I was reading about Jesus's lineage today in an attempt to understand why the Jews never recognised him and I realised why. Christians link Jesus to King David through Joseph, but Joseph isn't his Dad.
>>3473 There are also two totally different genealogies linking Jesus to David, one found in Luke, and one in Matthew. The one found in Matthew has 26 generations separating David and Jesus, while Luke gives a list of 41. Only three names (excluding Jesus, Joseph and David's) are found in both genealogies.
The Bible, as it turns out, has a few inconsistencies. Shocking. I'm not entirely sure what the Christian response to this particular one is, but I'd be willing to bet it's a wordy and overinvolved version of "shut up, it doesn't matter".
There is no evidence of an historical Jesus, but if there was one, he'd be irrelevant. There was no mythological Jesus, because magic isn't real.
I'm amazed by how many people refuse to consider that Jesus might be s fictional character despite there being absolutely no reason to presume anything different.
> There is no evidence of an historical Jesus, but if there was one, he'd be irrelevant.
To you, maybe. To all the people who died spreading the story of this fictional figure over the last ~1900 (historically verifiable) years, his existence or not - even as nothing but a man with a message would probably matter a lot.
Surprise surprise that Christianity has changed a lot over the last two thousand years. It should be fairly obvious to anyone with the gumption to use a computer that the Christianity practised today is very, very different to what people believed ~1900 years ago.
>>3485 >I'm amazed by how many people refuse to consider that Jesus might be s fictional character despite there being absolutely no reason to presume anything different.
I think most people assume that the myth is based around a kernel of historical reality rather than being completely invented, simply because that's the way things tend to happen - if I remember rightly, there was a historical Romano-Biton who won a battle at Mount Badon, and may well have been called something like the contemporary equivalent of 'Arthur', and Camelot, Excalibur and all the rest accumulated over the centuries (for example). I think most people assume (if they think about it at all) that there was a rabbi called something like Jesus (Yeshua, I think) wandering around first century Palestine preaching revolutionary ideas, and that the magic and invented details got added later.
>>3489 Scholarly thinking is that the character of Jesus is a blend of three or four different people, with the good deeds of a few others thrown in for good measure.
>>3486 >That's because your view of reality is about as narrow as theirs.
Is the idea of 'objective truth' not binary, by definition? Or do you think there are 'multiple realities'?
>>3487 >To you, maybe. To all the people who died spreading the story of this fictional figure over the last ~1900 (historically verifiable) years, his existence or not - even as nothing but a man with a message would probably matter a lot.
If he did exist as an individual and historical man is an objective claim, and really does matter to many people who preach the Gospel. If you are trying to say that it's the message rather than the reality of Jesus that counts (which isn't clear from the grammar of your post), then the attribution of the messages to Jesus is irrelevant, as 3845 said.
For example, in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus said,
'27 “Ye have heard that it was said by them of old, ‘Thou shalt not commit adultery.’
28 But I say unto you, that whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart.'
So, if Jesus really existed as a moral authority, then to look with lust is to break the 7th commandment; No adultery allowed.
But if Jesus never existed, then this claim can be argued against. It could be theologically correct, or theologically wrong, but if you don't believe it came literally from Jesus, then the historical existence of Jesus would be irrelevant.
>It should be fairly obvious to anyone with the gumption to use a computer that the Christianity practised today is very, very different to what people believed ~1900 years ago.
Does anyone claim otherwise? We no longer live under the Roman Empire, so immediately this is a strawman point. However, there are people living in the West, today, who believe homosexuality is an abomination, Adam and Eve were real people, as was The Flood, and that scientific progress is evil (ie, Biology is wrong because evolution is wrong; Physics is wrong because the Big Bang is wrong; Neuroscience is wrong because we have God-given Free Will; Stem Cell research, abortion, euthanasia, and computer science regarding Artificial Intelligence are all 'evil').
You're right that beliefs have changed, but the desire to go back to 'the way things were' is not only clearly alive and well, but even expressed by conservative atheists, which only demonstrates the appeal and potency of Biblical values (especially over technology and equality).
>>3489 >I think most people assume (if they think about it at all) that there was a rabbi called something like Jesus (Yeshua, I think) wandering around first century Palestine preaching revolutionary ideas, and that the magic and invented details got added later.
'most people' do assume a non-literalist and non-supernatural interpretation of these things. However, the minority who really do believe these metaphysical magical things are in the hundreds of millions.
