LDS

[Pup]

An appropriate saying comes to mind... there are none so blind as they who will not see.

The above is exactly what I was getting at in this previous post:

Imagine a salesman approaching everyone who passes with the same short sales pitch. To him, it doesn't matter if 90% of the people ignore him or laugh at him and walk away. What he cares about are the random, unpredictable 10% who are intrigued and stop to listen. He gives them the next stage of the sales pitch, loses a few more, but eventually let's say 1% stay and actually buy.

If 1% is an average sales rate for the industry, he'd be doing a perfectly good job. Yet if you asked any of those 99% how he did, they'd say he didn't do well enough to sell the product, and 90% might say his sales pitch was the stupidest thing they'd heard.

In other words, Janadele's answers are perfectly good answers, but only for the tiny percentage of people who are looking for those kinds of answers.

Picture a salesman saying to passersby: "Buy these sunglasses. If you wear them, all the hot chicks will love you." Ninety-nine people laugh and walk on. One is a young teenage boy desperate to figure out what turns on hot chicks, and the salesman actually convinces him the only thing standing between him and the girls that swoon over Justin Bieber is a pair of really cool sunglasses.

So as the kid is handing over his money, some passersby laugh and say, "Did you actually fall for that sales pitch?"

Now the kid is embarrassed. He doesn't know what to believe anymore, but he really wants to attract hot chicks. The salesman needs to keep him convinced to finish the deal, so he says, "Ignore 'em, kid. You look great in those sunglasses. Those people just don't know what's cool."

In other words, none so blind as they who will not see. It's the stage at which one has to put down the naysayers, who'll never buy the product anyway, for the benefit of the customers.

I don't think Janadele or most religious people are cynically promoting things they themselves don't even believe, but I do think there's a natural tendency for evangelical religions to copy common sales techniques, even subconsciously, simply because they work.

 

[Quinn]

Or perhaps English works the same way Egyptian hieroglyphs do: if you read it the correct way, it has a completely different and unrelated meaning from the one the blind nonbeliever sees. So what looks to us like some sort of faith-based waffle could really mean, "Hey, look, I found some pre-Columbian horsies, and here's the irrefutable proof!"

Dog-whistle religious enlightenment?

 

[skyrider44]

. . . For some curious reason I cannot reconcile that with the "international center of philosophical thought".

Perhaps this will help:

"When Paul arrived in Athens in 51 CE, Athens was a small city, about 20,000, far smaller than Corinth at 100,000, and well past its time. Stilll, for prominent Greeks and Romans, it was the center of learning and the philosophical pursuit of truth" [emphasis added].
(www.abrock.com/Greece-Turkey/athens.html)

 

[joobz]

Perhaps this will help:

"When Paul arrived in Athens in 51 CE, Athens was a small city, about 20,000, far smaller than Corinth at 100,000, and well past its time. Stilll, for prominent Greeks and Romans, it was the center of learning and the philosophical pursuit of truth" [emphasis added].
(www.abrock.com/Greece-Turkey/athens.html)

Gord in Toronto wasn't challenging the label of Corinth as a center of philosophical thought. He was challenging the idea that Paul considered it as such. Especially since he provided a quote from the bible where paul called a "city of idols" in the bible.

 

[Olowkow]

.... Well, perhaps sleeping in on Sunday.

....And getting to think rationally and consult honest sources.

Thanks for saving me the trouble of wasting my time schooling skyrider44 in a topic so easily researched.

 

[deaman]

Mere mortals who do not meet the criteria need not bother even considering the matter.

Mere mortals? You, yourself, are a mere mortal.

Why the condescending tone? There doesn't seem to be much humility in your answer. You just seem to think you are better then others.

How sad.

I asked you about running the BofA by some egyptologists and you completely ignored my question. Why?

You do not address the falsities contained within the BofM, because you cannot adequately do so.

You believe in the lies you've been fed and there is nothing to do but, ignore them, or block the reality of them, by answering in a condescending way, or by misdirection.

Just like a "mere mortal".

 

[deaman]

An appropriate saying comes to mind... there are none so blind as they who will not see.

Here is another one:

As you judge, so shall ye be judged.

 

[Gord_in_Toronto]

Perhaps this will help:

"When Paul arrived in Athens in 51 CE, Athens was a small city, about 20,000, far smaller than Corinth at 100,000, and well past its time. Stilll, for prominent Greeks and Romans, it was the center of learning and the philosophical pursuit of truth" [emphasis added].
(www.abrock.com/Greece-Turkey/athens.html)

So what? Paul did not think so.

