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

Hi mich2ael

"Certainly the New Testament documents were written down a very short while after the events as historical documents go."

As far as most scholars can agree the first gospel was probably written about 80 years after Jesus's alleged crucifixion. The later ones up to 150 years afterwards. This means even Mathew's Gospel probably relied on second-hand or even third hand oral accounts of dubious authenticity. By then the 'Paul-ine' version of Christianity was well established. The earlier James (Hebrew-only) sect having been destroyed.

The next few centuries consisted of a rapid spread across the empire and endless intercenine struggles for control of the doctrine of the early church, until Constantine stepped in and with typical ruthless Roman efficiency forced a bunch of terrified scholars to pick out the accounts that would serve the needs of Empire best. All opposition was then quashed and the first real church established. Only on the fringes of the empire did remnants for pre-Nicaea christianity continue, such as amongst the Coptics in Egypt and the Culdees in Britain.

"The account of creation is not a scientific thesis."

Indeed and I have no problem with that really. If people wish to believe in a mythological interpretation of the Creation myth of their religion well that's just fine. It's when they want to impose it on the general populace as literal truth that I get riled up.

"Time and time again we see God 'desperately' warning people and sending prophets to turn people from their sin so that he would not have to punish or destroy them."

And so we have sin. If, as Christian doctrine demands, the Abrahamic God is triple-O [omniescent, omnipresent and omnipotent] then he is personally responsible for everything. As an omniescent being he knows everything that has happened, is happening and that will happen. As an omnipotent one nothing happens without his will. Thus sin is his creation and he can prevent it at any time but does not.

How can anyone be interested in such a petulant deity?

"Humble when you consider what he left behind!! For a royal birth (The bible describes Jesus as King of kings and Lord of lords) a stable was a suprisingly humble place to begin his life."

He left nothing behind as he was created by himself. He chose to walk as a man, an 'avatar' as another world religion whould name it. As an all-powerful deity any form less than his full majesty would have been 'humble'.

And even if the story has any veracity he was not born in what we would have recognised as a stable. The rock-cut homes of the period was probably an extended family affair shared by the family that hosted his parents and their animals.

Remember the first, and probably most accurate gospel, doesn't even mention this event...

"Tiberias would not, I think, have recognised Jesus as a threat."

Given that Judaea was in a state of near revolt, and the Empire regarded it as a key border province (and their gate to the Silk Road) methinks Tiberius would have considered Pilate's reports pretty important. After all Pilate was considered such a failure he was assassinated upon his recall to Rome.

I always wondered why the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple meritrd no contemporary records...?

"Although a king, his ministry was not political,nor was it directed to the politically powerful, nor is his kingdom an earthly kingdom."

But the gospels (well some of them) would have it that that is exactly how Caiaphas sold it to Pilate, as a political threat, a potential popular uprising against Roman rule.

"There are non-biblical historical reports of one 'Jesus who went around doing good and healing the sick'."

Sources please.

"The bible is full of eye-witness accounts of these very events. How independent must they be?"

So is the Da Vinci Code, it remains fiction. Independent means coing from a non-Christian source such as the many Roman or Greek writers of the period (hint: look to the Essenes).

"And archaeology won't find remains in a tomb which was surplus to requirements and therefore unused!"

But to find absolutely nothing after two centuries of the most intense archaeology richly sponsored by men desperate to find any evidence whatsoever to support the Gospels? Only Egypt has had as much money spent on its archaeology.

"Yes, I'm beginning to wonder myself...I thought a few well chosen words would convert the lot of you and then it was going to be off to the next conversation forum...he he "

Good luck

Blessings,
Matholwch .

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I don't wish to derail the conversation, but I am not Della, have not been Della since 2004...

Just saying...

Vicky

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I am not Nicky, but as I wholly agree with her, I will give my here..

It's hard to express to someone who doesn't share the same point of view, but worship isn't intended to benefit God... it's a relationship. If you love your husband or wife, you tell him/her all the time, you can't help it, you just do.

In my opinion, worship is the same sort of thing.

Vicky

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Not sure what you mean by a set-subset relation. The brain is quite capable of changing dimensionality, such as when input from the retina of the eye (2 dimensions) is processed into a three dimensional image.

Noggin

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Same deal with me.

<> (Vicky)

Fair enough, but you don't *worship* them ...

az

Thanks Noggin, but that isn't quite what I meant. I was wondering whether the mind could be a subset or superset of brain activity, rather than there being some one-to-one mapping between them.

My whole aim is to investigate whether there can be persons, for example, without material objects. It is clear that what we call "the conscious mind" is only a small subset of mental activity (in the case of humans, anyway). Which of the various categories I have mentioned in earlier postings can exist independently of the others - if any and which others?

I ask this partly out of a spirit of philosophical enquiry, and also since the cause of the universe is must (at some point in whatever) have existed thus.

Where does admiration turn into reverence turn into worship?

Hi Trig

"Where does admiration turn into reverence turn into worship?"

When it becomes demanded by society or a priesthood. Power demands adoration and obedience - two key aspects of the christian church doctrine.

Blessings,
Matholwch .

Hi Della

As you know some of us old lags here still call you Della as that is the name we know you by. If I were to change my name I would have no problem with people still calling me 'Math' - so what is yours?

Blessings,
Matholwch .

