Simple question about god-human relations

[El_Machinae]

I agree with Jesus, the Old Testament is true.

You mean that you agree with the anonymous authors of the New Testament. What Jesus actually said is not as clear. The best we can do is create probabilistic estimates.

Modern Christians being incapable of presenting Miracles like in Jesus' day is evidence that the Christian message has been mistranslated by later Bible authors and compilers, if one believes in those miracles

Someone can be both deceived about their own spiritual status and also have access to moral insight. And if the moral inside is good, it could survive the test of time as useful. Honestly, it's insignificantly different from being a schizophrenic mathematician. Delusions can co-habitate with insights, especially around truths. If a schizophrenic can unpack math in useful ways, they can do the same with morals.

I have had clients for decades that were confused about whether they were divine or not. And some of them had greater insight into morality than others.

Obviously, you're free to believe in the Old Testament. All of the universe sings to the innocence of God of that libel, but then I am just going full circle and repeating myself.

 

[cav scout]

You mean that you agree with the anonymous authors of the New Testament. What Jesus actually said is not as clear. The best we can do is create probabilistic estimates.

I think it is reasonable to ascribe authorship to the named authors and take the eye witness accounts at face value.

Modern Christians being incapable of presenting Miracles like in Jesus' day is evidence that the Christian message has been mistranslated by later Bible authors and compilers, if one believes in those miracles

No mistranslation, the miraculous spiritual gifts in Acts ceased after the apostolic age.

Someone can be both deceived about their own spiritual status and also have access to moral insight. And if the moral inside is good, it could survive the test of time as useful. I have had clients for decades that were confused about whether they were divine or not. And some of them had greater insight into morality than others.

I don't think that someone who falsely claims divinity can be trusted for moral insight... or anything else.

Obviously, you're free to believe in the Old Testament. All of the universe sings to the innocence of God of that libel, but then I am just going full circle and repeating myself.

We seem to agree that God has provided natural revelation. Do you believe he has provided special revelation?

 

[Birdjaguar]

Synoptic gospels were around 60 AD, so more like 25-30 years.

This a good wiki on the many theories of how the gospels are related.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synoptic_Gospels

As far as dates go, most modern scholars put Mark at around 70 because of his mention of the destruction of the Temple (which took place in 70 AD). Luke and Matthew are put at the 85-90 AD mark.

The Bible's New Testament, which includes these four Gospels, was originally written entirely in Greek, the common language of the Mediterranean lands in Roman times. The first of the Gospels was probably Mark, written around 70 A.D., about 40 years after Jesus was crucified. Matthew and Luke were written between 80 and 90 A.D. Finally, The Gospel of John appeared in its final form around 95 A.D.

https://www.christianbiblereference.org/jintro.htm

 

[El_Machinae]

I don't think that someone who falsely claims divinity can be trusted for moral insight... or anything else.

Trusted? No, people are flawed.

Can they discern truths? Sure thing. And then later on, if they did some good piece of insight, we give them credit.

No mistranslation, the miraculous spiritual gifts in Acts ceased after the apostolic age.

So, then every Christian in the last two thousand years that believes they have witnessed a miracle... mad man, fool, or liar?

Importantly, can you find where Jesus predicts that his followers won't be able to perform miracles, except for one more dude that is an honorary disciple? Or is just convenient that Paul's writings include the amazing fact that future Christians won't be able to perform miracles.

Anyway, like I said, modern Christians not having access to miracles would be evidence that Jesus has been misinterpreted. The alternative, of course, is that Jesus has been properly interpreted and didn't know that God is innocent of torturing Pharaoh's subjects to teach him a lesson.

 

[Kyriakos]

You mean that you agree with the anonymous authors of the New Testament.

Surely it is the authors of the old testament who are anonymous.

Re @onejayhawk 's point, about belief itself being evidence, I do not agree at all, since it is evidence of there being a phenomenon which gets picked up/presented as having to do with a god, but in my view it is a purely human phenomenon and has to do with the human mind.

Anyway, the story of a "son of god" who ultimately dies and takes his place next to his father, is not unique to Jesus. There had been other saviors who were sons of god. Even Herakles by and large was one of them, given he did free mankind of various monsters. He even opened up the med to the atlantic. Jesus just cured some lepers

 

[cav scout]

This a good wiki on the many theories of how the gospels are related.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synoptic_Gospels

As far as dates go, most modern scholars put Mark at around 70 because of his mention of the destruction of the Temple (which took place in 70 AD). Luke and Matthew are put at the 85-90 AD mark.

