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I am at a loss to understand where or how you acquired this faulty view that relativism and philosophical naturalism are poisonous. They are simply non-theistic views of existence grounded in our experience of this physical world. Given the automatic conditioning of physical existence, it seems unavoidable without some experiential basis to question it.
You have already identified the poison yourself when you rightly labelled them as "non-theistic". Belief in the existence of immaterial reality has always been ubiquitous to the human experience. Relativism and philosophical naturalism are irrational.
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Originally Posted by MysticPhD
What seems utterly irrational and unnatural to me is the concept of a wrathful and vengeful Creator to whom we are disobedient "filthy rags" because of His Supreme Holiness (whatever that really is in your mind).
Pointless to refute your straw man as I would not represent my position that way at all.
You are not a Catholic because you don't believe Jesus rose from the dead, and the inconsistency and moral degeneracy of many of its leaders scandalizes you.
Now what don't I understand?
The way you come across to others who are different than you.
The way you come across to others who are different than you.
Well we've addressed this before, and I've already made it clear that my purpose here is to challenge and be challenged. It is not to conform to your sensibilities, beat around the bush, or placate anyone's moods and emotions.
What I type and post are dispassionate words on a screen. The "tone" in which you take them is on you.
Now were we to meet face to face, you might be surprised at what you encountered - as indeed might I.
I am at a loss to understand where or how you acquired this faulty view that relativism and philosophical naturalism are poisonous. They are simply non-theistic views of existence grounded in our experience of this physical world. Given the automatic conditioning of physical existence, it seems unavoidable without some experiential basis to question it.
What seems utterly irrational and unnatural to me is the concept of a wrathful and vengeful Creator to whom we are disobedient "filthy rags" because of His Supreme Holiness (whatever that really is in your mind).
Quote:
Originally Posted by EscAlaMike
You have already identified the poison yourself when you rightly labelled them as "non-theistic". Belief in the existence of immaterial reality has always been ubiquitous to the human experience. Relativism and philosophical naturalism are irrational.
Talk about getting the rational and the irrational backward!!
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Pointless to refute your straw man as I would not represent my position that way at all.
Really? You actually believe God kicked us out of some paradise because we disobeyed Him about some fruit (which actually was an allegorical reference to learning about Good and Evil). You believe that we somehow acquired and inherited some original"sin" (or sin nature) because of it. This supposedly makes us so obnoxious and disgusting to God and His Holiness that His Son had to be scourged and crucified to cleanse us and make us acceptable IF we believe in Him. If that is not what you believe please clarify.
You asked: "why didn't Mark tell us it was necessary to believe in Jesus to be saved?"
Firstly; I don't necessarily concede the premise of your question, as I would take the first verse as an admonishment to believe.
The whole point of the Gospels is not necessarily to instruct on how to attain salvation per se, but rather to narrate the events of the life of Jesus. As I said, they are biographies and not theological treatises.
Where in any of Mark does it even suggest you have to believe in Jesus to be saved?
Well we've addressed this before, and I've already made it clear that my purpose here is to challenge and be challenged. It is not to conform to your sensibilities, beat around the bush, or placate anyone's moods and emotions.
What I type and post are dispassionate words on a screen. The "tone" in which you take them is on you.
Now were we to meet face to face, you might be surprised at what you encountered - as indeed might I.
And yet you don't like it when I challenge one of your posts.
I'm not putting anything in the Bible to question. I'm putting Harry's speculative assumptions to question.
They are not assumptions, they are based on what we know about the Romans, and their fear of the dead being disturbed. The Romans had a major problem with grave robbery.
Since Mike Way has said he is divorcing himself from the thread I'll go ahead and address this to you...
One of the more reasonable non supernatural explanations to the idea that the apostles saw the risen Jesus is one that indicates that Jesus (as a real person) was some sort of Social Justice Warrior who was executed by the Romans/Jews (or both).
The resurrection was symbolic in that it allowed Jesus to continue to be the leader of the movement and allowed the movement to continue on `despite the loss of its leader.
Apologists would argue that the apostles would not have allowed themselves to be martyred if Jesus really hadn't physically risen from the grave. However, that notion is somewhat simplistic.
Dying for a cause is not unusual or infrequent. If they indeed were martyred, it could have been that they died for Jesus' "cause"...
The other thing is that apologists act like these apostles would have simply been let go if they said..."no, Jesus didn't rise from the dead." Like the Romans would have said. "Ok, you can go now. Everything is good." That is a fanciful notion. Especially after Nero started the persecutions.
It stands to reason that along the way the figurative resurrection became interpreted as being literal as the movement grew more remote in time from Jesus' actual death. In fact it is possible that there was enough time between his death and the writing of the gospels for this to have occurred.
Surely this transformation of figurative to literal resurrection would have naturally occurred with converts far away from the events in Judea in both distance and time.
Reading what I have about other men-gods in the myth pantheon I have noticed that nearly all of them started as disembodied beings who along the way were made human. It's just a natural progression of mythology that what starts off spiritual gradually becomes human over the decades and centuries. It was no different with Jesus. Paul thought of Jesus as a celestial angel and the writers of the gospels decades later placed this angel into a human body to make him more "human"---more accessible to other humans. But as one docu I was watching said, "Take away Jesus and you have to take away the apostles because the latter could not exist without the former. That pretty much clinches it for me: no Jesus and no apostles.
I have presented a lot of material over the course of this thread that many would think pretty much proves Jesus wasn't real, but I have only presented less than half of what I have. When you put the amount I have presented and have yet to present against the Christian's pitiful one little Josephus interpolated-riddled passage as proof of Jesus, I think it becomes an open and shut case of the Jesus of the gospels never having existed.
Reading what I have about other men-gods in the myth pantheon I have noticed that nearly all of them started as disembodied beings who along the way were made human. It's just a natural progression of mythology that what starts off spiritual gradually becomes human over the decades and centuries. It was no different with Jesus. Paul thought of Jesus as a celestial angel and the writers of the gospels decades later placed this angel into a human body to make him more "human"---more accessible to other humans. But as one docu I was watching said, "Take away Jesus and you have to take away the apostles because the latter could not exist without the former. That pretty much clinches it for me: no Jesus and no apostles.
I have presented a lot of material over the course of this thread that many would think pretty much proves Jesus wasn't real, but I have only presented less than half of what I have. When you put the amount I have presented and have yet to present against the Christian's pitiful one little Josephus interpolated-riddled passage as proof of Jesus, I think it becomes an open and shut case of the Jesus of the gospels never having existed.
Okay, so let's see. Here's a question for everyone reading the thread: has thrillobyte proven his point and it's an open and shut case that the Jesus of the gospels never existed?
I vote no. thrillobyte has not proven his point. I personally think the evidence for Jesus is minimal, and I believe there was a Jesus who probably taught at least some of what the New Testament suggests...without all the 'magic', but thrillobyte has not proven his posit (and neither have the chrsitians).
Who else would like to vote?
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