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Virgin birth of Jesus
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Sarpedon
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The reason that you are all having problems with this argument is because it is an entirely semantic argument. The concepts of religion and nationality are artificial, and people define them as they desire. To define a Christian as 'one who follows the teachings of Christ' is as arbitrary as defining a Scotsman as one born in the land known as Scotland.
The reason the 'No true Scotsman' argument is fallacious is because it focuses on the arbitrary quality of definitions.
The reason the 'No true Scotsman' argument is fallacious is because it focuses on the arbitrary quality of definitions.
Will Wiley
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Of course you can. Unless you believe there is some objective standard that defines what a christian is.
What is that standard and how did you decide that is the correct standard.
Atheos
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This might be a good point to draw attention to the fact that there are quite a few denominations of Christianity who believe that all other denominations are not true Christians.
James Brown
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The only thing that all Christians agree on is that the majority of the others are doing it wrong.
Are you saying that because you cannot define a true Scotsman, that Scotland does not exist?
Christians, Muslims, Hindus follow God in many different ways, so are you saying this means there is no God, in the same way as there is no Scotland?
DrZoidberg
Contributor
I recommend Misquoting Jesus by Bart Ehrman. He explains how many of the paragraphs in it have been added to settle specific conflict. Which doesn't really make sense outside the context. But the Bible is always read outside of context.
I don't it's possible to know which are the true Christians
I don't it's possible to know which are the true Christians
Don't you think we might start with things Jesus actually recommended, like loving our enemies or never swearing oaths? It would quickly cut out most of those who claim the label.
They aren't specific to christian teaching, must people don't need a sky daddy to adhere to those principles. No, let's start with the run-of-the-mill christian stuff that Jesus said, like claiming that he was the messiah and the son of god.
Sarpedon
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The land now known as Scotland was not always so known, nor was it always inhabited by the people known as the Scots. Likewise, there's no reason to believe that the current situation will continue forever.
I am not saying there is no such thing as 'Scotland.' I'm saying that, as a label 'Scotland' is not an absolute thing. You prove my point by assuming a binary choice: Either Scotland exists or it doesn't, because of your simplistic confusion of a label for a thing itself. I have no such confusion. I can recognize the applicability of a label without limiting my understanding to the definition of the label.
The idea that there is a 'true Scotsman' to be found is simply the error of Platonism, which imagined that there exists a perfect prototype of every idea, not recognizing that words and ideas are just things we invent to make sense of the world, which is what it is, regardless of what we call it.
While it is true I don't believe there is a god, I don't think that because of any semantic argument. That is a separate question. Many religious people are intoxicated by the seeming magic of words and writings, and relate their faith in them to their faith in god. It is the common error of mistaking the symbol for the object.
DrZoidberg
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If we look at the histories of all famous ancient people they are hagiographs. With every retelling bits get taken away and bits get added. Even if Jesus was a historical person there's no reason he said any of the things in the Bible nor matched their behaviours. The Christian Bible is basically the melding of Greek philosophy and Jewish theology. We know this because of Philo of Alexandria, from who most of the core elements sprung. That means we know a couple of things. That Jesus was in a position to study Greek philosophy. Or he wouldn't have come into contact with Philo's work. That means he was an aristocrat. Since the Christian Bible was originally commentary of the Torah, (the Dead Sea Scrolls suggest this), it's quite possible Jesus was a rabbi.
Also worth noting, at no point in history have new idea come from below. All new ideas originate in the scholarly class. We like to think that it isn't like that. But that's just the fact. Which just makes the idea of Jesus being a carpenter absurd. But what it does do, is fit a great narrative. Everybody loves rooting for an underdog.
News to me. What other religion calls on us to love enemies, forbids revenge and totally forbids swearing oaths - none I know of. There are lots more such things. Christianity is not a religion, and no religious people are Christian, in my view.
