Hemingway has made a legitimate point, but in so doing he has unintentionally taken up the legitimate aspect of a point stephentlig made against him.
The sheer number of religious believers does not prove that God exists; however, the fact that numerous intelligent people of proven intellectual attainments have believed in God and advanced intellectual reasons for their belief, and that instances are known of people who have converted from atheism to belief in God (including people who were brought up as atheists, just as there are people whow ere brought up in Catholicism and other religions and converted to atheism) suggests that such a belief is not self-evidently absurd like the Flying Spaghetti Monster, or resting on the same flimsy foundations as the child who thinks babies are brought by the stork.
Hibernicus, even you must see how unfair the above statement is.
You are trying to suggest that my position is that there is a link between intelligence and non-belief in the supernatural.
Some of the cleverest people to have walked the globe had some crazy beliefs. For Heaven’s sake Sir Isaac Newton is one of the most intelligent humans ever to have existed, but he thought he could produce gold via alchemy!!!
Once again, you have put forward a position that is NOT mine.
PLEASE STOP THIS!!!! You continually do this to me and other posters here and to be honest I am getting sick of it. Why can’t you enter into reasoned debate without telling me what my position is when it is clearly
NOT the position I hold
I am not suggesting for one moment that it is my view that intelligence = Atheism as you seem to be suggesting. Why would I? Some of the most intelligent people that ever existed were theists. I would ask you to please refrain from this outright dishonest behaviour in future. It shows a lack of respect for me to whom you responding and other posters who have not read the previous post may read yours and think that you are telling the truth when clearly you are not.
You are better than this. Rise above it. Wouldn’t it have been better to clarify my position by asking me
“Hemingway, are you suggesting that there are no intelligent Theists? Please clarify your position.”There term "belief" and "proof" also bears different meanings.
Agreed
What we are talking about is not absolute proof such as must instantly convince the hardest doubter - such proof, we are taught, will never appear till the heavens are rolled up and time is no more. What we are talking about is proof sufficient to act upon, on the basis of probability. We act upon such "proof" every day - if we did not, we would never do anything at all.
I agree in principle (except for your line
“the heavens are rolled up and time is no more”) statement. However you have made a revealing comment when you say
“such proof, we are taught”. Well that’s kind of the point. There is a difference between getting educated and being taught something.
Most (but not all) theists have been given religious instruction since early in their lives and most never bother to look for evidence of gods and this is fine. It’s a nice thing to believe that there is something after this life. I’d love it to be the case.
However what is this belief in the afterlife based on?
For the majority of theists I would suggest it is based on the religious instruction they received rather than verifiable historical and scientific facts.
Once again, I have no problem with this. Live and let live. However, from my position it seems an illogical stance to assume. Then again, I don’t live my life via the instructions of an Iron Age book so I am free of the shackles of religious faith. It doesn’t stop me being a moral or loving person.
Good things will happen to people in their lives. Theists attribute this to their gods looking out for them. I attribute these things to chance and maybe a sequence of events that led to a certain event occurring. When bad things happen the devil usually gets blamed by theists. Once again I would say its chance etc.
The fact is we are different. I accept your position and you accept mine. You think I am wrong and I am convinced you are wrong. So be it. Ner the twain shall meet. And so what? Lets debate and challenge each others reasoning. Its intellectually stimulating.
However, when you state all you need is
“proof sufficient to act upon, on the basis of probability” I would hold the position that the level of proof you are acting on is practically zero. Zilch. Basing a belief on an Iron Age book that has been mistranslated, tampered with and been the subject of countless editorial processes is almost unbelievable to me.
I was taught to believe in a deity since birth, therefore it’s hard to let go. But if gods exist why have they make the universe look exactly the way it would look if they didn’t exist? The lack of evidence for their existence is overwhelming in my view.
Certainly the universe has any painul features - it also contains creatures who try to understand it, and this is certainly remarkable if you think it emerges by blind randomness.
