Morality without God?

[tonyrey]

Eye witnesses are notoriously unreliable. It is harder to imagine a story not changing over 2,000 years. The bible used in the UK has it’s roots in the 1600s and was very much ‘tidied up’ or ‘cleaned up’ by it’s authors to represent the views of the time.

The key words are “a story” and “2,000 years”. From the ridiculous to the sublime!

 

[Bradski]

Now, tell me how you believe this Resurrection story got promoted…and repeated. Until finally 4 men heard about it and decided to write it down.

Keep in mind that while the story was being promoted there would have been individuals around who could have attested to it being a hoax. All they had to do was provide the corpse of Jesus, right?

If you don’t understand (or even accept) that a story can easily become embellished in the telling, especially when someone wants to put a positive spin on it, then anything I suggest is not going to gain any traction I’m afraid. And this wasn’t a CNN story that someone saw the night before and was repeating. This is a story that was being retold many, many years after it was said to have happened. Some would say over a hundred years after.

So there was no-one to say: ‘Hang on…I was there. It didn’t quite happen like that’. Luke – or whoever actually wrote it, had carte blanche to write what he believed others said that others believed etc. And isn’t that a problem in itself? You say that he is telling what you accept as the truth when there is very serious doubt indeed about whether the person who wrote it is actually the person you think it was. It could quite possibly have been someone who was lying through his teeth in order to promote Christianity.

Either Luke was lying or incompetent, since he claimed to have “carefully investigated everything” … “things…just as they were handed down to us by those who from the first were eyewitnesses.” This sounds like someone who relied upon direct evidence handed down from eyewitnesses to write a complete and orderly account.

Firstly, you are accepting that it was Luke. And, as above, there is serious doubt about that. And secondly, the very earliest accepted date for the gospel is some 60 years after the events it describes. There simply were no eyewitnesses left to tell the tale. And if you want to accept that he relied on evidence handed down from eyewitnesses, then from whom did he get this evidence? Someone he knew who knew someone who was there? Or third hand? Fourth? How many people would he have needed to investigate before getting a definitive answer as to what happened? How did he know that people that he might have talked to were telling the truth?

This was an event that may have been told and retold countless times before actually being committed to writing and this in a part of the world and at a time when the general populace was illiterate and deeply superstitious.

If you can accept the gospels as fact, no questions asked (as opposed to accepting them on faith), then your level of scepticism is at a dangerously low level.

 

[PRmerger]

If you don’t understand (or even accept) that a story can easily become embellished in the telling, especially when someone wants to put a positive spin on it, then anything I suggest is not going to gain any traction I’m afraid.

Can you give any examples in history of people who embellished a story, but refused to re-cant under torture, Bradski?

 

[PRmerger]

IThis was an event that may have been told and retold countless times before actually being committed to writing and this in a part of the world and at a time when the general populace was illiterate and deeply superstitious.

And you must also understand that this was a Jewish culture which promoted this story of a God-Man who was resurrected from the dead.

No culture on earth was less likely to mistake a man for God than this culture. And no culture would have been less likely to receive the story of God Incarnate rising from the dead.

Unless, of course, it really happened.

 

[Peter_Plato]

I
Firstly, you are accepting that it was Luke. And, as above, there is serious doubt about that. And secondly, the very earliest accepted date for the gospel is some 60 years after the events it describes. There simply were no eyewitnesses left to tell the tale. And if you want to accept that he relied on evidence handed down from eyewitnesses, then from whom did he get this evidence? Someone he knew who knew someone who was there? Or third hand? Fourth? How many people would he have needed to investigate before getting a definitive answer as to what happened? How did he know that people that he might have talked to were telling the truth?

This was an event that may have been told and retold countless times before actually being committed to writing and this in a part of the world and at a time when the general populace was illiterate and deeply superstitious.

If you can accept the gospels as fact, no questions asked (as opposed to accepting them on faith), then your level of scepticism is at a dangerously low level.

I suspect that it is your level of skepticism that is at a dangerously high level.

