Morality without God?

[Charlemagne_II]

**I wouldn’t know. I’ve never tried. **

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Existential_nihilism

Without God, the only meaning that exists is the meaning we choose to accept.

Therefore, all morals are man-made and without any other foundation.

Thus moral relativism for the atheistic nihilist is justified.

Very hard to defend!

 

[Peter_Plato]

I can’t forge my own reality. That is impossible. I am old fashioned in that the Catholic God seems to be nasty piece of work - killing Egyptians for example.

I guess if you think defending enslaved and defenseless Israelites against Egyptian military might is to be defined as being “nasty,” then we have very different notions of what the word means.

In the event that you are kidnapped and enslaved to a barbarous, cruel and inhuman band of terrorists make sure to point out to any would-be rescuers that their apparently benevolent actions are “nasty” and intolerable to you, even if they are merely attempting to save you from your brutal and inhuman captors.

Unless, of course, you believe your captors are merely acting humanely when they torture you or force you to do their bidding, which you must, since all actions, according to you, are merely “human” actions. So why should anyone try to save you?

 

[Peter_Plato]

Let’s to back a little.

Let’s say that someone heard a story about the resurrection and repeated it as if it were true. Maybe they thought it was true or it rang true for them. There were aspects of the story, which, if included, would make any listener doubt the veracity of the account, but they were omitted. Not intentionally, but the person telling the story thought they weren’t relevant or simply didn’t bother mentioning them…

Here is where your argument simply fails. You are attempting to “mythify” the resurrection from the get go by starting out with “Let’s say someone…” Why begin with vague generalities? Why not stay within the bounds of the real historical situation?

It wasn’t merely “someone” who heard the story, it was the Jewish Sanhedrin and the Roman authorities who heard it. Two parties who had just crucified Jesus precisely because they didn’t want the people being influenced by his teaching and authority. So these two parties had a compelling vested interest In debunking the story right from the beginning. They could have arrested perpetrators, checked out the tomb, located the body and generally thoroughly investigated the possibility that the story was a fiction. It should have been very easy, given their power, authority, control and omnipresence. Why did they fail to come up with compelling evidence to the contrary, at the critical time when they very well could have?

The Romans were far from inept and the Sanhedrin had strong motive. Together, these two parties would not have let the story get very far. So why were they powerless to stop it?

Perhaps because the resurrection really did happen?

 

[Charlemagne_II]

Peter

**Perhaps because the resurrection really did happen? **



And his resurrection alone gives us hope for our own.

 

[SonSearcher]

You said earlier:

So they wouldn’t have understood the prophesies to be about the resurection. They would have had no knowledge of that. There would have been no connection they could have made from the OT prophesies and Jesus. So I confirmed that:

They mentioned the prophesies and tied them into the resurrection when you have said that you don’t believe they could have done that. Now you say:

Why did they mention the prophesies when you clearly believe they couldn’t have understood the prophesies to be about Jesus?

Incidentally, when I originally mentioned the prophesies, you wanted me to quote chapter and verse. It sounded like you thought I was just throwing that in to bolster my argument without there actually being any prophesies. Or maybe you were just making sure I did know about them…

It sounded then like you thought they were bulldust. It still sounds like that. But the Gospel writers still made claim to them. Did they do a bit of reverse prophesying? Did they go back and look for something that would bolster their story? Did they think that the story of some guy and a whale was another ‘proof’ of the resurection?

It doesn’t sound credible to me and I don’t think it does to you either.

“But the new rebel is a skeptic, and will not entirely trust anything. He has no loyalty; therefore he can never be really a revolutionist. And the fact that he doubts everything really gets in his way when he wants to denounce anything. For all denunciation implies a moral doctrine of some kind; and the modern revolutionist doubts not only the institution he denounces, but the doctrine by which he denounces it. . . . As a politician, he will cry out that war is a waste of life, and then, as a philosopher, that all life is waste of time. A Russian pessimist will denounce a policeman for killing a peasant, and then prove by the highest philosophical principles that the peasant ought to have killed himself. . . . The man of this school goes first to a political meeting, where he complains that savages are treated as if they were beasts; then he takes his hat and umbrella and goes on to a scientific meeting, where he proves that they practically are beasts. In short, the modern revolutionist, being an infinite skeptic, is always engaged in undermining his own mines. In his book on politics he attacks men for trampling on morality; in his book on ethics he attacks morality for trampling on men. Therefore the modern man in revolt has become practically useless for all purposes of revolt. By rebelling against everything he has lost his right to rebel against anything.”

