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Catholic Church "Miracles"

Started by Paolo, December 07, 2020, 12:58:43 PM

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Mike Cl

A little food for thought.
A snippet from Carrier's new book--"on the Historicity of Jesus; Why We Might Have Reason for Doubt.
"The name 'Jesus Christ' literally means 'Savior Messiah', which actually just means 'Annointed Savior'.  The author of the Gospel of Matthew was well aware of this, and even made a point of it.  Jesus is an English derivation from the Greek spelling of the Hebrew name Joshua (Yeshua), which means 'Yahweh saves'. Christ is from the Greek christos, meaning 'annointed', which in Hebrew is masiah, 'messiah'.
     That should make us suspicious from the start.  Isn't his name abnormally convenient?"

Yeah, I would think so.  But the fundies would most likely simply say that that was the way god planned it.  Logic is not the long suit of the religious.
Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able?<br />Then he is not omnipotent,<br />Is he able but not willing?<br />Then whence cometh evil?<br />Is he neither able or willing?<br />Then why call him god?

Mike Cl

Quote from: drunkenshoe on February 03, 2021, 11:36:49 AM
Mike didn't need the chair anymore. He was floating in air, a meter above the ground, and was grateful his wife didn't see the light on his face while typing...





:lol:
I haven't posted about this for at least 5 yrs.  It's fun.  I spent up to a decade hitting the books hard about Jesus and christianity in general.  My fav part was the historicity of jesus.  I used fundamental (and hard fundy, like born-again material) books, liberal christian material, texts used in seminaries, popular christian scholars, and all of the mythist material I could find.  It was actually quite fun.  I learned quite a bit--which is fun.
Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able?<br />Then he is not omnipotent,<br />Is he able but not willing?<br />Then whence cometh evil?<br />Is he neither able or willing?<br />Then why call him god?

Cassia


Yeah. Great reads Mike !
The ancients were expert star and sky gazers. Useful for timing crop planting/harvest and navigating the seas. They have left us their celestial calendars. Tablets dating back to 1500 BC document the application of mathematics to the variation in the length of daylight over each solar year.

Luke 23:44-45. After the the fake death of cheezus....
“It was now about noon and darkness came over the whole land until three in the afternoon because of an eclipse of the sun.”

No mention of that 3 hours of darkness in any records. It would have been a HUGE deal for all of them. NASA has calculated no eclipses would be visible anywhere near the Holy Land around that year. What a missed miraculous opportunity. Bullocks.

Mike Cl

#228
This is an example of early Baruch.  Why post it again?  It fits what we are discussing in this thread, and all the material he presents is accurate:

Singulorum - the history of history ... is historiography.  The history of Christianity officially begins with Eusebius who is a contemporary of Emperor Constantine circa 325 CE.  This is basically 300 years after Paul.  History as written, is always propaganda by the winning side.  It has to be cross-examined ;-)  The writings of contemporary witnesses are the most reliable, but always biased.  One also has to distinguish between official records and popular fiction.  Most records, both Jewish and Gentile, for Palestine ... were destroyed in 70 CE, during the first Jewish-Roman war.  It doesn't take a conspiracy on the part of Jews or Romans to suppress the "Jesus" literature or groups that embodied that message ... it was illegal to operate an unauthorized men's club, and like most crimes of that era, the punishment was death, even for women.

Given that, if we imagine that America was destroyed, and 300 years later someone dug up "Tom Sawyer" ... would it be treated as historical evidence that Tom Sayer existed?  No ... but it would be proof that Mark Twain existed ... except that Mark Twain didn't exist, Samuel Clemens did.  That is what we are faced with in the textual evidence.  I have studied this early evidence myself ... specifically the "red letter" words of Jesus.  The gospels are novellas ... short religious fictions to support one or more early Christian communities ... that were more or less Pauline ... because all the other messianic Jews from 70 - 135 CE, were destroyed by the Romans in three massive Roman-Jewish wars (see Josephus for the first one).  The Gentiles wrote similar religious and secular literature, it was pulp fiction.  As Eusebius probably honestly relates ... all Jews were prohibited from the ruins of Jerusalem and a radius many miles around ... but one group, descended from the "James the Just" group, opted to apostasy from Judaism, so that they could retain access after 135 CE.  Jews continued in the neighborhood for several more centuries, particularly in Galilee ... where rabbinic Judaism was first birthed.  Historical Romans didn't write much about messianic Jews ... other than that they killed them for good reason.  Historical Jews, the surviving ones, were anti-messianic Jews ... for understandable reasons.  They did write about these troublemakers, but never about Jesus, but about the other failed pretenders to the miracle of Hannukah oil.

