The Bully Mentality

Here's a post from CARM that perfectly illustrates the bully menality as it appers in atheism:


Originally Posted by Bronze
I believe it is fair for the elfist to pressupose the existence of elves. It is rather ridiculous to cater to the minority opinion that there are no elves when the majority of humanity accepts the existence of some sort of elves. Personally, I have always believed a higher elf existed but I could not pin point what fairytale was "correct". But the a-elfist does not acknowledge any higher elf. It is almost as if there is a defeciency with the a-elfist. They make it seem like it is a good thing to be born without an "Elf gene" or the "Elf believing part of the brain" but I find it sad. My belief in elves and the consequent relationship from knowing elves is the most fullfilling aspect of my life. To be born without the ability to sense elves is the saddest thing I can think of. What a shame to go through life never knowing elves exist, never being able to make appeals to one's elf, never able to break free from the prison of the natural mind.



My Answer, Meta:Now class, here is a primse example fo the bully mentality of the atheist.


"I dont' like that idea. therefore, tis' a stuid idea. To prove it's stupid I'm to mock it by pretending its another idea that we all know is stuipid. Now that proves that Idea ;A is the same as Idea B because I can lump them into gether. by totally igonring the differences and pretending that my world view is all pervasive and the only way to think, I can shame anyone who disagrees whit me.

as an open minded free thinker of course."

Do we have this bully mentality in Christianity? naw, of course not! Christians have just innocent little lambs that never hurt anyone. Yes, of course we do. I'm agianst it there too. But the partcular hypocracy of those claiming to be "free thinkers" drives me up the wall.

They want to disparage the God argumetns, caliming they understand them, but sicne they think Being itself (God) is analogus to elves, then obviously they don't understand. If they did understand then this whole like mockery would be out of bounds.

The Prisim Effect

It was amazing to hear .Daniel C.Dennett discussing his recent work Breaking the Spell, on the Charlie Rose show, he suonded so much like the run of the mill atheist on a message board. I was stuck by the fact that there seemed little difference in what he ws saying and what the atheists on CARM say everyday. It struck me that I answer the very arguments he's making almost every day. But he writes a book about them and its' a big deal. One of the major arguments that I consider to be a major misconception is the idea that since there are so many different religions and they are unique, then there can't be just one of them that's right. Of course, they can't all be right, so they must all be wrong. Does that follow logically? Do the atheists on CARM care? Does Dennett care?

Right or wrong He extends the reasoning, so many different views of God, they must all be wrong too. Why? Well because there are a lot of them. Christianity must be wrong as well because there are many Christian denominations. What's really strange is that normally these people embrace diversity and defend the notion that we don't have to all see thins alike. And yet, I guess we do. Why can't one particular view be right and the others all wrong? The reasoning escapes me, it has something to do with "so many see it differently." Would these great scientific minds allow themselves to this way otherwise? If I pointed out that 90% of the people in the world believe in some kind of God, and the vast majority always have,so there must be a God because "so many do see it that way," what would hey say to that? They would fall all over themselves telling me how futile is the appeal to popularity, how it's a fallacy and how logical people don't think that way. So why can't it be that one view of God is right and the other are all wrong? Search me. According to Dennette that's the case.

That doesn't bother me though, because I have it covered either way. In my view God is beyond our understand it. That makes it easy to know which view of God is right;none of them are. None of them are and all of them are. We experience God at the mystical level, beyond word, thought,or image. The only way we can speak of anything we experience at this level is to do so analogically; that means we must encode it into cultural constructs.That's what makes view of God different. It is the differences in views of God that makes religions different. They are all get at the same realty beyond the analogies of culture, and trying to encode that in cultural constructs that are limited by time and place.

As with the prism, the effect of this cultural constructivism is to bring out different aspects of the divine/human experience: just as the prism brings out different colors of the em band. Through the prism of cultural constructs `mystical experience is broken down into the colored shades of culturally bound understanding. This is what confuses the Dennett type of atheist. Not knowing the experience of the Divine, not having had any contact with that which they disparage, they decide that the colors are far more important as marks of seperation and difference than they as diversity in unity.

Now of course one might bring up the fact that as a Christian I believe there is something special about my tradition. Of course I do, but I also grant the same right to other; the Moslim believes his tradition is special, the hindu privilageds her tradition. That is not unreasonable, it is only unreasonable when we start to use such differences to devide and as marks of supiriority rather than using them to bring together discussion and discourse and to build understanding. World culture has evolved, in some cases for worse, in some cases for the better. We have built bridges and people are crossing them all the time. When I did some Masters work in hisory of ideas (I never got the masters it was commuited into Ph.D. work and i changed topics) I had a study that said that out of British colonoiaism and American advertizing in Japan bouth counties had developed enough of a westernized style of self to make psychological testing in both places demonstrate a strong similarity to the West. Take that as a warning or as a mark of progress, in either case it seems to be the case that we are evovling into a world culture. I do not think we will a one world culture, or a one world governemnt or religion. I hope not. I would to preserve diverity. I wouldn't want to see everyone in the world be like me.

Perhaps as a Christain I should wish that all would find Christ, but I hope the Buddhists find him in a Buddhist way and Moslim in a molsim way, if that makes any sense. I am aware that Moslims already honor Jesus in their tradition. In no way is the diversity that we find in world religions indicative of any sort of falsehood of the divine. In fact I would be worried that if they were all too much alike that some form of hegemony was crowding out the truth

Welcoming Exotic Visitors

we have a huge batch of exotic vistiors this time. It is rapidly becoming the case that a major protion of my audience is made up of people around the world. I am delighted by this to no end, becasue one of the primary pleasures of the net, for me, is to know that I can find people living in places I would never know existed otherwise. I have friends all over the world who I would never have known had I not been on the net. Here's the lattest list:


69 75.00% United States
3 3.26% United Kingdom
3 3.26% Turkey
2 2.17% Australia
2 2.17% Malaysia
2 2.17% Thailand
2 2.17% Netherlands
1 1.09% Syrian Arab Republic
1 1.09% Canada
1 1.09% Iran, Islamic Republic Of
1 1.09% Hong Kong
1 1.09% Norway
1 1.09% Afghanistan
1 1.09% Germany
1 1.09% Singapore
1 1.09% Senegal


I think that's more at any one time than ever before. I don't think I've had Iranians before I dont' think I've had Syrians before. You are most welcome. I am amazed that anyone on the other side of the world wants to read what I have to say; and would like to hear more comments from people on the other side of the world. We can use this blog as a force for peace, or just keep track of the weather. I also notice that my hits have exceeded the all time number of hists for my web site. That's kind of crushing in a way. I put so much effort into the web site, and it's still something of a mystery why people come here. You all seem to like my ponderous philosophical think pieces and head for the hills when I get into historical data defendning the historical nature of Jesus.

An well, we aim to please. Toward that end I will return to the ponderious philosophical think piece this week.

Nevertheless, I do want to point out that there is a small but vocal minority that insists that Jesus didnt' exist as a man in histoy. To them I offer my historical Jesus pages. Sever pages disproving that tripe and also dispelling the myth of Earl Doherty's Jeus Puzzel. Historical Jesus pages

Welcoming

Political Reality of the Jesus Story

This is not a proof of anything, but I do get a sense of real history in reading the Gospel accounts of the trial of Jesus and the resurrection. Now this was brought up by somnia in the thread on Pilate. He finds it all "fishy" that Jesus is popular but the crowd calls for Barabas. I don't find it fish, I understand it perfectly.

I was a communist, I was a political organizer in the Central America Solidarity movement for a large part of the 1980s. I know that people are fickle, the main support for something is soft support, and crowd are easily wokred up. Our group got on the national news more than othe local central America group. That was partly becuase we had the famous Frank Verelly case where they admitted to being an FBI informant spying on our group. Even after that for years we got good national coverage of our protests because we knew how to build a media circus. In morning people would be saying 'Olie North is a hero" in the evening they would say "He destroyed the constitution." People are fickle and you can turn a crowd if you know how to work a crowd.

The whole story, the narrative as a whole, from the hatching of the plot (complete with household servants getting wind of it and having connections to Joanna and those in Jesus' group) to the arrest, the trail, the crucifiction, it all has a true to life political flavor that I do not think a legond or a myth would have. It could not have aquired that over time. If anything it would lose that sense of realism and take on a fake sense of the legondary over time. I sense a powerful realistic drama below the surface.

I realize the telling is callculated to fit the needs of the community. The hint of upstairs/downstairs kind of drama, the household servants for Jesus, the highpreist owner of the house plotting to destory Jesus to protect his own power. But is just a matter of spin, it doesn't negate the real sting of real back stabbing politics. That's the thing, if I had to put my finger on it. Real street level politics is the most dirty thing in which one can ever be invovled. Street polotics dirty as sin and it's cruel and backstabbing is commonplace. I know what I'm talking about because I was involved in one of the dirtiest faction fights ever, between the Trotskites (I was a "
"Trot," a follower of Leon Trotsky) and the CP (communist party USA).

