Merged (edited) General thoughts about Christianity and the bible

[catsmate]

They used to hide behind the sofa, which was less than ten feet high.

Dave

Not those ones then.

 

[Reformed Offlian]

I was thinking, if we allowed the miracle of the leg being somewhat fixed and reattached it makes the lack of any further such miracles very condemning of god.

He used up all the Super-glue to hold atomic nuclei together.

 

[W.D.Clinger]

I'm uncertain as to your response to my post to Rusty Tyler. Are you saying there are no forgeries included in what we can consider to be the 'modern' bible?

That is not what I am saying. If you follow the second of the two links I provided, you will read this:

To express the matter differently, only two authors named themselves correctly in the surviving literature of the first Christian century. All other Christian writings are either anonymous, falsely ascribed (based on original anonymity or homonymity), or forged.

That last sentence distinguishes between these three situations:

1. anonymous (e.g. Genesis, Matthew, Hebrews)
2. falsely ascribed (e.g. Daniel and some of the pseudepigrapha and apocrypha that have been excluded from modern Protestant bibles)
3. forged (e.g. almost half of the Pauline epistles)

Modern scholarship recognizes several other possibilities as well, such as Wikipedia's list:

1. Literal authorship.
2. Dictation.
3. Delegated authorship.
4. Posthumous authorship.
5. Apprentice authorship.
6. Honorable pseudepigraphy.
7. Forgery.

That list doesn't even include harmless pseudonymity, such as Kilgore Trout's authorship of Venus on the Half-Shell.

That they are something less than forgeries as I'm using the common definition?

Some are outright forgeries, some are not, and some fall into one of the intermediate categories listed above.

At any rate, your post still doesn't address previous forgeries that were considered a part of the bible that, seemingly, once discovered as actual fake gospels or whatever, were removed.

This is what I am getting at.

I wasn't trying to write the last word on Biblical forgeries. I was mostly trying to say the distinction between forgeries and properly attributed works is a false dichotomy, because there are a number of situations that fall in between those two.

For those who are mostly interested in books that have been removed from modern versions of a Bible, or were considered for inclusion but never fully accepted as canonical, there are a couple of lists in Marko Marina's article on the subject.

 

[P.J. Denyer]

They used to hide behind the sofa, which was less than ten feet high.

Dave

So we can establish that they're small and afraid of Daleks.

 

[P.J. Denyer]

What does curing cancer have to do with causing car crashes? Can God not cure diseases without causing property damage?

The saying is "Jesus is my co-pilot" do NOT let him drive!

 

[Rusty Tyler]

Question: How does natural selection introduce new information?
Isn't it limited to what already exists? From which the selections are made. ???
Seems that diminishing returns would be more likely.

 

[The Great Zaganza]

you do understand what "random" means, right?

 

[Lukraak_Sisser]

Question: How does natural selection introduce new information?
Isn't it limited to what already exists? From which the selections are made. ???
Seems that diminishing returns would be more likely.

I've already explained this (twice) in the evolution thread. Just because you do not like the fact that there is a well documented answer to that, does not mean you get to keep repeating the question in the hope of a different answer.

 

[bruto]

Of course all of this has been said and said by many, no doubt, but I have one problem with miracles and faith.

The contention is made over and over that proper faith requires no physical evidence, no proof. The faithful react with ire when skeptics point out how easy it would be for a proper god to prove its existence, and point out that the very idea of faith makes such proof not only unnecessary but forbidden. And yet, people like our original poster here continually bring up presumed miracles as exactly the evidence they deny. So which is it? To the faithless they remain mere parlor tricks, and fail to convince. For the faithful they are needless. So what is a miracle for? Divine diversion? A bored god 's equivalent of cracking his knuckles or tagging tank cars?

The faithful make a point, over and over, that for a god to declare itself definitively would be a violation of that god's demand for faith, even though it could be done with a snap of the figurative fingers. The greatest theologians rely on reason and logic and philosophical inference to lead them to belief and to argue their case. And yet their God can't seem to help himself, and every once in a while out pops a miracle, but it's always a cheap one. One person is cured of a disease that afflicts millions. One person is saved from an accident that need not have happened at all. One person tosses his crutches, but no amputee regains a limb. If such miracles are actual miracles, and not coincidences, I would suggest that they are actually evidence for an inadequate, human-invented demiurge. No proper god would combine such clumsiness and inefficiency. The only argument for a proper god creating the kind of miracles we're told of is a sense of humor.

