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Religious Pron - The Infancy Gospels 2
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Oct 1, 2023, 5:07 PM
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Last time I ended with this cliff-hanger about the Infancy Gospel of Matthew (TIGOM for short, because I’m a lazy typist.)
The shield reference was deliberate, because the Gospel does require the shielding of one’s normal sensibilities, and it does include dragons, which a lot of Gospels don’t have.
TIGOM starts off in much the same way as the earlier Infancy Gospel of James (TIGOJ). There’s Mary, daughter of Joachim and Anna, being sent to the Temple at age 3. Then at age 12 she’s raffled off to Joseph the carpenter. Then Jesus is miraculously born, the Magi stop by, etc. TIGOM is notable in that for the first time in print, an ox and a donkey show up at the nativity.
Deuteronomy 22:10 “Do not plow with an ox and a donkey yoked together.”
Good advice from the Bible, and from the Farmer’s Almanac
And here they are again. Mary and Jesus are special and get halos.
Continuing with the story, after Jesus’s birth the family flees to Egypt to escape Herod’s wrath, and stop to rest at a cave. And then things get weird. Medieval weird.
“Chapter 18. And, lo, suddenly there came forth from the cave many dragons; and when the children saw them, they cried out in great terror. Then Jesus went down from the bosom of His mother, and stood on His feet before the dragons; and they adored Jesus, and thereafter retired.”
Pic or it didn’t happen.
“Put me down, mom. I got this.”
Now, that’s important because: “Then was fulfilled that which was said by David the prophet: Praise the Lord from the earth, ye dragons” (Psalm 148:7)
So the dragons praised him, per prophecy. And then, two-year old Jesus said: “Do not be afraid; all the beasts of the forest must be tame before me.”
Tame enough to pet.
In Chapter 19 of TIGOM the family is attacked by wolves and lions on the road. And again, baby Jesus intercedes.
“Then was fulfilled that which was spoken by the prophet: Wolves shall feed with lambs; the lion and the ox shall eat straw together.” (Isaiah 65:25)
I couldn’t find a pic of a lion eating straw, but I found one of a lion made of straw.
And a lion eating a chicken.
When Jesus’s clan gets hungry in Chapter 20, he commands the palm trees to bow down and offer their fruit.
“…O tree, bend thy branches, and refresh my mother with thy fruit.”
And in Chapter 22 when they got too hot, Jesus just teleports them straight to Egypt.
“Lord, it is a boiling heat. Fear not, Joseph; I will shorten the way for you, so that what you would have taken thirty days to go over, you shall accomplish in this one day. And…they looked forward, and began to see the mountains and cities of Egypt.”
Here, an ancient Egyptian mayor bows before Jesus. In front of the local cathedral.
And when they reach the capital of Egypt in Chapter 23, the false gods of Egypt (which look a lot like demon baboons or devil monkeys) collapse before the baby Jesus’s greatness.
“CHAP. 23. And it came to pass, when the most blessed Mary went into the temple with the little child, that all the idols prostrated themselves on the ground, so that all of them were lying on their faces shattered and broken to pieces; and thus they plainly showed that they were nothing.”
“Then was fulfilled that which was said by the prophet Isaiah: Behold, the Lord will come upon a swift cloud, and will enter Egypt, and all the handiwork of the Egyptians shall be moved at His presence.” (Isaiah 19:1)
In time, the family learns from an angel that Herod has died. That puts the story at about 4 BCE according to Roman records. And so they return to Judea.
“It’s safe to go home now.”
The long road back to Israel
The story is far from over, so I’ll save that for the next installment. But since we’ve covered some pretty sensational stuff, let’s pause for a moment and think about this remarkable document.
Matthew writes it all down for us in Hebrew. Or so the story goes.
First, let’s give some credit to the fantastic illuminations (illustrations) that accompany this text.
The Massacre of the Innocents. Look! When you cut him open, red stuff comes out.
All those illuminations were possibly created, or at least collected and kept, by monks in this monastery in Klosterneuburg, Austria, in about 1250 AD.
It’s not exactly one of those moldy, dusty, austere monasteries for ascetics. It’s more on the upscale end as monasteries go.
Collectively, the pictures are known as the Klosterneuburg Evangelienwerk, and they were very popular with semi-illiterates in the Middle Ages.
John the Baptist being breast fed. Yeah, baby!
And circumcised.
The monks did artwork in precious metals, too.
Hey look! It’s Isaac, and Adam and Eve.
So those images made the Infancy Gospel of Matthew even more accessible to people who could barely read, and even more famous than just plain, dry, text. And they fit perfectly in the world of their time, between 400 AD and 1400 AD.
When in Rome do as the Romans. And when practicing medieval Christianity, practice like a medieval Christian. Which is not entirely the same as an ancient, or a modern, Christian. And so for perhaps a thousand years, some Christians at least, with the quiet acceptance of the church, actually believed Jesus tamed dragons. But he wasn’t alone.
St. George killed a dragon too.
As did Saint Michael.
As did Saint Margaret. It was a thing. Even women could be in the dragon killing club.
The Babylonian creation story, from 2000 BCE, involves Marduk slaying the dragon Tiamat and creating the world from her dead body. The idea of a hero taking on or slaying dragons is a very, very old one.
The creation of the world, Babylonian style
Some of you AD&D fans might remember Tiamat, too.
And her minions…
Fortunately, with the power of reason, we’ve moved beyond dragons and myths.
Still one more reason the Infancy Gospel of Matthew became so popular was its inclusion in a tome called the Golden Legend, in about 1250 AD. The Golden Legend was a real blockbuster. It was compiled by the Bishop of Venice, and it contained over 150 tales about the Apostles and the Saints and everyone who was anyone in Christendom. It was so popular that more than 1000 medieval-era copies of it survive to this day.
So you can see how an obscure, unpublished work got translated by Jerome as a replacement for the Infancy Gospel of James, and then got illustrated, and then got put on the Facebook/Youtube/TikTok/Instagram of its day, and suddenly had millions of followers. That’s backstory to the Infancy Gospel of Matthew.
Now, I really, really like TIGOM. And not just because it’s weird, kinda crazy, and a lot of fun, like some of my ex-girlfriends. Although that helps. I like it because it’s by true believers. TIGOM isn’t a text that is denying or questioning Jesus, or refuting anything about him. It’s not skeptical, it’s a love letter. Full-on adulation. Sort of Jesus fan-fiction for its day.
And dragons are just fantastically exciting.
Here Jesus sticks a blue dragon.
Fanciful? Sure. Even Jerome thought so when he translated it, and said as much in his disclaimer. But dragons were a thing in ancient and medieval literature. And so was Jesus. Two great things that go great together. Like peanut butter and jelly.
One could spend a lot of time trying to rationalize or explain such things in normal terms…the dragons were a snakes, or lizards, or whatever. But to me that’s missing the point, and it doesn’t really matter.
The story is about miracles. It’s about things that are beyond the norm. Did anyone question this when it happened?
I think the church saw it in the same way. Because I’m a little surprised that, so far as I know, TIGOM was never condemned in any way. It’s predecessor, TIGOJ, was rejected because Jerome thought brothers vs. cousins was too theologically controversial, but apparently dragons were completely acceptable.
As an apocryphal work, this text was declared to be “extra” information. So it delicately rides the fence of “you don’t really need this to be a Christian, but we won’t start a riot by taking it away from you. So reading it, and acceptance of it, may have been along the lines of, “Don’t ask, don’t tell.”
Is it a man? Is it a woman? It’s Pat.
Even if George Washington didn’t chop down a cherry tree, he still founded a nation. And even if Jesus didn’t talk down a dragon, he still started a world religion. So the people wanted more information about this guy; they were excited, and they wanted others to be excited with them. That’s what any Gospel, including the Infancy Gospel of Matthew, is all about. The Good News.
But we’re not done yet, so don’t put your shield down. Because even with dragons, we’re STILL not to the most controversial parts of TIGOM. Oh no. You’re still going to need that shield for part 3, and the dramatic conclusion to The Infancy Gospel of Matthew.
I’m really starting to like these cliff-hangers!
http://www.gnosis.org/library/psudomat.htm
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CU Medallion [58858]
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Great stuff as always.***
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Oct 1, 2023, 6:05 PM
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Re: Religious Pron - The Infancy Gospels 2
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Oct 1, 2023, 6:26 PM
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All interesting.
What would you consider to be their significance? Three non-controversial things we know (some of these you have said):
1. They have been known and studied for a very long time.
2. The texts hold nothing antithetical to Christianity 101.
3. Their exclusion from the NT was not due to content, but lack of provenance generally assigned to the NT documents. You're not going to exclude one on content that has dragons while including one that has walking on water. And that resurrection thing. In for a penny ...
Given those, what is your proposed significance of these Les Infants Terribles? I am not suggesting there has to be any. I watch "Christmas Vacation" religiously, pardon the pun, without claiming significance. "Interesting" is good enough for an entire thread.
So you wont think I am blindsiding you with that question, I will say up front that if there is little significance, that itself is significant, as it relates to the NT. I am actually interested in what you think its significance is, if any.
But to be clear, "Christmas Vacation" is the most significant holiday comedy in the multiverse. I don't even have to defend that. It just is, like Augustus McCrae said about a motto: "It says itself."
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Re: Religious Pron - The Infancy Gospels 2
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Oct 1, 2023, 7:31 PM
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>What would you consider to be their significance?
That's just the discussion I was hoping for, because I'm not really sure, and would love to hear what others think.
As I mentioned, as I read it, it feels to me like a love-letter of sorts. So it fills in a lot of pure informational gaps that the people from 30AD-300AD probably wanted to know. "Tell me more about his mom." "Tell me more about his trip to Egypt.", etc. In fact, once I get to some of the other early Christian sects, there's a few that venerated even Mary to varying degrees:
"Collyridianism was an alleged Early Christian movement in Arabia whose adherents apparently worshipped the Virgin Mary, mother of Jesus, as a goddess."
So lots of folks with lots of opinions and beliefs, early on.
I think it's also interesting that just like in the 4 Synoptic Gospels, the stories of the trip to Egypt aren't just random episodes, and they quote their fulfilment from the OT: "Thus was fulfilled the prophecy of X, or whomever."
The Gospel is actually a part of quasi-trilogy, TIGOM being a combination of two earlier, similar works, TIGOJ and the Infancy Gospel of Thomas. TIGOT actually quotes from Luke, so that would mean that either Luke came before it, or, that both TIGOT and Luke quoted from an earlier document.
So, that could mean that the same community wrote all three Infancy Gospels, or, separate communities wrote each and a third community combined them. Or any combination of the above.
But the most fascinating thing about it, to me at least, is the church reaction, or non-reaction to the Gospel. That could mean A) they didn't care, or see it as a threat to Christianity 101, or B), they couldn't stop it once it got into enough people's hands and lost control over it.
If B was the case, however, that didn't stop them from declaring other scriptures and movements to be heretical much later on, so it must have been very, very popular for the church to hake a hands-off approach to it, and treat it with kid gloves.
Another interesting point is that even though Jerome said plainly "I kinda doubt this", the church STILL allowed its tacit acceptance. It was deliberately put in the apocrypha pile, not the rejection pile. So, perhaps it was just too lengthy, or duplicated essentials that were already summarized in other Gospels, or just came too late to make the early cuts on what was in or out.
There's a lot of possibilities and "what if's" around this thing, and I'd love to hear more ideas.
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Re: Religious Pron - The Infancy Gospels 2
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Oct 1, 2023, 7:56 PM
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I could even see completely honest, good-faith, reverse engineering in the stories. Let's take the most fantastic part, the dragons.
Suppose I'm a Jew living in 100AD, and I'm reading my Psalms, and I come across “Then was fulfilled that which was said by David the prophet: Praise the Lord from the earth, ye dragons” (Psalm 148:7)
And I'm trying to figure out what that means. As a Jewish, or even full, Christian (such as it was in 100AD), I might think "Well, I've lived in Israel all my life, and I've never seen a dragon, so where might Jesus have seen one? Jesus travelled to Egypt, so maybe he saw one on the road to Egypt.
Scripture says "from the earth", so what in the heck is the Psalmist talking about? I suppose coming from a cave could be from the earth. So my logical conclusion is that Jesus saw a dragon, outside of Israel, in a cave, on his way to Egypt. Just as scripture says.
Now, it might be any other of 100 different things other than that, but I can see that being a possible, reasonable interpretation by an early Christian looking to understand scripture in relation to Jesus's life and travels.
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Re: Religious Pron - The Infancy Gospels 2
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Oct 1, 2023, 10:21 PM
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Fun questions. A good reason to consider these things. Thanks.
I did notice one thing here, and minute details like this rarely matter, but I'm going to start here because it leads to a relevant point: A Christian in 100 AD would not be wondering what the dragons meant, because if my memory is correct (good to bet against it), the pseudo Matthew gospel was not written until ... having to think about it ... 500 or so years later. I'm not quibbling about the 100 AD - you were typing, not researching - but I think it is the answer to your question above: "... is the church reaction, or non-reaction to the Gospel. That could mean A) they didn't care, or see it as a threat to Christianity 101, or B), they couldn't stop it once it got into enough people's hands ...".
