You probably haven't heard of them, they live pretty far away.
Can I crash here tonight?
You know, people weren't any dumber back then than they are today.
Paul wasn't going around pretending to be a synagogue leader on his word alone. First of all, he wasn't pretending to be a synagogue leader, but a high-ranking representative sent to enforce anti-Christian edicts. And second, he wasn't going on his word alone, but had a letter from the synagogue elders confirming his identity.
Those letters are long lost to us, unfortunately, along with most documents from Early Christianity
I was just envisioning all of the apostles as B.C. era hipsters and the image made me laugh.
"Me? I'm a Christian. It's a pretty obscure religion, you probably haven't heard of it."
You probably haven't heard of them, they live pretty far away.
Can I crash here tonight?
You know, people weren't any dumber back then than they are today.
Paul wasn't going around pretending to be a synagogue leader on his word alone. First of all, he wasn't pretending to be a synagogue leader, but a high-ranking representative sent to enforce anti-Christian edicts. And second, he wasn't going on his word alone, but had a letter from the synagogue elders confirming his identity.
Those letters are long lost to us, unfortunately, along with most documents from Early Christianity
I was just envisioning all of the apostles as B.C. era hipsters and the image made me laugh.
"Me? I'm a Christian. It's a pretty obscure religion, you probably haven't heard of it."
Oh god now I can't stop picturing bespectacled hipsters in ironic t-shirts and skinny jeans getting mauled by lions...
DivideByZero on
First they came for the Muslims, and we said NOT TODAY, MOTHERFUCKERS
You probably haven't heard of them, they live pretty far away.
Can I crash here tonight?
You know, people weren't any dumber back then than they are today.
Paul wasn't going around pretending to be a synagogue leader on his word alone. First of all, he wasn't pretending to be a synagogue leader, but a high-ranking representative sent to enforce anti-Christian edicts. And second, he wasn't going on his word alone, but had a letter from the synagogue elders confirming his identity.
Those letters are long lost to us, unfortunately, along with most documents from Early Christianity
I was just envisioning all of the apostles as B.C. era hipsters and the image made me laugh.
"Me? I'm a Christian. It's a pretty obscure religion, you probably haven't heard of it."
Oh god now I can't stop picturing bespectacled hipsters in ironic t-shirts and skinny jeans getting mauled by lions...
Was an animated gif ever made of the hippie on Futurama being eaten by Lrrr?
Most of the Kosher laws were actually removed by S(P)aul, whose story rivals John Smith in it's improbably self serving nature.
Not sure how "self-serving" it really was. I mean, Paul was a persecutor of early Christianity. He seems to have been fairly high-ranking in Judaism; he could go to distant synagogues and exert some level of power there. He gave that all up when he converted: instead of having power, he was taken out and whipped several times. What he gained instead was a certain level of leadership over churches - churches that he had to create himself, travelling from city to city, and power that he could only exert over a distance through letters (since he was travelling from city to city to create more churches). This doesn't strike me as a step up in his professional life.
Now I have to wonder whether there was actually any evidence of Paul's prior rank, or if all people had to go on was his claims.
I don't think we have any non-New-Testament sources about Paul's life, no. All we have are his claims in his letters, and the claims about him in Acts (which is a fairly pro-Paul book, not an objective source).
But the historical evidence is that he did travel around, founded several churches in several cities where he was an outsider in short order, helped them grow quickly, and kept a certain level of control over them from far away during his travels (at an era where the only form of long-range communication was hand-carried letters). That indicates he had a charismatic and strong personality. So it's not unbelievable that he could have risen in the ranks of Judaism too.
I doubt it. Paul grew his churches on conversion, which was based on his ruling that the only precept of morality in Christianity is being Christian. By comparison, Judaism is hard to convert to and actually has rules that need to be followed to be considered a moral person.
As a Jew, I must voice my amusement that any case of someone using something as evidence that religion makes people stupid is always in reference to something done by Christians. Not only is it evidence of a double standard in which anything done by Muslims is evidence against Islam but anything done by Christians is evidence against religion in general, but it also provides a nice piece of evidence that conversionary religions are inherently troublesome.
I'm not sure how that contradicts what I said.
