Proving The Resurrection By the "Minimal Facts" Approach

[pocaracas]

[cont.d]

No, but IIRC, the context of his point is that the Bible is unreliable since there were a variety of ‘Christian’ sects, all of which interpreted the Bible in mutually-exclusive ways…

Ah… no… first century - no bible.
Second century - distribution problems.

Actually, according to some scrolls found in the 20th century and according to some early heresy hunters from way back then (Tertullian, I think, and even Paul), there were many parallel gospels in circulation, giving many alternative views of the nature of Jesus. Possibly, views which arose in small communities that could have distorted the original message… or they may have been the only ones who kept the original message, but that got, eventually, seen as heretical… who knows?

Some would make it plain that Jesus was just a person, upon whom the Holy Spirit descended during his life and from then left him to die on the cross, which may have led to the famous last words “My God, my God, why have you deserted me?”.
Others posited a female companion for Paul, one who went through a few ordeals requiring miracles to get through… which represented the early supporters of women priests.
And many others…
It’s on this sort of thing that Ehrman specializes.

The Bible is a “first to fourth century text”. And, of course, unless I’m misremembering, the context of his discussion was the reliability of the Scriptural text…

Why don’t we check?
It seems it was about the absence of meaning in the suffering in this life:

Certainly…

No one said it’s easy. That’s why some people become depressed upon realizing this.
But it does give you a better appreciation of the one life you have… and of everyone else’s lives.

If it makes little to no difference between dying at age 20 or 80, then why hang around here? there’s an eternity of bliss on the other side, huh?
Then you need to impose special cases such that suicide is a sin and you wouldn’t be welcomed on the other side…

According to Bart Ehrman, there was an early (heretical, of course) christianity sect that explored this detail that this life is ultimately worthless.
Luckily, most people are rather fond of their own lives… a little thing that comes from evolution - stay alive for as long as you can! (unless some altruistic reason comes up, in which things become difficult to judge)

Aquinas, on the other hand, argues that natural evils are an unavoidable consequence of material bodies – that is, that they proceed from the nature of physicality itself. Therefore, by his analysis, they neither attach to free will nor cast aspersions on God’s omnipotence or omnibenevolence.

Now I have to read all of that… -.-’ thanks… I will read it all… but it’ll take some time.

 

[meltzerboy]

Reincarnations being one of the most popular. Dionysus, Osiris, Ganesha, Krishna, Quetzacoatl, Aristeas, lots in the Tanakh. Seems you can’t have a genuine religion withoutt someone coming back from the dead.

If you are going to want someone to believe in your god and you offer an afterlife (they ALL offer an afterlife), then surely, I mean SURELY, He is going to be able to conquer death. And it is ALWAYS a good idea to emphasise your connection with mortals: ‘Hey, I’m just like you! I love. I hurt. And so help me, I am prepared to die for you! So are you prepared to die for me?’ So they do (just to prove that last point).

But someone has to be there to greet you into the happy-ever-after. And cheating death is child’s play for a god. So…how do you think the narrative is going to run…

As I’ve said before, if there were only one religion and only one God, then there would be a lot less atheists. But not only are there very many, the similarities are not, how shall I say, subtle. It’s like one of those charts you get with ticked boxes to show who offers what.

After life? Tick
Creator of everything? Tick
Resurection? Tick
Virgin birth? Tick
Interaction with mortals? Tick

It’s The Religion Blueprint. Strongly recommended that you add a few details to make it specifically yours (and trust no-one notices the commonalities).

Many similarities you say? Would you want to take a shot at why that is so?

Judaism does not offer an afterlife, or, more precisely, does not put too much stock in an afterlife since the details are not spelled out in the Tanakh. The focus is on the here and now, studying Torah and living according to its moral principles. Further, while reincarnation is acceptable in Judaism, it is only for the purpose of completing an important task that was left undone in one’s earthly life, such as Torah study. This is not the same purpose as the reincarnation found in Hinduism.

