Quotes on TRUTH

don · 07-14-09 1:27 pm

With the passing of centuries, legends become more elaborate and creative imagination begins. Fortunately, with Christianity, rather than the passing of centuries we have a body of literature which most scholars place within a five or six decades span. That is like from 1950 to the present. (Message edited by Don on July 14, 2009)

neal · 07-14-09 1:44 pm

Devon The 'critique' of Freke & GAndy begins with ad hominems piled on top of more ad hominems. Stating in the first paragraph that the book is another in a line of false or lying history books (pseudo-historical) is ridiculous when the book claims to be about a personal theory arrived at after much study by Freke and Gandy's. The chapter on Paul possibly being a Gnostic was chosen for special derision. However, the multiple levels of heaven, the mystery religion terminology, the praying for the dead, the spiritual Christ instead of literal Christ, etc, leads to the likelihood of a Gnostic Paul without anything from Freke & Gandy. You asked for something specific that was troublesome to me. I can't find much of anything that wasn't troubling. PS... Still not home, but have some time/pc access for a bit.

neal · 07-14-09 1:46 pm

Fortunately, with Christianity, rather than the passing of centuries we have a body of literature which most scholars place within a five or six decades span. But the subject discussed supposedly died in 1930 or 1940. There are no documents from the time period he supposedly walked around on earth.

don · 07-14-09 2:50 pm

But the subject discussed supposedly died in 1930 or 1940. There are no documents from the time period he supposedly walked around on earth. Yes, and by today's media coverage standards, that is unacceptable. But, by historical standards, its quite connected to the time it happened. You know the argument. To be only twenty years after the fact, historically speaking, is quite impressive. .

elaine · 07-14-09 4:40 pm

Fortunately, with Christianity, rather than the passing of centuries we have a body of literature which most scholars place within a five or six decades span. That is like from 1950 to the present. You are referring only to what is called the New Testament, and it was not canonized until nearly two hundred years later. Plus, most of the accepted Christian doctrines of the Virgin Birth; dual nature of Jesus; The Trinity was not formulated until well into the Fourth Century, making the New Testament only the beginning, not the end of Christian doctrines at all. And with the Protestant Reformation and Adventism, many more doctrinal concepts have been added to the original "Jesus Movement" that began in the fourth decade of the first century. I am about finished reading Albert Schweitzer's classic The Quest of the Historical Jesus which analyzes the many theologians, beginning in the 17th century who raised questions of the historicity of the man called Jesus. It was heretical at first, as the subject was considered untouchable. Now we know so much more and realize that so much of what was believed was a massive creation of individuals, each building on earlier legends, none of them capable of documentation. The wonder is that today few moderns believe that the Roman emperors were gods; that even such gods as Dionysius, Artemis, Hercules and more ever existed; yet the evidence for Jesus is no less non-existent than is it for these historical legends. Why are all these other stories dismissed as myths, but the one about Jesus is considered the only true, actual historical record?

don · 07-14-09 7:40 pm

Why are all these other stories dismissed as myths, but the one about Jesus is considered the only true, actual historical record? Why is it that the same scholars (moderns) who consider Hercules a myth, believe that there actually was a historical Jesus? You are referring only to what is called the New Testament, and it was not canonized until nearly two hundred years later. Of course, canonization has nothing to do with when something was written. Canonization was a community process; even a political one; and some of us believe it was also a Holy Spirit guided process. But, the books were written and probably acknowledged as spiritually "special" as soon as they were written. The manuscript evidence for the existence of Jesus is quite abundant in comparison to other historical figures. If such evidence were available for a "secular" personage, scholars would strip the stories of their "miracles" and conclude that the person actually existed. This is what has been the critical conclusion regarding Jesus, hasn't it? .

