Battle Talk ~ Battle Royale VII

[jeremiah]

To Aussie Thinker:
How did Jesus make your list of big three?
Buddha was an ascetic, Jesus obeyed the Torah, and hung around with Jewish scholars and Jewish sinners. Mohammed received special revelation in fits of seizures. I think I will practice the method Jesus used. Obeying the scriptures and midrashing with rabbis and eating with sinners.
How did Jesus use the best science had to offer in 30 A.D.
What myths and superstitions did he overlook? or rather accept, and why is He any different than me or many others who accept these so called myths?
Same for Mohammed. I think that only Buddha followed your method except he had even less science than the other two.
It seems to me that I don't need to follow your prescription for getting closer to God. I need to at the very least, pick one, or take the best from all three.

 

[Bigotboy]

Originally posted by bmyers


Sorry, three strikes and you're out. PLEASE make an honest attempt to learn more about what the evolutionary model actually says before you attempt to debate the subject. Specifically with regard to the above:

1. No one says anything as silly as "life started from primordial ooze" in any serious discussion of the subject,

2. No current evolutionary biologist would say anything like "the first lifeform was a bacteria" (Ponder this question for a while, by the way - what is "life"?), and

3. As has been pointed out countless times, science DOES NOT deal in "proof" - and to try to disparage something as "merely theory" because there is no "proof" again simply shows how poorly you understand the terminology and processes of science.

I would say science does deal in proof- science, through observing and testing and falsifying, PROVED that DNA contained the code that determined how an organism would develop.

I am still looking for some verifiable evidence that life has evolved. I have been told by one person to look at animal breeding, then another says it is not a good example. But my original observation about breeding stands: there in no new information evident. What we see in the variations is merely a combination of existing information.
Please state a FACT of the evolutionary process as it relates to the formation of creatures. Did birds evolve from lizards ? Are Black people really inferior to Whites, because anybody can see that Black people are more closely related to the common anscestor of man and ape. This is pure Darwinism, by the way, and not a position held by the Bible. It says we are "all one blood".

 

[Aussie Thinker]

Jeremiah,

The point was the creation of a sensible God.

Those 3 had "glimpses" of God.. they promoted the basic tenet he gives us .. empathy for your fellow man.. do unto others etc.

Can't you see this type of God I present makes far more sense than the inconsitent God of the Jews and Christians ?

 

[jeremiah]

.....Yes, I agree that the god you describe makes far more sense, but I think that is because he is a god that the human mind either wants, or can conceive of. The God of the Jews- Christians is a revealed God and a God to be "feared" first of all, and a God who declares that His "ways are past finding out."

 

[Heino]

Originally posted by Bigotboy
Heino, before I get into responding to you I want to mention that I recognize your picture from "your" album cover from around 1973. I was just a toddler back then, but a very perceptive one.

You know of my namesake, Heino? Are you German? Very few people outside of Europe know of Heino! I have the same first name, Heinz, and everyone with that name is called Heino by friends. I have to confess that I am a Heino Impersonator, which is a popular activity when you go to a bar. It is similar to "Karioke" (Is it spelled the same in English?), but you wear Rayban sun-glasses and a wig if your hair is not white enough. Fortunately, I look enough like young Heino to only need the glasses. The real Heino is in his 70's now.

If you search for music on the peer-to-peer networks, I reccomend looking up "Der Real Heino". He is a parody of Heino, and does rude versions of Heino's songs, with the lyrics changed.

I do not use the term NAZI loosly. In this case I was using it to illustrate the point that Biblical morality has not been the basis for most of the bloodshed in history.

Well, not genuine Biblical morality. However, you must be aware that distortions of Biblical teaching have been used by many, including both the Catholic Church and the founder of my Lutheran sect, to justify horrible deeds. Not with standing, the crusades, witch hunts, and violence against Jews, Gypsies, Armenians, and Muslims.