Most people also assume Mickey Mouse is a myth, but you're right that the way things 'seem to happen' is that, over a long enough time period, and enough people, some will eventually believe that Mickey Mouse was a real person. And they might even use his popularity and prevalence as evidence that he existed, or at least something similar must have. It seems obvious that whether Mickey Mouse preaches a gospel of jihad and beheadings over buying Disney merchandise would play a pivotal role in the behaviour and actions of those who follow him in the future.
> Is the idea of 'objective truth' not binary, by definition? Or do you think there are 'multiple realities'?
Current m-theory suggests that everything is relative to a given frame of reference. That's about the closest we are to a unified theory of everything as of now.
>If you are trying to say that it's the message rather than the reality of Jesus that counts (which isn't clear from the grammar of your post), then the attribution of the messages to Jesus is irrelevant, as 3845 said.
You're conflating the message given in modern psalms with the original message of Jesus while at the same time refusing to see the significance of a change in Christian religion and morality.
> Does anyone claim otherwise? We no longer live under the Roman Empire, so immediately this is a strawman point.
I fail to see how whether or not we live under the Roman Empire makes the changes a religion undergoes during two millennia inherently a strawman argument.
> However, there are people living in the West, today, who believe homosexuality is an abomination, Adam and Eve .......
Your points about what I can only term fundamentalist ideas are moot; there are no otherwise intelligent Christians who would argue the points you stated. Intelligent Christians accept the mutability of religion, the fact that history is essentially bullshit and that various Bibles are a random (and heavily censored) sample of some historical documents about something that happened a long time ago.
Sage because I'm not a Christian in any real sense of the word; I just have a general disdain for Reddit-grade newly minted atheists who think they're all that because they can laugh along at Ricky Gervais' jokes about people having invisible friends while hardly having two brain cells to rub together under that tipped fedora.
>>3493 >Is the idea of 'objective truth' not binary, by definition? Or do you think there are 'multiple realities'?
Objective truth is pretty much a useless concept unless you're talking about maths or physics or something. What a person is, is a relative concept, let alone who a person is, so whether or not any given person existed is a slightly silly question. One man's mythology is another man's reality.
As much as I dislike card-carrying atheists, the historicity of Jesus is common amongst non-Christians.
To be fair, though, second hand accounts can never fully reveal the actual character of an historical figure. Hell, you can never really know or fully understand someone you fall in love with and wake up next to every day.
>>3497 It means there are lots of different ways to define personhood. Ask Simon what he thinks it means to be a person then compare it with what a PETA member thinks. Ask a Nazi, ask an Israeli, ask an 18th century American, ask an otherkin, ask a pro-lifer, ask a pro-choicer.
So Hitler says to Goebbels, "I'm going to kill 6 million Jews, and one furry." Goebbels replies "But why are you killing six million Jews?"
"See," says Hitler, "Nobody cares about furries."
The modern internet is full of people way more obnoxious than furries ever were.You've got bronies, facebook gender rights activists, and the entire population of Tumblr to detest now.
>>3495 >Current m-theory suggests that everything is relative to a given frame of reference. That's about the closest we are to a unified theory of everything as of now.
You're talking woo-woo. Just like how New Age gurus try to use quantum mechanics to explain things like 'universal consciousness', you are relying on theoretical physiscs to try and justify the existence of a historical Jesus. Either Jesus was a real person, who I could have met and talked to, or he wasn't. M-Theory shouldn't come into it.
>You're conflating the message given in modern psalms with the original message of Jesus while at the same time refusing to see the significance of a change in Christian religion and morality.
You even quoted the part where I said I couldn't understand what was meant in the first place in your response, so I can't reply to this.
>I fail to see how whether or not we live under the Roman Empire makes the changes a religion undergoes during two millennia inherently a strawman argument.
It was suggested that the historicity of an actual man denoted as Jesus was irrelevant to whether the message was true or not in post 3485. In post 3487, it was argued that the historical existence is important, followed by a statement that Christianity today is not the same as it was in Roman times. Nobody has ever claimed that Christianity is static and hasn't changed since Roman times. So to try and argue against the assumption that someone, somewhere, has said this, is a straw man. If this still doesn't make sense, I can't explain it further and you are simply going to have to ignore me or read more about it elsewhere.
>there are no otherwise intelligent Christians who would argue the points you stated (fundamentalist ideas).
