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

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wot?

Witch-burning times, I think she means.

Not one of civilisation's better moments.

Noggin

Noggin

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What about Peter? Peter refers to witnessing events from the Gospel accounts in his letters. What about Mark? We've mentioned Mark.

It would have been very difficult for the early disciples to preach fabricated events when there were still living eye-witnesses all around. They are recorded more than once as using the phrase: "You yourselves were witnesses of these things."

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The reason? Math seems to think there's a reason but I can't. What possible reason? What did they have to gain? What could explain the transformation of a bunch of cowering disciples hiding from the jews, into joyful, fearless witnesses. There was no financial advantage or any worldly gain to be had from making up an unbelievable story. With all due respect to Math, he does have an agenda; check it out.

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A tangible experience of God was the experience of believers in bible times as it continues to be today. Sometimes in quite dramatic ways. In fact, I wouldn't expect anyone to be convinced of the truth of this message without an experience of God. Who would want to believe in a dead God? Did you check out that site www.propheticvision.org.uk? Interesting testimonies there.

kind regards,

mi2ke

Noggin and Mich2ael

The "Burning Times" is a neo-pagan mythos which brings out the same resigned (and ignored) refutations by academically-inclined pagans as mich2ael's insistence on Biblical historicity brings out in academically-inclined Christians.

It has no basis in fact, but is accepted 'wisdom' among the newbies and the ill-informed, and is defended by them with the same fanatical disregard for facts as is displayed by some Christians, and with the same type of reliance on dodgy scholarship and bad research.

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Jez

o.i.c.

<<"The reason? Math seems to think there's a reason but I can't. What possible reason? What did they have to gain? What could explain the transformation of a bunch of cowering disciples hiding from the jews, into joyful, fearless witnesses. There was no financial advantage or any worldly gain to be had from making up an unbelievable story. With all due respect to Math, he does have an agenda; check it out.">>

Lots of people believe lots of frankly ridiculous things, but normally we disregard them in favour of more mundane explanations. The authors of the gospels appear to have believed something which looks, on the face of it, a damned sight silly. It seems easiest simply to lump them in with the rest of us who are pretty much all self-deluders in one sense or another.

Incidentally, a lot of leaders of cults, heresies, and of course mainstream religions, have gotten very wealthy, powerful and famous doing what they do. So there's another possible motivation there.

I'm sure you must be familiar with the ways that people tend not to think straight, but if you really don't get that, then I could always go and find a few choice examples from the big book of historical heresies .

Or, to put it more simply, if humans are capable of inventing a load of balls like Scientology and then taking it seriously, then they can probably manage to swallow resurrections and walking on water without asking too many questions.

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Bouncy, it does not follow that Christianity is invented.

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Hold on Jez, 'some' academically-inclined Christians, unless you wish to exclude all others by definition.

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Bouncy, it does not follow that Christianity is invented."

It follows that people frequently do these things for a variety of reasons, and given the choice of people being a bit silly en masse versus the other explanation of miraculous occurances, all-powerful beings and a spiritual war of sin and salvation, which seems more likely?

I take the point, Bouncy, but it is limited: it can never go beyond the question "which is more likely?" Of course the answer is normally going to be that someone *has* been a bit silly, but that can only be determined for each case by checking the facts, i.e. the question might be useful, but it does not replace the investigation. So the comment about Scientology might be relevant generally, but not once the specific claims of Christianity are being considered.

On the question raised by Math, who asked (I think) how Christians know which books are inspired, the simple answer is that they refer to the decisions of the Church, formalized as Mich2ael says at the fourth century councils of Hippo and Carthage. These councils produced lists of books that are to be accepted as inspired on the authority of the Church. These lists are consistent with the earlier lists contained in the 39th Festal Letter of Athanasius (367 AD) and the third century Muratorian Fragment. Inspired books, taken together, form the Bible.

There are some differences between Catholics (and Orthodox) and Protestants in the books or parts of books that are included in the Bible, but it should be noted that these differences are restricted to the Old Testament.

Within these books, textual criticism of the bible leads to the conclusion that we have a text the accuracy of which is more certain than any other ancient work. This is the reasoning that led Frederic Kenyon, to mention a Christian of academic inclination, to conclude as Mich2ael mentioned above that the scriptures have come down to us substantially as they were written. It is not just that we have biblical manuscripts that are closer to the original redaction than for other ancient works but that there are many more of them; many hundreds, as opposed to perhaps a dozen in other cases.

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So in this instance, "inspired" means "approved by the Church", yes?

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That's a pig's ear of a sentence . I have no idea whether the textual accuracy is being said to apply to the whole bible or just parts of it.

Noggin

Hi mich2ael

"It would have been very difficult for the early disciples to preach fabricated events when there were still living eye-witnesses all around. They are recorded more than once as using the phrase: "You yourselves were witnesses of these things."

We are talking about a time when most people would consider a trip to the nearest decent sized town an annual event. News came from whatever trader or traveller happened to wander through your village. In times such as these people believed in dragons and demons lived in the next district because 'people said so'.

It would have been incredibly easy for the disciples, most of them now working in Asia Minor and Greece, to say just about anything and find a good few people willing to give it some credence. These brave disciples of yours weren't preaching on the Temple steps in Jerusalem or on the Mount of Olives. Far too dangerous with Caiaphas and Annas still worried about people rocking the boat. Even where they did dare to speak they often got into trouble with the locals and not a few were martyred for their pains.