Aren't religions about a fifth-century-BC tyrant imagined to be in total control, and like all such tyrants, so non-okay they require constant praise? It seems to me that Buddhism and Christianity are not about that game, though a lot of the people who take the labels are just the usual mixture of mug and crook.
DrZoidberg
Contributor
Not quite. I'm pretty sure Pagan gods are anthropomorphic embodiment of the forces of nature. Every source I've read on the topic agree on this. Every Pagan diety is linked to one of the forces. If not directly then by lineage.
Christianity is inane in that the Christian god seems to be nothing more than the embodiment of the perfect father. Whoever came up with this probably had a complicated relationship with their father?
Buddhist gods are facets of our personality. And we invite them into us in order to aid us to change our behaviour. It's essentially a tool to break unwanted patterns of behaviour. So ancient AA?
Gods have throughout history been embodiment of the most diverse and abstract things. It's impossible to draw any general conclusions. I can't think of any god concept that is the embodiement of a secular ruler
Buddhist gods are taken for granted, because they were at the time, but are otherwise irrelevant, and in the same way Jesus expressed his socialist convictions using the images available (loving family and so on). We don't really have to play silly buggers, however. It seems to me that only the gods of the Judaic tradition are of the slightest importance, and they are as described. All the pagan hogwash is just an attempt to justify magic dances connected with hunting, planting and so on, mostly involving with animals and sex, and intellectually negligible.
DrZoidberg
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Hmm... I think you may have read a tad much anti-pagan Christian propaganda? Paganism was a sophisticated religion. Christianity just isn't. That's of course a part of it's appeal. Any idiot can get it. But that's not how to build an intelligent faith. Paganism has both depth and surface. It's not all magical dances. Greek paganism produced philosophy, for example.
I think it's interesting how you pick up on the socialism. I maintain that the prime inspiration for Karl Marx was Christianity. It's interesting that in China the Boxers, also Christian (though highly filtered through centuries of Chinese religions) developed very similar ideas. I'd also argue that these all failed for the same reasons. It's unworkable. Christians seems to be the quickest to abandon all the overtly socialist passages in the Bible
Of course Scotland had a beginning, but Scotland is not God.
God the creator of the universe, either exists fully and totally, or there is no God. There is no final proof, but we have faith that God exists, and he created the universe. If God can create life from no life, then it should be well within God's power for Jesus to have a virgin birth. Again, this is a matter of faith without proof.
Sarpedon
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I hate to break it to you, but that notion of God certainly had a beginning.
Of course, I was merely arguing against the 'no true Scotsman' fallacy, not the existence of God. It is no surprise to me that you should regard an argument against the idea that words have intrinsic meaning as an attack on the idea of God. I have repeatedly noted how religious people tend to conflate these two, seemingly unrelated topics. This lends greater credence to my belief that religious belief stems from an error in perception, where language has become so primary in our understanding of the world that people subconciously think that language pre-exists and shapes the world. Indeed, this is clear in scriptures. "In the Beginning there was the Word." for example. This is the mistaking of symbol for reality taken to the extreme. That error is common in religion. Not only is the word mistaken for God, the book where the words are written, the statue or other icon even music is called God. In reality, these are symbols, but the symbol is so enmeshed in the belief that it is unremoveable. Indeed, could God be merely a collection of symbols given an imagined reality? Plato suggested for every concept, there exists a perfect, ideal prototype. Again, he believed that reality followed the ideas, not vice versa. The concept of the almighty and indescribable God is the logical extension of that idea.
I have gone beyond arguing whether God exists or not. I now argue against the belief that ideas exist independent from reality, that symbols are the thing itself, that words have absolute meaning. These are the faulty foundations that the edifice of religion rests upon.