Yeah, secular scholars can't believe that Jesus actually predicted the destruction of the temple in the Olivet discourse so they put a "no earlier date" of 70 AD on all of the Gospels. I think Matthew, Luke and Mark (possibly in that order) were written well before 70 AD.

---------------------------------

So, then every Christian in the last two thousand years that believes they have witnessed a miracle... mad man, fool, or liar?

Importantly, can you find where Jesus predicts that his followers won't be able to perform miracles, except for one more dude that is an honorary disciple? Or is just convenient that Paul's writings include the amazing fact that future Christians won't be able to perform miracles.

Anyway, like I said, modern Christians not having access to miracles would be evidence that Jesus has been misinterpreted. The alternative, of course, is that Jesus has been properly interpreted and didn't know that God is innocent of torturing Pharaoh's subjects to teach him a lesson.

Cessation of miraculous spiritual gifts performed by the apostles and those close to them during during the apostolic age does not mean no miracles. God has performed miracles throughout the ages and still performs miracles to this day.

Jesus commissioned his messengers (apostles) to do miracles for the apostolic age:

These twelve Jesus sent out, instructing them, “Go nowhere among the Gentiles and enter no town of the Samaritans, but go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. And proclaim as you go, saying, ‘The kingdom of heaven is at hand.’ Heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse lepers, cast out demons.

After this the Lord appointed seventy-two others and sent them on ahead of him, two by two, into every town and place where he himself was about to go.

But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.

 

[Birdjaguar]

Yeah, secular scholars can't believe that Jesus actually predicted the destruction of the temple in the Olivet discourse so they put a "no earlier date" of 70 AD on all of the Gospels. I think Matthew, Luke and Mark (possibly in that order) were written well before 70 AD.

Why do you assume all those scholars are not Christians? Objectivity is a problem in Christian studies. Non Christians are tarred for being secular and Christians are tarred for ignoring non Biblical evidence. What one believes about the dating of the gospels is mostly tied to the bigger story of one's belief. Putting the writing before 70AD reinforces the idea of Biblical prophecy; putting it after shifts the focus to other scholarly concerns. Your brand of Christianity obviously includes an emphasis on prophecy and would naturally gravitate to and earlier date. TBH no one actually knows when they were written. We all compile the evidence we like best and then choose what to believe.

Other than our very own @Plotinus I like the ideas of Bart Ehrman

 

[cav scout]

Why do you assume all those scholars are not Christians? Objectivity is a problem in Christian studies. Non Christians are tarred for being secular and Christians are tarred for ignoring non Biblical evidence. What one believes about the dating of the gospels is mostly tied to the bigger story of one's belief. Putting the writing before 70AD reinforces the idea of Biblical prophecy; putting it after shifts the focus to other scholarly concerns. Your brand of Christianity obviously includes an emphasis on prophecy and would naturally gravitate to and earlier date. TBH no one actually knows when they were written. We all compile the evidence we like best and then choose what to believe.

More the divinity of Jesus than prophecy. And not tarring anyone, just saying that the argument they put forward is, "A priori Jesus could not have predicted the events of 70 AD so accurately (because he wasn't divine), therefore it had to be written in after the fact, therefore we just discount all evidence pointing prior to 70 AD."

 

[Birdjaguar]

Stick with your beliefs.

 

[cardgame]

Yes! That is exactly what He wants. He just doesn't want you to overthrow him because, well, would you want one of your creations to overthrow you and take your place?

If we're strong enough to overthrow him, is he really worth worshipping?

 

[cav scout]

Stick with your beliefs.

Thanks, I appreciate the sentiment. I think it's important for a person to be grounded in their beliefs, so as not to be "tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind." Even more important is to to have the courage to change your beliefs if they don't comport with truth.

 

[Moff Jerjerrod]

This is one of the best pieces of evidence against the divinity of Christ, and the only defense to that evidence is that the anonymous authors of the books describing Jesus made incorrect statements, embellishing or modifying things, in order to convince people that their version of Jesus more closely fit their conception of God. The authors thought that Yahweh was God, and then reimagined Jesus as being from Yahweh instead of being actually divine.