<> (TRiG)

In a relationship? Well never, unless it's not a very healthy one.

az

I'm always a little surprised at how ready people are to accept the authenticity of manuscripts claiming to be histories of actual events without having any idea as to where, when and by whom they were written. Historical documents, especially those for which there has been ample opportunity and motive for tampering, invention and hyperbole, should *never* be accepted so readily.

Noggin

Hello Matholwch,

em so do I take it (from posting 26461) that you're not quite ready for me to lead you in the sinner's prayer then?!

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Still very recent for the time.

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I presume you mean that christians had a hand in it! You seem to doubt the authenticity of all christian literature and literature written by people who may in some way be sympathetic to christian thought?! If my observation is correct we have little common ground.

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I think this must be a VERY liberal interpretation of the first council of Nicaea.

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You think that by listing three words beginning with 'o' you can understand the nature of God and from that position accuse the Almighty of all manner of things. Can the clay say to the potter: "What do you think you are doing?" "As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts." Isaiah 55:9

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A middle-class cave?

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It is not a major element in the story.

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Would Pilate have reported the death of what appeared to be 'just a religious fanatic' in some backwater?


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It was neither accurate or truthful of Caiaphas to sway Pilate's decision in this way at that brief moment in the narrative.

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I've not met them so I can'y verify!

<<I thought a few well chosen words would convert the lot of you and then it was going to be off to the next conversation forum...he he "

These words were, of course, written in jest.

I'm sure none of the above will have gone any way towards pacifying your sincerely held views on all things christian, but I nevertheless hope that we remain on friendly terms.

Bless you

mich2ael

Hello Noggin

An interesting book was written a few years ago by Frank Morison called: 'Who Moved The Stone?'

He set out to disprove the resurrection but, after researching the subject, came to the opposite conclusion.

Worth a read maybe?

mich2ael

I must admit that I've never had much patience with the philosophical objections to worship: "Even if I accepted that God exists, I wouldn't worship him." "Why would a God want us to worship him?" "Why should we be proud of being servile to a deity?"

You say that worship is never healthy in a relationship. It depends, of course, on the nature of the relationship. In a relationship between two humans, even if one is by some objective standard 'better', worship probably is unhealthy. But if you allow for the existance of a personal God (or, even if you theoretically allow for his existance, for the purpose of debate), you must also allow for reverence as an appropriate response to that God.

Matholwch may not worship his gods in the same way that Christians worship their God, but he accords them respect in some form. Of course, the spirits he feels he interacts with are not of the same majesty as a Creator of the Universe.

(Math, am I right in thinking that to your mind the Christian God is in fact just another god who's got big ideas and is pretending to be more important than he actually is? Was it you who called him a 'jumped-up desert wright'? If so, is this same spirit behind all the Abrahamic religions, or are there a multiplicity of different spirits, one for each monotheistic religion, each masquerading as the Creator of the Universe? Will he/they get into trouble for this deception?)

TRiG.

ho-ho-ho

If'n y'all don't believe in God why would you believe in Satan?
Humans are at the top of the animal chain because nature has endowed them with a superior brain.
Animals kill, feed, sleep, crap, then move on.
Humans did more or less the same until money was invented.

That changed the whole senario because animals could not eat the money and ignored it but the humans took it one step further when gold was discovered.
"Why should gold make any difference?' one might be tempted to casually warble.

Because gold is the only thing that is eternal.
when all other metals have been eroded by time and tide gold will remain for ever.

So now we have gold that sits in a bank somewhere doing nothing and probably cost some one his life looking for it but is now long gone.

Just how stupid can one get moving to a barren place and being bitten by snakes and trampled perchance by elephants or eaten by crocs, or having got ones find safely home is murdered for his gold.
Some pillock wrote a book titled,"Ah dun fun a mother f-----n' load o' gold" and the day after the first copy was sold was found dead and his gold gone.
But then the Human or Humans that did that proved how clever they were because they let some bugger else do the hard work then they moved in and reaped the reward.

Today we still have the same old problem and it is called going shopping. bye now y'all. T

However the gold still sits in a bank vault and is good for what????

A bloke goes into a Jewellers shop and the Jeweller says that he can sell the bloke a gold watch that will last forever, but, for a lot of money.
But the bloke thinks, "Since ah ahm sixty plus years old why would ah want a watch that lasts forever?"

So he walks out of the shop and finds another shop where "Knocking" noises were being emitted only to find it was the abode of the local blacksmith.

Yea ! Ah know , sum muvvers 'ave 'em an' they live. Slainte Y'all.T

<< is this same spirit behind all the Abrahamic religions, or are there a multiplicity of different spirits, one for each monotheistic religion, each masquerading as the Creator of the Universe?>>

I wouldn't presume to make any guess concerning the *real* identities of any putative gods at the time of the emergence of monotheism. Even tracing the history of what people thought about their/his identity/ies is tricky enough.

Nevertheless - Yahweh appears to have originally been a tribal god, one of a multiplicity of such, and not distinctively different from the others. Following the emergence of the monotheistic Persian empire in the sixth century BCE he appears to have become the local face of the Persian god Ahuramazda (the cult of Mithras, among others, seems to have been another such "local face"). Almost all of the surviving OT is Persian or post-Persian, albeit with some earlier sources, and incorporating local legends and myths (in the same way that Christianity later incorporated Pagan festivals and sites).

Noggin

az

fair enough but you don't worship him...

One version of the Christian marriage service says you do

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Jez