>Intelligent Christians accept the mutability of religion, the fact that history is essentially bullshit and that various Bibles are a random (and heavily censored) sample of some historical documents about something that happened a long time ago.
I'm not quite sure where to begin, so I'll start with the most absurd and work to the more complicated parts.
>History is essentially bullshit
What? You're simply dismissing the most crucial part of religion as 'bullshit?' History is a massive part of how we make moral decisions. How the universe came into existence, and how life evolved is really important in how we understand what happens when we die, and how to treat each other, plants and animals in the mean time. I understand that history is an art/humanities subject that is always open to interpretation, but that doesn't mean it didn't happen or is irrelevant to the world today. I don't want to resort to name calling, but 'philistine' comes to mind.
>Intelligent Christians
Oxymoron. And I don't mean that in some kind of insulting 'New Atheist' kind of way. A most accurate understanding of Biology is not only incompatible with Creationism, but also any kind of 'guided' or 'intelligent' design. So a scientifically literate person would be really hard-pressed to accept ideas of Original Sin, Resurrection and Salvation through Jesus Christ, even metaphorically. Metaphorically for what?
Secondly, you could mean 'intelligent Christian' to mean someone who really understands Christian theology, has read the bible, and even studied it at uni or equivalent. In that case, they would be hard-pressed to argue that Jesus didn't really die for 'our sins' or that homosexuality as an act or as a marriage is biblically compatible.
Assuming you consider the Church of England to 'intelligent Christians', then you are misrepresenting them to say they accept evolution. They lobby for 'intelligent design' to be taught in schools, and lobbied for an exemption (on the grounds of religious privilege) so that same sex marriage would be literally out of the question (as in, gay marriage is forbidden in the Church, and the law supports this).
When 'otherwise intelligent Christians' argue against groups like Westboro Baptist Church, if you pay close attention, they don't really disagree with the message; only the method of delivery.
And even if you separate 'fundamentalist ideas' from 'intelligent Christians', what do you think the proportions of each are? 99/1? 30/70? 60/40? Even if you think 1% of Christians are fundamentalist (it's definitely more), you're still dismissing at least 28 million people as 'moot' and unintelligent.
Bump because I want to make it clear that I don't even like Ricky Gervais.
>>3495 >Current m-theory suggests that everything is relative to a given frame of reference
You don't need M-Theory to say that, it's Einstein's postulate that led to his theory of Relativity. The philosophical implications for 'universal truths' are interesting - certain things like event simultaneity can only be true in a relative sense. It's not really relevant to Jesus though.
Absolutely, I only made the point as regards to another point made about objective truth being binary - it isn't. In fact one could argue that there is no such thing as objective truth full stop (although eventually that train of reasoning becomes simply absurd).
I don't think it's wrong but I think it's unhelpful. If you start saying things like "The speed of light isn't always 299,792,458 m/s because it's probably different in other universes" then you're not really being helpful. If things are universally true for our given frame of reference then simply calling them "true" is more useful than not (at least in everyday life; people trying to understand the origins of the multiverse obviously have to side step all such simplicities and deal with absolutes. Which, like you point out, are utterly absurd).
>>3530 But the speed of light isn't consistent in this universe and that is probably quite important if you're the sort of person who has a reason to want to know the speed of light.
I've spent 10 minutes trying to find a good answer to this and I can't.
As far as I understand, light always travels at the same speed, but it slows down sometimes.
It's to do with complicated maths regarding the behaviour of waves, the electromagnetic wave that carries light is always travelling at the same speed, but the photon of light which is carrying the information along that wave can slow down.
>>3536 This. Things get interesting when you start moving at rather high speeds. For instance, because the speed of light must FAIAP remain at c, though the satellites that make up the GPS move at a substantial speed relative to the ground, a second is not the same length aboard the satellites as on the ground, and so the time-keeping kit on-board has to compensate for this - the on-board radios have to operate at a marginally lower frequency than the ground stations.
That's the classical view and the only view that has any practical use, but the wave/particle duality thingy complicates matters. The wave can't bump into anything, but the collective sum of all the photons in the beam of light will create an interference pattern, which effectively super-imposes a new wave on top of the old one.
Also, even if you use the classical view of photons "bumping into" atoms, it still isn't accurate to say they slow down. Photons are absorbed and re-emitted, which means that they take longer in total to travel through the media, but at any one point the photons aren't travelling slower.
