Apr

30

Fark Theist Fun

April 30, 2009 by Brandon | 6 Comments

If you have some time on your hands, check out this thread I’ve been posting to. Specifically, we’re looking at a guy named “kerpal32″. We have about 10 pages of dialogue with him… well, if you want to call his comments a dialogue.

The link is to the second page of the thread, where kerpal32 jumps in.

I’m skinnyartist on Fark.



Oct

15

On my way home from Religulous, which I saw with my friend, we ended up in a discussion regarding sentience. Basically, it was my opinion that sentience is an adaptive trait, something which we, and other species, have evolved over time. My friend, who usually stops by here and reads my posts, so hopefully she’ll take some time to respond in kind, doesn’t necessarily believe in a God, however, she feels that we have a unique drive toward that which is philosophical in nature; where this drive comes from, she does not know.

Speaking directly to my friend: Please correct me if I’m wrong, or elaborate on that thought. I was admittedly rather confused about what exactly the point of saying we have a drive toward philosophical thought, because my interest was in where do you think that drive comes from and I’m not sure if you ever answered that. It did seem to me, however, that you were unwilling to accept that this was something that could have evolved.

So let’s take a second and discuss why sentience, imagination, self-awareness, or philosophical thought, might be an evolved trait, because I think that’s where I got hung up before and wasn’t able to give a clear answer.

I would argue that the ability to think abstractly, to use imagination, or to think of the world around us in philosophical terms, would give us a unique benefit over other creatures. How so? Well, it allows us to make better predictions about the world around us. This is much like the example my friend used regarding other animals demonstrating abstract thought; aparently a species of bird showed the ability to think abstractly, and planned ahead for a future, unforseen event that went beyond simple, hardwired instincts, and stored food premptively, expecting a shortage.

Other animals, like higher primates, can even deceive their fellows for their own benefit, which again demonstrates their ability to think abstractly and shows how it can be beneficial to an individual.

So there you have that. So what about this sentience business? Knowing you are an individual, different from another individual. You are unique. In my opinion, I think this benefits the individual by increasing their motiviation for self-preservation beyond hardwired instincts. A sense of self makes you want to keep yourself alive.

I know that for the most part I’m simply reiterating what was said before in my conversation without presenting a whole lot of new thought, but I think it helps to put it in writing to make it more coherent.

This leads me back to my initial problem; to me, it seems obvious that our minds evolved our sense of self and this so-called drive toward philosophical thinking. My friend said that she didn’t believe in a god per say, just in this innate drive that causes us to try to explain things we can’t explain with gods.

But where did it come from then if evolution isn’t the answer? It seems too ambigious for me. Being a naturalist, I’m quite satisfied with knowing that at this point in time, we obviously don’t understand the complexities of the human brain and its functions, however, evolution readily explains how it got to where it is, regardless of our lack of knowledge as to its function. Much like I can say I know that a watch can be built, with tiny little gears which somehow keep track of time, I couldn’t tell you exactly how it works, just that I know the basics of how it was made and how it functions.

I think I just bastardized the Watchmaker Argument to my favor. Clever me.



May

26

You might be interested in checking out these short essays in response to this question posed by the John Templeton Foundation.

I specifically like this answer, which you can read here in a PDF.



Apr

18

The Debate Continues

April 18, 2008 by Brandon | 1 Comment

So the debate continues. Well, it pretty much ended with this, because Elman’s responses to everything I posted here was, “I don’t believe it,” “It’s not true,” “That doesn’t prove anything,” “You’re wrong,” and my favorite, “Wikipedia is obviously biased because it doesn’t say what I want it to say so it is a bad source.”

Elman wrote:
I never said Mathew did not have Mark to refer to while writting his gospel. He may wall have and other sources also that may have been lost.

No, you claimed he was a flippin’ eye witness and knew Jesus. If he knew Jesus, he wouldn’t be needing another source to copy everything he wrote from, now would he? No, he’d write his own gospel, not word-for-word copies.

Elman wrote:
Bible scholars know you are mistaken on much of what you claim.

I’m sorry Elman, but this is the last time I’m going to state this and it’s the last time I’m going to respond to you in this subject. I’m honestly just done with it and can’t take it anymore.

