Morality...........

That type is the entire book of Revelations.

 

Before I reply Minuteman, there’s a side note that I’ve been considering.

A couple of days ago Peanut asked in a comment to TwoCrows, “If you don’t believe, why are you posting in Faith and Religion?" I’ve asked myself that question in the past, and I did so when I read peanut’s post.

I think it comes down to the “pressure” that I’ve mentioned in an earlier thread. Peanut said that she didn’t like feeling that she was being attacked for stating her Christian beliefs; and non-Christians also have felt that they have been attacked for questioning Christian beliefs, and have felt the pressure to conform, and not question Christian beliefs.

And before going further, let me say that I enjoy reading both your posts and Peanut’s posts. I find myself nodding along with much of what both of you say. Usually, it’s my mother in law with whom I find myself debating Christianity. Wow! If I didn’t already drink, one conversation with her would be enough incentive for me to start. She could make the Pope reach for the bottle.

Anyway, Pressure.
After again thinking about what Peanut said to TwoCrows, “if you don’t believe, why are you posting here?”, I thought again about the pressure to conform, or at least be silent in your disagreement, that many non-Christians encounter.

I thought, “If I were reading a thread in the firearms section, and someone posted that he had the best 12 ga. ever; and that he had blasted a pine tree, measuring two feet across, with his trusty 12 ga., and knocked the tree down; and I commented that I thought his claim was so much horse hockey; I don’t think that anyone would suggest to me that if I didn’t believe in the 12 ga. I should not post on that thread. In fact, most would join me in questioning the validity of that claim, and feel no pressure not to question it. (No offense Peanut, you had just asked a question that I had asked myself many times; and yes, I know, my thoughts tend to create the mother of all run-on sentences.)

I further thought, image if you (rhetorically speaking) were in the break room of your company, and Joe came in, beaming, bursting over with enthusiasm to share an experience with you. He plops into a chair and breathlessly exclaims, “ I had the most amazing experience on the way to work. Zrygd, from the planet Xystek, contacted me telepathically and showed me their plans to create a future colony here on Earth.

After you finished convulsing in laughter, you would remind yourself to take him off the short list for that supervisory position you had been tasked to fill, and maybe mention to security that they should closely inspect any bags that he brought onto the premises.

No one in the breakroom would look at you askance for your laughter at his claim. No one would suggest that you respect the claims of his experience.

But, Joe comes in, beaming, bursting over with enthusiasm to share an experience with you. He plops into chair and breathlessly exclaims, “I had the most amazing experience on my way to work (you see where this is going). Yahweh spoke to me and shared with me a view of Heaven. It was beautiful!"

If you convulse with laughter, you will be silently, or vocally, condemned by the other believers for disrespecting God, and ridiculing Joe’s religious experience. You mustn’t!

Even if they think Joe is full of horse hockey, none will dare express that thought, because Joe has invoked the name of Yahweh (God, Jehovah, The Lord, Yah-he-veh, or whatever they personally refer to him as). Joe is now above censure or ridicule. His beliefs, and claims, must be respected.

That is the pressure to which I have referred. Christians don’t see that pressure because they themselves contribute to it, whether they intend to, or not. When you’re inside the herd (and again, I apologize for Bovine comparisons, but the metaphor works so well), you don’t see the horns. When you are outside the herd, looking in, all you see is horns.

Anyway, asking myself the question which Peanut asked Twocrows, I answer that for me not to reply to posts I disagree with cheapens my own beliefs and sense of integrity. If this forum was titled “Christian Faith”, I suppose I could be asked to refrain from commenting on posts that I know nothing about. Since it is titled “Faith and Religion” I, and other non-Christians, feel privileged, even obliged, to state our opinions.

Okay, back to the matter at hand.

You and I can look at any one of these prophesies and have a different opinion as to whether it has been fulfilled or not. If you believe that it has been fulfilled, you can find plenty of support for your position. If I do not believe that it has been fulfilled, I can find plenty of support for my position.

