Life From Dirt?

[blü 2]

You seem to be treating the stories as if each story has to have all the details, but the truth is that what one misses out on another tells.

No, I'm not. And your statement that what one misses another tells is baseless, and utterly misrepresents the individual texts.

Who went there? No agreement. What did they see? No agreement. What did they then do? No agreement. To whom did Jesus first appear? No agreement. Second appear? No agreement. Third appear? No agreement. Where did he say to meet the disciples? No agreement. Did he ascend from Jerusalem or from Galilee? No agreement.

AND no eyewitness account, not a single one. No contemporary account, all stories from between two and six decades ago. No independent account, neither at the time nor later. AND a basically incredible claim, demanding instead the highest quality of evidence, of which there is, as you can see, absolutely none.

In this way we can reconstruct the whole story and end up with a few details that appear to be contradictions on the surface, but not when examined in more detail.

No, you can't. To make the tales fit the reader's demands, when they've already spoken for themselves, and where the circumstances are so strongly in favor of their being fictions in the first place (as in my third para above) is outright dishonesty.

 

[Audie]

No, I'm not. And your statement that what one misses another tells is baseless, and utterly misrepresents the individual texts.

Who went there? No agreement. What did they see? No agreement. What did they then do? No agreement. To whom did Jesus first appear? No agreement. Second appear? No agreement. Third appear? No agreement. Where did he say to meet the disciples? No agreement. Did he ascend from Jerusalem or from Galilee? No agreement.

AND no eyewitness account, not a single one. No contemporary account, all stories from between two and six decades ago. No independent account, neither at the time nor later. AND a basically incredible claim, demanding instead the highest quality of evidence, of which there is, as you can see, absolutely none.

No, you can't. To make the tales fit the reader's demands, when they've already spoken for themselves, and where the circumstances are so strongly in favor of their being fictions in the first place (as in my third para above) is outright dishonesty.

Just saying things with no basis seems dishonest to me.

 

[Brian2]

Suit yourself on that.
I do think you lie, as such.
You say things as if they were true
tho, in a most reckless way.

As for how you could think anyone
can prove God, welo. I offered two
possible ways to do i. Maybe you
know another.

I don't say that people can prove God. I'm the one who says faith is OK and stepping to a belief beyond what we have proof of is OK.
I wonder how atheists/skeptics can say that science has shown that God is not needed or that certain ideas in science have been shown to be true, when they have not.
But you do not seem to want to address that.
So anyway it seems that some atheists/skeptics say they shun faith but in reality embrace it when it comes to scientific ideas that have not been proven.

 

[Audie]

Information don't say that people can prove God. I'm the one who says faith is OK and stepping to a belief beyond what we have proof of is OK.
I wonder how atheists/skeptics can say that science has shown that God is not needed or that certain ideas in science have been shown to be true, when they have not.
But you do not seem to want to address that.
So anyway it seems that some atheists/skeptics say they shun faith but in reality embrace it when it comes to scientific ideas that have not been proven.

I did address that.
Read what I said !!!!
Yet again. You make things up.

If anyone says even your new modified version
of what " skeptics/ athiests" say, they are idiots.

You've no example of such an unlikely moron.

I think it's only in your head that they exist

Your thing about " faith" for skeptics is absurd-

For one your silly ignorant thing about proof.

How can you possibly not know that there's no proof in scince????

Your equivocation on " faith" is moldy and vacuous.

Acceptance of any idea is provisional , for a thinking
person. Good evidence with no contrary facts is
essential. One should always be prepared to
abandon beliefs if they are shown false.

But you mistakenly, quite foolishly, think that is
" faith" similar to yours.

You could hardly be more wrong.

Your assertion is wrong, imaginary, made up.




A Believer just believes things, for the sketchiest of
excuses, and they won't give them up no matter
what.
In Christianity that's a big virtue.

To a thinker it's intellectual bankruptcy.

 

[RestlessSoul]

Nothing does.

Sure they are. They're not material things, but matter is just one manifestation of the physical, the others being energy, force, form, space, and time.

No. It makes sound waves, but they are not experienced as sound unless a hearing creature is impacted by them and converts the energy to sound.

