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The synoptics say 1 year. John (or whoever was writing using his name), if we use the number of Passover meals as a guide, expanded it to 3. Right there you have a gargantuan flaw that cannot be explained away, even by Mike. That's partly why John places Jesus throwing all the money changers out of the temple at the beginning of his gospel instead of at the end as the synoptics do.
You're making a mountain over a molehill. There is no flaw, and there is nothing to explain away. John's Gospel covers the three years of Jesus' ministry while the synoptic Gospels skip over much of His ministry. The Gospel writers had the right to choose what to include or exclude from their Gospels based on their objectives and purposes for writing the Gospel accounts.
You can think whatever you like about whether I actually "believe" or not. You might be right. I don't know God exists; I think God exists. (And am convinced that "God is love" is a true statement, either literally or metaphorically.)
"God is love" is my working hypothesis and my desire is to be aligned with that God, in my beliefs, thoughts and behaviors. I also trust, implicity, that a God who is love would desire to empower me to do just that, whether I know or believe beyond doubt at any given moment that God (literally) exists or not. Unless someone can show me why that's an unhealthy attitude or detrimental to me or others in any way, I'm going with it.
Ps. I put "God" and "spirit" and such in quotes when speaking with atheists out of respect for your right to unbelief, I guess. I seek common ground with those who honor love, whether they think God exists or not.
It just seems like you are trying so hard to cling to whatever you can, to still be considered a "god-believer", even if it is just metaphorically. Why? As defined by the dictionary:
a metaphor- is a figure of speech in which a term or phrase is applied to something to which it is not literally applicable in order to suggest a resemblance.
Why must you complicate love with this "god-is-love" hypothesis just because it is something you desire? And you say that you're just going to "go with" it (this belief) unless someone can show you it is detrimental? Doesn't the truth matter to you? Do you base your beliefs just on desire or upon being convinced by evidence? Believing that something exists should be independent of whether or not that belief could give you comfort or fulfill a desire. Either you are convinced by evidence that a particular god exists, or you are not convinced and you remain without belief (as a non-believer; atheist) until such time as you are provided with such. For instance, if I was convinced by evidence that a two headed tyrant god existed, I would have no choice but to believe that it existed, period....regardless of how much I hoped that it did not.
Love is love, the universe is the universe, your conscience is your conscience, and god is god. Let's call a spade a spade. God is considered to be an actual supernatural divine being to christians (in addition to "love"), and is not just a metaphor. They consider this Being to have reasoning abilities and relationships with people, and believe that he has performed actions such as creating the universe and killing off all inhabitants of the planet (except for a handful of people/animals ) in a flood, for example. So, when you come to a forum such as this claiming to believe in "god" yet it is only a metaphorical "god," it comes across (to me) as disingenuous. It is like someone going to a gay forum trying to discuss gay issues as a "gay" person, when in reality, you are just "happy" and not actually homosexual.
Sorry, if this has come across as rather harsh. I am sure that you are a caring, sincere, person and I am not really trying to focus on you specifically. I just wanted to address some of these issues in general to the forum "audience"/lurkers.
It just seems like you are trying so hard to cling to whatever you can, to still be considered a "god-believer", even if it is just metaphorically. Why? As defined by the dictionary:
a metaphor- is a figure of speech in which a term or phrase is applied to something to which it is not literally applicable in order to suggest a resemblance.
Why must you complicate love with this "god-is-love" hypothesis just because it is something you desire? And you say that you're just going to "go with" it (this belief) unless someone can show you it is detrimental? Doesn't the truth matter to you? Do you base your beliefs just on desire or upon being convinced by evidence? Believing that something exists should be independent of whether or not that belief could give you comfort or fulfill a desire. Either you are convinced by evidence that a particular god exists, or you are not convinced and you remain without belief (as a non-believer; atheist) until such time as you are provided with such. For instance, if I was convinced by evidence that a two headed tyrant god existed, I would have no choice but to believe that it existed, period....regardless of how much I hoped that it did not.
Love is love, the universe is the universe, your conscience is your conscience, and god is god. Let's call a spade a spade. God is considered to be an actual supernatural divine being to christians (in addition to "love"), and is not just a metaphor. They consider this Being to have reasoning abilities and relationships with people, and believe that he has performed actions such as creating the universe and killing off all inhabitants of the planet (except for a handful of people/animals ) in a flood, for example. So, when you come to a forum such as this claiming to believe in "god" yet it is only a metaphorical "god," it comes across (to me) as disingenuous. It is like someone going to a gay forum trying to discuss gay issues as a "gay" person, when in reality, you are just "happy" and not actually homosexual.
Sorry, if this has come across as rather harsh. I am sure that you are a caring, sincere, person and I am not really trying to focus on you specifically. I just wanted to address some of these issues in general to the forum "audience"/lurkers.