 

[cornbread_r2]

If bereavement hallucinations are as common as they seem to be, then it would be remarkable if some of Jesus’s close followers didn’t experience postmortem apparitions of him. In that hallucinations are very real to the persons experiencing them, any followers who subsequently died – naturally or unnaturally – with the belief that they had seen the resurrected Jesus would not have been dying for a lie.

 

[Peter_Plato]

Actually, according to some scrolls found in the 20th century and according to some early heresy hunters from way back then (Tertullian, I think, and even Paul), there were many parallel gospels in circulation, giving many alternative views of the nature of Jesus. Possibly, views which arose in small communities that could have distorted the original message… or they may have been the only ones who kept the original message, but that got, eventually, seen as heretical… who knows?

Does the word ‘Apostolic’ mean anything to you?

Obviously, the ‘Christian’ message would derived originally from Christ. Since there were a determined number of his followers (Apostles and Elders,) then these individuals would be our best bet in terms of “the ones who kept the original message,” well… original.

You do need to read Jesus and the Eyewitnesses by Richard Bauckham for a comprehensive enumeration of the ways in which the early Christian community ensured there was no distortion to the original message.

The message isn’t that difficult, actually, since simple credal formulas existed very early on and these contained the essence of the non-negotiables in the original message:

1. Christ was fully human and fully God.
2. Christ was crucified and died to save all humanity from sin and its effects.
3. Christ founded a Church and ordained the Apostles as its first leaders.
4. Christ resurrected from the dead.
5. God, in the Person of the Holy Spirit, from Pentecost on, infallibly guides the Church in its mission.

Pretty much everything else can be deduced from the above.

Not much room for confusion and “distortions” would be quite obvious.

 

[Peter_Plato]

If bereavement hallucinations are as common as they seem to be, then it would be remarkable if some of Jesus’s close followers didn’t experience postmortem apparitions of him. In that hallucinations are very real to the persons experiencing them, any followers who subsequently died – naturally or unnaturally – with the belief that they had seen the resurrected Jesus would not have been dying for a lie.

Aside from the fact that 3, 4, 6 or 12 persons don’t normally hallucinate the same experience at the same time, you would have to assume that all experiences had by survivors about the dead were nothing but hallucinations. How would you know that, however, without assuming it, a priori?

 

[pocaracas]

Does the word ‘Apostolic’ mean anything to you?

Obviously, the ‘Christian’ message would derived originally from Christ. Since there were a determined number of his followers (Apostles and Elders,) then these individuals would be our best bet in terms of “the ones who kept the original message,” well… original.

You do need to read Jesus and the Eyewitnesses by Richard Bauckham for a comprehensive enumeration of the ways in which the early Christian community ensured there was no distortion to the original message.

The message isn’t that difficult, actually, since simple credal formulas existed very early on and these contained the essence of the non-negotiables in the original message:

1. Christ was fully human and fully God.
2. Christ was crucified and died to save all humanity from sin and its effects.
3. Christ founded a Church and ordained the Apostles as its first leaders.
4. Christ resurrected from the dead.
5. God, in the Person of the Holy Spirit, from Pentecost on, infallibly guides the Church in its mission.

Pretty much everything else can be deduced from the above.

Not much room for confusion and “distortions” would be quite obvious.

All good points, but they meet up with my very first intervention in this thread.

• Are the people we today (and as far back as the late first century AD) call the apostles the real original followers of Jesus?
• If the Teacher of Righteousness, predating Jesus by a few decades (2 or more generations), was the real historical Jesus upon which the story grew, then how could the first century persons be direct apostles?
• If, on the other hand, Jesus was an actual follower of the teachings of this Teacher, he would have imparted on his disciples (even more so on his closest friends, the apostles) the desire (perhaps this isn’t the best word) of his resurrection. This desire would grow and the story could incorporate it. OR it could have been Jesus himself who made them believe that he would resurrect… possibly, like the Teacher had done decades earlier. The Teacher’s disciples did think he would resurrect, according to the tale.
• Another possibility is that Jesus didn’t really have apostles… only disciples. No favorites. Eventually, a few people claimed to be apostles and told of the amazing things that Jesus did… even resurrecting. “One of us even put his own fingers through the holes on his hands!”. What was in it for them? Fame and, maybe some fortune? But this would lead to the dying for a lie problem… unless the ones that allegedly got killed were not the ones who told the lie… those were just extras in the tale of the liars…? Some alleged apostles did live out their lives, didn’t they?

