Morality without God?

[Charlemagne_II]

Bradski
**
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 atheist website are you quoting from? In my copy of the Bible Mark’s gospel ends with an account of the resurrection.

If your argument only is that the accounts are based on tradition, that is hardly an argument. All historical accounts are based on tradition. Is there any doubt in your mind that Thomas Jefferson wrote the main part of the Declaration of Independence? This is based on the tradition of the eyewitness account of those who knew Jefferson.

**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? **

No, there is no evidence that the gospels were written 60-70 years after the death of Jesus. Again, you appear to be working from an atheist source. The main thrust of your argument is that these are just tall tales told by nobody anywhere near the main action of events. Absurd. Really absurd. You are making the evangelists out to be a pack of frauds and liars. But then, that is always the devil’s policy. Make God out to be a liar. He did it with Eve and is still doing it.

 

[PRmerger]

If your argument only is that the accounts are based on tradition, that is hardly an argument. All historical accounts are based on tradition. Is there any doubt in your mind that Thomas Jefferson wrote the main part of the Declaration of Independence? This is based on the tradition of the eyewitness account of those who knew Jefferson.

'zactly.

The paradigm proffered by Bradski here ought to be applied to *all *historical events, resulting in a dismissal of, essentially, the discipline of history.

I think someone needs to alert the history departments at all the universities!

What is being argued results in this:



Set up…and, sadly, epic fail.

 

[Peter_Plato]

'zactly.

The paradigm proffered by Bradski here ought to be applied to *all *historical events, resulting in a dismissal of, essentially, the discipline of history.

I think someone needs to alert the history departments at all the universities!

What is being argued results in this:

http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_mebojpT0Sx1r1erqbo1_500.gif

Set up…and, sadly, epic fail.

http://forums.catholic-questions.org/attachment.php?attachmentid=16823&stc=1&d=1364684046

 

[PRmerger]

“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

Love this quote! It was actually posted earlier…I hope that it is read and digested by all here on this thread!

 

[Bradski]

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.

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

That’s fine. I have nothing there with which I could argue. Indeed, with which I would want to argue.

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!”

Hang on. You can’t have it both ways. You can’t say, as you just did, that it doesn’t matter if there were no eyewitnesses, you can still accept it as the truth, then go on to say that another event, as far as my argument goes, might not have happened ‘because there were no eyewitness accounts’ either.

My point has always been that you can’t treat the gospels as factual documents that undeniably tell exactly what happened. That they were almost certainly not written by those people to whom, I would say, most Christians would attribuite them. That they were not contemporaneous documents. That they were written decades after the event. That none of the writers were eyewitnesses and possibly no-one that they knew were in any case. That not all the traditional writers were eyewitnesses in any case.

I would suggest that if you asked any number of Christians about the gospels, they would generally assume they were written by Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, that they all had seen the resurecction (even you said as much) and that the gospels are accurate recoreds, written at the time about what happened (which Charles seems to believe).

That is not the case. However, if someone said what I’ve quoted from your post above, then who would argue with that?

Incidentally, your comparison with Pompeii is not a good one. You can actually walk around the place and see what happened for yourself. A better analogy I think would be, for example, King Arthur. There is probably as much doubt that he existed as there is with Jesus. That is…not much. He almost certainly did exist.

So if someone had started a religion based on him and what he taught, then they’d be on pretty solid ground that they were celebrating someone who actually existed. But if they went on to say that in a particular place there was a round table, and here was where he pulled a sword from a stone and this the lake where he is buried, then they’re going to have a struggle convincing people that these things actually did happen.

But if one of Arthurs followers said - ‘Look, this is important to us. It forms part of our belief system. It’s traditionally accepted that these things happened and we’re happy with that’, then who would argue?

 

[Bradski]

What atheist website are you quoting from? In my copy of the Bible Mark’s gospel ends with an account of the resurrection.