"The reason? Math seems to think there's a reason but I can't. What possible reason? What did they have to gain? "

Because they wanted to lead a cult? Because they were human and enjoyed the benefits being a resepcted preacher (as opposed to a lowly fisherman) could bring? Because they believed they were right and were happy to amend, destroy or decry anything that said they weren't? Because they were radicals and believed that they could change the world?

"With all due respect to Math, he does have an agenda; check it out."

Where?

OK, yes, I have an agenda but it may not be what you suppose.

You christians claim to have a God-given right to proselytise the world. You have used that to usurp nations, oppress native religions and politics, destroy cultures, kidnap and brainwash their children, prosecute wars against those you feel threaten your monotheistic view of the world, and hold back the search for truth that is science. I have the right to challenge that, especially where I can see errancy, deliberate falsehoods and lies.

Your dogma is utterly unforgiving and allows no tolerance of disagreement. This alone deserves challenge.

That said I come from a christian background, a christian nation, I have christian family and friends (some at quite high levels in the Mother Church), and thus I am not asking for the destruction of christianity. I am not even asking that you give up your beliefs, or modify them one jot or tittle. But if you come here and preach your beliefs I will challenge the errancies I perceive in them.

Right onto your linked testimonies. These carry no more weight than my own, or those of any of my particular brand of self-delusion. Not one of them can stand up against the arguments of the rationalists and humanists here and you know it. You can no more provide proof than can I. The difference between us is that I can recognise that and still sleep at night.

However, your preachers will tell you that my beliefs and experiences are delusions at best, or the work of the devil at worst. They actually teach that I will not be saved and will spend an eternity in the lake of fire. Nice chaps, forgiving god and all that...

Being a polytheist your beliefs do not challenge mine and I can afford to be tolerant of them, and you.

As you are a monotheist my beliefs do challenge yours and in all christian conscience, you cannot be tolerant of them, for if I am right, even in the smallest detail, everything upon which you found your creed can be seen as a lie.

As far as agenda's go it is a little one. I am tolerant until pricked, then I react.

Now what was the agenda you believe I had?

Blessings,
Matholwch .

Hello Noggin!

On inspiration and approval by the Church, I agree with you in this instance, i.e. this is how a Christian *knows* that a book is inspired, not the reason why the book itself is inspired. The conciliar approval by the early Church was the final stage of the formation of the canon. The Old Testament canon had been forming for centuries: its authority is recognised in the New Testament.

As regards the New Testament, the books were written by the apostles and their associates, and passed down to succeeding generations and read in the liturgy. In the next two centuries more writings were produced that claimed similar status, but they were rejected, as they had not been among the books passed down from the beginning. Some of these books were Christian, others were Gnostic. In reaction to these later writings the local churches drew up lists of the books that had been handed down from the apostles.

What the Church approved at the Councils of Hippo and Carthage was such a list, effectively saying that the books regarded as inspired were *those* ones, that these books are regarded as having been written under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, and they have been transmitted to the Church as such.

To Noggin again, this time on the accuracy of the text, since the argument hinged about early Christianity, I was referring mainly to the Greek New Testament, which was also Kenyon's specialist subject.

Archaeology has now recovered for us old fragments of books of the New Testament from the desert. The Bodmer papyri (c.200AD) or the even earlier Rylands Fragment could not have been edited after the time they were lost since they do not differ from the text as already known from later sources. There are hundreds of such fragments for the New Testament as a whole.

There are also commentaries by early Christian writers that quote the texts, from which much of the New Testament can be reconstructed without need for the originals, although thankfully we don't need to do that.

There were some variants in the text, e.g. the variant ending in Ch.16 of Mark's Gospel, the start of Ch.8 of John’s Gospel, and Ch.5 v.7 of the First Letter of St John; but these are well known. Apart from the above examples they are normally insignificant errors of copying, and there aren't great numbers of them. They are the variants that appear in the footnotes of today's bibles, where the main text is a translation of the original Greek. You can also get bibles with the reconstructed Greek text.

Math

Thanks for your recent communication.

I have tried to be gracious in all my communications but it still seems to create bad feeling. I apologize for any offence caused, especially if I have come across as intolerant, dogmatic or judgmental of your lifestyle...that was never my intention.

The agenda...again, apologies for offence caused...but I perceived a certain amount of 'animosity'?...maybe I'm being over-sensitive.

Thanks for having me in the bear cave.

goodbye

mikey2

Hi mikey2

Don't be such a wuss .

This is an open forum so you must expect some fairly rough toing and froing sometimes.

That said do not worry about offending me, you are far too gracious to achieve that anytime soon

So come back into the bear pit and give as good as you get. Besides Andrew needs all the friends he can get

Blessings,
Matholwch .

Mich2ael

Ah, he's worse in real life.

Give him as good as he gives you.

After all, in pagan fora, there's no chance for him to really get going...

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Jez

Math,

thanks mate...shall I tell you what I really thought then!?

mikey2

Yes mikey2, both barrels, in the face!

Hi Andrew

Even granted your account is accurate it's still deeply unsatisfying, as "inspired" now means "the oldest manuscripts that we have." Even such proof of age is no proof of veracity. Mich2ael was quite right to suggest that my position is that whatever the lineage of the written accounts, they are still accounts of things that are impossible (miracles and resurrection). That the gospel writers believed them is not enough.

Noggin