What would falsify your paradigm?

[blü 2]

Note this, quote "single person ramblings"
Luke never met Jesus

Assuming an historical Jesus, not one of the NT authors met such a person. And indeed none of them claims to have done so.

but his job was to be the historian for the Christian church.

The author of Luke wasn't an historian in that none of his writings show the slightest skepticism to the materials he was presenting ─ think of that genealogical nonsense trying to connect Jesus to David (a connection the Jesus of Mark says is irrelevant anyway). Instead, like Paul, he was a salesman.

I presume Luke died at the same time, in the same manner, as Paul.

Last of Paul's letters by 58 CE. Luke's gospel written mid-80s CE, after Mark's, say 75-76 CE and Matthew's, also 80s. Acts isn't written till the 90s at the earliest.

I wonder if John's Gospel wasn't written as it happened.

No, it was the last of the gospels written, somewhere in the latter 90s, early 100s.

But none want to come and die for humanity, and none are more famous in Western history.

In what sense did Jesus "die for humanity"? What was accomplished by his death that couldn't have been accomplished by his staying alive?

and none are more famous in Western history.

Which of the NT's five basis Jesuses are you referring to?

My own view is that very few people, starting with believers, understand Jesus on an historical basis at all. Instead he's an idea, an object of faith, infinitely malleable into all the different Christian sects we see, and have seen, and will see.

 

[Willamena]

The problem here is "truth"
Some people think "facts" are truth - and then proffer their own facts.

The truth doesn't reside in anything we say.

 

[Willamena]

Really? I suspect people are quite capable of ploughing right on through truth, as if it wasn't there.
Consciousness allows us to manipulate what we accept as truth, even hide it from ourselves.

I've always maintained a belief in truth on these forums.

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

*** this post was moderated by the RF staff*

No, I won't keep it short.
Science is not that simple. You can't just do morality with:
There are empathy observable not just in humans, but also other animals, therefore it can be use to achieve Greater Common Good.
That is basically your opinion and have nothing to do with facts and truth as how it would work in practice. I don't want your opinion. I want facts. How things work in the actual world and not just in your brain. You demand of others that they actually describe and explain how the world works. I demand the same of you and accept that you demand it of me.

Now, you brought up immorality as connected to morality and you used the word "prove". Then accountability kicks in just as when others claim proof.
If I use a claim of proof, you would demand of me that I can deliver. I demand the same of you.
It may very well be that you have learned how science works, but I doubt that you have learned how morality actually works. I accept if you correct me and show that you can robustly enough combine science and morality. So how come we as humans learn about science, but don't learn about morality at the same level?
Because we all learn the local cultural morality as children and so on. You don't formally have to go to school to learn morality, you learn it naturally.
In practice that means that you have a cultural bias, a subjective lens of morality. But so do I. I have just learned that it is biases and subjective and can explain that.
I know as to how the world actually works, that morality is subjective and you can't use reason, logic, proof, truth, evidence and what not to do morality. You can use science to describe morality, but you can't do morality using science and you can't do it objectively.

So let us circle back:

I note that you ignore, to 100%, that Exodus 21 proves the bible's god is an immoral monster.

Nice one.

You made an informal deduction in the form of:
Premise: Exodus 21 as written.
Therefore the Bible's God is an immoral monster.

That is all fair and well. The problem is that is not a valid logical deduction. I can explain it, if you want. What you did, was illogical and amounts to an appeal to emotion. But you see, you used the word "proves" and now you are "it". Your own demand of the ability to explain how the world works, now applies to you.

See Bob. You demand a standard of other humans as to how the world works. I just hold you to your own standard.

*** this post was moderated by the RF staff***

Let me explain that one to you. You have constructed a massively high tower; i.e. you demand evidence of other humans. That is the high tower. I then demand that of you and you can't. You resort to appeals to emotion and try to "degrade" me. That is what you did.
You demand evidence and I applied that you to you and you reacted with emotions.
The last quote is nothing but an emotion/feeling.

