The God of Convenience

[Esquilax]

So Papias who lived two to three generations after Jesus died was less able to identify the authors of the gospels than we are today? Papias could have had access to parents or grandparents of Jesus' contemporaries. So tell me why Papias wasn't qualified to determine who wrote the gospels? Here is Papias' own statement concerning his methods of gathering evidence. I'll go with Papias.

So, do you know anything at all about how your own holy books were compiled? Because when they were originally written, they had no authors attached; the author names were traditional christian names added to the books by the church at a later date, long after anyone who was alive at the time could say otherwise. Papias- who lived in the second century, by the way- added in, despite the fact that even the early church didn't think so, and were adding the names because they were traditional, that in fact, the authors were the apostles. But he had no way of knowing that; not only was he using second hand information at best, but the names themselves were fabricated out of whole cloth just to give the books authors.

You're asking me to believe that the names the church made up just so happened to be the correct names of the real writers. I don't know why you think that's okay.

I shall not hesitate also to put into ordered form for you, along with the interpretations, everything I learned carefully in the past from the elders and noted down carefully, for the truth of which I vouch. For unlike most people I took no pleasure in those who told many different stories, but only in those who taught the truth. Nor did I take pleasure in those who reported their memory of someone else’s commandments, but only in those who reported their memory of the commandments given by the Lord to the faith and proceeding from the Truth itself. And if by chance anyone who had been in attendance on the elders arrived, I made enquiries about the words of the elders—what Andrew or Peter had said, or Philip or Thomas or James or John or Matthew or any other of the Lord’s disciples, and whatever Aristion and John the Elder, the Lord’s disciples, were saying. For I did not think that information from the books would profit me as much as information from a living and surviving voice.

So, you'll take purported third hand information, passed down verbally from unnamed sources, to a guy who was born at best seventy years after Jesus died, reported in the form of sheer fiat assertions, with no evidence behind it, as truth?

No wonder you're a christian.

Since we experience unexplained events to this day, we can't say that Jesus didn't have the power to perform miracles.

Yes we can: no evidence has ever been presented that miracles are even possible. Impossible things, obviously, cannot happen, and so without some indication that these things are even possible, we have no reason to add them to the list of possible causes for things. Once again, and this is like the ninetieth time I've said this to you, the argument from ignorance is not evidence for your god.

Neither is your burden of proof shifting "you can't prove that it didn't happen!" schtick. This is just pathetic, Lek.

You may not believe it, but that doesn't mean it didn't happen. Until I've been convinced otherwise I'll accept the testimony of the church fathers who were so close to the time of Jesus.

So you'll shift the burden of proof, and believe the unjustified assertions of non-contemporary sources.

If we know that the earliest gospel was penned 30 years after Jesus' death, then it obviously could have been written by an eyewitness.

Given that, from what we can tell, the average life span in that time period was around 20-35 years, this is doubtful unless all the apostles were children. Were the apostles children, Lek?

You seem to be saying that your historians and scholars are smarter than mine. Since there is no consensus, that means you're historians are right. You agree that there is disagreement among historians and then you say that you don't need complete consensus to make the determination. You make these big statements as if you are unarguably right.

Yeah, we wouldn't want anyone to make any completely unjustified assertions, would we? That would be crazy.

At any rate, don't take "we don't need full consensus," to mean "there is no consensus." Among mainstream historians there is a consensus in the majority that the biblical authors are anonymous. I'm sorry if your fringe historians don't accept this, but there it is. Additionally, I detailed the history of the new testament books- a little thing called "evidence"- through which one comes to this conclusion of anonymity. Your response has been little more than "nuh uh, you can't prove they weren't written by the apostles!"

I don't really need to argue back against baseless assertions and appeals to fringe scholars.

I think that the authors are more qualified to speak for themselves, but obviously they didn't give their names. Someone wrote them and whoever they were didn't mention their names.

That's absolutely true. And when the church attached names to the books later on, they were plug names based in religious tradition, not fact. Hence, the books were anonymously written.

And if the authors are most qualified to speak for themselves, and none of them made the claim that they met Jesus, then what does that tell you?

They must not have felt compelled to tell who they were. If Mark didn't write the Gospel of Mark, then why didn't the "real" author tell who he was?

We can't know for sure, but a few possibilities that come to mind are that there were multiple authors, or that given the sheer number of books in the gospel accounts before the church decided which ones were canonical, the writer had no idea how significant his or her book would become centuries later.