As it does in mine. In fact, it will be the same in everyones. The bible has never been a static document and the gospels less so. Here are some web pages that suggest that there were additions to Mark’s gospel (none of them biased against Christianity - I’m note mining atheist sites here):

dictionary.reference.com/browse/tradition
gospel-mysteries.net/ending-mark.html
theologynetwork.org/the-bible/question-mark–understanding-the-gospel-of-mark.htm

Here’s a quote from the second:

‘Ancient copies of the Gospel of Mark can have several different endings. The shortest ending is found in the oldest manuscripts, all of which stop at verse 16:8. Most later manuscripts contain some additional verses, not always the same, which were apparently added to the gospel at later points in time. Excluding minor variations, these later additions created three new endings. The authors of these new endings didn’t identify themselves.’

and one from the third:

‘With the great majority of contemporary commentators and textual critics, then, we do not think that verses 9–20 were written by Mark as the ending for his gospel. The resemblances between what is narrated in these verses and the narrative of Jesus’ resurrection appearances in the other gospels suggest that this longer ending was composed on the basis of these other narratives to supplement what was felt to be an inadequate ending to the gospels’.

If your argument only is that the accounts are based on tradition, that is hardly an argument. All historical accounts are based on tradition. Is there any doubt in your mind that Thomas Jefferson wrote the main part of the Declaration of Independence? This is based on the tradition of the eyewitness account of those who knew Jefferson.

You don’t seem to undertand the meaning of tradition. It’s not something that is generally associated with factual documents:

Tradition:
The handing down of statements, beliefs, legends, customs, information, etc., from generation to generation, especially by word of mouth or by practice: a story that has come down to us by popular tradition. dictionary.reference.com/browse/tradition.

No, there is no evidence that the gospels were written 60-70 years after the death of Jesus. Again, you appear to be working from an atheist source. The main thrust of your argument is that these are just tall tales told by nobody anywhere near the main action of events. Absurd. Really absurd.

This is generally accepted. I didn’t think I’d have to confirm it, but here’s a link to a Catholic web page that does so. dictionary.reference.com/browse/tradition. There are literally hundreds more.

If you think that they were written about the time of the resurrection, then let me know where we can find that info.

 

[PRmerger]

You can’t say, as you just did, that it doesn’t matter if there were no eyewitnesses,

http://gifsforum.com/images/gif/facepalm/grand/disappointed_gif_44556.gif

No, Bradski. Of course it matters. Eyewitnesses are the key.

What I am saying is that it doesn’t matter that authorship of the gospels is not specifically stated in the text.

We know that the authors of the gospels were eyewitnesses, or received the testimony from the eyewitnesses, because of Sacred Tradition, which is the Word of God preserved in oral form.

 

[PRmerger]

My point has always been that you can’t treat the gospels as factual documents that undeniably tell exactly what happened.

Fair enough, Bradski. Then I challenge you to apply this principle to every single other ancient historical document.

You will need to dismiss the writings of Plutarch, who, apparently is the only source we have for documentation of a host of historical figures, and of Plato, Herodotus, Tacitus, Xenophon, Polybius, Josephus, Caesar, Cato, Livy, Sallust, Eusebius, Ammianus, Suetonius.

Will you question the accuracy of their writings at a dinner party, should you be seated next to a historian?

You will also be obligated to question the existence of Liang Hongyu, a Chinese warrior in the 12th century, the existence of a Mayan king, Yik’in Chan K’awiil, Genghis Khan, Alexander the Great, Sun Tzu, Joan of Arc…

What would you accept as evidence for their existence?

Will you offer the same degree of skepticism to their existence as you do to the writings of the New Testament?

If so, I will put you in the category of the 6000-year old earthers, and the people who deny we landed on the moon to whom you referred earlier: I will consider you a fundamentalist.

Your skepticism, if applied fairly and consistently, will result in an impotence with all things of import.

Paraphrasing Chesterton, you will have become practically useless for all purposes of discussion. By rebelling against everything historical you will have lost your right to rebel against anything in modernity.