The dating of the story likely means that the answer to your question is A(a). They didn't seem to care. It is centuries after both the events and the common understanding of what documents should comprise the NT. Q was seemingly the community held understanding among those alive at Jesus's time, Matthew and Mark basically compiling that understanding. Luke wrote down what he heard from that as well as from Paul, who visited face to face with the 12. John wrote his own personal memoir. And then Paul referred to the basics of the Gospel, referring to his direct conversations with the 12. And Peter says, "The dude is a hardass, but he aint wrong." So 500 years later someone writes an account that affirms the NT in all regards, plus dragons, etc. If you were there, what would you have done? Shrugged your shoulders and said what Jerome did: 'Looks specious to me, but no, it's not worth walking 300 miles to go to another council over it. My wife's mother is coming over next week, and she'd kill me. No wait, call a council meeting."
I think that's the story: a very late document of no provenance, worth roughly any document I would write. And we know what 16 thinks about those.
This might seem tangent, but to me it is relevant. In the US alone we have numerous denominations, and many churches that refuse denominational affiliation. Overseas there are many more of both. Catholics, bless their fertile hearts, are everywhere. No leadership of any denomination has any influence in the theology of any other denomination. And all those independents, I can tell you, listen to nobody, except maybe Francis Chan youtubes. Nobody, and I mean nobody, is in control. This leads skeptics to pause from saying "which God" just long enough to say "which denomination?"
Fair enough. So here's the thing: I have been in Central America, South America, Germany, Poland, Ukraine, Latvia and Albania, specifically to interact with Christians of various traditions and backgrounds. And that doesn't count the snake handlers in SW Arkansas and the socialists in California. Values all over the map. With no central control, these people hold almost nothing in common, except for these few constants: God created us; we demanded independence; we are paying and will pay an eternal consequence; Jesus was God-on-earth to pay that consequence; each person may now return to Him or remain separated. From Leninists on the west coast to Soviet hating Latvians in the east, from sophisticates in Europe to MAGAs in Arkansas, they hold those truths in common. That, and a desire to tell people who are still running from it. A church of 50 in Albania offered me headphones for translation: pretty snazzy tech for a tiny church. I refused, because it is too fun to share understanding in an unknown language.
Tell any of these people that an unknown person in 500-ish AD wrote an account of Jesus that affirms all that but tells some stories about dragons, they'd discuss it 3 minutes and move on. That, I think, is what happened to Les Infants Terribles. The Spirit seems to be superintending one truth: who He is and who we are. What He is doing around the world is not affected by what we are doing.
If you have other ideas about what gave cause to the writing and subsequent forgetting of these documents, I would be interested in hearing it. Keep up the fun work!
Message was edited by: CUintulsa®
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Re: Religious Pron - The Infancy Gospels 2
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Oct 2, 2023, 12:23 PM
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My original post was a little muddled on the dating, so I'll try to sort it all out. What we've got here is three documents, though I have only addressed two. Each of the three documents has a different scope and a different presumed composition date.
The Inf. Gospel of James (post 1) is reckoned to be the earliest of the three. It covers Mary, the birth of Jesus, and his life up to Egypt. It's dated at about 150 AD.
The Inf. Gospel of Thomas (which I haven't addressed) is second. It covers Jesus's life from age 5 up till his parents leave him behind at the Temple, at age 12. It's dated to about 180 AD I think.
And the Inf. Gospel of Matthew, the third of the three (this post) which combines those two earlier stories. And it's dated at roughly 600 AD.
So my rough calculation of 100AD was giving some "oral tradition" time, two or three generations or so. Presuming that someone could have first asked and answered the questions about 100AD, and then put the answers in writing by 150 AD and 180 AD. In any event, one might consider them "second generation" information, on the heels of the first wave of Gospels, composed maybe 50-100 AD.
Now, the interesting thing about TIGOM, the 600ish document, is that the document itself says that it was written by Matthew, in his lifetime contemporary with Jesus. That puts it at in the 30-60AD range, say. Then, it was later translated by Jerome, who lived about 340 AD-420 AD. Say he was an adult when he translated it, so maybe it got translated in the year 400 AD.
That still leaves a 200+ year gap between what the document itself says, and what today's "experts" say. Which is the truth? Idk.
I can see it both ways actually. First, I can see the document being attributed to Matthew for credibility. That was done frequently with ancient texts from everywhere...Greece, Egypt, Meso, Levant, etc.
But what is unusual is the fact that Jerome, personally, sort of rejected it. So if it was truly written in the 600's, as scholars say, and the writers wanted to "authenticate" it by attributing it to Matthew, then why have Jerome, who would also be dead in 600ish, discount the work?
If it was a complete fabrication in 600, wouldn't the fabricator just say "Matthew wrote it, and Jerome loved it." It's a real mystery. But regardless, the combined document is still based on two earlier ones from the 150-180 range.
>and subsequent forgetting of these documents
This is as interesting to me as the creation of the document(s). We've got three Infancy gospels here, that for about 1000 years (say 150 AD+ for the very earliest, up till at least 1250 at Klosterneuburger) that were fully tolerated by the church. Never fully accepted, but never fully rejected. And illustrated by monks themselves at the monastery. With at least 1000 copies that we still have today.
And then poof, forgotten. Now, maybe it wasn't exactly poof, but over some time period between the 1200's and now, 2000, they dropped off the map. Maybe it was the Dark Ages and wholesale death, or maybe the Renaissance and enlightened thinking, who knows?
A more succinct way of looking at it might be like this. Those gospels were written because people wanted answers about Mary and the baby Jesus. And they were popular. TIGOJ was banned, but people still wanted answers. So, TIGOT and TIGOM were written and composed. Then, some thing, or some things, happened from 1200ish to 2000ish, and no one cared about the history of Mary or baby Jesus anymore. That is, those texts were forgotten, and to this day there is nothing authoritative to replace them.
It's as if the religion has been streamlined, and Jesus's youth became less important to people farther and farther away from his birth. It used to be something that people HAD to know about, so much so that it merited a replacement when answers were taken away. And now, there doesn't seem to be a curiosity about it at all. Another mystery.
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Re: Religious Pron - The Infancy Gospels 2
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Oct 2, 2023, 1:43 PM
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Sure. And if there are no real theological differences between Les Infants and the NT, it seems the question is, 'why exclude these?' It likely wasn't over content, for the reasons we've discussed. That leaves provenance, does it not?
Hypothetically, it could be inertia. If someone uncovered a document that could be reasonably dated to 35 AD (not the paper necessarily, but the content), with a claim of Barnabas as author, with details that would make that claim reasonable, and with content that was totally solid ... would someone somewhere reopen the canon? Probably not. No compelling reasons for or against.
But in this case it's provenance, isn't it? That is my understanding. Maybe you have other information.
John was written in 70 to 90-ish, and skeptics jump up and down about that. Fine. Here we have somewhere between 200 and 600, and skeptics give it credibility. They are fun read and fun to discuss, but (1) without credibility, what is the point, or (2) if given credibility, even more has to be assigned to the NT documents. Either side of the fence is fine (some assign zero cred to any of it), but it needs to be one or the other.
Message was edited by: CUintulsa®
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Re: Religious Pron - The Infancy Gospels 2
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Oct 2, 2023, 1:52 PM
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Personally I’ve always found it ridiculous to canonize anything as if an all powerful all knowing god suddenly stopped speaking to his creation 2000 years ago.
I was at church this past Sunday and the pastor made the statement that there is no truth outside the Bible. That’s laughable.
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Re: Religious Pron - The Infancy Gospels 2
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Oct 2, 2023, 1:54 PM
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If God doesn't exist, it would be.
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Re: Religious Pron - The Infancy Gospels 2
Oct 2, 2023, 1:55 PM
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If I did it would be even more laughable.
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Re: Religious Pron - The Infancy Gospels 2
Oct 2, 2023, 1:56 PM
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If you mean because atomic physics is not it the bible, sure.
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Re: Religious Pron - The Infancy Gospels 2
Oct 2, 2023, 1:55 PM
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God that is.
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Re: Religious Pron - The Infancy Gospels 2
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Oct 2, 2023, 2:55 PM
[ in reply to Re: Religious Pron - The Infancy Gospels 2 ] |
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That is a very good point.
On the other side of it, Lewis would be the first to say he didn't come up with anything new. In the year 2500, if we are still here, people will be putting the truth of the bible into the language and culture that exists then.
"All truth is in the bible" can be argued for or against, depending on how one looks at that phrase. Lewis said many things not in the bible. Or everything he said is in the bible.
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Re: Religious Pron - The Infancy Gospels 2
Oct 2, 2023, 6:26 PM
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I may be wrong, but I think there are many lessons that Jesus taught that can be traced to other cultures and historical figures that existed long before he did.
I know apologists can twist the text to make it seems like it isn’t so but the Bible also seems to contain scientific errors.
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Re: Religious Pron - The Infancy Gospels 2
Oct 2, 2023, 6:40 PM
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True things existed before he came. Correct. The Golden Rule existed before He said it. If He created the universe and all truth in it, that would be the case. Be said birds fly, for instance. We presume people already knew that.
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Re: Religious Pron - The Infancy Gospels 2
Oct 2, 2023, 6:47 PM
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So the universe contains all the truth now, not just the Bible?
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Re: Religious Pron - The Infancy Gospels 2
Oct 2, 2023, 8:41 PM
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God created the universe. You're getting your 5th grade sets and subsets confused.
Since you dont believe God exists, what are you on about, anyway? What is your motivation for continuing illogical railings against something you dont believe in? We know it is anger, but if you think it is something different, what is it?
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Re: Religious Pron - The Infancy Gospels 2
Oct 2, 2023, 8:52 PM
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lol, and like clockwork the ad hominems and hand-waviness arrive as soon as legitimate questions you can’t answer come up
Why is that? So mysterious.
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Re: Religious Pron - The Infancy Gospels 2
Oct 3, 2023, 7:56 AM
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Yep that’s what he does when he’s cornered.
He contradicted himself and now he’s trying to weasel out of it by insulting me.
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Re: Religious Pron - The Infancy Gospels 2
Oct 2, 2023, 2:45 PM
[ in reply to Re: Religious Pron - The Infancy Gospels 2 ] |
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I believe it's a slightly different case for each gospel.
In the case of TIGOJames, in 150AD, it was rejected over a theological issue. Jerome didn't like that the manuscript referred to Jesus's brothers, in a blood sense, rather than in a "companion" sense. Jerome apparently wanted it to be clear that only Jesus was born divine, and Mary didn't give birth to "semi-divine" step-brothers, or however the people of the day might have interpreted them.
Jerome was willing to settle for "brothers" being interpreted as "cousins," but the TIGOJames was simply too contradictory, so he had a chat with the Pope and the Pope condemned it in 405 AD.
I'm not sure if provenance played a role in that condemnation (and subsequent rejection, in 500AD) because the theological issue over-rode it. It might have survived as an apocrypha if not for the theological issue, but there's no way to tell.
In the case of TIGOMatthew in 600ish, since it includes TIGOJames, it's interesting that it IS considered an apocrypha. One would think that if the "brother" issue was carried from TIGOJames INTO TIGOMatthew, it would have suffered the same fate as TIGOJames. But that appears not to be the case, since monks were still using TIGOMatthew, and the parts of TIGOJames it incorporated, into the 1200's.
Perhaps the "brother" language was changed along the way, and the content was kept the same, or, Jerome and the offended Popes had passed on by that time. The 500 AD rejection of TIGOJames was over 100 years before TIGOMatthew was even composed as a 2-part document in the 600s. So maybe anyone who cared about the brother/cousin issue was simply long gone by that time. Idk.
In the case of TIGOThomas, in 180ish AD, its fate may very well have been due to provenance. It also was not rejected, but considered apocryphal along with TIGOMatthew.
So only one of these particular three Gospels was actually rejected completely, and I think it would be reasonable to assume that some combination of both content and provenance relegated the other two to the apocrypha pile. Though how much of a factor each was I can't say.
>Here we have somewhere between 200 and 600, and skeptics give it credibility.
For me, the interesting thing is not that skeptics give it credibility, but that the church itself does. The church could have very easily condemned all three of these Infancy Gospels, but chose to keep 2 of these 3, albeit at arms length.
To me that seems like a combination of both 1) messaging, and 2) catering. That is, it seems the Church wanted to emphasize points A, B, and C. Say, birth, death, resurrection. But anything else that the people wanted was fine with the Church. The people could read about dragons, or not, and believe it, or not. Dragons don't affect A, B, and C. But anything that interferes with the clarity of birth, death, resurrection the Church dropped the hammer on.
In that light, point D might have been the brother vs. cousin issue, that Jerome and Pope Innocent I felt so strongly about. But when they died, no one cared about point D anymore. But the Church still cares about A, B, and C, very much so, to this day.
