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@Vader
Okay somehow my reply got deleted. Repost:
By the way, haven't seen you in a while. How's things been?
Eh, not great. Spent five hours on Friday night trying to get my grandma into the ER and ended up having to take her home untreated because there were no beds.
My activity on DART has just never been the same since the bish thing, I guess. I never really forgave this place for overreacting to that incident so badly that bish couldn't even stay on as a regular. Him stepping down as mod, that I can understand. I think he was reaching the burn-out point anyway. But them making it so bad that we lost him entirely? That made me fucking furious. I mean, this was the guy who didn't even want a moderation log because he thought it would be a "wall of shame" and make banned people feel bad. He didn't want anyone to feel ostracized by the community. The irony.
Speaking of burn-out point. If and when you reach yours, put your mental health first. This place is hard on its mods, even though as far as I can tell they always do their best.
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@janesix
The Southern Cross has spiritual or mythic significance in a number of cultures. For example:
The Maori name for the Southern Cross is Māhutonga and it is thought of as the anchor (Te Punga) of Tama-rereti's waka (the Milky Way), while the Pointers are its rope.
As for its visibility from the north, it can be seen from tropical latitudes of the northern hemisphere a few hours every night during winter and spring.
The Cross was once much more visible from the northern hemisphere; the ancient Greeks wrote about it. Precession changed all that by 400 BC, which perhaps explains why the constellation does not have more significance in Christianity.
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@janesix
You cant know even from analyzing the creation, because we have no idea why things were created.I suppose some people could have superior knowledge to mine, yet you have no idea if your knowledge is truly correct. How could you?
I suppose this is where faith in a religious text or prophet comes in. Most major religions seem to need to believe they have the inside skinny on God from some authoritative source.
Have none of these supposed sources ever been compelling to you?
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@Lunatic
To be clear I thought the allegations against bsh1 for pedophilia were pretty dumb as well, but I bet most the mods here took bsh's side on that one too lol.
You would lose that bet. Virt sided with the pedo-accusers, leading me to refuse to become his deputy moderator when asked, and the rest of the site authorities pretty much stayed silent as bish went down in flames, as I recall. I was the only staff member I saw publicly taking bish's side, and I was only a part-time special moderator. He worked hard for this site for over a year, enduring hate and toxicity from pretty much every corner, and his reward was to be burned at the stake over one regrettable joke. I was really hoping he would have come back as a regular poster by now -- he would be such a great contributor -- but alas, it seems the damage done was total.
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@Ramshutu
That is always a risk in a more laissez-faire system.
Make a special subforum with relaxed rules. A rough 'n' rowdy subforum. People can go there if they want to talk/debate with fewer restrictions, without it threatening the health and order of the rest of the site. Seen it work on other message boards.
I’ve more of an issue with Wylted; I flit between thinking he’s intentionally trolling, or has wider and broader issues that were all far too underqualified to deal with
Well, the two are not mutually exclusive.
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@RationalMadman
I fear this place will just use up mod after mod until it becomes an unmoderated ghost town like DDO.
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@RationalMadman
I did notice Wylted was dishing out fewer personal attacks than I remember. I don't have any experience with Mesmer AKA MgWhateverDemon, but his/her ban seems to be in keeping with the current rules as I read them.
I would prefer we go back to bish's way, but the cost of doing that is that people get to spout discriminatory bullshit and get away with it unless they cross over into attacking a user personally. Not everyone is okay with that, which I understand. Personally, I prefer the freedom to discuss extreme views and hot button topics.
I would like to see whiteflame incorporate more staggered, active punishment such as bans specifically from thread creation without banning posts or bans specifically from forum posting without banning debates.These seem to not be friendly technologically for Michael to enforce but the enforcement can be a temporary ban from the website if the person disobeys the 'mute'.
So kind of like how restraining orders work? Sounds like it would be a handy option for a mod to have in their toolkit.
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Well, I'm way out of date then. Back when bish was head mod we only punished racist or discriminatory speech directed against users -- not against classes or races in general.
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So head mod on DART is like the Defense Against the Dark Arts job at Hogwarts.