Yes, Paul grew his churches by converting Pagans to Christianity. Which basically means he convinced them of a set of beliefs that is almost the exact opposite of what they were taught since birth. And he did it with no external power backing him - Christianity had no wealth, no empire, no army camping at the gate. And he travelled from city to city, so he was an outsider with no previous reputation to work (his reputation among the Jews didn't carry much weight among Pagans, and was stained when he converted anyway) on or network of contacts to capitalize on. And, according to his letters and to Acts, he did it in his off-hours because he worked at a shop to earn money to sustain himself during the day.
His ability to setup and grow church after church was quite amazing, when you take all that into account.
That's part of what I mean when I said he must have had a very charismatic and strong personality to accomplish all this.
Richy on
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Mr_Rose83 Blue Ridge Protects the HolyRegistered Userregular
I totally forgot how god in his infinite wisdom, is supposed to take time out of torturing and murdering billions specifically to be extra mean to one specific woman who has her name tattooed on her forehead, except its not a name so much as a semi-random string of slurs.
Speculating whether she might or might not have been the (ex-?)wife of the guy who wrote revelations in the first place seems kind of moot but the concept certainly gives one new perspective on the 144,000 saved being "men who had not defiled themselves with women."
Huh, that's kind of odd. There are probably way more than 144,000 gay guys out there. How is God supposed to choose?
JihadJesus on
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Mr_Rose83 Blue Ridge Protects the HolyRegistered Userregular
edited May 2011
Seriously; the whole of Revelations sounds like one or two or twelve dudes' ergot-enhanced revenge fantasies rolled up into one 'coherent' 'story' that makes no sense even after you hand-wave away the glaring plot-holes (like all the stars in the sky falling to earth, shortly followed by several, maybe even more than three, instances of one third of the stars in the sky being thrown/swept/falling to earth) and pointless narrative elements (like the woman 'clothed in the sun' (which also previously had one third broken off and dropped on the earth) that gives birth to a baby that is immediately snatched away to heaven and then never heard from again).
Seriously; the whole of Revelations sounds like one or two or twelve dudes' ergot-enhanced revenge fantasies rolled up into one 'coherent' 'story' that makes no sense even after you hand-wave away the glaring plot-holes (like all the stars in the sky falling to earth, shortly followed by several, maybe even more than three, instances of one third of the stars in the sky being thrown/swept/falling to earth) and pointless narrative elements (like the woman 'clothed in the sun' (which also previously had one third broken off and dropped on the earth) that gives birth to a baby that is immediately snatched away to heaven and then never heard from again).
*sigh* Revelations is an example of apocalyptic literature, a literary style that was very popular in Judaism and Christianity at the time. These texts were never meant to be read literally at all. Nor were they meant to be subjects of literary criticism to find plot holes and unnecessary characters. They were very heavily metaphorical texts carrying hidden messages and lessons, and their interpretations were heavily dependent on the social and historical context in which they were written (as well as the views and beliefs of the author, of course).
Your "criticism" of this literary genre sounds about as profound and informed as someone criticizing classical music for not having lyrics and going too light on the electric base.
Seriously; the whole of Revelations sounds like one or two or twelve dudes' ergot-enhanced revenge fantasies rolled up into one 'coherent' 'story' that makes no sense even after you hand-wave away the glaring plot-holes (like all the stars in the sky falling to earth, shortly followed by several, maybe even more than three, instances of one third of the stars in the sky being thrown/swept/falling to earth) and pointless narrative elements (like the woman 'clothed in the sun' (which also previously had one third broken off and dropped on the earth) that gives birth to a baby that is immediately snatched away to heaven and then never heard from again).
*sigh* Revelations is an example of apocalyptic literature, a literary style that was very popular in Judaism and Christianity at the time. These texts were never meant to be read literally at all. Nor were they meant to be subjects of literary criticism to find plot holes and unnecessary characters. They were very heavily metaphorical texts carrying hidden messages and lessons, and their interpretations were heavily dependent on the social and historical context in which they were written (as well as the views and beliefs of the author, of course).
Your "criticism" of this literary genre sounds about as profound and informed as someone criticizing classical music for not having lyrics and going too light on the electric base.
The trouble with that, while it is accurate, is that there is a not-insignificant portion of humanity that treats it like the literal truth.
This creates numerous difficulties for our species as a whole.
The trouble with that, while it is accurate, is that there is a not-insignificant portion of humanity that treats it like the literal truth.
This creates numerous difficulties for our species as a whole.