The overview: It's clear to me that Jesus family had a notion of themselves as a Messiah producing line, or as some kind of remnent of the old guard. That's what's happening in the childhood narratives in the temple in Luke. Simeon and Anna are both said to be waiting for the consolation of Israel, in other words, they have a poiltical slant.Why would that even be in there if the actual family itself didn't take that view somewhat seriously? We see the attempt of the Jewish Christians to found a family dynasty. First with Jesus brother as leader, then with his cousin Simeon. That really explains how it is that Mary would be alarmed by Jesus ministry even though she would have known all his life that he was chosen as Messiah. Because he was not following the program. They would have assumptions in their own human scheming, surely God would do things their way. Jesus wasn't following the script, he had all this spiritual stuff instead of just liberating them from Rome.

The family probably had essene leanings. I'm not saying they were part of the group at Qumran, but it's clearl they were not Pharisees. The enmity between Jesus and the pharisees was natural because to them he represented the outsiders, the other faction, the rabble. To him they represented the establishment, the abusive powerstructure that blew their right to lead. The Sanhedrin feared the wrath of the people toward them if Jesus grew too popular. He may not have beent heir yet, but they were heading him of. His cleansing of the temple, a fine move of political theatrics, probably brought that upon him, because he got away with it. They probably said to themselves. we let him get away with this, what next? He's going to come clean out the Sanhedrin, the people will support him, do we let him do that?"

They had to obtain the support of the Romans to keep the people off their backs. Even at that point they could probalby have fended off an uprising of Jesus supportes and brought most of the populace to their side, but why do that when they could cut him off and put the blame on the Romans?

The finely structured Darama of the arrest, the deniel of Peter, the surprize o the moved stone, all of that speaks of relaity, not fiction. Why? Because they didn't hae novels then. The idea of an author making up a ficitonal story and using real charactor traits and real hsitorical settings and making as realisitc as possible was totally unheard of and would remian unheard for for a thosand four hundred years. It was not until the Renaissance that novels came about and then they came in Europe, not the middle east. The story telling tradition of the middle east is totally oppossed to this kind of realism and this kind of drama. The Arabian knights have some amazing moments, they never appraoch anything like this kind of realism.

The Mark accont of the Resurrection is the most realistic. The sheer terror of the women speaks volumes. The fear is still palpable and clings to the text, even depsite the lost ending. The fake stuck on endnig is so out of sink with the rest of it. That abrupt fear, they see a young man and run away freightened that's so much mroe like I imagine the reality would be. They are faced with a confussing and uncertian event and one that evokes unnamed terrors for them. That's probably the way it would be if they did actually find the door ajar, the tomb empty, and strange men in white telling them "he is risen."

Jesus: The Web of Historicity

I. Archeological Evidence for the Historicity of Jesus


A. Jesus' Childhood documented


a) Bethlehem manger.

"For the purposes of worship, the Jewish-Chrsitians of Palestine availed themselves not only of the synagogues, but also developed their ritual in certain "sacred and mystic grottoes" as reported by the ecclesiastical historian, Eusebius of Caesarea. In Their worship in this "Lord's house" in Bethlehem which was carried on until the fourth century, they celebrated two of three mysteries par excellence: Mary's Virginity and her bringing forth the Christ child; ...Hadrian profaned the site by planting a wood over the grotto, but this helped to maintain the tradition of the birthplace of Jesus." (Cornfeld, Archaeology of The Bible. New York: Harper and Row, 1976,p.2779-280)......



b) Nazerath.

Sketpics sometimes cliam that Nazerath was not inhabited at the time of Christ. Nothing could be further from the truth. In fact the very website they sometimes point out actually says the oppossite of what they want it to. See my Pages on the "histority of Nazerath."



B. Luke and Acts


1) The Pool of Bethseda

The pool of Bethseda in Luke where the angle "troubled the waters" for healing, and Jesus healed the lame man and told him to take up his bed and walk, has been discovered beneath the Church of ST. Anne. There is a pool at the bottom of a flight of stairs and an ancient fresco with a picture of an angel troubling the waters. (Bruce, The New Testament Documents,94).This find is also documented in Cornfeld's work Archaeology of The Bible, where he supports the conclusions.



2) Luke's geographical Accuracy.

Harnack and others attest to Lukes accuracy in terms of the ship wreck on Malta, the flavor and historicity of the cities he speaks of the, the time period and all other verifiable elements of this nature. "Sir William Ramsay who devoted many fruitful years to the Archaeology of Asia Minor testifies to Lukes intimate and accurate acquaintance and the Greek East at the time with which his writings deal." (Bruce 90). Ramsay began as a Tubingen liberal, believing Luke to be a second century production with no validity. By the end of his life he was so persuaded of the truth and validity of Luke that he gave up scholarship and became an Evangelist and apologist using arguments based upon the discoveries he had made. (Ibid). It cannot be claimed that he was not an "objective" scholar, as he is one of the grates of the field. Dr. Henry J. Cadbury delivered the Lowell lectures in 1953 and produced a work on the Book of Acts in which he hailed Luke as a first rate historian (Ibid.).



3) Luke's Social Accuity.

Neil thinks that one of the most impressive aspects of Luke as an historian is that he always gets the titles right. Many of the titles of local officials which Luke provides us with were not validated until modern times. "The writer of Acts knew the correct titles and used them with varying precision. In the words of Ramsey: 'the officials with whom Paul and his companions were brought into contact are those who would be there. Every person is found just where he ought to be; proconsuls in senatorial provinces, asiarchs in Ephesus, strategoi in Philippi, politarchs in Thessolonica, magicians and soothsayers everywhere.' The Most remarkable of these titles is Politarch the ruler of the city used in Acts 17:6...previously this word had been completely unknown except for this passage in Acts. It has now been found in 19 inscriptions dating from he second century..." (Stephen Neil, The Interpretation of the New Testament:1861-1961, London: Oxford University press, 1964, p.143). Neil argues that titles are the hardest things to get right, modern French writers never get English titles right, and this is something that would easily and surely betray an anachronism (147)Historians of the modern day judge Luke a superb historian.

(This makes him a better historian than Tacitus, and if Tacitus getting the title of Pilate wrong is an argument against his veracity, than surely getting them right must mean something)
Skeptics argue that the Apostles could have made up the stories of the Gospel despite the fact that they contain historical information. One,on an internet discussion board, even went to far as to compare the Gospels with Ernest Hemingway novels which have fictional plots set in historical settings. Of course Hemingway lived in the places he wrote about. It would be absurd to think of Luke trooping around ancient Palestine just to be abel to add a few verifiable touches to his account, especially in the days before anyone knew about archaeology. When we consider how many forgeries form this era have no historical evidence, or betray themselves with anachronisms, this argument seems to lack substance.



C. Peter's House

"The house was built in the first century, it became a center of religious activity [in Capernium] already in the second half of the first century Jewish-Chrsitians (or Mimin..as they were called) were numerous and lived continuously in Capernium and kept this tradition alive [the site for the house of Peter--which is mentioned in Mark; their graffiti on the plaster wall of the place of worship testify to their faith in Jesus, the Lord, the Most High, the good, and to their veneration of Peter." (Cornfeld p. 288). The house was taken over by Gentile Christians in the 5th century, and then build a splendid basilica. Now of course the skeptic will say "O, they just chose any old spot and said it was the right place for the pilgrims in the middle ages. But Pilgrims did troop to the Holy land as early as the fifth century, however, as Corfeld shows, most of these sites were already old by the fourth century. The tomb, Peter's house, The Bethlehem Grotto, Mary's house in Nazareth, and many other such sites, were already venerated as far back as the first century. While there is no definitive proof that these sites are the actual locations, the evidence is stronger than it seems at first glance.



D. The empty tomb

Archaeology cannot yet identify with certainty the tomb of Christ, but here is strong evidence supporting the Church of the Holy Seplicur as the original site. The site does date back to the fourth century when it was shown to Constantine. Bruce attests to the evidential support.(New Testament Documents) . More important confirmation comes from Gaalyah Cornfeld in Archaeology of The Bible Book By Book. Cornfeld tells us that from early times Christians reverenced the site, but it was desecrated when the Romans put up a statue of one of their gods. Jewish-Christians could no longer worship at the site for that reason, but they continued the knowledge of it until the time of Constantine when they were able to point him to it as the original site of the resurrection. Constantine put up a basilica over the original shrine, the Anastasis. Excavations by V. Corbo found a gold ring with the representation of the dome of the original shrine Anastasis. This indicates that this site was venerated by Christians in ancient times as the site of the resurrection. (and there is an empty tomb under neither it). (See Archaeology of The Bible: Book by Book, New York: Harper and Row, 1976, 271-2).


Bahat, Dan 1986 "Does the Holy Sepulcher Church Mark the Burial of Jesus?" Biblical Archaeology Review 22.3 (May/June):26-45.

"The fact that it had indeed been a cemetery, and that this memory of Jesus' tomb survived despite Hadrian's burial of it with his enclosure fill, speaks to the authenticity of the site. Moreover, the fact that the Christian community in Jerusalem was never dispersed during this period, and that its succession of bishops was never interrupted supports the accuracy of the preserved memory that Jesus had been crucified and buried here." (Bahat 1986:37.)

All of these sties have a very high probability and while none can be proven conclusively, the evidence is very strong that they were all venerated early on. The conclusion of a major Archaeologist of the NT:


Alviero Niccacci, O.F.M.