GK Chesterton
Orthodoxy

 

[SonSearcher]

Peter

**Perhaps because the resurrection really did happen? **



And his resurrection alone gives us hope for our own.

That’s right. Triple thumbs.

 

[Bradski]

Why did they fail to come up with compelling evidence to the contrary, at the critical time when they very well could have?

At the critical time? You give the impression that the gospels were some sort of news report published and issued a day or so after the resurrection. And that people were in a position to check what had been written themselves and have it confirmed one way or another at that time.

If people needed to come up with contrary evidence, then they needed some evidence in the first intance. The evidence which we are discussing, in the form of the gospels, wasn’t written until decades after the event.

This is similar to you coming across an anonymously written report of an event that happened in 1940 by someone who wasn’t an eye witness to those events, events that weren’t recorded in any other way at the time and at which the few people who might have been there have since died without leaving any information about it at all.

This is literally all the information that you have. And then you suggest that it must be true because you can’t find any indication that anyone proved it false back in the 40’s.

 

[davidv]

At the critical time? You give the impression that the gospels were some sort of news report published and issued a day or so after the resurrection. And that people were in a position to check what had been written themselves and have it confirmed one way or another at that time.

If people needed to come up with contrary evidence, then they needed some evidence in the first intance. The evidence which we are discussing, in the form of the gospels, wasn’t written until decades after the event.

This is similar to you coming across an anonymously written report of an event that happened in 1940 by someone who wasn’t an eye witness to those events, events that weren’t recorded in any other way at the time and at which the few people who might have been there have since died without leaving any information about it at all.

This is literally all the information that you have. And then you suggest that it must be true because you can’t find any indication that anyone proved it false back in the 40’s.

Are the gospels the only evidence of the events of which it speaks?

Your analogy fails because the Gospels are not the only information available.

 

[Charlemagne_II]

Bradski

**If people needed to come up with contrary evidence, then they needed some evidence in the first intance. The evidence which we are discussing, in the form of the gospels, wasn’t written until decades after the event. **

Two of the evangelists, Matthew and John, were also apostles, and therefore first hand witnesses. Mark and Luke knew both Paul and Peter, and had them to verify the resurrection.

Do learn some Bible history.

 

[Bradski]

Are the gospels the only evidence of the events of which it speaks? Your analogy fails because the Gospels are not the only information available.

The gospels are the records about which we are discussing. My analogy is relevant to them and their reliability. Nothing else.

Two of the evangelists, Matthew and John, were also apostles, and therefore first hand witnesses.

There is nothing except tradition that links either to the gospels that are associated with them and it is generally accepted that Matthew’s version is a copy of Mark’s and Mark was not an eyewitness and his account in any case finishes at an empty tomb.

Mark and Luke knew both Paul and Peter, and had them to verify the resurrection.

So why is Mark’s account different to Pauls? Paul never witnessed it. All he saw later he reported as a vision. And why does Mark’s account not detail the resurrection? The original gospel mentions someone saying that Jesus is risen and finishes there. If Peter was an eyewitness and Mark had access to him, then why didn’t Mark detail the most important event in Christianity?

And Luke reported what Peter told him? I’d be interested to know where that info comes from.

 

[Aloysium]

John 20: 24 But Thomas, one of the twelve, called Didymus, was not with them when Jesus came. 25 So the other disciples were saying to him, “We have seen the Lord!” But he said to them, “Unless I see in His hands the imprint of the nails, and put my finger into the place of the nails, and put my hand into His side, I will not believe.”

even after only days, at least one person did not believe what were direct eyewitness reports

 

[Ion]

The gospels are the records about which we are discussing. My analogy is relevant to them and their reliability. Nothing else.

There is nothing except tradition that links either to the gospels that are associated with them and it is generally accepted that Matthew’s version is a copy of Mark’s and Mark was not an eyewitness and his account in any case finishes at an empty tomb.