Responding to some of your thoughts in no particular order;
I told you from the get-go that I am a former Christian, so there would be no confusion along those lines. If you find it disingenuous that I don't kowtow to Christian doctrines when I told you I'm no longer a Christian, there's not much I can do about that.
I didn't claim to believe in "only" a metaphorical God. I think God exists -- that makes sense to me (except for the times it doesn't ), as does the idea that God is love.
I don't find the concept of a God who is love complicates love for me, so no worries there.
I don't find your post harsh, and I hope you don't find my response to be harsh either. We have very different perspectives, obviously, so we may not be able to communicate effectively abut this topic.
You simply do not even try to understand WHAT the products of our brain ARE as phenomena within the overall reality. You just consider them in some penumbra around what you consider the "real" reality. Until you do, you simply will never understand what we actually ARE, and subsequently what God IS.
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Originally Posted by mythunderstood
Why must you complicate love with this "god-is-love" hypothesis just because it is something you desire? And you say that you're just going to "go with" it (this belief) unless someone can show you it is detrimental? Doesn't the truth matter to you? Do you base your beliefs just on desire or upon being convinced by evidence? Believing that something exists should be independent of whether or not that belief could give you comfort or fulfill a desire. Either you are convinced by evidence that a particular god exists, or you are not convinced and you remain without belief (as a non-believer; atheist) until such time as you are provided with such. For instance, if I was convinced by evidence that a two headed tyrant god existed, I would have no choice but to believe that it existed, period....regardless of how much I hoped that it did not.
You seem to THINK you have a handle on truth in an area and about a subject that no such possibility exists. Your materialist blinders limit your perception and negate any possibility that you have truth on your side in this discussion.
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Love is love, the universe is the universe, your conscience is your conscience, and god is god. Let's call a spade a spade. God is considered to be an actual supernatural divine being to christians (in addition to "love"), and is not just a metaphor. They consider this Being to have reasoning abilities and relationships with people, and believe that he has performed actions such as creating the universe and killing off all inhabitants of the planet (except for a handful of people/animals ) in a flood, for example. So, when you come to a forum such as this claiming to believe in "god" yet it is only a metaphorical "god," it comes across (to me) as disingenuous. It is like someone going to a gay forum trying to discuss gay issues as a "gay" person, when in reality, you are just "happy" and not actually homosexual.
You seem trapped in the primitive and barbaric nonsense that Pleroo escaped. Although it could just be that you simply want to attack that nonsense instead of engaging Pleroo in intelligent discussion. You will find she is quite capable.
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Sorry, if this has come across as rather harsh. I am sure that you are a caring, sincere, person and I am not really trying to focus on you specifically. I just wanted to address some of these issues in general to the forum "audience"/lurkers.
As I suspected, you sought a soapbox for attacking the absurd and ridiculous primitive and barbaric beliefs instead of engaging in intelligent discourse about God.
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Originally Posted by Pleroo
Responding to some of your thoughts in no particular order;
I told you from the get-go that I am a former Christian, so there would be no confusion along those lines. If you find it disingenuous that I don't kowtow to Christian doctrines when I told you I'm no longer a Christian, there's not much I can do about that.
You were simply a foil for attacking the absurd beliefs you escaped from, Pleroo.
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I didn't claim to believe in "only" a metaphorical God. I think God exists -- that makes sense to me (except for the times it doesn't ), as does the idea that God is love.
I don't find the concept of a God who is love complicates love for me, so no worries there.
I don't find your post harsh, and I hope you don't find my response to be harsh either. We have very different perspectives, obviously, so we may not be able to communicate effectively abut this topic.
It is more that mythunderstood desires to attack the primitive and barbaric nonsense in religions and NOT communicate intelligently about God.
Will you take that one, Raffs or shall I ? I'm rapidly running out of eyerolling Icons, but the pitiful level of apologetics...
You can have it old thing. When it comes to MysticMeg's post I usually have a good stock of these at hand.... ...because frankly, I don't know what the hell he's waffling about most of the time.
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Originally Posted by Mike555
Not magic. You were given the answer to your question as to how John could remember the details. As Jesus has stated, the Holy Spirit would bring to remembrance all that He had taught them (John 1:26).
Yes, as I said...magic.
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The Gospel writers say otherwise. The Gospel of John claims to have been written by the disciple whom Jesus loved who had leaned on Jesus' breast at the last supper.
'Claims' that are not supported by evidence are worthless.
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And Luke writes at the beginning of his Gospel account of the things which had been handed down by those who had been eyewitnesses from the beginning (Luke 1:1-2). Luke himself had not been an eyewitness, but he was alive at the time that eyewitness's to Jesus were still alive, and he had the opportunity to interview them.