The three gospels are synoptic. They were copied. They are recognized as being copied texts by some of the most prominent church leaders and theologians, including, as I pointed out, St. Augustine. He just didn’t have the advanced methods we have to figure out the order correctly.

The writers of these books were not eye-witnesses. None of them knew Jesus.

Wikipedia wrote:
Origin of the canonical Gospels

Main article: Synoptic problem

The dominant view today is that Mark is the first Gospel, with Matthew and Luke borrowing passages both from that Gospel and from at least one other common source, lost to history, termed by scholars ‘Q’ (from German: Quelle, meaning “source”).

Wikipedia wrote:
Dating

Estimates for the dates when the canonical Gospel accounts were written vary significantly; and the evidence for any of the dates is scanty. Because the earliest surviving complete copies of the Gospels date to the 4th century and because only fragments and quotations exist before that, scholars use higher criticism to propose likely ranges of dates for the original gospel autographs. Scholars variously assess the consensus or majority view as follows:

* Mark: c. 68–73,[6] c 65-70[1]
* Matthew: c. 70–100.[6] c 80-85.[1] Some conservative scholars argue for a pre-70 date, particularly those that do not accept Mark as the first gospel written.
* Luke: c. 80–100, with most arguing for somewhere around 85,[6], c 80-85[1]
* John: c 90-100,[1] c. 90–110,[7] The majority view is that it was written in stages, so there was no one date of composition.

Elman wrote:
Which you are denying existed.

That has nothing to do with what I asked you. Not that I even care anymore.

Elman wrote:
The New Testament.

The implication was eye-witness and contemporary. I can write a book about any character I want to, and heck, I can even convince other people to write stories about that character too. Look at Harry Potter. By your standard of evidence, Harry Potter the person exists and is real. The books contain accurate historical information regarding locations and culture. More than one person has written about him.

Your book, once again, does not count as historical evidence by itself. Once again, the reason for this is because it also contains fictional stories and fictional characters. Unless we have actual evidence to support the man Jesus, like we have actual evidence to support the factual historical claims the Bible does contain, the idea of there being a man named Jesus cannot be proven or said to be true, and at best exists only as speculation, because the possibility that he is nothing more than one more fictional character and story like so many others in the Bible.

Elman wrote:
Guess what. Most historians would say it is probable that a man called Jesus existed and was crucfied by the Romans about two thousand years ago.

Most historians would probably say it is probable. I agree with you on that. But can they say for sure? Can we say for sure? No. We can’t.

Elman wrote:
I already addresed this preposterious proposal. No other historical document is treated that way.

Because it is not a historical document. It is a religious text with some historical accuracies. When will you realize that?

Elman wrote:
Matthew, John, and Peter all knew HIm.

This is fractal wrongness. You are so wrong, it is literally boggling my mind.

Matthew and John did not know Jesus. No one knows who Matthew even was, and John certainly didn’t know Jesus. Note for blog readers, this is referring to the actual writers of these texts, not the apostles. Elman claims the writers were the apostles.

As for Peter and the Epistles:

Wikipedia wrote:
First Epistle:

The First Epistle of Peter is a book of the New Testament. It has traditionally been held to have been written by Saint Peter the apostle during his time as bishop of Rome. The letter is addressed to various churches in Asia Minor suffering religious persecution.

Most scholars believe the author was not Peter, but an unknown author writing after Peter’s death. Estimates for the date of composition range from 70 to 112 AD.

Most critical scholars are skeptical that the apostle Simon Peter, the fisherman on the Sea of Galilee, actually wrote the epistle, because of the urbane cultured style of the Greek and the lack of any personal detail suggesting contact with the historical Jesus of Nazareth. The letter contains about thirty-five references to the Hebrew Bible, all of which, however, come from the Septuagint translation, an unlikely source for historical Peter the apostle, but appropriate for a Hellenized audience; thus the use of the Septuagint helps define the audience. The Septuagint was a Greek translation that had been created at Alexandria for the use of those Jews who could not easily read the Hebrew and Aramaic of the Tanakh. A historical Jew in Galilee would not have heard Scripture in this form, it is argued.

Wikipedia wrote:
Second Epistle:

The letter opens by identifying the author as “Simon Peter, a servant and an apostle of Jesus Christ” (2Peter 1:1). Elsewhere, the author clearly presents himself as the Apostle Peter, stating that the Lord revealed to him the approach of his own death (2Peter 1:14), that he was an eyewitness of the Transfiguration (2Peter 1:16-18), that he had previously written another epistle to the same audience (2Peter 3:1; cf. 1 Peter), and he called Paul the Apostle “our beloved brother” (2Peter 3:15).

