• Welcome to Religious Forums, a friendly forum to discuss all religions in a friendly surrounding.

    Your voice is missing! You will need to register to get access to the following site features:
    • Reply to discussions and create your own threads.
    • Our modern chat room. No add-ons or extensions required, just login and start chatting!
    • Access to private conversations with other members.

    We hope to see you as a part of our community soon!

So I just started reading The God Delusion..

crystalonyx

Well-Known Member
It ought to be immediately obvious that Julius Caesar is not a typical person, and that an itinerant Jewish sage/rabblerouser/whatever cannot be expected to have left anything like the kind of mark Caesar left. There is no surviving contemporary record of Muhammad, Boadicea, or the First Punic War. Our primary source for the life of Basil Bulgaroktonos was written after his death by a man who was a child when Basil died, and Basil was an emperor -- not an ancient emperor, either, but a medieval emperor.

Paul's epistle to the Galatians is thought to have been written in the 40s or 50s, and thus predates the gospels by about a generation or more. It's often noted that Paul seems more concerned with a mystical Christ than with the historical Jesus, but Paul refers to his adversary James as "the Lord's brother." I can't imagine any credible reason he'd do so, given their rivalry, unless James -- who was still living -- was known to have been the brother of Jesus. That's better independent confirmation than we have for the existence of Siddhartha Gautama (the Buddha) or Hamilcar Barca.


Except many of the books attributed to the schizophrenic Paul were not written by such a man, we actually don't know who Paul is, and whether he was a "real" person. Certainly any "quotes" taken from the bible by Paul about the supposed Jesus are suspect at best.
 

Storm

ThrUU the Looking Glass
It's not meaningful to talk about anything existing "before" the Big Bang, because the Big Bang is the beginning of time. There is no "before."
See, maybe it's a failure of imagination on my part, but that seems like utter nonsense.
 

Storm

ThrUU the Looking Glass
Actually, there's tons of documentation that you exist, for someone looking.
You ignored the "compared to Dubya" part.

Except many of the books attributed to the schizophrenic Paul were not written by such a man, we actually don't know who Paul is, and whether he was a "real" person. Certainly any "quotes" taken from the bible by Paul about the supposed Jesus are suspect at best.
What makes you think he was schizophrenic?
 

Magic Man

Reaper of Conversation
See, maybe it's a failure of imagination on my part, but that seems like utter nonsense.

No, it's true. Time is a quality of our universe. Before the Big Bang, the universe didn't exist (as we know it), and so time didn't exist. I don't fully understand that concept, but that's the basics of it. That's why science will never attempt to explain anything "before" the Big Bang, because everything we know, all laws of nature, and qualities like nuclear fusion and fission and time and space started with that, and that's all any evidence we can find leads back to.
 

Storm

ThrUU the Looking Glass
No, it's true. Time is a quality of our universe. Before the Big Bang, the universe didn't exist (as we know it), and so time didn't exist. I don't fully understand that concept, but that's the basics of it. That's why science will never attempt to explain anything "before" the Big Bang, because everything we know, all laws of nature, and qualities like nuclear fusion and fission and time and space started with that, and that's all any evidence we can find leads back to.
Yeah, I know all that. It still seems like nonsense. Of course, I'm open to the possibility that te problem lies with me. ;)
 

Storm

ThrUU the Looking Glass
Well, of COURSE there was a "before the Big Bang."

... is my knee jerk reaction. :)
 

Magic Man

Reaper of Conversation
Well, of COURSE there was a "before the Big Bang."

... is my knee jerk reaction. :)

Ah, but that's just your need for a linear timeline. I agree that it's hard to grasp (probably impossible) just like "forever", but I don't think that makes it nonsense (anymore than it makes "forever" nonsense).
 

