Premature= before extreme old age when body functions naturally fail.
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halbhh
The wonder and awe of "all things".
But to me it seems 'premature' for my body functions to naturally fail short of a magnitude more like 10^3, of which 500 is getting at least a decent portion.
Why does it seem so to me? Because my mind has barely scratched the surface of what is interesting and worthwhile to seek out and investigate during 50+ years, so 1,000 is at least feeling like it would be a more reasonable time scale before I'd feel this world as it is would get stale to me.
If even then.
So, while i understand the biological advantages to a species to have diversity and adaptation on a faster time scale -- shorter generations, and then the old getting out of the way, as we do -- still it feels and seems evident to me I'm mentally well suited for a much longer time scale, even in just this world. And 10^3 may be quite an underestimation, possibly. After all, it would not even be enough time to really get to know 1,000,000 people, I think. Not to the level I experienced already with one friend in 20 years before he passed away.
So, it's all pretty premature, if this were all there was.
Did you know that most mammals live appx. the same number of heartbearts? The shorter lived mammals and birds live more frantic lives, while longer lived ones (like turtles) take a year that these shorter lived animals do in a day. Based on what I know, it appears to me that all animals live the same number of experiential moments if they die in their natural old age. Seems fair to me. It's premature deaths that is immoral.
joelr
Well-Known Member
There are. People believing all sorts of Bronze Age mythology claimed to be revelations from a God, when it's all made up by people.
But the majority of the historicity field as well as Biblical archeology is really helping to demonstrate it's all fiction.
Gods, demigods, evil sin-force, magic blood atonement sacrifices. Very strange.
Feel free to evaluate evidence and explain why you find it flawed or good evidence.
Feel free to call something strange and then actually present evidence you believe demonstrates you point.
Feel free to care about what is actually true rather than assume things people told you were true.
Or not. Some people are just not interested in what's true.
Objectively true ?
joelr
Well-Known Member
To say that without evidence is as shallow and revealing as it gets.
Scholarship is peer-reviewed meaning you need sources, good arguments that can be fact checked and so on.
The computer you are writing on is from a long series of papers detailing theories, tests and are used to forward even more ideas.
Bad work is found and discadred so the best attempts at truth continue to move forward.
It already works. All your tech, medical advances and countless other things build on the work of people who study each field. History is no different. Some things remain vague but many many others - writing style and analysis, comparative writing, lexacography, so many aspects of researching religious text as well as extra biblical sources, comparative myth, it gives us very clear pictures of the origins, authors intent, what sources were used, the time frame written.
Then it can be referenced with archeology.
All you are doing here is showing you don't care about what is actually true and seem to be afraid of evidence.
joelr
Well-Known Member
Yes objectively true.
The Greek gospels about Hercules, demigod, Son of sky God Zeus, are likely objectively made-up stories.
Subjective truths are not important in this discussion.
joelr
Well-Known Member
Hoping? Guessing? Oh, Ok. I'll just quote the PhD who's done the latest Jesus historicity study since 1926, ending with a 700 page peer-reviewed book. He's very familiar with the field, what's consensus and what his peers are saying.
"
When the question of the historicity of Jesus comes up in an honest professional context, we are not asking whether the Gospel Jesus existed. All non-fundamentalist scholars agree that that Jesus never did exist. Christian apologetics is pseudo-history. No different than defending Atlantis. Or Moroni. Or women descending from Adam’s rib.
No. We aren’t interested in that.
When it comes to Jesus, just as with anyone else, real history is about trying to figure out what, if anything, we can really know about the man depicted in the New Testament (his actual life and teachings), through untold layers of distortion and mythmaking; and what, if anything, we can know about his role in starting the Christian movement that spread after his death. Consequently, I will here disregard fundamentalists and apologists as having no honest part in this debate, any more than they do on evolution or cosmology or anything else they cannot be honest about even to themselves."
Dr Carrier
I've watched at least 20 2-3 hour debates, Hitchens, Sam Harris, Carrier, Ehrman,....
and listened to the other sides. I have also read apologetics, C.S. Lewis, HAbaneras, Mike Licona,.
There is no "other side". If you allow yourself to be honest anyone can see there isn't evidence.
Apologetics is crank.
The entire debate with Barrt Ehrman, Licona's defense was like "but it could have happened", " let's agree to disagree and move on...".
He could make the same debate with Lord of the Rings. He presents nothing but wishful thinking and clearly just cannot let go of the fantasy about Gods and life after death.
Even C.S. Lewis? Mere Christianity, the entire book to say either Jesus was a giant liar or lunatic.
Since neither is likely .............IT MUST BE TRUE. YAY!
Hey C.S...like every other demigod, he's probably a legend.
