Dil, you & I are in full agreement with the above post.

But isn't interesting how we've both looked at the same Gospels, both spent time researching their background, spent time looking at related documents, writings, and interpretations of said books, and come to vastly different conclusions? I find it extremely odd that two intelligent, well-read people such as you & I could look at (I presume) the exact same "evidence" (such as it is) and come to diametrically opposed opinions on the matter.

I really hope you don't mind that I want to continue to prod you for more of your ideas on the matter. My mind is always open to new interpretations and ideas on the matter. So, if you know of anything that I might read that might help me better appreciate the historical grounding of the Gospels, I'd appreciate knowing about it so I too can peruse such a tome.

Thanks -- Mark

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"The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others. But it does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods, or no God. It neither breaks my leg, nor picks my pocket."

Thomas Jefferson

haha very true.

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"A dog barks when his master is attacked. I would be a coward if I saw that God's truth is attacked and yet would remain silent."
-John Calvin

...and not a very long drive either, I think.

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The apocalypse is coming... we're gonna need more ammo.

Yes, I've often found it amusing how intelligent people can so strongly disagree after seeing the same material. Almost makes one believe that intelligence isn't really all that relevent to figuring things out

No, I don't mind. It's been a little while since my latest cycle of really evaluating this stuff for myself, so if things get too deep I'll have to actually go look stuff up again instead of working from memory and that'll slow down my response time a bit.

Something to read? Hmmm. From where I sit at the computer I can see a couple titles on the shelf that might be interesting. There's Josh McDowell's Evidence that Demands a Verdict and Lee Strobel's The Case for Christ. The McDowell is somewhat old (my copy is from the 70's I think) but more strictly academic; almost more of a reference resource than a book per se'. The Strobel is easier reading and more recent (though still hardly new). Both have a broader scope than just the history of the Bible, so you might have to wade around a bit. I think Part I of the McDowell focuses on what you want. There might be some others lurking around the apartment somewhere; I'm not sure what we have here and what's in a storage box back in New Mexico.

I generally use these types of books more as a jumping off point than a final say. I pull out the names of texts, some dates, references to councils and the like and then go off on a broader search to see what I can find out about them. Last time I started with a list of questions to find the answer to. Something like "what are the oldests extant copies of gospel text" and such. I have that all written out somewhere and might be able to find it again.

Anyway, there you have it.

-Dil

PS On the other hand, the computer room bookshelf is much better eqipped with science fiction than with biblical history. So if you want any recommendations there I'm all good to go

Intelligence is highly relevant to figuring things out. However, intelligence is not relevant - nor necessarily involved - in this particular kind of disagreement. I bet that out of the same people who disagree after seeing the same material, at least one will have the same opinion before seeing the same material as after.

In other words, at least one of those people is not interested in figuring things out, - the only interest is affirmation. And that's how disagreement can occur in these matters.

A painting that goes for incredible amounts of money at Sothersby's must have some sort of value for certain people. Yet, an exact copy of the same painting is likely to go unsold. Why? The interesting thing here is not what kind of value something generates but how the value is generated.

Another interesting thing is to see that you (perhaps subconsciously?) understood my analogy right away even though you said you didn't quite follow the connection. That you ask if it wouldn't "make sense to just do your best to determine which ones, if any, were fakes" is just another way of saying that the fake has no value. Which was of course the connection I was trying to make.

If the true and real has value to you and the false and fake has no value, what value does something have if you have no way of telling whether that something is real or fake? Would you tag it with the lowest common denominator, meaning that the value is so-so, undecided, this or that .. or, in reality, without value? Or would you simply pretend it to be true and therefore represent a value to you?

I should add that I had a strong Baptist upbringing. By about the age of 13 or 14 my inquisitive mind caused me to start digging a bit deeper. A copy of Paine's Age of Reason fell into my hands during the summer between 8th & 9th grade and a light-bulb went on. I've been on a bit of a quest ever since.

And, I've always remained open to having my mind changed back after becoming a free-thinker. I don't think, Madsen, that your above post applies to me.

And besides, my only real complaint about ANY organized religion are those that attempt to usurp political processes.

The rest I just find interesting. . .

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"The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others. But it does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods, or no God. It neither breaks my leg, nor picks my pocket."

Thomas Jefferson

I'm more than happy to loose a bet in these matters

Alfred Korzybski said: “There are two ways to slide easily through life: to believe everything or to doubt everything. Both ways save us from thinking.” Surely, to have faith may be a good thing for some; but one need temper it with a good amount of skepticism.

