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Disinterested posted:the world without understanding something about Jesus Christ, Sure you can. This is trivially demonstrative. Individual believers customize their deity to support their actions. So the deity of a FYGM person is a deity that shows favor through earthly riches while the deity of a more noble person emphasized community service. Those two people may or may not use the same name to refer to their personal deity who wants what they want and values what they value. But if they do, the two mental constructs are still distinct entities that just happen to have the same name. When one invokes the name they are talking about something different than the other. You can't understand JC or any of the other popular names for "powerful entity that agrees with me" because they aren't a single thing. They have as any definitions as there are people who care about them. So you have it precisely backwards. In order to understand god concepts you have to first understand people. And you can understand people without paying attention to the pretense that various gods are a singular thing.
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Feb 6, 2015 20:33
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McAlister posted:Sure you can. This is trivially demonstrative. Individual believers customize their deity to support their actions. So the deity of a FYGM person is a deity that shows favor through earthly riches while the deity of a more noble person emphasized community service. This is so loving reductive that it's ridiculous. What drives people to create their belief systems? That question is going to involve you in examining concrete examples of belief. What unifying elements do belief systems have? As above. What types of human behaviour cohere to certain patterns and why? Ditto. That is even if you admit your premise, which is false. People do not only have a ~personal god~ except in a flatly epistemological sense (inasmuch as everything is personal) or in the sense that their relationship is personal. But to talk about this subject in this way is to invite the same conceptual problems about any wide-ranging historical or social phenomenon. That doesn't mean those subjects are best tackled by ignoring them and focusing on the purely personal. Certain historical forms of Christian belief are nonetheless extremely edifying when it comes to understanding attitudes and conduct. Moreover, people do not form their ideas in some sort of bizarro individual vaccuum. They form them in a social and historical context, one highly significant trope of which is religion. From an atheistic perspective - religion is man made. Of course, to understand religion, you have to understand. But the opposite will still be true! To understand man, you have to understand religion! Lastly, implicit in your post is some kind of assumption that people cohere to a certain nature. When you say you have to understand 'people' - what does that even involve? Individuals are very different, as you have already emphasised. It is very questionable that there is such a thing as 'human nature'. If individuals are very different, you then hit the epistemological problem - how the gently caress do I know what anyone else thinks about anything else at all? Maybe by looking at the traditions in which they express themselves and interact? Disinterested fucked around with this message at 22:06 on Feb 6, 2015 |
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Feb 6, 2015 22:02
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Oh man, this thread got away from me. My original argument is that all serious modern morality arguments fall outside the set of things the bible attempts to discuss. Christians and atheists both frame their concerns in ways the bible was not "advanced" enough to address.
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Feb 6, 2015 22:22
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ikanreed posted:Oh man, this thread got away from me. You definitely can't answer complex questions using just the bible, but the bible throws weight behind certain lines of argumentation, as well as developing others that probably would not be relevant at all if people did not believe in it. So in that sense it is indispensable.
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Feb 6, 2015 22:23
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Disinterested posted:You definitely can't answer complex questions using just the bible, but the bible throws weight behind certain lines of argumentation, as well as developing others that probably would not be relevant at all if people did not believe in it. So in that sense it is indispensable. But even those framings still owe more to say, utilitarianism or natural rights than whatever fractional memetic fragments are left from strict biblicalism.
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Feb 6, 2015 22:27
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ikanreed posted:But even those framings still owe more to say, utilitarianism or natural rights than whatever fractional memetic fragments are left from strict biblicalism. But it still propels them in directions they wouldn't always take. Plus, the manner and context of their development is still strongly governed by the history of Christianity - philosophical questions are not merely analytic discussions of abstract logical propositions, they can also be genealogical or involve themselves in questions of traditions of discourse, etc.
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Feb 6, 2015 22:28
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Disinterested posted:But it still propels them in directions they wouldn't always take. Plus, the manner and context of their development is still strongly governed by the history of Christianity - philosophical questions are not merely analytic discussions of abstract logical propositions, they can also be genealogical or involve themselves in questions of traditions of discourse, etc. I am not sure if I understand your intended meaning. Could you elaborate?