Other possibilities can be thought of, none basing any of it in magic, but rather on human nature.

Also, is it not true that most of the teachings of the church are actually what Paul taught?.. the one who came way too late… the one who claims to have had some experience very akin to an hallucination, or temporal lobe epilepsy…?

 

[Gorgias]

PRmerger:

How about you give us an example of a rule that doesn’t sound man made?

Two bodies are mutually attracted in a direct proportion to their masses and an inverse proportion to the square of the distance between their centers.

pocaracas:

LOL.
The rule had nothing to do with that… but ok

The rule had nothing to do with Newton’s Law of Universal Gravitation? Umm… ok; if you say so. :nope:

At some point, we sort of get stuck at whatever lies beyond this Universe… we cannot tell what it is, nor how it behaves, nor how causality applies… hopefully, it would be similar to within the Universe (that would certainly simplify things), but we can’t be certain of that.

So, unless that Ultimate Creator is postulated, I see no way to get to it… even granting a creator of this Universe (which need not be that Ultimate Creator).
Am I making sense?

Well, I’m with you to a point. You’re right, if what you mean is “we sort of get stuck trying to make empirical observations of whatever lies beyond this Universe.” That’s reasonable. However, if we’re unable to make empirical observations, then we have two choices, it seems: either stop thinking about such things (by deciding that the only standard is ‘empirical measurement’), or asking about other means to reason through the questions. Believers would say that the latter is reasonable. Non-believers who are materialists would stick exclusively with the former. Which standard are you suggesting we can use?

How nice of the church to keep up with the times.
Makes one wonder about the accuracy of that revelation detail…

(In my best ‘Ronald Reagan’ voice): Well, there you go again, poca!

The revelation was accurate; our understanding of it has developed. That’s absolutely reasonable, don’t you think?

Ah… no… first century - no bible.
Second century - distribution problems.

Actually… no. Although Scripture scholars fifty years ago posited that the Gospels were written in the second century AD, current scholarship points to first-century authorship of the synoptic Gospels and authorship of the Fourth Gospel around 100AD.

There also weren’t “distribution problems” in the second century. The Christian churches of the day had copies of the Gospels, and read them at their liturgical services. There are attestations of precisely this dynamic in the writings of the day.

Actually, according to some scrolls found in the 20th century and according to some early heresy hunters from way back then (Tertullian, I think, and even Paul), there were many parallel gospels in circulation, giving many alternative views of the nature of Jesus.

The assertion that there were divergent teachings, stemming from a variety of groups that took on the name of Christ, does not mean that the Church Jesus founded actually taught these things. Moreover, these views developed over time, and were not part of the teachings that proceeded from the birth of the Church in AD 33. Therefore, they were derivative groups, not ‘parallel’ groups.

Possibly, views which arose in small communities that could have distorted the original message… or they may have been the only ones who kept the original message, but that got, eventually, seen as heretical… who knows?

Without anything that demonstrates this actually happened, all you’re really doing is spinning tales, right? I’m ok with that – as long as you admit that you’re just building stories out of thin air…

Some would make it plain that Jesus was just a person, upon whom the Holy Spirit descended during his life and from then left him to die on the cross, which may have led to the famous last words “My God, my God, why have you deserted me?”.

These accounts would be woefully unaware that He was quoting Psalm 22. After all, he’s being suffocated on a cross – do you really expect Him to quote the whole psalm? But, why don’t you go ahead and read the whole psalm… and then come back here (having read the end of the psalm) and tell us what you think the message is that He was telling us…?

 

[Peter_Plato]

All good points, but they meet up with my very first intervention in this thread.