Case For Christ, Lee Strobel, the gospels MUST be true because they relate so many things the same...
Hey Lee, it's even written now in the new versions of the NIV bible. Mark is the source and the others draw from Mark. 98% of the original Greek in Mark in verbatim in Matthew.
So maybe it's because, they all copied Mark and made changes according to their political agenda!?!
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joelr
Well-Known Member
Now you are mis-representing me. I'm heading off the inane apologetics Christians use when one brings up Deuteronomy and the laws to kill every living person in 6 separate cities.
Then you get the apologetics ..............."they were all evil." Really everyone? "yeah everyone." The women? "The women were evil".
The children "evil". The babies? "EVIL"
"They ALL had to be killed, EVIL!"
Yeah, no. The archeology find no child sacrificing, they did find text explaining a deep religious system, a strong code of honor to parents, simple farmers trying to survive.
I didn't mean they were not completely free of bad? My point is they were clearly just like the Israelites. Their laws were almost exact according to Dr Josh Bowen who studies those cultures. He finds no evidence of "evil" people.
So the OT, after borrowing 2 creation myths and a flood story from Mesopotamian sources, write a foundation myth about coming from Egypt, killing all firstborn of every Egyptian and escaping en-masse. Except, whoops, never mentioned in Egypt.
Archeologists did happen to find proto-Israelite villages outside of Canaanite cities. No armed conflict at all.
So they came from Canaanite culture, hated them for some reason, the rest are myth.
Canaanites (and 5 other cities) pure evil. Nope. Just OT myths. Creation myths, foundation myths and a opposing society to hate. Sounds exactly like a typical human society. No Gods.
Oh, the Israelites did borrow a wife for Yahweh for a while, Ashera. Yahweh and his Ashera figurines were found at early village digs.
Also I'm always interested in finding out facts. Evidence is a good thing. Mostly avoided around here but I'm open to it. If it holds.
who believes those things today ?
I accept the biblical Scholars that actually believe the bible. I know the difference from Scholars who don't believe the bible is from God .
joelr
Well-Known Member
No one believes the Greek Gods are real. Now it's becoming more widely known that all religions are of the same mythical origins.
joelr
Well-Known Member
Theologians start their studies accepting the scripture is divine and move to interpret the meaning of the words.
Historians look for comparative myths, extra-biblical evidence, analysis of writing styles, archeology. The entire field is pretty much in agreement that the gospel stories and myth as well as the OT.
I do not believe you understand any historical argument against your Bible or religion. You called basic history "weird" which shows you are unaware of even basic Christian scholarship.
If your entire belief system is summed up in the movie The 10 Commamdments" then yes these would sound strange. Just like many advancements to knowledge would be weird to those living in closed societies. Wanting something to be true does not make it true.
Wiki page on Moses:
"Generally Moses is seen as a legendary figure, whilst retaining the possibility that Moses or a Moses-like figure existed in the 13th century BCE"
Wiki on Hellenistic Judaism:
"Both Early Christianity and Early Rabbinical Judaism were far less 'orthodox' and less theologically homogeneous than they are today; and both were significantly influenced by Hellenistic religion and borrowed allegories and concepts from Classical Hellenistic philosophy and the works of Greek-speaking Jewish authors of the end of the Second Temple period before the two schools of thought eventually affirmed their respective 'norms' and doctrines,"
During the 2nd Tempe Period Judaism changed to a monotheistic religion and adopted Persian and /greek concepts:
"There was a sharp break between ancient Israelite religion and the Judaism of the Second Temple.[37] Pre-exilic Israel was polytheistic;[38] Asherah was probably worshiped as Yahweh's consort, within his temples in Jerusalem, Bethel, and Samaria, and a goddess called the Queen of Heaven, probably a fusion of Astarte and the Mesopotamian goddess Ishtar, was also worshiped.[39] Baal and Yahweh coexisted in the early period but were considered irreconcilable after the 9th century.[40] The worship of Yahweh alone, the concern of a small party in the monarchic period, only gained ascendancy in the exilic and early post-exilic period,[38] and it was only then that the very existence of other gods was denied.[41]
During the Persian rule the Persian religion already had a prediction from 1600BC that a world messiah virgin born would come save humanity, members would resurrect at the end of times and their God was in an eternal war with their Satan.
all of those concepts emerged in Judaism during the Persian occupation. This is simple history.