elaine · 07-14-09 9:56 pm

Why is it that the same scholars (moderns) who consider Hercules a myth, believe that there actually was a historical Jesus? You posed the question. What is your answer? Could it be that the story of Jesus and his miraculous birth has been part of Western Civilization for nearly two millennia that it is not questioned? Many things in the culture to which we were born are never questioned, merely accepted. Few question, and those that do are readily identified. I could name many who began questioning of the entire cultus of Christianity and were declared heretics; which is quite a deterrent. History record numerous names of those who dared to study and question what had previously been untouchable: Spinoza, Erasmus, Kant, Hume, Darwin, and moderns whose names are now in the news. Magazines such as Scientific Inquiry and similar, have such articles, as well as The Atlantic Monthly, Harper's The New Yorker and newsmagazines. It is no longer anathema to ask questions, as it was for most of the years since Christianity became the dominant belief in Western civilization. Questioning is the method of scientists, philosophers, and all those who are not satisfied with "pat" answers. Thank God for those who have dared to ask questions on the status quo. A priori beliefs or a premise with many when they pick up the Bible to read, having heard all their life that it is "God's Word" and "Holy" and holds a special place, is a wonderful deterrent to questions. Only the bold dare to ask.

don · 07-14-09 10:16 pm

Could it be that the story of Jesus and his miraculous birth has been part of Western Civilization for nearly two millennia that it is not questioned? This is quite an affront to all the scholars which, under other circumstances, are cited as authoritative. (Message edited by Don on July 14, 2009)

elaine · 07-14-09 11:22 pm

It is equally an affront to all the many scholars who DID question. They were castigated, labeled heretics and worse. IOW, they were willing to speak out, knowing that it was the very unpopular thing to do. So who's the offended?

elaine · 07-14-09 11:24 pm

It is always the popular thing to march with the parade. Those who dare move the other way or either the brave or courageous to move against the flow.

elaine · 07-14-09 11:26 pm

For the names of more than a dozen German theologians who questioned the historical Jesus, read Albert Scweitzer's classic. It cost many of them their entire professional career and they were shamed for daring to ask.

don · 07-15-09 12:44 am

Those who dare move the other way or either the brave or courageous to move against the flow. We all need to be willing to stand up for what we believe to be true. . (Message edited by Don on July 15, 2009)

george · 07-15-09 4:29 am

Accepting or rejecting the story Christianity tells, is not a simple act of faith or the lack there of. This story is mixed up with politics, both national and religious, and comes with great emotional baggage as well. Many reject Christianity because of the way religious institutions misuse it; while others have psychological and emotional needs that need to embrace it. Of course, upbringing has most to do with how we respond to it. So, religious "truth" is very slippery, and is dependent on many things, including geography. Most, if not all, who hold strong religious views are basically afraid of death, and the idea that death is the end of everything. Christianity gives hope of something beyond death, which brings up the basis of the Christian message - that someone died and came back to life, offering that possibility to anyone who believes. How we react to that part of the story has everything to do with what we consider "truth". Could God accomplish this? Of course. Now, all we have to do, is believe in the Christian version of God. And who delivers that version? Christian churches, all of whom are wrangling for power; and all of whom have a slightly different version of God. Seems like an endless circle. Maybe it's just enough to say, IF the Bible picture of God and what He did in Christ is true, then I can accept it; but I don't need to jump through an endless series of hoops, some religious organization places before me, in order to gain favor with God and convince Him I should be saved. The Christian message is really only the message Christ delivered, and Paul enunciated, "fight the good fight of faith" as you live a life, loving God by showing love toward others. Love being defined as selfless acts of kindness. The sticky part is the word, SELFLESS. Most religious activity is far from being selfless. It's either practiced to gain God's favor; or it's something done by rote. Either way, it misses the mark by a mile. So maybe, the only people with a chance to be truly loving are those "who have not been defiled by religious politics, for they have kept themselves chaste. These are the ones who follow the Lamb wherever He goes." (Rev. 14)