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Feb 6, 2015 22:38
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ikanreed posted:Jesus, if he was real, is long dead. Very long dead. And in spite of the many people who would contest that because of various interpretations of the bible, any sincere attempt to answer the question: "Is Jesus (Christ) alive and well?" is going to find nothing. All framings of his opinions, beliefs, and actions are almost entirely irrelevant to any modern discussion of the real world. A large proportion of the population still pretends to believe absolutely in the reported actions and views of Jesus and attempts to infer positions on modern issues from them, however tenuously. Predicting these people's behaviour is a real world problem.
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Feb 7, 2015 01:52
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Jesus seems like a pretty deece guy
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Feb 7, 2015 02:25
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Exclamation Marx posted:Jesus seems like a pretty deece guy I like him.
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Feb 7, 2015 02:44
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Exclamation Marx posted:Jesus seems like a pretty deece guy Nah, he seems like a cool dude. Its his fanboys and fangirls I worry about.
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Feb 7, 2015 02:52
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I worry mostly about people who deny history.
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Feb 7, 2015 02:54
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Crowsbeak posted:I worry mostly about people who deny history. I worry about people that paint history with broad strokes, but hey.
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Feb 7, 2015 02:55
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Crowsbeak posted:I worry mostly about people who deny history. Such as?
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Feb 7, 2015 02:56
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CommieGIR posted:I worry about people that paint history with broad strokes, but hey. I do to, like when someone thinks that history can be broken down into materialist wants.
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Feb 7, 2015 02:56
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Crowsbeak posted:I do to, like when someone thinks that history can be broken down into materialist wants. I never did that, I simply argued that only viewing the overall religious value of historical figures instead of their political and historical personal values was worrying. If we all views history by the religion of the historical figure, it'd be a pretty piss poor overview of history.
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Feb 7, 2015 02:58
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This thread sure is....something awful
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Feb 7, 2015 03:00
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Crowsbeak posted:I do to, like when someone thinks that history can be broken down into materialist wants. I saw you posting something pretty reasonable in some other thread recently, and I was thinking "Huh, Crowsbeak... Isn't he some kind of stupid rear end in a top hat? I think I remember something like that. What if he isn't, though, and I'm just imagining bad things about random people now?" and I got kind of distressed. So, I just wanted to thank you for putting my concerns to rest.
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Feb 7, 2015 03:07
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Small Frozen Thing posted:I saw you posting something pretty reasonable in some other thread recently, and I was thinking "Huh, Crowsbeak... Isn't he some kind of stupid rear end in a top hat? I think I remember something like that. What if he isn't, though, and I'm just imagining bad things about random people now?" and I got kind of distressed. CommieGIR posted:I never did that, I simply argued that only viewing the overall religious value of historical figures instead of their political and historical personal values was worrying. You're comments on the crusades show otherwise.
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Feb 7, 2015 03:16
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McAlister posted:You may ignore the bibles claim to be divine but you ignoring it doesn't mean the bible doesn't claim it. No, the fact that the Bible is a collection of texts, all of which predate its formation by hundreds of years, does mean that. Also, you know, the actual text itself that doesn't claim to be divine. Maybe you should stop using an uncritical acceptance of the claims of a religious sect as proof of atheism.
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Feb 7, 2015 07:53
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Disinterested posted:But it still propels them in directions they wouldn't always take. Plus, the manner and context of their development is still strongly governed by the history of Christianity - philosophical questions are not merely analytic discussions of abstract logical propositions, they can also be genealogical or involve themselves in questions of traditions of discourse, etc.  this book which many people think makes a moral argument is used by people to justify their moral argument Congratulations on stating the obvious, the point isn't that people do dumb poo poo and therefore it must be worthwhile it's that the poo poo they do is dumb. Miltank posted:and yet, religion ended slavery. decent loving people who wanted to convince people to stop enslaving each other framed their argument in the context of the bible, a book that many shitheads quote from to justify being shitheads, to tell everyone else (most of whom also were brought up to think of the bible as worth listening to) they're shitheads suck my woke dick fucked around with this message at 10:19 on Feb 7, 2015 |
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Feb 7, 2015 10:14
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I CANNOT EJACULATE WITHOUT SEEING NATIVE AMERICANS BRUTALISED!
