Why do you think

Debate Room
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Is that not the point of debate? To politely discuss the terms of the argument in such a way that an agreement between the two is settled on? Perhaps you think you’ve “won” the debate? There are still extremely salient points which I do not agree with you on.

For example, you seem to be saying that a moral system based on values of hatred and intolerance is in no way comparatively inferior or superior to a moral system based on values of love and compassion.

Because:

A) they’re chosen subjectively
B) the terms are interchangeable

I do not agree with this and find it counterintuitive to common sense.

For example, we seem to have no issue agreeing on what “hatred” and “intolerance” mean. And yet the words “love” and “compassion” (according to you) May lead (at times) to acts of violence.

I find that incompatible with my experience of all four values. You seem to be arguing (forgive the colloquialism) that it’s like comparing apples and oranges. Whereas I am saying it’s like comparing a rotten apple to a ripe one.

You’re comparing a mythical creature to a feeling of overwhelming love? Seems a bit absurd doesn’t it?

It’s a feeling which people can identify and agree upon. Is that sufficient for you?

No. There are types of paternal love which allow parents to also beat their children and there are types of paternal love which do not allow parents to beat their children. Two different types of love. It’s incorrect to label them under the same name.

Well. I’ve come to my senses and I am now of the opinion that reward and punishment are relative.

I’m moving the discussion forward, if you don’t mind.

Who decides what rewards or punishments get doled out. Is it not those in positions of power?

If you cannot predict with any certainty that one group of values will lead to better social outcomes than another, then there is no point of labelling them “moral”.

“Moral - Adjective

holding or manifesting high principles for proper conduct.”

And yet you refuse to pass judgment on actions based on hatred and cruelty vs love and compassion? You think that because doing so is a subjective process there is no higher validity to it?

Good. Well, let’s move on to reward and Punishment. How are those consequences determined in a given society. Who writes the laws? How? And to what end? Is it the king who chops off the hands of a thief? Or the despot who executes a whole group of people based on the colour of their skin?

Fine. Out of interest … what points of nihilism seem demonstrably correct to you? Be honest. I don’t really care. I think in my heart I’m a nihilist with a conscience.

Better than anyone who thinks they can choose whatever set of moral values they want and get away with whatever actions they want without facing consequences doled out by a power and authority greater than their own.

Despite the lavash liberties associated with doing “whatever the fuck you want cause you feel like it” - there are entities in the world who may think otherwise and do have the power to convince you of as much.

Arbitrary, relative, or not … we put people in positions of power so that violence is rewarded with punishment.

And yet you refuse to pass judgment on moral systems based on hatred and intolerance? Despite the fact that you are demonstrating an understanding that they lead to the decay of society, you refuse to label them as “inferior”? I find that bewildering …

What about the definition of love via Jeezuz or the Buddha? They are not “most” people. Does the definition of a rare meaning not count because “most” people can’t agree on what it is?

Fair enough. You can have your cake and it eat too, I suppose.

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There. Now you’re 58 and you’ve seen a mermaid

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The books were unauthored yet this doesn’t take away from reliability yet that aside for clarity sake i will refer to the documents with those names in order to say the following, The book of Acts can be dated back to 62-64 AD for the following reasons: the author mentions the martyrdom of Stephen and James the brother of John but doesn’t mention the martyrdom of Peter, James and Paul which is said to have happened 61-67 AD. The book of Acts mentions Jerusalem sixty times but the destruction of the second temple is not mentioned, which occurred in 70 AD. The book of Acts doesn’t mention Nero and the persecution of Christians which is dated to 66 AD. The book of Luke is said to have been written before Acts so that puts it at early 60s and the book of Luke takes from the book of Mark so that puts Mark at late 50s. This is roughly 20 years after Christ’s death and resurrection which is contemporary to eyewitnesses so anyone who would have found falsities with the gospel could have written about it.

