Cardinal Pell and Evolution

[Brian2]

There are many denominations that disagree about what the Bible says or means and deny that any but they have the truth. Oneness denominations have specific verses and interpretations they cite, Jehovah's Witnesses have theirs, Catholic have theirs, Evangelicals have theirs, all claiming the truth. And sadly, in some cases, denying that others are Christians. Paul said we all see through a glass darkly. It seems unwise to be overly concerned about who's right.

The truth is something we look for, for ourselves, and to preserve and help others to find however. Loving others is the most important thing and sometimes that means pointing out their errors imo.

 

[Brian2]

That's not truth as I use the word. For starters, if gods exist, nobody know that or anything about them, because knowledge is acquired empirically, not by believing unfalsifiable claims like the above.

Knowledge, or at least what people perceive as knowledge, is acquired through faith also.

Then what value are your conclusions to those using objective criteria?

Maybe none.

Science makes no comment about anybody's claims except those of other scientists in peer review. Their job is to investigate nature, which is all there is as far as we know, and though they're not looking for gods like the ID people were, if they find one, they'll let us know right away. That has to be good enough for the religions. If they want more, they'll have to do it themselves. Complaining about the scientific method is pointless.

The scientific method is OK but to claim to be neutral as historians and then to use prophecy to determine a late date for writing the prophecy is not neutral.

They do understand that, and they ARE unbiased in their rejections. When prophecy is called fraud (after the fact), it's because of evidence. Most prophecy is rejected for other reasons, usually vagueness or lack of specificity.

I read of prophecies being rejected for being too specific at times.

 

[Audie]

There are many denominations that disagree about what the Bible says or means and deny that any but they have the truth. Oneness denominations have specific verses and interpretations they cite, Jehovah's Witnesses have theirs, Catholic have theirs, Evangelicals have theirs, all claiming the truth. And sadly, in some cases, denying that others are Christians. Paul said we all see through a glass darkly. It seems unwise to be overly concerned about who's right.

So...it doesn't matter if your chosen reading
shows hod as a psycho monster as in
genesis and exodus.

Or you choose to teach literal 6 day poof- and- flood
at the expense of your integrity.

And of course, at the same cost to those you may
teach.
Those who escape that mindset may well leave the faith completely.

And if there's really a god, he might be annoyed.

 

[Brian2]

You asked for an example and I gave it.

I would say that first many historians say to themselves, even if they don't write it down "the gospel must have been written after 70AD". Then they look around for other reasons for this conclusion, while at the same time discarding, for some reason, all the reasons that the gospel should be dated early.

 

[ppp]

I would say that first many historians say to themselves, even if they don't write it down "the gospel must have been written after 70AD". Then they look around for other reasons for this conclusion, while at the same time discarding, for some reason, all the reasons that the gospel should be dated early.

Do you have any substantive evidence that is the case? Do you say that only because you disagree with their conclusions?

 

[Subduction Zone]

So...it doesn't matter if your chosen reading
shows hod as a psycho monster as in
genesis and exodus.

Or you choose to teach literal 6 day poof- and- flood
at the expense of your integrity.

And of course, at the same cost to those you may
teach.
Those who escape that mindset may well leave the faith completely.

And if there's really a god, he might be annoyed.

Well, if there is a god a sin as small as ignorant people calling him, her, it a liar probably wouldn't bother it. That puts far too much importance on a mere human. But I do try to use that argument against creationists and they just cannot understand how they are calling their own God a liar.

 

[Brian2]

Do you have any substantive evidence that is the case? Do you say that only because you disagree with their conclusions?

Possibly I have substantive evidence. I was given a blog the other day which suggested that it was fine to use prophecy to date the writing of the gospels and so the gospels were written probably post 70AD because of the Temple destruction prophecy.
He said that he wasn't going to do that however and instead would see where he ended up without doing that.

When Were the Gospels Written and How Can We Know?

Greetings all! Alas, I am underway with my new blog in which I will explore a variety of topics related to Biblical studies, paying particular attention to the New Testament and other early Christi…

bibleoutsidethebox.blog

He claims to have ended up post 70AD using various approaches but the way he interpreted comments by the church fathers and his lack of knowledge of Apostolic Fathers use of the gospels in their writings, and what I see as his lack of knowledge of Roman history discredited what he said imo.
So imo he was not able to get to post 70AD without the presumption of the prophecy being written post 70AD.
He wanted the earliest use of the gospel material by the church fathers to be 150AD, however it was a lot earlier than that.