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Re: Religious Pron - The Infancy Gospels 2
1
Oct 2, 2023, 6:10 PM
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Agree. As I said above, one can go anywhere in the world and find Christians of wildly different worldviews believing those same core truths.
I might quibble with the idea that the church gives it credibility - I propose that the body of followers of Jesus would not - but yes, as you said, we believe A, B and C quite strongly, and do so cross culturally from an experiential basis.
So, this reminds me of a tangent point. One of the more common claims of atheists is that Christians exist because they are raised to be so. "You're a Christian because you were born in the US", not explaining where Chinese Christians come from. More broadly, the thread running through your posts seems to be that what Christians believe about the bible can be traced to sociological factors. I'll propose two surface reasons why those two views cannot be said to be true (I haven't thought these through in a conversational environment, so feel free to opine):
1. If one assumes God does not exist, the biblical record is obviously culturally produced. However, it is equally true that if God does exist, His interaction was with the cultures that existed at the time. "He has placed eternity in the hearts of men." If that is not true, religion is derivative of myths. If it is true, cultural views of God, accurate or not, come from that. The proposal that God's voice occurs in the midst of culture, and that the bible is it, cannot be invalidated by claiming cultural influence. That a flood story occurs in different cultures is irrelevant.
2. I mentioned the empirical data seeming to show that the percentage of the US population that are followers of Jesus - regardless of how many attend church - is in the mid single digits. That number will of course fluctuate some due to culture and availability, but almost nowhere is that number less than 2 or 3, and even in the US is likely not higher than 6 or 7. In the US, where "everybody goes to church", the high is 7. In China where it is next to illegal to go, except to the State sanctioned church, the number is 3% and growing. Among ethnic Jews in the US, the number is about 5%. I would make a significant bet that when the Kim dictatorship is finally gone, we will find that 5% waiting.
Change the culture, change the history, change the availability ... the 5%-ish seems constant. Go anywhere in the world, find those 5%, and the message is so consistent that you don't need a translator. This is without central control of message, though certainly interaction exists. If one wants to use culture to explain away belief in God, the cultural evidence could be said to be the other way.
Message was edited by: CUintulsa®
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Re: Religious Pron - The Infancy Gospels 2
Oct 2, 2023, 6:20 PM
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I’m literally laughing at you claiming to have solid data on the percentage of true followers of Jesus by country.
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Re: Religious Pron - The Infancy Gospels 2
Oct 2, 2023, 6:55 PM
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Not to mention, even if these numbers were accurate. You're telling me the range is 3-7% of the population of true believers?
How unconvincing is this message? Why is this all-powerful savior so inefficient at saving souls and reaching people?
When a few people fail a class, it's the student's fault; when the majority of the class fails, it's the teacher's fault.
It's just total ridiculousness and the arguments are always so baffling.
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Re: Religious Pron - The Infancy Gospels 2
Oct 2, 2023, 8:26 PM
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Yes I had those thoughts many times as a believer. If there really is a Holy Spirit behind all this, why is it that so few get it right.
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Re: Religious Pron - The Infancy Gospels 2
Oct 2, 2023, 6:43 PM
[ in reply to Re: Religious Pron - The Infancy Gospels 2 ] |
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> So, this reminds me of a tangent point. One of the more common claims of atheists is that Christians exist because they are raised to be so. "You're a Christian because you were born in the US", not explaining where Chinese Christians come from.
That’s too pedantic. The argument is more: “you are a because you were born in a place where is prominent”. And that IS the majority of the reason people believe what they do unless you are saying god chooses people geographically in the same way every other religions are grouped geographically.
It would be more compelling if Christians were randomly distributed while all other religions were clumped in groups or something like that.
You really don’t think you were influenced socially to become a Christian? That sounds ridiculous to me. It’s clearly THE reason.
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Re: Religious Pron - The Infancy Gospels 2
Oct 2, 2023, 6:45 PM
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Wow, tigernet butchered that, i tried putting “insert religion here” but it didn’t like the brackets
“you are INSERT RELIGION HERE a because you were born in a place where INSERT RELIGION HERE is prominent
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Re: Religious Pron - The Infancy Gospels 2
Oct 2, 2023, 9:26 PM
[ in reply to Re: Religious Pron - The Infancy Gospels 2 ] |
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You've done a good job of stating the case, I think.
If "you are a because you were born in a place where is prominent", one would expect to see many followers of Jesus in the US. Indeed, we do find many church goers. But the percentage of followers of Jesus is much lower. I can provide the data if you like.
What about where not prominent? As to data on numbers in other countries, that comes from studies by multiple reputable sources. You are a critic of religion generally and Christianity specifically, and you do not know this subject?
Christinas are in fact "randomly distributed while all other religions were clumped in groups or something like that." More "something like that". And not "randomly". "Evenly" would be a better description, though of course not perfectly, but much more evenly than cultural factors would explain, more than enough to invalidate the claim you have made.
The idea that self identification as Christian is not the same has having surrendered oneself to Jesus and only Jesus as the only atonement for one's sin is as old as Jesus's words in Matthew 7. "Many of you will say ..." Assessing that within modern cultural Christianity is a decades old discussion and study. 30 years that I know of.
Granted, it is not a simple thing to assess. Where everyone says, "I am a Christian", it is hard to winnow out the churchians. Where everyone is afraid to say "I am a Christian", it is hard to find people willing to talk. Different organizations have ideological reasons for under or over reporting. But when one wades through all that, the trend is clear: Followers of Jesus, while a small minority of any population, can be found nearly anywhere, and in percentages that are more similar than dissimilar.
Perhaps you enjoy the role of minority rebel, claiming an intellectually superior view than Christians. You will either love this or hate it: you are in the overwhelming majority.
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Re: Religious Pron - The Infancy Gospels 2
Oct 2, 2023, 9:52 PM
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> Christinas are in fact "randomly distributed while all other religions were clumped in groups or something like that." More "something like that". And not "randomly". "Evenly" would be a better description, though of course not perfectly, but much more evenly than cultural factors would explain, more than enough to invalidate the claim you have made.
Ok, pony up. Also, randomly distributed and evenly distributed would be synonymous here.
> Granted, it is not a simple thing to assess. Where everyone says, "I am a Christian", it is hard to winnow out the churchians. Where everyone is afraid to say "I am a Christian", it is hard to find people willing to talk. Different organizations have ideological reasons for under or over reporting. But when one wades through all that, the trend is clear: Followers of Jesus, while a small minority of any population, can be found nearly anywhere, and in percentages that are more similar than dissimilar
So... you have the data you claimed or not?
> Perhaps you enjoy the role of minority rebel, claiming an intellectually superior view than Christians. You will either love this or hate it: you are in the overwhelming majority.
I'm only interested in what is true, and the closest we can get to that is what can be backed up. I have no interest in being superior to anyone, that is something you are projecting. This is a religion forum, it is fun to discuss/debate/argue topics with people who disagree. For the thousandth time, this only comes up in religion forums because it is special to you, I get that, but this is one of many topics I discuss, and no other forum says crap like that. Even in politics where things get very heated, no one starts questions why I am arguing with them, they know why: I disagree with them and it's literally the purpose of forums like this. If you don't like discussing these things with me, then don't, that's fine, but can we skip the feigned ignorance?
Furthermore, in what sense am I the minority, in this forum, you mean? Most people, by your own admission in this very comment I'm responding to are not followers of Christ.
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Re: Religious Pron - The Infancy Gospels 2
Oct 2, 2023, 11:20 PM
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Two answers here:
1. Almost all data is self identification, because the purpose of determining the numbers is to determine how certain groups vote, what they think about cultural issues, etc. The number of people actually determining how many Christians exist by examination rather than self identification is very small.
One of the few is the Barna Group. Very legit, well known, respected. They attempted to find out how many evangelicals exist in the US, determined by how people answer 9 very basic questions. I forget them all, but they are very bottom shelf things like:
- The bible is true in what it teaches.
- Jesus is the only provision for forgiveness
- Salvation is available only through grace, not works.
- Has made a personal commitment to Jesus (bad wording, leading to over reporting, but that's imo)
- Jesus was sinless.
- The rest are similarly bottom shelf, "Christianity 101" things.
Barna labels as evangelical those who can answer yes to those. This is also a good description of who is a follower of Jesus vs a self described "Christian." This is a link to an NPR article on the subject of how to identify evangelicals. Halfway down the page you will see a bar chart showing the results of several self identity surveys, and then Barna listed last. You will see it is 6%.
https://www.npr.org/2015/12/19/458058251/are-you-an-evangelical-are-you-sure
2. Other cultures. In, say, Albania or Latvia, the self ID number is much closer to the real number. There is a much smaller "Christian culture" that leads to high self ID numbers. In some of those there is either a state church or the Catholic church, which obviously have a wide distance between self ID and anything like the Barna questions, and that has to be considered in making reasonable estimates. In Cambodia or China, if you say you are a Christian, trust me, you are.
So, you are demanding that I provide all that data? Every country everywhere? I dont mind going back through old files, but neither you nor I are going to be ordered around on labor intensive tasks just to satisfy someone else: I already know what I know, and you have nothing I want, and I'm sure the reverse is true. But I will provide data, conditionally:
You say "I am interested only in what is true". You also said it would be compelling. If I show the documentation for the percentage of believers being a relative constant (not exact, there are variations), to the degree that followers of Jesus are represented consistently, regardless of cultural acceptance, repression, danger, or the presence of other religions, will you then agree that this phenomenon highly suggests God's universal work that is independent of culture?
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Re: Religious Pron - The Infancy Gospels 2
Oct 3, 2023, 7:54 AM
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I’m confused. So you’re saying that true evangelical equals true Christian?
Jesus didn’t say you had to believe he was sinless or that the Bible was true….
He just said you had to believe in him. Whatever that means.
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Re: Religious Pron - The Infancy Gospels 2
Oct 3, 2023, 9:09 AM
[ in reply to Re: Religious Pron - The Infancy Gospels 2 ] |
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> So, you are demanding that I provide all that data? Every country everywhere?
Buddy, I'm only asking you to if you have the data you said you did:
"Christinas are in fact "randomly distributed while all other religions were clumped in groups or something like that." More "something like that". And not "randomly". "Evenly" would be a better description, though of course not perfectly, but much more evenly than cultural factors would explain, more than enough to invalidate the claim you have made."
Thus far, you've shown that Barna thinks 6% of Americans are evangelicals. Ok... I'm looking for the part where that invalidates that geography is the highest predictor of someone's religious beliefs?
> Barna labels as evangelical those who can answer yes to those. This is also a good description of who is a follower of Jesus vs a self described "Christian."
I can understand how that would be a meaningful distinction to find evangelicals, but our discussion isn't about who is an evangelical (or even who is a "true believer" as there is no way to actually test for that, we can only go by what people claim they believe). It's about whether your geographic location is the greatest predictor of your beliefs, and if Christianity strays from this norm. This applies to atheism as well, btw. If you had lived in soviet Russia, there's a great chance you were atheist.
> You say "I am interested only in what is true". You also said it would be compelling. If I show the documentation for the percentage of believers being a relative constant (not exact, there are variations), to the degree that followers of Jesus are represented consistently, regardless of cultural acceptance, repression, danger, or the presence of other religions, will you then agree that this phenomenon highly suggests God's universal work that is independent of culture?
Yes, if you show that Christianity is uniquely spread evenly across the globe unlike other religions, I will put that one in the win column for evidence for the Christian God, absolutely.
I've already looked into this though and Christianity absolutely is not evenly spread across the globe, it's predominately concentrated in North America, Latin America, Europe, Sub-saharan Africa, Oceania, and a few countries in asia. So I'm pretty curious to see this data you're claiming.
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Re: Religious Pron - The Infancy Gospels 2
Oct 3, 2023, 10:55 AM
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Barna doesnt think anything. They posted the results of a statistically valid study. You and I now therefore think it. That is where this is going to start. We do have to discuss this so we know what the data from various cultures says.
Yes, distinguishing between self identified from actual is very important for this discussion. The number of self identified Christians has been falling at a decent clip for a while, and sociologists consider this to be due to decreasing social pressure. As the culture changes, more self identifieds are willing to just say they have no affiliation, a rapid change in the US. To what number will if fall?
Becoming a follower of Jesus is a simple yet very difficult thing to do: One voluntarily surrenders the place of authority one's ego has in one's life, and gives that place to Jesus. How many people do that. As simple as it is to explain, here is the reported experience of evangelists in the US: When speaking with someone who (1) heard someone explain how he became a follower of Jesus, (2) has voluntarily indicated an interest in discussing the role of God in one's life, and (3) understands that the discussion will be how 1 applies to 2, the number of people who will say "Yes" to the offer of making that same surrender is about 20%. Consider what that means:
Of the people in a target group, only about 10% will respond to the invitation to engage in the above. Of those, 30% will agree to an individual discussion. So, of every 100 invitations, 3 end up with the offer to become a follower of Jesus. If those three, 1 will become a follower of Jesus. Not quite 1, actually (20%). And the target group was over 60% self identified Christians (US stats).