Archaeology, New Testament, and Early Christianity

Tomado de la página del "Estudio Bíblico Franciscano"



Archaeological excavations - since about the beginning of this century but particularly since the fifties - helped fill the gap of the first three centuries of Christianity in the Holy Land. Actually, in certain holy places remains of cultic installations have been uncovered that preceded the Byzantine buildings of the IV cent. AD. These remains were markedly different from those familiar to scholars of Christian archaeology. In order to interpret these remains, Christian and Jewish literary sources were consulted. From these we come to know that Christians of Jewish origin lived in Galilee, particularly in Nazareth, Tiberias, Sephoris and Capernaum, and in other parts of the country. Among these Jewish Christians, the relatives of Jesus had a preminent place in the community. It was only natural that these “relatives of Jesus” were deeply attached to the places and the traditions of their own family. It was around these places that Christian life and worship were organized and the first communities came into being. This has been one of the most exciting discoveries.

Sudying the literary sources and the pre-Byzantine remains, a conviction arose that a certain literature had to be taken into consideration that showed a foreign mentality: the so-called apocryphal literature. This literature was of a popular nature but not heterodox. It shows the thinking process and faith of the followers of Jesus (Christians) who though they beleived in him still followed the Jewish thought. This made their way of thinking clearly distinct from the Christians of the period coming from the Western world.

In some cases this literature reflects the mentality and beleifs of the Mother Church of Jerusalem. A literature which contains ancient elements that are in agreement with archaeological data. Over forty years of research have given us a much better picture of the history of the Christian presence in ther Holy Land from the NT times down to the present. The main links in this chronological chain, going back in history from today’s reality, are as follows: today’s church or sanctuary, Crusader, Byzantine, and finally pre-Byzantine periods. It is obvious that those sites where this chronological chain is uninterrupted can be considered as authentic sites and beyond any reasonable doubt.

The excavations at NAZARETH (1955-1960) by Bellarmino Bagatti revealed an uninterrupted sequence of cultic installations around the Grotto of the Annunciation. The present basilica is built on almost the same plan as the Crusader’s. A smaller Byzantine church of the fifth century AD was also found. The main result was the discovery, beneath the Byzantine church, of an early Christian building of a special layout, similar to that of the Jewish Galilean synagogues of the second-third centuries AD. The Nazareth excavations revealed for the first time clear traces of the Jewish-Christian communities that lived and prayed in the same place before the arrival of the Byzantines in the fourth century AD. Similar traces were also found in excavations at Dominus Flevit (The Lord wept) on the slopes of the Mount of Olives (1953-1955) and in Capernaum (1968 on).

At CAPERNAUM a well-preserved village has come to light, with its magnificent synagogue, the living quarters and a special house transformed into a place of worship already in the second half of the first century AD. It is called the House of Peter. We will return to Capernaum later on.

The excavations of B. Bagatti at BETHLEHEM (1948-1951) proved that despite important transformations, the grotto of the Nativity and the manger hewn into the rock remained basically the same. There are elements to show that a veneration of the place by the local Christian community existed uninterrupted since the apostolic times. This is proved by the fact that already in the second century AD several tombs were set up in the proximity of the venerated grotto, according to the well-known custom of burying the dead around holy places. In 135 AD emperor Adrian established on the place of the nativity a sacred grove in order to supplant Christian worship on the spot that was very popular. A consequence of this substitution was that the memory of the place was preserved for future generations. Thus emperor Constantine in 333 AD could easily locate the place and then built on it a basilica that has come down to us renewed by emperor Justinian. It is in fact the only Byzantine basilica preserved until today. The grotto of the Nativity presents us with an exegetical problem that we are going to deal with later on.



II. The Absurdity of a fictitious Jesus!



A. The Historical world


1) Early documentation

History is documents. Historians do not usually assume that documents are fake just because they are polemical, or that all the information in them is fictitious. It is absurd to think that Jesus was fiction or legend. It is absurd to think that the Gospel could have spread within the life time of eye witnesses. The accounts were being written by AD 50. Just because the canonical Gospels weren't yet written doesn't mean that the stories in them weren't written.



2) Living participants

The stories were certainly circulating during the time of eye witnesses. Wouldn't it have occurred to some one in Jerusalem, "say why is it that I don't' remember anything about a Pilate, or a Jesus of Nazareth, or even a town called Nazareth. Peter, Paul, James, Philip, all were real people, the stories with them in them circulated during their life times, would it not dawn on them "I don't' remember any of this?" would they not try to put a stop to it?




3) Living Memory of the Masses

Where were the multitudes, where were the throng of recipients of Jesus healing power? Where were those who greeted him when he rode into Jerusalem and the crowd put palm leaves in his path and shouted "Hosanna!"? If these things never happened how could 12 fishermen from the stix possibly convince the multitude of Jerusalem, a might urban center, that they had not only seen but participated in what all of them would have known never happened? And if one thinks well it wasn't written until 70 years latter, no it was written 50 years latter, but it was told orally from day one AD 33 Christ's resurrection. So how could they possibly convince a city that it saw what everyone in the city would know never took place? At the first writing just 20 years latter (AD 50) (see Jesus Puzzle pages) there would still be sufficient eye witnesses left to refute the claims. Such claims at that point would be laughed out of town. But even 70 years latter (actually 40 for Mark) there would still be some eye witnesses left, quite a few in fact since Polycarp lived to 86, one could live at least half that long and a little over. But wouldn't the next generation find it storage that their parents and grandparents never said anything about any such events? Moreover, there would be no basis for proof of such things, no record of witnesses, no empty tomb, no sacred sites.



4) Sacred Sites

Where did all the sacred sites come form? How could they just pick a site and tell people it was the site upon which this event that one remembers happened and expect them all to believe it? Why would they mark it? Why would they tend such sites? All the sacred sites of Christianity marked by tradition can be traced back to the first century, or at least the early second century. This is because people have living memoirie and as the first generation passed away people marked the sites to point out for future posterity, and for sacred veneration. But who would mark a site for an event no one could remember? Who would start going there to worship if there was no tradition anywhere that this was the site?


B. The Hoax

The only way the Christ-Myth notion could work is if it were a hoax. So Peter and 11 friends fabricate this account and start telling it to everyone around them. Wouldn't down on someone that "I never saw you with any Jesus of Nazareth! and say, where' s Nazareth?" Just how would that work? With all the principles still alive and living around the communities in which the stories were spreading. NO one ever saw a Jesus of Nazareth, or his crucifixion, or heard of an empty tomb. But suddenly here are these people proclaiming all the things that everyone would know nerve happened! The whole idea is ludicrous.


1) Motive?

Why would they start such a hoax in the first place? What would their motive be? Some thing that it was already a mystery cult form pagan sources. If this is the case than why would the principles create a hoax around it? What would they expect to gain from it? There would be no money in it because they had to work against the odds, face persecution,give up their family and friends, just to establish it. And they did get nothing out of it.


2) Why die for a lie?

We know from Clement's letter that at least Peter died for his faith. In fact Church tradition records that all the Apostles except John died for their faith. Why would anyone die for a hoax that he/she knew to be a lie? Who dies for a lie that he/she helps to create?


C. Why the Resurrection?

Even more ludicrous is the notion that this fictitious Messiah rose form the dead? The Messiah, according to Jewish belief was supposed to raise all the dead of Israel when he returned to establish his Kingdom. But the Jews did not look for a Messiah who would himself raise from the dead. Why would hoaxers risk such an outlandish story, if they could even think of it in the first place, when it was sure to be rejected?

III. The Strength of Jesus' Personality.


C.S. Lewis once argued that Jesus is too dynamic a character to be entirely fictional. The arguments for this can be found on my Page: "How do we know that Jesus is the Son of God." This is not the argument I give there, but the materail presented there also proves this point. He was one of the most profound ehtical teachers, anticipating Kant's Categorical imperative by two millenia. He also had a focuss and concern for people one rarely finds in a figure of greatness. The important point is, no one in Jesus' time had a concept of historical ficiton in a litterary sense. Sure there are stories form that or previous time where people combine real locatoins and events with ficition, but they did not write realistically, they did not have the concept of "court room evidence" or "historical proof." Their criteria for what made historical documentation was much different than ours. To invent a character like Jesus would require a writter of the greatness of Jesus (or at least that of William Faulner or Mark Twain). How absurd to sugges that some ancient unkown Hemingway created the historical novel 2000 years early and it just happend to become the world's dominat religion!


IV. Time line.


With the first writting of the Gospel story in AD 50 (see above) it is clear that the Jesus' story was already set in stone by mid century, just 20 years after the events. This would not be enough time for myth to develop.



William Lane Craig quotes prof. Sherwin-Whtite ("Contemporary Scholarship and the Historical Evidence for the Rsurrection of Jesus Christ," Truth 1 (1985): 89-95) "For in order for these stories to be in the main legendary, a very considerable length of time must be available for the evolution and development of the traditions until the historical elements have been supplanted by unhistorical. This factor is typically neglected in New Testament scholarship, as A. N. Sherwin-White points out in Roman Law and Roman Society tn the New Testament. Professor Sherwin-White is not a theologian; he is an eminent historian of Roman and Greek times, roughly contemporaneous with the NT. According to Professor Sherwin-White, the sources for Roman history are usually biased and removed at least one or two generations or even centuries from the events they record. Yet, he says, historians reconstruct with confidence what really happened. He chastises NT critics for not realizing what invaluable sources they have in the gospels. The writings of Herodotus furnish a test case for the rate of legendary accumulation, and the tests show that even two generations is too short a time span to allow legendary tendencies to wipe out the hard core of historical facts. When Professor Sherwin-White turns to the gospels, he states for these to be legends, the rate of legendary accumulation would have to be 'unbelievable'; more generations are needed. All NT scholars agree that the gospels were written down and circulated within the first generation, during the lifetime of the eyewitnesses."