I saw a film when I was a boy that terrified me. It was called Hexen. I was only about 10, and was scared by the depictions of the devils and monsters. I believe the film has an enigmatic status in film archives today. When I was in College, I saw the film again, and was surprised that it was a documentary depicting what went on in medieval Europe during the witch hunts. It sparked an interest for me in medieval History, and I learned that the unfortunate events of those times were made worse by the fact that documentation of people put to death was not kept for decades, until the Church asked for it, due to tales of innocent people who were unjustly put to death. This means that thousands and thousands of people were killed during the witch hunts who are lost to history. We only have documentation for the trials that were put on later. The estimate for generations of witch hysteria is in the millions, conservatively speaking. These people were killed for superstitious reasons, or for money and land, but the methods used were religious manipulation. Many people trully believed it as a matter of their faith, but it was a false faith.

I believe that the same is true for what you accuse evolution for. People in communist countries were killed purely for political reasons. Belief in Darwinian theory had nothing to do with Stalin and the Bolsheviks. It was all about politics and "political speediness", where leaders did not want to have to take time to win the hearts and minds of others, so they killed them. The Nazis were re-inventing ancient Teutonic religions from pre-Roman times. Darwinian theory was never more than a tool of communication for science-minded people, just like the idea that Jews were "Christ-killers" was used in churches to convince religious people. The Nazis used every idea they could to win over hearts and minds. They used any ideas that were convienient to them. We do not blame Christianity for Hitler, jsut because he used it against the Jews. Hitler used a distortion of Christian traditions, just as he used distortions of Darwinism, and distortions of socialism. It is ironic that Hitler called it "National Socialism" when it had virtually nothing in common with actual socialism, and especially after socialists were imprisoned and killed.

And I would argue that Adolph was NOT out of line with Darwin. Darwin was very plain in explaining his belief that "mud" races and women were inferior on the evolutionary tree. And if we all arose by pure chance, then why not follow the motto "might makes right" ?

That, my friend, is a distortion of Darwinian theory.

Your mention of the Neo NAZI groups in this country is the perfect illustration of some people who will not accept historical data as factual, no matter how much evidence you give them. Look at this in light of people who do not accept the overwhelming evidence for the resurrection of Jesus.

I do not consider atheists to be Nazis. There is no comparison. Nazis had great faith, unlike atheists, who have no faith. I have worked with many atheists, and they are just like anyone else I work with. I know many Hindus and Muslims too, where I work. Atheists do not go around forcing us to accept their ways or give up our faith. Nazis would do that.

 

[attention]

Originally posted by Bigotboy
Sorry to weigh in so late on this. I see the debate has moved on, but the point needs to be made !!



Aussie !!! You almost get it !!! In point of fact there were over 500 people who claimed to be eyewitneses of Jesus' resurrection. And some were willing to die rather than deny what they knew to be true. Now I may be willing to die for what I THINK is true, but how many people will die for what they KNOW is a lie, especially if it is of no consequence ? Most of the eyewitnesses had absolutely nothing to gain from professing a belief in the resurrection.
As for the reliability of the accounts ? There have been quite a few people in history who have set out to prove that the resurrection could not have happened, and some have come to the conclusion that it was in fact an actual event. Probably the most notable was Simon Greenleaf, the Harvard professor of law, who specialized in the field of evidence. He lived around the turn of the 20th century. More contemporary are Josh McDowell and Frank Morison.

I think no one denies the truth of what the eyewitness have claimed, that is that they correctly declared what they saw.

But if a good illusionist would perform a show in which some "miracle" occured, there would also be hundreds of eyewitnesses that would saw an event that was impossible.
When one would ask a person witnessing an illusion, what they saw, and since they don't know how the trick is performed, they can only tell what they saw. Even if that what they saw was something that is not possible to happen.

If it can nowadays happen that masses of people are deluded, it could for sure happen also in the past.

We know however from the context of an illiusion, that what we see is a trick being performed. We know it IS a trick, but in most cases we don't know actualy HOW the trick was performed.
So we could only tell from the context, that what we saw might actually not be what actually happened. But if not context is given, how would we interpret this then?


This is as such not proof against a resurrection of Christ, but it shows that an eyewitness report of hundreds of people can be a truth, while there nevertheless did not have to be a "real" resurrection.

What is in fact called a "resurrection". When in fact is someone dead and when is one still alive?

