Can We Have a Bible Thread? (Catch-All?)

I think it's actually impossible to arrange the dominoes of creation in such a way that they fall in a completely designed sequence until the end of days. But that obviously goes back to the logic problem of omnipotence.

complexmath wrote:

I think it's actually impossible to arrange the dominoes of creation in such a way that they fall in a completely designed sequence until the end of days. But that obviously goes back to the logic problem of omnipotence.

I don't agree with this view of God, but wouldn't it logically follow that an infinitely powerful computer could solve infinitely complex problems.

Not really... Non-deterministic Polynomial Time Complete problems, while not infinite, could exceed the functional lifetime of the universe in time to complete. That is, everything would be reduced to a homogenous cloud of particles with minimal energy before it was completed.

I think it's actually impossible to arrange the dominoes of creation in such a way that they fall in a completely designed sequence until the end of days.

In a deterministic scenario, it's the initial conditions that define every other state during the lifetime of the universe. From that perspective, there's no need to "arrange"; it all falls out from first principles.

Robear wrote:

Not really... Non-deterministic Polynomial Time Complete problems, while not infinite, could exceed the functional lifetime of the universe in time to complete. That is, everything would be reduced to a homogenous cloud of particles with minimal energy before it was completed.

True, but my initial comparison had an infinitely powerful computer doing the solving, not an exceedingly vast but finite functional lifetime of the universe.

Hint: You really shouldn't think about infinity that way, it doesn't work right.

Hypatian wrote:

Hint: You really shouldn't think about infinity that way, it doesn't work right. :)

I think that has been my point all along.

Hypatian, were you referring to me?

Robear wrote:
I think it's actually impossible to arrange the dominoes of creation in such a way that they fall in a completely designed sequence until the end of days.

In a deterministic scenario, it's the initial conditions that define every other state during the lifetime of the universe. From that perspective, there's no need to "arrange"; it all falls out from first principles.

Yeah I understand the argument, but I remain skeptical that from the initial state of the universe it would be possible to predict, say, that I would stay up too late gaming one night, doze off at the wheel the next day and crash my car, and not only that but the exact instant and all relevant parameters of that event. It's easy to wave one's hands and say "yes it's a tremendously complex equation" but I dunno. I suppose that's part of why I fall on the side of free will as opposed to pre-determination.

ComplexMath wrote:

I suppose that's part of why I fall on the side of free will as opposed to pre-determination.

Well, then, you don't believe God is all-knowing. That's fine. Lots of people agree with you.

In that sense, the more direct conflict is not free will vs predetermination but non-predetermination vs. predetermination. "Free will" there is simply independent human agency as expressed in a non-predetermined framework. Independent human agency can still exist in a predetermined framework depending on how you define "independent." As has been pointed out, just because you know your friend is about to make a horrible mistake doesn't mean he loses agency.

So um, Easter was this past Sunday. Another celebration of the theology du jour taking themes from that which came before. Kind of like lauding a chef for "inventing" the kobe slider.

Well, it would be a poor religion that didn't keep a lot of traditions from earlier ones. Judaism contains elements of several others from the area (Canaanite, Babylonian, probably Egyptian) and Christianity of course derives from Judaism. It's no surprise that we keep holidays that seem to be commemorated on Neolithic monuments...

Robear wrote:

Well, it would be a poor religion that didn't keep a lot of traditions from earlier ones. Judaism contains elements of several others from the area (Canaanite, Babylonian, probably Egyptian) and Christianity of course derives from Judaism. It's no surprise that we keep holidays that seem to be commemorated on Neolithic monuments...

Well that is until the same miracles, act, or traditions connect to a dozen or so gods; and people want to take that literally as history. God is held to a lesser standard of creativity than film critics hold James Cameron.

Or is Jesus like the divine Deadpool?

For me, all of the magic and miracles lose a lot of punch as you read the same things from Gilgamesh, Greece, Scandanavia, etc. This all powerful being is just doing the same stuff in myths and stories from previous centuries. It is like a paintover.

But maybe some folks prefer to read Perry Haughter and the Scorcher's Stones.

C'mon KG, you know that all those myths of other gods was just the devil trying to confuse the truth.

Can I change to Perry Haughter and the Scorched Scones? I think that has better legs.

Did I miss the point where we changed this thread to Mock Religion Catch-all?

Yeah, I thought this was about Bible stuff. Seriously. We do enough bashing already.