Persian Messiah,
"The Persian period saw the development of expectation in a future human king who would rule purified Israel as God's representative at the end of time – that is, a messiah. The first to mention this were Haggai and Zechariah, both prophets of the early Persian period. They saw the messiah in Zerubbabel, a descendant of the House of David"
Persian Satan - Angra Mainyu
During the Second Temple Period, when Jews were living in the Achaemenid Empire, Judaism was heavily influenced by Zoroastrianism, the religion of the Achaemenids.[27][8][28] Jewish conceptions of Satan were impacted by Angra Mainyu,[8][29] the Zoroastrian god of evil, darkness, and ignorance.[8] In the Septuagint, the Hebrew ha-Satan in Job and Zechariah is translated by the Greek word diabolos (slanderer), the same word in the Greek New Testament from which the English word "devil" is derived.[30] Where satan is used to refer to human enemies in the Hebrew Bible, such as Hadad the Edomite and Rezon the Syrian, the word is left untranslated but transliterated in the Greek as satan, a neologism in Greek.[30]
The idea of Satan as an opponent of God and a purely evil figure seems to have taken root in Jewish pseudepigrapha during the Second Temple Period,[31] particularly in the apocalypses.Persian Satan,
Heaven gets added to Judaism, 2nd temple period
"During the period of the Second Temple (c. 515 BC – 70 AD), the Hebrew people lived under the rule of first the Persian Achaemenid Empire, then the Greek kingdoms of the Diadochi, and finally the Roman Empire.[48] Their culture was profoundly influenced by those of the peoples who ruled them.[48] Consequently, their views on existence after death were profoundly shaped by the ideas of the Persians, Greeks, and Romans.[49][50] The idea of the immortality of the soul is derived from Greek philosophy[50] and the idea of the resurrection of the dead is derived from Persian cosmology.[50] By the early first century AD, these two seemingly incompatible ideas were often conflated by Hebrew thinkers.[50] The Hebrews also inherited from the Persians, Greeks, and Romans the idea that the human soul originates in the divine realm and seeks to return there.[48] The idea that a human soul belongs in Heaven and that Earth is merely a temporary abode in which the soul is tested to prove its worthiness became increasingly popular during the Hellenistic period (323 – 31 BC).[40] Gradually, some Hebrews began to adopt the idea of Heaven as the eternal home of the righteous dead.[40]"
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I read the bible every day . I believe it . If i read it believing it was a work of fiction and that supernatural things cannot happen, then sure I could become a scholar and treat it like Shakespeare or the Lord of the Rings . I could have lived with that ignorance .
halbhh
The wonder and awe of "all things".
Yeah, I've always thought that was interesting.
I just quoted the part we agree on above.
So, again, regardless of whether person X agrees with me -- I'm not trying to agree with person X.... -- I think 100 years would be, if it were the case, a very much premature time for me to cease to exist forever.
But, that's not the situation, wonderfully, because there is more than meets the eye to existence.
halbhh
The wonder and awe of "all things".
You keep assuming that when innocents died, they are now dead. Right? (a reasonable and commonplace assumption...)
But...
None of them are dead.
joelr
Well-Known Member
And people read Hindu religious scripture as well as Islamic scripture and many others and believe they are real. Yet they are not. People read the writings of Joseph Smith and believe they are actual communications from an angel.
What matters is what does the evidence say. I am open to investigation and to always have my beliefs challenged because I want to know what is actually true. You clearly are not interested in any of that so the ignorance is on your side.
You say it's ignorance to not think a religion is true yet avoid all scholarship and evidence.
The Bible is known to be a myth. That doesn't mean supernatural things cannot happen? They just didn't happen in Greek, Egyptain or Middle Eastern myths. Maybe someday they will happen.
"Religion Identity and the Origins of Ancient Israel"
K.L. Sparks (ordained Baptist Pastor, PhD in Hebrew Bible/Ancient Near East)
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As a rule, modern scholars do not believe that the Bible's account of early Israel's history provides a wholly accurate portrait of Israel's origins. One reason for this is that the earliest part of Israel's history in Genesis is now regarded as something other than a work of modern history. It's primary author was at best an ancient historian (if a historian at all), who lived long after the events he narrated, and who drew freely from all sources that were not historical (legends and theological stories); he was more concerned with theology than with the modern quest to learn "what actually happened" (Van Seters 1992; Sparks 2002, pp 37-71; Maidman 2003).
As a result, the stories about Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph are better understood as windows into Israelite history than as portraits of Israel's early history. Almost as problematic as an historical source is the book of Exodus. This book tells the story of Israel's long enslavement in Egypt and of it's eventual emancipation; it also narrates the first stages of Israel's migration from Egypt toward Palestine. The trouble with this story, historically speaking, is that the Egyptians seem to have known nothing of these great events in which thousands of Israelite slaves were released from Egypt because of a series of natural (or supernatural( catastrophes - supposedly including the death of every firstborn Egyptian man and beast."
