When it comes to dealing with those that are deliberately ignorant, what other point is really necessary?
Maybe work on fulfilling your reproductive capacity? You’re not going to be making babies posting on the internet.
pretty sure you don’t have the intelligence required to be so.
that it would bother you this much that i say its easy to get a PhD in theology is a bit perplexing. particularly because it probably is one of the easiest doctoral programs out there.
I haven’t read through the whole thread, so I don’t know if anyone else has actually spoken up to this, but my father has a Doctorate in Christian Theology. I don’t know a whole lot of specifics of exactly what he studied, and I remember some discussions we had while he was writing his thesis, but I don’t remember the specifics of that either. Still, I can at least give what I know.
He can fluently or passably read the major languages in which the Bible was written. He studied extensively related histories, particularly Jewish history and traditions and, obviously, Christian history and tradition. He knows the general theology of all of the major denominations along with the origins and scriptural justifications for them. If I recall correctly, his thesis was specifically about certain topics in the letters of Paul, but I don’t remember much more than that. Still, even if you think Christianity is completely bogus, that’s a lot of knowledge and it ties heavily into and provides perspective for a lot of major world events over the past two millenia and a lot of perspective on the views and practices of billions of people.
Personally, as someone who pursued a PhD for several years in Computer Science, it seems odd to me that someone would even really ask this question. The whole idea behind doctoral studies is having extensive knowledge in a highly specific area. The topic I was working on, to a layman, would have sounded ridiculously narrow, and yet I was part of a team of 4-5 people, all working on slightly different aspects of the topic and, in fact, my advisor had to tell me multiple times that I needed to narrow the scope of what I was working on.
So, similarly, as I understand in areas like literature, it’s not unusual for a thesis to cover even just a small subset of the works of a single author which, almost necessarily, is substantially shorter in length and of less historical and cultural impact than the Bible. So, considering just how narrow the topic was I was working on in Computer Science, it’s not difficult at all to imagine thousands of doctoral theses coming out of studying the Bible and related works, Christian doctrine and tradition, and the cultural and historical impacts of all of that.
1- i still have to say i have a strong dislike of religion ok? but your example is a very good one, i can’t deny.
2- that sounds really impressive about your father. to know foreign languages is really very impressive. to know that much about other denominations, well given my bias it doesn’t seem like a lot, but i admit from the way you describe it it is probably a lot more impressive than i am willing to admit. as far as research into a small unknown area of christian theological history, again, with my bias i don’t give it much credence but once again you described it well and make it look convincing.
I don’t know, but my daughter got an 87 for an assignment she did in religion class. The reason why she didn’t get an A? “Too many facts.”
:rolleyes:
wow, that is kind of odd…
As much as you have a point in starting this thread apart from fucking with people. See how that works?
you mean like how i insult religion and you insult me personally. ok, got it.
Do you honestly think you’re being attacked for insulting religion? Really?
I think what many posters here find so annoying about you is that you admit you are biased about this subject, and yet you refuse to pay any attention to any explanation of how your bias is contradicted by facts.
It’s as though somebody started a thread to ask why the Emperor Napoleon was of Chinese descent, and complain about this Chinese general starting wars in Europe and making all the conquered European populations speak Chinese and so on. And when other posters try to explain to him that in fact Napoleon was not Chinese, he just repeats “Well, I know I’m biased about Napoleon’s Chinese ancestry so I don’t find your arguments very convincing”. :rolleyes:
We’ve already agreed that certain “Doctorate of Theology” diploma mills do indeed have pretty lightweight degree requirements. But that does not mean that a research PhD in Christian Theology from a serious doctoral program is in any way academically lightweight.
To know a lot about theological doctrine and its history is not an academically trivial achievement, even if you don’t happen to believe in any of the doctrine’s claims about religious truth. As has been pointed out by other posters, a fair number of those of us who are arguing with you about this are atheists (including me), so we don’t believe in the truth of the Bible or Christian doctrine any more than you do. We just happen to be less closed-minded concerning facts about the historical and intellectual development of theological doctrine than you are.
But clearly, this is a matter on which your deeply cherished bias matters way more to you than mere facts, so I’m not going to waste any more time trying to drive a wedge between you. I hope you and your bias will be very happy together.
Fair enough. Though I am a theist myself, I disagree very strongly with my father on several theological points. But I think it’s important to make an effort to differentiate personal bias from the associated knowledge that goes along with it. So, though I strongly disagree with some of those theological points, particularly ones he’s spent a lot of time studying, I still think there’s important things that can be learned about those topics. For example, I don’t believe in the trinity, but that is a major point of doctrine for the vast majority of Christians, and I think understanding the scriptural basis for that point is valuable for understanding other Christians.
One of the reasons I quite like this message board is precisely because it has a lot of people with views that are different than mine. Particularly the atheists on this board are represented far higher than one would encounter in the general population. Some of them are hostile toward religion in general and anything associated with it, but in my experience, most of them will just disagree and be happy to engage in discussions about it. One former member I specifically remember having several discussions with who was both a strong atheist and was also very knowledgeable about the Bible and Christian theology; in fact, he was more knowledgeable than many of the Christians he engaged in discussion.
I think we can have discussions about the theology and history without having to personally have any stake in it. Today, virtually no one thinks there’s any validity to Greek, Roman, or Norse pantheons, yet many people still study them, they had major cultural and historical impact, and their study can give us insight even into modern day cultures. So even if some day Christianity becomes a minority or dead religion, I think it will be at least as worthy of study as any of those, probably even moreso.
