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28065. arkymalarky - 3/17/2006 5:31:33 AM I haven't been involved as a lurker in the discussion, though I've skimmed it, but Wiz, is this yours? If not, whose? I really like it: That is to say that life is a journey from the illusions of certainty to the certainty of illusions.
I don't like most of the pithy phrases that are so popular among the pop-psych ed-policy crowd. One of my professors' email signature includes "it is not enough to stare up the steps; one must step up the stairs," author noted in the signature, but I don't remember the name--maybe I could use your phrase as the signature to my emails in course-work exchanges. 28066. judithathome - 3/17/2006 6:14:13 AM I've seen Penn & Teller do some fairly miraculous things but I'm not about to worship them for it. 28067. TheWizardOfWhimsy - 3/17/2006 7:08:35 AM arky- I think it's mine because I've been saying it for decades, but I'm at an age where I watch a movie I've seen and remember nothing about it. Anyway, I decided to Google it in quotes and wound up at The Mote archive and found it in one of my posts in the political thread.
I also found the following when all of the exodus-neocon supporters were demanding links that buttressed the argument that Bush was not a success in Texas . . .
31212. TheWizardofWhimsy - 6/20/2000 12:05:41 PM
"BUSH ADMINISTRATIVE INEPTNESS--POOR APPOINTEES, WEAK OVERSIGHT--FUELS HOUSING AGENCY SCANDAL "For several months, the Tx. Dept. of Housing has been reeling as federal and state investigators probed public corruption allegations against one of its board members (Florita Bell Griffin) and questionable practices of its former executive director (Larry P. Manley)." Manley was "appointed in 1995 by Gov. George W. Bush to run an agency that dispenses half a billion dollars a year to improve housing for poor Texans." By 1996, "state auditors reported problems at the housing agency. Investigators said that year that the department under Mr. Manley had awarded developers tens of millions of dollars in federal tax breaks in an arbitrary and undocumented manner." In 1997, state auditors "uncovered more problems....
They found that the agency had awarded more than 60 percent of the contracts under a new program to people who previously worked with Mr. Manley at Texas savings and loans." Manley resigned last summer. That same week, it was reported that Bell, another Bush appointee, was "accused of using her influence as a public official to approve federal subsidies for low-income real estate deals in which she had a special interest." Bush's replacement for Manley, Daisy Steiner, recently met with the Senate Finance Committee on Feb. 2 and apologetically conceded that her "agency serves only 1.5 percent of the estimated l.5 million low income Texans who need housing help," a poor record, even using the agency's own criteria. The following day, two years late, the state auditors sent their 1997 findings to George's office. (HC 8/28/98, 2/3/99) 2/22/99
How utterly predictable and disheartening to reread this after President Shithead has captained the U.S. America adrift and aground. But that's for another thread.
28068. alistairconnor - 3/17/2006 10:59:26 AM Well, you're right to basically state that I cannot prove the existence of God [Christ] to you if you deny the miraculous.
There's a syllogistic fallacy in here, Jen, and it underlies all of your attempted rational defenses of Christianity. Something like this :
A) The miraculous is real.
B) Christ is miraculous.
C) Therefore Christ is real.
The obvious problem is that, even if (for the sake of argument) we agree on A, then this premise validates Christianity no more and no less than it validates Islam, Shamanism, Flying Spaghetti Monsterism or what have you. 28069. thoughtful - 3/17/2006 4:10:07 PM No Jen, it's more than whether or not I accept the miraculous.
You agree that men created what you view to be false gods. So you agree that at least some gods are manmade. You agree that men have written the bible. (Funny how if god is so all seeing and knowing how he kept having his scribes edit and change the bible for so many centuries, but that's another issue.) You believe the xtian version is the right one, and you believe that your interpretation of the xtian version is the right one.
But beyond your belief, what evidence is there that that is in fact the right one? Yes, yes, god has revealed himself to you and so on. But that is not any kind of external evidence.
