Another Big Big Thread of Religious Discussion

[Solid Snake]

Originally Posted by Sithdarth

I think you are still misunderstanding at the very least the point I was making.

My most recent post was directed at Gorefiend and thus wasn't responding to a single point you made.
But now I'll respond to a few of your points.

In that while some basic things did survive, like the resurrection, its highly improbably that his actual teachings in an non fundamentally way made it. Like I remember hearing something awhile back about a gospel that mentioned Jesus taught that one did not need a temple/church or a spiritual leader to find god and have faith. Which actually makes sense in regards as to his relationship with the Rabbis. The modern Church however is bigger and even more bloated than the Rabbis of Jesus' time.

As a protestant evangelical without any particular affiliation to any particular church, I'd actually entirely agree with your sentiment. (I'm not personally terribly fond of the Catholic Church's machinations, though I do believe that Catholics and Protestants will both be redeemed through faith in Christ and we'll thus all go to heaven.)

Further, we don't even have a name for the 12th apostle.

Hmm? The 12 original apostles were the 11 surviving disciples (not including Judas) and Matthias, who is chosen to replace Judas in Acts 1:12-26. "Then they cast lots, and the lot fell to Matthias; so he was added to the eleven apostles." The disciples are called apostles immediately following the resurrection of Christ and his Great Commission.

We also have:

Simon Peter (son of John), a Fisherman (Matthew 4:18-20, Mark 8:29-33, Luke 22:31-34, John 21:15-19, Acts 2:14-41)

James (son of Zebedee), a Fisherman (Mark 3:17, Mark 10:35-40, Luke 9:52-56, Acts 12:1-2)

John (son of Zebedee, brother of James), a Fisherman (the presumed author of the Gospel of John, the "One Who Jesus Loved") (Mark 1:19, Mark 10:35-40, Luke 9:52-56, "the one who Jesus loved" in all of John, Acts 12:1-2)

Andrew (Simon Peter's brother), a Fisherman (Matthew 4:18-20, John 1:35-42, John 6:8-9, John 12:20-22.)

Philip, a Fisherman (Matthew 10:3, John 1:43-46, John 6:2-7, John 12:20-22, John 14:8-11)

Bartholomew, position unknown (often assumed by Biblical scholars to have been an impoverished older man) (Mark 3:18, John 1:45-51, John 21:1-13.)

Matthew (called Levi,) a Tax Collector (Matthew 9:9-13, Mark 2:15-17, Luke 5:27-32.)

Thomas (called the twin, though his twin is never apparently present.) (Matthew 10:3, John 14:5, John 20:24-29, John 21:1-13)

James (son of Alphaeus), position unknown. He's the one who's least showcased in the Bible, but he's still mentioned by name in Matthew 10:3, Mark 3:18, and Luke 6:15. Strangely, he's not featured in any prominent moment in the Bible and his story's never quite told like the others, so he's your best bet for a "made up" apostle, I suppose, if you wanted to believe one was falsely manufactured.

Thaddaeus (Judas son of James,) who is not Judas Iscariot, mentioned in Matthew 10:3, Mark 3:18, and given a line of speech in John 14:22.

Simon the Zealot, originally a follower of John the Baptist, mentioned in Matthew 10:4 and Mark 3:18 and Luke 6:15. (He's the second weakest in terms of what we know about him.)

Judas Iscariot, who is replaced by Matthias after he betrays Christ and commits suicide.

That's eleven disciples who become the first 11 apostles, and Matthias, who joins in the party as a first-order-of-business in Acts 1. Of course later on we see a number of Christian missionaries referred to as apostles who weren't among the initial 12.

Additionally, why don't we have any writings from the apostles.

Huh? First Peter begins with the line "Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ." It's clearly promoted as a writing from the apostle Peter and it rather rigorously outlines his faith. second Peter starts off "Simon Peter, a servant and apostle of Jesus Christ." The Christian scholarly community promotes the view of the first letter being written in AD 64 and the second being written in AD 67 by the same Peter who stands on water.

We also have 1 John, 2 John, and 3 John by the apostle John (that one who Jesus loved who also supposedly authors the Gospel of John.)

That's two apostles right there who wrote down their stuff. (Including the gospels themselves there's also Mark/Levi who's suggested to have written the Gospel of Mark.) As for the others, well some may have simply been unable to write (Bartholomew in particular strikes me as a likely candidate for being illiterate.) And if you want to get into the gnostics, Thomas (of the doubting variety) supposedly wrote his own gospel that the Christian church rejected (claiming it was not in fact authentically the work of Thomas himself.)

At the very least they should have recognized how important what they were teaching really was and the importance of recording it as many times as possible and from as many viewpoints as possible.

That's precisely why there are far more surviving manuscripts and papyrus tablets of the New Testament gospels then...well...anything else! Throw the gnostics and other unaccepted variations of the theme into the mix and you have tens of thousands of surviving documents pre-printing press compared to only several hundred or even several dozen of such classic and revolutionary texts as the Iliad and the Odyssey and the works of Plato and Aristotle. And frankly, a vast majority of the documents that must have originally existed were likely destroyed in one of a variety of ways, which is a rather universal phenomena that's also drastically reduced our viable copies of every other piece of ancient literature out there.