Huh? What “intervention?”

• Are the people we today (and as far back as the late first century AD) call the apostles the real original followers of Jesus?

We could, I suppose, with equal alacrity, ask: “Are the individuals we today (and as far back as the 1920s) call The Three Stooges, the real original Three Stooges?” (Fake Shemps notwithstanding, since Judas Iscariot was replaced in the lineup by Matthias.)

You will have to provide something pretending to be a smidgeon of a reason to think they weren’t, given that the very idea of “the Apostles” derives from and is inseparable from the identified twelve individuals known as “the Apostles.”

• If the Teacher of Righteousness, predating Jesus by a few decades (2 or more generations), was the real historical Jesus upon which the story grew, then how could the first century persons be direct apostles?

Actually, the Damascus Document upon which your claims about the Teacher of Righteousness are based has been radio carbon dated to between 44 BCE and 129 CE. Which means, essentially, that you have very little certainty supporting your claim that the Teacher of Righteousness actually preceded Jesus.

Then there is the little matter of my posts 158-160 in this thread which show that most of what was contained in the Damascus Document about the Teacher of Righteousness was pre-prototyped in Wisdom 2, Isaiah and Plato, at least several hundred years before the earliest dating of the Teacher of Righteousness.

I am surprised that you even braved the opportunity to go back to this point when you offered squat in reply to posts 158-160.

• If, on the other hand, Jesus was an actual follower of the teachings of this Teacher…

If?

More like if.

And that if depends completely upon you giving something of a plausible reason why it should even achieve that level of if.

 

[Peter_Plato]

• If, on the other hand, Jesus was an actual follower of the teachings of this Teacher,

You do realize, I hope, that your tenuous “if” begins to fall apart when you apply the level of skepticism to it that you insist should be applied to the Church’s claims about Christ and the Apostles.

For example:

The fragments of the Damascus Document from Qumran amount to the following:

…with money…
…[his means did not] suffice to [return it to him] and the year [for redemption approaches?]…
…and may God release him? from his sins. Let not ] in one, for
it is an abomination…And concerning what he said (Lev. 25:14), “When you sell
anything to or buy anything from] your neighbor, you shall not defraud one another,” this is the expli[cation…
…] everything that he knows that is found…
…and he knows that he is wronging him, whether it concerns man or beast. And if
[a man gives his daughter to another ma]n, let him disclose all her blemishes to him, lest he bring upon himself the judgement
[of the curse which is said (Deut. 27:18)] (of the one) that “makes the blind to wander out of the way.” Moreover, he should not give her to one unfit for her, for
[that is Kila’yim, (plowing with) o]x and *** and wearing wool and linen together. Let no man bring
[a woman into the holy] who has had sexual experience, whether she had such experience
[in the home] of her father or as a widow who had intercourse after she was widowed. And any woman
[upon whom] there is a bad name in her maidenhood in her father’s home, let no man take her, except
[upon examination] by reliable [women] who have clear knowledge, by command of the Supervisor over
[the Many. After]ward he may take her, and when he takes her he shall act in accordance with the law …and he shall not tell…
loc.gov/exhibits/scrolls/today.html#trans11

The purported “full” text comes from medieval times (circa 10th century) and is called A Zadokite Work.

pseudepigrapha.com/pseudepigrapha/zadokite.html

Your presumption is that whatever the form of the Damascus Document that existed in the Essene community, it remained essentially unchanged up until the Zadokite Work was written, unembellished and pristine.

You won’t grant that regarding the Gospels over the course of less than 200 years, yet you expect it to be granted to two works separated by over 1000 years and many translators affected by numerous AGENDAS in the interim. You ought to be the first to be skeptical of the Righteous Teacher claims.

---

Additionally, there are a number of rules in the Zadokite Work that directly contradict what Jesus says or otherwise indicates is the true nature of “righteousness,” making the two teachers almost completely at odds with each other and their righteousness only bearing a superficial likeness. They couldn’t be the same Teacher. This is very apparent when you read the full document (link above.)

