26 Consider your own call, brothers and sisters: not many of you were wise by human standards,[e] not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. 27 But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; 28 God chose what is low and despised in the world, things that are not, to abolish things that are, 29 so that no one[f] might boast in the presence of God.
–Paul of Tarsus to the church in Corinth
Gary: After these points Celsus [a second century Greek writer and critic of Christianity] quotes some objections against the doctrine of Jesus, made by a very few individuals who are considered Christians, not of the more intelligent, as he supposes, but of the more ignorant class, and asserts that “the following are the rules laid down by them [Christians]. Let no one come to us who has been instructed, or who is wise or prudent (for such qualifications are deemed evil by us); but if there be any ignorant, or unintelligent, or uninstructed, or foolish persons, let them come with confidence. By which words, acknowledging that such individuals are worthy of their God, they manifestly show that they desire and are able to gain over only the silly, and the mean, and the stupid, with women and children.”… –Origen, early Church Father
Christian: Celsus was not an unbiased witness; his polemical goal was to make Christians look bad. You don’t think he could’ve exaggerated?
Gary: Excellent! Ditto for the anonymous Christian authors of the Gospels! They too were biased. Their polemical goal was “so that you might believe”. You don’t think they could’ve exaggerated???
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
End of post.
Escaping Christian Fundamentalism 
–Paul of Tarsus converted to Christianity due to a “heavenly vision”.
–Justin Martyr converted to Christianity due to his admiration of the Christian martyrs. He never says that his conversion occurred due to a rigorous study of the evidence for the Resurrection.
–Constantine’s mother was Christian. His conversion was triggered by a vision, but most people eventually adopt the religion of their parents, in particular, that of their mother.
–Augustine’s mother was Christian. Augustine, like many young people, rejected his mother’s religion as a young man, but eventually, like many, came back to it.
How many educated people in the first centuries of Christianity converted due to evidence for the resurrection of Jesus and how many converted due to a mystical experience or due to the influence of their mother?
LikeLike
Gary, you’ve oversimplified all of these conversions beyond recognition. I have commented upon them below to correct your oversimplifications. In posting the above from Dr. A’s blog, you left out my objections, in which I explained each of these conversions, so, in the interest of transparency and accuracy, I offer them again, below.
GARY: –Paul of Tarsus converted to Christianity due to a “heavenly vision”.
LEE: So now its a “heavenly vision” and not just a “light”? Well, that’s some progress at least. St. Paul was kidnapped, beaten, threatened, arrested numerous times, flogged, stoned, taken to court, slandered, bitten by poisonous snakes, and ultimately executed, all because of a “heavenly vision”? Talk about plausibility! Does that sound plausible?
As I keep saying, Second Temple Jews had religious vocabulary they used to describe dreams and visions, which Paul never uses to describe the appearances of Jesus to himself, the 11 disciples and over 500 others; plus, it would take more than a “heavenly vision” to convince such a Second Temple Messianic Jew that the previously executed Yeshua had, in fact, been raised from the dead, thus was, in fact, the Messiah. Messianic Judaism had no time for “dreams and visions.” It demanded a real-life flesh-and-blood Messiah, not a warm fuzzy feeling in somebody’s heart.
GARY: –Justin Martyr converted to Christianity due to his admiration of the Christian martyrs. He never says that his conversion occurred due to a rigorous study of the evidence for the Resurrection.
LEE: After first trying Stoicism, Pythagoreanism and Platonism, Justin found Christianity. At last, about A.D. 130, after a conversation with an unnamed old man, his life was transformed, and he describes it thusly: “A fire was suddenly kindled in my soul. I fell in love with the prophets and these men who had loved Christ; I reflected on all their words and found that this philosophy alone was true and profitable. That is how and why I became a philosopher. And I wish that everyone felt the same way that I do.”
Justin gives us the main gist, but there was undoubtedly a bit more to it than what he specifically mentions here.
GARY: –Constantine’s mother was Christian. His conversion was triggered by a vision, but most people eventually adopt the religion of their parents, in particular, that of their mother.
LEE: Granted its been about 20 years since I read Eusebius, but nowhere that I’m aware of does Eusebius credit the Empress Helena’s already being a Christian with Constantine’s conversion.
Constantine’s conversion should better be seen as a response to the massive exponential wave in the progress of Christianity, not as its cause. True, Constantine claimed a miraculous vision which claim he’d be a victorious at the Milvian Bridge: Eusebius writes that as a pagan Constantine didn’t know anything about this god that had just given him this sign in the sky, but that he was so moved by his vision of the cross that he vowed to worship no other God than the one represented to him. But Constantine also saw the positive effects the Church was already having on the Empire and thought that adopting Christianity as the preferred religion of the empire (it didn’t become the state religion until some later, under Theodosius) would help stabilize and unify his empire. And in his 2010 book Defending Constantine, Dr. Peter Leithart argues that what Constantine actually did was to “desacrifice” Rome in order to establish it upon the true sacrifice of Jesus Christ. Constantine enacted a “baptism” out of the world of Rome, and so he eliminated the competing Roman sacrifices: those associated with senatorial decisions, military victories, and the emperor. Instead, it was the sacrifice of Jesus Christ that became the founding sacrifice of the new city, the eschatological city.
GARY: –Augustine’s mother was Christian. Augustine, like many young people, rejected his mother’s religion as a young man, but eventually, like many, came back to it.
LEE: As for Augustine, he, too, tried various religions and philosophies, finally settling on the dualistic Manichean faith. Christianity being the faith of his mom Monica had less to do with his eventual conversion than the preaching of the famed Bishop Ambrose of Milan who, in Augustine’s words, made Christianity “defensible.”
In Confessions 5.14, Augustine recounts the impact Ambrose’s preaching had on him:
“Together with the language, which I admired, the subject matter also, to which I was indifferent, began to enter into my mind. Indeed I could not separate the one from the other. And as I opened my heart in order to recognize how eloquently he [Ambrose] was speaking it occurred to me at the same time (though this idea came gradually) how truly he was speaking. First I began to see that the points which he made were capable of being defended. I had thought that nothing could be said for the Catholic faith in the face of the objections raised by the Manichees, but it now appeared to me that this faith could be maintained on reasonable grounds — especially when I had heard one or two passages in the Old Testament explained, usually in a figurative way, which when I had taken them literally, had been a cause of death to me.”
Did you catch that: Augustine says “but it now appeared to me that this faith [Christianity] could be maintained on reasonable grounds ”
GARY: How many educated people in the first centuries of Christianity converted due to evidence for the resurrection of Jesus and how many converted due to a mystical experience or due to the influence of their mother?
LEE: None of the people you cite above converted due to a “mystical experience or due to the influence of their mother.”
The evidence of Jesus’ resurrection, while not specifically mentioned by any of these converts would nevertheless be an important body of evidence to consider, seeing as how it’s the primary, defining belief of the faith. Without a literal resurrection, Christianity, certainly as we know it, wouldn’t have existed.
Pax.
Lee.
LikeLike
Assumptions and generalizations, Lee. That is all you have in this comment: assumptions and generalizations. Just because it is implausible to you that a first century messianic Jew would conceive of one person’s resurrection due to a vivid dream, trance, illusion, or false sighting is not evidence. It is simply opinion.
