My Take On Jesus

[MrFungus420]

...and you catch more flies with honey than vinegar!

Two Three points on that (sorry, but I detest that phrase):

1 - Who wants to catch flies?
2 - You can catch a lot more flies with a steaming pile of manure or a rotting corpse.
3 - Flies are not attracted to honey anyway.

Sorry, end of mini-rant...

Mea culpa. It was a crap metaphor.

Ok, now I have people looking at me funny.

A literal LOL...

[M]

I'd take on Jesus. I'd just yank his beard and karate chop his neck. HI-YA!

[klr]

I'd take on Jesus. I'd just yank his beard and karate chop his neck. HI-YA!

[Surendra Darathy]

yank his beard and karate chop his neck

people looking at me funny.

If they do, just yank their beards and karate-chop their necks.

And then say, "Take that!"

Take on me
Take me on

bible stories have some "evidentiary value", surely you'd understand that they can have very little such value when we start to get into detail? They are written by believers, on the basis of stories passed down by other believers and the reliability of any historical core is necessarily compromised by this process.

Otherwise, if you apply the same standards equally across all ancient sources, you might as well accept the "signs & wonders" that proclaimed the Roman emperors to be Gods, or that showed Mohammed was the Prophet of God.

This names the problem that, AFAIK, Paul-o is not a historical figure anywhere else. IOW, he's an "icon" in a tradition full of icons.

Have I ever been invited to inform myself about John the Baptist outside of seeing his face on a plate somewhere?

What a dish he was!

[Bruce Burleson]

Sorry to cherry-pick your post, Bruce, but something jumped out at me.

If something relates to true information that is transmitted apart from the logical process, it is arational. That does not mean that you cannot go back and subject it to rational analysis - it's just that it originated by something other than rational processes - like when you hear the phone ring and know who it is, and then pick it up and your revelation is confirmed.

(My emphasis)
'Revelation'? I would prefer to describe it as 'guessing right'. Or are you arguing for some brand of telepathy here? We tend to remember the times that we are correct in guessing who is on the other end of the phone because they stand out. Far more often we are wrong and don't even remember or think about it. This is called the Von Restorff Effect.

Perhaps you just chose a bad example but this doesn't endear me to your theory of aratioanlity.

I agree with you. It wasn't a good analogy. We do tend to remember the hits and forget the misses. I'll give you another example from a discussion with an atheist named Duckphup (some other forum). He related an experience when he says that he knew when his father died, even though he was thousands of miles away. He confirmed the fact by contacting his family. This is different than the telephone analogy. Information was transmitted to him by some means that cannot be described by the Von Restorff effect. It wasn't by logic or reason or objective evidentiary analysis. It was "arational." Now, it could be confirmed by rational means (calling the family), but it was not received by rational means. It was immediate, proximate, and non-deductive. That is an example of revelation or intuition. Previously I have called it the "Duckphup Effect" in his honor, and will continue to do so.

[Bruce Burleson]

I am taking a look at the earliest Christian writings and evaluating them from a purely objective perspective, with no talk of God or Scripture at this point.

And that's an acceptable start, except for one thing: You're citing some sort of internal consistency as an argument that they (the epistles) should be considered specifically as historical documents. Fine, Bruce. Pride and Prejudice is internally-consistent, as well. Moreso than some texts I could mention, such as the gospels taken in aggregate as a text. Sure, I don't worry that Emma's characters are different from those of Persuasion. There are numerous individual stories in Burroughs' stories about John Carter of Mars, but I still don't think JC was a real civil war hero.

Really weak. You know from the beginning that Jane Austen is writing a novel. You know from the nature of the Pauline epistles that Paul is not writing a novel. You must do better than that if you want to dip my jumbo shrimp in your garlic sauce. You have to conduct an initial evaluation of the genre of literature under consideration. You can't lump them all into the same shrimp cocktail.

[Bruce Burleson]

Bruce, are you allowing and correcting for literary traditions that were in use two millennia ago, as opposed to today's styles of journalism and fiction? For instance, was oral tradition still in general use as a common method of moving information along from generation to generation? If so, was such information commonly embellished? How commonly? What quantity and type of embellishment was common? Similar questions need to be addressed for written material of the time, as well, wouldn't you say?