 

[P.J. Denyer]

Way way back in the first ten percent of this merged thread of obtuseness....

Have you ever read even a very basic description of how evolution happens?

It's what you get if random mutations sometimes occur. Mostly mutations are not good for an individual's survival and they die leaving no offspring. Sometimes they are neutral and neither help nor hinder. Once in a while it turns out to be advantageous in some particular circumstance and they survive where others do not, and if their offspring inherit the mutation, they gain the same advantage, and gradually replace more and more of their species who lack the mutation.

That's all it is.

 

[jimbob]

My kids also had an imaginary sibling called "Carby" that would carbonise everything because he was a pyromaniac.

Luckily, they only told stories about his antics, which were surprisingly varied, and after I read them, Archer's Goon, involved Carby burning the water.

My daughters also used him to explain their brother's toast making fails.

 

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Question: How does natural selection introduce new information?
Isn't it limited to what already exists? From which the selections are made. ???
Seems that diminishing returns would be more likely.

Ask whomever is feeding you this stuff to do better. That was idiotic.

 

[Reformed Offlian]

That is not what I am saying. If you follow the second of the two links I provided, you will read this:

That last sentence distinguishes between these three situations:

1. anonymous (e.g. Genesis, Matthew, Hebrews)
2. falsely ascribed (e.g. Daniel and some of the pseudepigrapha and apocrypha that have been excluded from modern Protestant bibles)
3. forged (e.g. almost half of the Pauline epistles)

Modern scholarship recognizes several other possibilities as well, such as Wikipedia's list:

1. Literal authorship.
2. Dictation.
3. Delegated authorship.
4. Posthumous authorship.
5. Apprentice authorship.
6. Honorable pseudepigraphy.
7. Forgery.

That list doesn't even include harmless pseudonymity, such as Kilgore Trout's authorship of Venus on the Half-Shell.


Some are outright forgeries, some are not, and some fall into one of the intermediate categories listed above.


I wasn't trying to write the last word on Biblical forgeries. I was mostly trying to say the distinction between forgeries and properly attributed works is a false dichotomy, because there are a number of situations that fall in between those two.

For those who are mostly interested in books that have been removed from modern versions of a Bible, or were considered for inclusion but never fully accepted as canonical, there are a couple of lists in Marko Marina's article on the subject.

If the Bible is divinely inspired, does that mean the books with delegated authorship were Holy Ghost-written?

 

[Reformed Offlian]

I've already explained this (twice) in the evolution thread. Just because you do not like the fact that there is a well documented answer to that, does not mean you get to keep repeating the question in the hope of a different answer.

He's not. He's repeating the question in the hope of creating the illusion that it stumps unbelievers.

 

[Jack by the hedge]

Question: How does natural selection introduce new information?
Isn't it limited to what already exists? From which the selections are made. ???
Seems that diminishing returns would be more likely.

This does not appear to be an honest question.

Did you forget that natural selection is the part which acts on variations, rather than causing the variations?

Or did you not listen and just didn't take that in in the first place?

Or did you decide to pretend you didn't already know that and just try for a reset?

 

[catsmate]

you do understand what "random" means, right?

Obviously not.

 

[catsmate]

Question: How does natural selection introduce new information?
Isn't it limited to what already exists? From which the selections are made. ???
Seems that diminishing returns would be more likely.

This has been explained to you. Twice in fact. Stop lying

 

[P.J. Denyer]

This does not appear to be an honest question.

Did you forget that natural selection is the part which acts on variations, rather than causing the variations?

Or did you not listen and just didn't take that in in the first place?

Or did you decide to pretend you didn't already know that and just try for a reset?

To quote Albert Rosenfield "I don't expect you to understand, I'm not a cruel man"

 

[turingtest]

This thread has taken a very decided turn towards Scorpion-style apologetics (post picked at random- they're pretty much of a sameness). Point being that (as I'm sure has already been said) attribution is easy, a path of lesser resistance, which is probably its attraction- but it's not the same thing as evidence if it's meant to convince someone who isn't already on that path.

 

[bruto]

Question: How does natural selection introduce new information?
Isn't it limited to what already exists? From which the selections are made. ???
Seems that diminishing returns would be more likely.

That's probably also a reason no poets have existed since Homer died.