Five Solas
Active Member
Again, not all historians who do Biblical work explain the NT is all Greek/Persian theology.
Sweeping statements are dangerous and most often false.
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How good is science as a religion?
- Thread starter robocop (actually)
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Sweeping statements are dangerous and most often false.
joelr
Well-Known Member
It's an opinion until you provide definitive evidence. Your beliefs do not matter, you need to demonstrate your beliefs are true. What the Bible says has not been demonstrated to be true. In fact "it's true because it says so" is probably the most ridiculous reason to believe something.
I'm discussing it with you and it's actually to your point. You claim the "GOD" can only mean Yahweh. Yet over 1 billion people say "Allah" can only mean God and you are wrong. This demonstrates that these religious ideas about what God is the real God are all over the place and mainly depending on where one finds religion. It also shows massive inconsistency in your statement as billions think your God is the wrong God. None of you have any empirical or logical base to these beliefs.
It is the same God but Muslims claim the words have been distorted.
You say "wrong" yet there is clear evidence - anyone can study that the later theologians, Aquinas, Augustine, Anslem, and several others and see they are NOT USING SCRIPTURE to form this theology but using Greek theology/philosophy in many ways. The modern concepts of God are completely from these theologians.
All the use of Greek philosophy from Plato and other Greek thinkers is detailed here -
Christian theologians (way after Biblical times) shaped who the modern Yahweh is and they all used Greek theology for that as well. Mostly Platonic ideas.
This Pastor does historical lectures on Christianity, here he goes over the main theologians and what they took from Plato and other Greek philosophy
Sorry, I'm right on that as well. I said it's opinion based on fantasy. The gospels are a fictional fantasy tale and those are almost definitely not the words of Jesus.
The Jesus Seminar, believing Christians voted on much of the words of Jesus not actually being from Jesus
Jesus Seminar - Wikipedia
However historical studies have demonstrated the source gospel Mark is re-working, Kings, The Epistles and several other sources of fiction. Leaving little room for oral translation. So this is fiction straight through.
Dr Carrier sums it up in his article about Mark's use of Paul (with several recent papers sourced)
"
Mark composed his mythical tale of Jesus using many different sources: most definitely the Septuagint, possibly even Homer, and, here we can see, probably also Paul’s Epistles. From these, and his own creative impulses, he weaved together a coherent string of implausible tales in which neither people nor nature behave the way they would in reality, each and every one with allegorical meaning or missionary purpose. Once we account for all this material, there is very little left. In fact, really, nothing left.
We have very good evidence for all these sources. For example, that Mark emulates stories and lifts ideas from the Psalms, Deuteronomy, the Kings literature, and so on, is well established and not rationally deniable. That he likewise lifts from and riffs on Paul’s Epistles is, as you can now see, fairly hard to deny. By contrast, we have exactly no evidence whatever that anything in Mark came to him by oral tradition. It is thus curious that anyone still assumes some of it did. That Mark’s sources and methods were literary is well proved. That any of his sources or methods were oral in character is, by contrast, a baseless presumption.
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joelr
Well-Known Member
Looks like I'm Right again. This time because you simply don't read what's written. You also said - " Anyone can understand the words (read the Bible) but the words have no deeper meaning without one first believing in God."
which is a lame apologetic. Because I was a believer and now I'm not and the meaning hasn't changed. It's just written by a person instead of a deity.
You should stop starting with "wrong again" when every answer isn't even close to correct? Maybe just give an answer and I'll correct you?
Anyway, from a Christian site:
"
Were Adam and Eve saved? The Bible does not specifically tell us whether Adam and Eve were saved. Adam and Eve were the only two human beings who knew about God before they became tainted with sin...."
However, if we keep reading we get to:
"
Yes, they were saved from the beginning, but set the precedence of death by sin to all their offspring and can only be redeemed by God's Son, Jesus Christ, whom He sent to undo the original sin by believing in Him. God sent the Truth, Way and life, so that we can walk with Him again in the Garden of eternal life."
HA!!! By JESUS who is in the NT which used GREEK SALVATION myths.
If you "can" then give evidence? If you cannot then you believe something that is simply not true. All this about "God has to change you first" are apologetics to deal with people who see this isn't real.
Skeptics do not accept ANY MESSAGE from ANY RELIGION that makes claims that can not be proven or shown reasonable evidence?
Biblical history? Yes, I accept Biblical history. Richard carrier, Bart Ehrman, Goodacre, and so on....long list.