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ikanreed posted:Jesus' words don't really matter to the modern world, and have to be stretched extraordinarily to fit much of anything. This is pretty much entirely untrue, regardless of your individual belief or lack thereof. Read the Jefferson bible-an account of his sayings with the miracles removed and ending before any resurrection. http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jefferson_Bible
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Feb 7, 2015 10:38
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blowfish posted:
I don't think we're disagreeing.
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Feb 7, 2015 11:49
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I haven't studied this matter, but it seems there's a bit of a consensus that the earliest writings about Jesus go to 30 years after his death. And while I think that after that time it's plausible for there to be real recollections of a person and perhaps some of his sayings, it somewhat tests credulity for the entirety of even a single gospel to be remembered and orally transmitted over that time. Even the Jefferson's Bible doesn't seem very believable to me. I think a gospel of the size of a Grimm's tale would be much more convincing. I mean, why does everything have to be a direct quote from Jesus? Why couldn't it be just, "We've founds a bunch of witnesses, and they seem to agree that the core messages of the Sermon on the Mount were..." 
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Feb 7, 2015 12:50
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supermikhail posted:I haven't studied this matter, but it seems there's a bit of a consensus that the earliest writings about Jesus go to 30 years after his death. And while I think that after that time it's plausible for there to be real recollections of a person and perhaps some of his sayings, it somewhat tests credulity for the entirety of even a single gospel to be remembered and orally transmitted over that time. Even the Jefferson's Bible doesn't seem very believable to me. I think a gospel of the size of a Grimm's tale would be much more convincing. I mean, why does everything have to be a direct quote from Jesus? Why couldn't it be just, "We've founds a bunch of witnesses, and they seem to agree that the core messages of the Sermon on the Mount were..." The Gospels are a transcriptions of early Christian oral traditions. You are reading them in an entirely ahistorical way.
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Feb 7, 2015 15:54
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Sinnlos posted:Hitler did and we should. Great Man historiography does not hold water and is not useful for studying human society. The same is true of Jesus and Christianity as a religion: it was a product of the society around it, it changed significantly as the times changed.
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Feb 7, 2015 17:58
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I think this thread should shift away from the slave trade and focus on modern day issues that many Christians throw their weight behind. Gay people and marriage is an excellent example. Where do you, Miltank et al, stand on this issue and are your reasons religiously motivated at all? What about certain illegal drug use? A great deal of moralising from religion is used to justify its continued prohibition despite the empirical argument increasingly suggesting that it is a bad practice. Jesus's teachings are generally presented as deontological principles, which I personally think have no place in a modern society.
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Feb 7, 2015 18:07
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Miltank posted:The Gospels are a transcriptions of early Christian oral traditions. You are reading them in an entirely ahistorical way. This seems to imply to me that Jesus had little to do with Christian values. He started the thing, sure, but Christianity has the people who perpetuated the oral traditions to thank / blame for its content? That is, should the words in the book be attributed to Jesus?
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Feb 7, 2015 18:24
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supermikhail posted:This seems to imply to me that Jesus had little to do with Christian values. He started the thing, sure, but Christianity has the people who perpetuated the oral traditions to thank / blame for its content? That is, should the words in the book be attributed to Jesus? The conjectured Gospel of Q is generally assumed to be the closest we have to actual sayings by Jesus.
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Feb 7, 2015 18:30
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Berke Negri posted:The conjectured Gospel of Q is generally assumed to be the closest we have to actual sayings by Jesus. The Life of Brian is the best biography.
