Columbia PhD in Ancient History destroys Christianity and Jesus

Originally posted by NewAgeMan
God both likes to suprise us and be surprised by our response

I believe more then once religious people said that there is no free will, that everything (history) is already written?!

Sorry to note, but that kind of does not go well with what you starting your reply with, don't you think?

And what if what we call a God is actually something like this:

Originally posted by adjensen
Richard Dawkins might be a fine evolutionary biologist, but as a philosopher or theologian, he's terrible.

You are kidding right?

There are tons of Dawkins youtube videos where he destroys theologians, using their own arguments.

Here is just one:

www.youtube.com...

(15 parts)

Originally posted by SuperFrog

Originally posted by NewAgeMan
God both likes to suprise us and be surprised by our response

I believe more then once religious people said that there is no free will, that everything (history) is already written?!

Religious people say a lot of things, some make more sense than others

But there are two Christian perspectives on "everything is already written". The first is held by most, if not all, and says that God, being eternal and outside of space and time already knows everything that will happen until the end of time. This causes people who don't really grasp the concept to think that means that there is no free will -- "If God already knows that I'll steal a pizza tomorrow, I am forced to steal the pizza." However, if one thinks it through, God's knowledge is not the cause, but merely an observation of your conscious act. If, tomorrow, I choose not to steal the pizza, God's knowledge would have been of me not stealing it.

The second perspective is Predestination -- the Calvinist notion (derived from St. Augustine,) that some people are "the Elect", who were chosen, before the beginning of time, to be saved, and nothing that they do can change that. There are a variety of reasons for reasoning this out, but the dominant one is a complete rejection of the Catholic (and, thus, Augustinian, ironically,) claim that, while faith in Christ is foremost, your works (how you behave) factor into salvation as well. Calvin utterly rejected that, and so, if your behaviour doesn't matter, how does God know who to save? He's always known, because he chose you, you didn't choose him.

There is something sensible to that, but unfortunately, Calvin goes deeper and looks at the other side of the coin -- what about the people that are not the Elect? Well, they're not simply ignored, but rather they were predestined by God to be damned, just as the Elect were predestined to be saved. In other words, if one was one of the Reprobate (Calvin's term for the non-Elect,) one was damned, and there's not one thing they can do about it.

To most people who are first encountering that chunk of Reformed Theology, that just screams of injustice, but if you spend some time working through the basis and thinking behind it (as I have, quite a bit in fact,) a pretty strong case can be made for it. From a practical standpoint, it does serve to answer the question of why some people, despite an earnest effort, just can't find faith -- no matter how much they want to connect to God, as they are not part of the Elect, there's nothing that they can do to manage it. (That's spoken as a believer, so the usual response of the disbeliever, "they don't find God because there is no God," doesn't apply, and an alternative explanation is called for.)

Kindly note that I am not a Reformed theologian, and I think that there are plenty of other good explanations for the things that Calvinism attempts to address.

Originally posted by NotReallyASecret

Originally posted by adjensen
Richard Dawkins might be a fine evolutionary biologist, but as a philosopher or theologian, he's terrible.

You are kidding right?

There are tons of Dawkins youtube videos where he destroys theologians, using their own arguments.

Here is just one:

www.youtube.com...

(15 parts)

I'm not going to watch a 15 part YouTube video, thank you very much. Can you tell me why you think that Dawkins is a good theologian? I suspect what you really mean is that he's a good debater, which I would generally agree with.

If you don't want to watch the video, please go bury your head in the sand.

Dawkins is a master of Christian theology.

adj

To me, Craig v. Ehrman was more interesting than Craig v. Carrier. No offense to the OP, these things are a matter of taste.

There were some problems with Craig's use of Bayes' Theorem (his probabilistic argument). If you are comparing two hypotheses of equal explanatory completeness, that is

Suppose one explanation were true. What is the probability of seeing the evidence you saw?

Suppose the other explanation were true instead, What is the probability of seeing that evidence?

Suppose the two probabilites are the same, which seems to be the case here between the "resurrection" and "body theft" - either way, you get an empty tomb with probability 1.

then the comparison of credibility of the two explanations does go by the prior probabilities alone. The lowest prior-probability explanation ("the miracle") will never the more likely than an equally complete explanation.

Ehrman didn't make a mathematical rebuttal at all, so I don't know if he appreciates the need for him to explain why he is comparing prior probabilities, but regardless, his usage is correct.

As to the Swinburne estimate that came up, you can find more about it here:

ndpr.nd.edu...

Since the argument starts with a prior probability of 1/4 that God exists and becomes incarnate, I find it unsurprising that he can pump that up to .97 by the end of the day.

