At What Point?

Ross Dolan said:
Let me make myself clear, Cypress...I DO NOT THINK ANYONE WAS LYING THERE.
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Cypress' shorthand for extremist thinking is to propose that someone somewhere thinks that the faith was a grand conspiracy so that he may point out how ridiculous this point is.

If anyone actually DID think that it would be absurd. But it's also a sly way to discount people's arguments through a strawman.

Thankfully I've never heard anyone (even atheists) espouse such an hypothesis.

Ross Dolan said:
I think it is a poorly thought-out mythology...that served an essential service to those relatively unsophisticated, unknowledgeable, superstitious people who wrote it.

I can understand why THEY wrote it, accepted it, and needed it...but I am baffled why people of today's age and relative knowledge continue that tradition. The mythology of the Bible makes no more sense than the mythology of the Egyptians, Greeks, Romans, or the Norse.
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In the grand scheme of things this seems quite spot-on. And as an atheist, for me, it really does drive home the idea of human-constructed concepts.

BUT, that being said, many times those constructs have value in and of themselves. "Love thy neighbor", man that's fantastic! One doesn't need an invisible being beyond space and time sitting in judgement of you to realize that's a better way to live. Be kind the poor. Don't think I need any grand theology to see the value in that.

There's a lot of good in the Bible and in Christianity. It is kind of gilding the lily to posit that it MUST have some grand concept beyond reality to make it true.

 
Ross Dolan said:
Let me make myself clear, Cypress...I DO NOT THINK ANYONE WAS LYING THERE.

I think it is a poorly thought-out mythology...that served an essential service to those relatively unsophisticated, unknowledgeable, superstitious people who wrote it.

I can understand why THEY wrote it, accepted it, and needed it...but I am baffled why people of today's age and relative knowledge continue that tradition. The mythology of the Bible makes no more sense than the mythology of the Egyptians, Greeks, Romans, or the Norse.

That is my point...not whether Jesus meant what he said or whether Paul was correct in changing things.
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I don't think anyone outside the fundamentalist community thinks Johah lived in the belly of a great fish.

We have 21st century expectations of what journalism, analytical history, biography are supposed to look like. Those genre of writing didn't exist in the ancient Near East, and only began to make their appearance in Hellenized Greece and Imperial Rome.

People back then seem to have been writing stories that held the essence of the questions they were asking and the values their societies held.

The Old Testament seems so mythical I think because the oral tradition was influenced by Mesopotamian culture and Mesopotamian cosmology.

The New Testament was written by educated Greek-speaking Hellenized Jews who wrote under the influence of Greek philosophy and Hellenic culture, and it seems less exotically mythical than the OT.

I myself don't see myth as a bad word. We have our own myths about George Washington and Abraham Lincoln, which while we know aren't literally true, are convenient constructions that tells us something about the essence of those men.

My view of the bible is that it is the most important literary work in the history of western civilization, and a repository of western concepts of moral freedom and ethical knowledge. As well as a source of some historical information about the Levant.

I hope we never get to the point where Homer, Virgil, the Bhudda, the authors of the NT are thought of an uneducated primitives who wrote worthless myth and fiction. The Oddessy, the Aeneas, the Gospels are our literary heritage, the only difference is that Aeneid, Odysseus were fictional, where as there is a substantial body of evidence characters in the NT were historical
 
Hume said:
Agree. I have no idea why the culture and religion of ancient Jews is relevant.
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The evolution to monotheism and a highly developed, almost legalistic concept of moral law, was a radical watershed moment in human history, and influenced western civilization for thousands of years.
 
Yakuda said:
And in the Bible of Jehovah Witnesses John 1:1 says "In the beginning was the word and word was with God and the word was A(my emphasis) god". Thats heresy. The details matter.
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that's standard kjv.

John 1

King James Version

​

1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.




you're a curmudgeonly fault finding gaslighter, ignorant of the actual message of Christianity.
 
Cypress said:
The evolution to monotheism and a highly developed, almost legalistic concept of moral law, was a radical watershed moment in human history, and influenced western civilization for thousands of years.
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Not really. Theology put Europe into the dark ages.
Greeks and Romans established the basis for law.
 
Hume said:
Not really. Theology put Europe into the dark ages.
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Not really. The Dark Ages weren't really that "dark" per se.

6 Reasons the Dark Ages Weren’t So Dark | HISTORY

The centuries following the fall of the Roman Empire in 476 A.D. are often referred to as the Dark Ages—but were they really?
www.history.com www.history.com

The Church did ascend to importance during this time and certainly they have some "sins" to account for. But it was filling a power vacuum left after the Roman Empire contracted and then fell in the West.

Yes, people were "benighted" then compared to now, but it was an evolutionary step.

Ironically it was the pious Muslims who helped preserve and promulgate a lot of "lost" western thought. So if "theology" is to blame for one it also appears to have been the catalyst for the other.

Hume said:
Greeks and Romans established the basis for law.
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That seems short-sighted. They weren't the first to establish rules of conduct or laws. No doubt the numerous great empires that came before also had rules and laws to run things.

The Greeks and Romans definitely helped shape the law as we understand it in the West but hardly the originators of "law" per se.
 
Hume said:
Not really. Theology put Europe into the dark ages.
Greeks and Romans established the basis for law.
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No, that thinking is a product of the biases of our primary education system which focuses on the history of western Europe.

The dark ages happened in western Europe.

The Eastern Roman or Byzantine empire in southeastern Europe and Anatolia was under the influence of Greek Orthodox Christianity and continued to thrive commercially and intellectually throughout late antiquity and into the middle ages. The Byzantine Empire is one of the great empires of all of late antiquity.

The dark ages in Europe was a result of barbarian invasions, the collapse of the western Roman empire, and the depopulation of urban mercantile towns and cities.

To a very considerable degree, literacy and education was kept alive and on life support in western Europe because of the monasteries and the Christian scribes.
 
Blackwater Lunchbreak said:
that's standard kjv.

John 1​

​

King James Version​

​

​

1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.




you're a curmudgeonly fault finding gaslighter, ignorant of the actual message of Christianity.
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No it's not. Didn't you see the "A"??????? The point is one letter makes a huge difference
 
Obtenebrator said:
So you compare homosexuals to murderers?

Interesting rhetorical gambit. Good luck with that.

Like I said earlier: enjoy your hate.
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I haven't compared homosexuals to anything....I asked you a question that points out the obvious lack of logic in your statement........it is significant you dodged the question......
 
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