Even if I accept the belief in the miraculous, what evidence is there that the xtian miracles in the bible are the correct ones. Why not the miracles of native american religions? Asian religions? ancient religions? and so on. And isn't there the possibility that all these miracles are in fact manifestations of the same god? And if so, then how can one be so exclusive for a single version of the revealed truth and deny all the others? Further, if you accept that the xtian version of the bible is the true correct way, how can you decide which of the xtian versions is in fact the right one as each decides what is fable and what is true in the bible, each coming to different conclusions about significant principles to live by. (divorce ok? abortion ok? gay sex ok? not going to church on xmas day ok? predeterminism? transubstantiation? the holy trinity? heaven? and so on.)
Just the fact that man and cultures exist in so many diverse forms around the world suggests to me that whatever god might be, he is not so partial. That at least is some evidence, however interpretive, that there can be more than one best way to live.
The fact that I believe homer and nero and aristotle existed is no different from the fact that I believe there probably was a fellow running around by the name of jesus christ who said a lot of interesting things and probably died by crucifixion on a cross. He was certainly well marketed. I also believe there was a guy named mohammed running around and moses and john smith and l. ron hubbard. There have been lots of people claiming lots of things over the centuries. You seem to have found a way to select among them. I have not. In fact, what I know of what a lot of them have said, little of it makes sense to me and my experience. As I said to wiz much earlier...is there a religion for the reasonable, and I suspect that the answer is no.
Please note I did not highlight xtianity in particular, but in my view, it is no insult to suggest that thinking is discouraged in the xtian religion as it is in many other religions...rather it is in evidence. One need only look at the efforts by religious xtians to keep the teaching of evolution out of schools to see it. In fact one need only look at the history of xtianity vs. science to see just how much they balk in the face of people who are willing to question faith and instead use their thinking minds to test it against objective reality.
28070. thoughtful - 3/17/2006 4:58:33 PM sorry...joseph smith, not john smith. Sheesh! 28071. thoughtful - 3/17/2006 4:59:19 PM tho clearly there are a lot of guys claiming to be john smith who are running around!
:-) 28072. thoughtful - 3/17/2006 8:38:49 PM Here's an article about the book i referred to above.
In the first few centuries after Jesus' crucifixion, scribes manually copied the books that would ultimately compose it. In the course of reproducing the manuscripts, they accidentally or intentionally made thousands of changes to the texts. Although most of those changes were insignificant, Ehrman argues some were theologically driven and intended to settle disputes that raged in the early church over doctrine and belief. 28073. TheWizardOfWhimsy - 3/18/2006 5:10:08 PM This is an excerpt from a review of Kevin Philip's new book American Theocracy. The full review is in the American Politics thread.
Phillips is especially passionate in his discussion of the second great force that he sees shaping contemporary American life — radical Christianity and its growing intrusion into government and politics. The political rise of evangelical Christian groups is hardly a secret to most Americans after the 2004 election, but Phillips brings together an enormous range of information from scholars and journalists and presents a remarkably comprehensive and chilling picture of the goals and achievements of the religious right.
He points in particular to the Southern Baptist Convention, once a scorned seceding minority of the American Baptist Church but now so large that it dominates not just Baptism itself but American Protestantism generally. The Southern Baptist Convention does not speak with one voice, but almost all of its voices, Phillips argues, are to one degree or another highly conservative. On the far right is a still obscure but, Phillips says, rapidly growing group of "Christian Reconstructionists" who believe in a "Taliban-like" reversal of women's rights, who describe the separation of church and state as a "myth" and who call openly for a theocratic government shaped by Christian doctrine. A much larger group of Protestants, perhaps as many as a third of the population, claims to believe in the supposed biblical prophecies of an imminent "rapture" — the return of Jesus to the world and the elevation of believers to heaven.