You are talking about a made up history that historians see no evidence for. Just like the made up stories about Muhammad speaking to an angel, your stories are equally suspect and not believable.
Evidence, yes I believe evidence. Yes I see the theology is all syncretic and found in older religions. Yes the archaeology doesn't support the narratives. Yes the gospel language is fictive and no history has ever been written like that. Sure I believe that evidence. No historian of that time ever wrote about Jesus, only about Christians who believe the gospels. Yup, believe that. I simply do. Please, provide some more evidence, I'm waiting our entire conversation.
Why would you doubt that? I bought into it and realized I was lied to when I looked for facts to back up the anecdotes.
Here is another.
Bart D. Ehrman - Wikipedia
Born on October 5, 1955, Ehrman grew up in Lawrence, Kansas, and attended Lawrence High School, where he was on the state champion debate team in 1973. He began studying the Bible, biblical theology, and biblical languages at Moody Bible Institute,[1] where he earned the school's three-year diploma in 1976.[2] He is a 1978 graduate of Wheaton College in Illinois, where he received his bachelor's degree. He received his PhD (in 1985) and MDiv from Princeton Theological Seminary, where he studied textual criticism of the Bible, development of the New Testament canon and New Testament apocrypha under Bruce Metzger. Both baccalaureate and doctorate were conferred magna cum laude.[3]
Ehrman was raised in an Anglican family and was originally a member of the Episcopal Church of the United States; as a teenager, he became a born-again evangelical.[1][4][5] In Misquoting Jesus, he recounts being certain in his youthful enthusiasm that God had inspired the wording of the Bible and protected its texts from all error.[1][4] His desire to understand the original words of the Bible led him to enroll in the Moody Bible Institute and Wheaton College, where he received a three-year diploma and a bachelor's degree.
He subsequently left evangelicalism and returned to the Episcopal Church, where he remained a liberal Christian for 15 years, but later became an agnostic atheist
Then why can you not present any evidence? I understood the evidence as a believer and it doesn't hold up. Nothing changes? You haven't been able to answer one single challemge or question except to say "I doubt it" and so I just prove it further. You bury your head. That is congitive bias.
Bart Ehrman understood the "evidence" and when he looked for real evidence he left.
I'm sure we both understood as believers and understood that there are no facts to support the religion. No more than any other religion has. This thing about you become a believer and then the evidence suddenly looks great is false. I have experienced it first hand. I hear Christians realizing the evidence is incredibly poor and the evidence that it's fiction every single week on Atheist Experience call-in show.
So your theory is crap.
Than it's a bad example because for years Ehrman was an evangelist fundamentalist Christian.
So was Matt Dillahunty, who was studying to be a Baptist Pastor from Atheist Experience. So your ideas on this are demonstrable false.
So many things wrong with this.
First myself and many other Christians were believers and then realized it's not true. So I "knew the things of God".
Total BS. It's an apologetic excuse for having ZERO actual evidence they teach people to say things like this.
1 Peter 3:15 tells you to defend your faith. Ridiculous apologetics that don't make sense is not helping.
So you submit a deity sets up a religion that has no proof, looks like a copy of older religions, no historical proof, written like fiction, no proof of Gods or demigods ever, expects people of sound mind to set aside rational thinking and first believe, then you get to "know things God"?
That is ridiculous. But, then we have people leaving the religion, people who "knew God" many who were high level. One Christian minister wrote an anti-Islam book and ended up converting. Anyway the evidence I knew did not change just because I believed it was actually real? I simply didn't know there was actual academics who knew way more than what the church was telling me and I also learned critical and rational thinking and want to know what is actually true. As uncomfortable as it is. And sometimes it is.
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joelr
Well-Known Member
The more I study the field the more I find. They don't talk about this in church and historians are not standing on shoeboxes telling everyone. It tends to **** off conservative Christian University donors.
For example Revelation, that myth is consensus to be from the Persians. And it's a chapter in the NT.
