Remembering the Barefoot Doctors

[f.Channell]

My New Testament History professor used to write that stuff on the board.
All Greek to me Bill.
Matthew is my favorite Gospel to read, he was a good writer in comparison to the others.

Jesus spoke Aramaic, he probably couldn't have read that.

F.

[Bill Glasheen]

Jesus spoke Aramaic, he probably couldn't have read that.

Yea... Somehow he missed out on that Exeter education.

- Bill

[f.Channell]

According to the infancy gospel of Thomas (not in the NT)
http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/i ... homas.html
Jesus was a childhood prodigy who was sent home from his first Rabbi teacher because he already knew everything.

F.

[Glenn]

Jesus spoke Aramaic, he probably couldn't have read that.

Aramaic was the everyday language of the Jewish people at that time (with Hebrew being a dead language largely only used for religious purposes, and it remained in that status until Israel revived it to a living language after 1948), but Greek was still somewhat common in the region, thanks largely to Alexander the Great, and of course Latin was common (although now it is a dead language).

Jesus could probably converse at least some Greek and/or Latin, but may not have been schooled in reading either. However the early Christian writers used Greek, and from what I have read the name "Jesus" that has been passed down to us is a Greek form of his name. Apparently his Jewish name would have been more like "Yehoshua", which is actually what we refer to as "Joshua" in English. I've been told that the New Testament authors/compilers probably selected "Jesus" instead of "Joshua" so that his name would be unique from any other name in the Bible. Not sure how accurate that is.

[f.Channell]

Hi Glenn,
It all comes down to opinions and guess work. Some people feel that Nazareth was a more cosmopolitan city than others exposing Jesus to more language skills than he necessarily had. After his death and his resurrection he supposedly gave his disciples the skills to speak in multiple languages to spread his word. The earliest Christian writings were by Paul 20 years after Jesus's death. He spent time in Rome, was put to death in Rome, and probably spoke multiple languages. He came into contact with Jesus disciples but in no way felt he had to follow them. And besides the various possible names you mentioned we have titles also like Son of Man to reckon with. And some of those Greek and Latin writing may be transcriptions of earlier writings. This is what makes finds like the Nag Hammadi Library, Dead Sea Scrolls and the Gospel of Judas so fascinating.

F.

[IJ]

I'm mystified, but not confused. The story now is that nothing religious is testable? Because God might have guided the creation of the Earth (or it might have been the completely nonmysterious forces of physics) but we can never know? Actually, the claim that the Earth is 10,000 years old is just as undisprovable. An omnipotent God could easily have placed all the fossil and geologic evidence right where scientists would find it as a test of our faith, and in fact, bunches of Biblical literalists have told me this is in fact the case. Again again, since we can't prove the negative, that may be, but what we can be sure of is that believing that to be the case hasn't advanced us or our knowledge, and that there are much more compelling explanations for why the Earth appears to be billions of years old (such as, it is).

If someone is a "fundamentalist" because they endorse the claims made in their holy books, then everyone else is reducing religion to a mysticism so vague that it doesn't explain anything for us. The cop out "render unto Caesar" also mystifies me because it implies that the religious have some special claim to matters spiritual, moral, and meaningful. I fail to see why this is the case. If religion is just parable and vague awe, we have literature and history for that. We don't need God when we have Aesop (etc). We don't need God to wonder why we're here or to ache for meaning, understanding, or fellowship (go watch "Contact" again for a good example from a skeptic, but there are way too many God independent great works to list). It seems people are saying sometimes that religion IS just history and literature, but we can enjoy all the art, literature, music, architecture, tradition and so on that came of religion without endorsing any far fetched claims (and continue making any amount of these things without it).

Even if religion were just a bunch of wholly untestable claims, such as, God guided evolution with an unseen hand, or, he orchestrated the constants of physics and the location of Earth to be conducive to us, vs those things happened without him, I rarely see this kind of religion practiced. It seems that instead of this agnosticism, instead of this rendering unto Caesar, we too often get people 100% convinced and insistent about their long series of religious facts, working to convert others, clashing with infidels, rewriting law and science tests to suit unconfirmed revelation, and so on. Not surprising, too, because religion that retreats to such distant realms doesn't do a lot lot for adherents. They couldn't even easily choose a group to worship with by those standards; you probably have to believe something more immediate and specific about the items served at communion to go to the trouble of attending, for example.

If no one can say anything about religion and religious claims, religion can't say anything to us, either. At least nothing we can't say to each other.

[f.Channell]

Who came up with Earth is 10,000 years old? It's in the millions, can't recall the exact figure. Datable by carbon dating meteorites in the ice in the glaciers and other ways. 10,000+ for humans resembling us is probably right.

F.

[Valkenar]

Datable by carbon dating meteorites in the ice in the glaciers and other ways.

That's just how God tests our faith.

[Bill Glasheen]

Who came up with Earth is 10,000 years old? It's in the millions, can't recall the exact figure. Datable by carbon dating meteorites in the ice in the glaciers and other ways. 10,000+ for humans resembling us is probably right.