Some external sources also give us an idea of dating. One such being Ireneaus who wrote in “Against Heresies” mentions that the book of Matthew was written while Peter and Paul were preaching the gospel.

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No. Most scholars agree ( which makes your jaundiced version of historicity unreliable) that “Acts” was written, in Rome, after the sack of Jerusalem, in between 70CE and 90CE. It was NOT before 66CE. It was written in very good Greek. It is largely based on Paul’s epistles but contradicts them in very important ways. Almost if the Author of “Acts” was writing about a different person altogether.

Again, like other gospels in the canon and those declared heretic, it is in the tradition of gnosticism, in that stories were experienced in dreams and visions and then written down as “gospel”. As Acts takes on the story after the alleged “Ascension” and ends abruptly with “Paul” preaching Rome it does have the hallmarks of a story written well after the events it is meant to describe. It is therefore as reliable as the gospels themselves. Either dream stories or hearsay, but definitely NOT an eyewitness account.

As an exercise maybe you should prove that point to your own satisfaction by actually comparing the epistles with those journeys and events depicted in Acts.

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You used this phrase twice. Who was it doing the saying?

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So a person writing 100 years after the events, and on a different continent, is now a witness to dates of the writing of Acts? One who has a vested interest in maintaining the story? Poor evidence. Disallowed.

" During the persecution of Christians by Marcus Aurelius, the Roman emperor from 161 to 180, Irenaeus was a priest of the Church of Lyon." Wiki.

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Outside of Acts there is not a whisper of awareness of the martyrdom of Stephen until Irenaeus talks about it around 180 CE. And Irenaeus is clearly using Acts itself as his source. (Recall, too, that the Acts Seminar has concluded that Acts itself was written in the second century.)

Tags: Acts of the Apostles, Luke, Matthews: Perfect Martyr, Shelly Matthews, Stephen

Screen shot 2013-11-26 at 8.05.04 PMI was introduced to the work of Shelly Matthews through the Acts Seminar Report. She is one of the Seminar Fellows. I have since read — and enjoyed very much — her historical study Perfect Martyr: The Stoning of Stephen and the Construction of Christian Identity.

Shelly Matthews is one of the few theologians I have encountered who demonstrably understands the nature of history and how it works and how to apply historical-critical questions to the evidence. She is a postmodernist (and I’m not) but I won’t hold that against her. At least she understands and applies postmodernist principles correctly — unlike some other theologians who miss the point entirely and resort to trying to uncover “approximations” of “what really happened” behind the fictional (and ideological) narratives in the Gospels and Acts.

Matthews is critical of the way scholars have with near unanimity assumed that the story of Stephen’s martyrdom in Acts is based on some form of bedrock historical event:

  • How else to explain the sudden propulsion of Jesus followers beyond the limits of Palestine?
    • (Recall that the Acts story tells us it was the death of Stephen that instigated the wider persecution of the “church”, and persecution led to the scattering of the believers, and that scattering led to the proclamation of the message beyond Judea.)
  • How else to explain the conversion of Paul?
    • (Recall that Paul — originally “Saul” — was one of those persecutors and it was his “Damascus Road” experience that brought him to heel and turned him from persecutor to missionary.)

Those are the twin (prima facie) arguments that have assured scholars that the Stephen event is historical ever since they were made explicit in the nineteenth century by Eduard Zeller (son-in-law of F. Baur).

But let’s save the discussion of method and criteria of historicity till last this time (or maybe a follow up post). To begin with we will set out the grounds for questioning whether the Stephen narrative in Acts owes anything to some historical “core” event. The question of the historicity of Stephen’s martyrdom is not the primary theme or interest of Shelly Matthew’s study (as its title indicates) but she does address it as part of her larger discussion on historical-critical inquiry and the way scholars have culturally fallen under the spell of the fundamental narrative outline and ideology of Acts. (Her discussion could equally well apply to the question of the historicity of Jesus but I think we need to wait for scholars to come to grips more generally with critical and methodological questions about Stephen before taking that step.)

