God as the ultimate child abuser

[Last Conformist]

Originally posted by Jon Miller
Identity, with the Jesus solution, sin is still the antithesis of God.

If sin is separation from God, it wasn't ever the antithesis of God.

I don't see your point with the free will comment, or else you don't see mine.

First, according to Christian dogma, God has free will and is free of sin, so sin cannot be a necessary consequence of free will. Second, free will is a nebulous concept with no commonly agreed meaning.

[Jon Miller]

OK, better to put it... Sin is seperation from God, as sin is the antithesis of God. (I might be using antithesis sloppily)

Yeah, you missed my point. One of the ways I could imagine 'presto' is for God to have us all be sinless... this would, however, violate our choice in the matter.

JM

[Elok]

Originally posted by Dr Strangelove
OK, Phillip Puillman is a children's fantasy writer. Big Deal.
The real question is......... what's the Archbishop's position on tinky-wink, right?

Seriously Elok, are these the issues on which you pick a church, what type of children's books they read or who gets to stick which body part in which oriface? Personally I don't go to church to find narrow-mided people to associate with. (I can find them on any street corner.)

Pullman is a fantasy writer...and moronic, strident atheist. He doesn't even understand the things he criticizes. Kissing up to such a man is not desirable in an eminent clergyman, to put it mildly. The ridiculousness of the lesbian bishop scandal was not the gayness per se, but the general attitude of contempt for tradition which led to it. If you're just going to make up your values from whole cloth there's no sense pretending to be Xian. Finally, we're getting the majority of our converts from "high-church" protestants like the Anglicans. They all tell horror stories, to much the same effect: the traditional protestant churches are being taken over by the same avant-garde pseudo-intellectual phonies C.S. Lewis warned them about fifty years ago.

[Last Conformist]

Originally posted by Jon Miller
Yeah, you missed my point. One of the ways I could imagine 'presto' is for God to have us all be sinless... this would, however, violate our choice in the matter.

Last I checked, Christianity has it we can't chose to be sinless ...

[Jon Miller]

Once more, read the myth of Adam. Sin is allowed because of choice, if sin was not allowed (by Godly action), there would be no choice in the matter.

JM
(by the way, we have gotten a bit into the speculation region of Christianity)

[Last Conformist]

Originally posted by Jon Miller
Once more, read the myth of Adam. Sin is allowed because of choice, if sin was not allowed (by Godly action), there would be no choice in the matter.

I'm quite familiar with the story of Adam, thank you. If your reading is that us regular folks can chose whether to sin or not, well then your reading is heretical - mainstream Christianity holds that we are all necessarily sinners, ie. we do not have a choice.

[Jon Miller]

The myth of Adam is about sins introduction.

JM

[Last Conformist]

Originally posted by Jon Miller
The myth of Adam is about sins introduction.

Yes. And ... ?

[Jon Miller]

A choice is made there.

JM

[Last Conformist]

Did you have a point, or are you just spamming at this point?

[Lorizael]

But Adam did not choose for all his descendents to be branded sinners. That was God's move.

And even if he did, does God changing the consequences of Adam's choice change Adam's choice? I don't think so.

[Jon Miller]

In the myth of Adam, Adam has dominion over the earth. That is why sin became an intrinsict property of the earth.

We aren't branded sinners, we have sin in our genetics (if you will, getting away from the myth).

I am not just spamming, it is just that I don't want to write books, and it is a complicated subject (And I Think we are misunderstanding eachother some).

Inherent in any choice is the consequences of it. If there are no consequences, it isn't a real choice.

If I have to choose chocolate or vanilla icecream, there are consequences, in that I am eating either chocolate or vanilla icecream. If no matter what I choose, I am eating vanilla icecream, then there wasn't really a choice there.

JM

[Straybow]

Originally posted by Agathon

Originally posted by Straybow
If by putting it in quotes ("Christianity" [sic]) you mean the centuries of superstition and Greco-Roman philosophy that has come to represent the bulk of Christian tradition, yes. If you mean Jesus' teachings, the miracles, the death and resurrection, no. You have absolutely nothing concrete to support that assertion, only your distaste for anything supernatural.

Not at all. My argument has absolutely nothing to do with the supernatural. It's patently obvious that the Gospel stories describe violations of the natural order, and for that reason (as Hume argued) are to be discounted. But that is a separate argument.

"Violations of the natural order" = supernatural
"are to be discounted" = distaste

Or are you saying that you have no distaste for the supernatural, you only insist that nobody tell the story when it happens?

My argument here is that we know very little about the historical Jesus, and even his existence is in doubt. The evidence we have are religious writings from well after the facts (if there were any), and we simply know that in their early stages, religions are highly malleable, especially once the "founder" dies and there is a struggle for dominance among the remaining members.

Unless the successors don't struggle for dominance. The Book of Acts is about how the members were unified and acted to preserve Jesus' teachings. But that's a religiously inspired record, so you must discard it and substitute your own wisdom.

Nothing you have said counters that argument. Your position seems to be: "I really want the Gospel stories to be true, so they must be".

So, respecting a historical document in the absence of evidence to the contrary is not a counter-argument? You have presented nothing in the way of evidence. We have to accept your comparison of Jesus' disciples to modern whack-job cultists just because you say so?

Meanwhile, you completely ignored my case. Xnity was initially Jewish in every way. Jesus' teachings, and the Apostles' in keeping them, were Jewish midrash. They expounded from Hebrew scripture upon the themes in Hebrew scripture. Everything that has been added since the fall of Jerusalem is Greco-Roman and can be easily distinguished.

On the other hand, if you had spent a lot of your time dealing with ancient biography and texts purporting to reveal the ideas of ancient thinkers, you would know that the evidence in this case is extremely thin. In other words, if you apply the standards of modern historical research to the Gospels and early Christian writings, you will discover that there is very little reason to believe that the Gospels represent a historical record in the modern sense of the term.

So, the standards of modern historical research are to ignore the context of the events in question? Then we are to insist that ancient texts be dismissed if they don't miraculously duplicate standards of modern historic recording?

For centuries this did not matter, as scholars simply did not have the resources, methods or evidence to subject the Gospel stories to fact checking. Now we do, and it does not look good for them. So what if a lot of people have a lot of emotion invested in these stories, the facts speak for themselves.

Ah, so where is this fact checking? The Romans didn't record census data by name and occupation. They didn't issue birth certificates, marriage certificates, or keep official records of the sort.

They didn't keep records of criminal accusations, trials, executions, and disposal of remains. The Romans had no official interest in religious disputes among the Jews. We have one guy who wrote about it, but you say that his writings were tampered with and unreliable.

A few trivial asides and political references don't jibe 100% with fragmentary records so the whole is to be discarded? You still haven't checked any of the facts in question, so your rejection is unwarranted. Rather, you have settled for an excuse to reject the testimony in the Gospels.

[Last Conformist]

Originally posted by Jon Miller
We aren't branded sinners, we have sin in our genetics (if you will, getting away from the myth).

And our genetics we did not chose.

Can you answer this very simple question: can people chose for themselves never to sin?

[Jon Miller]

Currently? I don't know. It might very well be that there exists a sinless path, but that none of us takes it. I am sure that none of us (humans) are sinless.

Some (particularly in my denomination, many) do beleive that people can choose to never sin. And that Christ is to be our example in that (That He never sinned).

JM