So I'm pretty darned certain that a great many efforts were made by many people involved to document Christ. Not all of it survived. As the Gospel of Judas would seem to indicate we're still in the process of recovering some ancient texts regarding the life of Christ to this day. It's somewhat of an ongoing process.

Which brings me to the next point. Why don't we have a gospel of Jesus?

Now that's a good question. We do know Christ was literate, so he didn't have illiteracy as an excuse not to write his stuff down. Then again, anything Christ himself would have written during his lifetime could have been easily used by the Pharisees to imprison or kill the guy. Jesus' relatively non-aggressive approach to spreading the gospel in that respect likely kept him alive that much longer. It's one thing if some guy is claiming to be God but you can't prove that he's done so because only the villagers are clamoring about it, it's another thing entirely if Jesus writes down his divine message -- the Pharisees would have certainly had legal justification to pounce on him far earlier.

There's also the additional problem that Jesus was trying to preach to a crowd that was mostly illiterate, and a majority of the people who were literate at that time wanted him dead. Beyond all that, I really can't say why he wouldn't still write a few details down for posterity's sake.

[ZAKtheGeek]

You control your mind and the decisions it makes, not God. Free will, it's awesome.

I'm not saying God controls minds, I'm saying it created them (as a subset of "everything"), and how they work is a function of their design, as with all things.

[Roy_D_Mylote]

Originally Posted by ZAKtheGeek

I'm not saying God controls minds, I'm saying it created them (as a subset of "everything"), and how they work is a function of their design, as with all things.

I like that you use "it" to refer to God. No, I really do. And I'm trying to understand your point. Are you saying the function of your mind is sinful in itself, or that it's inevitable that your mind makes you do/think sinful things?

[I_Like_Swordchucks]

Originally Posted by Solid Snake

That's two apostles right there who wrote down their stuff. (Including the gospels themselves there's also Mark/Levi who's suggested to have written the Gospel of Mark.)

Not to detract from your well placed points, but I do believe you're referring to Matthew there, not Mark. Matthew was Levi, Mark was John Mark (the kid that the apostle Paul didn't like at first).

We also have the book of James, which was potentially written by one of the Jameses (probably the one that wasn't killed by Herod).

But yes, most of these guys were fishermen. Matthew was a tax collector and would have been literate, but very few of these guys could read or write.

[Gorefiend]

125 AD... That's... about a hundred years after Jesus died? When you copy by hand, and you take into account that those copyists were uprofessional, that's a lot of room for error, addition, subtraction, and change. Besides, as I stated, most/all English versions of the Bible (including the King James Bible) aren't based on the best manuscripts available. They're based on Erasmus' translation of a handful of later Greek manuscripts into Latin, which included one which was forged so he would include the Johannine Comma. That, BTW, is the only part in the Gospels that claims any sort of Trinity. As for why word choice is important? Because tons of people believe every word in the Bible (often times, King James' Version) were scribed by God and given to us somehow, and that therefore every phrase is not only wise, but Holy, and so justify some rather horrible things, like prolonging the war in the Middle East, or persecuting homosexuals, or preventing women from advancing in society, or killing non-believers, or a heck of a lot of other things. If we put things in perspective, we can change our kerygma* and prevent our religions from becoming obsolete, or worse, from causing our whole society to stagnate.

As far as those original Christians on death row in Rome... They were convinced first that the world was about to end, and later that leading their life and dying as martyrs would make them reach heaven faster. Roman generals actually complained of Christians begging to be killed, not because Jesus was son of God, but because he, too, had been a martyr. No one claimed he had been Son of God or the Word of God until some 200 years after Jesus died, and even afterwards, the concept of the Trinity wasn't made official until Arius and Athanasius, hundreds of years after the fact.

That said, how recently was that papyrus discovered? Any chance its a forgery? After all, papyrus generally does NOT survive that long, and many forgeries have been made. Unless you're talking about this one tiny bit of papyrus that HAS been found and, except for your claim that it is intact, quite readily fills the descriptions you've made. (The one I'm aware of is a tiny scrap, hardly a couple of verses.)

Lastly, for the record, I'm actually Jewish. I also have studied quite a bit of this stuff. Another very good book I'd recommend is A History of God, by Karen Armstrong. She's very articulate, and demonstrates a lot of knowledge on the subject.

*Kerygma is a term somewhat related to dogma. It comprises the things a religion teaches at the time, whereas dogma comprises the basic tenets of a religion. For instance, dying in the Coliseums in the 200's, crusading in the 1300's, peace in more recent times may be examples of kerygma, while the teaching of the Eucharist would be dogma. In Western Christianity,the terms have become interchangeable, so in these religions changing certain elements of the kerygma could be considered as changing the dogma, at least at first.

[Fifthfiend]

Atheists would decry that logic as intellectually unsound and incohesive, and there's really not much I can say in response to that; my faith is on a deeper "soul" level than the logic with which my "brain" seems to function.