 

[PRmerger]

Incidentally, your comparison with Pompeii is not a good one. You can actually walk around the place and see what happened for yourself. A better analogy I think would be, for example, King Arthur. There is probably as much doubt that he existed as there is with Jesus. That is…not much. He almost certainly did exist.

Ah, so your objection, then, is *not *to the fact that there are no written texts penned by eyewitnesses to the event?

IOW: it doesn’t matter if no one wrote about the event in question?

Yes?

 

[PRmerger]

You don’t seem to undertand the meaning of tradition. It’s not something that is generally associated with factual documents:

Just to be clear, Bradski: what I was referring to was Sacred Tradition. Not tradition as you define it.

CII may have been referring to tradition when he referenced Thomas Jefferson, but that is, of course, quite different from the Word of God, preserved for us through Sacred Tradition.

 

[Charlemagne_II]

Bradski

A lengthy discussion of Mark’s gospel and the question of its ending may be found here in the Catholic Encyclopedia in the section titled “State of Text and Integrity.”

newadvent.org/cathen/09674b.htm#IV

The fact of the matter is that Mark’s gospel is clearly derived from the teachings of Peter.

“Now we learn from Acts (1:21-22; 10:37-41) that Peter’s preaching dealt chiefly with the public life, Death, Resurrection, and Ascension of Christ.”

So Luke independently confirms in Acts what the ending says in Mark about the Resurrection.

 

[Bradski]

So at least we agree, taking quotes from your link, that the gospels were written many decades after the event:

‘Taking the external and internal evidence together, we may conclude that the date of the Gospel probably lies somewhere between A.D. 50 and 67’.

 

[Bradski]

What would you accept as evidence for their existence?

When did the discussion change from one where I am debating the veracity of the gospels to one where you want to discuss the existence of historical figures?

I am very well aware of the problem of deciding if, in fact, a certain G. Khan existed or not. It is not uncommon to see his name mentioned whenever someone feels the need to dispute someone’s claim that Jesus didn’t exist. Would that we were discussing that. We are not.

I can guarantee that when I am reading The Republic that I don’t actually believe that I am reading a verbatim report of what Plato might or might have not said. I don’t treat it as ‘gospel’. I understand that over the years, what is being quoted is not neccessarily what actually was said.

So should I believe that everything that Plato said that Socrates said? Of course not. I take on board what is reported he said and I understand what is meant, but I certainly don’t think it’s actually the way it happened. His story is meant to be taken seriously, but it is not meant to be taken as an actual account of the minute by minute life of the man.

And it’s the same with any historical figure. You take what you know. That is: What has been written. What has been reported. What has assumed to be true. What you feel has been proved to be true. And you work with that to make your own personal decision whether you accept it as a given or not.

I personally find it very difficult to agree that anything like the resurrection (or indeed Socrates taking hemlock) actually happened because I know that if I do I have to accept anything that anyone tells me that has this patina of truth.

I really do not believe (in the sense that you ‘believe’) that any of the figures that you mentioned actually existed. I am just assuming that they did. I literally have no idea whether they did or not. And to be honest, neither do you. You make the same assumptions as I do in that respect. We have been told stories, we have read books, we have talked to people. What we believe has a very tenuous connection with reality.

 

[Cybophonia]

If you believe they were originally written in Hebrew first than you can have them earlier than 50 A.D.

 

[Hamlet123]

If you believe they were originally written in Hebrew first than you can have them earlier than 50 A.D.

Just to clarify: arre you saying - “if you believe they were written in Hebrew, then the Scriptures could have veen written earlier than 50AD” Do I understand you? I am not disputing you jusgt looking for clarification… and can you expand?

Unfortunately, we have gotten off-topic; but such is life.

 

[PRmerger]

So at least we agree, taking quotes from your link, that the gospels were written many decades after the event:

‘Taking the external and internal evidence together, we may conclude that the date of the Gospel probably lies somewhere between A.D. 50 and 67’.