We don't have the original autographs of Paul's or John's writings, but we do have manuscripts from multiple sources that give a pretty good indication of what the original writings said. You can consult the United Bible Societies 3rd edition eclectic text of the New Testament and see the best scholarly opinions about what the originals said. It's highly unlikely that there were any oral transmissions of Paul's letters before they were written down - they appear to have been letters from the beginning. Oral tradition may have played a significant part in the Synoptic Gospels, especially in considering the role that Q played in the teachings of Jesus. But John is not Synoptic, so oral tradition is less of a factor. It appears from the internal evidence to simply be an eyewitness account, albeit from a much later time than the Synoptics. If it was written about 90, John could have been anywhere from 80 to 90 years old, very old for that period. That, of course, has to be considered in evaluating its historical validity.

[Bruce Burleson]

Someone said that Paul's writings were translations from Aramaic. This is a mistake. Paul wrote in Koine Greek. Jesus probably spoke in Aramaic, and the gospels, written in Greek, would have to have translated Jesus' teachings from Aramaic to Greek.

Yeah that was me, sorry. I lazily made up what it was originally written in, because I really had no clue. Thank you for educating me there.

Not a problem. I'm relying on atheistic laziness to win this argument.

My point is that style can get lost during translation. Or, more to the point, put there by the translator. Whether it was Aramaic, Koine Greek, or Japanese (I'm assuming you can't read any of these), you can't know how Paul originally intended them to be read by original-language readers.

I can read Koine Greek. Studied it in seminary on my way to getting an MDiv. Aramaic - very minimal exposure. Japanese - haven't a clue except for "konichiwa."

[
Remember, Paul was converted when Jesus appeared to him from heaven on the road to Damascus, and then started building the early church and writing his letters.

Right. But when he was converted is irrelevant to the fact that he had some personal knowledge of Jesus physically. He says as much in II Cor. 5:16. I'm not concerned with what the New International Version or the King James Version says. I can read the Greek, and I know that "according to the flesh" means "physically." Paul had knowledge of the physical Jesus, period.

[Xamonas Chegwé]

Sorry to cherry-pick your post, Bruce, but something jumped out at me.

If something relates to true information that is transmitted apart from the logical process, it is arational. That does not mean that you cannot go back and subject it to rational analysis - it's just that it originated by something other than rational processes - like when you hear the phone ring and know who it is, and then pick it up and your revelation is confirmed.

(My emphasis)
'Revelation'? I would prefer to describe it as 'guessing right'. Or are you arguing for some brand of telepathy here? We tend to remember the times that we are correct in guessing who is on the other end of the phone because they stand out. Far more often we are wrong and don't even remember or think about it. This is called the Von Restorff Effect.

Perhaps you just chose a bad example but this doesn't endear me to your theory of aratioanlity.

I agree with you. It wasn't a good analogy. We do tend to remember the hits and forget the misses. I'll give you another example from a discussion with an atheist named Duckphup (some other forum). He related an experience when he says that he knew when his father died, even though he was thousands of miles away. He confirmed the fact by contacting his family. This is different than the telephone analogy. Information was transmitted to him by some means that cannot be described by the Von Restorff effect. It wasn't by logic or reason or objective evidentiary analysis. It was "arational." Now, it could be confirmed by rational means (calling the family), but it was not received by rational means. It was immediate, proximate, and non-deductive. That is an example of revelation or intuition. Previously I have called it the "Duckphup Effect" in his honor, and will continue to do so.

I don't know the guy - although a quick google shows that he has posted on RD.net in the past.

All I have in evidence for this 'arational' event is a second hand anecdote. Either or both of you could be lying, could have confused details or misremembered timelines. You give no details about the status of his father's health at the time, whether, perhaps, he phoned his family several times a week because of a 'feeling' and this time he was correct - in which case this could very well be an example of the Von Restorff effect again.

There are eye-witness accounts, often 2nd, 3rd hand or worse, of the most bizarre and preposterous events, from UFO abductions to miracle cures, from levitation to spontaneous human combustion. Do I believe all of these? No. Do I believe any of these? No. I simply utilise Occam's razor and keep an open mind while standing firmly in the sceptical camp. My stance on the Duckphup Effect is similar.

You will have to come up with a far better example. Or have your friend Duckphup provide proof of his revelation that will convince me that he is not lying, mistaken, delusional or misquoted.

[MissingNo.]

