How does God do anything?

[WAB]

Learner, Matthew 25 has (temporarily?) destroyed my interest in the teachings of Jesus.

Bible Gateway passage: Matthew 25:14-30 - English Standard Version

The Parable of the Talents - “For it will be like a man going on a journey, who called his servants and entrusted to them his property. To one he gave five talents, to another two, to another one, to each according to his ability. Then he went away. He who had received the five talents went at...

www.biblegateway.com

I felt that the servant with the one talent who hid it away to protect it, and then returned it to his master, did the most prudent thing, because he knew his "master", or employer, was a usurer and a dick (the text says "hard man") who produced nothing and made money from money; and yet, according to the parable, this prudent (read: virtuous) servant was "wicked" and deserved to be punished in the outer dark with the weeping and the gnashing of teeth and all that cruel and vicious stupidity.

The parable was supposed to mean three important things:

• One, be a good servant. Serve your master faithfully and you will be rewarded.
• The second meaning is: God wants us to make the best out of what he gives us.
• And for the walloping, faith-destroying third: God does what he pleases, and, if he decides to, he will give someone very little and then take that away, while he will also lavishly reward those who already have a lot - if he chooses. God is capricious and does what he pleases, with no need to explain himself or to even do anything THAT MAKES SENSE.

So, God is nature, which is capricious and answers to no-one, and has no sense of moral obligation, or right or wrong. Jesus is essentially telling his followers that God is nature. And, as anyone knows, as soon as you think you're in good with nature, a tree will fall on you, and you will die, and no-one will be around to hear it, not even some rabbits or chipmunks, so it won't make a sound, which will be alright with you because you'll be dead.

Some people understand that being dead is about the best state to be in, but it takes some living, and some wisdom to get it. We were all dead before, and will go back to being dead. I didn't keep tapping my foot and looking at my watch as the billions of years before I was born went by. Actually I didn't notice. And it'll be just like that when I go back to being dead, but this is for another thread.

Back to nature:

Nature sometimes causes male deer to get their antlers entangled. Often they struggle to no avail, and will eventually collapse and even more eventually die of thirst, all the while suffering goodness knows what horrible discomfort and anxiety. Sometimes decent human beings find these animals and with much gentle and loving effort separate them, with no reward save for the good of doing it ('virtue is it's own reward' happens to be true).

Hunters Help Rescue Two Deer Whose Antlers Got Entangled With Each Other - News18

Video of Wednesday’s rescue on WOOD-TV’s website shows Johnson’s friend, Brad Lyons, eventually deploying a specialized branch saw to cut part of an antler

www.news18.com

God Schmod. The best thing God ever does is when he does nothing, which, thankfully for all of us, is ALL THE TIME.

People are better, and you can actually see them, and talk to them.

Rabbits and chipmunks are cool too.

ETA: Oh I forgot to ask. What do you suppose God gets out of two male deer getting their antlers entangled and the two poor creatures dying a SLOW and horrible death? In the light of nature, it's easily understood: shit happens. It's unfortunate, and lamentable, and I suggest that if you put your heart and mind to it you will be able to empathize with such a thing happening to innocent creatures, and wonder why God let it happen - I mean seeing as God sees every sparrow fall and has the hairs of our heads numbered?

You will have to realize, in your rational mind, that such a terrible thing happening is explainable only in terms of nature and reality. It is impossible to explain given a God who is interested and involved with the world and who notices every sparrow that falls.

Unless, unless! The two male deer were unrepentant sinners in a past life, and God had provided this punishment as entertainment for himself and moral instruction for the rest of us?

Phooey. Phooey and nonsense.

 

[Learner]

Ok, I see the logic....

Bethlehem and Jerusalem exists.

Exactly. Making Jesus exactly as probable as Santa and Saturnalia.

Hmm, not sure if I go with that. Bethlehem exists as does Saturn exists - the Roman festival Saturnalia, were real events, which were as probable as the Jewsh festival events, such as , passover, feast of unleavened bread, etc...

Jesus the most written about from antiquity should be as probable as the lesser written about Caesar and practically everyone else - if, we are all using the same basic logic, on this particular discussion, I think.

 

[T.G.G. Moogly]

Jesus the most written about from antiquity should be as probable as the lesser written about Caesar and practically everyone else - if, we are all using the same basic logic, on this particular discussion, I think.

That's not accurate. People spent exponentially more time doing other things than talking about religion. They spent more time killing each other regularly over who had the right Jesus.

Caesar is a known. Jesus on the other hand has ten thousand different renditions. Which Jesus ghost is Learner talking about?