The Zadokite Work: No using tools on the Sabbath, such as ropes or ladders, to help people who have fallen into bodies of water, even if they may drown as a result. No saving of animals on the Sabbath for any reason.

**Jesus: **Which of you, if your animal falls into a ditch on the Sabbath, will not lift it out? (Matt 12:10)

The Zadokite Work: No gleaning of fields on the Sabbath.

**Jesus: **One Sabbath Jesus was going through the grainfields, and as his disciples walked along, they began to pick some heads of grain. The Pharisees said to him, “Look, why are they doing what is unlawful on the Sabbath?” (Mk 2:23)

**The Zadokite Work: **The head priest of each camp or community must be at least 36 years of age.

**Jesus: **Jesus was, at most, 30 years old when he began his ministry.

**The Zadokite Work: **Transgressors who have been expelled must be cursed and shunned.

**Jesus: **Told the adultress to “Go and sin no more.”

 

[cornbread_r2]

Aside from the fact that 3, 4, 6 or 12 persons don’t normally hallucinate the same experience at the same time,…

I haven’t been able to find enough information on the Apostles’ specific, individual experiences or mass hallucinations, in general, to know if that’s true or not.

…you would have to assume that all experiences had by survivors about the dead were nothing but hallucinations. How would you know that, however, without assuming it, a priori?

Positing that the Apostles might have had bereavement hallucinations does not necessarily commit me to the position that all such experiences are of naturalistic origins any more than the position that they had a supernaturally-based experience would necessarily commit someone else to the position that all such experiences are of supernatural origins (including those cases, for instance, where people claim to have been visited by their dead cats).

 

[PRmerger]

I haven’t been able to find enough information on the Apostles’ specific, individual experiences or mass hallucinations, in general, to know if that’s true or not.

Positing that the Apostles might have had bereavement hallucinations does not necessarily commit me to the position that all such experiences are of naturalistic origins any more than the position that they had a supernaturally-based experience would necessarily commit someone else to the position that all such experiences are of supernatural origins (including those cases, for instance, where people claim to have been visited by their dead cats).

Mass hallucinations doesn’t explain the empty tomb.

What’s the answer for why the tomb was empty, if Jesus was really dead and his followers all just all happened to have the same hallucination?

(As I’m typing this, you must know how much cognitive dissonance there is in trying to assert your position. Are we Christians really having to defend against the idea of a mass hallucination? Really?)

 

[PRmerger]

You are accusing me of an inability to think in abstract?!
You, who compared time to counting marbles?!

Sigh.

Face palm

Note to self: when in dialogue with poca, try to make analogies very, very simple. Because for some reason when analogies are presented, he suddenly becomes a fundamentalist. A literalist.

Christmas tree : ornament :: earlobe : earring.

“You are comparing a magnificent work of nature, which towers towards the sky, with an aromatic resin that makes me swoon, and a luscious green color…with a fleshy piece of cartilage? Madam, your analogy fails!”

Okey-dokey.

Duly noted.

Simple analogies whenever possible only.

 

[PRmerger]

I’m always amazed at how Star Trek V is generally considered the worse, but it’s the one from which we can draw the most quotes.

• What does god need with a starship?
• Damn it, Bones, you’re a doctor. You know that pain and guilt can’t be taken away with a wave of a magic wand. They’re the things we carry with us, the things that make us who we are. If we lose them, we lose ourselves. I don’t want my pain taken away! I need my pain!
• I doubt any God who inflicts pain for his own pleasure.

Sybok: I don’t control minds. I free them.

Holy Toledo, a Trekkie. I hope to hell you cut and pasted those lines rather than quoted them from memory.

I wonder how many kids were influenced by it. The morality was always a bit hokey and simplistic (Frank Gorshin in Let That Be Your Last Battlefield was a classic - and I swear I had to look up the title, although I remember the episode), but it had an influence.

Nerds!

 

[PRmerger]

Yes, but what the exercise showed was that your request was either unreasonable or applied equally well to statements about God.