Yes.

There is nothing about consciousness that makes it not physical. Don't confuse material with physical.

So there are in the physical world, fundamental phenomena which are immaterial?

 

[YoursTrue]

I don't expect Paul to be giving too many details of the life of Jesus. That was not what he was going in his ministry.
Luke in Acts 1 gives a quick summary saying Jesus appeared to the 12 over 40 days, proving He had risen but has no details of who went to the tomb. No problem there.
From Mark, Matthew, Luke and John we find out that Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, Salome and Joanna went to the tomb.
That not all are mentioned by each person is no problem imo. Luke even says that there were others with the women that he mentions.



There may have been an earthquake and the stone may have been rolled away by angels in Matthew but it does say that the women saw this, even if they may have felt the earth quake. We don't know where Matthew learnt about the guards trembling. Maybe the guards were still there when the women came, maybe not.



as above



Details not mentioned by some and added by others.



Lack of detail in some and more in others.
Paul does not speak of tomb visit and resurrection details, his 1Cor 15:5,6 does however show us that Jesus appeared to Peter before the other apostles, as Luke says also (Luke 24:34)



Paul not giving details of order of appearance and does not mention the tomb and the women, but seems to be mentioning those who could be good witnesses for the resurrection. (women in those days were not seen as good witnesses it seems)



Matthew is not big on the details of Jesus appearances to people in Jerusalem before they went back to Galilee.
Luke has the appearance to 2 disciples on road to Emmaus (one being Simon it seems). Simon first and the 11 after that as Paul says.



You seem to be treating the stories as if each story has to have all the details, but the truth is that what one misses out on another tells. In this way we can reconstruct the whole story and end up with a few details that appear to be contradictions on the surface, but not when examined in more detail.

True that even reporters reporting the same incident will have different wording, and notice different incidents occurring in the same event.

 

[YoursTrue]

My experience:
A while ago (several years ago) I did not believe in God. Any God. Hindu, Catholicism, Judaism, Protestant, I explored various religions but finally decided there was no God, based on what I learned and saw in the various religions and life around me. But then -- but then -- something happened and I "needed" God, a higher power. But I had no faith. I didn't pray because -- I didn't believe in God. Yet I asked a minister how can I believe in God? He said, "Faith is a gift of the spirit." I told him that I don't have faith. He said, "Faith is a gift of the spirit that only God can give." And I said, "But I don't believe in God." He again repeated that only God can give me this gift of faith. So I realized the conversation was over, and exited the conversation. But that night I prayed for the first time in a long time. Not for happiness but for faith, I prayed, "Oh, God, if you're there, give me this gift of faith." Things happened after that. I fought, i argued. But here I am with faith. Thankful. Did my life become better? Yes, indeed, just as Jesus said.

 

[Brian2]

What the heck is a "theistic scientist"? It would be fine if a scientist saw evidence of god in nature. Of course that would have to mean that that that particular god would have to be testable. How would you test your god? What possible test could refute his existence? If you say none then you have admitted to no evidence for your god. At least from a scientific perspective.

By theistic scientist I meant a scientist who believes in God.
Do you think that a scientist who believes in God can scientifically test that God?
Maybe believing scientist tests the truth of their God subjectively in their lives.
But if I say there is no test that could refute the existence of God that does not mean that there is no evidence, as you seem to admit.

 

[Brian2]

No, it is not.

But so far, impossible to support. Consciousness arises in a brain sufficiently complex to model itself as a conscious agent ("I am here now") in a theater of conscious phenomena ("That is there now"). The possibilities for self-referential thought are endless - thinking about oneself in a theater of consciousness containing one thinking about oneself ad infinitum. It's how matter behaves when organized into brains.

The magic spark isn't magic. It's inherent in matter. Everything we need to build this universe is right here in it now. I've mentioned the metaphor of the candle flame, which isn't a magic substance that enters candles as they are lit and goes to heaven when they burn out. It's an emergent phenomenon of matter doing what it does and revealing latent properties within the matter.

Science defines the magic spark of life as an emergent property of matter and that is a way to eliminate the magic in it. But neither of us know scientifically if it is an emergent property of matter.
So why do you sound as if you do know?