So why is Mark’s account different to Pauls? Paul never witnessed it. All he saw later he reported as a vision. And why does Mark’s account not detail the resurrection? The original gospel mentions someone saying that Jesus is risen and finishes there. If Peter was an eyewitness and Mark had access to him, then why didn’t Mark detail the most important event in Christianity?

And Luke reported what Peter told him? I’d be interested to know where that info comes from.

Indeed, soldiers were watching the tomb because the jews were afraid that the disciples will steal the body; they knew about the Lazarus resurection (which they thought it was faked), there was an important number of sympathizers in Jerusalem, so they had good reason for this. Then the body really dissapeared from the tomb. The jews suspected the romans and the romans suspected the jews; then they waited to see what happens, a revolt or something. Nothing like that followed, so they let it as it was, they didn’t want to create a a problem by advertising Jesus resurection to his sympathizers.

 

[davidv]

The gospels are the records about which we are discussing. My analogy is relevant to them and their reliability. Nothing else.

Their reliability cannot be determined in isolation from their context.

There is nothing except tradition that links either to the gospels that are associated with them and it is generally accepted that Matthew’s version is a copy of Mark’s and Mark was not an eyewitness and his account in any case finishes at an empty tomb.

What is wrong with tradition?

So why is Mark’s account different to Pauls?

Why should they be the same? They were different people with different perspectives and priorities.

Paul never witnessed it. All he saw later he reported as a vision. And why does Mark’s account not detail the resurrection? The original gospel mentions someone saying that Jesus is risen and finishes there. If Peter was an eyewitness and Mark had access to him, then why didn’t Mark detail the most important event in Christianity?

Why did he need to? Other writers had done so.

And Luke reported what Peter told him? I’d be interested to know where that info comes from.

From Luke, who was told by Peter?

 

[Bradski]

Their reliability cannot be determined in isolation from their context.

They do need to be looked at as to their accuracy and reliability. In isolation. You can’t pick parts of one and slide them into another and make assumptions for them all and view them from the present time and see how they all fit. They need to be viewed as documents of their time and decide whether, at that time, they were reliable.

What is wrong with tradition?

Tradition doesn’t correspond to accuracy. All the gospels were written anonymously. If you look at the reasons why they are attributed to certain people you’ll see they are nothing but assumptions which became tradition. In fact, in critical essays on the gospels, you’ll quite often notice that people refer to a particular gospel as ‘traditionally attributed to (name here)’.

Why should they be the same? They were different people with different perspectives and priorities.

They were reporting on the same event. If two reports of an event are different, then at least one of them must be wrong. Quite possibly both.

Why did he need to? Other writers had done so.

Why did Paul need to see it? Well Charles believes that two of the gospel writers got their information from him. If he didn’t see it (and he wrote as much himself) then there was no information to pass on.

From Luke, who was told by Peter?

So Peter told Luke details about the resurrection. And we know this because…Luke said so? Where did he say so? I’m not sure he quoted Peter at any time. I’ll stand corrected if you can show me where this comes from. Otherwise it’s another assumption to add to the list.

 

[Peter_Plato]

They were reporting on the same event. If two reports of an event are different, then at least one of them must be wrong. Quite possibly both.

Logically, this is not true. If two reports differ, one of them must be wrong only if they contradict each other. They could report two different aspects of the same event which could both be true or false. You have to show a contradiction to prove one must be wrong.

 

[Peter_Plato]

At the critical time? You give the impression that the gospels were some sort of news report published and issued a day or so after the resurrection. And that people were in a position to check what had been written themselves and have it confirmed one way or another at that time.

If people needed to come up with contrary evidence, then they needed some evidence in the first intance. The evidence which we are discussing, in the form of the gospels, wasn’t written until decades after the event.

This is similar to you coming across an anonymously written report of an event that happened in 1940 by someone who wasn’t an eye witness to those events, events that weren’t recorded in any other way at the time and at which the few people who might have been there have since died without leaving any information about it at all.

This is literally all the information that you have. And then you suggest that it must be true because you can’t find any indication that anyone proved it false back in the 40’s.

What you fail to account for is that information would have been carried by word of mouth even if it was not written down. News of the resurrection would have been transmitted widely before it was written down and would have encountered doubt and skepticism as it spread. The Sanhedrin and the Romans would have quashed the early rumors very quickly in the existing social media (rumor mill) before it had a chance to take hold. Even if the Gospel accounts were written decades later, they would have been dismissed very quickly because the verbal accounts could not have persisted or would have been laid to rest by hard evidence and therefore the written accounts would have taken no foothold when they were released. In fact, it was probably because the oral accounts were not proved false that the written accounts were produced.