Prophetic Christians, Phillips writes, often shape their view of politics and the world around signs that charlatan biblical scholars have identified as predictors of the apocalypse — among them a war in Iraq, the Jewish settlement of the whole of biblical Israel, even the rise of terrorism. He convincingly demonstrates that the Bush administration has calculatedly reached out to such believers and encouraged them to see the president's policies as a response to premillennialist thought. He also suggests that the president and other members of his administration may actually believe these things themselves, that religious belief is the basis of policy, not just a tactic for selling it to the public. Phillips's evidence for this disturbing claim is significant, but not conclusive. 28074. jexster - 3/19/2006 5:38:50 AM Jen,
Have YOU converted yet?
Grand Ayatollah Sistani on Homosexuality
Juan Cole
No you say?
Well maybe it's time you checked it out.
I am sure the Sayyed would be delighted to receive a pious pilgrim from the Cult of the Burnt Bush 28075. jexster - 3/22/2006 4:59:36 AM "You cannot evade the issue of God, whether you talk about pigs or the binomial theory, you are still talking about Him. Now if Christianity be. . . a fragment of metaphysical nonsense invented by a few people, then, of course, defending it will simply mean talking that metaphysical nonsense over and over. But if Christianity should happen to be true - then defending it may mean talking about anything or everything. Things can be irrelevant to the proposition that Christianity is false, but nothing can be irrelevant to the proposition that Christianity is true." GK Chesterton
28076. jexster - 3/22/2006 9:51:16 AM Anglican Leader Says the Schools Shouldn't Teach Creationism
LONDON, March 21— The Archbishop of Canterbury opposes teaching creationism in school and believes that portraying the Bible as just another theory devalues it, he said in a newspaper interview published Tuesday.
"I think creationism is, in a sense, a kind of category mistake, as if the Bible were a theory like other theories," the archbishop, the Most Rev. Rowan Williams, told The Guardian. "Whatever the biblical account of creation is, it's not a theory alongside theories. It's not as if the writer of Genesis or whatever sat down and said, 'Well, how am I going to explain all this?'
Cantaur Brings On a Mighty Monty Python 28077. anomie - 3/26/2006 12:29:12 AM Just getting around to reading your post 28069, Thoughtful. Not sure anyone could have said it better. I'd like to see Jen's reply, but I think I'll have to wait a while longer. 28078. arkymalarky - 3/26/2006 12:32:25 AM will it be italic? 28079. anomie - 3/26/2006 12:32:33 AM I remain perplexed at the assertion that it takes a God to explain the miraculous. As if the ordinary can exist and carry on without one. Same with creationism, which asserts that life is too complex to be explained without a creator...but everything else can exist without one? 28080. arkymalarky - 3/26/2006 12:32:48 AM Hmm. 28081. arkymalarky - 3/26/2006 12:33:41 AM That was not to Anomie's post, but to the italics issue. 28082. anomie - 3/26/2006 12:38:15 AM Sorry. Don't know how to play wth the "toys". 28083. arkymalarky - 3/26/2006 12:42:13 AM That's been up there several days, but hardly anyone posted since the open tag(s). 28084. Adam Selene - 3/26/2006 4:33:38 AM Anyone here read the gnostic gospels of Jesus? I've almost finished it... amazing.
If you dont' know - these are the "new" gospels discovered in 1945, written in coptic (nearly modern heiroglypics) and dated to be circa 100-200Ad. In other words, as old or older than the "true" gospels. These writings put christianity in a whole new light and really highlight how the catholic church cherry-picked the books they wanted to focus on their interpretation. The one by Mary Magdelen and another that mentions Jesus kissing Mary... wow.
Basically - gnostic versions of christianity focus on self-knowledge of god and do not require a priest to mediate. Much like the "modern" protestent movement, but even more radical if you can believe it.
Anyway - I'm really wondering how the new translations are playing with the religious conservatives? Are these new gospels even acknowledged?
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