Pretty much anything that had been Jewish-Gentile Christianity, was leveled and rewritten circa 135 - 200 CE.  There is evidence of a non-textual kind, prior to Constantine ... but this is evidence of Jewish-Christian communities of uncertain affiliation in Jerusalem ... prior to Constantine, but how prior, we don't know.  The other non-textual evidence is there too, but it is pretty thin before Christianity was chosen, and re-imagined politically, as a State religion.  Initially this new religion was Greek Orthodox, centered on Thessalonica and Constantinople, but the people in the West didn't speak Greek much, so a Latin derivative church had to be invented, centered on Rome and Carthage.

Our first complete NT books come from 200 CE.  Josephus was considered a traitor by the rabbinic Jews, so his books weren't copied by copyists of Jewish persuasion ... but were copied by Gentile historians and eventually under Emperor Constantine, by Gentile Christians.  Gentile Christianity as we know it got its start under Paul, whose writings were edited (as any ancient writing was) and a few other pre-Constantine writings such as The Didache ... which describes an early congregational practice circa Paul.  Diaspora synagogues were mixed communities of kosher Jews and god-fearers.  Many god-fearers were Gentiles who had been freed by their Jewish masters.  You can't go without a boss ... when you were manumitted from slavery ... your ownership was passed from your master to a new paterfamilias.  In some cases this was manumission as a Roman citizen (who was a slave of the Emperor).  Paul's ancestry in Tarsus was likely that kind ... as he admits, his citizenship wasn't purchased ... which means that one could do that ... in the early Roman Empire, most people were not citizens, they were subjects.  The way Paul talks of slavery on several levels ... I don't think that his ancestor had been a free Jew, who purchased (bribed really) a Roman citizenship off of the local governor.  It was more likely a manumission.  This is why Paul targeted manumitted slaves primarily.  This is why Paul speaks with a "slave mentality" and this is very useful to Roman Christianity later on.  But for the first 100 years, Christianoi (Greek for messianic-maniacs) ... just as Quakers/Shakers are named by their enemies much later ... were Jews of various kinds.  There are multiple gospels because there are multiple kinds of "Jesus communities" ... and Paul was one of those "apostles" who went around forming them, initially out of Jewish and god-fearers in existing synagogues ... where anyone who accepted Paul's message, was expelled from the synagogue by both kosher Jews and other messianic Jews.  It was the Roman authorities you had to be afraid of, because if you weren't associated with a legal synagogue, and still congregated, you were a felon.  But on this expulsion, you aren't beaten ... as Paul wasn't ... but upon re-admittence ... as Paul was.  Paul literally underwent multiple excommunications, to get more followers, he got readmitted (probably under false pretenses .. this is why there was a Jewish posse following him everywhere to warn the next synagogue down the road) multiple times ... and on re-admittance was flogged and trod upon at the entrance to the synagogue.  Quite the maniac.  Synagogues were still practicing this 1500 years later, in the time of Baruch Spinoza (who didn't seek re-admittence and so wasn't flogged or trod upon).

Anyway, after 135 CE, the various Christian communities (hence the diatribes concerning heresy by the other Christian groups different from the writer in question) were pretty much Gentile, because they had to be ... and Jewish Christianity pretty much died out, under Constantinian Christianity (State Christianity aka Greek Orthodox Church) by 400 CE.  Constantine's Christianity wasn't anti-Semitic by sentiment but by legal proscription.  Though Jewish Christianity has enjoyed a revival in the last 50 years (as did messianic secular Judaism in Palestine/Israel over the last 100 years).  Early rabbinic Judaism continued also ... but was pretty much suppressed in the Roman Empire by 400 CE also ... that is why there is the break in the Talmud ... from the Jerusalem Talmud to the Babylonian Talmud.  Under Emperor Julian the Apostate, the Temple was going to be rebuilt (as some messianic Jews are planning even now) .. but the early death of this emperor prevented this.  The back-reaction by the Gentile Christians was considerable (destruction of synagogues).

