(September 12, 2013 at 2:54 pm)Drich Wrote: For those of you who did not follow Minnie's last extended exchange with me, he offered to provide me with a faith shattering book written by Bart D Ehrman. The title : "Jesus Interupted."
Basically Mr. Erhman started out as a biblical scholar who has found reason to believe God does not exist through evidence he has compiled through his extensive studies in the bible, and it orginal texts.

My 'book report' will highlight a few of his more "faith crippling questions."

I'd just like to offer my condolences. May your unsupportable beliefs rest in peace while you yourself find meaning in a life without magic.

(September 12, 2013 at 2:59 pm)apophenia Wrote: From what I understand, Ehrman's change in belief was primarily motivated by the problem of theodicy, not because of his knowledge and experience with higher and lower criticism.

Your right. I just finished the first chapter, and the whole deconstruction of his faith started with the bible, and once he dismissed the bible as the word of God his whole system of faith crumbled because he built a non biblical pro Omni-max picture of God and started to question The existence of God. Because of all the suffering he saw in the world. Unfortunately he did not question the biblically based version of God but the Omni-max version of God he had in his mind.

Wow. How can a guy smart enought to teach this stuff at Princeton, be so blind about the foundations of his own faith?

This guy questions everything about God and the bible, but never once turns that powerful gift of questioning onto his foundational beliefs. If he had he would have seen the picture of God he was holding on to was false. just as false as some of the catholic based doctrines he identified and dismissed.

I could have been this guy, if I had not been lead to tear down my own understanding of God and made to rebuild it from scratch. When I did I based it off of the biblical picture, and when I did that all of the paradoxes and moral conflicts all went away. Not because I have ignored them, but because they have been truly answered.

Quote:Oh, yeah this would be a big problem to resolve if one assumes like Bart has that Gospels of John and Mark were both meant to chronoligcally account the events as they happen. Mark's account does seem to do this, but John's account reads like an adventure story.

The entire Bible reads like an adventure story. One written by a person with crippling emotional issues.

On the one hand we have a world-renowned scholar and the other we have a bozo who believes in fairy tales.

I'm too tired to read your bullshit tonight but this should be good for a few laughs.

Erich I would like to point out a flaw in your argument. What you and I read is a English translation. What this man is basing his argument s on is a reading of the originals in koine Greek, and I promise you they both read much differently in the original language because it is very different from English. In essence Bart ehrmen probably knows more about your argument then you do. His argument made in several debates, that the gospels were the recordings of oral traditions makes much more sense then yours does.
Think for a moment okay? Your in complex mess trying to explain why that discrepancy is there when in his argument that makes perfect sense. In a oral transmission being recorded in a another country several decades later this is exactly what you expect. Heres some more to think about. Why would john, a poorly educated fishermen write in Greek instead of his mother tongue of Aramaic, the language him and jesus would have conversed in?

(September 13, 2013 at 12:55 am)Lemonvariable72 Wrote: Erich I would like to point out a flaw in your argument. What you and I read is a English translation.

What you mean 'we' white man?
I check the Koine as well.
Blueletterbible.org

Quote:What this man is basing his argument s on is a reading of the originals in koine Greek, and I promise you they both read much differently in the original language because it is very different from English.

The difference in is the syntax sport, not the chronology of said events.

Quote: In essence Bart ehrmen probably knows more about your argument then you do.

This is an appeal to education, which is a Red herring.
Look at the facts as they are presented and weigh what is being said, do not dimiss one and hold to another because of where the arguements orginated.

Learn to honestly think for yourself do not default to thinking like someone else simply because he has been 'instutitionalized' for a longer period of time than you have.

Quote: His argument made in several debates, that the gospels were the recordings of oral traditions makes much more sense then yours does.

What page are you reffering exactly? I did not see these debates.

Quote:Think for a moment okay? Your in complex mess trying to explain why that discrepancy is there when in his argument that makes perfect sense.

There is nothing complex about anything I said. if anything it was over simplified. Again I say John's account is not a chronological one. To assume it was is to assume that a 2000 year old middle eastern culture prizes an accurate chronoligacial account as much as this western soceity does. That somehow there is an absolute unwritten standard in this soceity to only retell or tell of a series of events in their correct order of happening...
BTW have you seen any of the following movies.
Memento, Pulp fiction, Kill Bill, Muholand drive, usual suspects? and about a dozen or so more?? Care to guess what they have in common with the Gospel of John?