In our evolution, human beings lived and died according to the effectiveness of their social group. For this reason, exchange of information and social cohesion were of primary importance, and the more successful they were, the more successful the group, and all the individuals within the group. When the length and brightness of one's tail is the primary determinant of a bird's reproductive success, it is not surprising that evolution would produce birds with extravagantly long and bright tails. By the same measure when words and ideas are the most important thing, it is not surprising that people would put exaggerated emphasis on them, causing them, like the tail of the peacock, to become extravagantly exaggerated in their form and importance. So much so that it eventually may become a hindrance, especially in the context of a change in lifestyle, as, for example we have been experiencing more or less continuously for several centuries.
Of course, I was merely arguing against the 'no true Scotsman' fallacy, not the existence of God. It is no surprise to me that you should regard an argument against the idea that words have intrinsic meaning as an attack on the idea of God. I have repeatedly noted how religious people tend to conflate these two, seemingly unrelated topics. This lends greater credence to my belief that religious belief stems from an error in perception, where language has become so primary in our understanding of the world that people subconciously think that language pre-exists and shapes the world. Indeed, this is clear in scriptures. "In the Beginning there was the Word." for example. This is the mistaking of symbol for reality taken to the extreme. That error is common in religion. Not only is the word mistaken for God, the book where the words are written, the statue or other icon even music is called God. In reality, these are symbols, but the symbol is so enmeshed in the belief that it is unremoveable. Indeed, could God be merely a collection of symbols given an imagined reality? Plato suggested for every concept, there exists a perfect, ideal prototype. Again, he believed that reality followed the ideas, not vice versa. The concept of the almighty and indescribable God is the logical extension of that idea.
I have gone beyond arguing whether God exists or not. I now argue against the belief that ideas exist independent from reality, that symbols are the thing itself, that words have absolute meaning. These are the faulty foundations that the edifice of religion rests upon.
In our evolution, human beings lived and died according to the effectiveness of their social group. For this reason, exchange of information and social cohesion were of primary importance, and the more successful they were, the more successful the group, and all the individuals within the group. When the length and brightness of one's tail is the primary determinant of a bird's reproductive success, it is not surprising that evolution would produce birds with extravagantly long and bright tails. By the same measure when words and ideas are the most important thing, it is not surprising that people would put exaggerated emphasis on them, causing them, like the tail of the peacock, to become extravagantly exaggerated in their form and importance. So much so that it eventually may become a hindrance, especially in the context of a change in lifestyle, as, for example we have been experiencing more or less continuously for several centuries.
Some sort of philosophy occurred under poganism, and the beginnings of science, but how many sensible people ever seriously believed a word of all that animist bilge? Obviously, when it suited the doddering Roman Empire to compromise with Christianity it was bye-bye Christianity, hello God!
DrZoidberg
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Ehe... what? Pagans fully grasped the concept of metaphor. Don't forget that a Pagan could be an atheist. A few notable Greek philosophers for instance. They didn't stop being Pagan. Pagans had a philosophical rational around all their feasts. If you study all the feasts they had lots of aspects that are great. I forget which one, but the Roman's had a yearly "being honest day". Where you were allowed to be perfectly honest with whoever and they had to accept it and if necessary forgive you. And anything said on that day you just had to let go of and move on from. Imagine how great it would be to have some of that in today's world? There's no magic required to see the wisdom of that.
Or the Baccanalias. One day a year when it was ok to make a complete drunken fool of yourself. Not just ok, but encouraged. This should be put in contrast with the very stoic ideals of the Roman empire. A real man was in control of his emotions. It's not hard to see the upshots of Paganism.
Like I said, what we mostly hear about Paganism is stuff that's filtered through Christian anti-pagan propaganda. And there was a lot of that.
I think you're reading history completely wrongly. Constantine didn't dodder. He did what was politically necessary to keep the empire together. And by the look of it he picked the right moment. And once he shifted there was no hesitation. We know from archeological evidence that Constantine just added Christ as another god and went on with his Pagan ways as usual. But that was pretty common back then.
I think you need to let go of seeing Paganism as a archaic religion or unsophisticated religion. It's on par with Hinduism. Christian theology is dumb as bricks in comparison.