First of all, Luke was a companion of Paul and the fact that Acts changes from a third person to a first person narrative means that Luke accompanied Paul on Paul’s mission journeys. So, at least part of the story is a first person account. It also means that Luke had direct access to Paul and likely a number of other Apostles. His accounts were not as distant as you claim. If Luke didn’t write the accounts, then someone claiming to be Luke did, in which case he lied. There is no reason to think someone else besides the companion of Paul wrote Acts or the Gospel.

Luke and Paul’s writings are the most complete and accurate of any narrative we have from the period. Any secular writer from the period with the level of detail recorded by Luke would be acclaimed as a paragon of historical narrative. The only reason for doubting the authenticity of Luke is a predisposition on your part to denigrate anything of Christian heritage as tainted. That is a bias on your part, not one which you would similarly apply to “secular” works from the period.

Second, the Christians writing at the time of the early Church had no inkling of where the Church was headed in terms of popularity,so your claim that Christian writings were tainted in order to promulgate a “Christian” POV is reading back into the historical situation your own biases about Christianity as it is promoted today in some circles. PR is more of a modern phenomenon to counter attacks on the Church from a perspective of “popularity.” The early Church was more concerned with telling the truth and having it authenticated by accessible facts. Today, those facts have become historical in nature because we no longer have access to first person evidence. At the time of Luke and Paul, however, facts could have been and would have been checked.

The fact that no written denial or questioning of the facts exists from the time (within 200-300 years) means that the facts were not questioned when they could have been but weren’t. Considering Christianity had vociferous enemies in Jewish and Roman deniers, there was ample opportunity to cast doubt on the historical claims of Christianity. Why is there none?

Look at the number and breadth of denials or questions about the assassination of Kennedy or 911 that arose almost immediately after both events. Why absolutely none concerning Christian claims?

You can’t just assume people of the time were more superstitious, you have to claim they were absolutely brain dead to not reliably put to rest such an audacious claim when it surely could and would have been.

 

[PRmerger]

I suspect that it is your level of skepticism that is at a dangerously high level.

Indeed.

Except in some areas where his level of skepticism is at a dangerously low level.

There seems to be a degree of the* “Credulous Atheist” phenomenon* going on here. That is, the atheist who is skeptical about all things religious but will suddenly be peculiarly credulous and gullible regarding anything that even hints at discarding a religious truth.

To believe that a group of men could have died horrific deaths, all the while embellishing a story they knew was false (they knew they hadn’t seen anyone rise from the dead, yet died proclaiming they did), takes a certain degree of gullibility that is curiously lacking in all other areas of an atheist’s paradigm.

 

[JamesATyler]

If you don’t understand (or even accept) that a story can easily become embellished in the telling, especially when someone wants to put a positive spin on it, then anything I suggest is not going to gain any traction I’m afraid. And this wasn’t a CNN story that someone saw the night before and was repeating. This is a story that was being retold many, many years after it was said to have happened. Some would say over a hundred years after.

So there was no-one to say: ‘Hang on…I was there. It didn’t quite happen like that’. Luke – or whoever actually wrote it, had carte blanche to write what he believed others said that others believed etc. And isn’t that a problem in itself? You say that he is telling what you accept as the truth when there is very serious doubt indeed about whether the person who wrote it is actually the person you think it was. It could quite possibly have been someone who was lying through his teeth in order to promote Christianity.

Firstly, you are accepting that it was Luke. And, as above, there is serious doubt about that. And secondly, the very earliest accepted date for the gospel is some 60 years after the events it describes. There simply were no eyewitnesses left to tell the tale. And if you want to accept that he relied on evidence handed down from eyewitnesses, then from whom did he get this evidence? Someone he knew who knew someone who was there? Or third hand? Fourth? How many people would he have needed to investigate before getting a definitive answer as to what happened? How did he know that people that he might have talked to were telling the truth?

This was an event that may have been told and retold countless times before actually being committed to writing and this in a part of the world and at a time when the general populace was illiterate and deeply superstitious.

If you can accept the gospels as fact, no questions asked (as opposed to accepting them on faith), then your level of scepticism is at a dangerously low level.

The problem with your argument is that you don’t believe in the Holy Spirit. You don’t believe that these men were assisted by God himself to complete the task Jesus had put before his disciples. You don’t believe that Jesus was raised from the dead. The problem is, that you look at this simply as an endeavor by men to promote a powerless religion which is nothing more than some old stories and a few sayings. You don’t see any real divinity in what the apostles were doing but the Christians here do. You are arguing about what you think is possible but the people you are arguing with believe more is possible than you do.