john8verse32 · 07-15-09 7:58 am

Many question Christianity because of .... unproven/unproveable miracles errancy...such Matt and Marks inability to agree on a geneology blatant propagandizing...by Matt... having Jesus ride two donkeys at the same time in order to "fulfill" a prophecy he misunderstood or manipulated I personally reject the Old Test because of all the mass murder, mayhem, and misogamy, said to be commanded by the Hebrew God..."kill all themen and boys and any women who have had sex...but keep the virgins!!!" and I don't understand how anybody can accept it (literally)who has really read and understood what is going on in this autobiographical tale of a scientifically ignorant, educationally illiterate tribe of nomads in search of a homeland as belatedly written down after a thousand years of telling tall tales borrowed from antiquity around the campfire to impress, educate, motivate and control their kids... "don't make fun of old people, or bald guys, or prophets, or the bears will get you"!!! to believe that Elisha story literally makes their God out to be a child murderer. to believe the Egypt - Pharoah tale literally makes their God out to be possibly the biggest baby killer in history....except for the time their God was "sorry He had made them", and tried to punish his creatures by killing them all...including the innocent animals... the chief value of the Old Test is to show what NOT to do.... the value of the New Test is to show that humanity has progressed... the value of religion today may be to help continue that progression...and to help point out and overcome our worst antisocial behaviors... to make this the best place on earth we can... (Message edited by john8verse32 on July 15, 2009)

george · 07-15-09 9:36 am

John, I do think there's a personal element to the value of (not religion, as such) but in the message of Christ. Yes, love God and love neighbor is socially a good thing, but we do have to acknowledge that man, left to his own devices, manages to come up with a lot of bad stuff. Even the best of us, have tendencies we're not proud of. I have three grandchildren, and as cute as they are, there's a bit of nastiness that comes through, and you have to wonder where that comes from. There seems to be something innate in us all that isn't terribly attractive (based on Christian principles). I think the Christian message gives us parameters for living and motivation to try, and try again. The fact that Christian religion hangs on to the OT atrocities and tries to make lemonade out of lemons is because Jesus was part of that system and does not rebuke it in so many words, but uses it to teach his own countrymen. Had he come, denouncing the entire OT system he wouldn't have had the three years he had. The rebuke came camouflaged in parables; and it came in the way he lived and died. SDA theology comes along and places everybody within the OT religious system, using the grafting analogy given by Jesus; and trying to make everybody "Jews inwardly", not realizing that Jesus was talking to a haughty, self-righteous bunch. But I do think you're right in that the OT show us how NOT to do it. Otherwise, why the need for Christ?

renie · 07-15-09 11:13 am

Sirje and John......... thank you.

george · 07-15-09 11:36 am

Hi Irene! <img src="http://www.atomorrow.net/discus/clipart/smile.gif" border=0>

elaine · 07-15-09 12:01 pm

Must a Christian believe everything written in the Bible is literally true? Or, is it merely a perspective of peoples of that era? How can we base an entire way of life on questionable facts? Are all the stories in the NT true? How is that possible when there are so many contradictions? How can one determine what is necessary and important and what is superfluous? Is belief in all the miracles necessary or not? Is the ethical stystem Jesus taught sufficient for one to be called a Christian? Many people are willing to declare the guidelines of ethical living Jesus left us as a wonderful way to live. Must one also believe in the numerous miracles, the unsubstantiated traditions of impossiblilties in order to be a Christian? How much is legend and myth embellished in two thousand years? Is right living more important, or is belief in all the improbabilities required?