Indeed.

“Atheists get to do this but Believers don’t”.

#doublestandard

 

[PRmerger]

So, here’s what the Church teaches: for a sin to be mortal, it must be a sin of ‘grave matter’ (i.e., a serious sin); the person must know it’s a serious sin; and the person must deliberately consent to the sin. In the past, many had presumed that there was ‘deliberate intent’ in suicide; however, as our knowledge of mental illness increases, we are learning that it is not the case that a mentally ill person who commits suicide might be thought to have done so in the full and normal operation of their rationality. Therefore, it would be highly difficult to make the case that a person who commits suicide has committed a mortal sin such that, as you so cleverly put it, they “wouldn’t be welcomed on the other side.” Hope that helps…

And, I would add, that even way back when…18th century…some already had an enlightened attitude towards suicide. St. John Vianney, when asked if a man who had killed himself by jumping off a bridge was condemned to hell said: we can’t know. We don’t know if from the time he took the first step off, to the time he hit the water whether he realized, repented and was redeemed.

 

[Peter_Plato]

I haven’t been able to find enough information on the Apostles’ specific, individual experiences or mass hallucinations, in general, to know if that’s true or not.

Positing that the Apostles might have had bereavement hallucinations does not necessarily commit me to the position that all such experiences are of naturalistic origins any more than the position that they had a supernaturally-based experience would necessarily commit someone else to the position that all such experiences are of supernatural origins (including those cases, for instance, where people claim to have been visited by their dead cats).

Here’s the thing. Jewish burials weren’t really burials. The body was laid in a sepulcher or rocky cave for up to two years, typically wrapped in linen and spices to control the smell of decay. Usually there were multiple bodies in the sepulcher. After the flesh had decayed and only bones left, the bones were taken out of the sepulcher and put into a bone box (an ossuary.)

Jesus had died and his body put into the sepulcher. The women had come to prepare his body for the process of decomposition, but it was not there. The tomb was guarded on behalf of those who had a vested interest in making sure the body stayed where it was.

The hallucination theory, by itself, fails to explain the empty tomb. It also fails to explain the unexpected nature of the appearances which were not in accord with what the Apostles and other hallucinators would have expected. Purely psychological events must accord with the psychology of those experiencing them, otherwise there has to be a great deal of “filling in” as to why the hallucinations took on the character they did.

You might benefit from N.T. Wright’s treatment of the alternative theories and why they don’t work.
youtu.be/KnkNKIJ_dnw

 

[PRmerger]

What?! Has anyone else used my name?

[cont…]

Oh, dear.

Again with the literalism.

We did not interpret your “it’s not like you guys get a lot of pocaracas’s [sic] around here” to mean: many with the name pocaracas.

We understood you to mean: people like me who argue like me and present things like me.

Sheesh!

 

[pocaracas]

The rule had nothing to do with Newton’s Law of Universal Gravitation? Umm… ok; if you say so. :nope:

Lol… not that “that”… the other “that”.
“that” the rule works outside the Universe.

…] Believers would say that the latter is reasonable. Non-believers who are materialists would stick exclusively with the former. Which standard are you suggesting we can use?

Exactly just that! Empiricism is all we have to be as sure as we can about anything.
Other means to reason can lead to erroneous reasoning and, by the unavailability of empirical means, untestable claims… I’m not saying that they have led us to such errors, but we cannot tell if they are errors or not.

(In my best ‘Ronald Reagan’ voice): Well, there you go again, poca!

The revelation was accurate; our understanding of it has developed. That’s absolutely reasonable, don’t you think?

Why Ronald Reagan?.. bah, never mind!

Yes, it seems reasonable.

Actually… no. Although Scripture scholars fifty years ago posited that the Gospels were written in the second century AD, current scholarship points to first-century authorship of the synoptic Gospels and authorship of the Fourth Gospel around 100AD.

There also weren’t “distribution problems” in the second century…]

Well, yes, of course…
But the texts were not a unit, like they are now in the bible.
They were separate gospels… some suspected of being heretical, just as many others in circulation…
Also, each particular church would take its time to acquire a copy of a particular gospel… hence the distribution problems I mentioned.