Your question runs both ways, though: if Mark did write the gospel of Mark, why didn't he see fit to tell us that he was the real author? Why did he remain silent? And are you really telling me that the church a century later just so happened to guess the correct name, out of their stable of plug names they added in for convenience?

Yes, we already know you'll accept an argument from ignorance when it suits your argument, and that the rest of us understand that it's a fallacy. But let me ask you this: a muslim is sick, he prays to Allah, and when he recovers science doesn't know why. Do you take this as evidence that Islam is true, and Allah actually healed him?

Yes.

So what you've got is evidence that every single god ever exists. But those are mutually exclusive gods, so how do you tell which "evidence" is real, and which is not?

All you now have is a pile of arguments from ignorance which, at best, lead to some truthful representations of reality, and some false ones. Therefore, these miracle healings are not necessarily all truthful.

It's a subject that's very interesting to me. God can heal anybody, including atheists. God knows the hearts of us all.

So every unanswered question is evidence for your god specifically, even when someone prays to another god? Do you have any idea how irrational and presuppositional you're being?

You and your "special pleading".

Dismissal is not rebuttal.

[Lek]

So, do you know anything at all about how your own holy books were compiled? Because when they were originally written, they had no authors attached; the author names were traditional christian names added to the books by the church at a later date, long after anyone who was alive at the time could say otherwise. Papias- who lived in the second century, by the way- added in, despite the fact that even the early church didn't think so, and were adding the names because they were traditional, that in fact, the authors were the apostles. But he had no way of knowing that; not only was he using second hand information at best, but the names themselves were fabricated out of whole cloth just to give the books authors.

You're asking me to believe that the names the church made up just so happened to be the correct names of the real writers. I don't know why you think that's okay.

The church didn't just dream up those names They didn't just fabricate some names so they could call them something. They relied heavily on Papias and other early christian scholars.

So, you'll take purported third hand information, passed down verbally from unnamed sources, to a guy who was born at best seventy years after Jesus died, reported in the form of sheer fiat assertions, with no evidence behind it, as truth?

Yes. I could pass on to you what my father or grandfather told me about a person as important as Jesus. He was out personally interviewing people. Tell me about the more reliable methods used by modern historians to determine who penned the gospels.

Yes we can: no evidence has ever been presented that miracles are even possible. Impossible things, obviously, cannot happen, and so without some indication that these things are even possible, we have no reason to add them to the list of possible causes for things. Once again, and this is like the ninetieth time I've said this to you, the argument from ignorance is not evidence for your god.

Events that occur without a natural explanation are possibly supernatural. You don't have evidence to say that Jesus didn't perform miracles. You can say that you don't believe he did, but you can't deny the writings that say he did - quite a few, by the way. Christians aren't just pulling these things out of the air. You refuse to accept what has been researched and attested to by credible, educated people.

So you'll shift the burden of proof, and believe the unjustified assertions of non-contemporary sources.

Yes. Sorry to burst your bubble Esqilax, but despite how "smart" you think we are today, people were just as smart then. Now I know you're going to come back with some "conclusive" evidence about how stupid people were in those days.

Given that, from what we can tell, the average life span in that time period was around 20-35 years, this is doubtful unless all the apostles were children. Were the apostles children, Lek?

Based on that guess, if any of Jesus' disciples who were in their teens or twenties lived to 45 and their children and grandchildren also did, then Papias could have spoken with a disciple's child or grandchild. Or they could have lived longer since you're talking averages. Jesus had a good number of disciples also.

Among mainstream historians there is a consensus in the majority that the biblical authors are anonymous.

Oh. You know this? What is your source for that.

Your question runs both ways, though: if Mark did write the gospel of Mark, why didn't he see fit to tell us that he was the real author? Why did he remain silent? And are you really telling me that the church a century later just so happened to guess the correct name, out of their stable of plug names they added in for convenience?

I don't know why Mark didn't claim authorship. As discussed previously the church didn't just guess the right names. Like I said, they were smarter that you give them credit for.

So what you've got is evidence that every single god ever exists. But those are mutually exclusive gods, so how do you tell which "evidence" is real, and which is not?

My opinion is that there's only one God. People's perceptions of that God are different. They're not all valid. There is only true God. And, yes, I believe the christian perception is the right one.