One might say, "Well, the self identified Christians wont participate, because they already are." LOL, I wish that were true. The churchians over respond, and we try to discourage them. So, the ending 3% are probably a good cross section. Anyway, 1 in 100. Less than 1 of 3 of those actually willing to talk. Of all those, the number who say, "Oh, I have already done that"? Don't have a percentage, but it is rare.
So, when the Barna stats revealed the 6%, no follower of Jesus anywhere was surprised. Most of us intuitive knew.
The reason this is important is that if you insist on staying with self identifieds as your measure, you will have changed your claim from the cultural influence on how many are followers of Jesus, to the cultural influence on who identifies with that culture. I'm not saying you didn't mean to do it - maybe you didn't know such a difference exists - but now that you know we have to decide what we are claiming, and in your answer you seemed resistant.
You have said people in the US are Christians because they were born here. I have said, "That is incorrect. The number of followers of Jesus remains relatively constant regardless of cultural influence, whether great acceptance or significant danger." We agree that if the latter were true, it would compelling evidence that God is doing something.
I can be overbearing when I believe I have the information, I'll grant you that. But I don't claim it when I don't. I didn't intend to pause here, but I have a meeting to get to. So I am going to pause and say that before we discuss representative cultures around the world, are you at this point willing to say the evidence shows:
1. The culture has produced many who identify as "Christian" in the US
2. The number of people who are followers of Jesus is a fraction of that number.
3. The distinction is important in discerning what God is doing vs what man is doing.
If we cannot agree on that, what is to be gained by going further?
I am doing this because a while back I offered to send you the historical evidence for the accuracy of the NT documents. This was a university level thesis, seeking to discredit the validity of those documents, and was assessed and graded as such (methodology rather than conclusion), which is now published in book form. You refused, saying you saw on the internet that somebody didn't like it. A guy you didn't know meant more than a university thesis. From that time until now, I have refused to spend more time discussing that particular subject with you: I've done all I can do. You will notice that while I have mentioned this, I have never said anything snarky about it. I am glad you were that up front. Kudos to you, seriously. Saved us all a lot of time.
We are at that same point. The information has to matter. It didn't before. Fair enough. Does it now, defined by the above?
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Re: Religious Pron - The Infancy Gospels 2
Oct 3, 2023, 11:42 AM
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I'm going to ignore the wildly inaccurate assessment of what happened with the NT discussion because that will be a giant distraction, but happy to discuss that in another thread.
> Yes, distinguishing between self identified from actual is very important for this discussion.
If by "actual" you mean people that are literally in a relationship with the risen Christ, then you are now begging the question. That is, you are assuming the premise that we are trying to demonstrate.
Real or not, I don't think there is a scientific way to distinguish a "cultural" believer from a "real" one, regardless of the validity of the Christian religion.
1. The culture has produced many who identify as "Christian" in the US
Yes, I'm not singling out Christianity, though. The claim is where you are born has the highest predictive power of which religion you follow (including non at all).
2. The number of people who are followers of Jesus is a fraction of that number.
Begging the question.
3. The distinction is important in discerning what God is doing vs what man is doing.
Begging the question.
You are asking me to concede that God exists before moving on. No, I don't agree to those terms.
I have some proposed changes:
1. The culture has produced many who identify as "Christian" in the US
I'm fine with this one
2. The number of people that Barna identifies as evangelicals, is a fraction of the total number of self-identifying Christians.
3. The distinction is important because it potentially shows a difference in "cultural" Christians and Christians who take it more seriously.
Thoughts?
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Re: Religious Pron - The Infancy Gospels 2
Oct 3, 2023, 2:42 PM
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I want to address the top of the answer for a second. There is no emotion in this, just trying to reach an understanding. Two things about that:
1. I did offer to send it to you. You did turn it down, which is totally fine. I have said that I will no longer "offer proof", as I have done so, whether you took it or not. I think I've said I have no problem with that at all.
2. Another relevant aspect of this is two people, A and B, often draw different conclusions from the same facts. Happens all the time, especially in the scientific community. A and B discuss the information they have, each person explains why they draw the conclusions they do, but for whatever reason do not come to the same conclusion. At that point each person is free to refer to his/her conclusion without the other saying, "You offer no proof!!" That may or may not be true, but all those two can say is that each do have a substantiated belief. If every time A refers to his, B again says "you never offer proof" ... well, draw your conclusions what B is doing. Anyway, I have offered what I consider to be reasons to conclude Jesus is the Messiah. For a discussion between two reasonable people, that is enough. How you decide to proceed, which to me so far sounds like B, is up to you.
The next section of your answer:
If I am assuming the premise, I will be the first to want to fix it. The reason I don't think I am is that the premise - which is mine because you are the one rightfully asking for data to support it - is that the number of people who are followers of Jesus is relatively constant regardless of culture/country/govt oppression, etc, and that this is evidence of God working regardless of what humans do. Separating those followers from self identified has to be done to discuss the premise.
Your premise is that a location will produce more of whatever religion is historical/cultural to that place, including self identified Christians in the US. That is clearly the case. No argument from me. My premise is that beneath that, and in spite of it, there is something happening between Jesus and humanity that cannot be explained culturally or religiously. That requires assessing how many people have surrendered their spirit to Jesus.
At this point, maybe I can support that, maybe I can't, but that is the relevant issue, how many actual followers of Jesus are in the various locations and situations. Is that not correct?
That maybe addresses your three proposed changes. I agree with those, except for the last phrase in #3. I am not quibbling here, but "those who take it more seriously" is not what I am referring to. Lemme tell ya right now, some of those churchians are serious as a heart attack. Don't get in their way, don't miss church two Sundays in a row, and don't fail to volunteer for the bake sale. They sit on all the committees, never miss a Sunday, often end up on the elder/deacon board. You know the ones I'm talking about.  Some of those are followers of Jesus, some are not. You can't really tell by looking. But over a relaxed cup of coffee, in 3 questions I can get a sense of it. There are some things a person's spirit will not try to fake.
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Re: Religious Pron - The Infancy Gospels 2
Oct 3, 2023, 3:39 PM
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> I did offer to send it to you. You did turn it down, which is totally fine.
Didn't want to get into this here but you seem to want to so here we go:
You are baiting and switching, I'm not saying you didn't offer it, I'm saying it wasn't turned down because some guy on the internet didn't like it. If I recall the conversation you are referring, I read up on the contents and saw reviews stating it was a rehash of the minimal facts arguments. You then wouldn't tell me what specific evidence was going to be covered that was missing from those.
> 2. Another relevant aspect of this is two people, A and B, often draw different conclusions from the same facts. Happens all the time, especially in the scientific community. A and B discuss the information they have, each person explains why they draw the conclusions they do, but for whatever reason do not come to the same conclusion. At that point each person is free to refer to his/her conclusion without the other saying, "You offer no proof!!" That may or may not be true, but all those two can say is that each do have a substantiated belief. If every time A refers to his, B again says "you never offer proof" ... well, draw your conclusions what B is doing. Anyway, I have offered what I consider to be reasons to conclude Jesus is the Messiah. For a discussion between two reasonable people, that is enough. How you decide to proceed, which to me so far sounds like B, is up to you.
No, what happened there is what I suspect is about to happen with this data you supposedly have about the distribution of religious beliefs. When pressed, you start to caveat things to the point where nothing comes to fruition. Sending me off to read a thesis tells me that you are not able to succinctly point to or explain convincing evidence yourself. So when I say you offer no proof, that is what I'm referring to specifically.
I am familiar with the minimal facts arguments, and the apologetic arguments in general when it comes to the resurrection. So no, your characterization of me refusing to see some data you have is completely false.
Anyway, onto the current topic:
Caveat #3 however you'd like, I agree that, if true, there is a difference between a true believer and one who is not, I simply don't see how you could possibly measure it.
Let's see that data.
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Re: Religious Pron - The Infancy Gospels 2
Oct 3, 2023, 6:05 PM
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I want to go there because I should be able to refer to God without hearing, "you again offer no proof".
> "So no, your characterization of me refusing to see some data you have is completely false."
I agree with you. I haven't said you did. What I said is that you refused to see mine. What that means is that your repeated "you never offer proof" Is not true. That you refused it from me is not my business, so is fine by me. But you can't, as a reasonable person, continue to say, "you never offer proof".
You are right: the succinct thing I have said about the evidence is that the authorship of the documents, the evidence for their intent to tell the truth, the evidence for them knowing what the truth is, and the corroboration (verbal, circumstantial, historical) for what they said was the truth leads a reasonable person to conclude that the documents are accurate. That is as succinct as I can be. If you want evidence for all that, I can send it to you. Best I am willing to do. And that does not leave open the door of, "you never offer proof." But that's up to you.
Yes, I do caveat things. If I am going to spend time to present X, then when X is presented it has to mean Y. If we can't agree on Y, no, I'm not going around the circle again. I am not saying you are doing this, but a common intentional or unintentional tactic of one committed to bias is to first deny any evidence exists, and then deny what that evidence means if presented. That's a time waster from the start. So, without apology, yes, I tend to require an understanding of what Y is. Some people do not like that. They'll get over it.
> "Caveat #3 however you'd like, I agree that, if true, there is a difference between a true believer and one who is not, I simply don't see how you could possibly measure it. Let's see that data."
Agree, you can't measure it. You assess it. Part of the premise is that God is doing something not explained by human action, and that thing is something only God can measure. There is not a magic question that can surface that reality. However, within some broad but workable parameters, you can get a decent estimate. The fact that 65% of the US says they are Christian, but that only 6% will answer yes to the most basic Christianity 101 questions tells you that such an assessment can be made. We'll see that with Western Europe in a sec.
- Cambodia. Christianity actually had a "Year Zero" in 1979. The Killing Fields took the number of Christians down to an estimated 200. Today, about 3%. Not a fun place to be for them even yet, but about 3%
- China. 3% and growing. A discussion of how dangerous it is to be a Christian while not in the state sanctioned church (can go to one for weeks and never hear the word "Jesus") would take some time. Can if you like. About half a million baptisms per year, even so.
- Russia. Similar to, and opposite from, the US. There is a Russian Orthodox church, which is basically state sanctioned. Is politically aligned with Putin, for instance, and could face it's own UN sanctions. Lots of people say they are that. But in the 50's-60's Russia killed some 50M of its own citizens, and being a Christian put one on that list (official atheism). Today, around 10% of the population is Christian that is not part of the state church.
- Europe. Western Europe is said to be, with good reason, highly atheist. However, many W. European countries have a long Catholic history, so like the US many identify as that. Unlike the US, I am not aware of a Barna type survey that might objectively separate the cultural Christians from followers of Jesus. However, what we do know is that of the approx 50% of the population what will ID as Christian (Catholic, basically), 14% say Christianity is important to them, and, weirdly, only 23% say they even believe with certainty God exists. That equates to 7% and 12% of the population, respectively. One can reasonably assume that those would be followers of Jesus, given the cultural pressure against being one.
- Japan. About 2 million Christians, or about 1.6% of the population. While it is not dangerous to be a Christian there, Japan portrays Christianity as negatively as any place in the world, which is understandable.
I have lived in Albania and Poland, and spent time in Latvia, and to not have a 1000 word discussion I will say that my earlier description of American evangelism (10%, 3%, 1%) is exactly the same there. Poland is highly Catholic, seemingly none of whom have much connection to it. I have been in huge churches on Sunday just to see the architecture, and there would be a few dozen attending, the priest giving a political homily. Albania requires more of an intuitive approach, as no one claims to have really accurate numbers, due to the insane, Stalin-esque dictator there (died in 1995). When he died and basic freedoms were introduced, the remnant Catholic, Orthodox and protestant believers saw themselves as one body, a very unique thing in the world. The rough estimates of about 10% seem right, and very few of those seem to be "churchians". There is no culture of Christianity, and until 1995 being one would get you disappeared.
So, that is not a deep dive yet, but wherever one goes, whether Asia with it's cultural or government oppression of Christians, or Western Europe with its growing atheism and cultural apathy about religion, or the US with its culture of Christianity, the numbers of followers of Jesus are never high, but never insignificant. Always there. That is in contrast to the existence of all other religions, including cultural Christianity, that is highly dependent on history and culture.
Tell me where you are, I can tell what religions dominate. But put your finger on almost any spot on a map, and I can tell you that a single digit percentage of the population professes to a transaction with Jesus that no reasonable person will make unless the Spirit is calling them to it, this being regardless of cultural history, acceptance or oppression.
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Orange Blooded [2053]
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Re: Religious Pron - The Infancy Gospels 2
Oct 4, 2023, 8:36 AM
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> You are right: the succinct thing I have said about the evidence is that the authorship of the documents, the evidence for their intent to tell the truth, the evidence for them knowing what the truth is, and the corroboration (verbal, circumstantial, historical) for what they said was the truth leads a reasonable person to conclude that the documents are accurate.
I'm curious how you square the claim with what you said in another thread: that you've never seen someone come to christ because of the evidence. Are you implying those people were not reasonable? Or that the vast majority of people who see this are not reasonable?