 

[Learner]

Jesus the most written about from antiquity should be as probable as the lesser written about Caesar and practically everyone else - if, we are all using the same basic logic, on this particular discussion, I think.

That's not accurate. People spent exponentially more time doing other things than talking about religion. They spent more time killing each other regularly over who had the right Jesus.

Caesar is a known. Jesus on the other hand has ten thousand different renditions. Which Jesus ghost is Learner talking about?

The Jesus that secular scholars also agree and believe existed. I thought Bart Erhman was your friend?

From the horses mouth

"... I think atheists have done themselves a disservice by jumping on the bandwagon of mythiscism... .. frankly it makes you look foolish to the outside world..." Bart Erhman.

 

[Learner]

Learner, Matthew 25 has (temporarily?) destroyed my interest in the teachings of Jesus.

Hey WAB, good to see you're still around.

Will read and refresh myself on Matt 25, for the context you're highlighting.

(Elixir's post 279 also noted)

 

[T.G.G. Moogly]

Jesus the most written about from antiquity should be as probable as the lesser written about Caesar and practically everyone else - if, we are all using the same basic logic, on this particular discussion, I think.

That's not accurate. People spent exponentially more time doing other things than talking about religion. They spent more time killing each other regularly over who had the right Jesus.

Caesar is a known. Jesus on the other hand has ten thousand different renditions. Which Jesus ghost is Learner talking about?

The Jesus that secular scholars also agree and believe existed. I thought Bart Erhman was your friend?

From the horses mouth

"... I think atheists have done themselves a disservice by jumping on the bandwagon of mythiscism... .. frankly it makes you look foolish to the outside world..." Bart Erhman.

They wouldn't be able to sell all those books if they were honest with themselves.

 

[Rhea]

Jesus the most written about from antiquity should be as probable as the lesser written about Caesar and practically everyone else - if, we are all using the same basic logic, on this particular discussion, I think.

But we are NOT using the same logic in this discussion.

Caesar was written about by people all around him. His family, his friends, his rivals, his enemies, even the gospel writers. He (they, all the caesars) was written about when he (they) was a child. He was written about contemporaneously when he took office, when he made actions, and when he died.

Jesus was written about…. Only after his alleged death, and only by his adherents.

The fact that we are NOT using the same basic logic to compare the two accounts is public and obvious.

Caesar is a known. Jesus on the other hand has ten thousand different renditions. Which Jesus ghost is Learner talking about?

The Jesus that secular scholars also agree and believe existed.

Also public and obvious is that the secular scholars do NOT agree and believe that this Jesus was divine, magical, crucified or resurrected. So it is a deception to imply that “the Jesus Learner is talking about” is the same ones that the secualr scholars are talking about.

 

[Elixir]

Apparently the wise knew Jesus existed before Jesus existed. And were already in on the conspiracy plot.

 

[Swammerdami]

The usual Big Bang model of the universe's distant past implies that in the distant future the universe suffers a boring Entropy Death lasting for googols of aeons and longer. Penrose found this so unpleasant to contemplate that he devised Conformal Cyclic Cosmology.

The BB model does NOT say that the universe has a beginning.

It says that the further back in time we look, the smaller the universe was; And it observes that as the universe became smaller, some of the fundamental parts from which it is made showed radical changes in their behaviour, which significantly changed the rate of expansion.

It reaches a point before which the behaviour of the universe cannot be described, and tells us that at that point the universe was very small, and expanding very rapidly.

Some have speculated that this implies that a very short time earlier, the universe had a size of zero - that is, it didn't exist at all, and must have begun at that point. But that's speculation, and not a part of the theory.
...
While it is true that our ability to describe events using our current equations breaks down, I do not personally feel that we can so casually disregard the First Law of Thermodynamics as to lazily extrapolate that a beginning must have been a reality.

Of course, anything seems possible if you don't understand anything. And that's true of all speculation prior to the Planck epoch, including mine. But it takes a special kind of laziness to spend decades claiming that the BB model says that the universe has a beginning, without ever making the simple enquiries necessary to determine that it says no such thing.

The universe may or may not have had a beginning, and the BB model doesn't (yet) tell us which.

(Bilby -- Did you intend "Second Law"?)

I am intrigued by Sir Roger Penrose's Conformal Cyclic Cosmology. For starters, I think it eliminates the need for the peculiar "Inflationary Epoch" not implied by other laws of physics. In his theory, the "Bang" (origin) of our universe (call it #666 though it would presumably be in an infinite progression) was the the death phase of universe #665; and our entropy death will be the Bang for universe #667. (Penrose even thinks careful study of the cosmic microwave background may show evidence of universe #665.)

Penrose's theory may seem like crackpottery; but this Nobel prize-winner is one of the world's most creative living geniuses and, perhaps, the greatest living cosmologist.