Although 2 Peter internally purports to be a work of the apostle, most biblical scholars have concluded that Peter is not the author, and instead consider the epistle pseudepigraphical. Reasons for this include its linguistic differences from 1 Peter, its apparent use of Jude, possible allusions to second-century gnosticism, encouragement in the wake of a delayed parousia, and weak external support.[2] In addition, specific passages offer further clues in support of pseudepigraphy, namely the author’s assumption that his audience is familiar with multiple Pauline epistles (2Peter 3:15-16), his implication that the Apostlic generation has passed (2Peter 3:4), and his differentiation between himself and “the apostles of the Lord and Savior” (2Peter 3:2).

Wikipedia wrote:
Gospel of John:

The authorship has been disputed since at least the second century, with mainstream Christianity traditionally holding that the author was John the Apostle, son of Zebedee. Several other authors have historically been suggested, including Papias, John the Presbyter and Cerinthus, though many apologetic Christian scholars still hold to the conservative view that ascribes authorship to John the Apostle. Most modern experts conclude the author to be an unknown non-eyewitness.[11]

As for the three John epistles…

Wikipedia wrote:
The three Epistles and the Gospel of John are so closely allied in diction, style, and general outlook that the burden of proof lies with the person who would deny their common authorship.

As for Revelation, the accepted writer is John of Patmos, who is not the same John who wrote the epistles or the gospel and is not John the Apostle who knew Jesus. Lucky for you, though, this book has the best chance of it actually being written by John the Apostle, being that the date given for it is actually within his estimated life-span. However as I said, the scholarly view is that it was not him based on how the text was written.

Elman wrote:
And this has what to do with the price of eggs in China?

It has to do with the eye-witness period being far smaller than what it would be today. A life span was much shorter, therefore the eye-witness period was as well.

If we are talking about men who were in their late 20’s and early 30’s when Jesus was alive, then something written in 70 CE would have them aged in their 70’s. The average life-span during the 1st century was, literally, 20-30 years of age.

You can see how you’d have even more of a problem with the books that can be dated as late as 90 CE to 110 CE.

Elman wrote:
James his brother knew Him.

Wikipedia wrote:
The author identifies himself in the opening verse as “James, a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ”. From the middle of the third century, patristic authors cited the Epistle as written by James the Just, a relation of Jesus and first Bishop of Jerusalem.[9] Not numbered among the Twelve Apostles, unless he is identified as James the Less[10], James was nonetheless a very important figure: Paul described him as “the brother of the Lord” in Galatians 1:19 and as one of the three pillars of the Church in 2:9. He is traditionally considered the first of the Seventy Disciples. John Calvin and others suggested that the author was the Apostle James, son of Alphaeus, who was often identified with James the Just. If written by James the Just, the place and time of the writing of the epistle would be Jerusalem, where James was residing before his martyrdom in 62.

Authorship has also occasionally been attributed to the apostle James the Great, brother of John the Evangelist and son of Zebedee.[citation needed] The letter does mention persecutions in the present tense (2:6), and this is consistent with the persecution in Jerusalem during which James the Great was martyred (Acts 12:1). However, some challenge the early date on the basis of some of the letter’s content, which they interpret to be a clarification of St. Paul’s teachings on justification found in his Epistle to the Romans, written c. 54.[citation needed] If written by James the Great, the location would have also been Jerusalem, sometime before 45.[citation needed]

The Catholic Encyclopedia accepts James the Just as the author and dates the writing of the epistle between 47 AD (after a famine in Jerusalem attested to by Josephus) and 52 AD (at which point James made some decision as bishop).[citation needed]

Lastly, many scholars consider the epistle to be written in the late first or early second centuries, after the death of James the Just. Among the reasons for this are:[11]