I
didn’t suggest the whole thing happened by
“blind randomness”. See my first reply. Once the process got going there are many scientific explanations and theories on how the planets formed, how orbits formed, how amino acids combined to generate bacterial life and eventually hoe species evolved over time. Once again you are stating that I hold a position that I don’t. Please refrain!
Plus if “it” was designed who designed it? Where are they? Why the secrecy? Who designed them?
Certainly Elctric sparks in a piece of meat, the fingers of an ape moving on a keyboard, and soemthing is produced which is mutually intelligible and relates to the profoundest nature of reality. Isn't that at least prima facie evidence that some sort of reality exists - I do not say proof but evidence, something which cannot be dismissed as self-evidently false and which supports the claim that the faults are flaws that will be put right i the working out of some greater design, rather than proof of mere randomness and chaos as the ultimate reality?
ABSOLUTELY NOT!!!! This is such a weak response. It displays a profound lack of understanding as to the science behind how life evolved, continues to evolve and why the above examples you have given are perfectly explainable through non-supernatural means.
We have a working understanding of electric currents in organic matter. And by the way, humans are classed as apes. The
“nature of reality” is such an abstract term in the sense you use it above, that I cannot comment as it have several meanings.
BTW some arguments I have seen put forward by atheists (and indeed by 'intelligent design' theorists) assume that the creator God exists within the universe and is constantly labouring to fix his own mistakes - a god of the gaps - rather than one who stands outside the universe and who laid out his plan in the beginning, including his own intervention.
Interesting theory. Is it based on any testable evidence or is it mere speculation I wonder?
I think you will find, however, most Atheists will not speculate where gods operate at all. They reject the notion altogether in my experience.
Can you show me an example of an Atheist speculating about where gods operate? I would like to see an example of that.
Are you sure they were not debating reality issues?
If hemingway thinks the gospels show a progressive supernaturalisation of Jesus, he should see the ones that were rejected, and remember how strongly the Gospel of John insists on His humanity.
I don’t
EXCLUSIVELY suggest the gospels show a
“progressive supernaturalisation of Jesus”. I do say that the story of Jesus’ life had elements added to it by later gospel writers. Some elements are mundane and some are supernatural. For instance the virgin birth is not in the first gospel Mark. As Matthew and Luke most likely had a copy of Mark in front of them when writing their gospels, where did the story of the virgin birth come from?
Christianity was struggling in its infancy with other religions and sects. The claims the early Christians were making about Jesus were nothing new to the people who followed other gods. Many religions had feast days at Easter and on December the 25th. They practically all had a deity that was killed and rose again. Many of these deities were conceived of a virgin birth.
In fact Justin Martyr, the early church father, made a very revealing statement in one of his writing when he was addressing some pagans. He claimed that what he was stating about the miracles of Jesus was no different than what they claimed about their gods (or the suns of Jupiter as he called them).
However, he claimed he was right and they were wrong!!!!!!!
Special pleading anyone? What if I said to you that superman and iron man were fictional but spiderman? Oh now he is real! You’d be right to scoff at me. It’s a case of special pleading with no strong historical basis in fact. Much like some of the miracles attributed to Jesus.
I have looked at many of the apocrypha gospels. I bought a copy of a collection of the Gnostic gospels also from amazon.co.uk. I find the infancy gospels of Jesus the most interesting as well as the gospel of Thomas. As Jesus disappeared for so many years it is interesting to read the stories people wrote about what he may have done in that time period in the infancy gospels.
I knew the story of the sparrows (Jesus making them out of clay) as a kid. I didn’t realise it came from one of the banned books though. I believe this story made it into the Qur’an as well.
I think I am correct in stating also that the catholic tradition that St Joseph was on older man when he married Mary (and therefore unable to copulate with her, thus preserving her perpetual virginity) also comes from one of these banned books. Am I correct?
I recommend the History Channels DVD
“Banned from the Bible”. Its an excellent DVD and very informative.