Ah, I see. I did see some possible connection, but since, as I indicated, that connection didn't appear to make sense I assumed there must be some other.
But I think we can generally say that the false is not as valuable (at least for the same purposes) as is the real, though depending on the purpose and the situation there may be exceptions.

I suppose the value would have to be declared uncertain. The probable value would increase or decrease depending on how likely one felt the item in question to be true.

But of course, in the end, everything we percieve and think could be "fake". Pushed too far this will only lead us toward pointless nihilism.

Doubtless that is sometimes (perhaps often) the case. But I don't think its necessarily so, especially in regards to this kind of issue. In the end it would come down to the question of which theoretical explination one felt better explained the given evidence, a very subjective question.
I suspect that people could quite honestly disagree without one of them necessarily having decided in advance.

Well, it depends if the "theoretical explanation" in question concerns the special circumstance where there can be no such thing as "given evidence": Divinity.

To paraphrase Non Sequitur: If you don't have faith then any "theoretical explanation" concerning divinity is going to be a really weird thing to listen to

EDITED: After re-reading this, I've realized that it sounds somewhat out-of-character for me and perhaps a little harsh. I apologize in advance lest it offend and for steering the conversation off-topic (which it most certainly does).

Oh what utter nihilistic rot! (Sorry, Nemo, but IMO it is).
I won't even touch the strange connection made to faith here; let us examine the treatment of the poor and unsuspecting color "red", which certainly was underserving of such treatment. Two approaches come to mind:

First, we might ask just what the author thinks someone means when they say "I see red" and how that meaning conflicts with seeing "different wave lengths of radiation". What can, "I see" mean except that "I visually perceive" and how can we possible inform people what perceptions they are experiencing, as if they didn't know? And they do NOT in fact, perceive "different wave lengths of radiation"; they perceive "red".

Now, if we hadn't been so interested in trying to make the poor uneducated people feel foolish for saying "red" instead of "long wavelengths of light", we might have simply said that the reason we see red is because light of such-and-such a wavelength is entering our eyes. Thus we would have actually added something useful to them, explaining a perception without, at the same time, pretending that it didn't exist.


Now, to the second, and more damning approach.
We have here an amusingly absolute distinction: "the difference between what is true and what we perceive as true" or, as it is put elsewhere, "the difference between perception and reality".
I think anyone who has spent much time in the Humanities section of this forum knows that this is going to go badly.

If, as seems to be here implied, perception and reality are truly distinct, seperate things and one does not tell us about the other, then I dare say mankind is in a bit of a pickle.
I myself, for example, seem to have only perceptions. I get them in constant streams, but I don't seem to be getting any "reality" outside of them. I would ask the author, who so calausly dismissed "red" as "mere perception" just how he came up with his beliefs about the "different wavelengths of radiation"? I do hope he didn't use any of his senses in coming to this conclusion, for that would be reliance on his perceptions, which, as you might have heard, should not be confused with reality.
Clearly if our preceptions are not reliable then we are sunk. We know nothing about reality at all. All those experiments with prisms on the nature of light were pointless; they prove nothing. We don't even know the prisms really existed, except that we percieved them there. In this case, I would say that the person who says "I see red" is at least intellectually honest; he is merely reporting on one of his perceptions. The person who babbles on about "wavelengths of light" is making ludicrous assumptions; he is assuming that his perceptions, when we was "discovering" his tidbit of science, actually reflected reality. How arrogant.



Perhaps we might better just confess that either perceptions tell us about reality or that we know nothing about it what-so-ever. We might, it is true, build faulty conclusions and inferences atop our perceptions and thus believe false things about reality, but that shows only our errors of logic and deduction; the perceptions themselves simply are. They are, in fact, the only thing we actually know to be true.

I know that I see red. You merely think that you know why.

I think intelligent people can come to different conclusions about the same evidence without any need for "divinity" to be involved. It will still always come down to which explination of the evidence one feels is most likely.

And I would think that, if the question is one of "was there a divine interaction here?", then the person who believed, from the start, that no divine interaction was possible would be the one who had already made up his mind.
Only the person who comes in willing to except either explination as possible is really getting anything out of the evidence.

Your response - how shall I say it? - typifies the “dilettante”.

How do you know that you see red? See attached article:
The Role of Language in the Perceptual Processes