Yes.

Most reliable ancient documents that we have, Bradski.

Unless you have some other texts from that time period or earlier that you find to be better?

Do you have examples from 4 different authors detailing the same event? Maybe something written by eyewitnesses of the event from, perhaps 10 AD or even something else BC?

NB: These texts, naturally, need not be about Christ. I am simply looking for something you find to be more credible than these 4 documents as historical texts.

 

[JamesATyler]

So at least we agree, taking quotes from your link, that the gospels were written many decades after the event:

‘Taking the external and internal evidence together, we may conclude that the date of the Gospel probably lies somewhere between A.D. 50 and 67’.

I don’t see why you say that the Gospel was written *many *decades after the event. Just a quick Google search indicates that Jesus dies around 33AD (give or take a few years). As far as I know, there is no mention of his disciple’s ages. They could have easily been younger than him. Jesus is estimated to have died at age 33. Even if the date of the Gospel were 67 AD and the age of an eyewitness was 33 then he would have only been 67 years old. He could have easily been a few years younger or older though.

Are you thinking that his death was at 1AD?

 

[PRmerger]

When did the discussion change from one where I am debating the veracity of the gospels to one where you want to discuss the existence of historical figures?

We’re discussing the reliability of ancient texts.

Whatever skepticism you apply to the gospels ought to be applied to all historical texts of antiquity.

Do you not agree?

 

[PRmerger]

.And it’s the same with any historical figure. You take what you know. That is: What has been written. What has been reported. What has assumed to be true. What you feel has been proved to be true. And you work with that to make your own personal decision whether you accept it as a given or not

'zactly, Bradski. Exactly.

What I find curious is that the atheistic paradigm seems to be hyper-skeptical of all-things-religious, yet only minimally skeptical of all other things.

Why is this do you think?

I get that part about, “Well, being commanded to follow the teachings of someone vs accepting that a historical figure crossed the Rubicon is a difference of quality in acceptance”. I get that.

But my point is that the degree of skepticism is not judicious nor consistent.

You hold some sort of weird, arbitrary standard for evidence for Jesus, yet practically no standard at all (except “my 9th grade history told me that Caesar crossed the Rubicon, so I believe it!”) for all other things.

In fact, the standard of evidence posed by the 4 ancient historical texts surpasses/exceeds/puts to shame all other historical documents that no atheist ever questions.

Why is that?

I think the answer is bolded below.

I personally find it very difficult to agree that anything like the resurrection (or indeed Socrates taking hemlock) actually happened because I know that if I do I have to accept anything that anyone tells me that has this patina of truth.

 

[JamesATyler]

'zactly, Bradski. Exactly.

What I find curious is that the atheistic paradigm seems to be hyper-skeptical of all-things-religious, yet only minimally skeptical of all other things.

Why is this do you think?

I get that part about, “Well, being commanded to follow the teachings of someone vs accepting that a historical figure crossed the Rubicon is a difference of quality in acceptance”. I get that.

But my point is that the degree of skepticism is not judicious nor consistent.

You hold some sort of weird, arbitrary standard for evidence for Jesus, yet practically no standard at all (except “my 9th grade history told me that Caesar crossed the Rubicon, so I believe it!”) for all other things.

In fact, the standard of evidence posed by the 4 ancient historical texts surpasses/exceeds/puts to shame all other historical documents that no atheist ever questions.

Why is that?

I think the answer is bolded below.

I can answer why people are more skeptical of the gospels. The testimony about Jesus is that he was begotten of a virgin by the Holy Spirit. He walked on water and did other miracles. He rose from the dead. He saved people from their sins. These are extraordinary claims to make about someone. I think it’s pretty easy to understand why someone would be skeptical in the modern age where nothing of this sort has ever happened. Thomas, who was around to see Jesus’s miracles, was still so skeptical that he would accept no testimony about Jesus rising from the dead. He would only believe his own eyes.