V.Community As Author: Self Checking Information Dissemination.

A. It has the check of eye-witnesses in the Community.

B. oral tradition was not uncontroled spreading of rurmor a disciplined and ancient method of disseminating teachings.Oral tradition in first-century Judaism was not uncontrolled as was/is often assumed, based on comparisons with non-Jewish models.

From pg. 53-55 in B.D. Chilton and C.A. Evans (eds.), "Authenticating the Activities of Jesus" (NTTS, 28.2; Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1998):



"...[T]he early form criticism tied the theory of oral transmission to the conjecture that Gospel traditions were mediated like folk traditions, being freely altered and even created ad hoc by various and sundry wandering charismatic jackleg preachers. This view, however, was rooted more in the eighteenth century romanticism of J. G. Herder than in an understanding of the handling of religious tradition in first-century Judaism. As O. Cullmann, B. Gerhardsson, H. Riesenfeld and R. Riesner have demonstrated, [22] the Judaism of the period treated such traditions very carefully, and the New Testament writers in numerous passages applied to apostolic traditions the same technical terminology found elsewhere in Judaism for 'delivering', 'receiving', 'learning', 'holding', 'keeping', and 'guarding', the traditioned 'teaching'. [23] In this way they both identified their traditions as 'holy word' and showed their concern for a careful and ordered transmission of it. The word and work of Jesus were an important albeit distinct part of these apostolic traditions."Luke used one of the same technical terms, speaking of eyewitnesses who 'delivered to us' the things contained in his Gospel and about which his patron Theophilus had been instructed. Similarly, the amanuenses or co-worker-secretaries who composed the Gospel of John speak of the Evangelist, the beloved disciple, 'who is witnessing concerning these things and who wrote these things', as an eyewitness and a member of the inner circle of Jesus' disciples.[24] In the same connection it is not insignificant that those to whom Jesus entrusted his teachings are not called 'preachers' but 'pupils' and 'apostles', semi-technical terms for those who represent and mediate the teachings and instructions of their mentor or principal.[25]

------------------ 22. O. Cullmann, "The Tradition," in Cullmann, The Early Church (London: SCM Press; Philadelphia: Westminster, 1956) 55-99; B. Gerhardsson The Origins of the Gospel Traditions (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1979); H. Riesenfeld The Gospel Tradition (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1970) 1-29; Riesner, Jesus als Lehrer.

23. Rom 6:17; 16:17; 1 Cor 11:2, 23; 15:3; Phil 4:9; Col 2:6-7; 2 Thess 2:15; 3:6; 2 Tim 3:14; Titus 1:9; 2 John 9-10; Jude 3: Rev 2:13, 24. Cf. Abot 1:1; Philo, The Worse Attacks the Better 65-68. 24. John 19:35; 21:24-25; cf. 13:23; 18:15-16; 19:26-27; 20:1-10; 21:7, 21-23. Cf. J. A. T. Robinson, Redating the New Testament (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1976) 298-311. 25. On parallels with other rabbis and their disciples and other Jewish usage cf. Mark 2:18 = Luke 5:33; K.H. Rengstorf TDNT 1 (1964) 412-43;.TDNT 4 (1967) 431-55.Also, there wasn't necessarily a long period of solely oral transmission as has been assumed:"Under the influence of R. Bultmann and M. Dibelius the classical form criticism raised many doubts about the historicity of the Synoptic Gospels, but it was shaped by a number of literary and historical assumptions which themselves are increasingly seen to have a doubtful historical basis. It assumed, first of all, that the Gospel traditions were transmitted for decades exclusively in oral form and began to be fixed in writing only when the early Christian anticipation of a soon end of the world faded. This theory foundered with the discovery in 1947 of the library of the Qumran sect, a group contemporaneous with the ministry of Jesus and the early church which combined intense expectation of the End with prolific writing. Qumran shows that such expectations did not inhibit writing but actually were a spur to it. Also, the widespread literacy in first-century Palestinian Judaism [18], together with the different language backgrounds of Jesus' followers--some Greek, some Aramaic, some bilingual--would have facilitated the rapid written formulations and transmission of at least some of Jesus' teaching.[19]" (p. 53-54)

------------------ 18. Cf. Josephus, Against Apion 2.25 204: The Law "orders that (children) should be taught to read."; cf. idem, Ant. 12.4.9 209; Philo, Embassy to Gaius 115, 210, Further, see R. Riesner, Jesus als Lehrer (WUNT 2.7; Tubingen: Mohr [Siebeck], 1981; 4th ed., 1998) 112-15.

19. Jesus had hearers and doubtless some converts from Syria (Matt 4:25), the Decapolis (Matt 4:25; Mark 3:8; 5:20; 7:31), Tyre and Sidon (Mark 3:8; 7:24, 31; Matt 15:21).

N. T. Wright, critiquing the Jesus Seminar's view of oral tradition as uncontrolled and informal based on some irrelevant research done in modern Western non-oral societies writes:"Against this whole line of thought we must set the serious study of genuinely oral traditions that has gone on in various quarters recently. [65] (p. 112-113)

--------------- 65. For example, see H. Wansbrough (ed.), Jesus and the Oral Gospel Tradition (JSNTSup 64; Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1991), referring to a large amount of earlier work; Bailey, "Informal Controlled Oral Tradition," 34-54. The following discussion depends on these and similar studies, and builds on Wright, The New Testament and the People of God, 418-43; and idem, Jesus and the Victory of God, 133-37."Communities that live in an oral culture tend to be story-telling communities. They sit around in long evenings telling and listening to stories--the same stories, over and over again. Such stories, especially when they are involved with memorable happenings that have determined in some way the existence and life of the particular group in question, acquire a fairly fixed form, down to precise phraseology (in narrative as well as in recorded speech), extremely early in their life--often within a day or so of the original incident taking place. They retain that form, and phraseology, as long as they are told. Each village and community has its recognized storytellers, the accredited bearers of its traditions; but the whole community knows the stories by heart, and if the teller varies them even slightly they will let him know in no uncertain terms. This matters quite a lot in cultures where, to this day, the desire to avoid 'shame' is a powerful motivation."Such cultures do also repeat, and hence transmit, proverbs, and pithy sayings. Indeed, they tend to know far more proverbs than the orally starved modern Western world. But the circulation of such individual sayings is only the tip of the iceberg; the rest is narrative, narrative with embedded dialogue, heard, repeated again and again within minutes, hours and days of the original incident, and fixed in memories the like of which few in the modern Western world can imagine. The storyteller in such a culture has no license to invent or adapt at will. The less important the story, the more the entire community, in a process that is informal but very effective, will keep a close watch on the precise form and wording with which the story is told."And the stories about Jesus were nothing if not important. Even the Jesus Seminar admits that Jesus was an itinerant wonder-worker. Very well. Supposing a woman in a village is suddenly healed after a lengthy illness. Even today, even in a non-oral culture, the story of such an event would quickly spread among friends, neighbors and relatives, acquiring a fixed form within the first two or three retellings and retaining it, other things being equal, thereafter. In a culture where storytelling was and is an art-form, a memorable event such as this, especially if it were also seen as a sign that Israel's God was now at last at work to do what he had always promised, would be told at once in specific ways, told so as to be not just a celebration of a healing but also a celebration of the Kingdom of God. Events and stories of this order are community-forming, and the stories which form communities do not get freely or loosely adapted. One does not disturb the foundations of the house in which one is living."[B.D. Chilton and C.A. Evans (eds.), Authenticating the Activities of Jesus (NTTS, 28.2; Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1998) p. 113-115.]



D. Summary

The historicity of Jesus is more secure than most figures in the ancient world. We have no birth certificate for Julius Cesser. We have no real proof that Chalemaine existed, but Historians except him as having lived, and there are pure legends about him; they are even modeled after the Arthurian legends. (See Bullfinch, Mythology).

The major historians of the day witness Jesus' existence. While they could have been going merely on what Christians said about him, most of them were good historians who loved truth and believed passionately in documenting their cases. They had access to such documentation, why would they not use it? Joseph's himself is probably the most trustworthy historian of the first century. He records twice that Jesus of Nazareth existed, and there is no reason not to take him at his word. The texts have been emended, but not made up out of whole cloth. The bits that aren't emendations clearly testify to Jesus' existence in history.

The places where the drama unfolded are real and historical. The empty tomb of Christ was marked form the beginning and Christians made sure they kept track of the site. Why would a fictitious legendary character have a solid tomb? Why would it be empty? The principle characters in the story were real people. We know their historicity because we have the writings of those who knew them. While the Patristic writers do make mistakes, and while they don't' leave us a historical record that can fill in all the gaps reliably, they at least do testify to the existence of Jesus! They document their own associations with those who knew Jesus. There is no reason to assume that Jesus was not a real historical person. It would be enough just to take it on Joseph's' word, but the case is far stronger than that. In fact there is probably a stronger case for Jesus existence than for most figures in that time period.

Salvation, Punishment and Separation form God

this first part was told by another poster on Bede's list.