So here is something about the world. The world is not that simple and you can't account for it in a few lines of text. Neither can I, but I know that. Keep it simple is fine and well. But you can do it to simple and then that is a problem. I caught you in doing that and you apparently don't like that. Well, cry me a river. The world as such doesn't care about your feelings and emotions. But that is so of all humans.

So you want us to apply empathy. Okay!!! I in return want you to be fair and hold yourself to the standard that you demand of other people. If you demand evidence of other, then don't resort to an appeal to emotions. That is what you did and what I pointed out. Now learn from it as you demand of others. Live up to your own standard.
Chances are that you won't learn and resort to emotions, if you answer.

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

Ah, when you get to level 6, then you are at the level of the Christ.

----------
How to get more people further up Maslow's hierarchy: well, while there are some competing ideas/alternative paths like Andrew Yang with the universal basic income (he's calling it the "Freedom Dividend" apparently), I like instead more than that to start doing what we think we're sorta doing, but better.

What Warren proposes -- just the rich really pay something closer to their fair share of the common burden of Public Goods -- stuff that should be well provided like education and healthcare, etc. Capitalism with the rule of law and some fair (common in the world) level of Public Goods instead of the something closer to crony capitalism and lower level of Public Goods we have now.

It is a part of it, but it is not that simple. I know, I live in Denmark. I can give you the explanation of how it is not that simple, but we are derailing in a sense. But if you want to continue, I can answer you.
In short, social engineering is not that simple.

With regards

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

Oh. So you are only interested in converting me, then? Well, I'm predisposed to be a Theist, having been raised in that mind-set since birth.

However, I have studied the bible at length, and found within it's pages multiple reasons to NOT believe there could possibly be any god of merit, who cares.

For one, the principle matrix of the bible? Is Might Makes Right-- which is abhorrent, and immoral.

And here we go again.
You take a limited cultural POV as you are embedded in time and culture and then in another post go straight to an universal "we" for all humans.

Further again with the invalid and illogical reasoning.
Premise: Some people claim "Might makes Right".
Therefor/Conclusion: That is abhorrent, and immoral.

In practice you have noticed the "ladder of morality" and taken the first step, but there are many more before you can speak for an universal "we" as you did above. I can't, but I know that.
The problem of "evil" is in part that some humans believe that they can speak with authority for all humans. That is what you are doing in practice. You can't and neither can I. I know this, you don't.

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

I just did.
And you didn't provide a counter argument, you just repeated your dogma. Try to follow the argument and tell me which step isn't logical and why.
1. Morality is a set of rules (A, B, C, ...) that one regards as "good".
2. If, for different people or in different cases, you, in case X, apply rule A and in case Y you don't, you have broken rule A in case Y.
3. From 2. follows that, independent of what your rule set is, equality is always moral.
4. Equality is objectively moral and we found that using logic.

You are confusing IS-OUGHT.
The hidden premise is that you ought to follow the rules and not break the rules, but that is not a fact. It is a fact, that you can break the rules.
You treat an "ought", "don't break the rules in an unequal manner" as fact, but it is not a fact. Indeed it is an observable fact that it is possible.

So here it is:
Fact/premise: It is possible to act in an unequal manner.
(You): You ought not to do that.
But your ought doesn't follow with logic from the fact.

Further for your first premise (A, B, C, ...) there is another hidden premise. That the list of A, B, C; and so on are logically coherent. I.e. A AND(strong logic) B AND C and so on. That is not so. Logic doesn't work that way.
We are derailing. I can explain further, you just have to ask.

With regards

 

[Heyo]

You are confusing IS-OUGHT.
The hidden premise is that you ought to follow the rules and not break the rules, but that is not a fact. It is a fact, that you can break the rules.
You treat an "ought", "don't break the rules in an unequal manner" as fact, but it is not a fact. Indeed it is an observable fact that it is possible.

So here it is:
Fact/premise: It is possible to act in an unequal manner.
(You): You ought not to do that.
But your ought doesn't follow with logic from the fact.

What you call a "hidden premise" is actually the first premise. Having morality is the ought.
Would you call someone who sets a rule and then breaks it moral?