[Mudhammam]

They relied heavily on Papias and other early christian scholars.

You mean guy who said this about the death of Judas: "His body having swollen to such extent that he could not pass where a chariot could pass easily, he was crushed by the chariot, so that his bowels gushed out."

And:

"Judas was a terrible, walking example of ungodliness in this world, his flesh was bloated. For his eyelids were so swollen that he could not see the light at all, and his eyes could not be seen: so far had they sunk below the outer surface. When he relieved himself there passed through it pus and worms from every part of his body, much to his shame. After much agony and punishment he finally died in his own place. And because of the stench the area is deserted and uninhabitable even now; in fact, to this day no one can pass that place unless they hold their nose, so great was the discharge from his body and so far did it spread over the ground."

Sounds reliable.

---

Maybe Lek thinks demonic juices leaked out of Judas' body.

Yes. Sorry to burst your bubble Esqilax, but despite how "smart" you think we are today, people were just as smart then. Now I know you're going to come back with some "conclusive" evidence about how stupid people were in those days.

It's not like less than 10% of the population being able to read or write would matter, though, I'm sure.

[Lek]

You mean guy who said this about the death of Judas: "His body having swollen to such extent that he could not pass where a chariot could pass easily, he was crushed by the chariot, so that his bowels gushed out."

And:

"Judas was a terrible, walking example of ungodliness in this world, his flesh was bloated. For his eyelids were so swollen that he could not see the light at all, and his eyes could not be seen: so far had they sunk below the outer surface. When he relieved himself there passed through it pus and worms from every part of his body, much to his shame. After much agony and punishment he finally died in his own place. And because of the stench the area is deserted and uninhabitable even now; in fact, to this day no one can pass that place unless they hold their nose, so great was the discharge from his body and so far did it spread over the ground."

Sounds reliable.

---

Maybe Lek thinks demonic juices leaked out of Judas' body.

Sounds like a horror movie! Look at all the college professors today and the stupid things they say.

It's not like less than 10% of the population being able to read or write would matter, though, I'm sure.

That doesn't have anything to do with how smart they were. It just means that they didn't have a chance to learn to read.

[Mudhammam]

Sounds like a horror movie! Look at all the college professors today and the stupid things they say.

What's your basis for suggesting that Papias was an educator? Where did he receive his education?

And just to be clear, you're basically saying, "Look at all the college professors today and the stupid things they say... of course I believe every word."

That doesn't have anything to do with how smart they were. It just means that they didn't have a chance to learn to read.

The studies reported here represent the first steps in the development of a new research paradigm for studying the unique cognitive correlates of literacy. Reading experience exhibits enough isolable variance within a generally literate society to be reliably linked with cognitive differences. Research on such links is therefore facilitated because the consequences of engaging in literacy activities can be studied without necessarily obtaining totally illiterate samples or setting up cross-cultural comparisons. Issues that are at least analogous issues to those raised in cross-cultural research can be studied within literate societies with a paradigm such as this, and therefore the speed with which we can answer questions about the cognitive consequences of literacy may be greatly increased because more studies can be carried out, larger samples can be studied, and the range of the cognitive domains tapped can be widened. Research in this area appears to have been stifled because of the widespread acceptance of the most extreme interpretations of the outcome of Scribner and Cole's (1981) investigation--interpretations that have slowly diffused throughout the literature without being accompanied by any new data. These conclusions are fueled by a powerful social critique that advances the argument that the positive cultural and economic effects of literacy have been overstated--indeed, that literacy is, if anything, a repressive force (Auerbach, 1992; Street, 1984, 1988; Stuckey, 1991). Educational theorists such as Frank Smith accused the educational establishment of "overselling" literacy and have argued that "Literacy doesn't generate finer feelings or higher values. It doesn't even make anyone smarter" (1989, p. 354). The data reported herein appear to indicate that these theorists could well be wrong in this conclusion. If "smarter" means having a larger vocabulary and more world knowledge in addition to the abstract reasoning skills encompassed within the concept of intelligence, as it does in most laymen's definitions of intelligence (Stanovich, 1989; Sternberg, 1990), then reading may well make people smarter. Certainly our data demonstrate time and again that print exposure is associated with vocabulary, general knowledge, and verbal skills even after controlling for abstract reasoning abilities (as measured by such indicators as the Raven).

You were saying?

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8447247