 

[Peter_Plato]

Firstly, you are accepting that it was Luke. And, as above, there is serious doubt about that. And secondly, the very earliest accepted date for the gospel is some 60 years after the events it describes. There simply were no eyewitnesses left to tell the tale.

Even if we accept your dating and the implications of such a late date, are you claiming, for example, that it would be impossible for someone in 2013 to write a credible account of WWII? Of the Korean War? Of the Nuremberg Trials? Of the Holocaust? Are you a Holocaust denier, then, because no eye witness survivors could possibly remain to tell an accurate story? It must all have been fabricated? It would seem so if we apply your rigid standards for accepting written testimony.

 

[Bradski]

Can you give any examples in history of people who embellished a story, but refused to re-cant under torture, Bradski?

I haven’t said that the gospel writers embellished the story. I have said that Luke in in particular was able ‘to write what he believed others said that others believed’. I’m quite willing to believe that whoever did write it quite possibly believed it happened. Or at least believed what he was told. Or maybe not. It is literally impossible to know.

And in any case, as I have said before, there are plenty of examples of people who would sacrifice themselves (and unfortunately, in some cases, others as well) for what they believe.

But there is no credible evidence that the four men who are purported to have written the gospels in question (and the emphasis is on ‘purported’) were ever executed or tortured for their beliefs. So I would say that there may be no-one at all who has died in such a way for a belief they knew to be untrue.

So my ‘skepto-meter’ goes off the dial again when someone claims that they did in this case. There would be no reason whatsoever to suggest that they did other than an attempt to add credibility to an incredible story. I hope this isn’t one of the cornerstones of your argument: ‘He died for his beliefs therefore they must have been true’. That statement obviously doesn’t hold.

What you CAN say is that if someone died for his beliefs they must have believed them to have been true. It doesn’t make them true.

Even if we accept your dating and the implications of such a late date, are you claiming, for example, that it would be impossible for someone in 2013 to write a credible account of WWII? Of the Korean War? Of the Nuremberg Trials? Of the Holocaust? Are you a Holocaust denier, then, because no eye witness survivors could possibly remain to tell an accurate story? It must all have been fabricated? It would seem so if we apply your rigid standards for accepting written testimony.

That’s quite a nonsensical argument that I wouldn’t have expected from you.

 

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[Peter_Plato]

That’s quite a nonsensical argument that I wouldn’t have expected from you.

The argument was yours. I am putting it into perspective to demonstrate that it wouldn’t be reasonable to apply it today, which means your bias is showing.

 

[PRmerger]

I haven’t said that the gospel writers embellished the story. I have said that Luke in in particular was able ‘to write what he believed others said that others believed’. I’m quite willing to believe that whoever did write it quite possibly believed it happened. Or at least believed what he was told. Or maybe not. It is literally impossible to know.

Fair enough.

But let’s take it back 40 years.

Start from the moment that Jesus was buried.

What’s your explanation as to how the myth of the Resurrection began. And spread?

And keep in mind that all of these people who spread the myth ended up dying horrific deaths.

What’s your explanation for this phenomenon? And can you give another example in history of this explanation, so as to relieve my skepticism for your explanation?

 

[Bradski]

Fair enough. But let’s take it back 40 years. Start from the moment that Jesus was buried.

What’s your explanation as to how the myth of the Resurrection began. And spread? And keep in mind that all of these people who spread the myth ended up dying horrific deaths.

What’s your explanation for this phenomenon? And can you give another example in history of this explanation, so as to relieve my skepticism for your explanation?

There’s no point in taking it back to the actual date of the purported resurrection (and 40 years is a little skinny in any case. The generally accepted minimum for the date of the Gospels is 60 years after the event. That might seem like a moot point since we’re talking about events 2,000 years ago, but it emphasises the fact that there were no eye witnesses left to quote when they were written).