It is a unique Jewish practice, since the destruction of 70 CE ... to preserve perfect copies of Torah ... which is the primary part of the OT or Tanakh.  This is expensive even today ... it is done by hand, and if the scribe makes a single error, the whole scroll gets thrown out.  This is why a kosher Torah scroll costs $40,000 to make.  The OT as a book, was a much later invention circa 950 CE ... by a dissident Jewish group called the Karaiites.  The Aleppo Codex is (except for OT scrolls from the Dead Sea) the oldest partial OT book.  The slightly later Leningrad Codex is the oldest complete Tanakh in existence today ... but hardly the oldest Bible.  The Bible was originally ordered composed by Emperor Constantine.  This was done for 25 copies on vellum ... and each one took an emperor's ransom to make.  The Christian scribes had to kill 3000 sheep to make one copy ... you couldn't just jog on down to Kinko's ;-)  One of these Bibles, or possibly a slightly later issue, has been saved as the Codex Siniaticus ... it is also incomplete, as the Aleppo Codex is.  The story as to how the NT came about is fascinating but a distraction ... suffice it to say, prior to Constantine, we know that it existed as separate codexes (books) not scrolls.  These codexes were on papyrus ... and were actually recycled papyrus ... and the place that the recycled papyrus was produced, and bound into blank journals for business use (as journals are used for bookkeeping today) was in a Lebanese coastal town called ... da.da.da ... Byblos.  BTW - the Codex Siniaticus has plenty of scribal error in it, with emendations to the side of the error.  Gentiles were not going to throw away even a single sheet of vellum for a mere error.  Also Jews don't casually destroy sacred writings ... they are carefully stored or buried.  When the Codex Siniaticus was found, it was literally being used as tinder to light the kitchen stove at the Mt Sinai Monastery.  And rabbinic Jews would agree ... to consign it to the flames.


this was from 2015
Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able?<br />Then he is not omnipotent,<br />Is he able but not willing?<br />Then whence cometh evil?<br />Is he neither able or willing?<br />Then why call him god?

SGOS

MIke, you could have saved yourself a lot of time disproving the Jesus myth to yourself with only one book; The Bible should be enough to convince any thinking person that Jesus was not real.

Mike Cl

Quote from: SGOS on February 04, 2021, 02:58:52 PM
MIke, you could have saved yourself a lot of time disproving the Jesus myth to yourself with only one book; The Bible should be enough to convince any thinking person that Jesus was not real.
Yeah, you are right.  Actually, I did read the entire bible and a couple of seminary texts that taught the bible.  I wanted to understand what the christian viewpoint of all this was.  But you are right--if anybody reads the bible carefully and with an open mind, they will find all the reasons why christianity wrong.  The key is 'with an open mind'; believers don't have a mind, open or closed.
Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able?<br />Then he is not omnipotent,<br />Is he able but not willing?<br />Then whence cometh evil?<br />Is he neither able or willing?<br />Then why call him god?

aitm

“Open mind”...now there is a term that is certainly arbitrary. Open mind to “us” is simply employing logic and simple reason. Open mind to the religious means being able to set aside logic and simple reason and be willing to at least entertain the idea of magic. Open mind seems to be a fallacy of suggestion. For the religious cannot ever have it and those who have it cannot ever abandon it.
A humans desire to live is exceeded only by their willingness to die for another. Even god cannot equal this magnificent sacrifice. No god has the right to judge them.-first tenant of the Panotheust

Mike Cl

Well, Paolo, your responses to my posts about jesus were about what I expected.  Oh---you didn't make any?  That's about what I expected.
Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able?<br />Then he is not omnipotent,<br />Is he able but not willing?<br />Then whence cometh evil?<br />Is he neither able or willing?<br />Then why call him god?

