... implying precisely nothing about the rationality of an ancient person, growing up in a world inhabited by gods, rituals and cults, to believe in gods.

Perhaps not but answering this point of yours:

Maybe it was, but prior to that 'goddidit' was groundbreaking new insight, you made it sound like believing in gods has always been a default human condition, I don't agree. Plus, isn't this " the rationality of an ancient person, growing up in a world inhabited by gods, rituals and cults, to believe in gods" circular if it's intended to support our belief in gods?? Or maybe it begs the question.

"Circular? Begs the question? Perhaps it's an ad hominem? Eh, it kinda sorta smells fishy, is what I mean."

And no, it's neither. You asked whether I believed it to be a rational decision for an ancient person to attribute the drowning of a ship to the Wrath to Poseidon rather than just "**** happening". I do. If it was intended to be the stepping stone to some further argument, that must have slipped by me.

Oh I watched the image of tubby Bart the whole time . Contextually this has greater impact than the example you give. Maybe your circle of peers is much more liberal in their Christian views. Many of the people I mix with are very conservative (ie. believe every word in the Bible is God breathed - verbatim). Evangelical protestants place extreme importance on the "Word of God". When one combines the doctrines of Biblical Inspiration and Sola Scriptura it becomes REALLY important that the Bible is right on every detail.

edit: have to give you much respect if English is your second language. You are more articulate than many English as first language English speakers I know.

I'll say, this one just makes me sad for the penguin. Cute little guy.

Haven't watched (listened to) the whole thing yet. Got to about an hour in, Erhman starts his first rebuttal with a really bizarre (IMO) plea to the audience to be open minded, and also says some things about how White's presentation was "very smart." I wonder, is Erhman trying to communicate that White is just smoke and mirrors here? The reason I ask is because the placement of this seems really odd. I would think this would be more suitable for the final minute of a closing or something.

^^The one thing I found curious in the entire debate was that the title was "Does the Bible misquote Jesus", yet neither of them discussed even one example where Jesus was indeed talking. I guess either Ehrman just rattled through his usual stump speech, or perhaps he doesn't have a very convincing example.

Ya, I found that somewhat curious too. Esp. when he goes on to say "There are probably just two or three here that can be really open minded..." (or something to that effect). Way to be subtly offensive.

This reminds me of a very flawed thread of yours:

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/13...truth-1297473/

"Does the Bible misquote Jesus" is picking up on the title of one of Ehrman's books - "Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why". And yeah I think Ehrman has a pretty standard speech he always does.

Mark 1:41
New International Version (NIV)
41 Jesus was indignant.[a] He reached out his hand and touched the man. “I am willing,” he said. “Be clean!”

Footnotes:

Mark 1:41 Many manuscripts Jesus was filled with compassion

I think the above passage noted in the debate is an example. Not a verbal quote but still misquoting his character/actions.


---

In regards to Ehrman's plea for open mindedness... Yes this was kind of a veiled insult. But Ehrman knows who he is speaking with. Ehrman knows these are very conservative evangelicals similar to what I mentioned above in my previous post.

So we've had this discussion before and it didn't go well which I'm going to try and correct here because I think this may be important.

So lets start off by saying I'm okay with you talking about the consequences of my faith and I accept that to do that you have to include me. I'm not going to react as badly to this as I may have before but I have the same issue and that is you attributing to all people who believe in god negative consequences for you and your kids. You do this without understanding how my faith manifests and without any evidence for the actual consequences of my faith. You're making some sweeping generalisations which make you prone to accusations of hyperbole.

Do you consider every atheist who does nothing similarly? Like if you are including my possible inaction are you also considering equally culpable those that don't take any action in the absence of my beliefs? If so then it's not my faith that's the problem and if not you're holding me to a different standard that you're holding atheists to which seems unjust.

I am interested in your answer, this is not an attempt to get into a disagreement and I have no intention of putting you back on ignore. It's not even about me or my beliefs it's more what I consider to be the seamless switch between specific claims and generalisations that have lead to difficulties before.

One last thing I will say, you have made the claim on more than one occasion that one of sciences strengths is the fact that scientific hypothesis should be testable falsifiable etc etc you know the claim that religion is a net negative isn't going to meet that standard yet you seem happy enough to state it.