There is nothing to indicate that the myth did start a week after Jesus dies. There is no contemporary writing at all that describes it, so it’s not unreasonable to say that it actually started around the time of the gospels. It becomes then a story of a man who dies many years before the story is written (perhaps over 100 years) whom his followers thought to be the son of God. Who wanted what he taught to continue. They wanted prophesies to be fulfilled. They expected him to cheat death and re-join his father. He was expected to rise from the dead. So is it unreasonable to report, decades after the event that he perhaps might have done so?

If this was a secular account of some obscure deity in some god forsaken part of the world even a few hundred years ago, if the names and dates were changed then you would be as sceptical as I am. You would have to be because if you didn’t, you’d end up believing everything you read.

And once again, there are no indications anywhere that: ‘people who spread the myth ended up dying horrific deaths’. No-one died telling what they knew was a lie. Most definitely people die for believing a myth. A lot of people kill themselves for believing things. But, again, that doesn’t make what they believe true.

Maybe you could specifically accept that so I don’t have to keep repeating it.

 

[aprilfloyd]

There’s no point in taking it back to the actual date of the purported resurrection (and 40 years is a little skinny in any case. The generally accepted minimum for the date of the Gospels is 60 years after the event. That might seem like a moot point since we’re talking about events 2,000 years ago, but it emphasises the fact that there were no eye witnesses left to quote when they were written).

There is nothing to indicate that the myth did start a week after Jesus dies. There is no contemporary writing at all that describes it, so it’s not unreasonable to say that it actually started around the time of the gospels. It becomes then a story of a man who dies many years before the story is written (perhaps over 100 years) whom his followers thought to be the son of God. Who wanted what he taught to continue. They wanted prophesies to be fulfilled. They expected him to cheat death and re-join his father. He was expected to rise from the dead. So is it unreasonable to report, decades after the event that he perhaps might have done so?

If this was a secular account of some obscure deity in some god forsaken part of the world even a few hundred years ago, if the names and dates were changed then you would be as sceptical as I am. You would have to be because if you didn’t, you’d end up believing everything you read.

And once again, there are no indications anywhere that: ‘people who spread the myth ended up dying horrific deaths’. No-one died telling what they knew was a lie. Most definitely people die for believing a myth. A lot of people kill themselves for believing things. But, again, that doesn’t make what they believe true.

Maybe you could specifically accept that so I don’t have to keep repeating it.

Enjoyed reading this post

 

[Publisher]

There’s no point in taking it back to the actual date of the purported resurrection (and 40 years is a little skinny in any case. The generally accepted minimum for the date of the Gospels is 60 years after the event. That might seem like a moot point since we’re talking about events 2,000 years ago, but it emphasises the fact that there were no eye witnesses left to quote when they were written).

There is nothing to indicate that the myth did start a week after Jesus dies. There is no contemporary writing at all that describes it, so it’s not unreasonable to say that it actually started around the time of the gospels. It becomes then a story of a man who dies many years before the story is written (perhaps over 100 years) whom his followers thought to be the son of God. Who wanted what he taught to continue. They wanted prophesies to be fulfilled. They expected him to cheat death and re-join his father. He was expected to rise from the dead. So is it unreasonable to report, decades after the event that he perhaps might have done so?

If this was a secular account of some obscure deity in some god forsaken part of the world even a few hundred years ago, if the names and dates were changed then you would be as sceptical as I am. You would have to be because if you didn’t, you’d end up believing everything you read.

And once again, there are no indications anywhere that: ‘people who spread the myth ended up dying horrific deaths’. No-one died telling what they knew was a lie. Most definitely people die for believing a myth. A lot of people kill themselves for believing things. But, again, that doesn’t make what they believe true.

Maybe you could specifically accept that so I don’t have to keep repeating it.

You have some great points…Paul began his writing some decades before any gospel was penned…the gospels were penned around 60-135CE…“Mark” being the first…“John” being the last…“Luke” and "Matthew between 70-90 CE

They were not written to be eyewitness accounts of the life of Jesus of Nazareth, but as liturgical texts to be used in the synagouges to call to mind that God was still involved in Israel’s life. Each synoptic gospel’s stories hails back to an OT story told during the major Jewish feasts. Jesus was the “new Moses” …the “new Elijah”. A prophetic voice now sounding in Israel again…Gentile Christianity lost site of it’s Jewish roots after the fall of Jersusalem in 70CE…when synagouge and “church” split…and “Christianity” was born as a speparate religious tradition. The Rabbinical movement to preserve Judaism apart from the Temple had no place for those Jewish followers of Jesus.

