Were the writings of the Apostles considered Scripture?

elaine · 05-02-09 3:46 pm

I have no fear of agnostics or atheists; but it's the "fundies" of any religion that we should fear. They are the ones who prefer to rule by the sword; and if that is not possible, they'll find plenty of other ways to prevent education that disagrees with their precambrian beliefs.

bob_2 · 05-02-09 3:51 pm

How's this for starters: <blockquote><hr size=0><!-quote-!>quote:Human super niceness is a perversion of Darwinism because, in a wild population, it would be removed by natural selection. It is also, although I haven't the space to go into detail about this third ingredient of my recipe, an apparent perversion of the sort of rational choice theory by which economists explain human behaviour as calculated to maximize self-interest. Let's put it even more bluntly. From a rational choice point of view, or from a Darwinian point of view, human super niceness is just plain dumb. And yes, it is the kind of dumb that should be encouraged - which is the purpose of my article. How can we do it? How shall we take the minority of super nice humans that we all know, and increase their number, perhaps until they even become a majority in the population? Could super niceness be induced to spread like an epidemic? Could super niceness be packaged in such a form that it passes down the generations in swelling traditions of longitudinal propagation? <!-/quote-!><hr size=0></blockquote> <a href="http://www.rationalresponders.com/atheists_for_jesus_a_richard_dawkins_essay" target=_top>http://www.rationalresponders.com/atheists_for_jes us_a_richard_dawkins_essay</a> John, encouraging "super nice behaviors" should love this passage from Dawkins. Let's encourage the weak so Darwinistic "survival of the fittest takes over, eh?? Made up, Neal???? Hardly

bob_2 · 05-02-09 3:57 pm

<blockquote><hr size=0><!-quote-!>quote:In The God Delusion, Dawkins contends that a supernatural creator almost certainly does not exist and that belief in a personal god qualifies as a delusion, which he defines as a persistent false belief held in the face of strong contradictory evidence. He is sympathetic to Robert Pirsig's observation in Lila that "when one person suffers from a delusion it is called insanity. When many people suffer from a delusion it is called religion."[4] <!-/quote-!><hr size=0></blockquote> <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_God_Delusion" target=_top>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_God_Delusion</a> Pretty aggressive uncivil remarks if you ask me??? Neal may wish to call it something else. Being called insane, if a Christian, is pretty in your face, aggressive and uncivil, in my book.