It's kind of interesting, because I was reminded of that thread about the article in Atlantic http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/13...elife-1341061/

Ehrman's personal story seems to have been fairly similar. Very conservative evangelical, finds his studies don't match his beliefs and rather than perhaps investing some gray matter into coming up with some less cut-and-dried form of belief, he concludes it all doesn't make sense at all. It's not really surprising that he gets defensive when the matter of inspiration came up: Essentially his entire critique only has oomph if one presupposes an extremely strict and literal theory of inspiration. But that would in return also delineate quite clearly the boundaries of his argument. Thus he maintains that he only talks about it in the opening and closing remarks of his book to explain why he got interested in the subject. It's more than that - without that strict and literal understanding, his entire argument loses considerable force.

This is kind of where I am at, "investing some gray matter into coming up with some less cut-and-dried form of belief". My background is very similar to Ehrman (obviously less academic). You will NEVER hear a pastor/preacher/teacher talk about how the words in the Bible are actually a bit different than what God inspired in the original manuscripts. It is not transparent, especially on the part of academic evangelicals to simply avoid this topic altogether.

MB you have made statements to this effect several times: "you are a believer and through your action and/or inaction, you support a system that I believe has a net negative effect on our societies".

I want to give you a chance to support this claim. Feel free to elaborate...

Here are a few examples of how Christian faith positively effects societies that you may not know about:

Habitat For Humanity:
build and repair houses all over the world using volunteer labor and donations
http://www.habitat.org/how/christian.aspx

Food for the Hungry:
serving the poor globally since 1971 in short-term emergency relief and long-term work to end world hunger
http://fh.org/

Mennonite Central Committee
carry out disaster relief, sustainable community development and justice and peace-building work
http://www.mcc.org/whatwedo

International Justice Mission
make public justice systems work for victims of abuse and oppression who urgently need the protection of the law.
http://www.ijm.ca/

I really like IJM's work. They basically work to set free modern day slaves in developing countries by putting pressure on the local justice system.

Mercy Ships
Have hospital ships and land-based teams that provide primary medical care, relief aid and community support to the most impoverished people on earth, free of charge.
http://www.mercyships.ca/

It is important to note that there is a positive effect on society regardless of the veracity of Christian teaching. This is not meant to be a tooting of ones own horn. All I am attempting to do is provide some (needed?) balance to your point of view.

I guess Ehrman would have an answer to this, but imo this super-literal idea of biblical inspiration doesn't only get problematic with textual errors and such. Mark, for example, writes a rather aramaic/hebraistic kind of greek. And, if compared to Luke, not the most stylish. Do I have to assume that God needed to practice first before he got the groove of good koine-greek?

Barth (I think) said that the Bible contains the Word of God but not the words of God. I think that's a pretty good way to put it. Demanding that it contain the actual words whispered into the scribes ears (interestingly, Ehrman never actually addresses how exactly he figures inspiration to have worked in a technical sense despite White questioning him about it) that they then wrote down in a trance-like state or something just doesn't solve anything. Claiming that "he could've preseverd the originals" or "he could've made the scribes write perfect" is just asking for a constant divine intervention in human action. Plus, ldo, how DOES he know that the originals are lost? It took until 1947 to discover the Qumran scrolls - who knows what's still out there. I think this was also the point of the exchange about "no longer worrying about the originals" which he claims most present day text critics to have abandoned: Based on the manuscripts we have, we've sort of "done what we could". Further research without new texts won't significantly alter our knowledge anymore. That's not the same as saying that the original doesn't matter or or that we "don't know" what the original text was. It just acknowledges that there's a limit to what we can do based on what we have.

Does white ever answer the point about the added text in (mark?) Where the original ends saying 'they told no one, for they were afraid'? That seems to me to be a pretty significant addition

Ya. It's an addition, based on the other gospels. Iirc Ehrman touches on why it was added: The text isn't very "gospel-like" when it ends: And they were afraid and told no one.

But this is where White's distinction of viable and significant comes into play: The Two-source hypothesis is still (albeit never-ending debate about it) the most viable hypothesis on how to explain the correspondences between the gospels. But if that is the case, does a summary from Lk and Mt, that was added to Mk to make for a nicer finish actually change anything? In the sense of: Adding something we didn't already know? So yeah - it's a pretty significant chunk of text that was added. But (though we don't "see" that because the many different sections are neatly stitched together) Mt and Lk are also (to a significant degree) "summaries" of Mk and Q. So essentially it's the same "technique" that is employed at the ending of Mk, just this time in the opposite direction (i.e. back from Lk/Mt to Mk).