I know
Some days I feel like a biblical history course should be mandatory in our education system. It would end a lot of the fundie views and sects that plague modern North America, as well as a lot of the more retarded Atheist lines of arguments. And really, it's an absolutely fascinating book when you scratch below the surface to understand the hidden layers in it.
Yeah, that'll happen. As long as you let every single religious person hold their children out of it, assuming they don't get there local school board to *wink* make sure someone who teaches Sunday school at the mega church happens to get the assignment.
Yeah I know it's a complete pipe dream that will never happen, and that if it did it would become a Sunday school for whichever religious sect screams loudest rather than the history and literary course I'd like so it's really better that it never does happen... still, a man can dream
Yeah I know it's a complete pipe dream that will never happen, and that if it did it would become a Sunday school for whichever religious sect screams loudest rather than the history and literary course I'd like so it's really better that it never does happen... still, a man can dream
I had a class in High School called Myths & Legends.
We read parts of the Bible and compared Jesus' life to the classic heroe's journey from Greek, Norse, Chinese, and Egyptian mythologies. Then we did the same thing with Hercules, The Monkey King, Thor, and a few others.
That class was awesome, if only for my end of the year project: What if Hercules, Jesus, and MacGyver fought in Ragnarok?
Yeah I know it's a complete pipe dream that will never happen, and that if it did it would become a Sunday school for whichever religious sect screams loudest rather than the history and literary course I'd like so it's really better that it never does happen... still, a man can dream
I had a class in High School called Myths & Legends.
We read parts of the Bible and compared Jesus' life to the classic heroe's journey from Greek, Norse, Chinese, and Egyptian mythologies. Then we did the same thing with Hercules, The Monkey King, Thor, and a few others.
That class was awesome, if only for my end of the year project: What if Hercules, Jesus, and MacGyver fought in Ragnarok?
Good lord I was a nerd in High School.
That's a tough one... Hercules has the brawls, but MacGyver has the brains, so Hercules would win in a straight-up fight, but if he has access to tools and time MacGuiver would be able to devise a way to trick and trap him to win. Meanwhile, Jesus would refuse to defend himself and get his ass kicked, but he has healing and respawn powers, so if the fight doesn't have a time limit he could win by wearing down his opponents.
Yeah I know it's a complete pipe dream that will never happen, and that if it did it would become a Sunday school for whichever religious sect screams loudest rather than the history and literary course I'd like so it's really better that it never does happen... still, a man can dream
I had a class in High School called Myths & Legends.
We read parts of the Bible and compared Jesus' life to the classic heroe's journey from Greek, Norse, Chinese, and Egyptian mythologies. Then we did the same thing with Hercules, The Monkey King, Thor, and a few others.
That class was awesome, if only for my end of the year project: What if Hercules, Jesus, and MacGyver fought in Ragnarok?
Good lord I was a nerd in High School.
That's a tough one... Hercules has the brawls, but MacGyver has the brains, so Hercules would win in a straight-up fight, but if he has access to tools and time MacGuiver would be able to devise a way to trick and trap him to win. Meanwhile, Jesus would refuse to defend himself and get his ass kicked, but he has healing and respawn powers, so if the fight doesn't have a time limit he could win by wearing down his opponents.
Not "What if they fought each other?" but "What if they fought as a team?"
But the historical evidence is that he did travel around, founded several churches in several cities where he was an outsider in short order, helped them grow quickly, and kept a certain level of control over them from far away during his travels (at an era where the only form of long-range communication was hand-carried letters). That indicates he had a charismatic and strong personality. So it's not unbelievable that he could have risen in the ranks of Judaism too.
Yep. And let's not forget he was trying to sell his own brand of the faith to Gentiles, who weren't quite as down with the Jewish ritual laws. Get rid of those and it becomes a lot more palatable. Which is, of course, exactly what you want if you're trying to build yourself up as a religious leader: followers.
Re MacGyver, we all know how Ragnarok ends.
mythago on
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Seriously; the whole of Revelations sounds like one or two or twelve dudes' ergot-enhanced revenge fantasies rolled up into one 'coherent' 'story' that makes no sense even after you hand-wave away the glaring plot-holes (like all the stars in the sky falling to earth, shortly followed by several, maybe even more than three, instances of one third of the stars in the sky being thrown/swept/falling to earth) and pointless narrative elements (like the woman 'clothed in the sun' (which also previously had one third broken off and dropped on the earth) that gives birth to a baby that is immediately snatched away to heaven and then never heard from again).