 

[skyrider44]

So what? Paul did not think so.

How do you know what Paul thought? He may have written one thing and thought another in an effort to avoid giving offense. Leaders of all stripes find it necessary to do that on occasion.

 

[deaman]

How do you know what Paul thought? He may have written one thing and thought another in an effort to avoid giving offense. Leaders of all stripes find it necessary to do that on occasion.

Please correct me if I am wrong, but I though it was generally known that none of the writers of the New Testament, were the actually people who are named as authors?

That the books were actually written many, many years after the fact.

 

[Empress]

Please correct me if I am wrong, but I though it was generally known that none of the writers of the New Testament, were the actually people who are named as authors?

That the books were actually written many, many years after the fact.

Are you referring to the Gospels or did you mean all the books? My understanding is that several of the Pauline letters are viewed as genuine, written 50-60 CE, although scholars consider some to be pseudepigraphic. Not sure which letters skyrider was referring to, of course.

 

[pakeha]

It's a long thread so you may have missed it, but skyrider has actually acknowledged the problems presented by the BoA:



I remembered because such an admission is so unusual on this thread.

Far from missing that post, I responded to it and am waiting for some follow up on the subject of the BoA.

 

[Foster Zygote]

An appropriate saying comes to mind... there are none so blind as they who will not see.

Like Joseph Smith, who couldn't read the name Sheshonq. Like those who refuse to see his lie even now.

 

[Foster Zygote]

The above is a syntactic train wreck. I'm sorry, but I don't know what you're trying to say.

It was quite clear to me: If messages from a dead man, which contradict the messages of said man in life as reported by his acquaintances, don't qualify as "superstition", then what does?

 

[Foster Zygote]

How do you know what Paul thought? He may have written one thing and thought another in an effort to avoid giving offense. Leaders of all stripes find it necessary to do that on occasion.

The Acts Of The Apostles wasn't written by Paul. It was written by the author of The Gospel Of Luke, who was not actually Luke. The history of Paul's actions and theology is contradicted by Paul's own writings. Acts is just a work of fan fiction.

 

[Slowvehicle]

It was quite clear to me: If messages from a dead man, which contradict the messages of said man in life as reported by his acquaintances, don't qualify as "superstition", then what does?

TY...

 

[skyrider44]

It was quite clear to me: If messages from a dead man, which contradict the messages of said man in life as reported by his acquaintances, don't qualify as "superstition", then what does?

As I recall, RF and SV are on record as saying that the Bible is rife with errors/omissions/mistranslations, etc. LDS themselves, in the 8th Article of Faith, state that they "believe the Bible to be the word of God as far as translated correctly. . . ." [emphasis added]. Why, then, should it be surprising that messages attributed to Paul in the NT are not congruent with what Paul is alleged to have said (by his acquaintances) in life?

I find nothing superstitious about that.

 

[Gord_in_Toronto]

How do you know what Paul thought? He may have written one thing and thought another in an effort to avoid giving offense. Leaders of all stripes find it necessary to do that on occasion.

OK. Now Paul's a potential liar. How about he made the whole thing up after hallucinating he saw "The Christ" on the road to Damascus?

 

[skyrider44]

[aside]
The [Quote] function does not reproduce quotations within the post you are quoting. That is why the blue text didn't get included; Slowvehicle had rendered Gabby's text within quote tags.

There is a simple trick to getting the full post included, though. It suffers a bit in the description, but it is actually quite easy to do. What you do is this:

1. Click on the user name to the left of the post you want to quote.
2. A menu should appear.
3. Click on the "Quote this post in a PM to <username>".
4. A "Send a Private Message" window will appear with the full text of the post included between quote-tags.
5. Copy the entire text of the message except the first quote-tag. It doesn't include the pointer to the original post, so we don't want it.
6. Use the browser back function to abandon the private message and return to the thread.
7. Now, click on the [Quote] button as you normally would.
8. Replace all of the text in the Reply to Thread window except the quote tag at the beginning.
9. Enter your response text as per normal.

[/aside]

Thank you; very helpful.

 

[skyrider44]

Feigning confusion doesn't suit you well Skyrider44...Are you unaware of that fact? I am, however, aware that you will not respond to this post.

Sorry, but your sentence structure requires the services of a polyglot with 20 years' experience (something like that).

BTW, I'm not alone in my criticism. See jsfisher's post 6842.