The battle was between which version of Jewish history was to be preserved to be Jewish…the Rabbinical tradition or the “Christian” tradition…when the “Christian” version of Jewish religious life was rejected, it moved to a predominantly Gentile movement…and lost sight of the liturgical reasons why the gospels were written in the first place.

 

[PRmerger]

They wanted prophesies to be fulfilled.

What OT prophesies are you referring to, Bradski?

Can you please cite book, chapter and verse?

 

[PRmerger]

Most definitely people die for believing a myth. A lot of people kill themselves for believing things. But, again, that doesn’t make what they believe true.

Maybe you could specifically accept that so I don’t have to keep repeating it.

Yes, I specifically acknowledge that people may indeed give their lives for a myth…dying for something they absolutely believe to be true, while, in fact, it is a hoax.

We still have to investigate how this phenomenon of the myth was borne.

I am awaiting your explanation of plausible theories as to how this occurred.

 

[Bradski]

We still have to investigate how this phenomenon of the myth was borne. I am awaiting your explanation of plausible theories as to how this occurred.

Don’t you find this reasonable?

It becomes then a story of a man who dies many years before the story is written (perhaps over 100 years) whom his followers thought to be the son of God. Who wanted what he taught to continue. They wanted prophesies to be fulfilled. They expected him to cheat death and re-join his father. He was expected to rise from the dead. So is it unreasonable to report, decades after the event that he perhaps might have done so?

What OT prophesies are you referring to, Bradski? Can you please cite book, chapter and verse?

I said: ‘they wanted prophesies to be fulfilled’.

As in John 20.9 “as yet they did not know the Scripture, that he must rise from the dead”
And as Paul said, 1 Corinthians 15. 3-5, “Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures.”

I believe that most people refer to Jonah and psalm 16 (and 22?) in this respect. So the gospel writers were convinced – or were trying to convince others, that the resurrection was prophesied. It adds credence to the story. Now we can go on to ask whether you find the gospel references to scriptural prophesies in any way credible. I don’t. I think that they’re extremely obscure at best and could refer to simply anything. There isn’t any way that you could use them prior to the resurrection as a way to predict it. They can only be used post resurrection…

Which, of course, they tried to do. And I think that you find them stretching credulity just as much as I do. And if you do, you might get an understanding of my point that they were trying to put as much positive spin on the story as possible.

Don’t you consider the scriptural references as ‘embellishment’?

 

[Aloysium]

Someone mentioned Jonah

I know this is a philosophy section, but I cannot contain myself. :extrahappy:

He has to be one of the most interesting people in the O.T.
so filled with faith, with hope
unfortunately, a little lacking in compassion :tsktsk:
yet everyone with whom he is in contact, turns to the Lord :heaven:

he runs from God in full awareness of His goodness and mercy
sleeping below deck while the hurricane threatens the destruction of all on board

imagine the terror in the sailors :frighten:
and their total perplexity when he reveals that his God is the creator of the world
tormented with the thought of throwing him off the ship :sad_yes:
But they knew they must, “and the sea stopped raging. At this, the men were seized with dread of Yahweh; they offered a sacrifice to Yahweh and made vows to him.”

it is so cold in that fish
in the darkness, in the silence of the depths
as the fish swims on relentless, through the waves
three days

Jonah prays, “To the roots of the mountains, I sank into the underworld, and its bars closed round me for ever. But you raised my life from the Pit, Yahweh my God! When my soul was growing ever weaker, Yahweh, I remembered you, and my prayer reached you in your holy Temple.”

The entire story, the saving of Nineveh, Jonah’s unhappiness and God’s lesson, it reaches into what it means to be human and radiates God’s love for all mankind.

Enough of my further derailing this already derailed thread; back to games: :slapfight:

 

[Ion]

I said: ‘they wanted prophesies to be fulfilled’.

What you miss in your thinking is the tradition.
I recall an documentary, where a scientist was willing to declare that in the midst of their enslavement, Jewish people reinvented their past and wrote the bible.
You can’t.