The sooner you stop taking the Bible literally the sooner you can start to understand the point of the stories being told.
God as aliens is fascinating.
I feel it is a lot more probable than God as some supernatural entity.
Then again, I am a transhumanist who kinda expect humanity itself to reach "Godhod" eventually so aliens already having achieved that state wouldn't be a surprise.
The sooner you stop taking the Bible literally the sooner you can start to understand the point of the stories being told.
You also have to wonder about people who take it literally in English.
They probably can't comprehend it being it anything other than English
I did know a hellfire preacher once who refused to accept that it would be valuable for him to learn the book he clings to in the language it was written.
That said, the points of the stories in the Christian bibles when taken as metaphor aren't any more useful - or legal to apply in Western nations - than they are taken literally. They don't have any predictive power in either case.
The "metaphor" thing is a bullshit way to get out of admitting that a piece of text is wrong. There is never any textual evidence that the passage was meant as a metaphor, and the interpretation of the section as a metaphor rarely changes the overall message if it actually makes sense as a metaphor. The only reason that any person says anything is metaphorical is to ignore a passage that he finds inconvenient and doesn't want to talk about. You never see that in Judaism. In reform, you admit that you disagree with a passage. In orthodox, you Scalia the text into meaning whatever you want.
Bagginses on
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Liquid GhostDO YOU HEAR THE VOICES, TOO?!Registered Userregular
edited May 2011
I should use "Scalia" as a creative verb more often.
The "metaphor" thing is a bullshit way to get out of admitting that a piece of text is wrong. There is never any textual evidence that the passage was meant as a metaphor, and the interpretation of the section as a metaphor rarely changes the overall message if it actually makes sense as a metaphor. The only reason that any person says anything is metaphorical is to ignore a passage that he finds inconvenient and doesn't want to talk about. You never see that in Judaism. In reform, you admit that you disagree with a passage. In orthodox, you Scalia the text into meaning whatever you want.
Maybe not metaphor, but if you treat the stories as just that, stories with morals at the end, kinda like fables, some things get easier.
What's the point of the story of Esther? Well, it could just be a historical retelling of an event that took place a few dozen years ago. It could also be a story with a moral that even the seemingly smallest people can effect change with enough bravery.
But as a Jew, I was raised with the knowledge that you could get 5 rabbis (or laypeople) into the room, all read the same story, and you'd get a different opinion on the meaning of the stories. That's just the way that we work as a people. We're supposed to argue over things. Discuss them. It's through the arguing, the discussion, the exploration of what this bit means that we learn not only what we believe, but that it's ok to not agree with other people, because they don't see it the same.
Also, in University I took a class called "bible as Literature"
fantastic fantastic class. Should be a requirement (the intro to world religions class was a gen req for every major at university).
Yeah I know it's a complete pipe dream that will never happen, and that if it did it would become a Sunday school for whichever religious sect screams loudest rather than the history and literary course I'd like so it's really better that it never does happen... still, a man can dream
I had a class in High School called Myths & Legends.
We read parts of the Bible and compared Jesus' life to the classic heroe's journey from Greek, Norse, Chinese, and Egyptian mythologies. Then we did the same thing with Hercules, The Monkey King, Thor, and a few others.
That class was awesome, if only for my end of the year project: What if Hercules, Jesus, and MacGyver fought in Ragnarok?
Good lord I was a nerd in High School.
That's a tough one... Hercules has the brawls, but MacGyver has the brains, so Hercules would win in a straight-up fight, but if he has access to tools and time MacGuiver would be able to devise a way to trick and trap him to win. Meanwhile, Jesus would refuse to defend himself and get his ass kicked, but he has healing and respawn powers, so if the fight doesn't have a time limit he could win by wearing down his opponents.
Not "What if they fought each other?" but "What if they fought as a team?"
That sounds like a good raid party set-up. Hercules is the tank, MacGyver's the rogue/DPS, Jesus as the Cleric. Against raid boss Fenris, set against the backdrop of a mountain collapsing into a sun.