You can break rules. People do it all the time. But you can't break the rules and call it moral. Or, in your (corrected) words:

Fact/premise: It is possible to act in an unequal manner.
(Me): If you want to act moral, you ought not do that.
My ought follows from the premise that morality exists.

 

[Aupmanyav]

Morality is a social construct.

 

[Ayjaydee]

Morality is a social construct.

I suspect not

 

[PruePhillip]

The truth doesn't reside in anything we say.

If so, then where does Truth reside?
Someone must have it.

 

[PruePhillip]

Assuming an historical Jesus, not one of the NT authors met such a person. And indeed none of them claims to have done so.
.

Peter claimed to have known Jesus. He said "we were eye witnesses to His majesty."

 

[PruePhillip]

The author of Luke wasn't an historian in that none of his writings show the slightest skepticism to the materials he was presenting.

If not for the fact he was writing about Jesus he would be considered one of THE greatest
historians of the classic era.

 

[Howard Is]

To convince me to abandon belief in God, then, I would simply need to be shown evidence/arguments that either rendered theism incoherent or which pushed the probability of God obviously below half (or just less than half if it could also be shown it was non-pragmatic and/or depressing).

Like having your heart not just broken but sadistically smashed by the one you loved the most ?

Or watching a children’s hospital hit by napalm ?

That kind of thing often puts a dent in theism.

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

What you call a "hidden premise" is actually the first premise. Having morality is the ought.
Would you call someone who sets a rule and then breaks it moral?

You can break rules. People do it all the time. But you can't break the rules and call it moral. Or, in your (corrected) words:

Fact/premise: It is possible to act in an unequal manner.
(Me): If you want to act moral, you ought not do that.
My ought follows from the premise that morality exists.

Ahh, get it now.
We are doing meta-ethics. What morality is as ontological, how it exists and so on.
Sorry.
You are doing it again.
In effect you have A and non-A. You then declare subjectively that A is moral and non-A is not, but both are the same class; different behaviors and both behaviors. But that is not universal, objective and rational. It is your personal assumption, axiom and what not. You haven't shown that having morality is universally the same. You in effect behave as if your understanding of morality is universal. But no "ought" is universal. I.e. e.g. you ought to obey me or in reverse. It is moral in sense, but I personal don't accept that.

You have two behaviors. A and non-A. Both are fact in different locations as time, space and properties. You then declare the one universal, but it is not and thus the other is false.
You have in effect done over-reductive logic, because you have eliminated time and space.
Take behavior A and non-A. Forget for now, which is moral. Notice both are facts.
You then claim A "is" moral. But it is not a fact. It is a subjective rule. You have named A moral. The "is" in A is moral is not the "is" of a fact, like the cat is black. You have to check the ontological status of morality as such.

"Would you call someone who sets a rule and then breaks it moral?"
I don't call them anything, because all that goes on, is human behavior. I don't name them as "bad" or what ever.

If there is no objective morality and objective authority, then what do you do instead? Well, I won't take credit for having solved that. My wife is a social worker and as a practice of avoiding naming someone else as bad, here is how that works. You point out that you can do it differently and the other person can learn that and she/he can do it like you do it, if the person likes it.
Of course I am a part of a culture, where I have learned "naming"; i.e. you are "stupid, crazy, evil, wrong" and all those other version of a negative label we place on other humans. So I slip up, but I know the theory of how to do it and I practice.
No other human can be a negative, just because you put a negative label on them.
If I am incoherent, then that is a fact. If you label that as morally bad and place that on me, as something I am, then that is not what I am. Nor are you. There are no wrong, evil, bad and what not humans out there. Good and bad are subjective or as someone else pointed out - a social construct and social construct are not objective facts. They are inter-subjective rules, which are subject to cognitive, cultural and moral relativism.
In short morality is not the same ontologically and epistemologically as say gravity.
Your "ought" is not for the same "is/exists" as gravity. Hence meta-ethics. All version including your "ought" and mine are subjective, relative and depends on a given individual

 

[blü 2]

Peter claimed to have known Jesus. He said "we were eye witnesses to His majesty."