* the author introduces himself merely as “a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ”, without invoking any special family relationship to Jesus.
* the cultured Greek language of the Epistle, it is contended, could not have been written by a Jerusalemite Jew (though there were many Greek-speakers in Jerusalem and a Greek-speaking scribe could have taken dictation).[citation needed]
* the author fails to mention Jewish ritual requirements such as circumcision, whereas James the Just is known from Galatians and the Acts of the Apostles to have been particularly concerned with ministering to the Jewish and circumcised (however, since it is addressed to a Jewish audience, such requirements would naturally be taken for granted; moreover, the Epistle could have been written before the end of Paul’s First Missionary Journey (46-48 AD), when the inclusion of gentiles first became an issue).[citation needed]
* the author fails to mention any details of Jesus’s life (however, the doctrines resemble Jesus’s own doctrines as recorded in the Gospels, more than Paul’s doctrines).[citation needed]
* the epistle was only gradually accepted into the (non-Jewish) canon of the New Testament.

Elman wrote:
Actually there is a few outside sources that many of the early Christians died as martyrs.

And they are?

Elman wrote:
They are not mindboggingly significant on wheather He existed or on wheather He taught that we should love our neighbor.

Yes, they are. Because it doesn’t take a special person to teach “love your neighbor”. That message isn’t what made Jesus so special. It might be why he is special to you, but let’s be honest here, you don’t just accept that. You accept the whole deal. The point is that if we know that the story is flawed in significant ways, are we really justified in believing any of it? Whether or not what we are believing is good advice or not isn’t the point. Believe the good advice, by all means. But don’t believe it because Jesus said it.

Elman wrote:
Now you see where I said what Jesus was preaching was insignificant. You are more of a Creator than God perhaps. You create something from nothing.

What exactly are you saying? I’m utterly confused as to the point of that statement.

Elman wrote:
Not much bad stuff.

Bad stuff is bad stuff. He said bad stuff. I don’t get hit by baseballs in the fact very often, but when it happens, it’s bad. The frequency of its occurrence has nothing to do with the fact that it’s still bad.

Elman wrote:
So it is terrible advice to tell a rich man to help the poor? It is terrible advice to say we should focus on the problems we have now and not worry too much about potential future problems?

Jesus did not tell rich people to help the poor. Jesus told rich people to sell everything you own and give it to the poor.

Jesus did not say “Hey guys, don’t be worry-warts.”

Jesus said do not worry about what you will eat tomorrow. Do not worry about what you’re going to wear tomorrow. This is not in the sense of choices, as in “Hmm, wonder if I’ll eat pop tarts or donuts for breakfast.” Or “Should I wear the pink skirt or the blue skirt to school tomorrow?” No, it’s very clear. He says not to save money. God will provide you everything you need.

Elman wrote:
It taks little faith to believe Jesus existed as a man. It takes more faith to believe He was the son of God.

Faith is faith to me. It’s believing something without reason or evidence to support it, as we’ve been through. I realize you define it differently. So let’s not bother with that argument.

Elman wrote:
Again it is not a rule that ancient writtings must have other confirming sources before being a source of historical evidence.

It is when they’re story books full of fiction.

Elman wrote:
Again I have to keep repeating, other historical sources have mistakes in them which does not remove them from being historical sources.

Mistakes are different than utter fabrications, too. Once again I will repeat this. The Bible is not a historical document. It is a religious text that happens to contain some historical accuracies, these are determined to be true only because we have outside evidence to verify the claim.

And with that, I will leave you to have the last word because I’m finished with this debate. There’s nothing to debate because from what I see, you have obviously not even bothered to research any of this.

Dreadfully sorry, forgot Matthew.

Wikipedia wrote:
Although the document is internally anonymous, the authorship of this Gospel has been traditionally ascribed to Matthew the Evangelist, a tax collector who became an Apostle of Jesus. The surviving testimony of the church fathers is unanimous in this view, and the tradition had been accepted by Christians at least as early as the 2nd century up to modern times. In addition, the title “According to Matthew” is found in the earliest codices,[2] which date to the fourth century. Beginning in the 18th century, however, scholars have increasingly questioned that traditional view, and today the majority agree Matthew did not write the Gospel which bears his name.[3] Matthew primarily writes for the Greek-speaking Jewish Christians and Gentiles who were, at least partly, Torah observant.[4]



What is Fractal Wrongness?

The state of being wrong at every conceivable scale of resolution. That is, from a distance, a fractally wrong person's worldview is incorrect; and furthermore, if you zoom in on any small part of that person's worldview, that part is just as wrong as the whole worldview.

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