Looking at the prophesies concerning the Messiah for example, the first problem I see is that “the Messiah” (Jesus of Nazareth) and more importantly, the writers of the New Testament, had the opportunity to read the prophesies in Daniel and Isaiah and Micah, and conform their stories to the prophesies. All that we know of Jesus of Nazareth comes from the writers of the New Testament. There are no secular sources, excluding a highly dubious short mention in the works of Josephus, which can confirm any of these stories for us. I’d be rather surprised if the details of the life of Jesus of Nazareth didn’t fit the prophesies. If I can write my own story, I can conform to any prophecy that I choose.

You wrote: “In approximately 700 B.C. the prophet Micah named the tiny village of Bethlehem as the birthplace of Israel's Messiah (Micah 5:2). The fulfillment of this prophecy in the birth of Christ is one of the most widely known and widely celebrated facts in history.”

But the Jews, to whom Jesus believed himself to be sent, did not see Jesus’ birth as fulfillment of this prophecy. They rejected the claims of the Nazarenes because they believed that Jesus emphatically did not fulfill the prophecies.

In Isaiah 45, the prophet proclaims Cyrus, King of Persia to be “the Lord’s anointed one.”

The Rabbis of Jerusalem even proclaimed Simon Bar Kokhba to be the Lord’s anointed one, the Jewish Messiah, in 135 CE after he succeeded in kicking the Romans out of Jerusalem and establishing a short lived independent Jewish state. Of course, when the Romans killed Bar Kokhba a couple of years later, the Rabbis had to accept that they had perhaps erred in their proclamation.

Predictions within the Bible, which are supposed to help the Jewish people recognize their Messiah are found in Isaiah 2:4 and Micah 4:3 (There will be peace among all nations), Isaiah 11:6-9 (There will be perfect harmony), Isaiah 11:11-12, Jeremiah 23:8, Hosea 3:4-5 (All Jews will return to Israel), Isaiah 2:3, Zechariah 14:9 (there will be a universal acceptance of Yahweh and his law), and many other places. I can see why the Jewish people read these, looked at their situation under Roman occupation, and said “Messiah? I don’t think so.”

I find the passage in Mark, 3:21-22, to be interesting, concerning Jesus’ messiahship. Mark 3:21 – “Then Jesus entered a house, and again a crowd gathered, so that he and his disciples were not even able to eat. When his family heard about this, they went to take charge of him, for they said, “He is out of his mind.”

This was his own family who said “He is out of his mind.” Don’t you reckon his mother would remember the whole virgin birth thing? Don’t you suppose that Jesus’ being the son of God would have come up at the dinner table? Why would his family think that Jesus was out of his mind because he was out performing miracles and attracting a crowd? Shouldn’t that be what the son of God, the Messiah, would be doing? His own family didn’t regard him to be the Messiah.

You wrote in an earlier post about Jericho, about how recent finds prove that the walls of Jericho fell just as recounted in the Bible. You wrote:
“Joshua 6, tells how Israel conquered the walled city of Jericho. For six day they marched once around the city. On the seventh day they went around it seven times. The priests blew their trumpets, the people shouted, and when they did, "The wall fell down flat"

Starting in 1929, Dr. John Garstang, excavated the ruins of ancient Jericho. His discoveries corresponded remarkably with the Biblical account.

He learned that the wall was destroyed by some kind of violent convulsion such as that described in the Bible, and that when the wall feel that it fell outward, down the hillside, or as the Bible says, it fell down flat. Had the wall been destroyed by the battering rams of an enemy army, the walls would have fallen inward instead of outward.
[I edited some of your post for brevity, no nefarious intent.]

There are many Archeologists and Professors of History who even doubt that Jericho was even inhabited during the time in question. To quote Robert Dise of the University of Northern Iowa,
“In contrast to the biblical accounts, the archeological evidence shows that many of the cities that the Bible reports as conquered, weren't even inhabited when Israel entered Canaan. Ai had been abandoned after its destruction in the late 3rd millennium BCE, and was only resettled around 1200, when a modest farming village grew up on the site—which was then abandoned about 150 years later. Gibeon, with which Joshua supposedly made a treaty, also shows no evidence of habitation in the late 2nd millennium. The most glaring example is Jericho, which was only sparsely inhabited at the time of the conquest, if it was inhabited at all. Taking the place wouldn't have needed a full-blown marching band, a half-dozen kazoo players could've done it and not broken a sweat.”