Early Christian NT References

He said that the first universal census of the Roman Empire was in 74AD and so Luke had to have written after that date since he mentions a universal roman census.
I don't know if that makes sense but also for years now I have read various historians and even skeptics say that Rome was doing censuses since around the start of the first century at least.

He also quotes a couple of church fathers relating to the gospel of Mark and when it was written. He quoted Irenaeus of Lyons:

“…Peter and Paul were preaching at Rome, and laying the foundations of the Church. After their demise, Mark, the disciple and interpreter of Peter, did also hand down to us in writing what had been preached by Peter.” (Against Heresies III.1)

and claims this means that Mark wrote his gospel after Peter and Paul died, which he says was under Nero's persecution- 67,68 AD. so the Markan gospel cannot have been written before 70 AD.
This quote of Iranaeus however does not say that Mark wrote after Peter and Paul died, it says that pretty much that the gospel was put out, published, after that.
Luke could have been getting information from Mark for years before Mark was finished and it could have been just sitting waiting for the right time to publish, when Peter died.

Anyway, just a few thoughts on how this guy (Doston Jones) wants to date the synoptic gospels to after 70AD without referring to the prophecy.
As I said, he did not succeed and he also did suggest that it was appropriate to use the prophecy of the temple destruction and mention of the Jewish Roman war as if it was an after the event prophecy, otherwise historians would be giving the Bible special pleading, as they use prophecy like that with other old documents.
So prophecy is used with old documents and to date the gospels and the prophecy is seen as having been written after the events.
This is how people on this forum, who are into critical thinking and scientific thinking, say that prophecy should be used, and they also say that this is treating the prophecy with neutrality.

 

[ppp]

I would say that first many historians...

Citing one guy does not support a claim of "many". Do you have any evidence that a significant percentage of new testament historians assume 70CE?

 

[Brian2]

Citing one guy does not support a claim of "many". Do you have any evidence that a significant percentage of new testament historians assume 70CE?

This one guy did say that this was the common way that the supernatural is treated in documents.
Many people on this forum have said as much and even pointed my to the Oxford academic standards for the treatment of the supernatural in academia. He said that the supernatural is meant to be treated with neutrality but then wants this neutrality to be assuming that the prophecy is not true.

The usual dating of the gospels seemed to have been pre 70AD when the prophecy was not taken into consideration. Nothing has changed, the same evidence is there, but now more people are using critical methods and post 70AD has become more popular.

If you want more than one person's opinion here are others also who say that the prophecy is a big thing in the dating.

This first site is a work written for a degree and the author is widely read in the dating of the synoptic gospels. He says that those with late and intermediate dating rely on the temple prophecy and the Jewish-Roman war being mentioned. He also says that those who rely on the early dating also use the prophecy and think it can be a real prophecy. Read all about it, page 70 to 75. The author of this site ends up starting with the dating of Acts and ends up with an early date for the gospels.

https://digitalcommons.fiu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=3044&context=etd

The Story Of The Storytellers - The Gospel Of Mark | From Jesus To Christ | FRONTLINE | PBS

Gospel of Mark - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Another one who seems well read. Read the first 7 or so paragraphs if nothing else.

When Was Mark’s Gospel Written? | Fr. Dwight Longenecker

Today we celebrate the Feast of the Evangelist St Mark. In seminary we had to study modern Biblical scholarship, and one of my great blessings was that at Bob Jones I learned to be skeptical of the fundamentalists, but at Oxford I learned to be skeptical of the modernists. The fundamentalists...

dwightlongenecker.com

The first discussion on this site.

Why are the gospels dated post 70AD to 100AD?

Answer (1 of 9): Skeptics like Bart Ehrman will use Apollonius of Tyana as a challenge to Jesus’ uniqueness. Apollonius lived in the first century. His birth was supernatural. He also performed miracles and appeared to people after his death. Sounds familiar, right? Critics will then conclude tha...

www.quora.com

 

[Subduction Zone]

I would say that first many historians say to themselves, even if they don't write it down "the gospel must have been written after 70AD". Then they look around for other reasons for this conclusion, while at the same time discarding, for some reason, all the reasons that the gospel should be dated early.