F.

We're still working on the history of homo sapiens. However the earth is about 4 BILLION years old. We have marine (salt water) fossils not far from me on the coast of the James River that are 20 to 40 million years old.

- Bill

[Glenn]

Who came up with Earth is 10,000 years old?

James Ussher's 17th Century biblical-interpretation calculationof the age of Earth is the source usually used by Christians who hold to the idea of Earth (and the universe) being only a few thousand years old. It is actually closer to 6000 years that he came up with, with creation starting on Sunday October 23, 4004 BC. The idea that Earth is only a couple thousand years old was common among pretty much all Christians who gave it much thought at that time, and others came up with similar estimates, including reportedly Kepler and Newton. Ussher's calculation is better known then the others because from about 1700 on it was included with annotated editions of the King James Bible.

The link I have included provides some interesting detail on the methodology Ussher and the others used to reach their conclusions, fairly good science for the day. It was not until the late 1700s-early 1800s that newer scientific methods started opening up the possibility that Earth could be much older. Ussher's calculations would be completely relegated to history today if not for some wanting to hold them as sacred.

[f.Channell]

This is the classic argument from the Scopes trial. The key argument being how long is a day in Gods world?

Darrow, jacketless and wearing his trademark suspenders, began his interrogation of Bryan with a quiet question: "You have given considerable study to the Bible, haven't you, Mr. Bryan?" Bryan replied, "Yes, I have. I have studied the Bible for about fifty years." Thus began a series of questions designed to undermine a literalist interpretation of the Bible. Darrow later described the questions as “practically the same” as those he had confronted the Commoner with two years earlier in the Chicago Tribune. He asked Bryan about a whale swallowing Jonah, Joshua making the sun stand still, Noah and the great flood, the temptation of Adam in the garden of Eden, and the creation according to Genesis.
After initially contending, "Everything in the Bible should be accepted as it is given there," Bryan finally conceded that the words of the Bible should not always be taken literally. In response to Darrow's relentless questions as to whether the six days of creation, as described in Genesis, were twenty-four hour days, Bryan said "My impression is that they were periods."
http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/project ... rrowcl.htm

[mhosea]

Ian, what you're "confused" about, IMO, is the philosophy of science. Maybe you're not so much confused by it as simply unwilling to consider the relevant philosophical questions on an abstract level. For me this feels too much like a bad rerun from my usenet and listserv addictions of the early to mid-1990s. There are tomes written on this subject.

Even if religion were just a bunch of wholly untestable claims, such as, God guided evolution with an unseen hand, or, he orchestrated the constants of physics and the location of Earth to be conducive to us, vs those things happened without him, I rarely see this kind of religion practiced.

I don't know how "rare" you think Roman Catholics are, but here is a quote from the official catechism.

From English Translation of the Cathechism of the Catholic Church for the United States of America © 1997, United States Catholic Conference, Inc.

159 Faith and science : "Though faith is above reason, there can never be any real discrepancy between faith and reason. Since the same God who reveals mysteries and infuses faith has bestowed the light of reason on the human mind, God cannot deny himself, nor can truth ever contradict truth." (Dei Filius 4: DS 3017) "Consequently, methodical research in all branches of knowledge, provided it is carried out in a truly scientific manner and does not override moral laws, can never conflict with the faith, because the things of the world and the things of faith derive from the same God. The humble and persevering investigator of the secrets of nature is being led, as it were, by the hand of God in spite of himself, for it is God, the conserver of all things, who made them what they are." (GS 36 ' 1)

Albert Einstein did not believe in a personal God, but he did say things like this:

Albert Einstein:
I'm not an atheist and I don't think I can call myself a pantheist. We are in the position of a little child entering a huge library filled with books in many languages. The child knows someone must have written those books. It does not know how. It does not understand the languages in which they are written. The child dimly suspects a mysterious order in the arrangements of the books, but doesn't know what it is. That, it seems to me, is the attitude of even the most intelligent human being toward God.

I confess to great affinity for Einstein's view of the matter, even though it would come as a disappointingly non-committal to those who knew me when I was younger and had the universe all figured out. At any rate, my point is that you've left off half the spectrum of theists, pretending that the fundamentalists who are insisting on literal interpretations of the Bible are the only important examples.

[IJ]

Mike, I'm not sure what your catechism quote tells us. First, the rank and file don't necessarily agree. Second, just because they endorse the idea that there's nothing inherently wrong with scientific knowledge doesn't mean that they follow through. I'm not Catholic, so perhaps you could educate me on the official and common lay person opinions on such major questions as whether the planet was formed by gravity etc or God's hand, and whether life evolved due to natural selection or was guided. Third, all of that still leaves key questions unanswered, such as whether Catholicism would be so open-minded had the success of science not forced it to confront errors and adapt to new realities (think of Galileo). Fourth, what do we make of evidence for miracles, which I understand are required for sainthood (true?). If they've got any good ones, they really ought to try for the Randi prize. Fifth, regardless of how things are practiced, I'm concerned about how one arrives at truth in this tradition. If we're not to take the Bible literally, or we're to selectively take some phrases from it extremely seriously and recognize others are obvious metaphor, what's left is tradition and culture, mostly defined by powerful men elected to key positions. As evidence goes, private revelation doesn't do much for me. It's still very hard for me to understand why scientists should take specific God hypotheses seriously in the absence of any evidence for them beyond pick and choose from the Bible and "I say so" from the Vatican.