Peter was a Galilean fisherman who was very likely illiterate and if he had any Greek at all, a bare minimum of it. Neither 1 or 2 Peter was written by a Galilean fisherman; I mean, "gird up your minds" (and so on) in highly polished Greek rhetorical style, really?

And to claim to be eye witness to 'his majesty' is to claim nothing more than a vision, or even just an imagining, of Jesus. It's a pity the author of Peter didn't say "Judas* and I were eyewitnesses to the shouting match when the market vendor tried to short-change Jesus for the bagel" ─ notice how much more real, how much less dreamy, that sounds next to the 'majesty' shtick.

* Judas mac James vic Zebadee, of course. Judas Iscariot is a fiction within a fiction.​

If not for the fact he was writing about Jesus he would be considered one of THE greatest historians of the classic era.

That loud flapping noise is a squadron of pigs buzzing your house. Since the author of Luke was redesigning stories about Jesus to suit his own taste, and chucking in all the nonsense about Jesus' annunciation, virgin mother, angels in the rafters and shepherds tipped off by a caravan from Persia, blah blah, give me the Greek mythographers any day ─ they seem refreshingly honest about what they're doing.

 

[Galateasdream]

Like having your heart not just broken but sadistically smashed by the one you loved the most ?

Or watching a children’s hospital hit by napalm ?

That kind of thing often puts a dent in theism.

No, those are emotional issues not intellectual ones.
On their own they are just incidents, they would have to be turned into an argument for the non-existence of God from evil, either the logical problem or the evidential problem.

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

No, those are emotional issues not intellectual ones.
On their own they are just incidents, they would have to be turned into an argument for the non-existence of God from evil, either the logical problem or the evidential problem.

In short. You can't eliminate feelings/emotions and you can't be only intellectual. In the end that "it matters" however you, I or anyone else do it, that it matters, has an irreducible non-intellectual part. Not that everything is emotional, but you can't do without those.

 

[PruePhillip]

Peter was a Galilean fisherman who was very likely illiterate and if he had any Greek at all, a bare minimum of it. Neither 1 or 2 Peter was written by a Galilean fisherman; I mean, "gird up your minds" (and so on) in highly polished Greek rhetorical style, really?

And to claim to be eye witness to 'his majesty' is to claim nothing more than a vision, or even just an imagining, of Jesus. It's a pity the author of Peter didn't say "Judas* and I were eyewitnesses to the shouting match when the market vendor tried to short-change Jesus for the bagel" ─ notice how much more real, how much less dreamy, that sounds next to the 'majesty' shtick.

* Judas mac James vic Zebadee, of course. Judas Iscariot is a fiction within a fiction.​

That loud flapping noise is a squadron of pigs buzzing your house. Since the author of Luke was redesigning stories about Jesus to suit his own taste, and chucking in all the nonsense about Jesus' annunciation, virgin mother, angels in the rafters and shepherds tipped off by a caravan from Persia, blah blah, give me the Greek mythographers any day ─ they seem refreshingly honest about what they're doing.

There are two thoughts about Peter - one is that, being young, and living in a multi-cultural
society, plus having to go preaching to Greeks, Romans etc he would have made a point of
learning other languages. I would.
Secondly, he could have used a secretary. That was common too. There's a suggestion
that Mark or Matthew could be a Peter version via a secretary.
The majesty of Jesus had nothing to do with visions - it had everything to do with the
majesty of grace, lowliness, strength, compassion etc.. When you see some of these
qualities in people they are wonderful to behold (something Nancy Pelosi could have
shown instead of imitating the behavior of the person she hated.)

 

[Galateasdream]

In short. You can't eliminate feelings/emotions and you can't be only intellectual. In the end that "it matters" however you, I or anyone else do it, that it matters, has an irreducible non-intellectual part. Not that everything is emotional, but you can't do without those.

Sure.
But you can't construct a philosophical argument purely based on feelings.