SGOS

Quote from: aitm on February 04, 2021, 07:39:45 PM
“Open mind”...now there is a term that is certainly arbitrary. Open mind to “us” is simply employing logic and simple reason. Open mind to the religious means being able to set aside logic and simple reason and be willing to at least entertain the idea of magic. Open mind seems to be a fallacy of suggestion. For the religious cannot ever have it and those who have it cannot ever abandon it.
Beware of the person who says, "Keep and open mind," because they most likely have a fallacy to sell.

Hydra009

Quote from: SGOS on February 05, 2021, 10:59:43 AM
Beware of the person who says, "Keep and open mind," because they most likely have a fallacy to sell.
Ikr?  Let's say I woke up this morning, took the dog for a walk, and saw a real, live dragon with my own eyes.  I wouldn't just come to you with a story and say "you gotta believe me!".  I would show you any evidence I could possibly get my hands on - video, footprints, claw marks, scorch marks, discarded scales, etc.  And if I didn't have anything substantial, I would simply ask you to be on alert and let me know if you see anything odd.  I would NEVER ask you to take it on faith because anything can be taken on faith, so that route actually hurts my claim because it lumps my claim in with a lot of dodgy and probably false claims.

The only reason people say to take stuff on faith is because they don't have evidence and they know it.  It's a tactic born of desperation and it's sad that it actually works sometimes.

Paolo

#235
Quote from: Mike Cl on January 25, 2021, 10:15:02 AMEarl Doherty argues that Christianity began as a mystical-revelatory religion, very different from the "deviant" sect that won the propaganda war to become the eventual "orthodoxy." The latter gained prominence in the 2nd century and achieved total victory by the 4th. According to this theory, the idea of an historical progenitor was not original to the faith even in Paul's day, but evolved over the course of the later 1st century. As Doherty argues, "Jesus Christ" (which means "The Anointed Savior") was originally a heavenly being, whose atoning death took place at the hands of demonic beings in a supernatural realm halfway between heaven and earth, a sublunar sphere where he assumed a fleshly, quasi-human form. This and the rest of the "gospel" was revealed to the first Christians in visions and inspirations and through the discovery of hidden messages in the scriptures. After the confusion of the Jewish War and persistent battles over power in the church, rooted in a confused mass of variant sectarian dogmas, a new cult arose with the belief that Jesus actually came to earth and was crucified by Jews with the complicity of the Roman authorities. To defend itself against sects more closely adhering to the original, mystical faith, the new church engaged in polemics and power politics, and eventually composed or adopted writings (chiefly the canonical Gospels) supporting its views.

The "scandalous" consequence of Doherty's theory is that Jesus didn't exist. But it cannot be emphasized enough that Doherty's thesis is not "Jesus didn't exist, therefore Christianity started as a mystical-revelatory Jewish sect" but "Christianity started as a mystical-revelatory Jewish sect, therefore Jesus didn't exist." This is significant. Most scholars who argue that Jesus didn't exist (who are called "ahistoricists," because they deny the "historicity" of Jesus, or "mythicists," because they argue Jesus is mythical) have little in the way of reasons beyond a whole complex of arguments from silence. Doherty, in contrast, uses arguments from silence only to support his thesis. He does not base it on such arguments, but rather on positive evidence, especially a slew of very strange facts that his theory accounts for very well but that traditional historicism ignores, or explains poorly. By far most of the criticism or even dismissal of Doherty's work is based on the criticism or dismissal of the Argument from Silence, or his (often supposed) deployment of it. This completely misses the strongest elements of his case: evidence that Christianity did in fact begin as a mystical-revelatory religion.

Little needs to be said about Earl Doherty's views. In addition to not being supported, as I said previously, by TRADITIONAL historians (Christian OR OTHERWISE), his work arguably contains many logical/analytical/factual errors and not even skeptics really trust it. Bart D. Ehrman had this to say:

''[The book Jesus, Neither God nor Man is] filled with so many unguarded and undocumented statements and claims, and so many misstatements of fact, that it would take a 2,400-page book to deal with all the problems... Not a single early Christian source supports Doherty's claim that Paul and those before him thought of Jesus as a spiritual, not a human being, who was executed in the spiritual, not the earthly realm."

