At What Point?

Cypress said:
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
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I never said or inferred that I think the Biblical mythology is worthless...nor do I feel that way, Cypress. If something I said causes you to get that impression, I apologize.

But when it is used as an excuse to unduly influence the laws of our land, it is my opinion that every thinking person should oppose it with as much energy as possible.
 
Blackwater Lunchbreak said:
I havent' even noticed what you're even talking about, nitpicker.

and I don't care.
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Of course you dont care because you don't actually care about any of it. Christians believe God is one of many as the "A" in the JW bible indicates. Apparently thinking gives some people headaches.
 
Cypress said:
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.
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Religion is for the masses, a form of crowd control. It is authoritarian.
 
Ross Dolan said:
I never said or inferred that I think the Biblical mythology is worthless...nor do I feel that way,
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This is not an uncommon response for the poster. You will find, over time, that Cypress is well-read and has some good insights into topics but he is unable to discuss the topics without subtly (or at times openly) being hostile to his interloctors. Usually it is in the form of strawman arguments but soon it will graduate into simply dismissing your points as "frantic googling".

It is a shame because Cypress is clearly no slouch in terms of the content of the topic. It's just that he has difficulty in discussing it. Part of it seems to stem from his inability to synthesize or generalize the large amount of material he's read.
 
Ross Dolan said:
I never said or inferred that I think the Biblical mythology is worthless...nor do I feel that way, Cypress. If something I said causes you to get that impression, I apologize.

But when it is used as an excuse to unduly influence the laws of our land, it is my opinion that every thinking person should oppose it with as much energy as possible.
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You didn't say anything remotely offensive.

There is a legitimate school of thought that the bible is a bunch of bronze age myths written by people not educated to 21st century standards, and the book is completely irrelevant today.

I made my case for why the bible and other ancient literature is still worth knowing about and considering.

I don't want any religious group making laws either. If it were left up to the democratic process, outlawing abortion would never happen. Even in a red state like Ohio, people come out to vote in strength against extreme abortion restrictions.

All polling I've seen show a a strong majority of Americans supporting reproductive choice.

It's only because of a handful of rightwing judges, most of whom don't strike me as particularly religious and pious, that outlawing abortion is even on the table
 
Cypress said:
You didn't say anything remotely offensive.

There is a legitimate school of thought that the bible is a bunch of bronze age myths written by people not educated to 21st century standards, and the book is completely irrelevant today.

I made my case for why the bible and other ancient literature is still worth knowing about and considering.

I don't want any religious group making laws either. If it were left up to the democratic process, outlawing abortion would never happen. Even in a red state like Ohio, people come out to vote in strength against extreme abortion restrictions.

All polling I've seen show a a strong majority of Americans supporting reproductive choice.

It's only because of a handful of rightwing judges, most of whom don't strike me as particularly religious and pious, that outlawing abortion is even on the table
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I've always loved how people want to try and slap "reproductive" onto abortion. What exactly is reproduced when you kill a baby?
 
Yakuda said:
I What exactly is reproduced when you kill a baby?
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A blastocyst, embryo or 12 week fetus is not a human being.

No Republican has ever, or would ever risk their life to run into a burning fertility clinic to save a petri dish of blastocysts. Why? Because they do not actually believe a human life begins at conception.
 
Cypress said:
A blastocyst, embryo or 12 week fetus is not a human being.

No Republican has ever or would ever risk their life to run into a burning fertility clinic to save a petri dish of blastocysts. Why? Because they do not actually believe a human life begins at conception.
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It's a human life. Also what does the word "fetus" mean? I know you know this.

You would have to prove that but actively choosing to take a life for the purpose of convenience isnt reproductive".
 
Yakuda said:
LMAO. The point is "mostly exactly" is stupidity. Its not mostly exactly right to say the Christian God is A god. No God is God not one of many gods.

Like leftism
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you have made no meaningful point on the thread.


so the whole of the law means love thy neighbor as thyself.

it still a radical departure from how Jews of the time saw Jewish law.

that's just being able to read.
 
Hume said:
Not really. Theology put Europe into the dark ages.
Greeks and Romans established the basis for law.
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No, it is a historical fact that the political and economic collapse of the western Roman empire, the depopulation of cities, and the disruption of trade networks led to a period of economic and intellectual decline of western Europe.

The primary cause was not Christianity. If that were true, the brand of Greek Orthodox Christianity practiced in the Eastern Roman Empire (Byzantine Empire) would have had the same effect; but the Byzantine Empire was vibrant and flourished throughout late antiquity and the middle ages.

It's a historical fact that literacy and education in western Europe during the bleak period of the early middle ages was kept alive in large measure by the monasteries, monks, and scribes.

When you get to things like the Scopes monkey trial, then you can really make legitimate complaints about the toxic effect of fundamentalist Christianity on educated thought.
 
Cypress said:
No, it is a historical fact that the political and economic collapse of the western Roman empire, the depopulation of cities, and the disruption of trade networks led to a period of economic and intellectual decline of western Europe.

The primary cause was not Christianity. If that were true, the brand of Greek Orthodox Christianity practiced in the Eastern Roman Empire would have had the same effect; but the Byzantine Empire was vibrant and flourished throughout late antiquity and the middle ages.

It's a historical fact that literacy and education in western Europe during the early middle ages was kept alive in large measure by the monasteries, monks, and scribes.

When you get to things like the Scopes monkey trial, then you can really make legitimate complaints about the toxic effect of fundamentalist Christianity on educated thought.
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I find religion boring. Really don't care.
 
Hume said:
I find religion boring. Really don't care.
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That begs the question of why you haunt these threads then. You have repeatedly told everyone that you don't care about religion. So why come on here and waste everyone's time with your toddler-like chants of "I don't care!"

Good! You don't HAVE to care. But it sure would be nice if you would just STFU for a change. No one cares that you don't care.
 
Yakuda said:
It's a human life. Also what does the word "fetus" mean? I know you know this.

You would have to prove that but actively choosing to take a life for the purpose of convenience isnt reproductive".
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Thanks for the tacit and grudging admission that a human life does not begin at the moment of conception, which is what conservatives have been hollering from the rooftops my entire adult life.
 
Cypress said:
Thanks for the tacit and grudging admission that a human life does not begin at the moment of conception, which is what conservatives have been hollering from the rooftops my entire adult life.
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Okay that's fine.

I hate discussions about the stock market and professional baseball and generally avoid them like the plague.

I only got interested in religion when I realized I couldn't have a complete, integrated conception of human history, sociology, and human culture without a working knowledge of the religious traditions.

That is how I am able to make an integrated connection between Rome, the Middle Ages, the Byzantine Empire, Christianity , and western monasticism.
 
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