Nomad wrote:

Did I miss the point where we changed this thread to Mock Religion Catch-all? ;)

I am a little salty with the aftermath of Google putting Cesar Chavez on the front page, some of it was funny, some was just more war on religion kind of stuff. Not to mention a week on Christian values and Traditional marriage in the wake of the Supreme Court arguments, and 2 nifty abortion bills.

A little salty might be an understatement.

Interesting blog article starts a series on John the Baptist. Has a nice sidebar on one good reason to believe Jesus was born in August or September. The author is a professor of Christian origins and ancient Judaism, and currently chair of the Religious Studies department at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte.

Jesus near his thirtieth birthday joined the crowds that were streaming out to hear John. He traveled from Nazareth down to the Jordan, along this very route, to be baptized by John in the Jordan River (Mark 1:9). By such a response he was publicly joining and endorsing the revival movement John had sparked. As he was coming up out of the water he too heard the Voice, also from Isaiah, but a different text about a different figure: “You are my servant whom I uphold, my chosen one in whom my soul delights” (Isaiah 42:1). Matthew turned this “voice” into a public announcement from heaven—“This is my beloved son in whom I am well pleased,” while Mark, preserving an earlier more authentic tradition knows this as a voice that Jesus heard—not one the crowds heard (Matthew 3:17; Mark 1:11). It is significant that the Old Syriac version of Matthew still preserves the original reading: “You are my son my beloved in whom I have been pleased,” further attesting to Mark’s authenticity.[vi] We cannot be certain of the precise nature of this revelation, and whether it is something that came suddenly to Jesus at this moment, or something for which he had prepared himself along the way. What we can say is that from the time of Jesus’ baptism he was ready to take his destined place alongside John as a full partner in the Baptizing movement. Together they were prepared to face whatever lay ahead in the prophetic roles to which each believed he was called.

Fascinating stuff.

Yeah, James Tabor. He's part of The Jesus Project, and I believe one of the few who is still defending the authenticity of the James ossuary (and most notably the "brother of Jesus" inscription) from a few years back (which turned out to be a hoax). He seems to be engaging heavily unwarranted conjecture, wrapped up in the William F Albright method of biblical archaeology, where presuppositions come first, and the facts only matter if they seem to support their worldview.

Nicholaas wrote:

Yeah, James Tabor. He's part of The Jesus Project, and I believe one of the few who is still defending the authenticity of the James ossuary (and most notably the "brother of Jesus" inscription) from a few years back (which turned out to be a hoax). He seems to be engaging heavily unwarranted conjecture, wrapped up in the William F Albright method of biblical archaeology, where presuppositions come first, and the facts only matter if they seem to support their worldview.

Nic and I agree on this believe it or not.

Nomad wrote:
Nicholaas wrote:

Yeah, James Tabor. He's part of The Jesus Project, and I believe one of the few who is still defending the authenticity of the James ossuary (and most notably the "brother of Jesus" inscription) from a few years back (which turned out to be a hoax). He seems to be engaging heavily unwarranted conjecture, wrapped up in the William F Albright method of biblical archaeology, where presuppositions come first, and the facts only matter if they seem to support their worldview.

Nic and I agree on this believe it or not. :)

*checks for flying pigs, cats and dogs living together, Satan complaining about the cold*

Well, what did you think of his John the Baptist post? I found it interesting.

We had a big talk about evidence in church today. How history isn't about proof, but it's definitely about taking evidence and deciding what is reasonable to believe based on that evidence.

The pastor took the congregation through the gospels and showed places where they conflicted. He talked to us about where the authors of the gospels received their information - three (Mark, Matthew, John) wrote from direct experience (with John likely also sourcing from Mark and Matthew) and one wrote later based on interviews/investigations into what happened (Luke). He described their differing backgrounds, and how conflicting testimony should be expected. Testimony from such different people and times should conflict or he would consider it suspect.

He then spoke about the Bible itself. How he wouldn't consider it to be a book at all according to many people's definition. He considers it to be a collection of different works that are bundled together for convenience. There are other works which cover important historical narratives from that time as well.

For him, people deciding they'd rather die or be tortured horribly rather than recant what they think they saw is evidence that they really believed the events they professed to have witnessed to be true. The changes to Jewish and, later, Roman society (he pointed to Tacitus' work, which is a good source IMO) say that something happened.

In the end he stated that it's up to us all to look at the body of evidence that is presented to us and decide for ourselves what is reasonable - and continue to do so. We'll doubtless be wrong in some ways, but we'll be more genuine in our beliefs and accepting of others' beliefs for our having done the work.