These archeologists and professors believe that the story of Jericho, and others, were constructed as something of a cultural “hero tale.” I don’t have a problem with that, but then, I like reading Greek mythology as well.

Uh-oh. The wife just gave me another one of those “Are you going to sit on that computer all day?” looks. I’d best wrap this up.

Anyway, it’s an enjoyable debate. I hope I haven’t too grossly offended anyone.

 

My mother and father were both atheists.

My mother taught me to pretend to be a Christian, because to say that you are an atheist invites distrust and hatred.

 

tulianr: Looking at the prophesies concerning the Messiah for example, the first problem I see is that “the Messiah” (Jesus of Nazareth) and more importantly, the writers of the New Testament, had the opportunity to read the prophesies in Daniel and Isaiah and Micah, and conform their stories to the prophesies. All that we know of Jesus of Nazareth comes from the writers of the New Testament. There are no secular sources, excluding a highly dubious short mention in the works of Josephus, which can confirm any of these stories for us. I’d be rather surprised if the details of the life of Jesus of Nazareth didn’t fit the prophesies. If I can write my own story, I can conform to any prophecy that I choose.

Minuteman: There are other sources that collaborate the historical Jesus. Communique to Rome from Pilate and other sources reference him. Very few in academia doubt the historical Jesus. As to his life and times there are also many witnesses to the events described in the gospels. If they were a fictional accounting of the events the people alive and living in Judea in that time would know the falsity of them I would think and would contest them.

tulianr: I don’t mean to suggest that I don’t believe that the historical Jesus existed. I’m sure he did. I rather take Thomas Jefferson’s view of the New Testament – once you strip away the divinity question and the Jesus origin myth and the supposed miracles, the story of Jesus is an interesting one, and a worthwhile read.

You wrote: “In approximately 700 B.C. the prophet Micah named the tiny village of Bethlehem as the birthplace of Israel's Messiah (Micah 5:2). The fulfillment of this prophecy in the birth of Christ is one of the most widely known and widely celebrated facts in history.”

But the Jews, to whom Jesus believed himself to be sent, did not see Jesus’ birth as fulfillment of this prophecy. They rejected the claims of the Nazarenes because they believed that Jesus emphatically did not fulfill the prophecies.

Here again we have to consider the context. This statement is not true because of it's generality. All of the apostles, all of the original converts, many thousands that comprised the earliest church were Jews. It was actually a minority that rejected Christ as the Messiah.

I don’t think you can claim that it was a minority which rejected Jesus as the Messiah, when the Nazarenes were a minority sect within mainstream Judaism. Look at the writings of Paul and Luke. Paul wasn’t spreading the majority message. The books of Acts and Corinthians are full of accounts of Paul getting his butt kicked for going into Jewish synagogues and telling people that Jesus was the Messiah.

In Acts 18:6, we see the moment in which Paul decided to stop trying to convince other Jews of his message, and turned to the Gentiles. “But when the Jews opposed Paul and became abusive, he shook out his clothes in protest and said to them, Your blood be on you own heads! I am clear of my responsibility. From now on, I will go to the Gentiles.”

This wasn’t divine direction. This was Paul getting tired of having his butt beaten by other Jews. Growing up among the Gentiles, Paul figured they would be an easier crowd, and he was right. Roman pagans had been accepting the stories of other cultures’ gods for centuries. They were a very easy crowd, and voila, we have Christianity.

I find the passage in Mark, 3:21-22, to be interesting, concerning Jesus’ messiahship. Mark 3:21 – “Then Jesus entered a house, and again a crowd gathered, so that he and his disciples were not even able to eat. When his family heard about this, they went to take charge of him, for they said, “He is out of his mind.”