I recall a story I once heard about a conversation between Bertrand Russell and a Christian missionary which really, for me, brought to light the problem of the salvation of those who've never heard the gospel. It went something like this (forgive me if I get parts of it wrong, I'm just going from memory):

RUSSELL: Those people in [insert un-evangelized area here] whom you witness to, are they going to Hell because they don't believe, even though they've never had a chance to hear the gospel?
MISSIONARY: No, not if they've never heard.
RUSSELL: So, what happens if you tell them and then they reject it?
MISSIONARY: Well, then they will go to Hell I guess.
RUSSELL: So why tell them at all? What you're effectively doing is causing more damage than there was to begin with.

This whole question has always bothered me as a Christian and this dialogue has made it even more apparent. It doesn't seem very loving to condemn people when they haven't had a chance to receive what will save them; but, if they're to be judged on "what light they do have" or something like that so they're not entirely "at-fault" then what happens when a missionary gives them the gospel and they reject it? Did they not have a better chance of being saved beforehand? If anybody can suggest any books/essays/etc. that deal with this question or provide your own responses/suggestions to this I would deeply appreciate it. Thanks for all your help in the past. God bless.
__________


this is my bit:

I don't believe in hell in the convetional sense. I think most people feel that heaven = reward for good, hell = punishment for bad. To me this is the abandonment of the gospel. It is not being faithful to the Gospel, it's what people believe when they don't get it.

The thing is salvation is a process. It includes things like redemption and freedom from sin, born again, it's an over all renovation. This renovation and redemption is the alternative to our human state of lostness that is the result, not of punishment for being bad, but a consequence for being separated from God. We separate ourselves from God, and we do this in many way but ultimately it is as a result of existential anxiety. So in my view Jesus came and made the ultimate statement of solidarity to show God's solidarity with Humanity, so that we would seek God and turn from our lost, anxious, separated state. Those who will cease to exist (note--not burn consciously in torment but cease existence) will do so because they choose separation from God.

What about those who don't find Christ? They have the moral law written on the heart, and if they follow it they are following Christ (see Romans 2:6-14, Acts 17).

The Bible Between the Lines

I'm really sick of the way skeptics take themselves so seriously to express anger toward God when it's clearly obvious that God isn't the way the straw men have set him up to be. Most of this tendency goes back to taking the Bible literally. The flip side of this is the way some Christians learn to justify teh literal image as though it's really he point of the Bible an never stop to ask themselves, "what is this text really saying to me?"

The fact that most of the OT is narrative is a que for us. We should think "read between lines." It's not magic, it's literature you read it the way you would any other literature. You can understand the author probably has a point to make that is not obvious and the literal surface of the story is not the ponit, because in a narrative other than a children's story it seldom is. Even in children's stories we can sometimes sense that mroe is gonig on than just the gingerbread house where the witch eats children. I mean, come on. The step mother ties to kill the kids and you don' think more is going on thant he surface of the story?

So take the flood for example. What kind of text is it? We should always ask this first. Its' mythology. How do we know? Because it's just like other texts of the same myth that are much older. So obvioulsy the Hebrew redactors, in using a popular universal story that had been a mainstay of thier world for thousands of years (the origianal Suemrian epic is copied by the Babylonians and datesa bout 2000 years older than Genesis--in the Sumerian myth of Eden the Sumerian Adam is named Adam, but Eve is Adapa. In Sumerian flood story--Gilgamesh--Noah is Upnapishtim).

While the skeptic looks at the flood and says "O gee, God is cruel and evil to kill all those people, he must have afraid to let people have fun" or whatever they might say, we know that'snot the point. We have to look past the sruface plot. It's not about God being angry and killing everyone,that's just a plot device because they used a pagan myth that was already around. That's just part of the story that's a given for them. So let's ask ourselves why would they uset his story rather than make up their own? Because they have a point to make about what the pagan story says. What is says basically is that the gods were capcrecious. They destroyed the world because people were making too much noise.It also says Upnapistem survived the flood so Gilgamesh seeks him out to learn the secret of eternal life. The Hebrews are saying God is not caprious but if he did destroy the world he would do so for moral reasons and for good reasons not because they are making too much noise.

Our modern skeptics who know so little of the ancient world can only compare the story with our value system and since they expect everything to hold their values (modern skeptics are so ethnocentric) they conclude that gods not good because he doesn't hold their values. They just don't see that actually Genesis is closer to expressing the value with which they agree than are the original myths from which barrows. Then the point about eternal life, the point in Genesis is that God will keep us safe throuig the danger and give us new life if we hold fast in faith. Eternal life comes from faith in God, not form fate or luck.

These are the kinds of ponits being made by the story, not "you better shape up or God will kill you." The cruelty of God in tho flood story is just handed down from a previous version and has nothing to do with thei real encounter of th divine that Christians expernce. Of course God would never really kill all the people of the world in that way.

Bukt here's antoher point, we might be killing ourselves and since we aren't willing ot lsiten to God he can't warn us.

God, Morality, and Cultural Evolution

To those skeptics who try to castigate the Bible by pointing out anachronisms of morality, such as slavery and polygamy, my standard answer has always been that God respects social evolution. Perhaps this deserves some explaining.

What if God set up HQ in central park and held a press conference. At that press conference he said that all Republicans must go to concentration camps, anyone engaging in capitalistic enterprize at any level had to repent and give it us, and a socialisitic system like that of Stalin had to be establshed world wide forth with. Mroeover, he would say that hence forth all scinece must be banned and and scientific turths would be gleaned by prophetic gifts. Now he can be proven absolutely to be God, so you better do as he says. How many people in our modern world do you think would sruvive two days? How many would come out loving God or how many would pretend to obey but secretly think God is a sick and evil fool? How many right wing reacitonaries would be satanistas, or would accuse God of being satan?

First, my basic premise is that God is experienced at the mystical level. That means that beyond thought, word, or image, we are experiencing God in a way that cant' be truly understood or spoken accept in the deep recesses of our consciousness. This manifests itself in many ways, behavior, attempts at speech inadequate though they are, and other ways as well. I should point out here that I am not debarring God speaking directly or that I am not saying God doesn't use other forms of communication too, but that is the most basic and most universal; beyond conscious understanding, the mystical level.

Being social creatures, we must speak of our experiences of the divine, especially the more powerful experiences that flood our consciousness. I believe we all experience God to some degree, each and everyone of us, but some do so to such a powerful degree that the experience breaks in to our natural consciousness. But how can we speak of a truth and a reality beyond words? We can only do this by encoding our impressions into cultural constructs. That means they are all inadequate, and yet they are as adequate as anything of which we can speak, for all language bears that limitation of being encoded in culture. Language is culture, therefore, the encoding of language in cultural constructs means that all our communications fall short of their true marks.

Be that as it may, this cultural aspect means the difference between religious traditions. This is all a religious tradition is, the vocabulary that is applied in a certain set. A religious tradition is just the creation of a vocabulary for the sake of having a set of conventional references through which one's mystical experience can be given a meaningful context (and btw that is also how I see the OT; that is the function of the OT, to create a context in which Jesus as Messiah is meaningful). Thus, there is a connection between God, social evolution, morality and culture, and the truth of God must, a priori be understood viewed through the lens of a cultural understanding (that's the only way we ever understand anything--since language is culture all verbal understanding and raciocentenation is nothing but cultural understanding).

Secondly, the unchanging reality of God is revealed to us through Jesus Christ. The function of the OT is the creation of a meaningful context for the work of Christ as redeemer. But in Jesus' character (teachings, actions) we see God's universal and unchanging character. For this reason skeptics often say Jesus is far different from the God of the OT. All the aspects of Christ are seen the God of the OT, and certain aspects of that God are seen in Christ of the NT. But the real difference is that of shadow vs. substance. The author of (Pricillia?) Hebrews tells us that from OT to that time of Christ's appearing we move from shadow to substance. The things of the OT are types and shadows, the reality is Christ. "In many ways God spoke through the prophets, but in these latter times he has spoken perfectly through his son." (My trans). So we understand the true nature of God and God's unchanging ways through observation of Jesus.

This always brings up the charge of relativism and it can come in several forms. One such form is to say "well, so if we start having slavery again it becomes part of our culture and thus is ok with God?" But this is a failure to distinguish between society and culture. Not everything done in society is the limit of our cultural understanding. We cannot go back to slavery because we understand what's wrong with it. God only tries to enlighten people in so far as their cultural evolution will bear it. What would be the point in trying to show people int he ancient world that they are negating individual rights when the cultural had not yet evolved to the point of an understanding of individuality? But we in the :"postmodern" West, do understand the evil of slavery and so we cannot go back to it. When we find aspects of it still in practice we know it's wrong. We have a profound basis for demonstrating the wrong nature of slavery.

Another argument is made that this view sanctions cultural relativism. It says that if something is wrong now it was wrong 10,000 years ago and thus God could not excuse it. That's true, but God didn't undertake to explain to people why economic monopolies were wrong. why? Because there weren't any, there wasn't any capitalism. It would have made no sense. God did not undertake to explain why one-man-one-vote is a sacred principle, or why democracy is of God (if you want to understand that--go read John Lock's two treateses on Government). It would have made no sense to explain democracy to people living 4000 years before the French Revolution because they had no idea. They had no basis in conceptions, the basic Magna Charta had not yet been penned let alone the works of the French Philosophes or the American constitution.