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Feb 7, 2015 18:37
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Perhaps the ones who should deal with it... is this thread 
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Feb 7, 2015 20:59
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Ocrassus posted:I think this thread should shift away from the slave trade and focus on modern day issues that many Christians throw their weight behind. Gay Marriage. I believe man and women, but then its a minor issue compared to having children going without food, and medical care and a society turn away from helping the helpless. Drug use, I think you shouldn't do drugs, but then I can see that people use drugs despite the insane war. Crowsbeak fucked around with this message at 22:12 on Feb 7, 2015 |
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Feb 7, 2015 21:30
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Crowsbeak posted:Gay Marraige. I beleive man and wopmen, but then its a minor issue compared to having chiulodren going without food, and medical care and a society turn away from helping the helpless. Can you please put a coherent post together?
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Feb 7, 2015 22:00
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Crowsbeak posted:Gay Marriage. I believe man and women, but then its a minor issue compared to having children going without food, and medical care and a society turn away from helping the helpless. You believe man and women what? Are you saying you're a polygamist so long as it's one husband and multiple wives? Is this you trying to hint that you're a Mormon?
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Feb 7, 2015 22:33
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Who What Now posted:You believe man and women what? Are you saying you're a polygamist so long as it's one husband and multiple wives? Is this you trying to hint that you're a Mormon? I'll admit that you really made me laugh, with that one, it does sound like I am endorsing polygamy. Look I believe one man one women marriage. Now if you could prove to me that the early church allowed for the other conclusively I might change my mind. However at the same time it's at the bottom of my reasons to vote. I mean Christians should try to act on what Jesus says is most important like helping the poor. "Jesus" according to Matthew posted:And the king will answer them, ‘Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me.’ Then he will say to those at his left hand, ‘You that are accursed, depart from me into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels; for I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, I was a stranger and you did not welcome me, naked and you did not give me clothing, sick and in prison and you did not visit me.’ Crowsbeak fucked around with this message at 22:42 on Feb 7, 2015 |
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Feb 7, 2015 22:39
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Crowsbeak posted:I'll admit that you really made me laugh, with that one, it does sound like I am endorsing polygamy. Look I believe one man one women marriage. Now if you could prove to me that the early church allowed for the other conclusively I might change my mind. However at the same time it's at the bottom of my reasons to vote. I mean Christians should try to act on what Jesus says is most important like helping the poor. WOMAN I also literally thought you were down with polygamy from your first post of broken English. I don't give a drat about what the early church allowed, they actively prosecuted same-sex unions which had existed for ages before Christianity existed.
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Feb 7, 2015 22:54
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Al Harrington posted:WOMAN Are you talking about the Greek Pedastry? Because that really is not right. Likewise the Romans I am pretty sure were not fine with men actively choosing to be the one taking it in the rear end.
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Feb 7, 2015 22:59
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Crowsbeak posted:Are you talking about the Greek Pedastry? Because that really is not right. Likewise the Romans I am pretty sure were not fine with men actively choosing to be the one taking it in the rear end. It goes back further than that: http://digitalcommons.law.yale.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2503&context=fss_papers
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Feb 7, 2015 23:11
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Don't oppress his rrligious rights to be offended by the gay marriage 
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Feb 7, 2015 23:43
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It's worth pointing out that there is no uniform "Christian" perspective on gay marriage. We tend to be familiar with the religious rights and Catholic Churches take on the issue but most folks overlook the religious support of gay rights. The work of historian John Boswell does a good job of indicating that the medieval church may have preformed ceremonies that look remarkably like gay marriages. In modern times The Episcopal Church and Quakers were heavily involved in pushing for the decriminalization of sodomy in 1960s Britain. The first gay marriages I'm aware of were done by Unitarian Universalists. A host of denominations have been doing religious marriages for gay couples, even in violation of the law, since the 1990s. Many of the first academic defenses of homosexuality came from liberal theologians. There were and are conflicting Christian views on homosexuality, contrary to the stereotype it's not just a bunch of people supporting Fred Phelps.
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Feb 8, 2015 00:15
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