The religious versions of these views and movements often focus on cryptic revelations about a sudden, dramatic, and cataclysmic intervention of God in history; the judgment of humanity; the salvation of the faithful elect; and the eventual rule of the elect with God in a renewed heaven and earth.[3] Arising initially in Zoroastrianism, apocalypticism was developed more fully in Judaic, Christian, and Islamic eschatological speculation.[1][4][5][6][7]
Apocalypticism - Wikipedia
The Persian religion was Zoroastrianism
and this is it, dated ~1700 BCE from Mary Boyce
Zoroaster taught that the blessed must wait for this culmination till Frashegird and the 'future body' (Pahlavi 'tan i pasen'), when the earth will give up the bones of the dead (Y 30.7). This general resurrection will be followed by the Last Judgment, which will divide all the righteous from the wicked, both those who have lived until that time and those who have been judged already. Then Airyaman, Yazata of friendship and healing, together with Atar, Fire, will melt all the metal in the mountains, and this will flow in a glowing river over the earth. All mankind must pass through this river, and, as it is said in a Pahlavi text, 'for him who is righteous it will seem like warm milk, and for him who is wicked, it will seem as if he is walking in the • flesh through molten metal' (GBd XXXIV. r 8-r 9). In this great apocalyptic vision Zoroaster perhaps fused, unconsciously, tales of volcanic eruptions and streams of burning lava with his own experience of Iranian ordeals by molten metal; and according to his stern original teaching, strict justice will prevail then, as at each individual j udgment on earth by a fiery ordeal. So at this last ordeal of all the wicked will suffer a second death, and will perish off the face of the earth. The Daevas and legions of darkness will already have been annihilated in a last great battle with the Yazatas; and the river of metal will flow down into hell, slaying Angra Mainyu and burning up the last vestige of wickedness in the universe.
Ahura Mazda and the six Amesha Spentas will then solemnize a lt, spiritual yasna, offering up the last sacrifice (after which death wW be no more), and making a preparation of the mystical 'white haoma', which will confer immortality on the resurrected bodies of all the blessed, who will partake of it. Thereafter men will beome like the Immortals themselves, of one thought, word and deed, unaging, free from sickness, without corruption, forever joyful in the kingdom of God upon earth. For it is in this familiar and beloved world, restored to its original perfection, that, according to Zoroaster, eternity will be passed in bliss, and not in a remote insubstantial Paradise. So the time of Separation is a renewal of the time of Creation, except that no return is prophesied to the original uniqueness of living things. Mountain and valley will give place once more to level plain; but whereas in the beginning there was one plant, one animal, one man, the rich variety and number that have since issued from these will remain forever. Similarly the many divinities who were brought into being by Ahura Mazda will continue to have their separate existences. There is no prophecy of their re-absorption into the Godhead. As a Pahlavi text puts it, after Frashegird 'Ohrmaid and the Amahraspands and all Yazads and men will be together. .. ; every place will resemble a garden in spring, in which
there are all kinds of trees and flowers ... and it will be entirely the creation of Ohrrnazd' (Pahl.Riv.Dd. XLVIII, 99, lOO, l07).
a final battle between God/devil, all people get resurrected into new bodies and live in paradise. Revelation
The Relationship between Hellenistic Mystery Religions and Early Christianity:
A Case Study using Baptism and Eucharist
Jennifer Uzzell
February 2009
Baptism has been widely compared with initiation into the Mystery cults. In many of the Mysteries purification through ritual bathing was required as a prerequisite for initiation.
It is interesting to note that the early Christian writer Tertullian (c. 160-225CE) would not have agreed with this appraisal. Not only did he believe that certain of the Mysteries practiced baptism, but also that they did so in hope of attaining forgiveness of sins and a new birth. This was so striking a similarity that it clearly demanded some form of explanation. Not surprisingly, demonic imitation was the culprit.
Eucharist.
-Perhaps the clearest point of contact between the Mysteries and Christian Eucharist, and one of which the Church Fathers were painfully conscious, lay in a sacramental meal of bread or cakes and wine mixed with water in which initiates to the cult of Mithras participated.
They seek salvation from the debased material world through a spiritual ascent through the spheres. Mithras was expected to return to earth to lead his followers in a final cataclysmic battle between good and evil.
Dying/rising demigods
In Pagan Hellenistic and Near Eastern thought, the motif of a “Dying and Rising God” existed for millennia before Christ and there had been stories of divine beings questing into the underworld and returning transformed in some way.
Early apologists admitted similarities between Jesus and Greek deities and blamed it on Satan.
Even allowing for these caveats, it is clear that substantial ideological and ritual similarities did exist. In fact they were sufficiently obvious to the early Christian apologists that they felt obliged to offer some explanation for them, particularly since, to their embarrassment, it was clear that the Mystery rituals predated their own. The most common explanation, offered by many Christian apologists including Firmicus Maternus, Tertullian and Justin Martyr, was that demons had deliberately prefigured Christian sacraments in order to lead people astray. This explanation has sufficed for Christians over countless centuries, and indeed scholastic bias towards the assumed uniqueness, primacy and superiority of Christianity is one of the major methodological pitfalls encountered by those engaged in the comparative study of Christianity and the Mysteries. Many Christian scholars have been so certain that Christianity alone, of all the world’s religions, is an original and unique revelation that at times it seems that they might almost prefer the “demonic intervention” explanation to the unthinkable possibility that Christianity was influenced by its philosophical and theological environs. This paper, however, will seek to explore and quantify the similarities and differences and to offer a more prosaic explanation for them as far as it is possible to do so at such a remove and in the light of the methodological difficulties discussed above.