Wolfprint on
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Mr_Rose83 Blue Ridge Protects the HolyRegistered Userregular
*sigh* Revelations is an example of apocalyptic literature, a literary style that was very popular in Judaism and Christianity at the time. These texts were never meant to be read literally at all. Nor were they meant to be subjects of literary criticism to find plot holes and unnecessary characters. They were very heavily metaphorical texts carrying hidden messages and lessons, and their interpretations were heavily dependent on the social and historical context in which they were written (as well as the views and beliefs of the author, of course).
So, what you're saying is that it shouldn't necessarily make sense once you hand-wave away the total lack of any literary value?
Seriously; the whole of Revelations sounds like one or two or twelve dudes' ergot-enhanced revenge fantasies rolled up into one 'coherent' 'story' that makes no sense even after you hand-wave away the glaring plot-holes and pointless narrative elements.
The "metaphor" thing is a bullshit way to get out of admitting that a piece of text is wrong. There is never any textual evidence that the passage was meant as a metaphor, and the interpretation of the section as a metaphor rarely changes the overall message if it actually makes sense as a metaphor. The only reason that any person says anything is metaphorical is to ignore a passage that he finds inconvenient and doesn't want to talk about. You never see that in Judaism. In reform, you admit that you disagree with a passage. In orthodox, you Scalia the text into meaning whatever you want.
While that remains a possibility, there is also another one: maybe the text is not understood correctly. Its a pretty good call if something doesn't make sense. Of course some things just don't.
It will haunt you for ethernety. Albeit there is a lot of trash, there are some strong points to the theory. It always this center of perception thing. Humans think like that and stick to it, repeating the same mistake again again for generations. Chances are if you live on an island and thats your world you think in those standarts. And people assume thats all there is to the world. However, the most likely think is... if there is one inhabited island, there are probably more.
The earth isn't the center of the universe, the sun isn't, not even our galaxy. There IS NO CENTERPIECE. Chances are in all this time and space rose and rise a lot of civilizations. Chances are life as we know it did not evolve on this planet. Even nobel prize winners in genetic like Francis Crick are found in support of the theory (his argument was the initial environment was not supportive for the forming of cells and it happened way to early and way to fast).
Not really. You see: life adapts. Only then simplest forms of life are being able to hibernate, for an example, encased in ember for a couple of million of years, only to be found by humans, taken to a lab where they are set free and... interestingly they start to come out of hibernation and start multiplying. Live evolved here, but its origins - in my opinion - are not here. Actually this adaption is the remarkable ability wich rules out a young formed cell scenario. It looks like a well practiced and perfected sheme, possibly used on thousands of suitable worlds before and thereafter.
And if you look at it we had a lot of environmental changes over the course of history of the planet. Life always came up with a completely new sheme - totally alien to us if you think about dinosaurs and gigantic plants as an example.
But thats a big topic in itself and should not be discussed here, i don't want to be accused of derailing something again. I just wanted to make clear that because you don't grasp a underlying concept right off the bat it won't mean there isn't one.
It does. It drastically reduces the probability everywhere that life orginated from there. However, it must have started somewhere. But to think that our planet is the source... given all that time and space seems unlikely. And there are indices for exogenetic contamination, albeit currently arguable. The PDF i linked is such an indicator. But the big question is: contaminated from where? The example was a martian rock, but i do not think life originated from Mars either. Probably it worked its way through there from far, far away. Some microbes are incredibly resiliant to temperature extremes, extreme pressure and even radiation (example: Deinococcus radiodurans). Most of them quickly respond to environmental changes by creating heat shock proteines, cold shock proteines and start hibernating and can keep that up for a very long time only to rise to activity again if the environment changes to habitable parameters again. Why? If the rules of evolution define what kind of abilities are prefered in a specimen you really have to think about what kind of environment has such harsh requirements. I think to look beyond our world for the application of such abilities is perfectly sound. I don't think its just coincidence. I think the extremophiles aquired those abilities because that ensured their survival... beyond their cradle world, and probably the species are far older than we can imagine. To survive a world shattering impact to be flung into deep space only to become active again when the fragment settles down somewhere else billions of years later... is a pretty rendundand survival strategy if you think about it.
I would even go so far as to suggest the origin of a specimen is hinted by its "cosmic survival" abilities. Radiodurans would most likely have orginated from a place bristeling with radiation, an ability for wich it has relatively little use on our world except for dwelling in nuclear waste storage facilities or surviving direct nuclear detonations. If a specimen keeps up to ten backups of its genome at hand and developes enzymes wich can repair DNS damage fourhundred times more efficient than usual the question should be indeed: what the hell is going on here?