It is not a matter of saying that right or wrong is established by culture, but even C.S. Lewis (Mere Christianity) admits that right and wrong are transmitted and taught through culture. I have previously established the necessity of free will in the economy of God. In order for that to have any meaning, people must be brought along to a cognitive state where they develop their own understanding, that's why God doesn't want us to just be robots who are incapable of doing wrong. We have to develop as free moral agents. The point is that for this reason God must proceed at a pace comensurate with huamn social evolution. Sins are charged agsint man in the OT, but only those that can be understood by people at the time. That's the basic gist of the ten commandments: don't kill, don't steal, don't lie, don't cheat, no incest. These are the basic univeresal views found in all cultures. There are no idividualistic or existentialist understandings because those would have been beyond the understanding of the day. People are not givne more than they can conceptually comprehend. They are not blamed for sins they cannot understand.

We can understand these things, we an move beyond that time. This "if its not the book it's not true" kind of mentlaity is what puts Christiain politics back in the dark ages. People limit themselves to the cultural understanding of the ancient world insteading of trying to place the values behind biblical injunction in modern times and see how they apply to our context, without expecting them to apply in the same way they did in Abraham's time. This is not as hopeless as it seems, neither is it as realitivistic. After all, we have the example of Jesus to guide us. Jesus is the prefect revealiation of God to humanity and through him we can see the truth of God's nature. We can apply Jesus teaching and actions to our own time. We always know that the guiding principle is love. But we can also understand that God let somethings slide in the ancient world, just as he didn't try to give them a modern understanding of science and medicine, why? Because they couldn't take it. We can and we can understand what that core morality is that is always applicable, and we can understand how to apply it to our day, because we have the universal examplke of Jesus to live by.

the charge of intellectual dishonesty

Those children who offered 500$ to prove Jesus existed are still ranting and raving on their board (my space) about how I"m "intellectually dishonest." I said that they could ask after my reputation among atheists who argue with me for years and know me well, and they will vouch for me. They find this even more incriminating. For some reason they seem to think that if others vouch for you it somehow shows you are guilty.

The charge itself is as childish as the junior high school students who make it. The only reason they give is because I said I have a Ph.D. and I'm really just a doctoral candidate who is one step away from a Ph.D. that's enough of a distinction for them to hang a whole theology upon. But the truth is I did not say I had a Ph.D. I said I was a professional scholar, which I am. I have been paid for teaching and I've published. But somehow these jerks can't understand this.

I'm so sick of fools. So *&^%$ sick of fools.

I shall return

Like General MacAurthor. I shall regturn. I've been away becasue some scum bag broke into my home and stole my computer. Just to rub it in the bushed the monitor but didnt' take it. It was a beautiful think monitor that I loved. Well, I'll be back writting my ponderous over contemplative opinionated peices soon. Don't go away. Keep checking.

I shall return.

Metacrock's Metaethics

Metaethics is a real term in philosophy, I did not invent it to be cute. It means the study of theories aboutt what makes the ethical ethical.



Atheists and Evangelical apolostists are always going at on morality, on message boards. On any given night one can find a thread on "absolute morals." Usually I steer clear of these discussions, because I've found that neither seisi knows what they are talking about. Usually the Christians argue that there must be moral absolutes or all morality will break down and people torture babies for fund and no one will know why they should not, except that God tells us not to. The atheists usually try to argue that they know not torture babies for fund, then they try to ground that idea in something relative and less than absolute, but nevertheless something adequate to tell us not to; in social contract or feelings. The two major popular theories with atheists are utilitarianism and some vel ideate that science and nature can tell us what we should do or ought to do so they can make us an ethical system.

The other night on a board I deduced to take part because a Christian was doing an unusually good job and I decided to help him hold their feet to the fire. It began with a creation atheist grounding ethics in society. Most of the others soon relayed that this wont work. I think my argument that society is often wrong and sometimes the most ethical thing is stand alone against society, upon what does one base ethics then? After all, do we want an ethics defend by a society led by George Bush? I that got them. They had to back peddle then. They tried to ground ethics in pure feeling (I felt he love) they tried to ground it in nature, (nature organizes us for survival) but none of these could stand up to the Holocaust arguments. Hitler had his feelings about Jews, whose to say your feelings of love are right and his are wrong? The idea of a biologically based ethics just falls prey to Hummus fork (can't get an ought from an is).

It was the guy who wanted to ground it all in society and what society dictates (oddly enough an Austrian) who kept asking me to define and clarify my ethical ideas to an exeat that I finally decided "hey have this worked out pretty good. Why don't I write up my own ethical theory for the log?" So here it is.


Before presenting it I need to explain why I feel that both sides are a muddle in the debates on ethics. Mainly because the arguments alleyway turn on the notion of absolute o "objective" ethicsnm(Christianas) Vs "subeticvea and relative" ethics (the atheists). In such debate all the basics of real ethics is ignored compeltey,because no one wants to study that stuff. I subdued in graduate school under one major famous ethicists, Fred Corny of Perkiness, and under anther guy who is not as famous but I think is very good, Victor Worsfold of UTD. I've been a very careful student of ethics, and I resent the idea that people just trot out their prejudices and pass them off as real ethical theory. The problem wtth this talk about moral absolutes or "objective" ethics is that it ignores the mediation of ethical theory through agents of mediation; those who actually make the moral judgments. What the atheists do to cause a muddle is to argue about the subject/object dichotomy the way do always do, as though it's a matte of just collecting data objectively. Of causer the amusing part is that on the ethical front the atheist is forced to defend the subjective, something they usually fear and dread. So the fundamentalists/Evangelicals/apologists are too inflexible and can't allow for interpretation, and the atheists can't ground their axioms in anything solid, so they can't real come up with the force of an out: ethics is about you ought to do this, you ought not to do ths. In the mealy both sides ignore duty and objelegation as the basis of ethical principles.

The basis of ethical theory has to start with sorting out weather oen is thinking deontolgocally or teleologically about ethics. This is the major treason why atheist and Christian moralities are doomed to be ships that pass in the night. Atheists tend to be utilitarian or some form of consequentialist. In other words, the thing that makes an act ethical is its outcome. Most atheists will back off the formula "greatest good for the greatest number" but it seems intuitive and reasonable to them that "right" and "wrong" should be understood in terms of the outcome of an action; especially since they can' vest values with antiquated magical notions such as "good" or "evil." These are metaphysical notions and don't belong in our scientific (read "athistitic) world. Christians, on the other hand, tend to be deontolgoists, that is they reckon the moral based upon keeping rules, or duty and obligation. The fact of the matter is major ethicists have been both at the same time. ant had major bits of both in his ethical teary, even in the categorical imperative.

Ethics is about values and axioms. The best word to describe values in a moral senses "approbation" or "disapprobation" (meaning: approvla/disaproval). Values translate our desires into oughts. Axioms are persecutive formula that enable us to translate values into ought. Dorothy Emmett, (who was a devout Christians and at one time was the pride of the Evangelicals in academic) in her book the Moral Prism demonstrates that atheistical axioms are artery and that ethics is alleyway essentially contestable. So what makes the ought?

Not mere facticity. You cant' get an ought form an is. The only thing that makes an ought in the first place is:

(1) Value system

(2) axioms

(3) A means of mediating between the value and the axiom.

Now at this point you may wonder what is the distinction between a value and an axiom? In my view a value is a like, a matter of taste, a desire, approbation. I think the term "approbation" really says it all for value--that of which we approve.

An Axiom is a thematic approach to making something happen. A prescription. A thing is Axiomatic when we can take it as a rule. So the values tell us what we care Abu and approve of, and the axioms tell us what the rules are in retains to those things.


when we can say "you should." You should do this because it's a value and the axioms wont let you do otherwise.

So God creates the universe with the value of love. And the rules that he sets for behavior of moral agents reflect the naturae of that value, they are all designed to foster love, or to enable one to do the loving thing in regard to treatment of others. do not kill, not steal, do not covet they neighbors goods, love they neighbor, these are the rules and they are based upon the value that stealing, killing coveting are unloosing acts, love is obviously loving that's a tautology of course.

Of course you must have a standard to judge by so you know, and someone to write the rules; of course God, being all wise and all knowing is that mind. That's where the "objective" moralist comes into trouble; because the standard has to be interpreted and that means its' going to be subjective. Actually in my ethical system each side has a point. I do believe in universals, but I also believe that the application of universals is always going to be relative and localized. This doesn't meant that we have to through up our hands and just pronounce moral values relative and discardable. They are still grounded in universal truth, it's just that the mediation of that grounding is going to be subjective, and we can get around this.

I take a deontoloical view. I'm not to big on grounding ethics in rule keeping, but I do believe that duty and obligation and our motivations in living up to them WinNET the day. In my view the community has a part to play too. Ethics is not detrained by the community, and one can rise above the logclaized community by appareling to the hypothetical ideal community (based upon Chime Pressman's notion of the ideal audience). We have networks of communities. Alisdiar manicure in his great book After Virtue became famous for establishing that morality is relative, even if it is universal, because three are Athenian understanding of universal ethics, and there ear Napoleanic understanding of universal ethics and Ninetieth century Texan understandings of universal ethics (that's where they string em up). But there is no ideal universal ethics that any human can understand or live. Arguing this was not manicure's intention, but it's pretty much what his readers came away with. But the answer is, not the one gave, buy my answer is different communities form pools. There are levels of community and we can plug into history and understand the communities of the past, and we can go international and understand how other cutlers view things. We are vein influenced by and influencing other communities all the time. This means that even though we will probably never achieve the ideal understanding of God's will, we can combine the affects of all of these communal understandings and enlarge the community, make a big ideal community that is based upon historical prescient and interconnectedness.