Why do you think that the gospels should be dated early? The Gospel of Luke was clearly written after AD 74 since as you pointed out that was when the first empire wide census was done by Rome. They keep good records of those things. And the first one would have been well recorded. Apologists often make the apparently false claim that the anonymous author of Luke was a historian. He was clearly not. He got some of his history rather wrong. The only historical fact that he got right that I know of was that Quirinius did have a census. But it was not empire wide. Why he had it and what it was the first census of Judea is well understood. It was in 6 AD. Which is ten years after Herod the Great died. Nor would that census have required people to go to ancestral homes, and even worse it would not have applied to people that did not live in Judea. His excuse to get Joseph to Bethlehem was merely trying to make it look as if Jesus fulfilled a prophecy. At any rate that indicates even later authorship of Luke since people would have to have been used to nationwide censuses by the time he wrote it.

The problem with early authorship of the Gospels is that there does not appear to be any good evidence for it at all. One way that one can often date a work is by the language used within it. Languages are not dead. The English language is constantly evolving. If someone wrote in a text dated to 1945 "Gag me with a spoon" that 1945 date would be very much in doubt. Younger people of today might not know why, but an older person should be able to explain to them why that work was probably not written when it was claimed to have been. It is best to go to historians if possible. I know that is hard to do on the internet today because apologists have polluted the internet with excuses of why there is an earlier date. It can take some work to get past the apologists and find people that studied this that understood the language and history of the time so that they could put a proper date on these anonymous works.

 

[Audie]

Well, if there is a god a sin as small as ignorant people calling him, her, it a liar probably wouldn't bother it. That puts far too much importance on a mere human. But I do try to use that argument against creationists and they just cannot understand how they are calling their own God a liar.

By christian understanding, God
waxes full worth for far less.

 

[Audie]

I would say that first many historians say to themselves, even if they don't write it down "the gospel must have been written after 70AD". Then they look around for other reasons for this conclusion, while at the same time discarding, for some reason, all the reasons that the gospel should be dated early.

This is precisely the intellectual dishonesty
required of a vast range of Christians and
their beliefs. Yecs, notably. Flood believers.
Evolution deniers.
Specific people, specific examples abound.
I can stand behind my words.

Now while turnabout often is fair play, and
charges of hypocrisy may be true, your just
saying this of "many" historians, with no
example, the improbability that you've read
these historians and discovered the claimed
dishonesty-

I call baloney, and say you just made it up.

 

[shunyadragon]

I would say that first many historians say to themselves, even if they don't write it down "the gospel must have been written after 70AD". Then they look around for other reasons for this conclusion, while at the same time discarding, for some reason, all the reasons that the gospel should be dated early.

'I would say?' First, your bias against historians reflects your history of negative views. You do not know how historians and scientists 'think.' They only can go by the evidence. There is no evidence of the gospels before 70 AD. Discarding some reason? There is no evidence for 'some reason' for dating other than a religious agenda.

 

[Audie]

'I would say?' First, your bias against historians reflects your history of negative views. You do not know how historians and scientists 'think.' They only can go by the evidence. There is no evidence of the gospels before 70 AD. Discarding some reason? There is no evidence for 'some reason' for dating other than a religious agenda.

So???
Think you are so smart for using four lines to
say what took me four parapraphs??

 

[Brian2]

Why do you think that the gospels should be dated early? The Gospel of Luke was clearly written after AD 74 since as you pointed out that was when the first empire wide census was done by Rome. They keep good records of those things. And the first one would have been well recorded. Apologists often make the apparently false claim that the anonymous author of Luke was a historian. He was clearly not. He got some of his history rather wrong. The only historical fact that he got right that I know of was that Quirinius did have a census. But it was not empire wide. Why he had it and what it was the first census of Judea is well understood. It was in 6 AD. Which is ten years after Herod the Great died. Nor would that census have required people to go to ancestral homes, and even worse it would not have applied to people that did not live in Judea. His excuse to get Joseph to Bethlehem was merely trying to make it look as if Jesus fulfilled a prophecy. At any rate that indicates even later authorship of Luke since people would have to have been used to nationwide censuses by the time he wrote it.