george · 07-15-09 1:04 pm

Hi Elaine, I'm glad you joined in. I was just thinking about you and the points you make about the Christ story having been taken from previous pagan traditions; and why is the NT to believed more than the previous myths... I have to go back to a very basic issue - that of the existence of God.; and if there is God, then surely He wasn't going to wait thousands of years to introduce a life-or-death issue to the world. He must have communicated with man before Abraham heard His voice whispering across the plains. Does He not love the cave dwellers as much as any of us, or the people the OT describes as His? Man's need of redemption I think is universal. Even without ten commands from God's finger, man was aware of the two natures within (and let's not make a theological issue of that comment). If in no other way, most of us have known love from our mothers and/or fathers. When they leave us to go on alone, we, again, find that love as our own children come along. So we know what love looks like. We also know when there is none and we hunger for it. We also know when we aren't being loving - when our own needs supersede others', and we are sorry. These issues, along with a number of others, have been with us from the start. If God loves all of mankind, then surely He must have reached out by placing within us the need for the redemption that shows up in other cultures as well - and we find animal and human sacrifice for our sins, as well as all kinds of ritual ablutions permeating our histories. the familiarity of the theme, speaks to our communal need. Do we need to believe in the miracle stories in the NT? I really can't see what they can possibly add to the one big miracle at the end of the story. The miracles Jesus performed were meant to get the attention of a people used to looking for miracles a validating sign. Whether they were real or added for validity doesn't matter much since our redemption doesn't depend on our belief in miracles - maybe not in even in the big one. It seems that if Christ's redemptive act has meaning it's in the need we feel for that redemption. The "good news" that was to be scattered like the leaves of autumn was that God accomplished that redemption, whether we're lucky enough to have heard about it or not. One of my favorite books (from another thread) is Peace Child by Don Richardson, which speaks to this theme; and G.K. Chesterton's the Everlasting Man, which deals with those ancient, pagan stories. One point that he makes is that the very fact that there have always been gods speaks to the idea of there being GOD; and, as we look back at the early recordings of gods and their myths, we sense that we're "coming to the play, after it has already started".

elaine · 07-15-09 3:30 pm

Sirje, Humans have always belived in something, some idea above them, greater than, and depending on their circumstances where they lived, and how, they needed to appease him, to placate him, to give evidence of worship for their very sustenance: crops and food that depended on the rain and sun, over which they had no control. This was the beginning and germ of an idea, and is found in all cultures wherever there are humans: that need to attribute things to an idea greater than themselves. Karen Armstrong, in her epic The Great Transformation records the history as far back as we can discover, of the various groups of people who began formulating ideas of a god. What is striking, is the idea, foundational to all the differences, that to live harmoniously, there had to be something like the Golden Rule, built on respect for other people; when that was broken there was war and destruction. Later religions built upon and added certain ideas from earlier ones--which is readily seen in Christianity which was born out of Judaism: the Hebrew prophecies were very liberally re-interpreted to point to Jesus; the sacrifices that were so much a part of Judaism became the one "sacrifice" made by Jesus' life; the same God is worshiped, perhaps with a different understanding, in all three of the great monotheistic religions which emanated from Judaism. From the inside dust jacket: "In the ninth century B.C., the peoples of four distinct regions of the civilized world created the religious and philosophical traditions that have continued to nourish humanity to the present day: Confucianism and Daoism in China, Hinduism and Buddhism in India, monotheism in Israel, and philosophical rationalism in Greece. Later generations further developed these initial insights, but we have never grown beyond them. Rabbinic Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, for example, were all secondary flowerings of the original Israelite vision. "Armstrong traces the development of the Axial Age (1600-900 B.C.) chronologically down through 200 B.C., examining the contributions of such figures as the Buddha, Socrates, Confucius, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, the mystics of the Upanishads, Mencius, and Euripides. All of the Axial Age faiths began in principled and visceral recoil from the unprecedented violence of their time. Despite some differences of emphasis, there was a remarkable consensus in their call for an abandonment of selfishness and a spirituality of compassion. With regard to dealing with fear, despair, hatred, rage, and violence, the Axial sages gave their people and give us, Armstrong says, two important pieces of advice: first there must be personal responsibility and self-criticism, and it must be followed by practical, effective action. Armstrong urges us to consider how these spiritualities challenge the way we are religious today. In our various institutions, we sometimes seem to be attempting to create exactly the kind of religion that Axial sages and prophets had hoped to eliminate. We often equate faith with doctrinal conformity, but the traditions of the Axial Age were not about dogma. All insisted on the primacy of compassion even in the midst of suffering. In each Axial Age case, a disciplined revulsion from violence and hatred proved to the major catalyst of spiritual change." "What mattered was not what you believed but how you behaved. If a prophet or philosopher did start to insist on obigatory doctrines, it was usually a sign that the Axial Age had lost its momentum. There was no interest whatever in doctrine or metaphysics. A person's theological belief were a matter of total indifference. "We must learn to live and behave as though people in countries remote from our own are as important as ourselves....All the great traditions that were created at this time are in agreement about the supreme importance of charity and benevolence."