There have been also cases in modern times in which people have been called clinical dead. That is: their heartbeat and respiration were carefully monitored, and they were declared dead.
Even so, it has happened that people had "wake up" from such a condition.

Is that also a "resurrection".

This is just to state that there are more possibilitities then just the "did happen / did not happen" point of view.

What factually did happen or did not happen, might be never be revealable, since we can not reconstruct all the facts precisely.

The eye witness reports, as I have heard, were only put in paper significant time after the event. Some 30 years or so.

This is also an aspect of this.

From the (little) knowledge I have about this, I could neither claim that it was not a resurrection nor claim that it was.

I can only honestly say: I don't know.

We must also deal with THAT aspect of reality. There are things we don't know and can't possibily know.

Wether that is a reason to belief in something or not, is something of a personal attitude.

Mine is that I don't belief.

And as an addition to this.

What does the Bible say about the life of Jesus between the age of 12 and 30?

I have heard other stories in which it was assumed that Jesus went to India. Some people even claim that his grave is in India.

Does anybody have any info on that?

 

[attention]

Originally posted by Bigotboy
I would say science does deal in proof- science, through observing and testing and falsifying, PROVED that DNA contained the code that determined how an organism would develop.

I am still looking for some verifiable evidence that life has evolved. I have been told by one person to look at animal breeding, then another says it is not a good example. But my original observation about breeding stands: there in no new information evident. What we see in the variations is merely a combination of existing information.
Please state a FACT of the evolutionary process as it relates to the formation of creatures. Did birds evolve from lizards ? Are Black people really inferior to Whites, because anybody can see that Black people are more closely related to the common anscestor of man and ape. This is pure Darwinism, by the way, and not a position held by the Bible. It says we are "all one blood".

Firstly, I think you subtilly state that Darwinism (evolution theory) would actually form a ground for racist ideologies.
There is however not such a ground, and the nazi science that would have to proof such "genetical" deficits of non-arians, are generally considered a misuse of science.

For evolution theory, there are no "lesser" evolved species. It actually says that ALL species are optimally adapted to the environment. Evolution theory also states that there are no human races. Every mixture of human genes will bring forth fertile offsprings.

There are obviously genetically differences between human beings. That are adaptations to the environment.

Secondly, when you want proof of evolution/development, you don't have to look only in the field of genetical evolution, since the time frame is too small to see actual any major genetic changes (except for very simple organisms, and as far as I know we have seen genetic changes and progress occuring in certain species), but you could look into human society too.

Has human society developed in the past couple of thousand years, or not?

 

[isaiah 1:18]

Originally posted by attention
Oh people, come on. Not AGAIN this form of sophistry.

Please look up this thread with a quote from Hegel, which already show where your idea simply goes wrong.

(small excerpt)

"It is impossible for anything to begin, either in so far as it is, or in so far as it is not; for in so far as it is, it is not just beginning, and in so far as it is not, then also it does not begin. If the world, or anything, is supposed to have begun, then it must have begun in nothing, but in nothing — or nothing — is no beginning; for a beginning includes within itself a being, but nothing does not contain any being. Nothing is only nothing. In a ground, a cause, and so on, if nothing is so determined, there is contained an affirmation, a being. For the same reason, too, something cannot cease to be; for then being would have to contain nothing, but being is only being, not the contrary of itself"

Incomprehensibility of the Beginning

Or see my thread on the Fundamental Question

and the thread on Why it is impossible that time had a beginning?

And this rises above sophistry, how? As logical is it is, it is based on a materialist view. Does that make it fact? No. Is it logical? Yes, if certain premises are agreed upon.

But is it ultimately correct?

Undetermined.

So, it is therefore just another viewpoint to be considered.

 

[bmyers]

Originally posted by jeremiah
To bmyers and, or, Aussie Thinker:

We know the Attributes of the God of the Bible. Could you please explain the attributes of a god behind a 5 billion year old earth, a god behind evolution, a god behind scientific laws and discoveries. Describe a god who wrote no books, was not seen by any man, who left no unexplainable supernatural miracles, who left us no instructions on how to live. and who does not indicate that he cares for us, and never left his son to die for us.
Please describe in any detail you so desire the attributes of your god or god who has none of the attributes described above?