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@Wylted
who we always unite against. Our own
Are you telling me you would rather fight each other than us godless heathens? Wylted, Wylted, you're talkin' crazy. Think about what you're giving up! The contemptuous attitude, the scoffing, the pomposity -- are we not ideal adversaries? How could you replace us? Fight Mormons? They will never do for you what we do for you. You can fight other theists... but deep down, you'll be thinking about us.
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@FLRW
When they banned you this place was like South Park without Cartman.OMG, is Wylted's first name Kenny?
Do you mean Eric? Although I guess Wylted did have a Kenny-like tendency to get banned and then come back.
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@Wylted
You got it, buddy. I'll respect your authori-tah and just observe. But if I may -- without atheists, who will the theists unite against?
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@Wylted
Well, I was sort of joking, but obviously representation of women in the Bible is not five stars. It was written thousands of years ago.Representation is a stupid concept. The only black mentioned in the Bible is Cain, and the only white is Caesar.Yet women were heroes in many bi le stories. We have the redeemed prostitute that let the jews into her window so they could conquer an enemy city that was surrounded by walls. I'm not going to mention all of them, because the names are lost to me at the moment and it would require Google.They are there though. The first story, eve played a major part in. She was Adam's companion and equal in every way. She is made superior to him after the "fall of man", because she his made his servant.Jesus constantly brought up that there is nothing greater than serving. Those who serve will be highest in heaven.Proverbs talks a lot about how a man cannot be successful, unless he has the support of a good woman.The o ly negative shit you can say about women in the Bible is that they are supposed to serve man, and it isn't even a negative. Did you see man's punishment? It isn't to serve the person you love, which is actually awesome and something men feel inclined and love to do, but it is to live off of your blood and sweat. He is sentenced to a life of hard manual labor. This was a Jewish man. You know how much jews hate manual labor.
When they banned you this place was like South Park without Cartman.
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@BrotherDThomas
Well, I was sort of joking, but obviously representation of women in the Bible is not five stars. It was written thousands of years ago.
“But I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp the authority over the man, but to be in silence.” (Timothy 2:12)
Paul did not write Timothy; it's pseudepigrapha.
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Because even gods fear a mother's wrath, obviously. And well they should.
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@Greyparrot
Does this imply God has a butt?
Kanye had to come from somewhere.
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@TheMorningsStar
Why do you use this definition of atheist (the Flew definition)? It is a definition rejected by essentially all academics in the Philosophy of Religion, yet it is common to find laypeople on the internet use this definition of atheist. Within academia the definition of atheist is "one who believes there are no gods", yet so often when this definition is mentioned online it seems 'atheists' almost take offense to it and get defensive of the 'lack of belief' definition.Why is this? Why hold onto a definition that is rejected by academics? Especially those here, on a website designed for debating? Why not use the definitions used in academia?
Because they don't want to define atheism as a belief.
I find it is also common for online atheists to be Christ mythicists, even though the mythicist position is rejected by most academics in the field. Nothing says atheists must be in step with all things academia.
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@Stephen
Sure, I'm curious. 👍 I was going off of Wikipedia's etymology for it, but it's not like they've never been wrong before.
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@TheMorningsStar
Ha, I totally had never heard this before. Very entertaining read.
If one is willing to accept argument from religious experience as valid evidence, then I would say it does favor the existence of multiple gods over the existence of one god.
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@aaaa
Is it ever talked about in the Bible?
I'm not aware of any place where it's explicitly explained. The most common answer I hear from Christians is probably "God wants us to worship him because it's good for us." I'm also not aware of where the Bible explicitly says this. I take it to be extrabiblical interpretation on their part. Perhaps someone will educate me on which passages this comes from.
The impression I get from the Bible is that God simply deserves worship because he is that great, that glorious, and that powerful -- that his very existence compels and demands worship in the same way that the very existence of a black hole bends the fabric of space-time. I believe we get our word "worship" from an older word that meant something like "worthship." In the Bible, God is simply worth it, knows it, and considers worship his due.
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I would say that while the Bible clearly does say in places that faith gets you into heaven and not actions, it just as clearly enforces a stick/carrot morality system in other places.