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Mr_Rose83 Blue Ridge Protects the HolyRegistered Userregular
It does. It drastically reduces the probability everywhere that life orginated from there. However, it must have started somewhere. But to think that our planet is the source... given all that time and space seems unlikely. And there are indices for exogenetic contamination, albeit currently arguable. The PDF i linked is such an indicator. But the big question is: contaminated from where? The example was a martian rock, but i do not think life originated from Mars either. Probably it worked its way through there from far, far away.
No-one, anywhere, has claimed that Earth is the prime source of any exogenic hypotheses that I've heard of. Or are we talking about religion again?
Besides which, if life originated somewhere by abiogenesis then spread, why couldn't it have originated in two places then spread? Or three?
The problem with exogenesis as a hypothesis is that its currently unfalsifiable - to properly test it we need at least two planets with life and we currently only have one.
No, no one has claimed the "source" in the exogenic hypotesis is Earth, but outside the exogenic hypotesis its the comon idea. And "outside" is pretty much the general perception, hence its called a hypothesis.
Of course it can orginate in multiple places. Thats probable. Still the probability for being "seeded" is higher than being a "source". Expect multiple specimens at various levels of complexity being present in the environment. Just like on earth. If you find a nice, habitable spot you are not expecting just one "breed" of life, do you?
And for being unfalsifiable... there are the indices. Those are falsifyable and there were many objections being made regarding those pieces. It seemed to put the last nail into the coffin of the hypothesis. However all objections that have been made have, after years of study and research all been reviewed an taken into account. And not a single one managed to find definitive proof that the respective samples were of non-organic origin. In all fairness also the opposite is not the case but it held well through all of the research. Also there is the problem with the definition of life itself wich makes search for a proof of devinite organic origin not easy. It reached a stage where the standarts we apply for terrestrial organisms it would be satisfied, however because of the implications people are a little more on the critical side. The tendancy is twoards organic the more research is spent on those samples. And thats a good lead i guess.
Crick took it a step further by suggesting it may have been INTENTIONAL seeding ("directed panspermia").
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Mr_Rose83 Blue Ridge Protects the HolyRegistered Userregular
No, no one has claimed the "source" in the exogenic hypotesis is Earth, but outside the exogenic hypotesis its the comon idea. And "outside" is pretty much the general perception, hence its called a hypothesis.
Of course it can orginate in multiple places. Thats probable. Still the probability for being "seeded" is higher than being a "source". Expect multiple specimens at various levels of complexity being present in the environment. Just like on earth. If you find a nice, habitable spot you are not expecting just one "breed" of life, do you?
And for being unfalsifiable... there are the indices. Those are falsifyable and there were many objections being made regarding those pieces. It seemed to put the last nail into the coffin of the hypothesis. However all objections that have been made have, after years of study and research all been reviewed an taken into account. And not a single one managed to find definitive proof that the respective samples were of non-organic origin. In all fairness also the opposite is not the case but it held well through all of the research. Also there is the problem with the definition of life itself wich makes search for a proof of devinite organic origin not easy. It reached a stage where the standarts we apply for terrestrial organisms it would be satisfied, however because of the implications people are a little more on the critical side. The tendancy is twoards organic the more research is spent on those samples. And thats a good lead i guess.
Crick took it a step further by suggesting it may have been INTENTIONAL seeding ("directed panspermia").
Outside of exogenesis the source of life on Earth is widely held to be Earth, yes. But that's not really unexpected is it? Given that exogenesis is an umbrella for the study of all the ways, means and possibilities of life transferring between planets, if you exclude all of the variants on that, the only possibilities left are fall into "life originates on one planet and stays there" and "life doesn't originate" and we know there's life here so that last one is out.
I on the other hand understood you to be talking about some form of exogenic hypothesis where Earth was the prime source for life everywhere else - which, like I said, I've never head before.
Which actually seems odd. If you assume that life migrates and that it starts somewhere, then add that we know there's life here, why is it not reasonable to have at least one hypothesis that includes life starting here and radiating outwards? Truly life on Earth isn't really old enough to have got very far at all but that's not actually an obstacle is it, since we don't know of any extraterrestrial life that's older than Earth life?
The problem with taking the Bible as a series of fables is that you then have no reason to believe the supernatural events in the Bible, including the resurrection and divinity of Christ. Whooooops there goes the entire reasoning behind being a Christian.