Wait what? Jesus posts replies in the Off Topic forum? Or is OT the Old Testament? If it's the latter one has to believe that the OT and the NT are both the Word of God. The Word is truth. It never changes (except what man does to it and woe to him who adds or substracts from the original Hebrew texts according the the Bible).

We were gonna overthrow him because we built some tall mud tower? Is that why he had the WTC's destroyed?
...

The small mud tower according to the story was built by those who had the intention of reaching God and replacing him. The WTC is something totally different and has nothing to do with God. I don't believe that the WTC was built with the intention of reaching heaven.

Do you really think that God created land plants before there was life in the ocean?

Do you think that God really destroyed all animals in the world, except for some people a boat and two of every living thing?

Do you really think that God put pox on a peasantry in order to convince their King that holding the Hebrews was a 'bad idea'?

Do you really think that God ordered the Israelites to kill gay people?

Do you really think that God helped those same Hebrews genocide the people of Canaan?

Jesus did. And then he told people to love that god.

Look, I'm as happy as anyone to read in metaphor - there is a lot of Christianity that I defend, but there's no evidence that Jesus knew that the OT was lying about God. And there is zero evidence that Jesus preferred a God was innocent of the libel. If Jesus had provided parables about "Moses being a myth" and "Noah being a myth", then I'd not have this very evidence I am presenting. But he's just spinning the OT, just like every other 'prophet' telling you to worship something that both doesn't exist and is unworthy of love.

There is a lot that you said there but in brief the Bible is filled with prophesies that have had past examples to go by. The plagues that were sent to Egypt at that time were sent to tell Pharaoh to release the Jews. The Bible does say that who ever persecutes the people of Israel will be cursed and what happened to Egypt is an example of that.

As for the spinning of the OT you've got me puzzled there. Are you saying that Jesus twisted stories in the OT in order to convince people to worship God?

 

[Moff Jerjerrod]

If we're strong enough to overthrow him, is he really worth worshipping?

Nope. I agree. A god that is not strong enough to prevent his demise is not worth worshipping at all.

 

[El_Machinae]

Wait what? Jesus posts replies in the Off Topic forum? Or is OT the Old Testament? If it's the latter one has to believe that the OT and the NT are both the Word of God. The Word is truth. It never changes (except what man does to it and woe to him who adds or substracts from the original Hebrew texts according the the Bible).

Yeah, I know some Christians just believe the Bible to be true. There's no real debate about the evidence of Jesus's divinity, because the claim is that the Bible is divine. So, the claim that Jesus is divine is just wrapped into that. There are some people who think of the Bible as the product of fallible humans, but still contains evidence that Jesus is divine. Calling the Bible 'divine' is a stronger claim than claiming that Jesus is, but that's just the way the Venn diagrams are drawn.

As for the spinning of the OT you've got me puzzled there. Are you saying that Jesus twisted stories in the OT in order to convince people to worship God?

I don't think he 'twisted' stories in the OT. I think he thought he had some special insight into God that allowed him to add insight to what can be gleaned from the OT. He was 'allowed' to deviate (or re-frame) from the understood scholarship, because he knew something the Rabbis didn't. So, there were (say) old stories of Moses and Jesus said "no, you've misunderstood" or "that's changed now that I'm here".

I think he added value, there were moral truths that Jesus described that were goodly. But I think he was just building off of the OT's framework, assuming that it was true.

 

[innonimatu]

Assuming a god exists, what is the point of salvation being gained by humans depending on some action, ethic, work or other part or even the whole of their life? If god is omnipotent and omniscient, it would already be aware of who will be saved and who will not.
At times I've heard the argument, from clergy, that the point is to have people realize that they are responsible for what will happen to them, and therefore if they aren't saved it is due to their decisions. If so, god would still be aware they would act in this way, rendering the decision-making decorative at best, and at worst a pretext to have god mock those destined to fall anyway.

Has someone in this thread already mentioned an ambitious and unscrupulous politician named Calvin and how he carried that into predestination and still managed to convince people to follow him and kill for him?
Religions, especially the monotheistic god-all-mighty type end up becoming tools in the hands of ambitions men playing the religious leader. We're probably fortunate that whomever compiled the Bible inserted that passage about rendering unto Caesar what is Caesar's, of this type of people would succeed way more often.