Then Luke is not an eye-witness. An eyewitness is someone that actually witnesses the event. If I tell you that my friend told me that he saw an alien life-form under his bed, that doesn't make me an eye-witness to the alien life form. Luke was not an eye-witness because he did not witness the events he is describing. In addition to that. You can't even be that what he wrote was reliable. How do you know that ....
1. The people that he spoke to were giving hime the true story and not exaggerating or even making it up.
2. He truthfully related what he was told without alteration, exaggeration or that he didn't just make it up.
The mainstream scholarly view is that the Gospels are anonymous works, written in a different language than that of Jesus and his gang, in distant lands, after a substantial gap of time, by unknown persons, compiling, redacting, and inventing various traditions, in order to provide a narrative of Christianity’s central figure–Jesus Christ–to confirm the faith of their communities....and I would vote for that view too.
And about the authorship of 1John
The anonymous voice of 1 John was identified with the author of the Fourth Gospel by the end of the second century CE … Since the Gospel was attributed to the apostle John, the son of Zebedee, early Christians concluded that he had composed 1 John near the end of his long life … Modern scholars have a more complex view of the development of the Johannine community and its writings. The opening verses of 1 John employ a first person plural “we” … That “we” probably refers to a circle of teachers faithful to the apostolic testimony of the Beloved Disciple and evangelist. A prominent member of that group composed this introduction.
[The following are snippets I have filched from various books and documents that I have which I have gathered together.]
As such, it is not unusual for scholars to doubt the traditional authorship of the Gospels, considering that the authorial attributions of the other anonymous books in the New Testament are also in considerable dispute.
The internal anonymity of the Gospels is even acknowledged by many apologists and conservative scholars, such as Craig Blomberg, who states in 'The Case For Christ' (pg 22) - It’s important to acknowledge that strictly speaking, the gospels are anonymous.
So, immediately one type of evidence that we lack for the Gospels is their authors identifying themselves within the body of the text. The titles that come down in our manuscripts of the gospels do not explicitly claim M, M, L, J as their authors. Instead, the Gospels have an abnormal title convention, where they use 'according to' or 'handed down from', followed by the traditional names... the Gospel according to Matthew. The titles operate more as placeholder names, where the Gospels have been 'handed down' by church traditions affixed to names of figures in the early church, rather than the author being clearly identified
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Since the oldest extant writing of the apostolic church fathers is 1st Clement (c. A.D. 96), one wouldn't expect to find any writings mentioning the Gospels before that time. As mentioned below, while Clement didn't refer to any of the four Gospel accounts by name, he did state that the apostles received the Gospel from Jesus.
Strange indeed that he didn't quote from them. Of course, we know why.
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Of the four Gospels, John's is the only one that states that the writer was an eyewitness.
Then shall we throw the other three out as they can't be trusted?
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Most scholars believe John to be the disciple referred to as the disciple whom Jesus loved who was the author of the Gospel of John.
Actually most scholars agree that the gospel authors are unknown.
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Since the early Church does affirm that Matthew, Mark, and Luke were the writers of the synoptic Gospels, and since there is no competing tradition which denies that, ...
..but there is. The consensus of NT scholars say that the gospels were not written by those who's names they bear. The fact that, as you yourself concede, the first church fathers who allude to or quote the texts for nearly a century after their composition do so anonymously is very good evidence that the documents had no titles and that the titles were later additions (most likely after the mid-2nd century CE). The names only appear later, which is the evidence to be expected if the Gospels first circulated anonymously, and were only given their authorial attributions in a subsequent period. Likewise, even when the later titles were added, the attributions were listed only as 'according to'the names affixed to each text, which still entails considerable ambiguity about their authors.
[End of snippets from my documents.]
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...and since the early church could have picked better names to attach to the Gospels if indeed Matthew, Mark, and Luke were not the actual writers, it is safe to assume that they were indeed the author's of those Gospel accounts even if most modern critical scholars don't agree.
LOL! That is a pathetic attempt at apologetics. 'The church would have picked better names so that proves that M.M.L.J did write the gospels'. Madre mia! What skewed logic!
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It's a matter of whether you are willing to believe the testimony of the early Church.
You know that I don't. Just as I (or you) wouldn't believe the testimony of a Ford car salesman when he tells us that a Ford would be the best car to buy.
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While Clement didn't mention the four Gospel accounts, he did state that the apostles received the Gospel from Jesus Christ.
Then he didn't mention the four gospel accounts them which is what I said.
The rest of your post is your usual circular reasoning of quoting the Church or the Bible to support your claims.
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And that really makes bothering with you a waste of time. And therefore, this conversation has gone on long enough.
So you keep saying ...but you keep responding with a wall of circular logic. The only 'evidence' you ever produce is the propaganda of the Church or the Bible. As verifiable evidence it fails miserably.
Opportunist I doubt that anyone thinks I am slinking away.
