q pericopes are in different places than the Matthew-editor’s.
[nitpick=slight]Papius claimed that Matthew collected the sayings in Hebrew not Aramaic. (Hebrew was the still the language of literature and scripture, even when the spoken language was Aramaic)[/nitpick]
I share your hypythesis, though, that Papius’ Hebrew sayings gospel may have been translated into Greek and become Q. However, this would require more of a recomposition of the Hebrew original than a straight translation. Q appears to have been composed in Greek rather than translated and its allusions and quotations from the Old Testament are dependent on the Greek Septuagint rather than the Hebrew Bible.
Thanks for the correction. Lib, does that answer your question about Q adequately?