(July 7, 2016 at 5:32 pm)Irrational Wrote:

(July 7, 2016 at 2:47 pm)RoadRunner79 Wrote: As to the nativity, I think that you are neglecting a couple options, that Mark may have been aware, but simply chose not to include it in his Gospel.  Or it is possible that Mark was not aware, but the Matthew and Luke where made aware by their sources.  In his book "Cold Case Christianity" by J. Warner Wallace; he points out that witnesses often do not always provide the same details (some may focus on one thing, that others do not).  Likewise a witness (especially one who is aware of others testimony) may not provide all the details, that they think your already know and rather focus on what they can add.

Except the argument about witnesses providing different factual details due to different perspectives and backgrounds is irrelevant here, because the differences in the nativity stories aren't due to those factors. If that was the case, the proportion of similarities in the elements of the nativity stories should've still been much higher, and the contradictions wouldn't be so apparent. But what we see instead is that the nativity stories were written exactly as if "Matthew" and "Luke" weren't aware of each other's writings. The similarities we do see are those to do with later key doctrines regarding the birth of Jesus: such being born of virgin and being born in Bethlehem. But the nativity stories are just considerably different from each other in most elements.

I feel like I'm not following you, because it seems like every time that I address what I think you are talking about, that the topic changes, and we never really discuss anything.  

Quote:As for "Mark", most likely when that was written, the whole idea of Jesus being born in Bethlehem and of a virgin had not yet been popularized if at all  surfaced at the time. This specific lack of details about Jesus' birth is also noticed in the writings of Paul. Something like the virgin birth of Jesus should've been mentioned by Paul in at least one of his epistles, but it's nowhere there.

How did you come to this conclusion?

(July 7, 2016 at 4:02 pm)Ignorant Wrote:

pocaracas Wrote: An "action" of a thing is not a thing, then.... it is... wait for it... a PROPERTY.

Then describe the property. If you can describe the property of 'existence' in an adequate way that is not a thing's 'being' or 'acting' in some way, then I'll buy that existence is not an action.

Hmmm.... let me try this...
[cheating through wiki] "Existence is commonly held to be that which objectively persists independent of one's presence."

But this makes no sense, to me...

Keep searching.... from the same wiki, this is curious... "A scientist might make a clear distinction about objects that exist, and assert that all objects that exist are made up of either matter or energy. But in the layperson's worldview, existence includes real, fictional, and even contradictory objects."
Are we before a second version of mixing up two concepts with the same word?

A thing with matter or energy is defined as existing. it's matter or energy properties imply existence, it seems. So... existence is a "conditional property"(?)

(July 7, 2016 at 4:02 pm)Ignorant Wrote:

Quote:An electron has the property of existing in the real world. It has many other properties, too.... charge, mass, velocity, energy. All those properties, taken together, let us make the identification of "electron". A conceptual electron, one used by physicists when doing calculations, has no property of existing in the real world.

This illustrates your problem nicely. You say that a conceptual electron does not have the 'property' of existence, but it still has the properties of charge, mass, velocity, energy, etc. Fine. If there is a real electron, it has the property of existence. Remove the property of existence, and there is merely a conceptual electron, but still an electron.

What happens if we apply the same to a different property. Suppose there is a real electron. Remove only the property of 'charge'. Is an electron still existing? No. Is whatever-it-is still existing? Yes. So if existence is a property and not an act, then it is a radically different sort of property than the others. When a conceptual electron is being, then it is existing. If it is not, then it is merely conceptual.

Are you saying that a "conceptual electron" is the same as a "real electron"?
All other properties are the same so we can still call it an electron, but there's a difference between the two, wouldn't you say?

Is focusing so heavily on the NT an admission that trying to evidence the OT is a doomed project?

Except for fundamentalists, they seem to have given up on the OT. Instead they continuously try to validate the much less remarkable (from a magic point of view) NT and conflate the existence of a man with the existence of a man-God.

Even if Jesus existed, even if he genuinely died and then came back to life, it doesn't tell us anything about "God". The magician doesn't get to proclaim how he does a trick when you can't figure it out. All we'd have is a very unusual and unexplained series of events that we can't investigate further. Personally I wouldn't give a monkeys, further to scientific enquiry, which appears impossible.

The very idea that God would be involved in this charade is laughable to me. Proving these events to be true is like saying, "No really, God totally is a massive drama queen with serious issues, who has to murder avatars of himself before allowing himself to forgive people."

Really. Forgive me if I keep as far away from that lunatic as possible.

(July 8, 2016 at 2:10 am)robvalue Wrote: Is focusing so heavily on the NT an admission that trying to evidence the OT is a doomed project?

Except for fundamentalists, they seem to have given up on the OT. Instead they continuously try to validate the much less remarkable (from a magic point of view) NT and conflate the existence of a man with the existence of a man-God.

Even if Jesus existed, even if he genuinely died and then came back to life, it doesn't tell us anything about "God". The magician doesn't get to proclaim how he does a trick when you can't figure it out. All we'd have is a very unusual and unexplained series of events that we can't investigate further. Personally I wouldn't give a monkeys, further to scientific enquiry, which appears impossible.

The very idea that God would be involved in this charade is laughable to me. Proving these events to be true is like saying, "No really, God totally is a massive drama queen with serious issues, who has to murder avatars of himself before allowing himself to forgive people."

I thought I was a drama queen. You surpassed me.

I've tried very hard before to understand what Ignorant's idea of a god is. I have failed. But I appreciate his continued civil communication.

It seems to bear absolutely no relation to any of the characters in the bible, however.

(July 8, 2016 at 5:11 am)robvalue Wrote: I've tried very hard before to understand what Ignorant's idea of a god is. I have failed. But I appreciate his continued civil communication.

It seems to bear absolutely no relation to any of the characters in the bible, however.

I don't think he has an idea of god... At least, it doesn't matter for this discussion.

(July 8, 2016 at 2:10 am)robvalue Wrote: Is focusing so heavily on the NT an admission that trying to evidence the OT is a doomed project?

Of course that approach is doomed to a failure signified by the new testament itself. Because as is said often enough in the gospels and new testament, Yeshua's legitimacy is dependent on him fulfilling the prophesies and upholding the laws in the old testament. So if you discard the ot the nt falls apart.