This Jesus, Neither God nor Man is said to be ''[a] revised edition of [The Jesus Puzzle], with a new title [...] expanded by incorporating the rebuttals to criticisms received since 1999 and accumulated on his website''.

So, if this book sequel is said to be same book, but a self-proclaimed 'improved' one, and Ehrman had this to say about it, then of course it follows that what he said can be equally applied, arguably even more, to the weaker first book.

If someone as virulent anti-Christian as Bart Erhman has such a view of Doherty's work, do we really need to go any further? The guy is an obvious hack. I rest my case. Why would he say any of this if Doherty's book is nothing but horsecrap?

Quote from: Mike Cl on January 25, 2021, 10:15:02 AMThe mythical Jesus did not have the name Mr. Jesus Christ (no middle initial either--although I like to add an H. to it or simply say 'Jesus fucking Christ'--especially when I hit my thumb with a hammer.

This is a phenomenally dumb statement. Was this supposed a joke or something? I wouldn't know, since I have Asperger's Syndrome.

Anyway, I just wanted to say this. Did Carrier really wrote this in a scholarly, professional review? It seems very inappropriate, unless he wants to gratuitously attack the Christian religion and its believers. Which would be not be surprising coming from the ilk of New Atheism shitheads, such as Dawkins, Harris, etc.
Oh noes...I think I’m dead....

Paolo

Quote from: Mike Cl on February 05, 2021, 10:29:58 AM
Well, Paolo, your responses to my posts about jesus were about what I expected.  Oh---you didn't make any?  That's about what I expected.

Well, sorry that I have a sick grandmother that I have to take care of daily, and cannot immediately indulge, 24/7, your atheistic delusions.

Thankfully, I had to say much less this time!
Oh noes...I think I’m dead....

Paolo

#237
Quote from: Paolo on February 05, 2021, 09:34:28 PMThis is a phenomenally dumb statement. Was this supposed a joke or something? I wouldn't know, since I have Asperger's Syndrome.

Anyway, I just wanted to say this. Did Carrier really wrote this in a scholarly, professional review? It seems very inappropriate, unless he wants to gratuitously attack the Christian religion and its believers. Which would be not be surprising coming from the ilk of New Atheism shitheads, such as Dawkins, Harris, etc.

I did a cursory Web search, and could not find that specific bit on Carrier's original 'review'. I suppose this must be Mike's own commentary on it, thus. He formatted his post so badly that I couldn't tell what was his crap versus Carrier's.

Well, I suppose I should apologize for this 'misreading', anyway!  :lol:
Oh noes...I think I’m dead....

Mike Cl

Quote from: Paolo on February 05, 2021, 09:34:28 PM

Anyway, I just wanted to say this. Did Carrier really wrote this in a scholarly, professional review? It seems very inappropriate, unless he wants to gratuitously attack the Christian religion and its believers. Which would be not be surprising coming from the ilk of New Atheism shitheads, such as Dawkins, Harris, etc.
Do you need to ask me what Carrier wrote or not write.  Look it up. So far all you have offered is your opinion.  And not even on the central question of whether or not Jesus was an actual person.  Do you have any facts to offer or just slurs like 'shithead' or you own rambling opinion?????
Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able?<br />Then he is not omnipotent,<br />Is he able but not willing?<br />Then whence cometh evil?<br />Is he neither able or willing?<br />Then why call him god?

Mike Cl

Quote from: Paolo on February 05, 2021, 09:57:03 PM
Well, sorry that I have a sick grandmother that I have to take care of daily, and cannot immediately indulge, 24/7, your atheistic delusions.

Thankfully, I had to say much less this time!
Sorry about your grandmother--hopefully, with your help, she will improve. 

My atheistic thoughts may be delusions--if so, please point out how that is the case.  Name calling and pure opinion proves nothing. 
Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able?<br />Then he is not omnipotent,<br />Is he able but not willing?<br />Then whence cometh evil?<br />Is he neither able or willing?<br />Then why call him god?