The fact is that the overwhelming majority of first century Jews, the people and culture among whom this story first circulated, DID believe that it was plausible that (a few) first century Jews could come to believe in one person’s resurrection based on vivid dreams, trances, illusions, false sightings, hallucinations and/or another natural explanation! Even the Gospels indicate that most first century Jews believed that there was a natural explanation for the empty tomb (someone moved the body) and that the sightings of a resurrected Jesus were based on ghost sightings (illusions).
The fact that a few first century Jews believed this resurrection tale did NOT convince the majority of first century messianic Jews that it was true! This is excellent evidence that it is YOU who has an incorrect view of what was and what was not plausible for first century messianic Jews to believe.
LikeLike
GARY: Assumptions and generalizations, Lee. That is all you have in this comment: assumptions and generalizations. Just because it is implausible to you that a first century messianic Jew would conceive of one person’s resurrection due to a vivid dream, trance, illusion, or false sighting is not evidence. It is simply opinion.
LEE: So is your theory that such “dreams and visions” kick-started the Jesus Movement after Jesus’ death. But again–as I keep trying to get you to see–much of history is based on assumptions; not blind assumptions, but assumptions based on evidence, which is what mine are. But you are so desperate to cling to to your unbelief, that it causes you to place blind faith in implausible, improbable, scenarios. You’ll at least admit the empty tomb and that the apostles at least thought Jesus was resurrected (most non-Christian NT scholars will at least admit that much), so that’s something. But it just isn’t plausible that something as nebulous as a dream or a vision caused all of these men save John to risk persecution and finally death. Would you risk your life for a dream or a vision?
And I can’t help but notice you didn’t comment on the other converts whose conversions I referenced. Their mothers had nothing to do with their conversions.
Pax.
Lee.
LikeLike
Lee: But it just isn’t plausible that something as nebulous as a dream or a vision caused all of these men save John to risk persecution and finally death.
Gary: Assumption. You have no idea if people are willing to die for beliefs based solely on visions and dreams.
Lee: And I can’t help but notice you didn’t comment on the other converts whose conversions I referenced. Their mothers had nothing to do with their conversions.
Gary: Most people eventually adopt the religion of their parents, in particular the religion of their mother.
LikeLike
GARY: Gary: Most people eventually adopt the religion of their parents, in particular the religion of their mother.
LEE: That statement hardly counts as “commentary.” What clinical evidence or data do you have to back up your assertion? Because I quoted both Justin and Augustine in their own words, telling you why they converted, and their mothers aren’t mentioned at all.
So you won’t believe either Justin or Augustine? Talk about bias!
Pax.
Lee.
LikeLike
I never said I know as fact that these men converted due to the influence of their mothers. I simply said that their mother’s choice of religion was a possible influence on their conversion and that most people eventually adopt the religion of their parents, in particular that of their mothers.
You cannot prove that their mothers’ influence did not influence their conversion and I cannot prove that they did. However, please provide evidence that either man extensively studied the evidence for the resurrection of Jesus prior to their conversion.
LikeLike
GARY: You cannot prove that their mothers’ influence did not influence their conversion and I cannot prove that they did. However, please provide evidence that either man extensively studied the evidence for the resurrection of Jesus prior to their conversion.
LEE: This whole line of reasoning Gary is just juvenile. I’m sorry, but it is. It’s juvenile. Again, all it does is make you look like a hyper-critical skeptic desperate to cling to his presuppositions at any cost, even at the cost of critical thinking.
If you’re an intellectual like Justin or Augustine studying the Christian faith with a view to conversion, trust me, you study the evidence for the central tenet of that faith, Jesus’ resurrection. Justin himself actually wrote a treatise on it and Augustine wrote about it extensively in several works.
Pax.
Lee.
LikeLike
Prior to their conversion??
Please provide the evidence. It is possible they did, I am not claiming I know as fact that they did not. But I would bet that throughout history, most people who have converted to Christianity have done so for emotional reasons or because it is what they are familiar with (the religion of their parents), not because of extensive research looking objectively at the evidence.
Tell us about the circumstances of your conversion. When did you first believe in the resurrected Jesus as your Lord and Savior, Lee.
LikeLike
GARY: Tell us about the circumstances of your conversion; when you first believed in the resurrected Jesus as your Lord and Savior, Lee.
LEE: My conversion was around age 12, when my late dad baptized me based upon a profession of faith “that Jesus Christ is the Son of God.” Contained within that confession was the belief that Jesus was bodily raised from the dead. So at 12 years old, my conversion was probably mostly emotional. St. Paul’s however; Justin’s and Augustine’s however; Dr. Francis Collins; was not, primarily emotional. Theirs, while containing an emotional component, was in large part evidential and intellectual; we know this because they recorded their conversion accounts.
As for me, why I’ve stayed a believer for all these years is, like CS Lewis, in large part intellectual; in my early 20s I decided that I had to decide for myself whether I was a believer because it’s what my parents programmed me to think, or if there really was good evidence to back up what I’d been taught. Like you, I was taught a fundamentalist caricature of Christianity; however in my case, recognizing that I had believed a caricature did not make me think I had to throw out the baby with the bath water and abandon the faith completely. I was able to recognize that fundamentalist caricature as a caricature; CS Lewis helped a lot with that. So did NT Wright. Thus I adjusted my beliefs to a more, grown-up, adult level. I came to realize that reason leads me to faith. I realize I’ll never have the kind of 100% clinical certainty most atheists and skeptics seem to demand; but then, who among us has 100% certainty about anything in life, so I’m okay with not having all the answers.
Basically, I’ve stayed with the faith because I’ve simply read too much to abandon my faith. And not devotional books, but hard, academic, intellectual stuff. Everyone from Augustine to Irenaeus, to Marcion to Dawkins to Lewis to Collins to Wright to Ehrman to Vermes to Pagels to Russell to Nietzsche to Sartre, to Perrin, to McGrath, Etc., etc. The Q’uran, the Book of Mormon. I even tried to read the Bhagavad Gita 35 years ago. I’m reading the Talmud even as we speak.
Pax.
Lee.
LikeLike
So just to be clear, you first believed in corpse resurrections at age 12. After that, your entire social network (parents, pastor, Sunday School teachers, church friends) reinforced your belief that corpse resurrections are real. When you were older, you researched the evidence to confirm that your belief in corpse resurrections is true.
Is it possible that years of social reinforcement from the primary authority figures in your life about the veracity of corpse resurrections influenced (biased) your interpretation of the evidence, Lee?
LikeLiked by 1 person
GARY: So just to be clear, you first believed in corpse resurrections at age 12.
LEE: No, I believed in “corpse resurrections” (as you so oddly put it) much earlier; I only made the conscious decision to make a public proclamation of faith and be baptized at age 12.
GARY: After that, your entire social network (parents, pastor, Sunday School teachers, church friends) reinforced your belief that corpse resurrections are real.