Why?

Obviously, anyone who wants to can speculate on what attributes are or are not implied by the universe that we see around us. And I seriously doubt that we'd all come to the same conclusions as to just what those attributes have to be. Another complicating factor is that the conditions you mentioned above are by no means strictly tied together, despite repeated creationist/literalist/fundamentalist attempts to make them appear so. It is certainly possible for someone to think that there could be a God behind evolution, AND that the Earth is 5 billion years old - and still that this same God was "seen by man, performed miracles, left instructions on how to live, cares for us, and left his son to die for us." In fact, it is quite clear that a very large fraction, and likely even the majority, of professed Christians in this world believe exactly that. So your argument is of the "excluded middle" variety - you'd like to force us into choosing between one of only two extreme options, namely either accepting the whole creationist/literalist position, or atheism as the "only" alternative. Nonsense.

But even if we DID come up with a description of God per your request above - what would it really mean? I strongly suspect that you're looking for something to point to and say, "See? THAT God isn't nearly as nice as THIS God!" But that's an utterly irrelevant argument. Your view of God is NOT more likely to be true than anyone else's, simply because you LIKE it better. The truth does not particularly depend on what you would like to be so.

 

[bmyers]

Originally posted by Bigotboy
See previous responses concerning evidence of the resurrection.

I'm sorry, but we are apparently using different meanings of the word "evidence." Your previous response mentioned something about "500 eyewitnesses to the resurrection" - how do we know about these people? How can we verify their story, outside of the stories given to us in the Bible? What independent corroboration for the Biblical account is available?

I hope you understand the logical problem with an argument along the lines of:

"I have evidence that this book is true."

"Really? What evidence is that?"

"Well, there are eyewitness accounts!"

"And how do you know this?"

"Look, they're right here in the book!"

 

[bmyers]

Originally posted by Bigotboy
Darwin was very plain in explaining his belief that "mud" races and women were inferior on the evolutionary tree.

Please provide a reference to the writings of Darwin in which the above conclusions appear.

 

[bmyers]

Originally posted by jeremiah
Buddha was an ascetic, Jesus obeyed the Torah, and hung around with Jewish scholars and Jewish sinners. Mohammed received special revelation in fits of seizures.

I don't know much of Islamic tradition, so I won't comment on the Mohammed statement - but I don't think you're all that familiar with Buddhism. Siddhartha Gautama, the Indian prince who was later known as "the Buddha," pursued asceticism for a time in his search for enlightenment, but ultimately rejected it as having no answers. To characterize him, especially after becoming "the Buddha," as an ascetic is quite a stretch.

Same for Mohammed. I think that only Buddha followed your method except he had even less science than the other two.

I'm not quite sure what you mean by "having" less science, but Buddhism is certainly notable among these three as placing much more emphasis on rational inquiry. See the quotation in my signature as one example.

 

[attention]

Originally posted by isaiah 1:18
And this rises above sophistry, how? As logical is it is, it is based on a materialist view. Does that make it fact? No. Is it logical? Yes, if certain premises are agreed upon.

But is it ultimately correct?

Undetermined.

So, it is therefore just another viewpoint to be considered.

Have you in fact read into this link of Hegel about the Incomprehensibility of a Beginning?

 

[isaiah 1:18]

Originally posted by attention
Have you in fact read into this link of Hegel about the Incomprehensibility of a Beginning?

So, if I don't relent it must mean one of the following:

1. I didn't read it.
2. I don't understand it.
3. I'm Theistically stubborn.

Or, I read it, heard of it, and understood it, even before it was referenced but find that it is in the ultimate sense sophistry offered to debunk what the proponent views as sophistry.

The key is: "it is sophistry in the ultimate sense." No matter what, ultimately, it is as philosophical as it purports to be reasonable. Mind you, I'm not saying that it is without merit, but that it is on par with any philosphy that attempts to answer the ultimate questions with a sense of authority yet in the end still remains no higher than speculation.