This is all about mediation of values. Because it is through the community that we mediate values. But this also brings the church back in as an ethical orbit. Religion is a social institution and its' part of the community. Through this amalgam of the ideal historical and international levels of the communal that the individual can stand up against his local community, even against his national community and say "no the labor camps are wrong, Hipster is a disaster, the Nazis are morally bankrupt." We dot' have to just allow whatever society says is true because he have higher standard to which we hold the immediate community; all the other communities over time and accorss cultures.

Where does God fit into this picture? In my view. since it is deontological, God is the thing that brings the ought. God's character is love, and thus love is the background of the moral universe. The truth of God's moral commands are grounded in the character of love. God's approbabations are not arbitrary or merely for the same demonstrating severity, they are an expression of his character which is love. God writes into the fabric of the universe immutable laws which are based upon the will to the good of the other. We attach duty and obligation and this give us an ought, we ought to do our duty and keep our obligations. All of this is based upon love as the background of the moral universe. We understand and mediate God's immutable universal values and axioms through the lends of the ideal community and it's understanding over time. This also includes the church and it's understanding of God's commands.


when I speak of an "ideal community" I mean a thought tradition, going back thousands of years, such Western civlization. So all basic soruces of knowledge about Western cutlure would go into this; art, liteature, religion, poetry, film, mustic, the whole thinking culture. But it also woldnt' stop there, it was transur accross clutres and consult with other cultures. The point is not to create a universe, becasue that can't be done. God is the grounding for universals and that's the strongest grounding we can have. But this is a means of orbitraition and understanding in the way that MacInsire shows we do undertand ethids, as what we are rooted int he culture and community that we are in. But we are also builidng a larger culture thoughout the world and it exetends back into time. This is not an attempt to stabilze sourcesof relativeism. It is rather, an attempt to undersatnd the orbitary of the comminity in all the sources that make it up. It also means that the religous community would be cheif among themse.

welcoming exotic visitors

If the graphic comes out you can see the flag of Trinidad and Tabago. To be honest I had never herad of the place. It's off the coast of Brazil. I am honroed to have a viewer from Trinidad and Tabago, as I long to travel and this makes me feel connected to far away places. I am also happy to have viewers from the Coribian.That region is speicial to me since i was in Central America Solidarity movmeent.

As you can see the exotic visitors are down today, even though we have a couple of very exotic ones. But the day was avaerage for hit count, 41 unique hits.

Welcome, I hope you enjoyed it!

Metacrock.

Can the Bible Be Trusted?

This question was asked on CARM tonight. My answer: for what? For building air craft carriers? No not at all. The reason I answered this was because the question, when fleshed by the questioner, involved scientific information and literal historical information. This is an issue that come sup on these forums all that time: If there is a mistake in the Bible (i.e., any kind of inaccuracy = "Mistake") then the whole Bile is wrong and can't be trusted. Anther version of this that I find atheists and other skeptics using quite a bit is the historical inaccuracy or the cultural anachronism. There's a better version with failed prophesy. That's a bit understandable because one would expect a spiritual book to get the spiritual stuff right. In all of these the pay off is, if there is any "mistake" (discrepancy, inaccuracy) then the whole thing is no good. The corollary is we can't trust the Bible if there are any mistakes because the only alternative is to pick and Cohoes heat we like. Unfortunately the Christian apologists have bought into this too, fueled by their commitment to inherency. The Christian apologists believe the only alternative to total inherency of the text is "picking and choosing what you like."

On the face of it this seems like a reasonable question, can I trust the Bible? But the problem is it is too simplistic. For what are we trusting it? The permitters of trust in all three cases are empirical accuracy of a factual nature, science, history, and fulfillment of predictions. Why should we trust the Bible for those things? It's not a science text book, it's not a history text book, and prophesy is much more subtle and complex than some fortune teller's prediction game. We need to understand what it is we should trust the Bible to do, then we can answer the question. According to the Pastoral epistles Paul told Timothy all scripture is fit for reproach and correction. So Scripture is a corrective upon one's moral life, and one's spiritual life. Why would accuracy in science matter for that? The Bible was written over a long period by many different people. It's a collection of writings, and they are all made for different reasons. We can't just assume that the whole has only one purpose. The major purpose to which it is supposed to be put, however, as a canon of scripture, is doctrinal soundless and the bestowing of Grace upon the reader. Here I urge the reader to get hold of a copy of William "Billy" Abraham's ground breaking book Canon and Criterion. He develops this theme of Scripture as the bestowing of grace at length and allayers the tendency to turn Scepter into a form epistemology.

The tendency to turn the Bible into an epistemological system is understood by Abraham as one of the major hang ups of the faith since the Reformation. But skeptics and atheists have taken their que form the church which has taught this for centuries. The upshot has been to see the Bile as a proof text vouchsafed by its empirical accuracy, and that's the Christian's angle. The atheist angle is to compare that to scientific understanding in the modern age, show that the bible is lacking and dismiss it out of hand. The tendency toward a theory of inherency is the upshot of this epistemic kind of Bible. Warfidld and Draby, retreating form modernity, angry at Darwin, trying preserve what they saw as the truth of Scripture, understood the truth of Scripture in a literalistic fashion. Thus, Scripture must dements it's veracity by being right about everything and it must be right about things demonstrable. Of course I am lax not to discuss the contribution of Robert Boyle the latitudinarians before this, but that would be dissertation topic and I'm quite sick of that.

With this dichotomy between the epistemic Bible and the grace filled Bible we have issue of proof. I urge apologists not to torot out a bunch of poufs to show ha that edible is inspired. We are under no obligation to prove this. The Bible is the Scripture of a specialized community, those outside the community have no real right OT criticize it. Only if we are trying to prove it OT them that this matters. WE can prove it, but it works better rhetorically to let them come on our turf and argue the failures of the bible so we can defend. Much easier to defend against assertions of Biblical falsare than to prove inspirited status. Especially so when the rug will never accept one's notion of the thing inspiring it.

The answer is the Bible can be trusted to do the things its' supposed to do:

(1) Vouch safe the deposit of truth Jesus taught the Apostles and that was left to the church.

(2) Bestow grace upon the reader.


We test the veracity of the Bible by What it does for us in our lives. We test the veracity of the Bible by its ability to bring Jesus into our lives. This is what it means to bestow Grace upon the reader. We are not picking and choosing what we like, if we shed the verbal plenary concept. We use the historical critical method as a means of determining the base line so we always have a standard to work from. Christians have a bad habit of acting like there is a verse somewhere that says "this is the Bible, it is inherent, inspired, mistake proof a filled with hidden scientific facts that ancient people could not have known. Believe it all and have a nice life." There is no such verse. I say this from any persecutive. I could be a conservative Evangelical and make this argument: we do not have to prove the Bible by any sort of empirical test of veracity we need to be aware of the true purposes of Scripture and stop confusing our apologetical aims with the purposes of the Holy Spirit. We need to be aware of the true purses of Scripture and we need to understand historical critical methods so we can know the original intent of the authors.

Nature of Atheist/Theist Debate

One thing that bugs me to no end is the contrant atheist refrian "there's no evidence for god." What really gets me is people who deride my arguments. I sometimes feel like saying 'yea, but for God arguements they are pretty good." I mean come on, consider what they are. For proofs of nuceal fission they suck. But compared to other arguments for God they are pretty damn good. But I think atheists lose all criticial faculties and in the end are totally unable to think objectivley about God arguments.

I believe that it is not possible to be objective about evidence on a topic like this. Thus evidence is of no abail. We always conscutre evidence in likght of our pervious decisions about God.

There is a point to be made about the glass half empty/full. That usually is taken as donnoting pessimism or opimism but it goes with the atheist/theist debates too. If you can link that to pessimism/optimism I think it might be aprapoe. But be that as i may, the atheis sees the galss half empty, the theist half full. This is not meant in terms of negative/posative or pessimism/optimism but in terms of rational warrant. For the theist the warrant is rational if the chasim that the leap of faith must be traversed is half filled with warrant. But to the atheist the gap, however small, is isurrmoutable. Thus to the atheist there is no ponit in any warrent and the evidence is never adequate. To the theist evidence is more than adquate because they have already made the leap.

Can "Being Itself" be Personal?

The fundamental problem in understanding the "personal" nature of the ground of being is that our understanding of the problem is backwards to the truth of the solution. We think of God as "a being" because we are laden with the big guy in the sky Even those of us who feel we know better cannot help but draw an analogy between God's mind and the human mind. We can't help but think of God as thinking a we do. This is just a symptom of a deeper aspect of the problem; our understanding of what it means "to be." We think of "being" as just an abstraction of the concept of the verb "to be." Thus we look around us we say "I see that I am, I see that this object before me [my desk, my chair, my cup of coffee, whatever) Is, thus these are examples of what it is to be. We habitually think of being as punctual facts, "I am therefore I have 'to be.'" So for us being is an abstraction of the fact of existing. There is more to being than just the fact of things existing. The fact that something is can't be personal, nor can it be a conscious person. The fact that something is can't have a will or volition and it can't love me or you. But there is more to being than just the fact that something is.