The assertion that there were divergent teachings, stemming from a variety of groups that took on the name of Christ, does not mean that the Church Jesus founded actually taught these things. Moreover, these views developed over time, and were not part of the teachings that proceeded from the birth of the Church in AD 33. Therefore, they were derivative groups, not ‘parallel’ groups.

Were they really?

Ever heard of the Essenes?
“”
Since [they are] despisers of wealth—their communal stock is astonishing—, one cannot find a person among them who has more in terms of possessions. For by a law, those coming into the school must yield up their funds to the order, with the result that in all [their ranks] neither the humiliation of poverty nor the superiority of wealth is detectable, but the assets of each one have been mixed in together, as if they were brothers, to create one fund for all. 123 They consider olive oil a stain, and should anyone be accidentally smeared with it he scrubs his body, for they make it a point of honor to remain hard and dry, and to wear white always. Hand-elected are the curators of the communal affairs, and indivisible are they, each and every one, [in pursuing] their functions to the advantage of all.

(8.4)

124 No one city is theirs, but they settle amply in each. And for those school-members who arrive from elsewhere, all that the community has is laid out for them in the same way as if they were their own things, and they go in and stay with those they have never even seen before as if they were the most intimate friends. 125 For this reason they make trips without carrying any baggage at all—though armed on account of the bandits. In each city a steward of the order appointed specially for the visitors is designated quartermaster for clothing and the other amenities. 126 Dress and also deportment of body: like children being educated with fear. They replace neither clothes nor footwear until the old set is ripped all over or worn through with age. 127 Among themselves, they neither shop for nor sell anything; but each one, after giving the things that he has to the one in need, takes in exchange anything useful that the other has. And even without this reciprocal giving, the transfer to them [of goods] from whomever they wish is unimpeded.
“”

Does this remind you of anything?
“Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things” (Colossians 3:2).
“Those who trust in their riches will fall, but the righteous will thrive like a green leaf” (Proverbs 11:28).
“What good will it be for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul? Or what can anyone give in exchange for their soul?” (Matthew 16:26).
“Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal” (Matthew 6:19-21)

Without anything that demonstrates this actually happened, all you’re really doing is spinning tales, right? I’m ok with that – as long as you admit that you’re just building stories out of thin air…

Well… I did start the sentence with a “possibly” and ended it with “who knows?”, so I had hoped that much would be clear.
Can anyone tell if this is what indeed happened?

These accounts would be woefully unaware that He was quoting Psalm 22. After all, he’s being suffocated on a cross – do you really expect Him to quote the whole psalm? But, why don’t you go ahead and read the whole psalm… and then come back here (having read the end of the psalm) and tell us what you think the message is that He was telling us…?

“In the most general sense, Psalm 22 is about a person who is crying out to God to save him from the taunts and torments of his enemies, and (in the last ten verses) thanking God for rescuing him”

Maybe they were unaware of that pslam… yes, it is possible.

 

[PRmerger]

Empiricism is all we have to be as sure as we can about anything.

This is, amusingly, a faith-filled assertion.

You believe it because someone told you it’s true.

But you never read a single study with empirical data that demonstrates that “Empiricism is all we have to be as sure as we can about anything.”

#faith
#irony

 

[PRmerger]

As far as I remember, I didn’t request anything on this… I merely commented that some religious “rules” sound man-made…

You would need to give an example, then, of a religious rule that doesn’t sound man-made.

What would that look like?

Perhaps I was educated once… and my memory distorted the teachings… or the teachings changed in the meantime…
Or I learned about some other branch of christianity and made a mess when applying it to catholicism…

I suggest, as you continue to dialogue here, you make it clear that your lack of education on all things religious is what is fueling your question.

Right now, you seem to be asserting that you have studied things quite well, and find the concepts untenable.

But, as it turns out, you actually have “distorted the teachings” or aren’t even sure you were educated about them.