neal · 05-02-09 4:21 pm

How's this for starters: Well, for starters, its just plain dumb. Its obvious that you did not even read the title of the essay nor the complete essay. If I'm wrong, then you need to find the nearest community college and take a course in remedial Reading Comprehension. The title was "Atheists for Jesus". He was arguing FOR being nice. He even goes so far to say, like I have, that the republicans are the ones with the Darwinian social platform. That is TRUE. As I said during the election, Obama is the candidate most likely to institute programs that Jesus espoused. Go back and read the essay again. Your comprehension is seriously deficient.<blockquote><hr size=0><!-quote-!>quote:I am no memetic engineer, and I have very little idea how to increase the numbers of the super nice and spread their memes through the meme pool. The best I can offer is what I hope may be a catchy slogan. 'Atheists for Jesus' would grace a T-shirt. There is no strong reason to choose Jesus as icon, rather than some other role model from the ranks of the super nice such as Mahatma Gandhi (not the odiously self-righteous Mother Teresa, heavens no). I think we owe Jesus the honour of separating his genuinely original and radical ethics from the supernatural nonsense which he inevitably espoused as a man of his time. And perhaps the oxymoronic impact of 'Atheists for Jesus' might be just what is needed to kick start the meme of super niceness in a post-Christian society. If we play our cards right - could we lead society away from the nether regions of its Darwinian origins into kinder and more compassionate uplands of post-singularity enlightenment? I think a reborn Jesus would wear the T-shirt. It has become a commonplace that, were he to return today, he would be appalled at what is being done in his name, by Christians ranging from the Catholic Church to the fundamentalist Religious Right. Less obviously but still plausibly, in the light of modern scientific knowledge I think he would see through supernaturalist obscurantism. But of course, modesty would compel him to turn his T-shirt around: Jesus for Atheists.<!-/quote-!><hr size=0></blockquote> Personally, I think Dawkins needs to read the book NONZERO: The Logic of Human Destiny. I read it when it was first published and agree with many of his social theories.<blockquote><hr size=0><!-quote-!>quote:Evolution meets game theory in this upbeat follow-up to Wright's much-praised The Moral Animal. Arguing against intellectual heavyweights such as Isaiah Berlin, Karl Popper and Franz Boas, Wright contends optimistically that history progresses in a predictable direction and points toward a certain end: a world of increasing human cooperation where greed and hatred have outlived their usefulness. This thesis is elaborated by way of something Wright calls "non-zero-sumness," which in game theory means a kind of win-win situation. The non-zero-sum dynamic, Wright says, is the driving force that has shaped history from the very beginnings of life, giving rise to increasing social complexity, technological innovation and, eventually, the Internet. From Polynesian chiefdoms and North America's Shoshone culture to the depths of the Mongol Empire, Wright plunders world history for evidence to show that the so-called Information Age is simply part of a long-term trend. Globalization, he points out, has been around since Assyrian traders opened for business in the second millennium B.C. Even the newfangled phenomenon of "narrowcasting" was anticipated, he claims, when the costs of print publishing dropped in the 15th century and spawned a flurry of niche-oriented publications. Occasionally, Wright's use of modish terminology can seem glib: feudal societies benefited from a "fractal" structure of nested polities, world culture has always been "fault-tolerant" and today's societies are like a "giant multicultural brain." Despite the game-theory jargon, however, this book sends an important message that, as human beings make moral progress, history, in its broadest outlines, is getting better all the time. (Feb.)<!-/quote-!><hr size=0></blockquote><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Nonzero-Logic-Destiny-Robert-Wright/dp/0679758941" target=_top>http://www.amazon.com/Nonzero-Logic-Destiny-Robert -Wright/dp/0679758941</a>

neal · 05-02-09 4:28 pm

Pretty aggressive uncivil remarks if you ask me??? Neal may wish to call it something else. Being called insane, if a Christian, is pretty in your face, aggressive and uncivil, in my book. Your comments are interesting but, unfortunately, do not have anything to do with your previous statement that I called BS on. You said Neal, Hitchens and Dawkins have made it clear that they plan to create chaos and agressively go at Christians with Darwinism. Does the quote you posted (which is actually quoted by someone else to be, allegedly, a quote made by Dawkins) lead to a conclusion that he is advocating chaos? No. Does the alleged quote use "Darwinism" to aggressively "go after" christians. No. Keep looking for statements which BACK UP YOUR ASSERTIONS. Thank you.

bob_2 · 05-02-09 5:00 pm

If the God doesn't exist, and you want to create a Tshirt along with Dawkins, Atheists for Jesus, who's the insane one??? His Son Jesus can exist if God doesn't exist. What is a Cultural Christian, eh???

bob_2 · 05-02-09 5:45 pm

Sorry, "His Son Jesus CANNOT exist if God doesn't exit."

bob_2 · 05-03-09 3:01 am

Atheists and Agnostics Take Aim at Christians <a href="http://www.barna.org/barna-update/article/12-faithspirituality/102-atheists-and-agnostics-take-aim-at-christians" target=_top>http://www.barna.org/barna-update/article/12-faith spirituality/102-atheists-and-agnostics-take-aim-a t-christians</a> <blockquote><hr size=0><!-quote-!>quote:A new evangelistic movement has emerged in America. Yet this effort does not spring from those loyal to a particular faith or religious view. The new evangelists are atheists. People who have determined there is no God or who doubt his existence (a group commonly known as agnostics) are adopting a more aggressive, intentional effort to discredit the notion that God exists and to critique people of faith. Widely reviewed new books such as The God Delusion and God is Not Great represent this movement. ... Proponents of secularism suggest that rejecting faith is a simple and intelligent response to what we know today. Yet, most of the Americans who overtly reject faith harbor doubts about whether they are correct in doing so. Many of the most ardent critics of Christianity claim that compassion and generosity do not hinge on faith; yet those who divorce themselves from spiritual commitment are significantly less likely to help others. ... <!-/quote-!><hr size=0></blockquote> Ok, Neal, how am I doing, eh?? (Message edited by Bob_2 on May 03, 2009)