This was his own family who said “He is out of his mind.” Don’t you reckon his mother would remember the whole virgin birth thing? Don’t you suppose that Jesus’ being the son of God would have come up at the dinner table? Why would his family think that Jesus was out of his mind because he was out performing miracles and attracting a crowd? Shouldn’t that be what the son of God, the Messiah, would be doing? His own family didn’t regard him to be the Messiah.

His many brothers and sisters were quite understandably, as were many from his own village, skeptical of him at first. After all it must be hard to realize that your brother you have grown up with is the Son of God. The bible says that prophet is always rejected in his hometown. But many of his brothers and his mother also came to accept him as the Messiah and helped in his ministry.

But his family shouldn’t have been faced with the knowledge that Jesus was the Son of God when he was thirty years old. If the birth myth is to be believed, Jesus’ mother knew at the moment of conception. And please don’t tell me that over the years - thirty years, his siblings would not have been made aware of his unique status. Do you really believe that you could grow up with a sibling that was the Son of God, and your mother not make it known to you? “James! Turn the Son of God loose! You can’t put the Son of God in a headlock!”

Maybe there was a reason that his family rejected his claims of divinity; because they knew him to be the son of Joseph the carpenter.

Jesus didn’t become the Son of God at the age of thirty, but that is when the claims surface, or rather, they are documented by New Testament writers fifty to seventy years later to have surfaced when he was thirty years old.

Jesus, even according to New Testament writers, referred to himself as the “Son of Man” as did most of the Old Testament prophets. I see nothing in the words of Jesus, as presented to us, which tells me he considered himself as anything other than a Jewish prophet. He believed that he was sent unto the lost sheep of the House of Israel, to lead them back to the path of righteousness. He wasn’t starting a new religion. He wasn’t on a mission to the Gentiles and the peoples of the earth.

It isn’t Jesus that I have a problem with. It is the New Testament writers mythologizing his life that I find frustrating; and the later Christians’ failure to recognize myth when they see it, that makes me bang my head on the table.

As Mark Twain is said to have observed, “It ain’t those parts of the Bible that I can’t understand that bother me, it’s the parts that I do understand.”

Virgin birth was a practically unknown claim in the Jewish world, but it was very common in the Roman world. Roman mythologized accounts of famous Romans is replete with claims of virgin birth. It was almost required if you were to be elevated above the masses; as was a connection to the Gods. Julius Caesar’s family traced their lineage back to Aeneas, and through him to the Goddess Venus. It wasn’t strange for Romans to claim a direct connection to divinity, but it was in the Jewish culture.

Likewise, if you were to be elevated above the masses in the Roman world, you absolutely had to work miracles. Tacitus wrote of the Emperor Vespacian healing a blind man in Alexandria with his spittle. Sound familiar?

It is my thought that Jesus saw himself as a Jewish teacher, in the manner of Akiva, or perhaps as a prophet. He preached of the coming of the New Kingdom to the Jews, and was killed by the Romans because of it; because they knew that the Jewish New Kingdom meant the end of Roman rule, because it was to be a kingdom here on earth, not in some far away Heaven, after the deaths of the faithful. Had that been the message of Jesus, the Romans could have cared less. But calling for a New Kingdom to wipe away the Romans was subversion and Jesus died for it; not because he was the “Son of God”, but because he was a Jew trying to shore up the faith of his fellow Jews, telling them that hope was on the horizon.

New Testament writers, struggling to make the story of Jesus palatable to Greco Roman pagans, dressed up his story and mythologized it, until the true story of Jesus becomes almost unrecognizable. Sad really.

 

The only two types of criminals that Roman law allowed to be crucified were insurrectionists and rebellious slaves.

Pilate would not have crucified anyone for any other reason, he was the sort of person to have political enemies who would have gone to the trouble to report it to Rome.
To crucify someone to keep the Jews from rebelling ?
Rome would crush the rebellion instead.

The Romans referred to the Zealots/Sicarii as robbers to insult them, they were terrorist assassins not thieves.

 

I've seen a couple of theories about what he was up to during those lost years, but so far everything I've seen has been highly speculative.

 

Such as a long running rumor that he was a student in a Tibetan monastery.

But even with him being away for 18 years, why would his mother forget the whole virgin birth thing ?