> If you want evidence for all that, I can send it to you. Best I am willing to do. And that does not leave open the door of, "you never offer proof." But that's up to you.
Please do, that's literally what I've been asking for. I don't want anything sent physically, though, I'm not going to dox myself.
> Yes, I do caveat things. If I am going to spend time to present X, then when X is presented it has to mean Y. If we can't agree on Y, no, I'm not going around the circle again. I am not saying you are doing this, but a common intentional or unintentional tactic of one committed to bias is to first deny any evidence exists, and then deny what that evidence means if presented. That's a time waster from the start. So, without apology, yes, I tend to require an understanding of what Y is. Some people do not like that. They'll get over it.
You are free to do that, of course, but that seems to waste more time to me. I've never seen anyone do that before. In my opinion, good evidence stands on its own. I'm not going to spend an entire thread asking you specifically what you believe fossils to be before I present you with the fossil record. It's convincing on its own.
Wouldn't it be simpler to say here is the evidence, here is what I think it means, than to do that? I honestly don't see what you are accomplishing with that tactic. So what if someone refutes what they think it means? Disagreement comes with the territory.
As for the data:
I do find it interesting, but I think it's too incomplete as is to draw the conclusion that it requires divine intervention. It relies heavily on a (somewhat arbitrary, although I understand your point/reasons) subset of self-reported data. My main concern though is that I only see a few examples here, and I see no data for other religions. Do they follow a similar pattern? Is there an analogous subset of the self-reported data for them?
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Re: Religious Pron - The Infancy Gospels 2
Oct 4, 2023, 2:42 PM
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I should have said, meant to say, "solely due to". The transaction required between a person and Jesus requires one to own his fallenness and its earthly and eternal consequences, and mere investigation of Jesus will not overcome resistance to that. Most avoid doing so, and if they keep justifying that long enough they end up denying first their own imperfection, then the possibility that imperfection even exists. Fordt has done it below. No slam on him: it's where an atheist/agnostic has to end up. If God exists, the reality of our sin is back on the table, and the purpose of that line of philosophy is to explain why that can't be.
I know I speak harshly about that. But if one wants the patient to buy the diagnosis, it's past the time for the friendly bedside manner. "You have cancer. Stage 4. There is no mistake."
"I don't know, doc. That x-ray doesnt seem as clear to me as it does to you."
"You came to see me. And now you want to argue it away. The cancer is there even if the x-ray didn't pick it up. Or is that pain in your gut not doubling you over at night?"
"It does seem a lot better today. Let me see how it goes."
"Denial won't make you any deader than the cancer. Just more certain. You have cancer. Call me when you need morphine. But hopefully before."
Sorry, a mental vacation there. I write a few dialogue based short stories that some people - I know you will never believe this - enjoy. Like the low tech guy who ordered a new pair of running shoes that came with a chip that tracks how far he runs. Or goes. And necessarily, where. And how long. Some do come with those chips, you know. I opened the box, saw that to be the case, scared me to death. I mean, once they are in your phone .... My times went down immediately. Had to get to get those liars back home.
Dox? One guy? Okay, I'll put the package under the rock two paces behind the bench at the corner of 3rd and Elm. No police, or the book gets it, see.
People caveat all the time. Maybe no one has done it with you, but without it some conversations have one person taking the role of inquisitor, asking for information while agreeing to nothing, not even that the information matters. I'm not criticizing you for that: it can naturally happen if one person is making a claim to be defended. But this leads to me hearing, very often, "You wont provide proof", "you change subjects", etc, etc, accusations of dishonest communication.
This is because, it seems to me, you want me to prove to your satisfaction that God exists (or whatever the subject is). I have no intention of doing that, and never have. What I AM doing is showing that what I believe is valid, meaning it is reasonably based on objective things. That we differ in conclusion is not a concern to me. What does matter to me is that we establish that our differences are in the conclusion, not in whether objective evidence exists.
And then I hear another accusation of dishonesty. How to handle that. Typically, one ask up front that if X is provided, it qualifies as an objective evidence. Whatever each then conclude, no one can say, "you won't do abc". Yes, as you say, disagreement comes with the territory, but frustration doesn't have to. Just trying to eliminate the frustration part.
The issue about the relatively even distribution of Christianity regardless of place and circumstance is a good example. In your response, you do not agree with my conclusion. You gave good reasons for that, and I will try to answer those. I might or might not, to your satisfaction. No worries. You will understand why I see one thing, and I will understand why you do not, or see another thing.
I am convinced that 95% of our sort of misunderstandings would not have occurred over beers/burgers on the patio. People intuitively understand each other's meanings and intents. What takes an hour to write takes a minute to say. In print, we read into it all sorts of untrue things and intents, usually because we, imo, put a caricature of past interactions in the role of speaker, rather than the one actually doing the writing. However guilty you might be of that, I am know I am at least equally so, which is how I knew to just now say it.
We are sharing one of my custom aged bourbons (I start with mid shelf, age it up to top shelf, bypasses the hype crazy, can't find it, etc). We're talking along, you say something. I say, "Nobody believes that." We both would know I wouldn't say that unless we both knew that was hyperbole, not about you, might even be funny. But read it in print ... its on.
About your last paragraph: replace "arbitrary" with "inexact", and I will agree. The 6% in the US is likely accurate, but that does not mean that ONLY 6% of the population are followers of Jesus. I expected you call me on that. I had used too many words already so let that part go. Good theology doesn't get anybody into heaven, so bad theology can't keep anyone out. Someone who doesn't think the bible is true can nevertheless know Jesus. And some of those 6% don't. The relevant point is that the number is pretty low. But you are right, I didn't think to remember the stats an other religions as a looked through it. I have to ask a question about that. Sorry, this has been long so hang with me.
We agree that culture/location can predict religion. Each area has a religion that is very high in that area compared to other areas. Are you asking if whether in those areas, similar to Christianity, there is a smaller "true believer" component, so that they too are evenly distributed in the world? That is a very valid question, and I did briefly consider it, but I would very much think not. This is not based on research - I might go look - but a couple of things:
- "Membership" in any religion, including cultural Christianity, is activity based. To be a Muslim one adheres to the 5 Pillars. To be Buddhist one adheres to teachings and practices. They clearly say so. A ceremony sometimes marks the decision. A person decides to follow that line of teaching and practices. Even Christianity ... join the church, you will eventually get counted in a Gallup survey of how many Christians there are. Certainly some will be more devout than others, same as with Rotary club members, but all are Muslim/Buddhist by virtue of a decision to adhere to practices.
Having a relationship with Jesus is a fundamentally different, almost opposite, transaction. There is not an analogous subset of other religions. Other religions are similar to cultural Christianity, or vice verse, differing only in a few principles.
- This is definitely a SWAG. Scientific Wild ### Guess. But it seems that where you see minority practitioners (IE Muslims in the US) those tend to be from, or have a connection to, the originating culture or location. US Muslims tend to be mid eastern. There are American born Muslims/Buddhists, but my sense is that those are a minority of them. The Christians in Japan, China, Cambodia, E Europe were born there. US missionaries had some influence in the past, but that is always the case with any religion, and for 100 years or more the knowledge of all religions has been pretty well universal.
It seems that your observation is correct, that location and culture mostly determines what religion will exist there.
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Orange Blooded [2053]
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Re: Religious Pron - The Infancy Gospels 2
Oct 4, 2023, 4:45 PM
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wrt to the data, while I am not convinced it points to divine intervention, I do see your points and I can see how you view it that way. I have no problem with that. I just don't think we have the tools to measure it rigorously enough to be conclusive, so I'm not going to ask you to chase down further data.
I will concede that it's a good point and if we COULD measure it accurately, and it showed what you are saying, then it would be pretty hard hitting evidence. I'll still count it in the evidence column for Christianity, it's just not conclusive.
I do want to address the other points a bit, as I think there is some good stuff in here to clarify:
> The transaction required between a person and Jesus requires one to own his fallenness and its earthly and eternal consequences, and mere investigation of Jesus will not overcome resistance to that. Most avoid doing so, and if they keep justifying that long enough they end up denying first their own imperfection, then the possibility that imperfection even exists. Fordt has done it below. No slam on him: it's where an atheist/agnostic has to end up.
I do not think this resistance you are talking about exists at all for the vast majority of atheists/agnostics, and certainly does not with me. At least not in the way you are saying.
I do not think there is ANY difference in the way I don't believe (or what you would call resistance) in Christianity than I do any other religion apart from Christianity happens to be the one that I am around and grew up with (hey look at me keeping this relevant to the original discussion! high five.).
There is no "knocking on my heart", sense of a higher power, or voice in my head that I am resisting.
I know you feel that I'm resisting you, but I "resist" Muslims/Mormons/(Buddhists and Hindu's don't seem to frequent forums I do) in the exact same way on other forums and I get very similar pushback. That I have some resistance to Allah (or insert God here) and if I only really looked/believed/whatever THEN I would see. Btw, I have similar arguments on UFO forums that have oddly similar pushback even though the topic isn't supernatural at all. That I'm "too scientific" or require too much data to believe. I've even been accused of "scientism" and that it's my "religion" on a freakin' non-religious forum! To me, asking for hard evidence is the LEAST I should be doing.
Also, I don't think Fordt is justifying anything, his position is clearly as stated, that he does not have enough data to say God exists. You guys keep accusing us of having data that we simply do not (and that has not been provided).
I want to hammer this point home because for whatever reason it doesn't go through:
What you guys seems to be saying is "you KNOW what is right (referring to accepting Jesus) and are simply resisting because you don't want to be told what to do, or because you want to sin, or blah blah"
That is not the case at all. If I thought Jesus was who he said he was, why on earth would I resist that? That makes zero sense, and it would be nice if you guys would quit acting like we are that stupid.
I have no desire to "sin" or "be my own god" or any such nonsense. I am here, I don't know why, the evidence unequivocally points to natural reasons (at least from the big bang onwards). I want to live my life, take care of my family and have some fun. Part of that fun is arguing on here. That's it, there is no big evil intention that you are insinuating and we certainly aren't "sick" because some lady ate an apple.
> "You have cancer. Stage 4. There is no mistake."
"I don't know, doc. That x-ray doesnt seem as clear to me as it does to you."
"You came to see me. And now you want to argue it away. The cancer is there even if the x-ray didn't pick it up. Or is that pain in your gut not doubling you over at night?"
"It does seem a lot better today. Let me see how it goes."
"Denial won't make you any deader than the cancer. Just more certain. You have cancer. Call me when you need morphine. But hopefully before."
I have some problems with this and before you tell me, it's just an analogy, it's not perfect let me just say I understand that and that's USUALLY fine, but to me there is a glaring problem with this analogy that renders it completely false imho.
This analogy has a doctor telling a patient that he has cancer and there is no mistake. Got it. Do you know what else this doctor has? Unequivocal scientific evidence that the cancer is there and importantly, he can show the scans, blood tests, symptoms, etc... convincingly to the patient.
So, I don't buy the next part of the analogy at all "I don't know, doc. That x-ray doesnt seem as clear to me as it does to you." because that is not at all analous to my eperience.
There has not been the equivalent of this doctor showing me that I am "sick" and need help. It's not like I got handed a diagnosis and am denying it. No, it's more like (and yes this is a harsh analogy, but it's no harsher than you've been, it's not personal, just an analogy) a guy telling me that 5G is the reason I caught covid.
To put it succinctly: sure, religious people have told me religious things, but by no means am I ignoring some divinely offered gift (that I'm aware of) and am simply resisting/denying.
I am in the exact same relationship to Islam as I am to Christianity. I have the exact same (lack of) convincing evidence for both.
The Quran claims the moon split in half. I don't believe that, you don't believe that. The Bible claims the temple curtain split in half and a bunch of people rose from the grave and walked around the city. I don't believe that, you do believe that. I think the evidence for both are equal.
> What does matter to me is that we establish that our differences are in the conclusion, not in whether objective evidence exists.
I don't really want to keep quibbling over what we mean here by objective evidence. I think we could call this very thread on geography/religion "objective evidence". But as I think we both agree, it is neither scientific nor conclusive. So if that's what you mean by having objective evidence, then sure. But when I say you haven't shown evidence, I think things get a bit pedantic. I don't literary mean you haven't ever shown me anything you consider evidence, I mean there has not been any convincing evidence in the same way that there is for evolution.
I don't know, maybe we can come up with a difference phrase here that isn't as grating to you, I'm fine with that.
> I am convinced that 95% of our sort of misunderstandings would not have occurred over beers/burgers on the patio. People intuitively understand each other's meanings and intents.
For the most part, yes. I still do not agree that the evidence for anything supernatural is approaching the reasonableness or quality of the evidence that exists for things like evolution. Evolution may be an unfair standard, though, as it's pretty one of the highest supported scientific facts we have.
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Re: Religious Pron - The Infancy Gospels 2
Oct 5, 2023, 3:34 PM
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All that is very fair.