External evidence

Outside of Acts there is not a whisper of awareness of the martyrdom of Stephen until Irenaeus talks about it around 180 CE. And Irenaeus is clearly using Acts itself as his source. (Recall, too, that the Acts Seminar has concluded that Acts itself was written in the second century.)

Paul mentions in his letters several persons who were part of his life and that appear in Acts but he nowhere indicates that he ever owed his conversion to the events initiated by the martyrdom of Stephen — a martyrdom that he reportedly witnessed as an accomplice.

Clement of Rome and Polycarp wrote of Christian martyrs but appear to have never heard of Stephen.

Any assertion attributed to Stephen is evidenced. The Bible tells ‘STORIES.’ It is not the evidence it is the ‘CLAIM.’

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You accepted the core premise you had been disputing, that morals are relative and subjective? So it is settled.

I have never claimed this, indeed I have repeatedly told you I am not making a claim about what is moral, only that the distinction is a subjective one. Not sure why you keep making this error?

Can’t help you there, I get definitions from the dictionary.

You already accepted this premise, your love for your family prompted you to state you would “end someone” who threatened them. You agreed that the unimaginable violence of the second world war was morally justified to defeat Nazism, if that wasn’t based on love and compassion for the victims of Nazism then what else, and again you agreed when I pointed this out.

It’s an absurd straw man, since your claim was about “other dimensions”, and you asserted that my disbelief in your unevidenced claim for their existence was based on my “faulty” or “limited perception”. Thus my example was entirely apropos, and I ask again since I have “gone my whole life without perceiving mermaids, is this then evidence of my flawed perception and their reality?”

Try this then what is the objective difference between these “other dimensions” and invisible mermaids? Since all you offered was a bare claim they are equally unevidenced at this point.

I think you must now that a subjective feeling is not objective evidence, just as you must know what the words mermaid and invisible mean? I also imagine it would be insufficient for you to believe invisible mermaids were real just because someone simply claimed they had a feeling that invisible mermaids were real. So unless you can offer some objective evidence, I must remain incredulous. Your argument that this is a fault in my perception has been demonstrated as biased, and therefore flawed.

[quote=“rat_spit, post:423, topic:3719”]

You just did precisely that? You called them both love, ipso facto love is open to subjective interpretation. My example demonstrates that the subjective notions two parents hold of love of their child prompts two very different actions.

I have never claimed this, only that what we deem “better” is subjective. You seem to making the same error over and over again, I am not arguing what is moral, only that the distinctions are subjective. Subjective morality does not mean one would be amoral.

Sigh, I am not labelling anything as moral? I am asserting that what we label as moral is subjective.

Not true, I only explained that my judgments like everyone else’s are subjective, why you keep making this error is baffling? Subjective morality and amoral are not the same thing.

Not even remotely true, have you lost all moral distinctions because you have now had to accept the fact that they are subjective?

No need, they would by necessity be equally subjective.

That no objective morality exists, that religious morals are no less subjective than any other.

Again why you are now reeling off subjective claims is not clear? However this assertion seems over simplistic, the necessity of investing power into leaders in post industrialised societies seems manifest, as does the necessity to curtail or limit that power.

No I don’t do any such thing, nor have I ever remotely claimed this.

What about them, they are subjective?

I don’t know what you mean by count, if you use a word that means to you what it does not to the majority then it behoves you to accurately explain what you mean, or what you’re saying becomes confused or even meaningless. I dislike the religious penchant for vapid metaphor precisely because such woolly sentiments have little meaning, when someone says “god is love” they might as well have said “fishy boxes are right” for all the sense they have conveyed.

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Nope, just a photographic image of what appears to be someone with a physical deformity. And I’m not 58…

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Of course it does, it makes them hearsay created many decades after the events they purport to describe. It certainly fails to satisfy key criteria upon which the historicity of documents is established.