LEE: In a manner of speaking. One thing they didn’t do is ask to me reject the modern, scientific worldview of a heliocentric solar system, electrical power, advances in modern medicine, etc. When Gary Dobbs on Channel 48 Weather says his Doppler Radar predicts rain, I grab my umbrella. And one of my good friends, John, is a physicist and an aerospace engineer over in Huntsville, AL; he’s also a believer in “corpse resurrection” (a deacon in his church) as you so quirkily describe it. John has worked on projects for NASA, Boeing, etc. He’s living proof (as if Fr. Georges Lemaître or Dr. Francis Collins weren’t proof enough) that one doesn’t have to bury one’s head in the sand to be a religious believer, certainly not a Christian.
GARY: When you were older, you researched the evidence to confirm that your belief in corpse resurrections is true.
LEE: Again, I don’t know why you’ve suddenly decided to use that phrase (to make the belief look as weird as possible? I think you’re maybe trying to spin my comments); what I did was study the intellectual evidence for the truth claims of Christianity and found it–and continue to find it–persuasive. I didn’t try to prove what I already believed, thus I read skeptics and atheists as well as believers.
GARY: Is it possible that years of social reinforcement from the primary authority figures in your life about the veracity of corpse resurrections influenced (biased) your interpretation of the evidence, Lee?
LEE: At age 12, sure. At age 53? No way. Like I said, as an adult I’ve read waay too much for that to be true any longer.
The more I read alternative theories like yours the more they seem even more fantastic than believing in the resurrection. I really don’t have that level of faith!
I realize that believing God raised Jesus from the dead sounds incredible on the surface; and believe me, at 53 years old I do not make that claim lightly. I do not claim that God raises people from the dead every alternate Sunday.
However as I said earlier, it is only your–very strong and at times bordering on irrational–prior commitment to materialism that makes anything even remotely supernatural seem impossible. If you’d just open your mind just a little . . .
Pax.
Lee.
LikeLike
Lee: He’s living proof (as if Fr. Georges Lemaître or Dr. Francis Collins weren’t proof enough) that one doesn’t have to bury one’s head in the sand to be a religious believer, certainly not a Christian.
Gary: Millions of very intelligent, highly educated people believe in Jesus’ bodily resurrection. Millions of other very intelligent, highly educated people believe that a seventh century prophet flew over Jerusalem on a horse with wings. And millions of other very intelligent, highly educated people believe that the Buddha caused a water buffalo to speak in a human language for a prolonged period of time.
Lee: I didn’t try to prove what I already believed, thus I read skeptics and atheists as well as believers.
Gary: And that is exactly what Muslim, Jewish, and Mormon apologists say about their investigation of their religion’s teachings, yet most Muslims remain Muslim, most Jews remain Jews, and most Mormons remain Mormon. Why is it that most people who investigate the religion in which they were raised remain in the religion of their parents?
Lee: However as I said earlier, it is only your–very strong and at times bordering on irrational–prior commitment to materialism that makes anything even remotely supernatural seem impossible. If you’d just open your mind just a little . . .
Gary: I am a non-supernaturalist, so I agree, I have a bias against resurrections. But what about all those Jews, Lee? You still haven’t adequately answered that question: Why do so many Jews, who believe in the supernatural, reject the Resurrection of Jesus Story?
LikeLike
If you’d just open your mind just a little . . .
Seems to me it works both ways … but unfortunately, in matters of religion (Christianity), it rarely does.
LikeLike
NAN: Seems to me it works both ways … but unfortunately, in matters of religion (Christianity), it rarely does.
LEE: I’m sorry you feel that way. I guess you haven’t talked to a lot of Christians, or perhaps you’re talking to the wrong ones. Don’t let the vocal yet ignorant, judgmental, self-righteous Christians among us color your views of the rest of us; we aren’t all trolls.
As I indicated to Gary, over the past 30 years I’ve read as many atheist and skeptics’ books as I can get my hands on (the atheist philosopher Thomas Nagel is a favorite, even though the only thing we agree on is that naturalistic, Darwinian evolution can’t explain consciousness or the human mind; he’s honest enough to admit that); as I also said to Gary, I don’t find their arguments persuasive (other than Nagel’s above). And I certainly haven’t found anything Gary has said yet to be persuasive.
Pax.
Lee.
LikeLike
I used to be a believer so I’ve been exposed to all that you’ve presented in these conversations. And I’ve read books as well. In fact, I wrote one of my own … which included a multitude of research that (further) convinced me that none of it is real. Of course, each person has to make that discovery on their own … -IF- they are ever able to look past the rhetoric that has been repeated for over 2,000 years.
LikeLike
Well said, Nan.
LikeLiked by 1 person
GARY: And that is exactly what Muslim, Jewish, and Mormon apologists say about their investigation of their religion’s teachings, yet most Muslims remain Muslim, most Jews remain Jews, and most Mormons remain Mormon. Why is it that most people who investigate the religion in which they were raised remain in the religion of their parents?
LEE: Many of my Jewish friends don’t even really know what their own faith teaches, let alone anyone else’s. One friend who’s Catholic admitted I know more about Catholicism than she does.
The Mormon and Jehovah’s Witness apologists I’ve talked with over the years weren’t very well read. I studied with two JW ladies 20 years ago who had never heard of the Nomina Sacra, the fact that ancient Christian scribes often abbreviated the Divine Names of Father, Son and Holy Spirit in the gospels thus that this was evidence that the pre-Nicene Church was Trinitarian. They had no clue. You can’t tell me the early Church invented the Trinity in 325 AD–the Watchtower position– when evidence such as the Nomina Sacra argues against that very idea.
GARY: I am a non-supernaturalist, so I agree, I have a bias against resurrections.
LEE: An admission of bias. At least that’s something; the skeptics in the Amazon forums always claimed that because they were ‘atheists/skeptics they had no biases.
GARY: But what about all those Jews, Lee? You still haven’t adequately answered that question: Why do so many Jews, who believe in the supernatural, reject the Resurrection of Jesus Story?
LEE: Gary you’re killing me! They reject it because they don’t believe Jesus was the Messiah! In Christian theology Jesus was resurrected to prove that he was the Messiah (well, that and to conquer death). Jews do not believe (unless they’re modern Messianic Jews) that Jesus was the Messiah, thus they reject any claims for his resurrection. I don’t know how much plainer I can say it.
I reject the claim that Mohammed ascended to heaven, not because I don’t believe ascension is possible, but because I don’t believe Mohammed was a true prophet. That’s why observant Jews reject the resurrection.
Pax.
Lee.
LikeLike
You don’t need to believe someone is the messiah to decide if there is sufficient evidence to believe that that person has been seen alive again after his execution! Your reasoning is fallacious.
Bottom line: the evidence that a few first century Jews saw a walking, talking corpse is POOR. That is why 99.9% of Jews rejected it in the first century and why 99.9% of Jews reject it today. It is a silly tall tale which most likely originated in the hysterical minds of Jesus (mostly) uneducated, superstitious, emotionally-traumatized followers. Period.
LikeLike
GARY: You don’t need to believe someone is the messiah to decide if there is sufficient evidence to believe that that person has been seen alive again after his execution! Your reasoning is fallacious.
LEE: Gary, again, you’re thinking like a skeptic from 2023 and not a Messianic Jew from AD 30.