Quote: In a oral transmission being recorded in a another country several decades later this is exactly what you expect.

If this were the case then why wasn't the 'error' corrected when the preist who compiled the bible around the same time? Why didn't they 'fix' the error then if it were indeed an error? Do you honestly think that you are bart are the only two people to have noticed the sequencing issue brought up here?

Quote:Heres some more to think about. Why would john, a poorly educated fishermen write in Greek instead of his mother tongue of Aramaic, the language him and jesus would have conversed in?

Maybe your question should be how was an illiterate fisherman able to write in the standard or base language for that reigon?

Maybe, just Maybe a man like John (Who had estasblished several congergations) at the end of his life had a scribe pen everything down like all of the other Apstoles did. Kinda like Peter and The Godpel writter Mark, Paul and Timothy and serveral others. (oh, and he was literate and did write himself on occasion, but as secular history underscores Scribes did 95% of all writting back then, because writting material was far to valuable of a commodity to have unpracticed people scribbling down chicken scratch. Scribes were also tasked with the perservation of written material which was a full time job in of itself.)

So again John like everyone else had a scribe record the content of His message.

(September 12, 2013 at 11:39 pm)Drich Wrote: Wow. How can a guy smart enought to teach this stuff at Princeton, be so blind about the foundations of his own faith?

That right there. That's the sort of smugness that makes me laugh. It could be the case that a prestigious New Testament critic is 'blind' about the foundation of his former religion, but given it's his job and that the majority of reactions/reviews to his written works have predominantly been his peers something like "Meh, most of us know all this" or "Nothing new here, mostly a compilation of our field's accrued knowledge" it seems a better inference that you're blinder to your faith's foundation than he.

(September 12, 2013 at 11:39 pm)Drich Wrote: I just finished the first chapter...

Keep reading...
The first chapter is just an intro!

(September 13, 2013 at 9:43 am)MindForgedManacle Wrote:

(September 12, 2013 at 11:39 pm)Drich Wrote: Wow. How can a guy smart enought to teach this stuff at Princeton, be so blind about the foundations of his own faith?

That right there. That's the sort of smugness that makes me laugh. It could be the case that a prestigious New Testament critic is 'blind' about the foundation of his former religion, but given it's his job and that the majority of reactions/reviews to his written works have predominantly been his peers something like "Meh, most of us know all this" or "Nothing new here, mostly a compilation of our field's accrued knowledge" it seems a better inference that you're blinder to your faith's foundation than he.

Again, he ascribes to an Omni-max God. Which it does not take a masters in theology to know is not how God describes Himself in the bible. It is a doctrine of man that orginates from about a dozen unconnected verses in the bible. (Basically some priest defined an all powerful God by using a dozen different unrelated passages in the bible.)

Which sets up all sorts of paradoxes (like the one Bart could not reconsile. which cost him his faith.)

In short God simply describes Himself as "I am" or the alpha and the Omega, the beginning and end of all things. Which people have a tendance to glance over, but in the description holds the key to understanding the true nature of God. for it is so easy to understand but so complex as to hide the nature of God from men like bart in plain sight.

If God is Omni-max as bart believes He is bound to the definations of what it means to be omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent, omnipresent. Other wise God defaults on His 'all powerful' nature.) Which in of itself is a paradox because if God is all powerful then how can He be bound/forced to do what these defination say He must do?

Which is where God's description comes in. If God is the Alpha and Omega, the He has the first and last word on everything. He answers to no one He is bound by nothing. Which is the true meaning of the term 'all powerful.' In short God who he wants to be and displays power and mercy when He wishes to do so and is not for nor even compelled to comply with any standards but His own.

Which again is how the term "All powerful" works, and is not tied to the definations of the Omni-aspects of God.

I can be 'smug' because I can identify that Bart has all of this great biblical knoweledge, and somehow has failed to grasp a 1st grade sunday school concept about the most very basic nature of God. Which I guess is what happens when one studies the bible under the guidance of man and not under the guidance of the Holy Spirit.

I do confess my ignorance about the book, because it is not necessary for my atheism. From what I hear, Bart dissected the so called sacred book. Good for him, and it does keep christians thinking, but alas, they always fail on the essential: EVIDENCE, ffs, why do your god hide so much?