The Holy Church of Charles Darwin.

TheGreatGodPan on 28/4/2006 at 01:43

Quote Posted by Strontium Dog

lol western attitudes

The context was him being in a crowd of Americans, so normal should be understood to be something that would not stick out in that crowd.

GBM: I understand what you mean now, I think we were quibbling over pretty minor stuff. Nevertheless, I don't know what you mean by the Gospel of John having stuff against the worship of Jesus. Here's the end of chapter 9 where Jesus is talking to the healed blind man

Quote Posted by King James Bible

[35] Jesus heard that they had cast him out; and when he had found him, he said unto him, Dost thou believe on the Son of God?
[36] He answered and said, Who is he, Lord, that I might believe on him?
[37] And Jesus said unto him, Thou hast both seen him, and it is he that talketh with thee.
[38] And he said, Lord, I believe. And he worshipped him.
[39] And Jesus said, For judgment I am come into this world, that they which see not might see; and that they which see might be made blind.
[40] And some of the Pharisees which were with him heard these words, and said unto him, Are we blind also?
[41] Jesus said unto them, If ye were blind, ye should have no sin: but now ye say, We see; therefore your sin remaineth.

Nicker: GBM did comment on the structure of a post of mine (you missed out on the days when they were all (http://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?p=1245087&highlight=#post1245087) one gigantic paragraph) in another thread, but until you posted here I was not a topic of discussion (I did make myself one when I mentioned worshipping Jesus). Your post did not have anything to do with the subject at hand. It belonged in the other thread.

st.patrick on 28/4/2006 at 11:39

Quote Posted by Convict

Whaa? IIRC Paul's letters are dated around 60ish AD etc. We have a fragment of Mattew's gospel from 125AD - from Egypt I think.

Or are you from a remote pygmy tribe where generations = 5-10 years? :confused:

a) Paul's letters might very well be dated around 60 AD, but they haven't been preserved in that form - only via transcriptions from around 150 AD, so the dating can hardly be considered accurate for the same reasons I stated before
and
b) a generation by today's measures is about 25-28 years (from birth to reproduction), and it was significantly less in ancient Palestine; some 18-22 years. Go figure, pygmy.:p

Nicker on 28/4/2006 at 21:08

Quote Posted by TheGreatGodPan

"Topic of discussion"? :eek: It really is all about you isn't it.

Jenesis on 29/4/2006 at 14:00

Hey guys, sorry it's taken me a while to get back to this. Also I will shortly be leaving for my parents' place for the weekend, so I don't know how much I'll be able to type. A relief to some of you, I'm sure.

Just a couple of things for now:

I was criticised for saying that there was only one supernatural explanation for what happened to Jesus' body. Which is fair enough, I guess, but the number of supernatural explanations that have actually been seriously suggested is pretty small. There's the Islamic version which I forgot to mention (thanks, SD), the Biblical version, and not a lot else. My aim was to discuss the seriously-proposed explanations. Given that Jesus claimed that he would die and rise from the dead, and that he was the Son of God, there's particular reason to consider that claim, since something weird happened to the body.

There was also the question about the guards - could they have been involved in the theft of the body? No reason why not, I suppose, but they'd need an incentive. The Jewish authorities were able to bribe the soldiers because they were wealthy, and because they could promise the soldiers protection if the story got to Pilate. The disciples, however, were a poor bunch, and couldn't offer the same safety if the truth came out. Matthew, it's true, had been a tax collector, but had given that up some years ago to follow Jesus. The disciples weren't in the habit of carrying large bags of money with them.

OrbWeaver on 29/4/2006 at 15:37

Quote Posted by Jenesis

I was criticised for saying that there was only one supernatural explanation for what happened to Jesus' body. Which is fair enough, I guess, but the number of supernatural explanations that have actually been seriously suggested is pretty small. There's the Islamic version which I forgot to mention (thanks, SD), the Biblical version, and not a lot else. My aim was to discuss the seriously-proposed explanations.

By allowing consideration of a single supernatural explanation, you open the door to a host of other possible explanations which are equally likely[1], essentially making any conclusion worthless. If you then restrict consideration to a limited number of "serious" religious hypotheses, you are assuming the conclusion by only considering explanations which are similar to what you already believe.

[1]: since supernatural explanations are by definition unexplained by human knowledge, it is impossible to assign an accurate probability to each one and therefore they must all be considered equal.

Wyclef on 29/4/2006 at 18:50

Jenesis' efforts are akin to the efforts of the ID movement in that he is trying to fit God in the explanatory gaps. In principle this is possible -- as I said before, teleology was certainly very reasonable in Aristotle's time -- but since extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, the plausibility of supernatural explanations inevitably fall far short of that of more prosaic explanations. I don't quite see the point here -- isn't faith a cornerstone of Christianity? (ID, on the other hand, has an ulterior motive -- it's the thin edge of the wedge that culminates in the restoration of the hegemonic cultural position of Christianity.)