If Most of the classical historians mentioned by Hemingway have been lost or exist only in brief epitomes, so we know of them only by brief summaries by later writers or references to them in other texts;
I have a list of over forty Historians from this time but didn’t type them all up. I only used six of them for my inital reply. I can type up the list if you want and we can discuss them one by one.
the argument from their silence - which is BTW the same as the argument from proving a negative,
INCORRECT!!!! It is not the same argument at all. I am NOT stating these Historian did not exist. I am stating they existed, were in or around the area of Judea at the time Jesus carried out the miracles attributed to him and mention nothing about them. That is all.
I merely use these Historians to highlight the point that the earliest historical accounts we have of Jesus com about a significant period of time after his death. That is all.
given that Roman-based authors were not very interested in provincial prophets; it's like saying the founder of Baha'ism never existed because his contemporary mr. Gladstone never mentioned him, except that we have all Mr. Gladstone's writings whereas only small and random fragments of classical historians survive.
Once again very weak. Mr Gladstone was not a historian who lived in nineteenth-century Persia where the faith was started. He didn’t comment on Bahá'u'lláh or his works.
However, many historians’ that lived in the area where Baha'ism was prominent
DID and wrote about Bahá'u'lláh and his works!!!!!
Tacitus, Suetonius and Josephus, dismissed sl lightly are in fact the principal surviving historians of the period!
Well that’s kind of my point Hib. They are not OF that period when Jesus walked the sands of Judea. They came later, three of the historians I mentioned don’t mention Jesus by name and the one that does mention his name has almost certainly had the relevant section of his text corrupted! Now we are getting somewhere……
(We also know, BTW, that the full text of Livy's history ended at 9 BC, which hardly suggests it would have had much to say about Jesus
Livy died in 17CE. It is believed Jesus was born probably around 3 BCE. Livy was a historian who lived in the same area and within the lifetime of Jesus. We have no record where makes a mention of Jesus’ miracles. That is my point.
- and Lucanus is the poet Lucan, whose epic about the civil war between Caesar and Pompey describes events 50 years or so before the birth of Jesus, so his "silence" is about as significant as a present-day American writer on the American Civil war not mentioning Tom Barry.
Lucanus died in 65CE. He was alive and in the region at the time of Jesus. He was indeed a poet who recorded historical events of significance in his works. He makes no mention of Jesus. Your statement that him mention Jesus is
“as significant as a present-day American writer on the American Civil war not mentioning Tom Barry” is also ridiculous similar to your Mr Gladstone comment.
A present-day American writer on the American Civil war would have no reason to comment on Tom Barry unless he was writing about the history of prominent guerrilla leaders in the Irish Republican Army during the Irish War of Independence..........
Or if he was a historian recording events living in the region in which Tom Barry operated Hib!!!!!!
Getting the picture?
Lucanus was a historian in the region in the first century recording events of significance but, doesn’t mention the miracles. Period.
Dont you think some of the acts and miracles attributed to Jesus would have been newsworthy and worth recording by the people assigned to carry out these tasks at the time?
When you consider the tiny population of the area, someone like Jesus must have been well known and his acts would surely have been recorded by the local "reporters". But they were not.....
Everyone cites material from secondary sources - I presume this is where he got his list of historians -, but Hemingway might at least be curious enough to read around them a little.)
Ad Hominem attack? I
DID read up on them. That’s the point. It appears you have
YOUR facts incorrect hib.
Saying that St. Paul is not interested in Jesus' life but only in his death and resurrection is (a) like saying that Paul does not mention any miracle except the resurrection - that's a big exception (b0 is based on a false antithesis. Paul is writing to existing believers to explain the significance of what they already know - the evangelists are writing for new converts and to leave a record for future generations.
It’s my understanding Paul was preaching to the Gentiles and trying to get new converts. He wrote to places where he had previously established Christian communities. These letters are the works of Paul that are in the New Testament.
You can say what you want on St Paul Hib, but the truth is he never mentions any of Jesus miracles save the resurrection and he puts all his energy into that. He mentions very little of his life and this is understandable as he never met Jesus.