It is simple,anyway. What is believable or not believable is so on its own merits and whether they believed it or not, then and really the literary mindset then is utterly irrelevant. Indeed that was such a non -argument, I wonder yo even bothered to post it.
John is indeed a reliable guide to what the disciples taught. I am aware of the reasons why many doubt the historicity of John, but those reasons don't hold up. It wasn't John's intent to go into detail about what the other three Gospels had already stated. Therefore he included information that the other Gospel writers chose not to write about while not including a lot of what the other Gospel writers did include in their Gospel accounts. Further, none of the Gospel writers were concerned with writing in strict chronological order. They often wrote thematically. John was also more interested in affirming and defending Jesus' divinity then the other Gospel writers were.
For anyone who may be interested, Craig L. Blomberg has a book called The Historical Reliability of John's Gospel, Issues & Commentary.
John is indeed not a reliable guide to anything. And excuses to explain away glaring contradictions that blow his credibility away will not save him, And neither will evasions about strict chronological order excuse the blatant fiddling of text or (for example)John's dishonest attempt to cover up the significance of the temple cleansing.. I have seen some of the apologetics for that and they only make the apologists look as dishonest as John.
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What you have been given is proof that in Jewish thought, before, during, and after the time of Jesus, whether resurrection was believed or rejected as was the case with the Sadducees, resurrection was always though of as a physical, bodily, resurrection. This included the disciples of Jesus who at the time He told them, could not understand that He would be killed and then rise again bodily the third day. And I have already shown, to anyone who bothered to read my post, that Paul also thought in terms of a bodily resurrection. That's why I went to the time and trouble of making that post, which apparently was a waste of time.
Jesus was physically, bodily resurrected. This is shown both in the Gospels and in Paul's writings.
I am aware of the Jewish idea of bodily resurrection. I am also aware -as you are - of the idea of an impalpable non - solid holy spirit. And I don't need to explain any further if you are unable to see where that fits into the gospels and Paul, even from memory.
I need hardly comment on quoting what the gospels say in order to prove what they say is true.
You will have to do better than that to try to make those contradictory resurrection accounts look anything other than invented stories to fill a gap left by a non -event that later Christians felt ought to be an event.
P.s Your respinse is pretty much the same. Excuses and magic to explain why the gospels are full of contradictions. It is remarkable that a holy spirit putting a correct story into their heads couldn't get it straight between even two of them.
They were making much of it up, old son, and "Oh of course you won't believe it" doesn't make the gospel case look any better.
Last edited by TRANSPONDER; 09-19-2016 at 01:57 AM..
John is indeed not a reliable guide to anything. And excuses to explain away glaring contradictions that blow his credibility away will not save him,
Indeed so old cabbage. Mike already concedes that Matthew and Mark are not eye-witness accounts so all we need to deal with is John and Luke.
Something that screams that 'John' was not the author of g.John is that John couldn't have written a complex narrative in Greek.
William Harris notes:
'The likely overall illiteracy of the Roman Empire under the principate is almost certain to have been above 90%.” Of the remaining tenth, only a few could read and write well, and even a smaller fraction could author complex prose works like the Gospels.' Ancient Literacy (pg. 22)
The language and style of the Gospel of John contradicts the claim that it was written by John. Based on its complex Greek composition, the author of this gospel had advanced literacy and training in the Greek language. Yet, John was a poor, rural peasant from Galilee, who spoke Aramaic. In a world where literary training was largely restricted to a small fraction of rich, educated elite, it's just plain dumb to suggest that an Aramaic-speaking Galilean peasant could author a complex Greek gospel.
Furthermore, in Acts4:13, John is even explicitly identified as being illiterate...
'Now when they saw the boldness of Peter and John, and perceived that they were unlearned and ignorant men, they marvelled; and they took knowledge of them, that they had been with Jesus.'
So even evidence within the NT itself would not identify John as being an author of a complex narrative written in Greek.
I think we can safely close this argument by concluding that:
1. John was not the author of the gospel that bears his name and therefore, g. John cannot be considered as John's eye-witness account.
2. Luke is simply repeating what others told him and is therefore, not an eye-witness account.
Daft apologetics that claim that an account written by someone that wasn't there, are eye-witness accounts because they relay what alleged eye-witnesses are alleged to have said are...well, daft!
...and then there is the evidence of plagiarising. We know that gM. gM. gL are copying each other for their information. Matthew filches from as much as 80% of the verses in the Gospel of Mark, and Luke filches from 65%. The mind can only boggle at the apologetics employed to explain why an alleged eye-witness (Matthew) would need to crib 80% of his story from someone that wasn't there and who saw nothing (Mark)!!
So my old walnut. As we have shown that none of the gospels were written by eye-witnesses, shall we go down the pub?You might be interested in this for some bedtime reading. I doubt Mike would.
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), as does the idea that God is love. 
? I'm rapidly running out of eyerolling Icons, but the pitiful level of apologetics...