If you’re an orthodox, Messianic Jew in Jerusalem in AD 30 and the Sanhedrin has just had Jesus executed as a false Messiah, who, among other things, used sorcery to deceive people, the last thought you would have was to believe God had resurrected him. Because God doesn’t resurrect false prophets who use the dark arts to deceive people. So if this Yeshua’s erstwhile followers claim to you that they saw him alive again three days later, your first thought would probably be that they’re either crazy or lying, because, again, God wouldn’t resurrect an executed criminal deceiver like him.
GARY: Bottom line: the evidence that a few first century Jews saw a walking, talking corpse is POOR. That is why 99.9% of Jews rejected it in the first century and why 99.9% of Jews reject it today. It is a silly tall tale which most likely originated in the hysterical minds of Jesus (mostly) uneducated, superstitious, emotionally-traumatized followers. Period.
LEE” Total hyperbole.
Pax.
Lee.
LikeLike
NAN: I used to be a believer so I’ve been exposed to all that you’ve presented in these conversations. And I’ve read books as well. In fact, I wrote one of my own … which included a multitude of research that (further) convinced me that none of it is real. Of course, each person has to make that discovery on their own … -IF- they are ever able to look past the rhetoric that has been repeated for over 2,000 years.
LEE: Is your book available for sale? I’d be interested in reading it.
What Gary seems not to get is that people convert and apostatize for lots of different reasons, not all of them based on a rigorous evaluation of the evidence. In fact, of the people I’ve known who abandoned their faith (and I’ve known a few) or talked with online (even more) over the past 20 years, probably 80% of them left Christianity based on a negative emotional response which had nothing to do with a critical evaluation of the actual evidence.
Oh, they’ve read a couple of blogs by Bart Ehrman, Michael Shermer or Jerry Coyne (which usually just happen to say what they want to hear at the moment) and thus consider the case closed, but such doesn’t really count as studying the evidence.
In other cases (and from everything he’s said this seems to be Gary’s MO), people who were raised in a strict fundamentalist type of faith mistake that childish caricature for real, authentic Christianity, when it isn’t. Thus, they’ll say things like, If I’m expected to believe that James Ussher was right and the earth is only 6,000 years old, I’ll pass. Or, If I’m expected to believe I’m gonna be raptured off a plane in mid-flight over the Atlantic, I think I’ll bow out.
Then, often, when you tell them not all Christians (not even most Christians) believe in the Rapture anyway and that there are Evangelical and Roman Catholic Christians like Dr. Francis Collins, former director of the Human Genome Project and the late Pope John Paul II, who accept evolution, they tell you that you’re lying, that’s impossible because Christians don’t believe in evolution, period. (Or they’ll tell you that “Trinitarian” Christians believe that “resurrection” and being “raised from the dead” are two different things. When, as a “Trinitarian” Christian since age 12, you object to this, they’ll argue that you’ve no idea what you’re talking about.)
Thus, in my humble opinion there’s a lot of “rhetoric” on both sides.
Pax.
Lee.
LikeLike
Lee: In fact, of the people I’ve known who abandoned their faith (and I’ve known a few) or talked with online (even more) over the past 20 years, probably 80% of them left Christianity based on a negative emotional response which had nothing to do with a critical evaluation of the actual evidence.
Gary: I agree 100%, Lee. Most people do not come to faith (belief in the supernatural claims of Christianity) nor leave faith due to historical evidence. Just like you, the overwhelming majority of Christians became Christians as children, too young to seriously study the historical evidence. They adopt the beliefs of Christianity simple because it is the religion of their parents or because they have an emotional experience which triggers their desire for “salvation”.
Most people who abandon their faith do so because they lose interest or because they suffer a tragedy and realize that God isn’t there for them. Very few people take the time to actually study the evidence.
I suggest that before someone joins Christianity or leaves Christianity they should read a few books. Here is my suggested reading list:
Christian: “Evidence that Demands a Verdict” by Josh and Sean McDowell, “The Death of the Messiah” by Raymond Brown.
Skeptic: “The Case Against Miracles” by John Loftus, “Misquoting Jesus” by Bart Ehrman
LikeLike
NAN: Lee, your response is an excellent example of “Christianity.” To you, it’s one thing. To a fundamentalist, it’s something else. To a Catholic, Evangelical, Mormon, Jahaveh’s Witness, etc., etc., it’s something else. And each person deeply believes THEIR version is correct … and will cite books, people, experiences to validate their belief.
LEE: In other words, truth is relative? There IS no way to know, whose version of Christianity, if any, is the correct version? A Postmodernist would answer, “no.” A sincere, well-meaning postmodernist would say: there is no ONE “correct” version of Christianity, everyone’s version is correct because their version represents “their truth,” and it would be intolerant and dogmatic to insist otherwise.
The next time you get pulled over for speeding, just tell the cop that truth is relative, thus your truth is that you can drive 55 in a 35 mph zone, and let me know how that works out for you.
The very idea of orthodoxy, which goes all the way back to the New Testament, argues against the idea of “all beliefs lead to Jesus.” In the New Testament writers like John in I and II John drew a line in the sand and stated in no uncertain terms that, John’s case, anyone who denied that Jesus was a real, embodied human being and not just a spirit-being was an antichrist (apparently Dan Brown has never read I or II John). They routinely condemned heresy, the idea that one could simply pick and chose what one wanted to believe. Instead the Church from at least the time of Acts 15 (ca. AD 48-50) forward insisted that there were essential, non-negotiable elements of the faith that couldn’t be dropped or added to based upon a whim or someone’s private opinion (the original definition of heresy).
The idea recently resurrected by scholars like Elaine Pagels and Bart Ehrman and popular authors like Dan Brown that for the first two hundred or so years of “Christian” history there were all these diverse groups who followed Jesus with nothing much else in common, and that until the early Catholic Church squeezed everyone else out nobody really cared much what the real Jesus said or did, is basically a revival of the old Walter Bauer theory of the 1930s, which had been disproved as false by the 1950s because Bauer tended to cherry-pick and exaggerate his evidence to suit his thesis, ignoring any evidence which didn’t support it.
Thus Mormonism and the Watchtower (Jehovah’s Witnesses) are heresies because the LDS Church teaches polytheism and the Watchtower is Arian, denying the divinity of Jesus.
Fundamentalism at least takes monotheism and the deity of Christ seriously.
Nan, your book is in my cart on Amazon.
Pax.
Lee.
LikeLike
To a Christian, who has been taught that Christianity is the only “true” religion, all others are heresy. Yet those who believe and live within those other faiths are just as certain that their perspective is correct. In actuality, the ONLY truth is to discount the idea/belief in the existence of a supernatural being.
I will be interested in your thoughts related to my book.
LikeLike
Lee: In other cases (and from everything he’s said this seems to be Gary’s MO), people who were raised in a strict fundamentalist type of faith mistake that childish caricature for real, authentic Christianity, when it isn’t.
Gary: I agree with you that fundamentalist Christians are more likely to deconvert when exposed to a rigorous analysis of the evidence for Christianity’s supernatural claims than would a moderate or liberal Christian. Why? It is much easier to disprove what the authors of the Bible actually said, than disprove the opinions of “experts” about what the authors really meant to say.
