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Because,if God is claimed to be in control, you would expect it to be less of a mess than it is. The Woman taken in adultery is just one example. Luke mixing up his material, the odd need for four separate gospels, the contradiction of the Nativity and resurrection accounts, the misinterpretation and even misquoting of OT script makes it look like the work of fallible men, without any god in control.
Because,if God is claimed to be in control, you would expect it to be less of a mess than it is. The Woman taken in adultery is just one example. Luke mixing up his material, the odd need for four separate gospels, the contradiction of the Nativity and resurrection accounts, the misinterpretation and even misquoting of OT script makes it look like the work of fallible men, without any god in control.
From my perspective, nothing of this matters. It's just a (flimsy) excuse for men not to believe.
Inevitably. But I cannot leave it with the hint of 'My opinion is a valid as yours' because I can give a truckload of examples of why John and the Synoptics too, do not stack up as reports of what Jesus said or did or of who he was. You just have Faith.
It's just a (flimsy) excuse for men not to believe.
If you had never heard of the bible before and went to college and signed up for an "Enlightenment to Religion"...and heard all this for the first time you would have laughed out loud.
'Interesting' is something at any rate and persuasion or conviction is something that can only come with a real willingness to question, rather than find one or other reason to shrug it off. I'd be happy to discuss it more, but it's off - topic here, or at least clogging up the thread. And you saw what happened last time. The guy I was debating with just ignored everything I'd said and started trying to get cheap points by denouncing my writing - style to the moderators.
A pity.
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Originally Posted by AREQUIPA
The common message of the epistles and the Gospels is that the law, the Mosaic law, is not going to save anyone. It is only Faith in Jesus that can do that.
I think it's a bit more than that, that's almost a specifically Protestant interpretation of the Gospels. Jesus in the Gospels does speak of trying to reach Jews first and the value of certain Jewish laws. He is also much more about actions than Paul is, not just about having faith in him.
Mark 10:19 "You know the commandments: Do not commit adultery, do not kill, do not steal, bear not false witness, do no fraud, honour your father and mother."
Matthew 10:5 "These twelve Jesus sent: commanding them, saying: Go not into the way of the Gentiles, and into the city of the Samaritans enter not. But go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel."
Matthew 25:33-37 "And he shall set the sheep on his right hand, but the goats on his left. Then shall the king say to them that shall be on his right hand: Come, you blessed of my father, possess you the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. For I was hungry, and you gave me to eat: I was thirsty, and you gave me to drink: I was a stranger, and you took me in: Naked, and you covered me: sick, and you visited me: I was in prison, and you came to me."
Luke 10:25-28 "And behold a certain lawyer stood up, tempting him and saying, Master, what must I do to possess eternal life? But he said to him: What is written in the law? How do you read it? He answering, said: You shall love the Lord your God with your whole heart and with your whole soul and with all your strength and with all your mind: and your neighbour as yourself. And he said to him: You have answered right. This do: and you shall live."
There are also verses where Jesus seems to say worship should not be directed solely at him as a Man.
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Originally Posted by AREQUIPA
It's what Romans is all about. The gospels go even further than Paul in attacking the law (sabbath observance, ritual cleanliness, kosher food). I would observe that, though Paul begins by saying how important the Law is and the Jews as recipients of the law, he spend the rest of the epistle saying that being a Jew is no advantage and the law doesn't help. Paul is a crafty herbert. The later epistles go further. The Law was given to increase sin so Jesus could make a more spectacular job of saving.
Paul is a bit hard to understand and seems to go rather far at times. Non-Paul epistles seem to do more to emphasize the value of works and Acts actually maintains some Jewish traditions.
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Originally Posted by AREQUIPA
The Gospels convey to me a more hostile view of Judaism than Paul's
In some ways, but I think in many ways it seems to be a hostility to Sadducees and Pharisees than Judaism in general. That most modern Judaism descends from those could seem to make it translate to being Anti-Judaism, but at that time Judaism was a bit more in flux.
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Originally Posted by AREQUIPA
I'm afraid that you can't dismiss it by references to Nazi - neo Marcianism.
I wasn't intending to dismiss by relation to Nazis. My point was that a total rejection of Jewish books or ideas is clearly rejected in early Christianity. Christian efforts to "cleanse the faith" of anything Judaic extend to modern times, but always fail and are deemed heterodox.
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Originally Posted by AREQUIPA
I say look at the gospels themselves with an open mind and you'll see for yourself that they are full of examples of what I say and to reject that is just the old ploy of dismissing evidence and then saying that there isn't any.
This is disappointing. I generally find you one of the smartest atheists here but "if you read with an open mind you'll agree with me and if you don't agree with me than you must not have read with an open mind or have some other damage." If your views were so obvious they would be much more common in non-Christian writing on the NT than I think they are in reality.
If you had never heard of the bible before and went to college and signed up for an "Enlightenment to Religion"...and heard all this for the first time you would have laughed out loud.
I'm not sure that is so. I've heard odd myths not of my religion, but they don't necessarily make me laugh. They mean things to people and I think I try to have some respect for cultures.
However even if it was so that's not really all that significant. When I first heard the story about "If you put one twin on a ship going light-speed while the other stays on Earth, the twin on the ship will be a different age when he returns then the twin who stayed on Earth" I thought it was so obviously wrong I wondered why anyone believed it. However it's physics and it's real.
If I told you the details of the Tai'Ping Rebellion or the War of the Triple Alliance involving Paraguay or several other historic events they might strike you as the most preposterous things you ever heard. It doesn't change the fact they are actual events in history. The world or reality doesn't revolve around not doing whatever you or I think is laughable.
If you had never heard of the bible before and went to college and signed up for an "Enlightenment to Religion"...and heard all this for the first time you would have laughed out loud.
True. Without the enlightenment of the Holy Spirit, one will never "get" Holy Scripture.
Inevitably. But I cannot leave it with the hint of 'My opinion is a valid as yours' because I can give a truckload of examples of why John and the Synoptics too, do not stack up as reports of what Jesus said or did or of who he was. You just have Faith.
It's fascinating that you would take the opportunity in this particular thread to quote the New Testament, which was unknown to Matthew and Mark (at least; John may never have existed and Luke may not have been Jewish), since it wasn't written until long after their deaths.
True. Without the enlightenment of the Holy Spirit, one will never "get" Holy Scripture.
Like I said...I tried for nearly forty years and I do not believe in ghosts, holy or otherwise.
The Internet is providing the "beginning of the end" for all of primitive mankind's BS. Not a bit too soon if one asks me.
There is either:
1) No invisible man in the sky salivating for a chance to judge and punish his own creatures.
2) One who doesn't give a big rat's arse about the parasitic life forms on this one in a hundred billion plus planets.
Anybody with one iota of good sense and reasonable thinking ability could have come up with something ten times better than the fabrications and outright lies in the bible.
I'm an agnostic...I don't know and you don't either!
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and persuasion or conviction is something that can only come with a real willingness to question, rather than find one or other reason to shrug it off. I'd be happy to discuss it more, but it's off - topic here, or at least clogging up the thread. And you saw what happened last time. The guy I was debating with just ignored everything I'd said and started trying to get cheap points by denouncing my writing - style to the moderators.