I guess I’m kind of rambling a bit, but my point is, that I think you’ll see better results if you can make a concerted effort to set aside your bias against religion, at least when it comes to these sorts of discussions. I don’t expect you or anyone to believe it, hell, I don’t believe a significant portions of it myself, but I do think we can still have fruitful discussions about it without even touching on the topic of whether or not we believe it is true or valuable or whatever other subjective values we may assign to it.
No, it’s more a case of you go around annoying people on purpose and make no pretence to be doing otherwise, so I invite you to consider the inconsistencies in your position. Such inconsistencies could include your pretended intellectual superiority not borne out either by the quality of your arguments or indeed your presentation of them, but I think your bragging about improving the quality of your life deserves to be held up for examination against what that quality actually is. And, like I say, if you go around being deliberately annoying then you’ve no grounds for squealing if you get annoyed in return.
Right. Plenty of denominations have no academic requirements for their clergy (but that doesn’t mean the clergy are ignoramuses) and plenty of denominations have an academic requirement. There are some denominations that require their clergy, even if the aspiring cleric already has a degree, to earn a degree at the denomination’s seminary or equivalent school.
Yeppers. One offered by an accredited university is no shake either. In other words: it is rigorous. Just because someone doesn’t particularly like the subject matter does not mean that the academic rigor is absent. The OP’s whining is basically no different than that of those who malign liberal arts in general.
Wow! Did you check all the offerings on that site? One program requires the student to be proficient in four languages: Ancient Greek, Ancient Hebrew, and two modern languages. And that’s on top of all the other stuff they have to do.
The OP not only has not done the basic research, but will not as he never had any intent to learn the answer to the query posed. He’s admitted to being a troll (this is apparently his second admission to that so I’m wondering why he’s not banned yet).
Regarding the comment about considering an analysis of Iliad or Odyssey invalid if the analyst believed in Zeus: rubbish. A literary analysis remains a literary analysis regardless of the analyst’s religious belief. One could even put forth the idea that a believer in Zeus would have been far more familiar with the cultural setting of the poem than those of us today. I wouldn’t be surprised if some modern doctoral candidate has expounded that idea.
Quite unrelated to the OP, since no punchline appeared forthcoming for what I assumed was a lawyerly joke, I Googled and got to discover something about legal fictions, common law, and placeholder names (what we IT types call metasyntactic variables). So, something new learnt; that’s cool. Thanks **Bricker. **
A better critique of Christianity might point out that in either case, true or false, Creflo Dollar’s net worth is the same. It might suggest believers voted with their faith and that got 1 million civilians killed in the Iraq war, just as dead true or false. Evil men seized the reins of power in America and brought parts of the world to ruin, along with our prestige and finances. But what better veil to drape over ill intent and naked will to power than Jesus? What kind of bad guy is as obvious as these guys?
Maybe the OP would feel better if someone told him which religious ideas were correct. I’ll spot Chapter 1 for nothing:
You have to listen and pay attention. It can’t be told. Not because it is a secret, but because the act of reference screws it up. It isn’t beyond reference, more like before it. You’ve gone too far if you resort to reference. Therefore, you cannot be persuaded of it. It can’t be told in the first place!
You could see it for yourself- that is really the only way. I don’t know how you could become a Taoist- those writings are colored by the idiosyncracies of the guy plus the state of the nation of China 2500 years ago. There is no doubt that he saw what there is to see, and doing that can make a guy pretty moralistic, like Moses after the Burning Bush, but times and places change.
Fortunately the Taoists didn’t corner the market. There is zazen practice- they’ll teach you how to see what there is to see if you’ll follow along.
I think the Sun Dance was a way to induce the experience, though I don’t know for sure. Physical extremis can do it, but of course it wears off. We’re modern people who spend a lot of time indoors, so it would probably take less torture for this to work on us. Just sayin’.
Test it yourself. Yoga philosophy is also true, at least to a point, if you get a good version and do it instead of thinking about it. You aren’t going to get a PhD in something that* can’t be told*, you have to just see for yourself. So find a yoga class that will teach you pranayama. It is the dumbest thing- not yoga, which does seem pretty dumb to some people. Pranayama, at its introduction, will seem like the dumbest suggestion you ever heard. Even if you are a good sport, it probably isn’t going to work the first few times because it is going to seem so stupid. It is really easy- so easy, it is stuuuupid. I’m really not over stating the case here.
Once you get over that and just do it until it works, well, I think you’ll know when it worked. I don’t want to say too much, since I can’t persuade you anyway, but once you’ve taken such a simple practice to the point that it works, read some interpretation of Patanjali’s yoga sutras- you’ll see that they described your experience rather specifically, 1200 years ago. I can’t vouch for the ultimate conclusions of that work because I just am not a PhD or other expert, but up to a certain point anyway, it really is true.
William Tell might be the kind of hero you need to exhibit the overcoming of difficulties- victory, I suppose. Christianity possibly could induce it for some people- if your faith is so strong that no statement is too outrageous to flap you, I suppose you might have suppressed the modifications of the mind. But I don’t think that is the road you want to take.
Whoa…
Nice username – fits that post, anyhow.
Somewhere, I can hear Beryl_Mooncalf screaming.
Regards,
Shodan
I hold a meaningless Doctor of Divinity decree. The Universal Life Church in Modesto, California required that I give them $20 for the fancy certificate.