LikeLike
GARY: Gary: I agree with you that fundamentalist Christians are more likely to deconvert when exposed to a rigorous analysis of the evidence for Christianity’s supernatural claims than would a moderate or liberal Christian.
LEE: Gary, you have a talent for misinterpreting/reinterpreting what someone has written which is itself almost supernatural.
None of this is what I actually said. What I said is that you don’t know the obvious difference between fundamentalism and authentic Christianity.
Pax.
Lee.
LikeLike
Lee: What I said is that you don’t know the obvious difference between fundamentalism and authentic Christianity.
Gary: Please tells us what authentic Christianity consists of, Lee.
LikeLike
GARY: Gary: Please tells us what authentic Christianity consists of, Lee.
LEE: Broadly speaking, the tenets of the Apostles and Nicene Creeds.
Pax.
Lee.
LikeLike
Lee’s original statement: What I said is that you don’t know the obvious difference between fundamentalism and authentic Christianity.
Gary: All Trinitarian denominations adhere to the three great creeds. So all Trinitarian denominations are “authentic”, including all fundamentalist Trinitarian denominations. So what is your point?
LikeLike
GARY: Gary: All Trinitarian denominations adhere to the three great creeds. So all Trinitarian denominations are “authentic”, including all fundamentalist Trinitarian denominations. So what is your point?
LEE: Yes, all “Trinitarian” denominations are orthodox, in that they hold to the classic, essential tenets of the faith, as summarized by the great creeds. As such, they’re my brothers and sisters in the faith, whereas Mormons or JWs wouldn’t be.
Where the fundamentalist caricature comes in is when such fundamentalists make the insistence, for example, that Genesis 1-3 was intended as a literal historical account of a 6-day creation, and then the fall; it would reject the idea of different editors/redactors of Genesis or that anything in these accounts was intended to be read/interpreted figuratively: it was 6 literal 24-hour days; a literal talking serpent; and a literal piece of fruit, and to suggest otherwise is heresy. As you know from Dr. Anderson’s blog, Answers in Genesis makes this kind of interpretation a salvation issue. It insists that theistic evolution is a dangerous false teaching that compromises the faith of the church.
Fundamentalism tends to take everything (or at least lots of important things) in a wooden, literal sense; it insists that theistic evolution is unscriptural and anti-Christian, often idolizes the Bible (without being consciously aware of it); makes statements such as, “God said it, I believe it, and that settles it,” or “The Bible says what it means and means what it says,” which tend to trivialize scripture to the level of a bumper-sticker or billboard slogan. It tends to make everything in scripture black or white, with no gray areas; and it insists on total, 100% biblical inerrancy.
But it is also highly selective in what it chooses to zero in on as being literal, for example, in my tradition lots of ink was spilled to prove that Ephesians 5.19: “speaking to one another with psalms, hymns, and songs from the Spirit. Sing and make music from your heart to the Lord,” precluded using instrumental music in church (although we didn’t go as far as the great 16th c. Reformer Zwingli who interpreted this passage so woodenly that he though it forbade any kind of vocal singing!); while I Corinthians 14.26: “What then shall we say, brothers and sisters? When you come together, each of you has a hymn, or a word of instruction, a revelation, a tongue or an interpretation,” only applied to the first century Church and not to the modern church. So not using instruments (which that passage isn’t actually addressing at all) is a universal mark of the church but everyone, men and women in an assembly, having a hymn, tongue or exhortation, was particular to AD 55 only.
I don’t know really how else to describe it other than that fundamentalism distorts and exaggerates the true faith for a caricature. What makes it especially problematic is that fundamentalism is often dogmatic that it’s views are the only legitimate views, all other interpretations or ways of reading scripture are, if not outright wrong, at least suspect.
Pax.
Lee.
LikeLike
But that is not what you said. You said, “What I said is that you don’t know the obvious difference between fundamentalism and authentic Christianity.”
You may not like fundamentalism nor their interpretation of the Christian holy book, but according to your own definition of “authentic Christianity”, fundamentalists are authentic Christians. Therefore, can you admit that you were wrong accusing me of not knowing authentic Christianity?
LikeLike
GARY: But that is not what you said. You said, “What I said is that you don’t know the obvious difference between fundamentalism and authentic Christianity.”
You may not like fundamentalism nor their interpretation of the Christian holy book, but according to your own definition of “authentic Christianity”, fundamentalists are authentic Christians. Therefore, can you admit that you were wrong accusing me of not knowing authentic Christianity?
LEE: Perhaps that was a poor choice of words. Earlier in Dr. A’s blog I used the phrases “adult” and “grown-up” to make my point. The fundamentalist caricature is a gross parody of the real thing. It asks one to believe in the parody, the watered down, cheap copy, instead of the real thing. It sees everything as black and white and discourages asking questions, especially ones it isn’t equipped to answer. It insists on a rigid, inflexible, wooden literalism which tends to interpret Job or the Psalms the same way it interprets II Samuel chapter 19 Acts chapter 15.
It’s like mistaking the old Saturday Night Live Dana Carvey parody of late US Pres. George H. W, Bush for the real man.
Ultimately, the fundamentalist caricature of Christianity which insists in, say, a literal heaven somewhere “out there” with real streets of gold, or a literal 6, 24-hour-day creation, makes it harder for intelligent, thoughtful people to have faith. It asks them to believe in substitute and not the real thing.
Pax.
Lee.
LikeLike
Maybe you are the one grossly mischaracterizing the Bible. There are many theologians who believe that Jesus taught that heaven is a literal, physical place. Your opinion is just your opinion. It is not fact.
LikeLike
Lee, don’t all these “interpretations” validate the very real thought that the entire bible story is suspect? -IF- a “God” truly directed its writing, it would seem ALL that believe in “him” and “his” authority would be in concert.
LikeLike
NAN: Lee, don’t all these “interpretations” validate the very real thought that the entire bible story is suspect? -IF- a “God” truly directed its writing, it would seem ALL that believe in “him” and “his” authority would be in concert.
LEE: Many of us would argue that 99% of the orthodox denominations (Catholic, Orthodox and Protestant) are in agreement on the essentials. No, we don’t always act like we are, but we are.
Take the US Constitution as an example. Why don’t all Americans of whatever political party (Democrat, Republican, Independent, Libertarian, Green, Socialist, etc.) interpret the US Constitution alike? You’d think the founders would’ve authored something everyone could agree on. Or is it that most of us do agree on the basic, fundamentals of the Constitution (the Bill of Rights, the right to vote, etc.), so that our disagreements are usually over the minutiae?
But actually the truth of Christianity stands or falls on whether Jesus was literally raised from the dead or not. If he wasn’t, which Bible version you read or what denomination you belong to makes no difference whatsoever.
Pax.
Lee.
LikeLike
There is no good evidence that Jesus rose from the dead.
LikeLike
NAN: From my perspective, there is no comparison between interpretation of the Constitution and the bible. The former is not a “sacred” document that promises eternal life. It is merely a means/method for helping society get along with each other.
LEE: Take the Bible’s alleged sacredness off the table for the moment; the underlying principle is the same for both documents it seems to me. Most reasonably intelligent people can agree on the essential guarantees provided by the Constitution; you don’t have to be a constitutional lawyer to understand your basic civil rights as an American.