That is half correct. We have a proposed mechanism for naturalistic abiogenesis. It just needs to be fleshed in better and confirmed.

True.

That's a religious belief. Remove the god and spirit parts, and we see that man is just another animal.

If the body of man evolved then that would be just another animal without God's involvement and turning it into a man, made in the image of God.

If the evidence doesn't support the belief for all competent thinkers, it is not supporting evidence, just something evident to the senses.

The gospels support the belief in Jesus but only if believed.

 

[PureX]

My experience:
A while ago (several years ago) I did not believe in God. Any God. Hindu, Catholicism, Judaism, Protestant, I explored various religions but finally decided there was no God, based on what I learned and saw in the various religions and life around me. But then -- but then -- something happened and I "needed" God, a higher power. But I had no faith. I didn't pray because -- I didn't believe in God. Yet I asked a minister how can I believe in God? He said, "Faith is a gift of the spirit." I told him that I don't have faith. He said, "Faith is a gift of the spirit that only God can give." And I said, "But I don't believe in God." He again repeated that only God can give me this gift of faith. So I realized the conversation was over, and exited the conversation. But that night I prayed for the first time in a long time. Not for happiness but for faith, I prayed, "Oh, God, if you're there, give me this gift of faith." Things happened after that. I fought, i argued. But here I am with faith. Thankful. Did my life become better? Yes, indeed, just as Jesus said.

What you hadn't realized, I suspect, was that faith is a choice, not a belief based on information.

 

[Brian2]

What evidence is there for this spirit? What evidence that my cat doesn't have it, as well?

Your cat has biological life force as do humans.
Humans have spirit from God which makes us more than animals imo.
We can see that humans are more than cats, but of course I have not met your cat.
Spirit is something that is not testable by tests for material things, but as I said we can see the huge difference between humans and animals.

 

[Brian2]

That is appropriation, pilferage, plagiarism. Claiming something to be your's which really is not.
A failed simile.

There is nothing in the world which is not physical. The tree and the noise (sound), both are physical.

So are beauty, love and consciousness physical things or non-existent?

 

[Brian2]

And your " god not needed...science has shown,..true"
is false, made up. Worse than merely unsubstantiated,
it's impossinle, as sscience is incapable of doing that.

It's hard to understand what exactly what you said.
It is true that science cannot shown that God is not needed but ateist and skeptics claim this a lot.
I also hear them claim that science has shown that abiogenesis, without the need for God, is true and that evolution without the need for God is true.

 

[Brian2]

Nothing does.

Sure they are. They're not material things, but matter is just one manifestation of the physical, the others being energy, force, form, space, and time.

How do you know?

 

[Aupmanyav]

So are beauty, love and consciousness physical things or non-existent?

Yes, they are concepts created by physical mechanism in brain.

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

Yes, they are concepts created by physical mechanism in brain.

The problem is that physical is a concept created in the brain/mind.
You can't point to God. But neither can you point to the physical.

You are in effect caught in the idea, that your concepts are not really concepts, they are concrete.

 

[RestlessSoul]

Yes, they are concepts created by physical mechanism in brain.

And a symphony is a formal arrangement of harmonised sounds created by an orchestra. But the music is not the instrument that produces it.

 

[Brian2]

Josephus' account of the trial of Jesus son of Ananais (Latin, Ananus) aka Jesus of Jerusalem, in The Jewish Wars, Bk 6 Ch. 5.3.

Certainly God gave the Jews warning about Jerusalem and the Temple. But as Josephus said at the end of Chapter 5:
However, it is not possible for men to avoid fate, although they see it beforehand. But these men interpreted some of these signals according to their own pleasure, and some of them they utterly despised, until their madness was demonstrated, both by the taking of their city and their own destruction.

What has Ananus got to do with Jesus apart from the fact that you want to use the story to show Mark was written after 70 AD. But Ananus was a Jewish prophet who was filled with the Holy Spirit at Pentecost and prophesied and was put on trial and beaten for no reason. This also shows what Jerusalem had done to the prophets before that. You also ignore the true prophecy Ananus gave from God.