Sure, I can understand that it can sound offensive to read someone write that people avoid admitting to their inherent fallenness. That sounds accusatory. If we were in casual conversation, it would not sound that way: That subject has been discussed for centuries. As it applies to Christianity, here is a true thing: Listen to 100 people tell their personal story of how they came to the point of giving themselves to Jesus, and all will say the very same thing, that they spent years in various pursuits to convince themselves of their own worth. All will voluntarily say, or will do so if asked, that the only thing keeping them from Jesus was their own resistance to admitting that at their core something was wrong with them that human pursuits cannot fix. That is a 100% testimony of all who now follow Jesus. I have never heard one exception. I am reasonably sure none exist.
That means one of two things is true:
1. That is true of all humans, but only a few are willing to face it.
2. That is true of no humans, but some turn to religion as a cure for guilt, or a crutch as some claim it to be.
We have a thread right now proposing sin does not even exist, so I think we can assume all humans think about this, and find some mechanism of either facing or explaining away the fact that they do not live up to their own standards, let alone who God is, should He exist.
As to your last paragraph:
Sure, I am very willing to say the evidence is compelling to me but not to you, and leave it at that. Evolution is a good example: I have no opinion about how one solitary cell developed into all we see now. Both the straight creationist and the pure evolutionary proposals seem to have insurmountable holes to me, but whatever. In either case, the generally held understanding is that dna could not have randomly occurred in the universe. While no way do I think that proves God interacted there, I do see it as one item of evidence. Others, such as yourself, propose an as yet unknown definition of 'universe'. Fine. I can let it stay there.
Same with evidence for the NT. The evidence I have seen tells me that the best explanation for the existence of the documents is that they date to the period, that they intend to tell the truth, and that they do tell the truth. You do not think so. I dont think I have ever indicated any unwillingness to let that be the case without accusing you of anything.
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Orange Blooded [2053]
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Re: Religious Pron - The Infancy Gospels 2
Oct 5, 2023, 3:51 PM
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> Listen to 100 people tell their personal story of how they came to the point of giving themselves to Jesus, and all will say the very same thing, that they spent years in various pursuits to convince themselves of their own worth. All will voluntarily say, or will do so if asked, that the only thing keeping them from Jesus was their own resistance to admitting that at their core something was wrong with them that human pursuits cannot fix. That is a 100% testimony of all who now follow Jesus. I have never heard one exception. I am reasonably sure none exist.
This is not surprising, though, that's literally the story they were told about why they needed Jesus. I did this exact same thing. I was one of those 100 people you speak of. I used to give the "we are broken and need jesus" spiel.
> That means one of two things is true:
1. That is true of all humans, but only a few are willing to face it.
2. That is true of no humans, but some turn to religion as a cure for guilt, or a crutch as some claim it to be.
Or 3. it's literally part of the indoctrination process. It would be weird if they didn't give that as a reason.
> We have a thread right now proposing sin does not even exist, so I think we can assume all humans think about this, and find some mechanism of either facing or explaining away the fact that they do not live up to their own standards, let alone who God is, should He exist.
Sin is a religious concept. People think about it because it is discussed ad nauseam by religious people. I understand that the bible says sin exists, but that seems to be the only place it exists. You can't just claim it exists and point to the bible and say "see". That's the same as me taking a concept from the quran and expected you to just buy it.
> In either case, the generally held understanding is that dna could not have randomly occurred in the universe.
Generally held by who? That single paper is not general concensus.
> Same with evidence for the NT. The evidence I have seen tells me that the best explanation for the existence of the documents is that they date to the period, that they intend to tell the truth, and that they do tell the truth.
I would love to be pointed to evidence that shows they intended to tell the truth and that they do tell the truth when we can't even verify that a lot of the event even happened.
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All-In [30121]
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Re: Religious Pron - The Infancy Gospels 2
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Oct 2, 2023, 10:02 PM
[ in reply to Re: Religious Pron - The Infancy Gospels 2 ] |
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Good reply
>I might quibble with the idea that the church gives it credibility - I propose that the body of followers of Jesus would not
Yes, I would agree that today the church gives no credibility to TIGOMatthew, but I'm not so sure that it didn't in the past. From the OP, there are a lot of Saints that killed dragons. It was kind of a "saintly" thing to do in the Middle Ages. And so to include Jesus in that "family," complete with scriptural backing "Praise the Lord from the earth, ye dragons,” put him in the same realm as the Saints. Above it actually "if a Saint can kill a dragon then surely Jesus can" type thinking.
And not only was TIGOM revered enough to be illuminated, which took a lot of time, money and effort, it was also included in The Golden Legend, sort of an early encyclopedia of Christianity. I don't have any numbers of any kind to support how many people may have believed TIGOM, but it seems that in was included in the corpus of circulating material right on through the Middle Ages, albeit as an apocrypha.
>More broadly, the thread running through your posts seems to be that what Christians believe about the bible can be traced to sociological factors.
>1. If one assumes God does not exist, the biblical record is obviously culturally produced.
Agreed. Yes, it would have to be. There would be no other option.
>However, it is equally true that if God does exist, His interaction was with the cultures that existed at the time. If it is true, cultural views of God, accurate or not, come from that.
Yes. I agree completely with this as well.
>The proposal that God's voice occurs in the midst of culture, and that the bible is it, cannot be invalidated by claiming cultural influence.
>Yes. I agree with that also. But here I would add a caveat. Not that the Bible is false, but that other interpretations of God can be true as well. Say, God came to the Israelites as a cloud. I have no problem almost calling that a fact. That is, to the people that experienced God in the Sinai, whatever God was, on that day he was a cloud leading them out of the desert. That is how they experienced God on that day, in that place.
But that does not prohibit God from also appearing as a lotus on the other side of the world, to another culture. An omniscient God can do anything. So it is an artificial limiting of him, a human limiting of him, to say "He must be this way and only this way."
That's back to the "Dad told me bedtime was 8:00, so it's 8:00 for everyone in the world" analogy. Except he might have told my brother it was 9:00, and only Dad and my brother know what they discussed.
>That a flood story occurs in different cultures is irrelevant.
Yes, I agree with that, too, but in a positive sense. I don't see parallel or nearly parallel events as disproving God in any way. The fact that Hebrews saw a flood as an act of God, and the Mesopotamians also saw a flood as an act of God, to me, says that both groups experienced something they could not otherwise explain. And so the cultural difference, the two separate stories, are two attempts, by two different peoples to explain the same thing - "What is behind this deluge from the sky?."
>If one wants to use culture to explain away belief in God, the cultural evidence could be said to be the other way.
I wholeheartedly agree with this. And in fact, that's how I see all religions. I don't see cultural differences, or sociologic alternatives, or anthropological variations, as a reason NOT to believe, I see them as a reason TO believe. Maybe not in the specific answers they yield, but in the underlying attempts that are made to understand. That is, I don't know if leavened bread gets one any closer to God than unleavened bread, but those who make the distinction feel that it does. And in my mind, God, or something, has told them that yeast matters, even if he didn't tell everyone else.
The fact is that all over the world, for all of known history, man has tried to explain "the mystery." The unknown. Whatever it is that gives us consciousness, or brought existence into being, or what comes next, or what's behind the curtain.
So I see all religions as explanations to grapple with that unknown. Now, some of those religions might be a little more unusual than others, but at their core, they are trying to explain that which cannot be fully explained. I suppose if it could be fully explained, we would be God ourselves. But one hard truth is that we simply don't know everything. Some may have had an experience with God and know what he told them, but no one can be sure of what God told others.
And so that's why Christians are just as faithful as Jews, or as Muslims, or as Buddhists in what they believe. All of them have been willing to sacrifice, or even die, over time, in defense of how God came to them. Or, how they believed God came to them.
>Change the culture, change the history, change the availability ... the 5%-ish seems constant.
I won’t disagree with that either. For those whom God has come to in “Christian” clothing, they are steadfast in that belief. But, he has perhaps also come to others in other clothing. Only the ones he comes to can say how he came to them.
To bring this back around to the OP, when a true follower, someone who believes with all their heart that every iota of scripture is sacred, what to they do when they see this?
“Praise the Lord from the earth, ye dragons”
They don’t discount it, they believe it. So they desperately try to logically search for the wisdom to be able to explain it. The answer they come up with might be kind of quirky, but the faith behind trying to get that answer is passionate and complete.
As I said in the OP, I don’t see this story as skeptical of Jesus in any way. It’s pure exaltation and adulation.
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Re: Religious Pron - The Infancy Gospels 2
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Oct 2, 2023, 10:53 PM
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>>More broadly, the thread running through your posts seems to be that what Christians believe about the bible can be traced to sociological factors.
I answered this indirectly and out of sequence, so I'll try to clarify here.
I can't really say what any particular Christian believes or not. But I do think that either through personal experience, or a similar experience that others have relayed, that the Christian religion answers questions that its followers have. I mean, to be a Christian, at a minimum, one must believe in the birth, death, and resurrection of Jesus as the Messiah.
That's kind of clunky so I'll try to answer more clearly. Let's use sin as a random example. Sin may or may not exist. I have no idea, and that would make for a 100-post thread all its own, lol.
But what we do know for a fact is the someone wrote about sin. They defined and described it. Whether it exists or not, and whether the description is accurate, or not. And so a Christian may have 1) experienced sin directly, or 2) read about sin from someone else.
And so whether their experience is personal, or relayed, the idea of Sin, whether it exists or not, makes sense to them. They believe it. And it answers a question for them. It resonates with their life experience.
So it's more of a personal, not a societal issue. Society and culture may provide an answer. But does one, personally, subscribe to that answer? Does the answer resonate with the person?
It's a personal thing that I don't even think we can even control. I can't "choose" to like raw oysters. It's outside of the realm of free will. And so is belief. Either one believes, or they do not believe, in whatever.
That's the same whether it's Sin, afterlife, grace, purgatory...all the "answers" that we have to choose from, in any and every religion. Does the answer describe the reality in a satisfactory way, to the prospective believer?
Just like with Sin, if one cannot buy into the answer or the concept of Brahman, that person will never be a Hindu. One has to first have possible answers, and then believe those possible answers.
There may be twenty different religions may have a slightly different description of sin, for example. And all may be "partially correct", but none in full. And there may be no one "correct." Perhaps God approached each of those people with a different description of Sin.
So sociological factors may provide answers, but the belief, and investment in those answers, is entirely personal.
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Re: Religious Pron - The Infancy Gospels 2
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Oct 2, 2023, 11:47 PM
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> "Good reply." Thank you. It hasn't found general acclaim.
All you said, very cool. Very much want to reply, and I will tomorrow, but (1) before I read this I spent time with one of the dissenters, and (2) it is thus past beddiebye time on the right coast.
Thanks for the reply; I'll be back.
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Re: Religious Pron - The Infancy Gospels 2
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Oct 3, 2023, 4:23 PM
[ in reply to Re: Religious Pron - The Infancy Gospels 2 ] |
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> "That's kind of clunky so I'll try to answer more clearly. Let's use sin as a random example. Sin may or may not exist. I have no idea, and that would make for a 100-post thread all its own, lol."
Ha. Yes, but dead serious, pardon the pun. One can take the entire board (please, take the entire board), and erase everything on it, and start with that one question - does sin exist - and we will be exactly where we need to be. There is literally no point in the discussion - besides mere philosophical interest, all the words of which will be gone one day - without one first answering that question.
I have seen literally no one, zero, zip, come to faith in Jesus because they examined all the facts and decided he was the real deal. Did I say zero? So, why do I degenerate into discussing all that? Sh**, I don't know. Make me stop.
Some do come to faith only after such an examination of the history and evidence. That is true. But in those cases they were sincerely dealing with a rip in reality that they couldn't close with, relationships, accomplishments, sex, money, altruism, what have you. They knew something wasn't right with the world, and deep down they knew the genesis of it came from inside them.
But that is the important question. Does sin exist? What do you think?
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Re: Religious Pron - The Infancy Gospels 2
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Oct 3, 2023, 4:32 PM
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> I have seen literally no one, zero, zip, come to faith in Jesus because they examined all the facts and decided he was the real deal.
This statement is striking in that we will see it in two totally different ways. To me, that statement seems obvious. Nobody comes to faith because of examined facts because they are severely lacking.
> But that is the important question. Does sin exist? What do you think?
What reason do we have to think it exists? The Bible. Is the bible reliable? Doesn't appear so. It gets so much wrong about in just the first few chapters, so it seems unlikely that it's somehow right about sin.
Seems pretty open and shut.
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Re: Religious Pron - The Infancy Gospels 2
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Oct 3, 2023, 5:12 PM
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To be fair, the concept of Sin does exist outside of the Bible. The Egyptians, and Mesopotamians, and even some Eastern religions have varying conceptions of Sin. It might make a good lead-off topic for discussion in a future post.
And primarily, but not always, sin is relational. In the broadest sense, disobeying God. But not always. Because not every religion involves obedience to god, or gods.
So sin can also be against one's fellow man. But it is almost always relational. That is, if there were only one person in existence, there could be no sin, because there would be no one to sin against. Just like it takes two-to-tango, it takes two-to-sin.