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I was just envisioning all of the apostles as B.C. era hipsters and the image made me laugh.
"Me? I'm a Christian. It's a pretty obscure religion, you probably haven't heard of it."
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Oh god now I can't stop picturing bespectacled hipsters in ironic t-shirts and skinny jeans getting mauled by lions...
Was an animated gif ever made of the hippie on Futurama being eaten by Lrrr?
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I'm not sure how that contradicts what I said.
Yes, Paul grew his churches by converting Pagans to Christianity. Which basically means he convinced them of a set of beliefs that is almost the exact opposite of what they were taught since birth. And he did it with no external power backing him - Christianity had no wealth, no empire, no army camping at the gate. And he travelled from city to city, so he was an outsider with no previous reputation to work (his reputation among the Jews didn't carry much weight among Pagans, and was stained when he converted anyway) on or network of contacts to capitalize on. And, according to his letters and to Acts, he did it in his off-hours because he worked at a shop to earn money to sustain himself during the day.
His ability to setup and grow church after church was quite amazing, when you take all that into account.
That's part of what I mean when I said he must have had a very charismatic and strong personality to accomplish all this.
I totally forgot how god in his infinite wisdom, is supposed to take time out of torturing and murdering billions specifically to be extra mean to one specific woman who has her name tattooed on her forehead, except its not a name so much as a semi-random string of slurs.
Speculating whether she might or might not have been the (ex-?)wife of the guy who wrote revelations in the first place seems kind of moot but the concept certainly gives one new perspective on the 144,000 saved being "men who had not defiled themselves with women."
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Your "criticism" of this literary genre sounds about as profound and informed as someone criticizing classical music for not having lyrics and going too light on the electric base.
The trouble with that, while it is accurate, is that there is a not-insignificant portion of humanity that treats it like the literal truth.
This creates numerous difficulties for our species as a whole.
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Some days I feel like a biblical history course should be mandatory in our education system. It would end a lot of the fundie views and sects that plague modern North America, as well as a lot of the more retarded Atheist lines of arguments. And really, it's an absolutely fascinating book when you scratch below the surface to understand the hidden layers in it.
I had a class in High School called Myths & Legends.
We read parts of the Bible and compared Jesus' life to the classic heroe's journey from Greek, Norse, Chinese, and Egyptian mythologies. Then we did the same thing with Hercules, The Monkey King, Thor, and a few others.
That class was awesome, if only for my end of the year project: What if Hercules, Jesus, and MacGyver fought in Ragnarok?
Good lord I was a nerd in High School.
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That's a tough one... Hercules has the brawls, but MacGyver has the brains, so Hercules would win in a straight-up fight, but if he has access to tools and time MacGuiver would be able to devise a way to trick and trap him to win. Meanwhile, Jesus would refuse to defend himself and get his ass kicked, but he has healing and respawn powers, so if the fight doesn't have a time limit he could win by wearing down his opponents.
Not "What if they fought each other?" but "What if they fought as a team?"
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Yep. And let's not forget he was trying to sell his own brand of the faith to Gentiles, who weren't quite as down with the Jewish ritual laws. Get rid of those and it becomes a lot more palatable. Which is, of course, exactly what you want if you're trying to build yourself up as a religious leader: followers.
Re MacGyver, we all know how Ragnarok ends.
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The sooner you stop taking the Bible literally the sooner you can start to understand the point of the stories being told.
You also have to wonder about people who take it literally in English.
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Depends on how you define "god".
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I feel it is a lot more probable than God as some supernatural entity.
Then again, I am a transhumanist who kinda expect humanity itself to reach "Godhod" eventually so aliens already having achieved that state wouldn't be a surprise.
They probably can't comprehend it being it anything other than English
I did know a hellfire preacher once who refused to accept that it would be valuable for him to learn the book he clings to in the language it was written.
That said, the points of the stories in the Christian bibles when taken as metaphor aren't any more useful - or legal to apply in Western nations - than they are taken literally. They don't have any predictive power in either case.
Maybe not metaphor, but if you treat the stories as just that, stories with morals at the end, kinda like fables, some things get easier.
What's the point of the story of Esther? Well, it could just be a historical retelling of an event that took place a few dozen years ago. It could also be a story with a moral that even the seemingly smallest people can effect change with enough bravery.