That's just the first 2 books of the OT. The entire religion can be demonstrated to be borrowed myths with no evidence as to actually happening at all.
joelr
Well-Known Member
And, more apologetics. Besides they are ad-hoc desperate apologetics to answer why would your God order the deaths of so many people, they don't make sense. If Yahweh were real he would not need order deaths but merely convert them through demonstration of his power or even just change their minds. But no, just end their lives?
You also have to cherry pick scripture so none of them went to Hell
Mainly these apologetics fail because there is no Yahweh. It's sad to see normal intelligent people who would normally just agree, it says those things because it was written by Bronze Age people, not dictated by a sky-god. But instead you have to bend over backwards to justify a bunch of fiction in modern times. Bizarre?
"
Religion Identity and the Origins of Ancient Israel
K.L. Sparks (ordained Baptist Pastor, PhD in Hebrew Bible/Ancient Near East)
As a rule, modern scholars do not believe that the Bible's account of early Israel's history provides a wholly accurate portrait of Israel's origins. One reason for this is that the earliest part of Israel's history in Genesis is now regarded as something other than a work of modern history. It's primary author was at best an ancient historian (if a historian at all), who lived long after the events he narrated, and who drew freely from all sources that were not historical (legends and theological stories); he was more concerned with theology than with the modern quest to learn "what actually happened" (Van Seters 1992; Sparks 2002, pp 37-71; Maidman 2003).
As a result, the stories about Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph are better understood as windows into Israelite history than as portraits of Israel's early history. Almost as problematic as an historical source is the book of Exodus. This book tells the story of Israel's long enslavement in Egypt and of it's eventual emancipation; it also narrates the first stages of Israel's migration from Egypt toward Palestine. The trouble with this story, historically speaking, is that the Egyptians seem to have known nothing of these great events in which thousands of Israelite slaves were released from Egypt because of a series of natural (or supernatural( catastrophes - supposedly including the death of every firstborn Egyptian man and beast."
They are myths, used to unite a society, frame laws and wisdom and taken from older myths who also wrote fiction about fictional gods used to unite their society and teach laws.
It isn't just the first books of the OT that use old stories. The 2nd temple period is where all Christianity was formed from Persian and Hellenistic influences.
Even the "holy spirit" to my surprise is just more Greek/Persian mythology:
"the Holy Spirit appears to have an equivalent in non-Abrahamic Hellenistic mystery religions. These religions included a distinction between the spirit and psyche,
Another link with ancient Greek thought is the Stoic idea of the spirit as anima mundi – or world soul – that unites all people
In Zoroastrianism, the Holy Spirit, also known as Spenta Mainyu, is a hypostasis of Ahura Mazda, the supreme Creator God of Zoroastrianism; the Holy Spirit is seen as the source of all goodness in the universe, the spark of all life within humanity, and is the ultimate guide for humanity to righteousness and communion with God. The Holy Spirit is put in direct opposition to its eternal dual counterpart, Angra Mainyu, who is the source of all wickedness and who leads humanity astray."
That's from 1600BC.
Why couldn't Joseph Smith have encountered an ' angel ' ,or Muhammed? A fallen angel / false spirit ?
joelr
Well-Known Member
One of the members of a forum that was big for awhile Personal Development for Smart People suddenly had daily messages from Jesus. Updates. People claim to have communication with divinity all the time and are always telling tall tales.
The actual answer is use critical thinking and skepticism. Incredible claims require incredible evidence.
People claim to speak regularly with divinity (first no divinity has been demonstrated to be real, that's one problem) and all they get from it are ridiculous myths that oddly enough sound like the same myths from other cultures (Christianity, Judaism, Islam) or are a big bunch of new BS (Scientology...).
Smith was a con artist. No one ever found his golden plates. The rhetoric he came away with about Indians being white people who sinned and so forth. If you cannot figure out it's a bunch of BS then you just don't care about what is true.
There is zero evidence that "Gods" speak to people in their minds. This is another trope of mythology. The claims do not stand up to careful investigation.
This should not be hard for you because you likely do not think Prince Ardjuna was actually spoken to by Lord Krishna in the Gita. Or really think the angel Gabrielle spoke new laws of Christianity to Mohammud. Because you would convert to Islam.
So you already know it's mostly BS.
You are just making a special allowance for your religion because you want to continue believing it.
The same goes for Abraham. The consensus in scholarship is that primary first author was more interested in creating myths for the new emerging culture, clearly drew from existing myths from Mesopotamia and gave the culture something to latch onto. There was no Yahweh speaking to Moses and Abraham. Those are stories that unite people. Yahweh became a national God in a larger pantheon, each nation having a supreme God of the nation.
The switch to Yahweh-centric only happened way later in 600-300BC when the high priests began questioning why was Yahweh allowing all these nations to continue to invade? The answer was monotheism (the Persians were also doing it). Didn't work, the Greeks invaded then the Romans.