But, again, the truth of Christianity doesn’t hang on anybody’s interpretation of the Bible, but on whether Jesus of Nazareth was actually raised from the dead or not.
NAN: The fact that individuals disagree with some of its tenets [the US Constitution] doesn’t condemn them to eternal punishment.
LEE: We haven’t established that merely disagreeing with some of the Bible’s tenets will in fact condemn a person to to eternal punishment. I’ve been reading the Bible since age 6 and I don’t remember any passage or text which specifically says that. Now there may be some Christians who say that, but that’s different than arguing that scripture says that. That’s one of those fundamentalist caricatures I keep trying to Get Gary to see/understand. That’s something comedian Dana Carvey’s SNL “Church Lady” character, Enid Strict, would say.
Jesus in scripture seems to make the litmus test belief in himself, not necessarily in correctly interpreting every part of the Bible, or in a mental/intellectual assent to a body of doctrines about himself.
What’s more important, a restaurant menu, or the actual food the menu describes? Rightly interpreting scripture is important, just as rightly interpreting your menu insures you get the food you want for the price you’re willing to pay however to obsess over the Bible the way some people do is akin to obsessing over the menu to the point the point you never actually eat anything.
The 19th c. Christian reformer and unity advocate Alexander Campbell (1788-1866), who with his father Thomas Campbell and colleague Barton W. Stone, was a founder of the Stone-Campbell religious movement from which the Disciples of Christ, Churches of Christ and Independent Christian Churches trace their origins, argued that God only holds a person responsible for “the available light” they possess; in other words, God doesn’t send people to hell for a genuine lack of knowledge or understanding of a particular doctrine or dogma in scripture.
In a February, 1826 correspondence with a “Dunkard” or German Baptist (so-called becauyse they practiced a baptism of triple immersion), Jake Hostetter, Campbell answered certain of Hostetter’s queries regarding how to baptize, whether foot-washing was a necessary commandment, how often churches should observe communion, etc., by saying, in part:
“Dear Brother–For such I recognize you, notwithstanding the varieties of opinion which you express on some topics, on which we might never agree. But if we should not, as not unity of opinion, but unity of faith, is the only true bond of christian [sic] union, I will esteem and love you, as I do every man, of whatever name, who believes sincerely that Jesus is the Messiah, and hopes in his salvation.”
And as Campbell’s colleague Dr. Robert Richardson said, our faith is placed–or should be placed–in a person (Jesus) not a body of doctrines however important those doctrines may be.
As for the Constitution, it guarantees all Americans certain “inalienable rights” (free speech, freedom of assembly, freedom of religion, etc.) whether they are cognizant of said rights, or even agree with said rights. The Bible, in a similar vein, has God making certain promises to all who sincerely call on the name of Jesus, but nowhere predicates the bestowal of those promises on assent to an advanced and precise doctrinal platform.
Again, doctrine is important, God honestly desires our accurate understanding himself and his character, especially as expressed through Jesus, however God doesn’t beat people over the head or hold them responsible for knowing things they honestly don’t know.
I would say what angers God more than honest ignorance is a willing ignorance.
NAN: I still maintain that if the Christian God truly existed, there would be no difference between how people envisioned “him.” What possible advantage to “his” cause is achieved through religious discord?
LEE: No useful purpose is achieved by religious discord. But all the religious discord isn’t really God’s fault, is it? God didn’t make Indian Brahmins execute Buddhists and Jains in the 5th c.; nor is God responsible for the Muslim Jihad, which had conquered Palestine and all of Christian North Africa, before turning its sights on Western Europe and Byzantium, long before the first Crusade; God isn’t responsible for the 17th c. Wars of Religion between Protestants and Catholics. God isn’t responsible for David Koresh, Jim Bakker, or Robert Tilton. All of this is our fault.
Pax.
Lee.
LikeLike
Ghosts don’t impregnate human virgins. Human beings cannot walk on water. Brain dead corpses are never resurrected. Abandon your comforting delusions, Lee. Do it for the sake of humankind. Help Nan, me, and other non-supernaturalists create a world free of superstitions!
LikeLike
GARY: Ghosts don’t impregnate human virgins. Human beings cannot walk on water.
LEE: So you able to state categorically that no has ever or will ever walk on water? All because you’ve never seen it?
GARY: Brain dead corpses are never resurrected. Abandon your comforting delusions, Lee. Do it for the sake of humankind.
LEE: Again, you can state categorically that “brain dead corpses are never resurrected?”
Perhaps not, if you presuppose materialism, that matter is all there is or ever will be. But then . . . if matter is all there is or all there ever will be, how do you explain the rise of the mind and consciousness?
GARY: Help Nan, me, and other non-supernaturalists create a world free of superstitions!
LEE: A world based solely on scientific materialism? What an awful, world! A world of scientific materialism forces you to believe a lie, because, if Richard Dawkins is right, and human beings are merely “slaves to our DNA,” that means free will is an illusion and life has no real meaning or purpose. So, just to cope materialists are forced to pretend as if free will exists and life does have meaning.
If it’s all the same, I’ll pass, thanks!
Pax.
Lee.
LikeLike
LEE: So you able to state categorically that no has ever or will ever walk on water? All because you’ve never seen it?
Gary: No. Water walking will never happen because it violates the inviolable laws of physics.
LEE: Again, you can state categorically that “brain dead corpses are never resurrected?” Perhaps not, if you presuppose materialism, that matter is all there is or ever will be. But then . . .
Gary: Yes. Dead brain cells cannot be regenerated. It is a scientific fact. The scientific method, the most reliable method of determining universal truths in human history, has proven so reliable that educated people can trust consensus scientific opinion as fact.
Lee: How do you explain the rise of the mind and consciousness?
Gary: Biology.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Hmmm. There’s one thing I guess I’ll never understand … why Christians see the need to respond to questions related to their belief via a MULTITUDE of words. From my personal perspective, it comes across as trying to prove the unprovable. 😏
Sidenote: I received your response related to my book. Thank you. I’ll try to get back to you within the next couple of days.
LikeLike
From my perspective, there is no comparison between interpretation of the Constitution and the bible. The former is not a “sacred” document that promises eternal life. It is merely a means/method for helping society get along with each other. The fact that individuals disagree with some of its tenets doesn’t condemn them to eternal punishment.
I still maintain that if the Christian God truly existed, there would be no difference between how people envisioned “him.” What possible advantage to “his” cause is achieved through religious discord?
LikeLiked by 1 person
Lee, your response is an excellent example of “Christianity.” To you, it’s one thing. To a fundamentalist, it’s something else. To a Catholic, Evangelical, Mormon, Jahaveh’s Witness, etc., etc., it’s something else. And each person deeply believes THEIR version is correct … and will cite books, people, experiences to validate their belief.
My book is called “Things I Never Learned in Sunday School” and is available here. I hope you will be open enough to read it as I address many of the issues that are commonly discussed (and debated) related to the various aspects of Christianity; however, it is NOT academic.
LikeLiked by 1 person
I just added your book to my kindle wish list.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Nan, I’ve scanned the “preview” of your book on Amazon. I have some thoughts from having scanned the preview but that’s probably a topic for another thread.