No it isn’t it seems you don’t know what contemporary means. I think you mean to make the unevidenced assertion that the earliest of the hearsay claims were possibly within living memory. This is debateable since the average life expectancy was well short of making this probable, however the claims would remain anonymous hearsay dated long after the facts they purport to describe. No contemporary writings, claims that someone witnessed something written after the fact, and unverified and unverifiable are not by any stretch of the imagination eyewitness accounts.

Argumentum ad ignorantiam fallacy. Nothing gains credence because it has not been disproved.

He was Greek, and wasn’t even born until 130 years after the alleged death of Jesus, and he was a Bishop in the early Christian church, so describing his as “external” is hilarious sophistry, almost as hilarious on his subjective claims about when the gospels were written, when we already have accurately dated the earliest examples and his unevidenced subjective beliefs are not supported by the facts of those dates.

Do you think pointing to the subjective opinion of other religious apologists lends objective credence to the gospels? Why would you think that?

FYI, even if one could establish someone claiming to have witnessed a miracle, was present at the alleged event, it would remain an unevidenced subjective opinion that the events witnessed were “inexplicable by any natural or scientific law, and therefor attributable to divine agency” That by the way is the definition of a miracle and is a textbook argumentum ad ignorantiam fallacy. Also given the ignorance and superstition that was indicative of that epoch, it is telling us nothing, since by any standard most people during that epoch and in that place were entirely ignorant of natural and certainly scientific explanations anyway.

The likelihood that the natural order was altered favourable, compared to the likelihood they simply didn’t understand what they had seen speaks for itself, we are comparing the common place with the never objectively evidenced once, and this is assuming we can accurately assert what anyone saw, which we cannot, since all we have is second hand anonymous hearsay claims, dating to decades after the fact.

You would need to demonstrate sufficient objective evidence that a supernatural event is even possible, before such a claim would have any meaning at all. And the gospels fail to even establish that anyone witnessed anything at all, beyond unevidenced and anonymous hearsay claims written long after the events.

Put bluntly you have the most extraordinary of claims, and no objective evidence at all to support them, or that they are even possible.

I think @Old_man_shouts_at_cl has amply and admirably covered the inaccuracy of many of your other claims.

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Er, no, these texts were plainly written by human beings. Just because we don’t have data allowing us to name the authors doesn’t alter this elementary fact.

This is hilarious fantasising.

We have, for example, that hilarious passage in Matthew (27:51-54), asserting that zombies walked the streets of Jerusalem during the crucifixion. Which is manifest nonsense of the most steamingly feculent order. Made even worse by the fact that the occupying Romans never mentioned this occurring. We are dealing, in the case of the Romans, a civilisation that meticulously documented even such mundane matters as tax returns. We can be pretty certain that if the occupying Roman forces had seen zombies walking the streets of Jerusalem, they would have devoted a lot of attention to documenting this independently.

There’s also the hilarity involved in Matthew 4:1-11, where Jesus is asserted therein to have been completely alone while being tempted by the devil … except that by definition, if he was alone, there was no one around to write down the events asserted to have taken place in that passage. Oh, and Matthew 4:8 implies a flat Earth, an assertion known to be wrong by Eratosthenes of Cyrene, who, back in 200 BCE or thereabouts, performed the first empirical determination of the circumference of the Earth. Indeed, this empirical determination formed part of my elementary physics classes when I was 11 years old, and if you never learned about this, then your education system clearly failed you.

Then there was Aristarchus of Samos, who not only provided the first empirical determinations of the relative sizes of the Sun and Moon, and their distances from the earth, but also placed the planets in their correct order within the first prototype heliocentric model of the Solar System, again around 200 BCE.

Funny how none of this knowledge filtered through to the authors of your favourite mythology, isn’t it?

