h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Then, whats the point in trying to convert people, which so many Christian groups try to do. Someone is either certain to accept God without any help or to reject him regaurdless of how much you help him. Either most Christians don't share your interpretation about predestination, or they can't follow a simple chain of logic.

1) What is your basis for this claim of different audiences for different gospels?

3) (wondering where 2 went) - Why bother to claim kinship with David at all if he's the son of God? And why through Joseph, if Joseph is not his father? Answer - Joseph IS his father. And the kinship to David is necessary to fulfill certain prophetic requirements, so the writers made it up.

4) Then why the gaps? Why is there no overlap? Why do the two stories purport to tell the same thing, and have nothing in common? A cop can tell somebody is lying when the stories of two suspects share no common elements. And if the Herod slaughter is documented, you should be able to find us an online reference.

5) I look forward to your evidence.

6) But "kissed her often about the mouth" is amorous even by Western standards, wouldn't you agree?

7) Well, if you go for symbolism... bah, it's still a guy killing a tree in a snit.

8) The raising of Lazarus was no parlor trick. It was a regular part of religious practices dating back to ancient Egypt. The dead pharoah's successor was laid out in a similar manner and given drugs to induce a death-like state, during which he was supposed to receive the spirit of Horus, the god who ruled over earth. The three days were significant, because Horus' father, Osiris, who ruled the underworld (and under whose care Horus came into during the days between the pharoah's death and his successor's receiving of Horus' spirit) was slain, and his wife Isis reassembled his body and brought him back to life after three days.

Jesus arrived on the third day and resuscitated Lazarus according to a ritual Moses very well may have brought from Egypt, or Jesus learned in Egypt, or came into the culture another way. And as usual, the Christians took it completely out of context.

9) Apparently they didn't notice much at all. I have the sciences at my disposal. If they had seen what they thought, then their tales would have been consistent with archaeological and forensic findings.

10) My surprise is not unique. Pilate shares my suspicions in the John account. Otherwise, he'd never bother with the spear bit.

11) Keywords: "earliest texts available." The earliest available translations do not predate the 4th century AD. And, as I have shown, those texts were edited at that time, in the Council of Nicea. The church edited them to make the books conform to their own ideals, rather than the other way around... although how any set of ideals could be made to conform to such a collection of inconsistencies is beyond me.

They certainly do, and so they should because they are! (I am not one but I have friends and family who are.)

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You're right, they don't.

Even if the gospels were intended for different audiences- that doesn't really excuse where they contradict one another. If you squint you can accept the different accounts of the life of Jesus as based on differing recollections- they are aspects that can't be reconciled. But does it not make more sense to consider much of the gospels as primarily metaphorical? Why should the remote copies of the memories of fallible people be assumed completely accurate? It's nonsensical. What is of value in the Bible is metaphorical- and all too often the metaphor is ignored in favour of details and literalism.

What is really telling to me is that there are certain similarities in the Gospels, particularly in the Synoptic Gospels (those being Matt, Mark, and Luke), up to and including the crucifixion. After Jesus dies, they don't resemble each other in any way.

That tells me that, up to and including the crucifixion, they're telling a story that has something of a historical background. After the crucifixion, they're making it all up themselves.

The biggest point of contention between the Gnostics (the first Christians) and the Pauline Christians was that the Gnostics were very angry at Paul for taking the metaphor of Jesus' resurrection so literally.

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I am writing a few years later, and I have to at the hare assertion again! It makes me smile and ask is that all you've got? Too heavy reliance on the Skeptics Annotated Bible, I think. If you explore a translation later than the KJV, youll see the truth of the matter... that the Bible nowehere claims that hares are ruminants.
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I thought as much!

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Ridiculous. Can't you (they) tell the figurative language from the literal?
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Ditto.

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Very few people (most of them in the USA) believe that it is.

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See above - but better still, stop relying on angry, campaigning atheist websites, and look up the answers to these canards. They exist, I assure you!
Here's one:
http://skepticsannotatedbiblerespons.blogspot.com/

Della

And, obviously, as a Christian, who bases her faith and belief on what the Bible says *YOU* can tell figurative language from the literal. Well, you can distinguish between the really stupid bits that just cannot be true from the really stupid bits that you can rationalise some how to prop up your need to believe in a supernatural being.

Apologist responses to skeptical critique is always good for a laugh, so I checked out Della's source. And it was as good as I expected. First, we have this page: http://skepticsannotatedbiblerespons.blogspot.com/2004/11/index-of-alleged-contradictions.html

In which only 106 out of 360 contradictions even receive an attempt at answering.