First, Being is also an act. We are engaging in this act right now, even if we aren't moving. Rocks on the field that never change their relative position, and the stars in the sky that seem to be the most solidly fixed objects (even though relatively they do move) are all egging in an act as they sit apparently "motionless." That is to be, and the act of being is engaged in second by second. Moreover, Being is more than an act. We are looking at being existentially, that is to say--according to its appearance to us as a fact pertaining to existence -- but there are other ways to look at it. Paul Tallish, on the other hand, said explicitly (in Systematic Theology Vol. I) that Being Itself does not refer to an existential fact but to an ontological status. What is being said is not that God is the fact of the being of some particular object, but, that he is the basis upon which being proceeds and upon which objects participate in being? In other words, since God exists forever, nothing else can come to be without God's will or thought; and since there can't even be a potential for any being without God's thought, all potentialities for being arise in the "mind of God" then in that sense God is actually "Being Itself." I think "Ground of Being" is a less confusing term. God is the ground upon which all being is based and from which all being proceeds. The acts of being in which our individual lives engage flow out of that one primary eternal act which is God. The thing doing the action is NTO merely a fact, not merely an act, but an actor, a consciousness with will and volition. This consciousness forms the basis for all that is. God is The ultimate framework of reality, In that context God is the ground of being, and as such, God's will and volition and consciousness, such as it is, forms the agency through which subsequent acts of being can be.

It is the basic tension between the limitlessness of being (the infinite) Vs the limited nature of our own lives, the context in which our act of being are played out, that evokes the sense of the numinous; the basis of religious sensibilities. In this way we form the basis of our own religious nature. Atheists try to understand religion through the lends of empiricism, they cast it in the role of a primitive failed science; for them, religion exists as a failed explanation for why things work. But Clearly religion is much more than that, as I have documented elsewhere, mystical exprnice is at the center of all organized religion. The only real reason to believe is if and when and because God seems real to us. God becomes a reality in our lives, not because we can explain things, not because we need a crutch, but because we experience the power and presence of God. What we encounter in that power and presence is love. Those who encounter the power of God as a reality in their lives usually experience a sense of God's love. This experience can sometimes be so strong that it carries them on to spread love into the world. But it is foolish to think of an impersonal form of love that has no basis in reality. Love must be personal or it is not love. A mere force of attraction like magnetism cannot be called "love" beaus the very term implies will. Love = the will to the good of the other.

Several theologians, Tallish among them, have noticed a link between love and being. Joel Gravure's summary of Hans Urs Von Balthasar's Retrospecitiveof his theology (1988).

The meaning of being lies in love, and knowledge is only explainable through love and for love. The will which exists in the object to open itself and the will which exists in the knowing subject to open itself in receptivity are the double form of the surrender which manifests itself in these two ways. From this follows the insight that love is never separable from the truth. Just as little as there could be knowledge with the will, so also truth is hardly knowable without love.

Garver on Balthasar:

He starts with the philosophical wrangling of humanity: we recognize our own fainted and contingency as well as the contingency of the world of things around us—and yet we are aware of being itself as something absolute and unlimited. Various philosophical and theological attempts have been made at explaining the problem of being.

Some (such as Parminades) have tried to say that all things are infinite and immutable being, while others (such as Heraclitus) have said that everything is movement and becoming. The Parmenidean solution—which is also that of Buddhism and neo-Platonism—falters since anything finite must be non-being, an illusion to be discovered, and the One is attained only through mystical experience. The Heraclitean solution must end in contradiction, identifying life with death, wisdom with folly. We are left then with an inescapable dualism between finite and infinite, contingent and necessary, and so on.


In other words, Balthasar recognizes the link between love and being. That link is also the basis of knowledge, but all attempts to reconcile the sense of duality that emerges from the realization, outside of the Christian God have failed. The Christian God solves the problem through the Trinitarian solution, because God creates out a desire but not out of a need. Through Trinity God is self sufficient, containing both the other and the self at the same time. Thus, love, being, knowledge and community all wrapped up in one thing, and their place in world flows out of God's disbursement.

The basic link between love and being is marked by Tallish and John Mcquarrie as well: for both theologians the link is the giving nature of both love and being. Both being and love bestow upon the other; being bestows the act of being upon the beings, and bestows "the good" (the will for the what is best) upon the other. Both are active, they are "on" as opposed to off. When we think about the most basic distinction between being and nothingness, that would be the distinction between "on" and "off." On would be positive, there, acting, giving out, participatory, existent. Nothingness is "off," not being, non existence.
Nevertheless, we tend to ground our understanding of what being is in our experiences of what it is to be. We structure our sentences in such a way as to indicate that any particular thing is just one of many things existing along side one another in creation. I say that God is 'necessary being' not "a necessary being," not because I forgot the "a" but because God is not "a being." He is above the level of any particular being that participates in being, but exists on the level of the Being, the thing itself, apart from any particular beings. There is Being, and there is "the beings." This is a crucial distinction, but it leaves one wondering what it means and how it could be. What is being said here is not that God is some magical form of abstraction, but that God is the first, and highest and only necessary thing that exists, and thus, had God not created, God would be the only thing that exists? Could one somehow ponder a universe in which God had not created, in which God was all that was, one might well ask "what is it to be in this universe where there is only God?" In such a universe the only conceivable answer is "to be is to be God." In that sense God is Being Itself. In other words, the sense in which God is "being itself" is the sense in which all being is founded upon God as it' source and origin. God is the gate keeper of being, the foundation of Being.



The question is, was God more than just a Spinoza-like "ground of understanding" for Tillich? My reading of Tillich sees him as patterning his notions after the great Mystics of the Eastern church and that of Mraciea Eliade. Some readings see it as more of an impersonal principle. God is the "unbounded condition," "being itself," and being itself can't be "a person." Instead, Tallich calls God the personal itself. In other words, God is the ground of the personal, he basis upon consciousness can be found in the universe. We should not expect to recognize God as "a person" in the sense that we are persons, not with personality problems, and a limited persecutive of isolation and epistemological uncertainties, but this does not preclude the conscious. God would contain the basic structure of consciousness and thus would be able to have volition and personal awareness. This goes back to the problem with the way we understand being. Just as we think of being as the momentary individual instance of an existing thing, we think of consciousness as only the by product of an individual Brian for an individual organism. If consciousness is a basic property of nature than it might be "ground up" and shared by all "the beings" in differing degrees. In my own reading of Tillich's high theological parlance, and it's a matter of decoding a very dense set of terms, they do not so much reveal an impersonal foe as God, as they reveal an apophatic approach to understanding a view of God that embraces the mystical and cannot be defined according to human logic.This is similar to the Buddhist notion, Tillich's God is "neither a person nor a non person" (Buddhist = neither mind nor non-mind).
In answer to the question "can Being Itself Be understood as 'a personal being?" "No," because Being Itself is not "a being" and is not personal in the sense of human finitude. Now, does that mean that "it" (God = Being Itself) can't will, can't be motivated by volition and can't love? Tillich's view would allow for all of these, that Dionysius' view, that of Augustine and Luther and many others would allow for these things. God does love and does will. Tillich's langauge, while not really apophatic in the traditional sense I think is functioning in that way, rather than just being merely equivolcal. We cant' expalin everything. It would be foolish to pretend to explain everyhthing. Any theological view must speak to the faith concerns of the day without pretending to make God transparent. To that end Tillich must have a view which works within the mystery, and while shedding light, doesn't try to expose the mystery itself.He makes the point (Systematic Theology vol I) (p240) that religious symbol "has nothing to do with the empirical assertions involved in it, be they physical pschological, or historical." He goes on to say that a religious symbol must express a corrolation between the relation of the symbol and the thing it symbolizes and it is true if it adequately expresses the relation some person with final revelation. "Religious symbols are double edged, they are directed twoard the infinite which they symbolize and toward the finite through which they symbolize it." But than he says: as an example of the above, "If God is symbolized as father he is brought down to the relationship of father and child, but at the same time this human relationship is consecrated into a pattern of the divine human relationship."Than he begins to examine basic qualities or attributes and how they fit his notion of symbol.

"The basic ontological structure is transcendent in the divine life without providing symbolic material. God cannot be called a self, because the concept of self implies seperation from everything that is not self. God cannot be called the world even by implication. Both self and world are rooted in the divine life, but they cannot become symbolic for it...But the elements which constitute the basic ontological structure can become symbols because they do not speak of kinds of being (self and world) but of qualities of being which are valid in their proper sense when applied to all beings and which are valid in their proper sense when applied to Being ITself..."

Furthermore, he goes on right after this, still expliaining how these ontological forms can work when God trasncendes them, still speaking of the problem that God is not a person, but is he the ultaitme person itself, and he says:



"The Solution of the difficulties of the phrase "personal God" follows form this. Personal God does not mean that God is a person, it means that God is the ground of everything personal and that he carries within Himself the ontological ground of personality.He is not a person,But he is not less than personal"...and goes on... "God is the principle of individuation as well as the principle of participation.The divine life participates in every life as its ground and aim. God participates in everything that is..."(Ibid, 245)



Summary


HOw can being itself be consciuos, or "personal?" Being itself is more than just the fact of existence and more than indivudal act of existence, it is also the source of existnece; it is the foundation or basis upon which thigns come to be. That source is the personal itself, the bassi of consciousness, which is a basic property of nature. The nature of God's consciousness would ot appear as personality to us. We cannot be sure that God diliberates or indulges in ratiocentination, but can be relatively sure that God seeks to fulfill a will and a volition.