As for the spectrum of theists, I'm aware of it. I've focused on the literalists because there's at least a clear source for the theories. It seems to me that literalism was the rule at one time, and then the gradual accumulation of incontrovertible scientific evidence moved more and more items needing explanation to the science fact basket and out of the faith basket. There are holdouts who will come up with any patch to protect the original theory (God planted all that fossil evidence, etc). The rest are accepting a smaller and smaller role for God in the goings on of the world. It sounds like you are keeping an open mind because of the incredible complexity and scale of "creation," and I have no problem with that. I'm open to anything we'll find including things I don't personally understand beyond a rudimentary level (relativity and QM among them). What I don't get is why we should go forward with faith that we'll eventually find proof of God (or the vastly more common certainty that we are seeing his hand in all sorts of goings on). Seems to me those philosophies are a product of upbringing in which we're taught to expect and see those things rather than any good reason to do so.

Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all other countries because you were born in it. ~George Bernard Shaw

We seem to treat religion basically the same way. It's not a foundation for investigation. We can pretend science ignores it because as in Gould's mind, there are separate nonoverlapping magisteria for science and religion to occupy. This is a polite way to avoid an argument. A more honest appraisal is that science ignores religion because it's got nothing going for it.

Einstein and many others of his day and earlier often referred to God when discussing matters mysterious. His views on the matter, like Jefferson's don't fit in a quote. A lot of what he said was metaphor and reflected the near universality of religious belief in his peers. I don't personally believe that when he commented on quantum mechanics by saying, "God doesn't play dice" (or something very much to that effect), he was thinking that God actually controlled the behavior of individual subatomic particles, but rather that Nature doesn't behave in a QM way, rather he suspected that we could figure out laws that governed particles the way they govern planets, which are known not to skip out of solar systems based on probabilities and waves the way electrons can tunnel past barriers.

In any case, people who use the word "god" to refer to their wonder for the unknown and their search for understanding are largely just poetic atheists if you ask me. If God isn't doing the things we traditionally ascribe to him (since you use the Catholic example, say, actively listening to confessions and forgiving people, or changing the nature of the bread and wine) and keeps moving farther and farther out of the picture, it makes me think the reason he remains in their world view is wishful thinking vs. cultural conventions in their expression.

[mhosea]

In my experience, Catholics by and large do not concern themselves with a literal interpretation of Genesis, and in particular there is, by and large, no issue taken with evolution. I can't account for what uneducated individuals who don't bother to learn what their church teaches may think about it, but personally I've never met a Catholic who was concerned with such matters, and I've never heard a homily having anything to do with it. The only thing the Catholic church concerns itself with is the ethical conduct of science, e.g. vis-a-vis embryonic stem cell use, etc. Yes, they learned to excise scientifically testable beliefs from the system of faith the hard way--by being wrong.

What I don't get is why we should go forward with faith that we'll eventually find proof of God

I wasn't aware that anybody expected to find corporeal proof of God. The more common belief is that the matter will be self-evident upon death. Even a true miracle would be tough to work with scientifically--really hard to replicate. As for miracles required for sainthood, yes, I'm told that is so, but only one can be a card trick.

If God isn't doing the things we traditionally ascribe to him (since you use the Catholic example, say, actively listening to confessions and forgiving people, or changing the nature of the bread and wine)

I'm not sure how anybody would know one way or the other. The first two are obviously not testable, and the "nature" of bread and wine thing is cleverly defined in such a way as to exclude all physical properties!

[robb buckland]

How Moses got the Ten Commandments

God went to the Arabs and said,
"I have Commandments for you that will make your lives better."

The Arabs asked, "What are Commandments?"

And the Lord said, "They are rules for living.
"
"Can you give us an example?"

"Thou shall not kill."

"Not kill? We're not interested."


So He went to the Blacks and said,
"I have Commandments for you that will make your lives better."

The Blacks wanted an example, and the Lord said,
"Honor thy Father and Mother."

"Father?"

"We don't know who our fathers are. We're not interested."


Then He went to the Mexicans and said,
"I have Commandments for you that will make your lives better."

The Mexicans also wanted an example, and the Lord said,
"Thou shall not steal."

"Not steal? We're not interested."


Then He went to the French and said,

"I have Commandments for you that will make your lives better."

The French too wanted an example and the Lord said,
"Thou shall not commit adultery."

"Not commit adultery? We're not interested."


Finally, He went to the Jews and said,

"I have Commandments for you that will make your lives better."

"Commandments?"

They said, "How much are they?"

"They're free."

"We'll take 10."


That should offend just about everybody