Pax.
Lee.
LikeLike
May I suggest you use this link to contact me: https://escapefromreligion.wordpress.com/contact
That way we can discuss issues via email rather than take up space on Gary’s blog.
LikeLike
NAN: Hmmm. There’s one thing I guess I’ll never understand … why Christians see the need to respond to questions related to their belief via a MULTITUDE of words. From my personal perspective, it comes across as trying to prove the unprovable.
LEE: Nan, please forgive me. Brevity is not my forte.
That being said, we’re not discussing the Super Bowl or who won on Jeopardy last week (or as Dr. Moreland says, what Joe is having for dinner Wednesday night). The subject we’re discussing is weighty, otherwise why did you bother to write a 178 book on the topic? I could say the same of you, that you’re trying to prove the unproveable by using a lot of words in a lengthy book.
One thing atheist Blair Scott said to the audience in his 2011 debate at the University of North Alabama with Christian minister Kyle Butt of Apologetics Press which I wholeheartedly agree with is that this issue (does God exist?) cannot be decided by anyone merely based on having attended a two-hour debate, or reading a few blogs on the internet.
But I’ll try to be brief.
Pax.
Lee.
LikeLike
A LENGTHY book??? If you found my book lengthy, than I dread to think how you would describe the tomes written by many Christian apologists!
LikeLiked by 1 person
I wish NT Wright’s Son of God book was only 178 pages instead of the wordy meandering slog that it is.
LikeLiked by 1 person
EPICURUS: I wish NT Wright’s Son of God book was only 178 pages instead of the wordy meandering slog that it is.
LEE: Ahh, but what a great book it is! One of the most important books of it’s kind.
Pax.
Lee.
LikeLike
Have you read Licona’s book on the Resurrection? How do you think it compares to Wright’s.
LikeLike
NAN: A LENGTHY book??? If you found my book lengthy, than I dread to think how you would describe the tomes written by many Christian apologists!
LEE: My brother would consider a 30 page book the equivalent of reading War and Peace. Personally, I like ’em long. I think this is evidence that too many modern adults have the attention span of a five-year-old.
Regardless, the point I was trying to make (apparently very badly) is that such important subjects can’t be reduced to slogans or bumper-stickers.
I mean, would you want to know your neuro-surgeon learned his surgical techniques from the Cliff’s Notes for neurosurgeons?
Pax.
Lee.
LikeLike
Gee … I don’t recall using any bumper stickers or slogans. But even if I did, my book was written for the layperson. It was never intended to be read by Christian apologists who obviously (as you yourself have demonstrated) would not agree with my perspectives or the examples I used.
LikeLike
GARY: Gary: Yes. Dead brain cells cannot be regenerated. It is a scientific fact. The scientific method, the most reliable method of determining universal truths in human history, has proven so reliable that educated people can trust consensus scientific opinion as fact.
LEE: In 1975 the scientific consensus said that by the mid-1990s the earth would be in the middle of a global ice age (it was actually on the cover of national US magazines like Time and Newsweek) . The “scientific consensus” once said the sun revolves around the earth.
The scientific method only goes so far. There are lots of things it cannot address. The idea that science can or will explain everything is called scientism, and we saw in one of Dr. A’s blogs how it is a false world-view.
GARY: Lee: How do you explain the rise of the mind and consciousness?
Gary: Biology.
LEE: Impossible! For example, modern scientists of a decidedly secular bent insist that Darwinian evolution serves survival, not truth.
John Gray writes in his 2003 Straw Dogs: Thoughts on Humans and Other Animals that:
“If Darwin’s theory of natural selection is true . . . the human mind serves evolutionary success, not truth.”
Dr. Francis Crick (best known for cracking the DNA code) in his 1994 The Astonishing Hypothesis: The Scientific Search for the Soul writes:
“Our highly developed brains, after all, were not evolved under the pressure of discovering scientific truths but only to enable us to be clever enough to survive.”
Eric Baum in his 2004 What is Thought? says:
“Sometimes you are more likely to survive and propagate if you believe a falsehood than if you believe the truth.”
Thus, as as literary critic Leon Wieseltier in his 2006 New York Times article “The God Genome” astutely observed:
“If reason is a product of natural selection, then how much confidence can we have in a rational argument for natural selection? Evolutionary biology cannot invoke the power of reason even as it destroys it.”
Atheistic philosopher Thomas Nagel exposes this fallacy in his book Mind and Cosmos: Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature Is Almost Certainly False. In the book Nagel argues that “the modern materialist approach to life has conspicuously failed to explain such central mind-related features of our world as consciousness, intentionality, meaning, and value. This failure to account for something so integral to nature as mind, argues philosopher Thomas Nagel, is a major problem, threatening to unravel the entire naturalistic world picture, extending to biology, evolutionary theory, and cosmology.”
Although Nagel refuses to consider the “God hypothesis” and can’t offer a counter-explanation to explain mind and consciousness he’s at least honest enough to point out the proverbial elephant in the room.
As the late Christian philosopher Francis Schaeffer observed, by having to deny scientifically that life has meaning, yet at the same time argue from a moral standpoint that we may be built to believe it does anyway, these secularists like Gray, Crick, et. al. are driven to affirm truths that their own secular worldview cannot rationally explain, which is a kind of mysticism.
Pax.
Lee.
LikeLike
LEE: In 1975 the scientific consensus said that by the mid-1990s the earth would be in the middle of a global ice age (it was actually on the cover of national US magazines like Time and Newsweek) . The “scientific consensus” once said the sun revolves around the earth.
Gary: Most university educated people do not go to Time and Newsweek for scientific consensus. The fact is, you will not find such a scientific consensus on this issue in any reputable scientific journal from that time period. Prove me wrong.
Prior to Copernicus, science was controlled by the Church. Blame the Church for geocentricity, not science.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Lee: How do you explain the rise of the mind and consciousness?
Gary: Biology.
LEE: Impossible! For example, modern scientists of a decidedly secular bent insist that Darwinian evolution serves survival, not truth.
Gary: No one knows for certain the origin of reason and the conscience in humans, but many scientists believe these entities will most probably be explained by biology, not withstanding the protests of a few philosophers (who are not scientists/biologists).
LikeLike
GARY: Gary: No one knows for certain the origin of reason and the conscience in humans, but many scientists believe these entities will most probably be explained by biology, not withstanding the protests of a few philosophers (who are not scientists/biologists).
LEE: One doesn’t have to be a scientist/biologist to see the fallacy of scientism; actually, if more scientists were better philosophers they wouldn’t paint themselves into corners they can’t get out of like that.
As I said above, the idea that naturalistic Darwinian evolution produced mind and consciousness is impossible. Remember this quote by literary critic Leon Wieseltier in his 2006 New York Times article “The God Genome?”:
“If reason is a product of natural selection, then how much confidence can we have in a rational argument for natural selection? Evolutionary biology cannot invoke the power of reason even as it destroys it.”
Please address the substance of Wieseltier’s quote.
It’s illogical to argue, as atheistic biologists do, that evolution wires us for survival, not truth or reason, then to invoke reason to explain the rise of consciousness. You don’t have to be a biologist or a philosopher to see that, just a critical thinker.