You are also forgetting that Paul and the other Apostles would have been preaching the resurrection within less than a year of the event. How convincing would they have been if it was fabricated? Surely, any listeners would have challenged such an outlandish claim by checking the tomb and then reporting that the event could not have happened.

This is why the claim by spurious archeologists to have found the tomb of Jesus doesn’t make sense. Surely, a tomb identified with all the family names in central Jerusalem would have been ample proof against the resurrection. Why then did the “myth” not suffer an early demise? Why would anyone believe a resurrection account when the tomb of Jesus was there for all to check, even marked with his name and the names of all his family? Makes absolutely no rational sense to me.

 

[Bradski]

Even if the Gospel accounts were written decades later, they would have been dismissed very quickly because the verbal accounts could not have persisted or would have been laid to rest by hard evidence and therefore the written accounts would have taken no foothold when they were released. In fact, it was probably because the oral accounts were not proved false that the written accounts were produced.

Even if they were written decades later? I don’t think there’s any doubt about that. And also modified over following decades as well. And who needs verbal accounts to confirm or deny the story? Who was going to be around to deny what was written? They are the only written records. Do you think a few thousand copies were made and distributed so that everyone then (who wasn’t around at the time of the events) could have a say as to its veracity?

We currently live in a world where there is access to so much information it’s not funny. And yet we still have people who think that the Twin Towers were blown up. That Armstrong didn’t land on the moon. I have literally been posting on a forum today where a couple of people have been suggesting that Sandy Hook was a set-up job. That there were multiple shooters. Good grief, no-one can agree on exactly what happened a few days ago in their own back yard when we have terabits of information at our fingertips.

And you are going to tell me that decades after an event that only a few people could have seen at the time (and who were reported to have been pretty confused by what happened in any case at a time of great stress to each of them), in a place that was soaked in superstition, at a time when only a tiny percentage of people could read and write, when travel to the next town was a major undertaking, that a single document, written anonymously and not distributed widely, would be subjected to critical review and possibly discarded because there might have been someone who knew someone with information from 60 or 70 years previously that was somehow more credible?

 

[Peter_Plato]

Even if they were written decades later? I don’t think there’s any doubt about that. And also modified over following decades as well. And who needs verbal accounts to confirm or deny the story? Who was going to be around to deny what was written? They are the only written records. Do you think a few thousand copies were made and distributed so that everyone then (who wasn’t around at the time of the events) could have a say as to its veracity?

We currently live in a world where there is access to so much information it’s not funny. And yet we still have people who think that the Twin Towers were blown up. That Armstrong didn’t land on the moon. I have literally been posting on a forum today where a couple of people have been suggesting that Sandy Hook was a set-up job. That there were multiple shooters. Good grief, no-one can agree on exactly what happened a few days ago in their own back yard when we have terabits of information at our fingertips.

And you are going to tell me that decades after an event that only a few people could have seen at the time (and who were reported to have been pretty confused by what happened in any case at a time of great stress to each of them), in a place that was soaked in superstition, at a time when only a tiny percentage of people could read and write, when travel to the next town was a major undertaking, that a single document, written anonymously and not distributed widely, would be subjected to critical review and possibly discarded because there might have been someone who knew someone with information from 60 or 70 years previously that was somehow more credible?

There is meager to no evidence that Sandy Hook was a put up job. There is a boatload of evidence that the Twin Towers episode could have taken place substantially different than portrayed by the “offical” version.

What you haven’t provided is a credible explanation for how a few poorly educated Jewish fishermen and a Pharisee in training could have convinced a largely skeptical and hostile world - a world that had every reason and motive to deny their central story - concerning the extraordinary claim that Jesus rose from the dead, when such a story could have been soundly debunked by the same determined enemies that had Jesus crucified and had every motive to stamp out the unbelievable claims. It should have been a simple matter to debunk what was already a difficult to swallow tale.