In case it's not clear Justin Martyr and other 2nd century apologists were asked why Jesus was just like all the other Greek deities around at the time. His answer? Well, Satan went back in time, made those Gods look to be similar to Jesus, same stories, miracles, resurrection, to fool Christians in the 2nd century to thinking it was all copied from Greek mythology/religion.
Wow, thanks for clearing that up Justin! I thought they just copied from those when Mark wrote the legend? Wow Satan can time travel. That opens up a whole new problem? Or maybe he can just see the future. So he influenced all those writers a few centuries ago. Well that clears that up.
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mikkel_the_dane
My own religion
It's funny....in my 20+ years of working in science, discussing science with the public, and debating science with various groups, I've not once come across anyone who holds that view.
For a viewpoint that's allegedly common, it sure is hard for me to find anyone who adheres to it. I guess I need to get out more?
We have those here on the forum. In the end they claim to the effect that science can show with evidence that the world is natural or a similar variant as e.g. physical.
Others/some of them claim that we with objective reason, logic and evidence can do the world.
Jose Fly
Fisker of men
Who here in this forum believes that science is the method we should use to answer all questions?
cladking
Well-Known Member
mikkel_the_dane
My own religion
Well, it comes in several variants:
1. We, who do natural science, which by definition is the only form of knowledge and we, as scientists, hold authority over the world, because we are the only one, who have knowledge. Further all problems can be solved with the correct definitions for which we decide those and then we can use science and thus all problems are solved.
2. We. who observe and otherwise have experiences, always have evidence, because all experiences are empirical, so e.g. if you are said to have wrong thoughts, that is with evidence.
3. We are in effect self-evidently normal, rational and so on and that is with evidence as per science.
4. The universe for all human experiences and otherwise is physical and science can give evidence of that.
5. Only objective reality is real and that is with evidence as per science.
In general they do their first person subjectivity as if it is an objective standard with evidence as per science.
Now I have used a combination of sociology, psychology and philosophy and I am not the only one, who understand this about some of the posters here. Either you get it or you get it differently.
And no, it is against the rules to tell you, who they are. Just as we don't do that with e.g. theists.
cladking
Well-Known Member
The worst of it is that most people who believe in science simply don't understand what it is they believe in. They mistake theory for dogma, evidence for fact, and et als as truth. They don't understand definitions, axioms, or even experiment and only have models that they were taught, often as dogma and as being inflexible and immutable. They believe that since there is no "I" in ""TEAM" that it follows only Peers are privy to truth.
mikkel_the_dane
My own religion
Yeah, yet I have different dogma than them, but it is still dogma.
Jose Fly
Fisker of men
Again, who? Names please.
mikkel_the_dane
My own religion
That is against the rules.
cladking
Well-Known Member
I don't think it's against the rules but it's against my policy. I never single anyone out on line even for praise except for specific accomplishments. It's not fair to list be;lievers in science because such a list can never be truly accurate and we can't really see into one another's minds, only parse their words.
It's easy enough to just look and see who believes in science and who understands it. There's not much overlap anyway.
Jose Fly
Fisker of men
Well that's a rather convenient loophole, isn't it? One can say anything...."there are Christians here who advocate for child sacrifice"....and if anyone asks who these people are, you just say "Oh that would be against the rules" and you're off the hook.
Let's see if I can address this in a different way.
mikkel_the_dane
My own religion
Remember the following. If you use enough time here and understand how in effect objective authority works in practice and that is not unique to religion, you can spot it.
BTW as I understand it, we are at least 5 different posters, who understand how scientism works in practice.
As a side note I have just read about 1000 pages about social pedagogy and how science is limited in that field, yet there are claims about social pedagogy for which you should just use science as for the field of medicine.
Jose Fly
Fisker of men
There's a simple work-around. Find the post where you think someone engaged in scientism, reply to it, and then link to that reply in a post to me with something like "You should read my post here: LINK".
mikkel_the_dane
My own religion
Read the answer in your thread by a staff member.
Jose Fly
Fisker of men
I already posed that scenario to the staff member.