Matthew teaches that your works are the key to eternal reward:
- “When the Son of Man comes in His glory, and all the holy angels with Him, then He will sit on the throne of His glory. All the nations will be gathered before Him, and He will separate them one from another, as a shepherd divides his sheep from the goats. And He will set the sheep on His right hand, but the goats on the left. Then the King will say to those on His right hand, ‘Come, you blessed of My Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world: for I was hungry and you gave Me food; I was thirsty and you gave Me drink; I was a stranger and you took Me in; I was naked and you clothed Me; I was sick and you visited Me; I was in prison and you came to Me.’ -- Matthew 25:31-36
- Just then a man came up to Jesus and asked, “Teacher, what good thing must I do to get eternal life?”
“Why do you ask me about what is good?” Jesus replied. “There is only One who is good. If you want to enter life, keep the commandments.” -- Matthew 19:16-19
Paul taught that you are saved by faith alone and not works:
- For we maintain that a person is justified by faith apart from the works of the law. -- Romans 3:28
- For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God—not by works, so that no one can boast. -- Ephesians 2:8-9
Yet Paul also emphasized that your good deeds and actions will be central to eternal reward:
- God “will repay each person according to what they have done.” To those who by persistence in doing good seek glory, honor and immortality, he will give eternal life. -- Romans 2:6-7
And of course James is big on works, questioning whether faith without good deeds can gain you salvation:
- What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if someone claims to have faith but has no deeds? Can such faith save them? -- James 2:14
- You see that a person is justified by what he does and not by faith alone. -- James 2:24
- As the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without deeds is dead. -- James 2:26
I could go on. Needless to say, all of this has given scholars, believers, and theologians plenty of mental exercise over the years.
I think stick/carrot morality is a more primitive morality, personally -- the ideal is that we do good things because it's the right thing to do and because we care about the world and about others. And for whatever it's worth, the Bible also says that you shouldn't do good deeds just to be seen doing good deeds, and emphasizes sincerity and purity of motive. It covers both bases, I think.
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@RationalMadman
Well that is probably not true either. Jesus had women followers that he seemed to love above the men in his outfit or so the men believed. And the bible states that Jesus and other the male followers of his, lived off and sponged off the women of substance in his circle.Which female followers were believed to be loved above the men in his outfit?
In the Gospel of Philip, Jesus loves Mary Magdalene more than anyone else, and the disciples ask Jesus, "Why do you love her more than us?"
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@PGA2.0
It appears I am very late to our discussion about whether the Gospels are eyewitness accounts. Maybe I'll start a new thread to address your post, if that's agreeable to you -- and if I have the time and energy to elucidate my thoughts. Which is always perilously uncertain. Especially when my DVR is full and I've just bought new books.
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I approve of where this thread went.
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@RationalMadman
The favor was to Jairus but the one he used his power to cure was the girl.
Don't get me wrong, I am totally open to the idea that he was gay. I feel scripture does not give us any indication on that count one way or the other, but it's certainly possible.
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He raises Jairus's daughter and exorcises the Gentile woman's daughter.
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@Timid8967
A nontrinitarian can believe in the divinity of Jesus without necessarily believing he is one with, or equal with, God the Father. Mormons and Jehovah's Witnesses would be modern examples. Alternatively, a Christian could venerate and follow the teachings of Jesus without thinking he is divine at all, like the ancient Ebionites. Unitarians would be a modern example -- some of them, anyway.And I would argue that to be a follower of a certain ideological figure, you do not necessarily need to believe in them as a deity, but you do need to do more than just "like" them -- you need to devote yourself to their teachings and take them as a life model.Which parts do you have to devote yourself to? All of it - or just the parts that you identify with?if not all, then why don't you just admit it is an eclectic religion and not label it christianity?And the overwhelming majority of christians in the world - according to the WCC would not accept either the JWs or LDS as anything but cults - pseudo in nature.
I'm so glad you asked me that, because I have a pre-written Supreme Christian Checklist of Parts You Have to Devote Yourself To, To Be Christian, which is the absolute authority across the world because I, Castin the Great (Peace Be Unto Me), have declared it to be so, and only the Christians who devote themselves to my Supreme Checklist are the really real Christians. So sayeth Castin the Great.