The Twin Towers account has persisted because the government did not even attempt to fully investigate the actual event until at least a year later and in fact resisted calls for an investigation until the site was almost completely cleared of all evidence, which did nothing to quell suspicion, but instead fanned it. Same with the Kennedy assassination. The alternative accounts proliferate precisely because information was kept back by those in authority.

This is exactly the opposite of what occurred in Palestine. The authorities then had strong motive to dispel the alternative account, unlike 911 and Kennedy.

Neither the Jewish Sanhedrin nor the Romans would have had any motive to “cover up” the real facts that would have refuted the resurrection story. On the contrary, they had every reason to debunk it. Why didn’t they when the very reason they crucified Jesus was to prevent this kind of mythification from taking hold among his followers?

To imagine an equivalent scenario, it would be, in modern terms, like having Elvis followers claim he lives on. Notice as a similar kind of episode, the accounts of Elvis’ continuing health persisted only in the proximate time following his death but have largely died out decades later. We would have expected that Jesus’ resurrection account, if demonstrably false, would have followed a similar course and fizzled out a few decades after his death.

Jesus’ followers were not confused about what happened, they clearly understood that he had risen from the grave. What they were confused about was the significance of the event: why he did rise and what it meant from that point on, especially as to how it would impact their lives.

 

[PRmerger]

Let’s to back a little.

Let’s say that someone heard a story about the resurrection and repeated it as if it were true.

Let’s stop right here.

“Someone” heard the story about the resurrection from whom? And where did this “whom” hear it from?

And why would he proclaim it?

And what time frame are you talking about? Days after Jesus’ crucifixion? Or decades after? And how do you know?

 

[PRmerger]

Anyone coming on to the forum and reading that, having read your previous posts and come to the conclusion that you were a well read, intelligent woman who would appear to be trustworthy and would never deliberately try to mislead anyone, might accept what you have just said and might well repeat it elsewhere.

Then someone else, reading what that person had repeated would repeat it himself. And so on. So in a number of forums and discussions and dinner table conversations we have many people stating quite honestly that the gospel writers had ‘actually seen Jesus in then flesh’. Really? Yep, I have it on good authority. I’ve heard it from any number of reliable people in different forums and in various conversations.

Yet the gospels were written anonymously. It is only assumed that they were written by Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. Whoever wrote Mark, even if it was Mark, doesn’t actually say that he saw the resurrected Jesus and it’s generally accepted that Matthew’s gospel is a copy of Mark’s.

Luke? Whoever it was says specifically that he wasn’t an eye witness. And John could have been an eyewitness but the gospel again is written anonymously. If he did see what he said he saw, why not identify himself?

Having been given all that additional information, do you think that anyone would then claim that the gospels must be true because each of the writers personally saw Jesus in the flesh after the resurrection?

I don’t think so. At best one could say that: Assuming that one of the gospels had been written by the person whom it is assumed wrote it, and assuming that he was telling the truth and was not mistaken, then it is possible that that one person may have been a witness.

Which is a lot different from all the definitive statements people may have made after reading your post.

Perhaps if you were on an evangelical Christian forum, Bradski, you would have an argument that was tenable.

However, you are on a Catholic forum, and, as I’m sure you know, we don’t believe that the Scriptures are the Word of God in their entirety. We profess that Sacred Tradition is also part of Divine Revelation.

Thus, the gospel writers do not have to proclaim, “I am Mark and I wrote the gospel of Mark and it is the Word of God” for us to believe that it is the Word of God.

We know this through Sacred Tradition and because the Church told us. (And truly,* all *Christians, even fundamentalists and evangelicals who reject the authority of the Church only believe in the gospels because the Catholic Church told them to. I hope that you are able to use this fact in a discussion sometime with an evangelical Christian. I would love to be a fly on the wall on that one! )

As such, it is irrelevant whether the gospels actually say that they were written by witnesses or received from witnesses. Either one is sufficient.

And remember, if you are going to dismiss the testimony of eyewitnesses as being credible regarding any event in history, then you are going to have to be dismissive of a whole lot of important events that occurred in our history.

I would love to hear you proclaim at a dinner party, “I don’t believe that the destructio of Pompeii ever occurred! We don’t have any witnesses to that. And even if we did, eyewitnesses are notoriously unreliable, so their testimony is useless!”

I imagine you might get this response:

(Here it comes…

wait for it…

wait for it…)