Now, one of those two might be God, and so a curious question would be, if God were alone in the universe, would there be sin? By that definition, no.
But it's definitional as well. I've had a hundred arguments with my own family about a tree falling in the woods. It's a running joke at this point. Definitionally, there is no sound, because sound requires a hearing element, an ear, or a recorder, to detect it. So a falling tree would cause a vibration in the atmosphere, but not necessarily a sound.
Sin is a complex topic, and it's been defined and contemplated by a lot of different people and cultures. It's worth a deeper look someday.
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Re: Religious Pron - The Infancy Gospels 2
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Oct 3, 2023, 6:20 PM
[ in reply to Re: Religious Pron - The Infancy Gospels 2 ] |
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Is there a reason you didnt mention the first sentence of the next paragraph, that many people do come to faith after that same examination? Granted, I meant and should have said "solely because", in the first sentence. But the second one was still there. That you would do that gives more evidence for something than the sentence itself.
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Re: Religious Pron - The Infancy Gospels 2
Oct 4, 2023, 12:28 AM
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>Is there a reason you didnt mention the first sentence of the next paragraph, that many people do come to faith after that same examination?
No reason. I was probably just distracted by contemplating sin, lol. I'm not surprised that people come to faith in a variety of ways, for a variety of reasons. Every person's "belief threshold" is different, as are their life experiences.
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Re: Religious Pron - The Infancy Gospels 2
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Oct 3, 2023, 4:58 PM
[ in reply to Re: Religious Pron - The Infancy Gospels 2 ] |
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>At this point in my life I'd say no. That would be based upon a definition that sin is disobedience of God will. Since I'm currently an agnostic and ambivalent about God's existence, that's kind of a logical extension.
But even if I did believe in God again, I'm not sure I would believe in sin, because I don't know if God would have what I would call a will, or if he would impose that will on us. That's veering towards Deism, but my current conception of a possible God is that "he" is so foreign to us that it's simply beyond comprehension.
For instance, I can watch a bug crawling on the floor. That bug is making decisions. He's choosing to go left or right, or stop, or whatever. But I have no idea what he is thinking. When Mrs. Fordt makes those same decisions, to go left, or right, I have insight into shy she is doing it...she's getting out of the sun, or she's trying to hear the TV better, but there is a connection of experience I have with her that at least puts me in ball park over her actions. But with a bug, the chasm is just too great. People can tell me about their experiences with God, and I seek those out, but short of a direct experience myself I can't fully relate. So at this point in my life, I sense the mystery, but not the relationship.
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Re: Religious Pron - The Infancy Gospels 2
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Oct 3, 2023, 10:08 PM
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I think I understand what you are saying. Never a safe bet with me. And what follows is off the top of my head. I am not familiar with the philosophical work done on the existence of objective morality, so you have me at a disadvantage. As it were.
Three questions:
1. If one doesn't believe God exists, we need another discussion of whether any moral truth exists. If sin does not exist, one has at least halfway said, "No, no moral truth exists". Cultural norms exist, and we can make laws to enforce those, but violating even those is merely that, not something morally wrong.
But lets assume He does, or might, exist. In the example of it being a universal truth that taking another man's wife is seen as wrong, is doing so merely breaking social convention? Has the adulterer done nothing objectively "wrong"?
2. If that is true, is the reverse true, that no high ideals that qualify as good, other than by social convention? If there is no sin, there is no good, except for social norm, correct?
In the opposite of the above example, lets say an attractive opportunity presents itself. The lady who cuts your hair is "all that", and y'all get along great, and one day you get a text (because of course she uses a text based appointment system). You assume it's about an appointment, but instead ... hold on while I get my heart to slow down ... it's an invitation to drinks after work. I've heard things like this happen. She's married, you're married, a one-off, pardon the pun, could be relatively safe. ("Never go to bed with anyone who as less to lose than you do.") It checks all the boxes. You text back and ask to stop by the salon. You go see her and say this:
"Cherry, I cannot imagine a more attractive offer. I'd be lying if I said I hadn't often thought about it. Gosh, everything in me wants to say, 'just once'.
"Honey, if we did, you wouldn't want to stop at just one."
"Stop it. Yeah, I know. So, I have come here to tell you something face to face, and it has nothing to do with me and you. If it was that, we'd be gone. But I have never met your husband. I probably never will. But it is very important to me that should I ever meet him it will be under this circumstance: 'You are safe with me when your back is turned.' I'll never say it to him, he'll never wonder about it, but man to man we need to know that about each other. He is safe with me when his back is turned. I cannot give that up. And if I did, you would know that about me, and I don't want that either."
Let's assume that happened. Does what you said to her not express an ideal that goes beyond social norm? Sure, society looks down on it, for lots of tangible reasons. But a one-off, no one knows, nobody gets hurt. No social needs violated. Is what you just said to Cherry not a higher good than social needs? If that higher good exists, would you have fallen short of that higher good had you done it?
3. I would make the case that sin is not defined as not following God's will. That certainly would be, but that is not the thing itself. My understanding is that in the NT verse, "For all have sinned and fallen short of God", the Greek word for sin is transliterated as "missing the mark", and I think that same Greek word is used in other places in the NT. What is the mark being missed? Whatever we would be had we not fallen, and we likely cant fully understand the depth of that. Nevertheless, unless we see as morally neutral the war, rape, manipulation and predation in all its forms that characterizes humanity - unless we see those as mere variance from social norm - there is something wrong with us. Our actions are merely the result. We are no longer a straight arrow, thus destined to miss the mark.
That is not yet a question, I know. But it is that for which God sacrificed Himself, not merely our actions. The NT is clear about that.
Summary:
1. Is a thing wrong merely by breaking social norm?
2. Is a thing good only because it fits social norm?
3. Is it not objectively clear that something is fundamentally wrong with us? Isn't the denying of objective Truth an attempt to deny that?
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Re: Religious Pron - The Infancy Gospels 2
Oct 4, 2023, 2:39 AM
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Good discussion.
>1. Is a thing wrong merely by breaking social norm?
Thirty years ago I would have probably said no, but today I'd probably say yes, a "wrong" is generally breaking a social norm. Case specific, of course. But hunting for those exceptions would be an enlightening investigation, along the lines of the "Trolly Problem."
I do think that while most wrongs are things that are against social norms, there are also things that are relatively common to mankind, in general. For instance, I can usually hug Mrs. Fordt in a church with no objections. But I once got a very nasty frown and finger waggle from a Turk for doing the exact same thing in a Mosque in Istanbul, lol. So that would be a social, or cultural thing. But, harming a child is generally regarded as intolerable in both Christians, and Muslims, and Agnostics and Atheists for that matter. So there is a distinction between the social and the common.
But, since I have generally conducted myself exactly the same when I was Christian, as I did when I was Atheist, as I do as an Agnostic, (and even as I did when I flirted with Taoism/Buddhism), I don't see "common wrongs" as being religious or tied to God in any way. I didn't rob any more banks as an Atheist than I did as a Christian, lol. Zero in both cases.
2. Is a thing good only because it fits social norm?
I would suppose yes, though again, finding the exceptions would be fun and informative. For instance, a hand gesture that might be complementary in one culture might be offensive in another. And I imagine there are common "good things" as well.
3. Is it not objectively clear that something is fundamentally wrong with us? Isn't the denying of objective Truth an attempt to deny that?
This we'll have to get deeper into. We'd have to discuss what those fundamental wrongs might be. In my current world view I tend to see people as motivated by either fear, or desire. Or in farmer's parlance, the carrot and the stick. And the two can be deceptive, or they can be combined.
I'm a big fan of military history too, so I'll just pick any of a thousand points in history as an example. Let's say Napoleon invades Italy. Now, he's probably not doing that to be "evil," he's probably doing it for greed, or desire. And, he might be doing it out of fear at the same time, because Italy might join with Austria if he waits.
The Italians, of course, view him as wrong, as would most other countries. They in fact even viewed him as not just wrong but evil, and he was so reviled by some they even called him the Anti-Christ.
 >
But at the root of his actions were plain old simple desire (greed, or ego) and possibly fear. His allies probably saw it as good, and his enemies probably saw it as bad. But even those who saw it as good, would change their tune if they were asked "Well, would you like to be invaded?" Then it would flip from good to bad.
But things can be so relative it's almost impossible to sort them out sometimes. There was once a Sports Illustrated article on the Sacramento Kings when they were at their worst. Just terrible. And the interviewer asked, "Don't you want to be a "good" team? (granted, that's "good" in a completely different context) Why don't you spend the money to be good? It will increase your wealth and the wealth of the community with extra side businesses, more fans, etc. And he said "We actually make money being horrible. We pay our players so little money that we are still in the black after concession sales, TV revenue, merchandising, etc. So losing is a winning proposition to us.
Now, that's completely axx-backwards in a conventional business sense, but I use it as an example to show how reality, and morality, and right and wrong, can be equally subjective, and equally confusing at the same time.
To scale things down to a personal level, let's say let's say someone is doing a Candid Camera "ethics" test. And they set a case of beer down on the sidewalk to see who will steal it. A guy comes along, looks at it, and walks on. And the camera crew approaches him and praises him for his morality and his resistance to steal the beer. And he looks at them and says "I don't like beer." So his perceived moral virtue was nothing more than a lack of desire. He simple did not desire the beer, so he took no action.
Motivations, and actions, can be really murky. And not murky in the sense of deceptive, it's just that so much can color one's perception of actions that right and wrong can be really flipped on each other I think.
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Re: Religious Pron - The Infancy Gospels 2
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Oct 3, 2023, 4:09 PM
[ in reply to Re: Religious Pron - The Infancy Gospels 2 ] |
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Just as a one-off, I do wonder what those dragons were that knights went around saving damsels from. There's a sentence in there somewhere. Obviously some of the stories of knightlinesshood are made up, but you can't swoon a virgin with a made up animal. Not that I wouldn't try; I just never seemed to get there in time. If you think you know what they were, I'll buy it. You have the authority of Adam: whatever you call a thing, that is what it is.
> "But here I would add a caveat. Not that the Bible is false, but that other interpretations of God can be true as well. Say, God came to the Israelites as a cloud. I have no problem almost calling that a fact. ... But that does not prohibit God from also appearing as a lotus on the other side of the world, to another culture. An omniscient God can do anything. So it is an artificial limiting of him, a human limiting of him, to say "He must be this way and only this way."
Absolutely agree. Still happens today. There are things God does in certain non Christian countries that could be seamlessly added to Genesis and Acts. That is not first hand, but is not rumor: it is second hand, from people known by me who were there. I'm not asking you to believe that, but am saying that I agree with you for several reasons.
Where we might disagree on the role of cultural influence or interpretation of the OT is what conclusions are drawn. IE, what is the overall direction, or message? An example might be the proposal that Jews see the OT one way, Christians another, and that this difference is sociological. I would agree that for many Jews and Christians that is correct. However - I know I'm repeating - a significant number of Jews see it as pointing to a sacrificial Messiah. A thing, such as the OT, might stand alone in its message, separate from whatever cultural influences determined its stories and examples.
> "I don't see cultural differences, or sociologic alternatives, or anthropological variations, as a reason NOT to believe, I see them as a reason TO believe. Maybe not in the specific answers they yield, but in the underlying attempts that are made to understand. That is, I don't know if leavened bread gets one any closer to God than unleavened bread, but those who make the distinction feel that it does. And in my mind, God, or something, has told them that yeast matters, even if he didn't tell everyone else."
Ha. Evan/Noah: "Honey, where is the unleavened bread?"
"It's called pita, Dad! And its in the fridge where it always is!"
But yes, if God exists, this becomes true: "He has placed eternity in the hearts of men." If that is true, men, left to their own devices, will develop all sorts of religions. As you say, this is evidence for, not against, which is somewhat similar to CS Lewis suggesting that the existence of an external, absolute Truth is seen in the fact that no matter where one goes, or when, it is not considered good form to steal a man's wife. This leads some to say, "All lead to God", which I desperately hope isn't true.
Ed Sullivan: "So, what are holding there? Is that your crash helmet?"
Astronaut Jose Jimenez: "Gee I hope not."
Some of it, just too weird. But objectively it is not judgmental to say that if Jesus is the Messiah, the other solutions cannot be right. That leads to all sorts of questions.
> "And so that's why Christians are just as faithful as Jews, or as Muslims, or as Buddhists in what they believe. All of them have been willing to sacrifice, or even die, over time, in defense of how God came to them. Or, how they believed God came to them."
Sure. Agree. Not to get detailed or wonky, but I think we would agree that sincerity is irrelevant. We cant create truth with sincerity. The 'dying for what one believes' is often misunderstood by both Christians and non, I think, for that reason: sincerity can be misplaced. The only relevant dying aside from Jesus was that of the 12, however many were martyred, and probably Stephen. They didn't die because they believed or where committed, but because they first-hand-knew whether it was true or not. You already know that, I know.
But yeah, Dragons. Well alrighty then. If one must. All life is funny if you keep squinting just a little.