 

[Learner]

Jesus the most written about from antiquity should be as probable as the lesser written about Caesar and practically everyone else - if, we are all using the same basic logic, on this particular discussion, I think.

But we are NOT using the same logic in this discussion.

No disputing you here...

In you previous post your said " Exactly. Making Jesus exactly as probable as Santa and Saturnalia." The logic that Santa being a fairy story, had somehow, the same probable comparison with Saturnalia, which were real events. Saturn and its rings are real too.

Caesar was written about by people all around him. His family, his friends, his rivals, his enemies, even the gospel writers. He (they, all the caesars) was written about when he (they) was a child. He was written about contemporaneously when he took office, when he made actions, and when he died.

Jesus was written about…. Only after his alleged death, and only by his adherents.

The fact that we are NOT using the same basic logic to compare the two accounts is public and obvious.

I think the understanding is: the people who wrote the bible, would still be within their life expectancies, living during when Jesus was alive, and after His death when the Gospels are understood to have been written.
.

Caesar is a known. Jesus on the other hand has ten thousand different renditions. Which Jesus ghost is Learner talking about?

The Jesus that secular scholars also agree and believe existed.

Also public and obvious is that the secular scholars do NOT agree and believe that this Jesus was divine, magical, crucified or resurrected. So it is a deception to imply that “the Jesus Learner is talking about” is the same ones that the secualr scholars are talking about.

Existed Rhea. The majority (if not all) agree Jesus existed.

 

[Learner]

Apparently the wise knew Jesus existed before Jesus existed. And were already in on the conspiracy plot.

View attachment 36420

I think the painter of the above had some advantage, being that he existed long after Jesus was crucified.

 

[Rhea]

I think the understanding is: the people who wrote the bible, would still be within their life expectancies, living during when Jesus was alive, and after His death when the Gospels are understood to have been written.

You don’t know that. You have no idea who they were.

Existed Rhea. The majority (if not all) agree Jesus existed.

Not the same Jesus you believe. You believe in a divine being who did specific things. Secular scholars (soe of them, anyway) believe in the existence of some person who bears a slight resemblance to the non-magical things in a few of the stories, and many scholars posit an amalgam of several people. That is NOT, at all, believing that your Jesus existed.

 

[Rhea]

Apparently the wise knew Jesus existed before Jesus existed. And were already in on the conspiracy plot.

View attachment 36420

I think the painter of the above had some advantage, being that he existed long after Jesus was crucified.

But it give us a nice view of how the people on whom you rely for religious information werre willing to just make shit up to tell their stories.

 

[Learner]

I think the understanding is: the people who wrote the bible, would still be within their life expectancies, living during when Jesus was alive, and after His death when the Gospels are understood to have been written.

You don’t know that. You have no idea who they were

Existed Rhea. The majority (if not all) agree Jesus existed.

Not the same Jesus you believe. You believe in a divine being who did specific things. Secular scholars (soe of them, anyway) believe in the existence of some person who bears a slight resemblance to the non-magical things in a few of the stories, and many scholars posit an amalgam of several people. That is NOT, at all, believing that your Jesus existed.

Well yes of course... my Jesus,we didn't get to that. We can discuss that too....

I forgot you would need a transcript from the previous vid I posted of Bart Erhman. He says ALL the scholars and historians of the NT agrees with Jesus's existence.

 

[DBT]

I'm not a religionist (didn't know there were such things). I don't promote or defend any religious beliefs. I'm a theist I believe our existence and the universe was intentionally caused. Not because of what we don't know and can't observe but based on what we do know and observe.

Except that you can't observe the great intender. You can't observe it, measure it, smell it, quantify it, predict what it will do, experiment with it, hear it, feel it, see it, you can't do anything with it. Unless of course you and the great intender are one and the same.

You can't observe, taste, feel, touch or explain the alleged natural forces that caused nature to exist but that doesn't stop you from believing they caused the universe and life to exist...true?

Rather than external forces, matter/energy has properties.

 

[Rhea]

Bart Erhman. He says ALL the scholars and historians of the NT agrees with Jesus's existence.

I find this claim surprising, and vague. Like saying that ALL scholars agree that Paul Bunyan existed. Many do. That does not convert to “the stories of Paul Bunyan are true,” though, does it.

Aside, I have experience with Bart Ehrman’s work, having listened to one of his 12-hour courses. I think it was the one on the historicity of Jesus, even, but it might have been the new testament one. It’s been 20 years. Anyway, throughout that 12 hours, I never once got the impression that his Jesus and your Jesus were the same Jesus. Like Paul Bunyan, a “real person” existed whose life was used as backdrop for fantastical fictions.