First we need to demonstrate that there ever was an historical Jesus. I accept that it's possible, but I don't accept that it's clearly demonstrated. I separately accept that stories about him existed orally, and it's credible that Paul, as he says, persecuted their sect in some way. What I don't accept is that oral tradition is reliable ─ a problem I first considered when I was doing some history of the Gaels in Scotland and found written accounts of various shenachies. The question of oral history has been widely studied in many cultures. One thing they show about oral tradition is that the story is constantly "improved", made more tellable, adjusted to the audience, and tending to vary with its size, one or three or many. The very fact that there are four approved gospels and various other gospels as well, makes the point. One easy example will illustrate the point ─ the five distinct versions of Jesus in the NT. Paul's Jesus pre-existed in heaven with God, created the material universe, and was a Jewish human descended from David ─ my best guess is that this implies the spirit of Jesus entered the zygote of an ordinary Jewish couple and became embodied that way. Mark's Jesus is the only version with credible elements ─ an ordinary Jew who is baptized by JtB, at which moment the heavens open and God adopts Jesus as his son on the model of David's adoption in Psalms 2:7. (And see Acts 13:33-4). He's expressly not descended from David. The Jesus of Matthew and the Jesus of Luke were each foretold by angels, conceived by divine insemination of a virgin, absurdly said to be descended from David by invented and entirely incompatible genealogies, and which are for Joseph, expressly NOT Jesus' father. Then there's John, whose Jesus, like Paul's, pre-existed in heaven with God and created the material universe, and was descended from David. (But one of the things they do have in common is that, regarding the 4th century triune Jesus, each of those gospel versions expressly denies that he's God, and never claims to be God.)

Paul certainly would not have become a Christian if he knew that Jesus had not even existed. (and the Jews of Paul's day and Paul would have known that little fact)
Jesus pre existed and created the universe and became a human. But the mother was a virgin and so no zygote was killed so that Jesus could become a human.
Mark starts at the baptism of Jesus but Jesus is still the Son of God in Mark also. (eg Mark 14: 61,62, Mark 8:27-30)
Jesus is also Son of David in Mark (eg Mark 10:47)
Both Genealogies make it plain that Joseph is not the father of Jesus and Lukes is logically the genealogy of Mary whose father is also called the father of Joseph in those days.
And yes Matthew and Luke have information about the early life of Jesus and conception etc.
Each gospel writer has his own agenda and information to convey and they add to each other and not contradict.
The each have Jesus as the Son of God, and end up showing clearly that He is the divine Son of God, someone the Jews wanted to kill because He made Himself equal to God.
When on trial His claim to being Son of God was what got them in the end even though the OT clearly tells us that the Messiah would be the Son of God.

Yes, Paul and Mark had written about Jesus. Paul's letters were generally unknown till the 2nd century, when if I recall correctly Marcion produced them to support his gnostic view of Jesus, but Mark provides the template for the other three gospels, and is, as it were, quoted in Matthew and Luke, a big part of the 'synoptic' element.

Certainly the letters of Paul were circulating and quoted by Church Fathers before Marcion.

 

[Subduction Zone]

By theistic scientist I meant a scientist who believes in God.
Do you think that a scientist who believes in God can scientifically test that God?
Maybe believing scientist tests the truth of their God subjectively in their lives.
But if I say there is no test that could refute the existence of God that does not mean that there is no evidence, as you seem to admit.

No "theistic scientist" appears to be able to do that. I know of some scientists that believe in God. They still tend to accept reality. Professor Kenneth Miller comes to mind. He is a Christian but I am very sure that he accepts abiogenesis as being factual. There is no doubt at all that he accepts the fact of evolution:

Kenneth R. Miller - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

He knows that his God beliefs are not testable.

 

[TagliatelliMonster]

How can we be certain that a chair exists, independently of our ability to perceive it? Because we can sit on it, because we can see it, or both? How does the reality of a chair differ then, from that of a word? We can see a word on the page, we can hear it spoken, and we can put it to use. Can we really say more of a chair?

I can take a chair and hit you upside the head with it and it will knock you out.