 

To which prophecy are you referring? The one that I'm used to hearing is Isaiah 7:14 - "Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign, the young woman (almah) will conceive and give birth to a son, and will call him Immanuel." The "Young Woman" is usually mistranslated as "Virgin", but the word used was "Almah", which means "young woman" not "virgin", from what I've read about the passage. If they meant "virgin" the word "Bethulah" should have been used; and I don't think Jesus was ever called Immanuel, or "God with Us."

As for the travels, I've heard the tales, but I have yet to see one shred of credible evidence to substantiate the claims. I am really dubious about claims of trading missions to Britain during this time period. Britain saw the first serious numbers of Roman troops in 54 BCE, and didn't truly fall under Roman domination until about 40 BCE. Even then, the Celtic tribes were just paying tribute to Rome; they weren't directly ruled by the Empire. Warfare amongst the British Celtic tribes was rife during this period, and even their relationship with Rome was an iffy one. They stopped paying tribute several times, and went into open revolt, leading to another major invasion in 43 CE. It was after this invasion that Roman towns began to be established. I can't imagine a significant international tin trade occurring at any time prior to this.

 

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/...a-moral-obligation-says-Oxford-professor.html

Isn't a little bit of a conflict of interest when a person conducting research/experiments is also the editor of a journal that defines what IS medically ethical?

 

I didn't read the article to indicate that Professor Savulescu actually participated in the study, just that he commented on the study from a moral perspective.

In any event, it is a touchy subject, from a moral perspective. There are both secular and religious arguments against the practice of genetically modifying babies. I can agree, to a degree, with the idea of modifying the genes of an embryo that has an obvious genetic defect. I see no benefit to allowing a child to be born with a genetic defect, if you can correct it. I don't think there is any honor or morality to be found in consigning a child to a life of difficulty and pain. I certainly see such manipulation to be on better moral ground than aborting said baby, so that it would not be born with a crippling defect.

However, this particular study seems focused on genetic manipulation of an embryo in order to effect a change in the future child's personality. That, I think, resides on much shakier moral ground. I can see all sorts of practical objections to the use of such manipulation, not even taking into account the religious objections to such. I find it difficult to find any moral justification for it. I don't think nearly enough is known about long term consequences of playing with someone's personality traits. Once upon a time, the Lobotomy seemed like a godsend for the mentally disturbed. Now we can look back on that practice, and shudder, wondering "what were they thinking?"

There is also the thought that sometimes "negative personality traits" can come in handy. Screwing around with something that evolution has been perfecting for millions of years seems an iffy proposition. It could very well be mankind's final mistake.

 

With 18 pages of comments, it surprises me that I do not find any mention of what I believe to be the over-whelming need for morality: Evil. Evil exists and cannot be denied. I do not believe in any of the Gods, at least not the vindictive, jealous, insecure ones conceived by sheep-herders a few thousand years ago, but do consider myself a moral and devout man. I see evil as being the creator of the need for morality and form follows function. Where there is a need, there will find a solution. Evil requires no demons or superstitions, it apparently can thrive with no impetus. Evil creates the canvass for morality and we each learn to paint it different.

 

Maybe so but much like a burn, it doesn't ever hurt as much as long as it is on somebody else.

 

I think you are partially right Sea: Human needs do drive the development of morality, but as often as not, and most probably more often than may be imagined, dealing with "evil" is not the only, nor indeed even the main engine for developing moral codes of behaviour (formal or informal). Morality has, in my opinion, more to do with regulating the ways in which humans interact and behave towards each other in a whole range of contexts, than in dealing with "evil".

I am of the view that, being the social animals that we are, we as a species have found that there is more to be gained by social behaviour that tends to support group cohesion and the benefits of cooperating as a group than otherwise; and that morality is a matter of regulating social behaviour by promoting and rewarding pro social behaviour; and by discouraging and punishing the kind of anti social behaviours that would tend to undermine social cohesion and diminish group functionality, be the group a couple, a family, a band, a clan, a tribe or a nation.

 

Lions only sleep with lambs when they are not hungry and only then as a means of protecting dinner tomorrow.