bob_2 · 05-03-09 3:42 am

Here is a comment on the Aggressiveness of Atheists against Christians: <blockquote><hr size=0><!-quote-!>quote:Jonathan Baker says: March 2, 2009 at 6:19 pm These summaries are maliciously wrong: 1. God. Loving slavery since 4000BC. 2. Jesus condoning drowning anyone. I have already explained the second to you, and you seem to have ignored it. Slavery is a phenomenon which the Judaism inherited, and it is clear that at each step of the way (including the very beginning which the billboard quotes) it has been consistently controlled and then abolished by Christianity. Slavery died out of Christian countries by the middle ages (and then scandalously revived again in the 17th century). It has been (and continues today) alive in other cultures, but has been condemned by Christians from the earliest centuries. Indeed two early popes had been slaves. I am more than happy to provide a balanced and fair account of slavery and Christianity if you require it. If you can not understand the difference between: “it would be better for him if…” and “I say that he should be…” there is something wrong. Hyperbole is frequent in Christ’s writings. To my knowledge (though there will always be fundamentalists who get it wrong) noone has ever had a millstone tied to his neck by a Christian for causing him to fall. It is obvious to any fair-minded person (!) that it is the seriousness of this that Christ is reinforcing, not the spiteful and vengeful mentality that only someone who had no knowledge of the Gospel could ever read into it. <!-/quote-!><hr size=0></blockquote> <a href="http://www.the-atheist.com/more-aggressive-atheist-ads/" target=_top>http://www.the-atheist.com/more-aggressive-atheist -ads/</a> Richard Dawkins: The Atheist Evangelist <a href="http://byfaithonline.com/page/in-the-world/richard-dawkins-the-atheist-evangelist" target=_top>http://byfaithonline.com/page/in-the-world/richard -dawkins-the-atheist-evangelist</a> <blockquote><hr size=0><!-quote-!>quote:As we waded into more controversial territory, Dawkins began to reveal the character associated with his more inflammatory works. His latest book, The God Delusion, is a vituperative assault on religious belief in general, and Christianity in particular. It is also a runaway bestseller, with 1,250,000 in print. "What is the objective of your anti-religious campaign?" I asked. "I think my ultimate goal would be to convert people away from particular religions toward a rationalist skepticism, tinged with … no, that’s too weak," he said, correcting himself, "… glorying in the universe and in life. Yes, I would like people to be converted away from religion to skepticism." <!-/quote-!><hr size=0></blockquote> What is the definition of: vituperative containing or characterized by verbal abuse Neal is that getting close to what you were wanting as a definition of aggressive or abusive descriptions of atheistic efforts by Hitchens, Dawkins, Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens, and Daniel Dennett. As reflected in conventions held in Washington, D.C. to "encourage, inform, and unite the unbelieving. Something like a Promise Keepers for atheists—minus singing, crying, and Tony Evans, of course."

neal · 05-07-09 9:02 am

Sorry, "His Son Jesus CANNOT exist if God doesn't exit." That's completely false. The existence of a child does not prove who the father was. Since Jesus was a sperm attached to an egg at one point he could have been mistaken about who his father was. You may as well say that your wife's kids couldn't exist without you. Of course they could. They could just have had a different father. Additionally, there are many references to characters in the Bible who are called Sons of God. If you get around to reading the Bible sometime you will come across them.<img src="http://www.atomorrow.net/discus/clipart/happy.gif" border=0>

bob_2 · 05-08-09 12:00 am

Neal, TTTHTFAL.

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