After being married to a devout and crazy Seventh Day Adventist for all of 4 months, I can definitely say that I will never begin a relationship with an overly religious person again.

I can certainly see dating a casual theist...even a follower of a certain religion, as long as that person doesn't expect me to believe what she does.

I found it quite hard to respect my wife when she said things like, "Jesus is coming back in my lifetime, and we need to be prepared." Or that Noah's Ark really happened. Etc.

I'm guessing you knew this before you got married?

Dude, there's a reason why What Happens in Vegas Stays in Vegas.

No, I'm pretty sure that you suggesting that it's rational to believe in gods if you grow up in a world that believes in gods is circular reasoning when used to support how we arrived at a point where there are gods. There must have been a point when it wasn't rational.

So you're saying that belief in gods is rational?

These aren't deliberate steeping stones, I'm just asking questions that I'd like the answer to and seeing where it goes.

Bolded: I didn't use it that way, and you did neither.

This is where we started off:

Underlined: Doesn't follow. The fact that we "arrived" at a point where it was rational doesn't mean that it was irrational before. Maybe simply no one had the idea (or the brain capacity). If you're running with this Dawkins model of evolutionary side-effect, then at some point, the belief in God simply "popped up" (remember: emergent property). However, as "rational" means something like "a normative concept of reasoning in the sense that rational people should derive conclusions in a consistent way given the information at disposal", an idea that no one has conceived of yet isn't irrational - it's just not conceived yet.

You're skipping scopes again. I was maintaining that it was rational for a citizen of ancient Ephesus to attribute sea storms, say, to Poseidon. This is also why it's not circular. If we take the above definition, ancient people, trough a "concept of reasoning" derived at the conclusion that gods exist in a consistent way given the information at disposal.

It doesn't actually matter how your individual faith manifests unless you have literally never told anyone or given any indication that you believe in the christian god, or have done something to actively counter religion, in which case none of this applies.

But, any action you taken in your life that might influence another in their positive belief of god has helped sustain and perpetuate that system of belief. If you go to a church, or wear a cross, or just occasionally admit to belief, you have made a difference. It may not be much, but when 2.6 billion people are doing it becomes a powerful force. You all share an idea and help keep that idea alive. Any meme has to propagate.

If I did nothing, I would be guilty of allowing the system to perpetuate too. What's the quote? "All this is needed for evil to prevail is for one good man to do nothing." Our inaction can have as great an impact as action.

Sure, I apply this to everyone including myself. I couldn't, for example, moan about consumerism if I then went out and bought the latest iGadget and behaved like a good little consumer.

I don't know how you can disagree that you're part of the system of christian belief and in whatever small way, you help perpetuate that belief system, I think where we might disagree is that it's a net negative.

Sure, it's only my impression that it's a net negative, it would be a tough one to prove and I doubt I could do it even if it were provable. I take some reassurance from the fact that I'm far from alone in thinking like this though, which is not proof, it's just evidence that I'm not deluded.

This is a highly offensive approach. By that standard, any democrat who voted democrat twice in 2000 and 2004 is "guilty by association" - through continually living in the US and paying taxes there - for the 2nd Iraq war and so on.

And this is just pathetic. You riled on for godknowshowlong about your special definition of delusion, but now you claim that you holding a belief that you KNOWINGLY can't prove (or substantiate in any non-controversial way), that you KNOWINGLY hold while a large number of people (many of them atheist) disagree and which really only defence you have is TRUSTING the ASSURANCE of others is not deluded. This is absurd.

So what you're effectively doing is establishing that belief in god = bad a priori. You're also conflating all consequences of belief and calling them negative.

What you want to do is hold someone to account for their beliefs not the consequences of those beliefs, this is prety arrogant tbh.

May I ask you what you are doing to actively counter religion?

What difference? What system of belief? There are lots of beliefs that qualify as theist and there are lots of different perspectives on what a good life should be, again you're lumping them all together and calling them bad.

What are you doing about religion? What are you doing about poverty? About racism? About homophobia? About sexism? About inequality? About injustice? Because if you aren't doing anything to comabt them you're part of the problem.

I believe there is a god you can't really infer anything else from my faith as stated, you can't aggregate peoples views then try to talk to those views specifically. It's a strawman

I'm considering religion as a net negative for my maiden thread in this forum but I'm swerving it because it seems less than interersting.

gogogo, I so want someone to make an intelligent case for this. I actually thought about playing advocatus just to get a discussion about this.