Actually I would decry it as lazy and rather spiritually hollow. It just doesn't especially seem like what I would call a Beatitude unto the Lord to, having felt the touch of the divine in your own life, to blindly accept what the nearest person and / or religious institution subsequently hands to you with the claim that it represents His word and will.

Fuck how do you know what He wants isn't for you to accept that uncertainty is a part of the world as He created it and that part of the Plan isn't for you to have to muddle along a bit and figure things out for yourself, and that you aren't fucking up the entire production by taking the easy answer?

For whatever reason God chose to make people fallible and then His son chose to spread his message by way of those same fallible creatures which He created, and it seems to me that to claim otherwise is to deny God's own design for His creation. Hell if God were going to use His divine puissance to ensure that the Testament passes so flawlessly from hand to eye to scribbling hand - if he were going to intervene so directly in the doings of man to restrain us from the consequences of our own fallibility - then what would be the point of anything?

[ZAKtheGeek]

I like that you use "it" to refer to God. No, I really do. And I'm trying to understand your point. Are you saying the function of your mind is sinful in itself, or that it's inevitable that your mind makes you do/think sinful things?

I'm saying how minds work depends on how they were designed, so I fail to see any justice in God judging the decisions that result from its own design. I don't make a glass ball, then smash it to bits for rolling down inclined surfaces; or at the very least, I don't blame the fucking ball.

In context, I'm saying God's a dick for making people that like to do certain things, then punishing them for doing those things.

And I could talk about inevitability too, but that's not the point I'm trying to make here.

[Sithdarth]

Huh? First Peter begins with the line "Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ." It's clearly promoted as a writing from the apostle Peter and it rather rigorously outlines his faith. second Peter starts off "Simon Peter, a servant and apostle of Jesus Christ." The Christian scholarly community promotes the view of the first letter being written in AD 64 and the second being written in AD 67 by the same Peter who stands on water.

We also have 1 John, 2 John, and 3 John by the apostle John (that one who Jesus loved who also supposedly authors the Gospel of John.)

That's two apostles right there who wrote down their stuff. (Including the gospels themselves there's also Mark/Levi who's suggested to have written the Gospel of Mark.) As for the others, well some may have simply been unable to write (Bartholomew in particular strikes me as a likely candidate for being illiterate.) And if you want to get into the gnostics, Thomas (of the doubting variety) supposedly wrote his own gospel that the Christian church rejected (claiming it was not in fact authentically the work of Thomas himself.)

Sorry I meant to say all the apostles there because I know we have writings from two of them. As far as being illiterate that really isn't an excuse. I'm pretty sure they could have found someone to write it down for them at some point.

Further I don't think it'd be to very hard for Jesus to write a gospel and then shove it in a cave somewhere until he was dead and resurrected and then tell one of his apostles were it was.

Thaddaeus (Judas son of James,) who is not Judas Iscariot, mentioned in Matthew 10:3, Mark 3:18, and given a line of speech in John 14:22.

This would be the apostle I'm talking about. Thaddaeus isn't even his accepted name. According to church doctrine its St. Jude. He was also named as Lebbaeus, Judas the Zealot, Judas son of James (as you pointed out), and Judas brother of James. He is also supposedly a brother to Jesus. His name is one of the clearer example of how person sentiment always clouds writing and can obscure key facts.

[Archbio]

I don't make a glass ball, then smash it to bits for rolling down inclined surfaces; or at the very least, I don't blame the fucking ball.

Especially if you've made every single surface and are supplying the gravity.

Following general Christian theology, God not only created the human spirit/mind/soul and the human body, which then all have characteristics determined by the creator assuming the creator has itself free will; but it also created the world and the root of every opportunity for 'sin.' The creator has decided on how easily tempted humans are, and how strong and frequent temptations are. God also didn't take adequate precautions to properly inform its creatures of the home rules.

If we're supposed to be following rules (no matter if it's avoiding sin or accepting some religious notion), freewill actually doesn't mean much when we don't actually know* we're supposed to follow these particular rules, and these rules often hinge in good part on divine edicts; not instinct, reason or our desires. On the contrary.

While I'm at it, the definition of 'sin' is also within the control of a freewilled God. As is the judgment itself, its critera and possible sentences. The whole process is rigged.

Bringing everything down to the freewill of a designed creature in a designed world subjected to unknown, arbitrary (from the perspective of the god) rules is senseless, not just unfair.

Unless one doesn't hold that this God is at once omnipotent, omniscient and omnibenevolent.

*Being told something isn't the same as knowing something.

[Bob The Mercenary]

Originally Posted by Archbio

If we're supposed to be following rules (no matter if it's avoiding sin or accepting some religious notion), freewill actually doesn't mean much when we don't actually know* we're supposed to follow these particular rules, and these rules often hinge in good part on divine edicts; not instinct, reason or our desires. On the contrary.

This is going to sound pretty "out there", but in the Bible, somewhere, it says that God also created the conscience. It says the feeling of whether something is right or not is embedded in our hearts so that even if we weren't given a list of things to do and not do we still would have a gut feeling whether or not it was right.