Pax.
Lee.
LikeLike
Do you have a degree in a scientific field, Lee?
LikeLike
GARY: Do you have a degree in a scientific field, Lee?
LEE: No, and I don’t need one to see the fallacy inherent in scientism. Science alone without philosophy, without religion, without morality, is dangerous.
Science can make us smarter, but not wiser. Science can show us how to build a bigger bomb, but it can’t tell us whether it’s morally right to use it or not.
Pax.
Lee.
LikeLike
That’s right. You have no expertise in science yet you believe that you know more than all the scientists combined! That is not rational. It is entirely possible that morality is biologically based.
LikeLike
I suggest you start reading more scientific articles and less philosophy. What do you have when ten philosophers meet? Answer: Eleven different opinions! Science is based on evidence, not on opinion. For a starter, Lee, please read this short article:
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/15-answers-to-creationist/
LikeLike
GARY: Gary: Most university educated people do not go to Time and Newsweek for scientific consensus. The fact is, you will not find such a scientific consensus on this issue in any reputable scientific journal from that time period. Prove me wrong.
LEE: If you really believe that no one gets their views on science from magazines such as these, you’re more naïve than I thought.
Check this out: its titled “The Cooling World” and was published in Newsweek on April 28, 1975:
Click to access the-cooling-world-newsweek-april-28-1975.pdf
Did you catch that? If not, here’s the first couple of paragraphs:
“Science.
“The Cooling World.
“To scientists, these seemingly disparate incidents represent the advanced signs of fundamental changes in the world’s weather. The central fact is that after three quarters of a century of extraordinarily mild conditions, the earth’s climate seems to be COOLING DOWN. Meteorologists disagree about the cause and extent of the cooling trend, as well as over its specific impact on local weather conditions. But they are almost UNANIMOUS in the view that the trend will reduce agricultural productivity for the rest of the century.”
GARY: Prior to Copernicus, science was controlled by the Church. Blame the Church for geocentricity, not science.
LEE: Actually ancient Greeks like Aristotle several centuries before the Church taught that the earth was the center of the solar system; the Church thought, mistakenly as it turns out, that Aristotle was right.
Pax.
Lee.
LikeLike
Gary: Once again: Please provide a reputable scientific source.
LEE: If you really believe that no one gets their views on science from magazines such as these, you’re more naïve than I thought.
Gary: I never claimed that no one gets their science information from magazines. What I claimed was that most university educated people do not.
LikeLike
Aristotle was not a scientist. He was a philosopher. Word to the wise: Don’t accept stock market advice from your plumber and don’t accept scientific claims from philosophers.
LikeLike
GARY: Aristotle was not a scientist. He was a philosopher. Word to the wise: Don’t accept stock market advice from your plumber and don’t accept scientific claims from philosophers.
LEE: Gary, there were no scientists as we’d understand that term in ancient Greece; ancient philosophers filled that role, doing lots of other things besides think/write about the meaning of life.
The term “science” wasn’t used until the Victorian period; before then, people used the word “philosophy” to refer to science. The original definition of philosophy is: “A lover (philo )of wisdom (sophia),” be it natural, religious, etc.
Aristotle wrote on many different “scientific” subjects, including metaphysics. The Medieval Church considered Aristotle one of the greatest intellectual minds in history, and he and his colleagues thought that the sun revolved around the earth,
Science as we understand that term only grew out of the Christian European Middle Ages.
Word: to the wise: you might want to understand how scientific investigation in the ancient world actually functioned before you lecture others about it.
Here’s a great book on the topic, by Oxford Professor of the History of Science, James Hannam: God’s Philosophers: How the Medieval World Laid the Foundations of Modern Science.
Pax.
Lee.
LikeLike
If they weren’t using the scientific method, they weren’t scientists.
LikeLike
GARY: If they weren’t using the scientific method, they weren’t scientists.
LEE: Medieval English Bishop Robert Grosseteste was one of the major contributors to the scientific method. Without the Medieval Church sponsoring scientific inquiry it really would’ve been the “dark ages.”
Pax.
Lee.
LikeLike
Most of science’s greatest men and women have been theists. Were they great scientists because of their superstitions or despite them? Who knows.
LikeLike
GARY: Most of science’s greatest men and women have been theists. Were they great scientists because of their superstitions or despite them? Who knows.
LEE: I would say because of them, because only in the West, which was Christian, did the scientific method even develop. Why did the scientific method develop in Christian Europe and not Buddhist Asia or Islamic Arabia? Because Christian Europe believed that nature operated according to laws, which were evidence of a lawgiver. Christianity further believed that God had given human beings rational minds with which to explore and understand the workings of his creation.
As Prof. of the History of Science James Hannam of Oxford says:
*”The basic point is that medieval Christian natural philosophy grew into modern science and gave rise to all the great technological achievements that flow from that. Islamic science, to be blunt, stopped progressing centuries ago.” . . . *
“The Church made math and science a compulsory part of the syllabus at medieval universities for anyone who wanted to study theology. That meant loads of students got grounding in these subjects, and professors could hold down jobs teaching it.”
And the Christian God is both rational and free. As Peter Hodgson writes:
“Tip the balance one way or the other and science is destroyed. Deny the freedom of God and you have a necessary world and no incentive to make experiments. Deny the rationality of God and you have a chaotic world.”
Pax.
Lee.
LikeLike
GARY: I suggest you start reading more scientific articles and less philosophy. What do you have when ten philosophers meet? Answer: Eleven different opinions! Science is based on evidence, not on opinion. For a starter, Lee, please read this short article:
LEE: Gary, there’s a difference between science and scientism.
Science is based on evidence: where’s the evidence that evolution produced mind and consciousness? The evidence actually argues against this idea!
Good philosophy is based on logic, and the idea that science can ever explain the origin of the human mind is illogical. Because, again, naturalistic Darwinian evolutionary theory says that evolution has hard-wired us for survival, not for discovering scientific or any other kind of truth, but also that reason is a product of natural selection; this is totally illogical. If nature wired us for survival, not truth, how can we even do science at all?
That’s why scientists need philosophers like Prof. Thomas Nagel to keep them honest.
Pax.
Lee.
LikeLike
I’ll go with scientists over philosophers, any day of the week.
LikeLiked by 1 person
GARY: I’ll go with scientists over philosophers, any day of the week.
LEE: And you’ll get a very one-sided, dark view of reality; because science cannot address certain fundamental questions having to do with morality, values or the meaning of life. You only get answers to these questions via philosophy and religion.
What does it mean to be a human being? Science can’t answer that. Why are we here? Why is anything here? Science can’t answer that. Is racism morally wrong? Science can’t answer that. Is Jethro Tell a better band than Yes? Science can’t answer that (but the answer’s still, yes, Tull is better, if only just a little).
Do you seriously want to live in a world where “survival of the fittest” is the rule of the day and the highest law anyone can appeal to?
Pax.
Lee.
LikeLike
All animal herds, troops, and packs have rules of behavior. In chimpanzee societies it is usually forbidden to kill the young of members of the troop but entirely permissible to kill (and eat) the young of neighboring enemy chimp troops. Herd rules became known as “morality” in humans.
LikeLike