Does a God exist?

[Minimalist]

The 'Gospel of the Lord', which was the version of gLuke used by Marcion and thus the first canonical version of any gospel begins at 3:1.  This means that the earliest written version for which we have any attestation - and this comes from the early xtian heretic hunters who wrote against Marcion does NOT contain any of the whole-world being taxed shit, or the angels announcing John the Baptist and this jesus fuck or whatever else is in the first two chapters of bullshit which must have been added on at a later date. 

BTW, Marcion has 'jesus' showing up as a grown man literally popping into Capernaum at the beginning.  Obviously, Later xtian writers gave his gospel a thorough re-write.

http://gnosis.org/library/marcion/Gospel...#Capernaum

In the fifteenth year of Tiberius Caesar,
Pontius Pilate being governor of Judea,
Jesus descended [out of heaven] into Capernaum, a city in Galilee,
and was teaching [in the synagogue] on the Sabbath days;
And they were astonished at his doctrine,

[RoadRunner79]

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.  

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?

[pocaracas]

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"(?)

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?

[Ignorant]

A thing with matter or energy is defined as existing. it's matter or energy properties imply existence, it seems. [1] So... existence is a "conditional property"(?) [2]

1) Yup. This is hardly surprising when it comes from metaphysical naturalism. In other words, if only 'material' reality exists, then the most fundamental 'kind' of matter is equivalent with existence itself.

Metaphysical Naturalism [straight from wiki]: Metaphysical naturalism is a philosophy which maintains that nature encompasses all that exists throughout spacetime. Nature (the universe or cosmos) consists only of natural elements or natural processes that reduce to natural elements, whose fundamental building blocks are spatiotemporal physical substance—mass–energy LINK

You might find that intellectually satisfying. I don't: What is matter? Are there more fundamental conditions which must exist for matter to exist? For energy? If yes, then matter/energy does not = existence. If no, then matter/energy = existence. The fact that two things are being considered (i.e. matter and energy) is a big clue that we haven't discovered the fundamental condition for reality. But that is just me.

2) Call it whatever you want, as long as you realize that it is a property which describes an action.

Are you saying that a "conceptual electron" is the same as a "real electron"?

No. I am saying that they differ in the most fundamental respect: the real electron is doing something that the conceptual electron is not, i.e. the real electron is being. It is doing what electrons do.

You say that existence is a property like charge and mass, etc. I am saying that even if existence were a property, it is a radically different sort of property compared to charge and mass. Take away the existence property and nothing is there. Take away the charge property and something is there (a charge-less thing with the mass of an electron), but it is not an electron. The existence property governs the ENTIRE thing, while the charge property seems only to govern the KIND of thing. It is therefore inadequate to describe existence as a property like charge and mass. It is more adequate to describe existence as an act, the most fundamental or 'primary' act of everything.

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?

Ya... one is existing, the other is not existing. If you won't budge on the property thing, fine. A thing has the property of existence IF it is existing (which is an action).

[robvalue]

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.

[Silver]

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.

[pocaracas]

A thing with matter or energy is defined as existing. it's matter or energy properties imply existence, it seems. [1] So... existence is a "conditional property"(?) [2]

1) Yup. This is hardly surprising when it comes from metaphysical naturalism. In other words, if only 'material' reality exists, then the most fundamental 'kind' of matter is equivalent with existence itself.

Metaphysical Naturalism [straight from wiki]: Metaphysical naturalism is a philosophy which maintains that nature encompasses all that exists throughout spacetime. Nature (the universe or cosmos) consists only of natural elements or natural processes that reduce to natural elements, whose fundamental building blocks are spatiotemporal physical substance—mass–energy LINK

You might find that intellectually satisfying. I don't: What is matter? Are there more fundamental conditions which must exist for matter to exist? For energy? If yes, then matter/energy does not = existence. If no, then matter/energy = existence. The fact that two things are being considered (i.e. matter and energy) is a big clue that we haven't discovered the fundamental condition for reality. But that is just me.

That's you forgetting Einstein: E = mc^2
Energy is mass.
Energy (or mass) equals existence...
Enter the Higgs Boson and quantum fluctuations as mechanisms by which these things are generated... by which things come into existence.

2) Call it whatever you want, as long as you realize that it is a property which describes an action.

Our language does give it away.... "to exist". Doesn't exactly carry the same ring as "to energize", or "to mass" (whatever this is)

Are you saying that a "conceptual electron" is the same as a "real electron"?

No. I am saying that they differ in the most fundamental respect: the real electron is doing something that the conceptual electron is not, i.e. the real electron is being. It is doing what electrons do.

You know... the conceptual electron is also doing what electron do... just not in real space... in theoretical/modeled space.

You say that existence is a property like charge and mass, etc. I am saying that even if existence were a property, it is a radically different sort of property compared to charge and mass. Take away the existence property and nothing is there. Take away the charge property and something is there (a charge-less thing with the mass of an electron), but it is not an electron. The existence property governs the ENTIRE thing, while the charge property seems only to govern the KIND of thing. It is therefore inadequate to describe existence as a property like charge and mass. It is more adequate to describe existence as an act, the most fundamental or 'primary' act of everything.

Come now...
Take away the existence property and nothing is there. yes.
Take away the charge property and no charge is to be found on that particle. Like you said, a chargeless thing with the mass of an electron. Why would absence of charge make the particle non-existent?
Take away the mass property and no mass is to be found on that particle. A massless thing with the charge of an electron...
I don't think any of these two things have been observed, though... that seems to be a forbidden (or rare) state of affairs.

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?

Ya... one is existing, the other is not existing. If you won't budge on the property thing, fine. A thing has the property of existence IF it is existing (which is an action).

One can turn that around, you know?
A thing "is existing" if it has the property of existence. Which came first, the egg or the chicken?
I can't tell.

[robvalue]

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.

[pocaracas]

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.

[Pat Mustard]

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.