george · 07-15-09 4:13 pm

We must learn to live and behave as though people in countries remote from our own are as important as ourselves....All the great traditions that were created at this time are in agreement about the supreme importance of charity and benevolence." Yes, but that charity and benevolence comes from somewhere outside of ourselves. It's not natural for us to place our own wants and even needs aside to tend to someone else's. The universality of it all has to say something about who we are and about truth. I have really come to think that we make far too much of all the minutia required by religion. As you say, it can't be about what we believe so much as how we live; except, what we believe controls how we behave; and I think that is exactly the point of Christianity. As we experience, in some way, what it meant for Christ to die as he was bringing salvation to us, we are motivated to somehow repay by passing on the love and grace he has given us. There can't be any other motivation that is selfless. We can work our fingers to the bone, doing good, but if it's motivated by fear of damnation, or by an expected payback then we have failed in passing on the love we have received. Maybe it's best to lose that "hope of glory" in order to really love your neighbor. If God is watching, He'll do the right thing.

elaine · 07-15-09 5:39 pm

How did so many peaceful and peace-loving cultures subsist for so long without the direct knowledge of God as Christians know today? Isn't the Golden Rule a selfless motif? The only fear is that by ignoring it we become victims of what we most fear. I truly believe that the largest majority of people around the world truly want to live with love and harmony, but their circumstances often prevent that possibility. We here, have been given so many more privileges that it is difficult to put ourselves in others' situations and face the deterrence they do. "Will not the God of all do what is right"? I believe so.

george · 07-15-09 7:29 pm

Dear Elaine, I truly believe that the largest majority of people around the world truly want to live with love and harmony, but their circumstances often prevent that possibility. You are much more optimistic on that score than I am. I have known other cultures first hand, and while it's true that the average person just wants to live in peace and make the best of his life, the ugly side of selfish ambition, greed and materialism makes people harbor attitudes that are in no way similar to Christian principles. Even in Nazi prison camps, where you would think everybody would be understanding of each others situation, there was scuffles for better bunks, extra food, clothing etc. When pushed to the edge, people reveal their true selves and none of us know what we are capable of until we are faced with situations we never dreamed of. If we are to speak in generalities, then yes, most people are good people, but I think Christianity asks us to go beyond being good people, and I don't think that comes naturally. Anyone been in heavy traffic on a hot day?

elaine · 07-15-09 7:40 pm

When pushed to the edge, people reveal their true selves and none of us know what we are capable of until we are faced with situations we never dreamed of. That makes all the difference, doesn't it? Have you seen that Christians in heavy traffic behave any differently? How would you know? Do they not say words under their breath that should not be uttered?

don · 07-15-09 11:14 pm

Have you seen that Christians in heavy traffic behave any differently? It is not the profession of Christianity that makes for a better world; its the living out its principles. Do Christians who live out the principle of loving their enemies behave differently? Of course they do. Get a practicing Christian, or empathetic atheist, behind the wheel and it is a joy to behold; courtesy, etc. Except if you are driving in Paris. There, at least downtown, you do a great service to everyone if you are quick, take risks, and get masterfully on your way. <IMG SRC="http://www.atomorrow.net/discus/clipart/happy.gif" ALT=":-)" BORDER=0> .

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