Hmm, my browser red underlined "pre-written" as a misspelled word and suggested "pee-written" as one of the corrections.
Possibly a commentary on the theological value of my Supreme Checklist. Harsh but fair.
The point is, I am not the arbiter of what it means to be a follower of Christ.
And disagreements over what it does mean to be a follower of Christ appear to go back to the time of Peter, James, and Paul in the Apostolic Age. In my own experience, Christians have always devoted themselves more to the parts of the Bible they identify with, and de-emphasized parts of the Bible they do not identify with. I don't know a Christian who consistently follows "all of it."
I have a Christian acquaintance who divorced her first husband because of irreconcilable differences rather than infidelity. Jesus, it appears, does not approve of this, and according to him she is committing adultery on her first husband with her second husband. Yet she worships Christ and is a pillar of her church. Is she not a Christian because she doesn't follow "all of it"? No one in the Protestant world seems to question her Christianity, and I suspect you wouldn't either, even though Jesus's disapproval of divorce is spelled out far more explicitly in the Bible than the doctrine of the Trinity.
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@EtrnlVw
Were you once a Christian or were raised in a Christian household? or are you just interested in religious theology? unlike a lot of folks you have a very solid grasp of theology, it's kind of unique to you. Is Christianity the only religious theology that interests you? have you ever been curious or have studied any other religious knowledge?
I was raised by an agnostic and former Christian, in a very Christian area, where I went to church and was often, and still am, encouraged to convert. I have a definite interest in theology, and it certainly is not limited to Christianity, though like most westerners I have read the Bible more than any other religious text.
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@Timid8967
A nontrinitarian can believe in the divinity of Jesus without necessarily believing he is one with, or equal with, God the Father. Mormons and Jehovah's Witnesses would be modern examples. Alternatively, a Christian could venerate and follow the teachings of Jesus without thinking he is divine at all, like the ancient Ebionites. Unitarians would be a modern example -- some of them, anyway.
And I would argue that to be a follower of a certain ideological figure, you do not necessarily need to believe in them as a deity, but you do need to do more than just "like" them -- you need to devote yourself to their teachings and take them as a life model.
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Are we the most sexually sensual species? I would've guessed bonobos. I don't know, I'm not a biologist.
From Wikipedia:
... while the weight of a young adolescent female bonobo "is maybe half" that of a human teenager, she has a clitoris that is "three times bigger than the human equivalent, and visible enough to waggle unmistakably as she walks".
Fun fact: None of you can ever unread this.
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@PGA2.0
You ignore the biblical accounts. Why is that?
Oh, I don't ignore them. I just think they're pseudepigraphal. Which is the consensus among historical scholarship.
The Gospels are written in highly proficient Greek. It's very unlikely that Jesus's immediate followers, being lower-class Jews from rural Galilee, could read or write well in even their own language, much less be so fluently literate in another.
It's estimated that fewer than 3% of Jews in Roman Palestine could read and write well enough to compose texts like this, and the ones who could would've all been urban elites, with the wealth and leisure to afford the education. Scholars think the Gospel authors most likely came from urban areas outside Palestine.
And of course, there's the fact that all of the Gospels are written anonymously, and none of them are written in the first person.
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@Barney
- P1: If someone is key to a mythology, they are a mythological figure.
- P2: Jesus Christ key to Christian mythology.
- C1: Therefore, Jesus Christ is a mythological figure.
So you would say L. Ron Hubbard was a mythological figure, for instance?
Eh, I don't know. Could make it sound like you're saying L. Ron Hubbard was never a real person.
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@PGA2.0
Someone can be the key to some mythology and not be a mythological figure. The gnostics built a myth around Jesus, yet the biblical text warned against this and claimed eyewitness testimony of His historicity. The OT points to such a historical figure who the NT writers identify as Jesus. You, Ragnar, want to brush off these testimonies and fuel the myth. Simon Greenleaf, who wrote a treatise on eyewitness testimony that is well respected and its basis is still in use today, saw these eyewitnesses as credible. The eyewitnesses are reasonable to believe. The gnostics were not eyewitnesses but claimed some hidden knowledge. Their credibility is in great question.
