Doulos wrote:You are correct that I didn't put the full text, but rather a short statement which I felt was key. My laziness in typing there.

That claim of laziness is hard to believe, since you deleted the part of the sentence you quoted that undermined your assertion, giving the impression the Dictionary implied that most rather than some manuscript variance does not affect meaning. Your deletion, and your false use of the phrase 'immediately following' were in keeping with an apologetic agenda, not laziness.

A lot like you posting that initial text without context or citation

What is that supposed to mean? I gave a link to Murdock's post where it was cited. I then caught you out in your attempt to falsely rebut me through your selective quoting of context.

By the way Robert, since you place so much stock on the Interpreter's Dictionary of the Bible, I guess you're in agreement with the historical existance [sic] of Jesus and his believed ressurection [sic] which they lay out?

No, I am not in agreement with dogmatic interpretations. My use of this mainstream theological reference was simply to show that as they say "there are many thousands [of manuscript variants] which have a definite effect upon the meaning of the text." I am not placing 'so much stock' on this book, just using it as a reference to show that your claims about textual fidelity are baseless. There was probably far more political tampering with Christian doctrine in its early stages than we can easily prove, since the miraculous claims are impossible and the writers had a clear agenda to conceal and suppress their sources in order to promote simple belief in Jesus.

Plate tectonics. Black holes. Heavier than air flight. Many accepted theories and technologies began as wishful thinking.

That's confirmation bias. Of the three examples you mention that are positives, how many failed millions of wishful ideas aren't mentioned? Wishful thinking does not suffice. The examples came true not because of wishful thinking, but because the hypotheses have been verified by experiment. There are some excellent theories that I'm sure originated in a drug induced stupor, but their success is not due to the drug induced stupor. It is due to how closely the ideas match reality.

If you think it's reasonable that a belief system would manifest and be maintained orally with high fidelity in a short amount of time requires support. The mnemonic nature of orality doesn't change the fact that human memory is notoriously fallible. The cases where people memorize entire books is comparing apples to oranges.

How did the people who originally obtained the story commit it to memory? Did they take notes during Jesus' speeches so they could reproduce what he said verbatim decades later? If so, where are those notes? If destroyed, then why? These questions may be unanswerable, but that doesn't change the fact that they are pertinent and cast doubt on the claim.

Yes I do in fact. I believe in God. But, I may also state that, not only do I believe in God, I also believe in Christ and thusly put my faith and trust in him.

Interbane wrote:

Plate tectonics. Black holes. Heavier than air flight. Many accepted theories and technologies began as wishful thinking.

That's confirmation bias. Of the three examples you mention that are positives, how many failed millions of wishful ideas aren't mentioned? Wishful thinking does not suffice. The examples came true not because of wishful thinking, but because the hypotheses have been verified by experiment. There are some excellent theories that I'm sure originated in a drug induced stupor, but their success is not due to the drug induced stupor. It is due to how closely the ideas match reality.

If you think it's reasonable that a belief system would manifest and be maintained orally with high fidelity in a short amount of time requires support. The mnemonic nature of orality doesn't change the fact that human memory is notoriously fallible. The cases where people memorize entire books is comparing apples to oranges.

How did the people who originally obtained the story commit it to memory? Did they take notes during Jesus' speeches so they could reproduce what he said verbatim decades later? If so, where are those notes? If destroyed, then why? These questions may be unanswerable, but that doesn't change the fact that they are pertinent and cast doubt on the claim.

Wishful thinking alone may not suffice, but neither does one person's assertion that something is wishful thinking make it so in fact.

I would suggest that you read some of the books written on the subject before you comment on what is reasonable. Your idea that a "belief system would manifest and be maintained orally with high fidelity in a short amount of time" itself is part of the problem. Christianity did not emerge in a vacuum, but as part of pre-existing cultures of oral memory. Both the Greeks and Jews had strong histories and traditions of oral memory and fidelity. Human memory is fallible, yet it is also highly adaptive.

Robert Tulip wrote:

Doulos wrote:You are correct that I didn't put the full text, but rather a short statement which I felt was key. My laziness in typing there.