But as a Jew, I was raised with the knowledge that you could get 5 rabbis (or laypeople) into the room, all read the same story, and you'd get a different opinion on the meaning of the stories. That's just the way that we work as a people. We're supposed to argue over things. Discuss them. It's through the arguing, the discussion, the exploration of what this bit means that we learn not only what we believe, but that it's ok to not agree with other people, because they don't see it the same.
Also, in University I took a class called "bible as Literature"
fantastic fantastic class. Should be a requirement (the intro to world religions class was a gen req for every major at university).
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That sounds like a good raid party set-up. Hercules is the tank, MacGyver's the rogue/DPS, Jesus as the Cleric. Against raid boss Fenris, set against the backdrop of a mountain collapsing into a sun.
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While that remains a possibility, there is also another one: maybe the text is not understood correctly. Its a pretty good call if something doesn't make sense. Of course some things just don't.
It will haunt you for ethernety. Albeit there is a lot of trash, there are some strong points to the theory. It always this center of perception thing. Humans think like that and stick to it, repeating the same mistake again again for generations. Chances are if you live on an island and thats your world you think in those standarts. And people assume thats all there is to the world. However, the most likely think is... if there is one inhabited island, there are probably more.
http://marsprogram.jpl.nasa.gov/mgs/sci/fifthconf99/6211.pdf
The earth isn't the center of the universe, the sun isn't, not even our galaxy. There IS NO CENTERPIECE. Chances are in all this time and space rose and rise a lot of civilizations. Chances are life as we know it did not evolve on this planet. Even nobel prize winners in genetic like Francis Crick are found in support of the theory (his argument was the initial environment was not supportive for the forming of cells and it happened way to early and way to fast).
And if you look at it we had a lot of environmental changes over the course of history of the planet. Life always came up with a completely new sheme - totally alien to us if you think about dinosaurs and gigantic plants as an example.
But thats a big topic in itself and should not be discussed here, i don't want to be accused of derailing something again. I just wanted to make clear that because you don't grasp a underlying concept right off the bat it won't mean there isn't one.
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I would even go so far as to suggest the origin of a specimen is hinted by its "cosmic survival" abilities. Radiodurans would most likely have orginated from a place bristeling with radiation, an ability for wich it has relatively little use on our world except for dwelling in nuclear waste storage facilities or surviving direct nuclear detonations. If a specimen keeps up to ten backups of its genome at hand and developes enzymes wich can repair DNS damage fourhundred times more efficient than usual the question should be indeed: what the hell is going on here?
Besides which, if life originated somewhere by abiogenesis then spread, why couldn't it have originated in two places then spread? Or three?
The problem with exogenesis as a hypothesis is that its currently unfalsifiable - to properly test it we need at least two planets with life and we currently only have one.
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Of course it can orginate in multiple places. Thats probable. Still the probability for being "seeded" is higher than being a "source". Expect multiple specimens at various levels of complexity being present in the environment. Just like on earth. If you find a nice, habitable spot you are not expecting just one "breed" of life, do you?
And for being unfalsifiable... there are the indices. Those are falsifyable and there were many objections being made regarding those pieces. It seemed to put the last nail into the coffin of the hypothesis. However all objections that have been made have, after years of study and research all been reviewed an taken into account. And not a single one managed to find definitive proof that the respective samples were of non-organic origin. In all fairness also the opposite is not the case but it held well through all of the research. Also there is the problem with the definition of life itself wich makes search for a proof of devinite organic origin not easy. It reached a stage where the standarts we apply for terrestrial organisms it would be satisfied, however because of the implications people are a little more on the critical side. The tendancy is twoards organic the more research is spent on those samples. And thats a good lead i guess.
Crick took it a step further by suggesting it may have been INTENTIONAL seeding ("directed panspermia").
I on the other hand understood you to be talking about some form of exogenic hypothesis where Earth was the prime source for life everywhere else - which, like I said, I've never head before.
Which actually seems odd. If you assume that life migrates and that it starts somewhere, then add that we know there's life here, why is it not reasonable to have at least one hypothesis that includes life starting here and radiating outwards? Truly life on Earth isn't really old enough to have got very far at all but that's not actually an obstacle is it, since we don't know of any extraterrestrial life that's older than Earth life?
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All that crazy shit at the front of the book is totally true. Y u gotta deny the scriptures?