There is no eyewitness testimony of Jesus Christ that I am aware of, sadly. I wish there was.
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@Timid8967
So the strawman definition of God is the one you yourself used in the OP. Why use what you consider to be a strawman?
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@Greyparrot
Oh, Grey. I told you not to keep picking your own mushrooms.
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@Timid8967
What definition of God are you referring to as the "strawman one"? Omniscient, omnipotent, omnibenevolent? That one?
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@Timid8967
Which means that atheists and non-theists like myself need to try and find a better definition of god to dispute, rather than pushing the same old strawman argument, which I have also argued belittles the atheist position.
What better definition of God would you propose atheists use?
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@FLRW
Eh. Even if we did have "eyewitness accounts" of the resurrection -- if we knew the Gospels of Matthew and John were really written by Matthew and John, say -- I still wouldn't be convinced. It takes more than ancient eyewitness testimony to overpower my skepticism that a man can rise from the dead.
I don't think Josephus ever claimed Jesus resurrected, anyway. That part of the Testimonium Flavianum screams "Christian interpolation."
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@Timid8967
It is an intriguing thought though - why would David have been thinking about Roman Crosses - when the Romans were not in power then - and the crucifix had not been invented.
Why does Psalm 22 make you think the author was thinking about crosses? Just because it says "they pierced my hands and my feet"?
This part of the passage in particular is pretty murky, translation-wise. Apparently, if you translate it literally from Hebrew into English, it comes out like:
- "Like a lion my hands and feet."
This doesn't make much sense as-is, so it's been translated various ways:
- Early Rabbinical paraphrases were something like, "They bite my hands and feet like a lion."
- The Septuagint translated it as, "They dug my hands and my feet."
- The JPS Tanakh has it as, "Like a lion they are at my hands and feet."
- And the NRSV, the version most biblical scholars use, translates it, for some reason, as "My hands and my feet have shriveled." While leaving the footnote: "Textually obscure; Meaning of Heb uncertain."
So, taking this and the entire verse into account, I'm just getting the image of a man being encircled by attackers who assault his hands and feet "like a lion" as they menace him.
This definitely doesn't put me in mind of crosses or crucifixion.
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@Greyparrot
HB doesn't understand there are consequences for acting on bad intel like Bush did.
HB merely argued the correct course of action was to investigate if the intel was, in fact, good or bad, and to take precautions in the meantime.
I certainly did not see HB arguing that Trump ought to have gone to war over the intel he had at the time.
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@lady3keys
"Intimidating," pfft. This from the person who apparently reads quantum mechanics and astrophysics books in her spare time.
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@lady3keys
He is an agnostic atheist, like moi. Props for even knowing the name.
Fundie Christians don't like him because he says the mythical Jesus they worship is not the historical Jesus.
Militant atheists don't like him because he says there was a historical Jesus.
He pisses people off on both sides, basically -- much like I'm doing right now, probably.
As for Jesus being God, here is another Ehrman quote from Did Jesus Exist? The Historical Argument for Jesus of Nazareth:
- "Apart from fundamentalists and very conservative evangelicals, scholars are unified in thinking that the view that Jesus was God was a later development within Christian circles. Fundamentalists disagree, of course, because for them Jesus really is God, and since he is God, he must have known he was God, and he must have told his followers, and so they knew from the beginning that he was God. This view is rooted in the fundamentalist doctrine of the inerrancy of scripture, where everything that Jesus is said to have said, for example in the Gospel of John, is historically accurate and beyond question. But that is not the view of critical scholarship."
Not only does Ehrman not think Jesus was God -- he says Jesus's earliest followers didn't think so, either.
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No historian will say for certain Jesus ever existed because Tacitus is still not a strong enough source to say it's 100 percent true.
- "He certainly existed, as virtually every competent scholar of antiquity, Christian or non-Christian, agrees." -- Bart Ehrman, source: Forged: Writing in the Name of God
You speak as if Tacitus is historians' only source on Jesus. He is far from it. He is not even considered a main source. The value of his account is supplementary.
there are no Roman documents to collaborate this "facts".
There are no Roman documents about anything from first century Palestine.