Then we go here to find a specific answer to an incontrovertible contradiction: http://debate.org.uk/topics/apolog/contrads.htm

The first very specific one we find is, "2 Samuel 24:9 gives the total population for Israel as 800,000, whereas 1 Chronicles 21:5 says it was 1,100,000." And their response:

"It is possible that the differences between the two accounts are related to the unofficial and incomplete nature of the census (which will be discussed later), or that the book of Samuel presents rounded numbers, particularly for Judah.

The more likely answer, however, is that one census includes categories of men that the other excludes. It is quite conceivable that the 1 Chronicles 21:5 figure included all the available men of fighting age, whether battle-seasoned or not, whereas the 2 Samuel 24:9 account is speaking only of those who were ready for battle."

To which there can only be one response: "And monkeys might fly out of my butt." Wild theories drawn from deep within the rectal cavity do not an argument make.

Anyone with a bit of experience with literature can, Alfster! *You* can tell poetry from prose, literal from figurative, can't you?

If I was to say "Dawn reached out her rosy fingers and caressed my face", you can surely that I am personifying sunrise, and not that someone called Dawn was flirting with me, or that an atmospheric and astronomical phenomenon had grown phalanges?

Sorry, that should say "you can surely *tell* that..." obviously.

Oh right, so Poetry is made-up figurative rubbish and prose is factual, relevant data?

Poetry CAN be literal and factual. Prose CAN be figurative and fictional (gosh - you do not believe that everything in sci-fi books is real do you?).

We are not talking about spotting iambic pentameter from: clause and sub clause, full stop, new paragraph, we are talking about FACT from FICTION.

A *totally* different thing. Could you rebuff my remark from an historical perspective rather than an English literature perspective please.

And here is some historical poetry for you:

http://eserver.org/poetry/light-brigade.html

I knew what you meant by that bit. It's the rest of the post that makes no sense as an addition to the discussion.

Maybe saying sorry for that would be more suitable.

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No, Alfster, sorry, it's you not making any sense! I don't know where you got your assertion from about *me* mixing up prose and poetry, I gave you an example of figurative prose, and suddenly you wander off down some bizarre by-way accusing me of not understanding the difference! I did English lit at University, man, and I write science fiction! So, I have to ask what on are you talking about? Maybe like many science-oriented people, you have a touch of Asperger's syndrome, and the problem in distinguishing figurative from literal is yours, not mine?

Della You said in reply to the fact that you cherry pick what you do and do not want to believe in the Bible. But you explain your cherry picking because you can tell what is actual fact and what bits are just made up'/figurative/can be ignored because you do not like what it is saying.

You then start going on about poetry and prose to move the thread away from the fact that you choose what you want to believe is true in the Bible.

The question is: how can you tell what it figurative(i.e. totally made up) and what is a flowery way of explaining historical fact and God-given instructions.

In poem The Charge of the Lighth Brigade there are the lines:

"They that had fought so well
Came thro' the jaws of Death
Back from the mouth of Hell"

This is obviously not saying that they passed through Deaths jaws or came from the literal mouth of Hell.

Because we know what did happen: the British Light Cavalry charged down a valley at Russian guns, most got killed, some got back alive.

Unless you know exactly where the passages of the Bible came from you cannot glibly decide to believe in some bits and not others.

So, how do YOU decide which bits of the Bile are based on historical fact and which ones are just stuff someone has written down figuratively and not based on actual events or actual 'words/instructions from God.



I cannot remember which 'Della Ploy number' this one is but it is the one where you project your problems on to someone else to deflect the issues onto someone else and move the focus of your muddled arguments on to others.

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I believe it is Della Technique™ number 4.


az

Alfster wrote

Just noticed the wonderful bit of mis-typing in that sentence.

And thank you Az. I did not have my pirated copy of Della's 'Manual for De-railing Threads' with me.

Childish, azahar and Alfster... I call that 'ad hominem'. Given that you both get your ideas and 'debating' techniques from Hoo, I am tempted to ask what number he gave that one, in his lecture series? (Attack the morality or sanity of the opponent, it flummoxes them, and destroys their credibility with people who don't know them. Very effective!) I can just imagine him saying that, in a voice I hear in my mind as a whiny combination of Rowan Atkinson and David Wossname who plays Roy Cropper on Coro.

As for the subtsnace of the demand, I have answered this many dozens of times. Neither of you (nor your boss-man) is really interested in an answer. So, you won't get one from me! You've had too many, and still choose to ignore what you can't (or won't) undderstand.

http://public.fotki.com/six7s/humour/CreationStreet.html

I thought it was az's "cabal"... Now, apparently, the conspiracy widens to include az's "boss-man". It's time to get Interpol onto this!