It was a good sermon which probably shocked a few within the congregation which haven't been attending for very long. Yet another example of why I choose to bring my family there.

That sounds like a really good church, Lou. A lot like what I remember from before the 80's.

Speaking of which, biblical scholar Robert M. Price has an excellent *relatively* new podcast with the Center For Inquiry called "The Human Bible," which revolves around examining the bible as a human creation and elucidating some of it's more obscure, confusing or misunderstood elements. It's become one of my favorite religion podcasts. Also, even though Price is a mythicist (as am I, frankly) and it's being produced by an atheist organization, it's totes friendly to believers and examines the bible in a secular light without being patronizing or contemptuous.

Robear - I need to read Part II, and give Part I a re-read to digest it. I'll get back to you.

Lou - I have to hand it to your pastor; it seems he's willing to admit and address publicly a lot more about the problems with the Bible than most would. And I can't help but feeling like he's almost there. I still have to take issue with a few key points (being a thread about the Bible and all), namely the "die for myth" thing I see floating around. This concept puts forth that one wouldn't die for a lie, that it must have been true else they would have recanted their faith and lived. This position immediately breaks down when you apply the same reasoning to other faiths; Christianity doesn't have a monopoly on religious persecution, and scores of people throughout history have been tortured and killed in the name of their respective faiths only to hold fast to their convictions. Does this indicate veracity or truthfulness of their claims? Well, no. It only demonstrates the strength of their conviction, not the accuracy of them. One can be steadfast, adamant, and thoroughly convinced - and wrong. To say (as some do) that Christianity is different is purely special pleading, and basically tantamount to saying, "it's different just because".

To the second issue, of authorship of the Gospels, Matthew, Mark and Luke were certainly not direct, eyewitness observers to any of the purported events. Furthermore, none of them were written in or gathered information directly from the supposed time of Jesus. Even the most conservative estimates place the earliest writings at around 60 years later, any by all accounts, written by numerous people over the subsequent years - not the apostles. So all we can really say about them is that they were written long after the supposed events took place, by various people recording little more than what amounted to hearsay. And as for extant sources, like Tacitus, they make mention of believers and the phenomena of early Christian belief, not of Jesus himself. No contemporary historian made any reference to the Jesus of the Bible even existing, let alone performing the miracles attributed to him in the stories. We have various mentions of "Christus" and "Chrestus" in Tacitus and Suetonius, but linking these to Yeshua of the Bible is a stretch at best. Considering "Christ" was a title and not a name (which simply meant "anointed one", and was frequently attributed to the plethora of mystics and such at the time) and could also refer to a common proper name (Chrestus), drawing a line from those to Jesus is really, really overreaching.

If one were to forgive such glaring problems in Christian mythology and history, to be intellectually honest, one would have to do so for every other faith out there. In doing so, one sees quickly that you can justify any other mythical text as easily as you could the Bible. This gets back to my disdain for Albright and most Biblical scholars - they are putting the cart way before the horse, starting with the conclusion (the Bible is true) and working backwards (cherry-picking data buffet-style to craft a case for the Bible while ignoring the plethora of contradictions and lack of actual evidence). Is it more prudent to say they're all somehow "true", or that they're all most likely old stories and fables kept alive by bad reasoning? I opt for the latter.

And Ruhk, I freakin' love Price. Have you listened to his other podcast, "The Bible Geek"? It gets pretty deep into some serious Biblical minutia, but is a fascinating and enlightening look at some of the most obscure and specific questions about Biblical literature.

Thanks for sharing and sourcing your beliefs, Nicholaas. I'm unprepared to defend someone else's, but my own take on things is similar to yours. Actually I think it's even more compelling to point at religious martyrdom and its apparent popularity with early Christians as well (even down to volunteering), as that's very well documented by a variety of sources. Like I said, our pastor stated some of his own beliefs and raised issues with the Bible in order to make a point. Granted, it had his own slant to it, but the point behind it is sound.

Nicholaas wrote:

And Ruhk, I freakin' love Price. Have you listened to his other podcast, "The Bible Geek"? It gets pretty deep into some serious Biblical minutia, but is a fascinating and enlightening look at some of the most obscure and specific questions about Biblical literature.

Oh yeah, I've listened to the Bible Geek for years, though I did take a break for awhile and only recently resumed listening. There was a period of time when he was unemployed and pumping out 2-3 hour long episodes almost every other day and I sort of burnt out on it. As the saying goes, "ain't nobody got time for that."