Lack of Roman documents on Jesus should only be really significant if they kept a wealth of records on such things, yet none exist for Jesus. Instead, there are no surviving Roman records from the place and period whatsoever. This means their silence on Jesus is unremarkable and insignificant.
- "In that connection, I should reiterate that it is a complete 'myth' (in the mythicist sense) that Romans kept detailed records of everything and that as a result we are inordinately well informed about the world of Roman Palestine and should expect then to hear about Jesus if he really lived. If Romans kept such records, where are they? We certainly don't have any." -- Bart Ehrman, source: Did Jesus Exist? The Historical Argument for Jesus of Nazareth
There are not even first century Roman documents on Pontius Pilate, the highest status figure of Jesus's place and time.
- "Think of everything we do not know about the reign of Pontius Pilate as governor of Judea. ... It would be easy to argue that he was the single most important figure for Roman Palestine for the entire length of his rule. And what records from that decade do we have from his reign -- what Roman records of his major accomplishments, his daily itinerary, the decrees he passed, the laws he issued, the prisoners he put on trial, the death warrants he signed, his scandals, his interviews, his judicial proceedings? We have none. Nothing at all."
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@rosends
Maybe so. And maybe faith is that we worship him anyway because we attribute all of existence to him even without understanding his nature.If one were more definite and more definitive in one's faith, we would not be witness to so many words of incertitude.
#MoreCertainThanThou
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@rosends
But that judgment of "an enormous amount of suffering in the world is destructive suffering. It creates senseless death and pain that never yields any constructive result" is an expression of our human assessment.
It certainly is. But if God is so beyond our human understanding that we cannot make a negative assessment of him, then it is equally true that we cannot make a positive assessment of him either. We cannot say he is good or evil, just or unjust. We are simply not smart enough to say he's a good guy or a bad guy. Why then worship a question mark about whom nothing can be definitively known?
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@fauxlaw
Do you think Calvinism is a cop-out?
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@rosends
Judaism does not call God "omnibenevolent" without a large asterisk -- that we can't always know the larger plan within which God's behavior is benevolent. The infant can't understand why the shot administered by the doctor was actually a "good" thing. The infant only feels the pain and thinks the doctor is evil. God is a parent, and sometimes a parent spanks a child. God is a boss who makes demands and punishes a lack of obedience. His roles are complex and multi-faceted so we don't reduce things to a single dimension and then measure God against what WE think that role should entail.
This seems to assume that all suffering is constructive suffering. Yet an enormous amount of suffering in the world is destructive suffering. It creates senseless death and pain that never yields any constructive result.
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@rosends
The question is why God allowed this to happen. The answer is"wow, this exposes the contradiction within Christianity, guess God is a hoax".Just so I understand, your sense of this as a contradiction is because you presuppose the label of "omnibenevolent" as a descriptor of God, right?
Omnibenevolence is very commonly presupposed in the notion of God, at least in the Christian world I live in. I am curious -- do you define God this way, personally?
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Tacitus attests that Christ was put to death by Pontius Pilate under the reign of Emperor Tiberius. Had Tacitus spoken of these worshippers' idol in god-like terms, I would certainly think they probably worshipped a mythical figure. Instead Tacitus spoke of their idol as a mere human who was executed by human rulers. This must weigh my interpretation.
Much written history is like this -- indirect witnesses such as Tacitus writing decades after the events or persons they discuss. But it is striking that all of the sources on Jesus -- the Gospel sources, the apocrypha, Paul's letters, Josephus's writings, Tacitus's account -- agree that he at least lived. Since it is unlikely that all of these people would independently fabricate the existence of the same man, the most likely explanation is that he existed.
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@Timid8967
What is the evidence that Jesus ever existed?
Virtually all scholars agree that Jesus of Nazareth was a historical figure for the simple reason that multiple independent textual sources attest to his existence, including people who had no reason to make him up, like Tacitus and Josephus.
And if textual evidence is not enough to declare a figure historical, then we must stop talking about, say, Socrates or Pythagoras as if they really existed. We would be shocked at how many figures we would wipe from the face of history if we required archaeological evidence of an ancient person to declare their historicity. Most individuals passed without leaving any trace in the archaeological record -- certainly most first century Judean peasants did.
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