 

[bilby]

Jesus the most written about from antiquity should be as probable as the lesser written about Caesar and practically everyone else - if, we are all using the same basic logic, on this particular discussion, I think.

But we are NOT using the same logic in this discussion.

No disputing you here...

In you previous post your said " Exactly. Making Jesus exactly as probable as Santa and Saturnalia." The logic that Santa being a fairy story, had somehow, the same probable comparison with Saturnalia, which were real events. Saturn and its rings are real too.

Caesar was written about by people all around him. His family, his friends, his rivals, his enemies, even the gospel writers. He (they, all the caesars) was written about when he (they) was a child. He was written about contemporaneously when he took office, when he made actions, and when he died.

Jesus was written about…. Only after his alleged death, and only by his adherents.

The fact that we are NOT using the same basic logic to compare the two accounts is public and obvious.

I think the understanding is: the people who wrote the bible, would still be within their life expectancies, living during when Jesus was alive, and after His death when the Gospels are understood to have been written.
.

Caesar is a known. Jesus on the other hand has ten thousand different renditions. Which Jesus ghost is Learner talking about?

The Jesus that secular scholars also agree and believe existed.

Also public and obvious is that the secular scholars do NOT agree and believe that this Jesus was divine, magical, crucified or resurrected. So it is a deception to imply that “the Jesus Learner is talking about” is the same ones that the secualr scholars are talking about.

Existed Rhea. The majority (if not all) agree Jesus existed.

The majority do NOT agree Jesus existed.

And never have.

It's probable that the majority of Christians agree that Jesus existed. It's certain that the majority of humanity does not, and never has.

 

[Swammerdami]

Recently I watched a video by Richard Carrier discussing his book On the Historicity of Jesus. Carrier has a PhD in History of Philosophy and has written other books on this topic. As an atheist, he makes clear that the only two hypotheses worth considering are
(a) There was a real Jesus, presumably of Nazareth, who inspired the new religion(s) but he performed no miracles and was not resurrected.
(b) There was no such Jesus at all; the whole story is an invention.

I agree those are the choices, but Occam's Razor leads me to (a). Carrier, on the other hand, feels that (b) is much more probable. (As I mentioned in another thread, he claims to reach this result via Bayesian analysis!) To reach this conclusion he assumes the mentions of Jesus by Josephus are ALL later interpolations. Several times in the video he plugs his book ("that's why the book is so long ... I consider ALL the evidence") but my Kinokuniya Wish-List is already overly long. In any event I'm sure Carrier knows much more^* on the topic than I do, so I will be less adamant about Jesus' historicity going forward.

The consensus, IIUC, is that Josephus DID write about Jesus, but some brief phrases ("He was the Messiah") were later interpolations. This makes sense to me. Adding a sentence is easier than a paragraph when interpolating, and if Christians DID inject the entire paragraphs about Jesus, surely they would not have been as lukewarm as Josephus' mention (sans "Messiah").

* - I only skimmed the YouTube, but I noticed at one point he mentions that "Isaac was Abraham's first-born son"!!! I am NOT a Biblical scholar but even I knew that BOTH the Koran and the Torah show Ishmael as born first, and that birth is an essential part of the story. (Where did Carrier get his PhD from, again? )

 

[T.G.G. Moogly]

Maybe that's how god does things. I mean the same argument that the gospel protagonist was historical can be made for Pegasus, Hercules, dragons, gods and any mythical entity. This is how fiction writers, actors, storytellers and others have made comfortable livings for millennia, by embellishing everyday thoughts and experiences. You just can't have any preconceptions about these folks' intentions if you're going to understand how their gods do anything.

 

[atrib]

I think the understanding is: the people who wrote the bible, would still be within their life expectancies, living during when Jesus was alive, and after His death when the Gospels are understood to have been written.

You don’t know that. You have no idea who they were

Existed Rhea. The majority (if not all) agree Jesus existed.

Not the same Jesus you believe. You believe in a divine being who did specific things. Secular scholars (soe of them, anyway) believe in the existence of some person who bears a slight resemblance to the non-magical things in a few of the stories, and many scholars posit an amalgam of several people. That is NOT, at all, believing that your Jesus existed.

Well yes of course... my Jesus,we didn't get to that. We can discuss that too....

I forgot you would need a transcript from the previous vid I posted of Bart Erhman. He says ALL the scholars and historians of the NT agrees with Jesus's existence.

No, he doesn't. Richard Carrier, PhD in History from Columbia, for one, doesn't believe Jesus was a real historical person, and he has written books about it. And there is no way Erhman could know what every single historian believes.

You really need to stop making up shit.