And I fail to see how that relates to debate of when or how Life "started" on Earth. In that, yes, I am ignorant. My position is, if whe had a time machine and could keep going back in time until we found the point at which life as we define it biologically began, wouldn't that in pragmatic terms mark the "beginning?"

 

[jeremiah]

To bmyers:
Maybe I don't know Buddha as well as I thought. I thought he acheived enlightenment and experienced Nirvana by practicing a severe form of ascetism until he reached that state. I thought he was willing to die until he had overcome his flesh. I think Buddhist monks today practice certain types of ascetism and certainly isolation from the world. I think at the very least Buddhism could be described as mental ascetism?
I think you have a very severe ascetism in mind, if you do not think that Buddhism promotes a form of ascetism and isolating the mind from what the body is experiencing.

 

[ex_fundy]

Originally posted by Bigotboy In point of fact there were over 500 people who claimed to be eyewitneses of Jesus' resurrection. And some were willing to die rather than deny what they knew to be true.

Yeah, I thought this sounded pretty convincing when I first heard the claim. Then I realized none of the 500 people Paul (if he was really even the author) refers too are named, we have no reputable record of how any of them really died, people die all the time for falsehoods, etc., etc.

Even if Peter were crucified on a cross upside down (one of the many legends surrounding the apostles) you don't know if it was for any particular belief he held or for some crime he committed (e.g. tax evasion, preaching without a license, etc.). Can you show me 1 reputable historic document that records a person that claimed to be an eyewitness to the resurrection being killed because he/she would not denounce that particular claim?

 

[ex_fundy]

Originally posted by Bigotboy We have the testimony of Abraham, who moved when God told him to. He claimed to have talked with God....
And which child has actually seen Santa flying ?

And we have many people today giving testimony that they were abducted by aliens or that god told them this or that, do you believe all those claims too? What about Mohammed or Joseph Smith, do you accept their claims to hearing direct divine words? If not, what rational methodology do you use to distinguish who's claims to accept and who's to deny?

Ordinary things (those many people exerience regularly) require little evidence, but extraodinary things require extraordinary evidence. Claims that an infinite divine being spoke directly to another human is an extraordinary thing and I will accept it as reasonabe once someone provides me with extraordinary evidence. Until then, I'll categorize those claims along with the alien abduction stories and Elvis sightings.

 

[attention]

Originally posted by isaiah 1:18
So, if I don't relent it must mean one of the following:

1. I didn't read it.
2. I don't understand it.
3. I'm Theistically stubborn.

Or, I read it, heard of it, and understood it, even before it was referenced but find that it is in the ultimate sense sophistry offered to debunk what the proponent views as sophistry.

The key is: "it is sophistry in the ultimate sense." No matter what, ultimately, it is as philosophical as it purports to be reasonable. Mind you, I'm not saying that it is without merit, but that it is on par with any philosphy that attempts to answer the ultimate questions with a sense of authority yet in the end still remains no higher than speculation.

And I fail to see how that relates to debate of when or how Life "started" on Earth. In that, yes, I am ignorant. My position is, if whe had a time machine and could keep going back in time until we found the point at which life as we define it biologically began, wouldn't that in pragmatic terms mark the "beginning?"

The only question was: have you read this link and paragraph of Hegel, or not?

 

[Frank Ernest]

Battle Royal VII

Battle Royal VII

Have saved the entire debate. From what I've skimmed there's a bunch of good info here. It will take me a while to sort it all out.

Thanks to the participants.

 

[isaiah 1:18]

Originally posted by attention
The only question was: have you read this link and paragraph of Hegel, or not?

The answer: Yes.

But let's recall the context of your original question, shall we?

"Oh people, come on. Not AGAIN this form of sophistry.

Please look up this thread with a quote from Hegel, which already show where your idea simply goes wrong."

That type of response suggests exasperation, arrogance and and sense of resolute knowledge. Naturally, you should have expected a defensive response. In these matters, NO ONE has the definitive answers. If you notice, concerning the ultimate questions, I proposed probable answers - though admittedly limited in scope. But to call someone's reasoning sophistry as compared to your own reasonings which have no definitive basis in the ultimate is hubris. It is on par with one saying "yes God exists" rather than saying, "I believe God exists."