9-10ths_Penguin

1/10 Subway Stalinist
Premium Member
To sum up: You and logician are correct in saying that the gospels are historically unreliable, but incorrect about the extent to which that is true and about the reasons you've given (on this thread) for saying so. The evidence for Jesus is so sparse that it remains possible to disagree about whether he was a revolutionary or an itinerant sage, whether he considered himself the Messiah or not, and all kinds of other important details. We just don't know that much. We do know a little, though, and to simply sweep Jesus out the door of history because you imagine that no accurate facts about him could have survived oral transmission for forty years, or because our sparse sources don't meet the standards we'd expect for modern sources, is every bit as fatuous as believing that every legendary detail is true.
I'm more inclined to dismiss these details as irrelevant than incorrect. At this point, I think I've come to the conclusion that arguing about the historicity of Jesus is a bit like arguing over the characteristics of the stone in your stone soup.

See, maybe it's a failure of imagination on my part, but that seems like utter nonsense.
If it helps, Stephen Hawking wrote that asking "what happened before the beginning of time" is a bit like asking "what lies north of the North Pole?" The question becomes meaningless.
 

Storm

ThrUU the Looking Glass
If it helps, Stephen Hawking wrote that asking "what happened before the beginning of time" is a bit like asking "what lies north of the North Pole?" The question becomes meaningless.
It doesn't. The very concept of a "beginning of time" makes no sense to me. Time just IS.

EDIT: But thanks for trying. :)
 

Smoke

Done here.
Except many of the books attributed to the schizophrenic Paul were not written by such a man, we actually don't know who Paul is, and whether he was a "real" person. Certainly any "quotes" taken from the bible by Paul about the supposed Jesus are suspect at best.
That's sheer nonsense. There's no serious doubt about whether Paul was a real person. Some of the letters attributed to Paul were really written by Paul, and some weren't. When it comes to the Bible, you can always find some scholar somewhere who holds a completely daft opinion, but there's no serious doubt about Galatians, either. Scholars are as close to unanimous as they ever get in agreeing that it's genuine.
 

challupa

Well-Known Member
Ah, but that's just your need for a linear timeline. I agree that it's hard to grasp (probably impossible) just like "forever", but I don't think that makes it nonsense (anymore than it makes "forever" nonsense).
So what are you saying? Is "now" all there ever is or was or will be because there really is no time except in this physical dimension?
 

Smoke

Done here.
See, maybe it's a failure of imagination on my part, but that seems like utter nonsense.
It depends on whether you think time is a dimension like length or breadth, or an absolute that exists whether anything else exists or not.

Asking what happened before the Big Bang is like asking how wide the Hudson River is in Kansas.
 

Storm

ThrUU the Looking Glass
It depends on whether you think time is a dimension like length or breadth, or an absolute that exists whether anything else exists or not.
I tend to think the latter, perhaps manifest as the former.

Asking what happened before the Big Bang is like asking how wide the Hudson River is in Kansas.
Unless there's something else out there. ;)
 

Smoke

Done here.
I'm more inclined to dismiss these details as irrelevant than incorrect. At this point, I think I've come to the conclusion that arguing about the historicity of Jesus is a bit like arguing over the characteristics of the stone in your stone soup.
I've been saying for years that the historical Jesus just isn't that relevant to Christianity, and if he's not even relevant to Christianity, you have to wonder why we're all so interested in him. Upbringing and culture, I guess. :)

If it helps, Stephen Hawking wrote that asking "what happened before the beginning of time" is a bit like asking "what lies north of the North Pole?" The question becomes meaningless.
Now see, I wish I'd read your response before I wrote mine. I like yours better.
 

Storm

ThrUU the Looking Glass
I tend to think the latter, too, but it doesn't appear to be true. :)
Heh. I don't know, maybe I'm doing the same thing as a YEC, rejecting the science that doesn't line up with me theology, but it really doesn't make any sense to me.

Especially in light of the multiverse theory. Are we supposed to believe that all the universes were born at once? If not, then there's time outside them.
 
Top