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Re: Religious Pron - The Infancy Gospels 2
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Oct 3, 2023, 5:58 PM
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>However - I know I'm repeating - a significant number of Jews see it as pointing to a sacrificial Messiah.
Yes, I've actually got a post on the back burner regarding historical Jewish Christians, which is a fascinating perspective.
>We cant create truth with sincerity.
A good comment. Truth would be a good topic in itself. I'm not sure it's singular. I'm almost starting to see existence like an atom. No matter how deep you go, no matter how many times you think "I've hit the core, or the bedrock, or the last quark, or the final revelation, there is always one more curtain...
If we ever get that knowledge and some type of artificial immortality, that would probably be bad for the universe.
"And the LORD God said, “The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever.”
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Re: Religious Pron - The Infancy Gospels 2
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Oct 3, 2023, 10:18 PM
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If you are not going to laugh at my movie references, I'm going to stop making them. I'm petty that way.
I agree with your Tree of Life comment. One has to be a Jew or Christian to believe this, but I believe that is why no one has, is close to, or ever will, understand and reproduce the formation of RNA or DNA from protein. We can actually see it, and we know the components, but can't get close to making it. We'll see. Feel free to come back to me should it happen.
But enough about this thread. I'm liking the one about sin. 'Cause it's so fun and all. Sin, I mean.
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Re: Religious Pron - The Infancy Gospels 2
Oct 4, 2023, 12:53 AM
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>If you are not going to laugh at my movie references,
Lol you went over my head on that one. I had to look it up but good reference. Haven't seen the movie but I like Carrel and Freeman so I'd probably enjoy it.
>but can't get close to making it.
I'm flabbergasted by how simple H2O activates life, so RNA and DNA are way farther down the investigation line for me. lol.
>'Cause it's so fun and all. Sin, I mean.
Agreed!
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Much of Luke (and Matthew) are reworks or copies of
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Oct 2, 2023, 12:26 AM
[ in reply to Re: Religious Pron - The Infancy Gospels 2 ] |
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Mark, or at least that's what I understand most biblical scholars believe. Assuming that is correct, and Luke quoted from an earlier document, the question is, are the same things common to both Luke and TIGOT found in Mark as well. If so, the gospel of Mark could be the source.
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Re: Much of Luke (and Matthew) are reworks or copies of
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Oct 2, 2023, 12:36 PM
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That's a real possibility, and I haven't looked closely enough at the two documents to really check. But it certainly would be an interesting investigation.
I haven't gotten to it yet, but the Documentary Hypothesis, (which you are getting at) and its many, many variants, is another great topic. On the side I'm working on a comparison of the Synoptic Gospels (Matt, Mark, Luke, and John), and their similarities and differences related to Jewish Christians. It'll be an upcoming post.
Once you read through the 4 Gospels a few times very quickly, they really do feel like Vanilla, Chocolate, Strawberry, and Butter Pecan. All ice cream, and all fundamentally the same, but with some real striking differences on what each includes, and what each leaves out. And the obvious question is of course, "Why include this but not that, or vice versa?"
Reading them slowly is one thing, but when one reads them quickly the differences stand out more, because you can more easily remember what you've just read earlier.
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Excellent, sir. I can't wait for the next one.***
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Oct 1, 2023, 6:47 PM
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Re: Religious Pron - The Infancy Gospels 2
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Oct 1, 2023, 9:22 PM
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Maybe I missed it but what are the composition dates of these infancy gospels and are they considered authentic?
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Re: Religious Pron - The Infancy Gospels 2
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Oct 1, 2023, 10:41 PM
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Confirm on google (at one's peril) but I think 500-ish AD, or maybe later, at least for the Matthew one. Going from memory there. Authenticity becomes a different question on something that late. Would have to know the author and what research and source documents, if any, support the story. It seems the lack of those caused the "whatever" response to the stories.
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Re: Religious Pron - The Infancy Gospels 2
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Oct 2, 2023, 7:03 AM
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I was seeing around 650 AD for TIGOM on google and also that the letter by Jerome was considered a forgery. Just curious what dates Fordtunate had as I know his research is more thorough.
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Re: Religious Pron - The Infancy Gospels 2
Oct 2, 2023, 12:39 PM
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Yes, clipped an answer in above post.
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All-In [30121]
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Re: Religious Pron - The Infancy Gospels 2
Oct 2, 2023, 12:40 PM
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Well, below actually. The cascading post format is playing havoc.
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CU Medallion [58858]
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Some are believed to date first or second century AD.
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Oct 2, 2023, 12:56 AM
[ in reply to Re: Religious Pron - The Infancy Gospels 2 ] |
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For instance, The Infancy Gospel of Thomas was quoted around AD 180:
The first known quotation of the Infancy Gospel of Thomas is from Irenaeus of Lyon around AD 180, who calls it spurious and apocryphal.[2] Scholars generally agree on a date in the mid-to-late-2nd century AD. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infancy_Gospel_of_Thomas
Not sure what you mean by authentic.
Others are dated as late as AD 650.
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Orange Blooded [2221]
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Re: Some are believed to date first or second century AD.
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Oct 2, 2023, 7:09 AM
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By authentic was it written by Matthew. TIGOM is also called The Gospel of Pseudo Matthew, so I’m guessing nobody actually considers it to be written by him.
I believe there is also another Gospel by Thomas that is basically a collection of sayings by Jesus that is considered even earlier than 180 but it was used by Gnostics so I believe it was considered heretical by the early church.
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CU Medallion [58858]
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Re: Some are believed to date first or second century AD.
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Oct 2, 2023, 12:48 PM
[ in reply to Re: Some are believed to date first or second century AD. ] |
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Yes, the naming of all these guys is a challenge too.
The Gospel of Thomas is attributed to Thomas's missionary work in India. It was declared heretical because it was considered a little too "Eastern" in philosophy. Along the lines of "God permeates everything" vs. "God is a distinct entity separate from his creations, earth, man, universe." It's been a while since I've read it but I think that was the rub with the early church. It's on my upcoming post list, for "one of these days."
The INFANCY Gospel of Thomas is a completely separate work, and has to do with Jesus's life from age 5 till about 12.
It's gonna be the topic of post 3 in this series.
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Orange Blooded [2221]
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Re: Some are believed to date first or second century AD.
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Oct 2, 2023, 9:28 AM
[ in reply to Some are believed to date first or second century AD. ] |
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Also FWIW it’s debatable whether Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John were actually written by the people they are attributed to.
Luke possibly because the same person wrote Acts.
Mark seems to be based on some first hand information, but like you’ve pointed out Matthew and Luke used Mark as a source.
John most likely was written by an elder in the early church. His gospek definitely shows signs of legendary development.
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Orange Blooded [2053]
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Re: Some are believed to date first or second century AD.
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Oct 2, 2023, 7:00 PM
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I don't think it's even that controversial. They are all anonymous accounts and we don't have any original manuscripts so we can't confirm the attributions.
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Re: Religious Pron - The Infancy Gospels 2
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Oct 2, 2023, 12:38 PM
[ in reply to Re: Religious Pron - The Infancy Gospels 2 ] |
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Yes, I was a little unclear in my original post. Here's a clip from my reply to CUinTulsa up above.
"The Inf. Gospel of James (post 1) is reckoned to be the earliest of the three. It covers Mary, the birth of Jesus, and his life up to Egypt. It's dated at about 150 AD.
The Inf. Gospel of Thomas (which I haven't addressed) is second. It covers Jesus's life from age 5 up till his parents leave him behind at the Temple, at age 12. It's dated to about 180 AD I think.
And the Inf. Gospel of Matthew, the third of the three (this post) which combines those two earlier stories. And it's dated at roughly 600 AD."
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Oculus Spirit [94384]
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At first I was like: "OH NO, NOT THIS STUFF AGAIN."
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Oct 2, 2023, 6:44 AM
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Then about half way through the post I remembered Saban Satan was...well here's the text from Revelation 12:
"7 And there was war in heaven: Michael and his angels fought against the dragon; and the dragon fought and his angels,
8 And prevailed not; neither was their place found any more in heaven.
9 And the great dragon was cast out, that old serpent, called the Devil, and Satan, which deceiveth the whole world: he was cast out into the earth, and his angels were cast out with him.
10 And I heard a loud voice saying in heaven, Now is come salvation, and strength, and the kingdom of our God, and the power of his Christ: for the accuser of our brethren is cast down, which accused them before our God day and night.
11 And they overcame him by the blood of the Lamb, and by the word of their testimony; and they loved not their lives unto the death..."
It was also true that Jesus cast out many demons who all submitted to Him upon sight and obey His directions immediately. "And they overcame him by the blood of the Lamb."
A Plus on the presentation.
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Orange Blooded [2053]
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Re: At first I was like: "OH NO, NOT THIS STUFF AGAIN."
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Oct 2, 2023, 8:48 AM
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John found the "good shid" on that island. Those fungi do wonders for your writing.
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CU Medallion [58858]
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That begs the question (here we go) ...
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Oct 2, 2023, 8:57 AM
[ in reply to At first I was like: "OH NO, NOT THIS STUFF AGAIN." ] |
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Instead of having a war which involved his angels acting as soldiers, and then kicking the devil out of heaven and sending him to earth, why didn't he just spare the war and the torment the devil would cause us, and the need for salvation, and just snap his fingers and make the devil disappear altogether?
Sounds like God wants the devil around for some reason, and I'm trying to understand why.
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Orange Blooded [2053]
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Re: That begs the question (here we go) ...
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Oct 2, 2023, 9:41 AM
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You know why though.
He believes it's a historical account and you and I do not.
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Orange Blooded [2221]
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CU Medallion [58858]
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Re: That begs the question (here we go) ...
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Oct 2, 2023, 10:03 AM
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Your rite - I stand erected.
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Orange Blooded [2053]
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Oculus Spirit [94384]
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I told you this twice.
Oct 3, 2023, 5:36 AM
[ in reply to That begs the question (here we go) ... ] |
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Your computer worships you. It does exactly what you tell it to do. How much love can it show you? You can love it but it won't return that love to you.
God didn't created His angels like your computer. He gave the freewill. Satan decided he wanted to rule his own will rather than loving God and submitting to Him. He tempted other angels by telling them they can rule their hearts too.
We know that because of scripture which I've C&Ped for you both in a Tmale and here on this forum. Isa chapter 14. Satan wasn't trying to take over God's throne of power just the throne in Satan's heart. Satan's self governing attitude transformed him from an angel into a devil.
God had to set everything right so He created mankind to establish His righteousness forever for both angel and man. God isn't a spoiled child who says 'It's my pool and my toys, if you don't do exactly what I say you'll all have to go home and I'll play in my pool alone!'
He wants a perfect existence both for Himself, due to Him being Holy, and for us because His children are Holy too. You know what happens when you make an alteration to perfect, it becomes less than perfect. That's a simple concept which even a child can grasp.
So mankind is that proof. Man failed to be holy and God took on the body of a man and suffered and died to show that His selfishness is righteous and justified.
Now the big question, can God make a rock that's so big He can't move it? Yes, God has or will create a lake of fire, an eternal place to put Hell, all the rebellious angels and men which He will then forget forever. He has already put my sins in a place where He can't see them.
He can do that for you too if you trust in His Son and the salvation He bought for you when He died on the cross. You should be with the angels, you, 16and18 and The Big Dog do enough harping already.
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Orange Blooded [2053]
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Re: I told you this twice.
Oct 3, 2023, 7:07 AM
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> I told you this twice.
lol, you and CU both say this as if you gave a good answer.
> God didn't created His angels like your computer. He gave the freewill.
oh, in that case, stop complaining holocaust and childhood rape victims, god only allowed it so that you have everyone can have freewill so that he could be worshipped.
Makes sense.
> He wants a perfect existence both for Himself, due to Him being Holy, and for us because His children are Holy too. You know what happens when you make an alteration to perfect, it becomes less than perfect. That's a simple concept which even a child can grasp.
Yes, it's so simple to grasp that a supposedly perfect and loving god would make/allow such a violent horror show.
> He can do that for you too if you trust in His Son and the salvation He bought for you when He died on the cross.
Here's the question you just won't answer, where is this guy? You keep telling us there is a unicorn in your back yard. Well, where is it?
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Oculus Spirit [94384]
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Don't change the subject.***
Oct 3, 2023, 7:26 AM
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Orange Blooded [2053]
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Re: Don't change the subject.***
Oct 3, 2023, 7:55 AM
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Asking a question at the end isn’t changing the subject
I realize you can’t / won’t answer it
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Orange Blooded [2053]
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Re: Religious Pron - The Infancy Gospels 2
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Oct 2, 2023, 8:46 AM
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Do you have a blog or write anywhere else, or is this a treat just for us TNetters?
Fantastic as always, keep 'em coming.
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All-In [30121]
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Orange Blooded [2053]
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Re: Religious Pron - The Infancy Gospels 2
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Oct 2, 2023, 6:47 PM
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Well thank you for sharing it here. It’s always a fun read
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