Craig wins the point about him being laughed off the stage, though. Swinburne participated in a philosophy conference in April 2002 at Yale, and so far as I know, was respectfully heard.

Craig was smart to distance himself from this. His remarks about how he would use probability theory himself were closer to the views of George Polya, who wouldn't wiggle onto a hook for a numerical probability for this sort of thins at all. Craig didn't either.

But his own arguments about qaulitative criteria for evaluating explanations need some work, according to elementary probability theory. Evaluating competing complete explanations of a set of historical facts by the criteria of "explanatory power, explanatory scope and plausibility" adds nothing to evaluating them by plausibility alone in this case.

Complete explanations tie in explanatory power, and Craig's "four 'facts'" are heavily dependent. In particular, if Jesus was buried and that tomb was found empty soon afterwards, then that in itself would explain devoted followers "seeing" him, and combined with those visionary expereinces, also explains the disciples' coming to a strong belief that he was raised. (There is little or no evidence that any person who met Jesus before his crucifixion was killed after refusing an opportunity to renounce their faith and live, so we needn't explain that anyway.)

Ehrman's points, then, withstood attack. It is a matter of faith, I think, to get from the "four points" to a resurrection.
-

Originally posted by NotReallyASecret
Dawkins is a master of Christian theology.

lol, I suspect Dawkins would punch you in the face for insulting him like that

Look at how cranky he gets at one of his friends who keeps using the word "design", for Pete's sake.

Originally posted by eight bits
As to the Swinburne estimate that came up, you can find more about it here:

ndpr.nd.edu...

Interesting, though he quickly lost me here:

Swinburne begins his argument in chapter 2 by giving three main reasons to expect God to become incarnate:

1. to provide a means of atonement
2. to identify with our suffering
3. to show us how to live and encourage us to do so

I'm not sure that it's fair to start a probability calculation by stacking the deck like that.

Originally posted by adjensen

Look at how cranky he gets at one of his friends who keeps using the word "design", for Pete's sake.

I suspect you are on crack for Pete's sake.

This guy was in a Dawkins documentary trashing the whole idea of design, as he does in this very video.

LOL

Originally posted by NotReallyASecret
This guy was in a Dawkins documentary trashing the whole idea of design, as he does in this very video.

When did I say he didn't? I was pointing out Dawkins' crankiness, that's all.

I did like the bit where the guy said "no one would have designed a body this badly", citing the thin arm bones that skateboarders are apparently breaking constantly, but then goes on to say that it's brilliant because it lets you twist your arm. I wonder if he uses twice as much Chapstick from talking out of both sides of his mouth, lol

reply to post by Numbers33four

The historicity of Jesus is well established.

It is? Since when, exactly? I have searched for Jesus in all of his incarnations for over 30 years now, and have yet to see any real historical document of Codex that bears out the story. Only the
New Testament says anything about Jesus. And as you can see, if you research the origins of the NT, you will see the story is not to be trusted, as there was an agenda at play. Jesus Christ was Julius Ceasor, and had the attributes of Mithras. Care to debate me?

reply to post by micmerci

Flavius Josephus made only two references to "Jesus" in Books 18, and 20, and a reference to John the Baptist in Book 18, in his "Antiquities of the Jews," written around 93–94 AD. There is some dispute that the true author of the references in question was not Josephus at all, but was a later Christian writer. The references found in "Antiquities" have no parallel words or references in the other work by Josephus, the "Jewish War," written some 20 years earlier.

Flavius Josephus

reply to post by autowrench

The references found in "Antiquities" have no parallel words or references in the other work by Josephus, the "Jewish War," written some 20 years earlier.

Sure there is.
Anyway, if anything, it would be "later Christians" who would be trying to take the Jesus reference out because it implies he was a fraud.

Originally posted by autowrench
reply to post by Numbers33four

 

The historicity of Jesus is well established.

It is? Since when, exactly? I have searched for Jesus in all of his incarnations for over 30 years now, and have yet to see any real historical document of Codex that bears out the story. Only the
New Testament says anything about Jesus. And as you can see, if you research the origins of the NT, you will see the story is not to be trusted, as there was an agenda at play. Jesus Christ was Julius Ceasor, and had the attributes of Mithras. Care to debate me?

Event the Old Testament is not to be trusted. For example, even though King Omri was a MAJOR king, he is mentioned ONCE in the Old Testament.

Old Testament was written by propagandists who were trying to distort history.

reply to post by NotReallyASecret

Old Testament was written by propagandists who were trying to distort history.

And they did just that, too. I wonder sometimes if We the People of Earth will ever get the straight poop on our real history? I have read that at least some of it is hidden under the right paw of the Sphinx, but forces are keeping that hidden away.

bump