I have to wonder whether the medieval catholic church's refusal to disseminate the bible textually was in part due to accumulated institutional knowledge of the harm that came out of people taking pieces of it into some interpretation and gathering armies of fanatics to attack other people on "religious" grounds. The late roman empire, and the byzantine later, teared itself apart in religious civil wars. The winners were some desert barbarians who ran in with their own derivative version of the thing...

The so-called reformation and the counter-reformation in the west would later cause yet another wave of religious war. Secularism may have been borne out of it, but at a terrible cost. And imo the need for that cost is doubtful, society in western Europe went backwards after the 15th century and only really recovered in the 18th. Medieval Europe was more tolerant. Even accounting for nasty stuff like the albigensian crusade or the fourth crusade.

Trying to create rules-born strict religions out of an evolutive mix of ancient texts was a recipe for disaster. In the late roman empire, in the early modern age, the different islamic empires at each other's throats, and now. It's a sad history all together. An omniscient god who knew what he was making and willed all this would be a monster unworthy of any worship.

 

[Moff Jerjerrod]

Thanks El_Machinae. Your explanation makes sense now to me.

 

[Kyriakos]

Yeah, I know some Christians just believe the Bible to be true. There's no real debate about the evidence of Jesus's divinity, because the claim is that the Bible is divine. So, the claim that Jesus is divine is just wrapped into that. There are some people who think of the Bible as the product of fallible humans, but still contains evidence that Jesus is divine. Calling the Bible 'divine' is a stronger claim than claiming that Jesus is, but that's just the way the Venn diagrams are drawn.

What if the bible is divine, but Jesus isn't? ^_^
Ie some god wanted people to think Jesus was actually divine, but in reality he was another human thinking he was divine.

There is a nice short story by Borges where some theologian claims that the real son of god in the gospels was Judas, but out of some mysterious divine plan he wanted to be known as the antithesis of divinity. Iirc the title is "Three versions of Judas".

 

[El_Machinae]

There is a story in the Old Testament where a cabal of sorcerers were able to convince the Pharaoh that they had access to the true gods, and they did minor magical tricks in order to impress him. Because of that, the Pharaoh respected false gods.

I remember that story whenever one of the faithful tries to impress me with some modern miracle they experienced. If Satan exists, he's able to convince people that the Bible is true with a little bit of flash and bang. And then people twist all over themselves defending the libel against God that is presented in the Bible

Imagine believing that God had ordered the murder of homosexuals, and then creating a morality where this is justified, all because some sorcerer tossed stick on the ground and turned it into a snake

 

[Kyriakos]

There is a story in the Old Testament where a cabal of sorcerers were able to convince the Pharaoh that they had access to the true gods, and they did minor magical tricks in order to impress him. Because of that, the Pharaoh respected false gods.

I remember that story whenever one of the faithful tries to impress me with some modern miracle they experienced. If Satan exists, he's able to convince people that the Bible is true with a little bit of flash and bang. And then people twist all over themselves defending the libel against God that is presented in the Bible

Imagine believing that God had ordered the murder of homosexuals, and then creating a morality where this is justified, all because some sorcerer tossed stick on the ground and turned it into a snake

It's not like there is any real chance the bible contains something tied to an actual god (assuming such an entity exists).

That said, I don't agree that if a god exists, they somehow have to be benevolent. It also depends on what kind of intellect that god has. In the unlikely case it is something similar to human-type intellect (with human passions and logic), then I don't see why a human who is vastly more powerful than normal humans, has to never like seeing you killed for fun.

In my view the christian/jewish god is mostly a personification of a salvation mechanism, and as such morality is thrown in so that anyone can strive to be behaving like that god commands, since morality is something everyone has a notion of. It would be a lot more difficult if that god asked that you prove the twin prime conjecture in order to be saved - but not less believable, imo.

 

[El_Machinae]

I see no reason to assume that the Creator is benevolent, but that doesn't mean that it could not also be falsely accused.

The big bang and natural selection were not benevolent, but they never told us to kill people weaker than ourselves and take their stuff, for example.

If someone's faith falsely attributes God with evil commandments, that's on them, and it also means that they don't love God enough to disbelieve when people say that he's evil