That claim of laziness is hard to believe, since you deleted the part of the sentence you quoted that undermined your assertion, giving the impression the Dictionary implied that most rather than some manuscript variance does not affect meaning. Your deletion, and your false use of the phrase 'immediately following' were in keeping with an apologetic agenda, not laziness.

The part of the sentence I deleted was, "XXX. Many thousands of these different readings are variants in orthography or grammar or style and have no effect upon the meaning of the text." Your previous post originated where I placed the XXX, so this was the sentence immediately following.

I find it fascinating that you keep returning to attacks on my character Robert. You speak a lot about ad hominem attacks, but you seem to return to them over and over in your own posts.

Robert Tulip wrote:

A lot like you posting that initial text without context or citation

What is that supposed to mean? I gave a link to Murdock's post where it was cited. I then caught you out in your attempt to falsely rebut me through your selective quoting of context.

You have may apologies on that one Robert. I just finished looking at your post Fri Oct 12, 2012 1:45 am, and forgot that you'd placed a citation on your previous post.

Robert Tulip wrote: By the way Robert, since you place so much stock on the Interpreter's Dictionary of the Bible, I guess you're in agreement with the historical existance [sic] of Jesus and his believed ressurection [sic] which they lay out?

No, I am not in agreement with dogmatic interpretations. My use of this mainstream theological reference was simply to show that as they say "there are many thousands [of manuscript variants] which have a definite effect upon the meaning of the text." I am not placing 'so much stock' on this book, just using it as a reference to show that your claims about textual fidelity are baseless. There was probably far more political tampering with Christian doctrine in its early stages than we can easily prove, since the miraculous claims are impossible and the writers had a clear agenda to conceal and suppress their sources in order to promote simple belief in Jesus.

So you only are in agreement with dogmatic statements which support your own viewpoint?

JFRobot wrote:Yes I do in fact. I believe in God. But, I may also state that, not only do I believe in God, I also believe in Christ and thusly put my faith and trust in him.

Amen JFR. Welcome to Booktalk

Thanks!

If I say yes , am a brainwashed fool.
If I say No , am a fool who think high of oneself.
with the resources and my limited knowledge , all i can say is
I don't know and I don't need to bother about it.

Actually, if you say that you don't believe in a supernatural creator or God you're a rational person. Believing in anything without evidence is the sign of a fool. Rejecting claims because of insufficient evidence is the sign of a rational and clear thinker. Saying, "I don't believe that claim because there isn't enough evidence supporting that claim" is NOT the equivalent of saying "Your claim is false." I'm not sure why this is a hard concept for many people to grasp.

Chris OConnor wrote:Saying, "I don't believe that claim because there isn't enough evidence supporting that claim" is NOT the equivalent of saying "Your claim is false." I'm not sure why this is a hard concept for many people to grasp.

Chris, you have described a key issue here regarding why debate about religion is so difficult. For believers, asking for evidence is the same as arguing their claims are false. The reason is that religious belief is not scientific, but is just a traditional acceptance of authority, a desire to accept claims that people would like to be true. If you hold this faith attitude, then anyone who links belief and evidence is automatically an atheist.

Evangelical preaching has a strongly rhetorical style, inculcating the teaching that doubt is from the devil. When people are primed with this psychology of suspicion that anyone who asks questions is a disloyal outsider who does not belong in their community, the logic of evidence becomes irrelevant, and has to be dismissed with emotional arguments.

Recent scholarship has shown that there is no evidence for the existence of Jesus Christ, and that the evolution of Christian faith is better explained by the hypothesis that Jesus was invented than by the traditional view of him as the founder of Christianity. This is an entirely shocking and impossible claim for Christian believers, since the myth of Jesus is at the foundation of their views about culture and community and morality.

Once one thread of a person's sense of identity is unpicked, the whole weave begins to unravel. So people have a strong psychological need to reject any idea that looks like it is picking at the threads of their faith. But since science is all about logic and evidence, only accepting demonstrable claims, that means conventional Christianity is simply incompatible with the scientific method.

Believers try to deny this hard fact of incompatibility with evidence by pretending that faith and reason are separate, but this whole framework unravels as soon as they try to use faith to justify claims of fact.