My take on Jesus is that he's a vampire hunter (skip to 0:24 if you don't want to see the introductory bullshit).

[Bruce Burleson]

While I agree that the bible stories have some "evidentiary value", surely you'd understand that they can have very little such value when we start to get into detail? They are written by believers, on the basis of stories passed down by other believers and the reliability of any historical core is necessarily compromised by this process.

Otherwise, if you apply the same standards equally across all ancient sources, you might as well accept the "signs & wonders" that proclaimed the Roman emperors to be Gods, or that showed Mohammed was the Prophet of God.

Why should an account written by a believer have very little evidentiary value? The first two points that I have made relate to eyewitness testimony, not stories passed down by other believers. I'm presenting you with what I consider to be first hand accounts, and I'm giving you the reasons that I take this position. If you want to compare the writings of Paul and the gospel of John with some ancient account of some other religion, give me the specifics. Regarding Mohammad, I don't question his existence as a person - that seems to be pretty well established. The issue of whether Mohammad was the Prophet of God is not an historical issue, anymore than the issue of whether Jesus was the Son of God is an historical issue. Those are theological issues, and I am not arguing that point at this time.

[Bruce Burleson]

I'd take on Jesus. I'd just yank his beard and karate chop his neck. HI-YA!

And he would have forgiven you.

[Oldskeptic]

My understanding of “arational” is in the consideration of emotions, such that having an emotion is arational as in it is neither rational or irrational to have an emotion. Where rationality comes into play is what is done with the emotion. The emotion originates in the limbic system, but the response to the emotion is handled in the frontal cortex. The limbic system cannot be said to be rational it is only responding to sensory or hallucinatory input.

“Religious experiences” cause emotions so there is nothing rational or irrational about having a religious experience or the emotions that it causes, but then the emotion has to be dealt with by the frontal cortex which can’t make an arational judgment. It is either rational or irrational and probably rational reactions are inversely proportional to the strength of the emotion.

So it could be suspected that these subjective reasons to believe do stem from arationality in that the beliefs are because of strong emotions that the frontal cortex reacts to in an irrational way. Or maybe a better way to put it is that in some cases the emotion is so strong that the filtering system of the frontal cortex simply is inadequate and the emotion is simply accepted as evidence for the reality of whatever caused the emotion.

Revelations fit here very well, as they can generally be linked to some sort stressor that causes a dream or some type of psychotic episode. The cause can also be purely physical as in lesions in certain areas of the brain or epileptic tendencies. Certain chemical compounds can also cause extreme states of happiness or fear that the mind can accept as evidence of a reality that does not exist.

@Bruce:
You say that you want to explain why you believe, I’m willing to take a crack at it also. You begin from a premise that what you believe is true, but I default the other direction. I think that there are explanations for why anyone believes in things that seem to be illogical. And if you’re really serious about debating this then a few specifics would be nice. Such as:

Do you believe in the resurrection? If so why, and what was the purpose?
Virgin conception of Jesus?
Healing miracles as told in the Gospels.
Water into wine? walking on water? Feeding the multitude on a few fishes and loafs of bread.

Saying that you are a Christian does not tell anyone very much, especially when you have indicated that you might be pretty selective about which parts of Christian doctrine you accept.

An outline of what you do accept and why could be helpful.

[Xamonas Chegwé]

I'd take on Jesus. I'd just yank his beard and karate chop his neck. HI-YA!

And he would have forgiven you.

Surely that would only apply if MCJ believed in him and did all that being-born-again stuff, wouldn't it? For such a forgiving guy, he was pretty exclusive in the ones he was going to save from hellfire.

[Bruce Burleson]

You will have to come up with a far better example. Or have your friend Duckphup provide proof of his revelation that will convince me that he is not lying, mistaken, delusional or misquoted.

He wasn't my friend, and that is part of the point. He didn't like me and certainly didn't like Christianity, but in a moment of personal openness related this story. I'll see if I can find his post so that I can at least eliminate the hearsay aspect of this discussion. Of course, even if he comes here and relates the account directly to you, you will not be convinced that he is not a liar or a lunatic. But why would an atheist say something like this?

If you were convinced that Duckphup experienced what he said he experienced, would you be open to the possibility that information can be transmitted arationally, that is, apart from the deductive process and apart from objective analysis of evidence (i.e.; the scientific method)?