The point I am making is these stories of raising the dead and walking on water (the miracles) come much later. The earliest writings we have don’t mention these other miracles. You suggest one reason why this may be the case. I am suggesting another.
Lets debate it........
You think Paul doesn’t mention other miracles because the communities he was writing to already knew about them. I willing to listen to that argument and it is one possible explanation.
On the other hand I am suggesting that it is highly unusual that St Paul would not have even mentioned
ONCE any of these other miracles. Not once in the thirteen New Testament books which have the name Paul attributed to them.
NOT ONCE!
I put it to you that it is because he was unaware of these other miracles. Furthermore I suggest that some of these miracles were invented by later writers to raise the status of Jesus higher to compete with other god of that time that shared similar attributes (walking on water, raising from the dead, healing the sick were all common features of other pagan gods). It was a means to an end.
Furthermore, I suggest that the scholarly history suggests that my stance may be the correct one as the canonical gospels became more enhanced with new facts about Jesus over time.
I might add that while Hemingway invokes "the majority of Biblical scholars" (though his use of the publicity hounds of the Jesus Seminar does not suggest he knows much on the subject)
Just to point out the actual quote I made was
“I have studied this are quite extensively, and the dating of the gospels is almost universally accepted by most modern biblical scholars. Members of the Jesus Seminar
as well as scholars not affiliated with this organisation are in practically universal agreement.”
I also mention scholars outside the organisation. And just to pull you up on the above, I am very much familiar with the Jesus Seminar! And frankly I think my above answers show that I do have at least a fairly good understanding on the subject matter at hand. Go easy on the Ad Hominems Hib!
I am well aware that many Catholics have a dislike of the work of the Jesus seminar as they attempt to look at matters to do with this subject matter differently to people of faith. None the less they are for the most part New Testament scholars who try to judge matters regarding the historicity of Jesus without allowing faith to be one of their defining criteria.
However, I referenced other sources (scholars
NOT affiliated with the Jesus Seminar). You appear to have ignored this fact. Why?
- he appears to be advancing a position - that Jesus never existed - which is certainly not held by the majority of Biblical scholars. If I have misunderstood him I apologise.
I am not suggesting Jesus didn’t exist. I actually think there is a very high probability he did exist.
What I am suggesting is that the stories we have of him bear little resemblance to the acts carried out by the man who walked the sands of Judea in the first century. I further suggest that his story was beefed up to compete with other competing deities around at the time by early Christians.
THAT is my position. Not the one you suggest. Apology accepted……..
I would also suggest that his blunders in discussing classical historians seem to suggest that he has moved from one theological position to another without ever developing critical thought.
No blunders were made that I am aware of. Please read my above answers. Another Ad Hominem attack Hib. Attack my points, not me.
I think all the answers above I have given are based on critical thought. I moved from a theological position
BECAUSE of critical thought. When I applied critical thought to theology, it crumbled and I found logic. QED………
He used to accept whatever he heard in church, now he accepts whatever he picks up on polemical atheist websites, without learning anything about the subject themselves.
You are right with the first part of you answer. I did used to accept what I heard in church. You still do. So what? What has that got to do with anything?
Your quote
“now he accepts whatever he picks up on polemical atheist websites, without learning anything about the subject themselves” is downright offensive.
Clearly I have researched this matter thoroughly and I think my contributions to this site show that I research most subject matters that I respond to fairly well. I don’t just rely on Atheist websites.
I resent your trying to paint me as some kind of conspiracy nut. If you were not the moderator I would ask for you to be warned for that last statement.
I am an ordinary guy who has read the bible on many occasions, read up on how the bible was put together, read differing views of scholars on the subject and have viewed many DVDs from Biblical Archaeology Review and the History Channel that I use as references. I am not some spotty teenager in a room with a laptop.
You could at least show me some respect!
Would any of the other Catholic posters care to comment on the content of Hib’s last statement or any of the Ad Hominem statements he made?