The problem with early authorship of the Gospels is that there does not appear to be any good evidence for it at all. One way that one can often date a work is by the language used within it. Languages are not dead. The English language is constantly evolving. If someone wrote in a text dated to 1945 "Gag me with a spoon" that 1945 date would be very much in doubt. Younger people of today might not know why, but an older person should be able to explain to them why that work was probably not written when it was claimed to have been. It is best to go to historians if possible. I know that is hard to do on the internet today because apologists have polluted the internet with excuses of why there is an earlier date. It can take some work to get past the apologists and find people that studied this that understood the language and history of the time so that they could put a proper date on these anonymous works.

Was There Really A Census During the Time of Caesar Augustus?

BLOG ? READ ? SHARE? COMMENT ?

crossexamined.org

04.03.09 Bethlehem (c. 6-5 B.C.); THE REGISTRATION (or Census)

04.03.09 Lk 2:1-3 Bethlehem (c. 6-5 B.C.) THE REGISTRATION (or Census) 1 In those days a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that the whole empire should be registered. 2 This first registr…

www.mysteriesofthemessiah.net

IBRI Research Report #4 - The Census of Quirinius

Critics have objected to every statement of fact in the census account of Luke 2:1-5. Here the critical view is analyzed with special attention to Quirinius' association with this census. A false correlation by critics between Luke's narrative and a later census described by Josephus seems to be...

www.ibri.org

 

[Brian2]

This is precisely the intellectual dishonesty
required of a vast range of Christians and
their beliefs. Yecs, notably. Flood believers.
Evolution deniers.
Specific people, specific examples abound.
I can stand behind my words.

Now while turnabout often is fair play, and
charges of hypocrisy may be true, your just
saying this of "many" historians, with no
example, the improbability that you've read
these historians and discovered the claimed
dishonesty-

I call baloney, and say you just made it up.

There are more knowledgeable people than I who say the same thing. (see post 309)

 

[Audie]

This one guy did say that this was the common way that the supernatural is treated in documents.

In view of the nonsensical and unevidenced natureof
all things "supernstural it would be
weird to treated it any other way than
with great skepticism / dismissal.
Like we do with Bigfoot or Reptoids.

Theists and woo woo fans, though, have no choice ce but to Believe else their world falls apart.

THEY can't be the biased ones into self deception and intellectual dishonesty so it must be them dirty skeptics.

 

[shunyadragon]

Was There Really A Census During the Time of Caesar Augustus?

BLOG ? READ ? SHARE? COMMENT ?

crossexamined.org

04.03.09 Bethlehem (c. 6-5 B.C.); THE REGISTRATION (or Census)

04.03.09 Lk 2:1-3 Bethlehem (c. 6-5 B.C.) THE REGISTRATION (or Census) 1 In those days a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that the whole empire should be registered. 2 This first registr…

www.mysteriesofthemessiah.net

IBRI Research Report #4 - The Census of Quirinius

Critics have objected to every statement of fact in the census account of Luke 2:1-5. Here the critical view is analyzed with special attention to Quirinius' association with this census. A false correlation by critics between Luke's narrative and a later census described by Josephus seems to be...

www.ibri.org

These are not reasons to date the gospels early. The census would be general knowledge regardless of when the gospels were written.

 

[Brian2]

'I would say?' First, your bias against historians reflects your history of negative views. You do not know how historians and scientists 'think.' They only can go by the evidence. There is no evidence of the gospels before 70 AD. Discarding some reason? There is no evidence for 'some reason' for dating other than a religious agenda.

Who me......... biased against historians........... history of negative views?
Don't you think that the prophecy of the destruction of the temple is evidence for historians who ignore prophecies by saying they were written after the fact.
Don't you think that they use such reasoning in other documents with prophecies and it would be special pleading to not use it for dating the gospels.
Have you never read reasons for the early dating of the gospels? Your bias is showing. There are reasons.
See post 309 and you will find plenty of sites that show historians use the prophecy to say the dating is late.
If you read enough you also will find reason for early dating.

 

[Brian2]

These are not reasons to date the gospels early. The census would be general knowledge regardless of when the gospels were written.

I was replying to @Subduction Zone about the use of 74AD as the first empire wide census in the Roman Empire. It seems he accepts only historians who don't believe in Jesus so they will have no impact on him. Christian historians are liars it seems.