I’ve already dealt with other assertions contained within said mythology that are so manifestly and violently at variance with demonstrable scientific fact, that they render said mythology worthless as a purported source of “knowledge”. But mythology fanboys keep running away from that embarrassment.

As for the idea that any of the various scribblers of mythological tracts, were “contemporary” with the events asserted to have taken place in said tracts, this is another fantasy. A distance of several decades between the events in question, and the first production of purported “written accounts” thereof, does not match the definition of “contemporary”.

For example, various fundagelicals like to assert that Josephus was “contemporary” with the events in question, an asssertion which is laughable when one realises that Josephus was not even born until four years after the crucifixion.

Plus, the idea that a collection of superstitious first-century individuals, primed in advance to treat unsupported supernaturalist assertions uncritically as fact, produced anything historically rigorous on the matter, is another fantasy.

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Hi @Calilasseia, I can share the source I use to respond no problem: Dr James Tour: https://www.jmtour.com

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This would be the same James Tour whose assertions are demolished here, I take it?

The same James Tour who, surprise surprise, is connected with the Duplicity Institute? An organisation that has been peddling lies about science for over a decade?

Funny how my prediction that the Duplicity Institute was involved in your collapsed apologetic soufflés came true …

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I’ve added their 2 records to my music library on Spotify.

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I don’t mean to be rude but it doesn’t sound like you know much about Dr. James Tour. Dr Tour was treated unjustly because he signed something he agreed with on in the Dover case. Now he is releasing his videos on Youtube and is not work of DI it is his own response to the Origin of Life. He wanted to reach the masses and Dave Farina decided to deride Dr Tour and he has responded. I welcome people here to go to his videos and find something wrong. I believe even Tour himself welcomes any atheist to a private zoom to talk about his faith https://www.jmtour.com

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Have you watched “Professor Dave’s” response to James’s videos.

Here is just one. By the way James is now avoiding the debate he already agreed to previously.

James is just ridiculous, even someone with a bit of understanding or enthusiastic of chemistry can see that James is just not honest.

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Geeeeez… :roll_eyes:… I made it through maybe eight minutes of the vid. That was more than enough to realize how ridiculous that dude it. And the only reason it took that long is because he really didn’t say much until he was giving his (pathetic) “car parts” analogy. The disturbing part is that there are so many people who actually believe the shit he is spewing.

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DAMN! Now I gotta go watch the video.
Okay, I know for a fact this guy is not at the top of Mount Stupid. I hike up there every day for lunch with Ken Hamm and the Banana Man and I have not one single seen him at the top.

Spot on Tin. That car analogy was just stupid. If 1 million monkeys on 1 million typewriters can eventually type the entire works of William Shakespeare, building a damn car is child’s play. What a stupid argument.

I just had to stop the video at this point as well.

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Not quite. But Yes, we choose our morals in a subjective manner. Though some of us identify our own flaws, and having done so, try to become better people. Thus we can even choose between superior and inferior within our own system of morals.

It may be relative as well. What I consider “good” another may consider “weak” or “cowardly” and thus “bad”.

But here’s a question. Do you consider your moral values, your “moral integrity” to be inferior or superior to that of say, Charles Manson?

Fair enough. You never claimed it. But isn’t it safe to assert this much? If morals are simply relative and merely subjective, then how can one system be superior or inferior to another? There is, as you say, no objective standard to judge by …

Yeah? I bet you get recipes from a cook book to, don’t ya?

I didn’t say “love”. My “hatred” for the person threatening my family would cause me to “end them.”

My love for my family is not the root cause of my violence. It’s not even related … at all. My tendency for hatred is the only thing causing me to act out violently.

As, I said, my actions depend on my intentions, my intentions depend on my feelings. My feelings of hatred may be overcome by feelings of compassion. Depending on what moral value I cultivate, I could just as easily end that man as I might pity him.

People don’t act violently out of love. People act violently out of hatred. It’s not impossible that the two might coexist in the same person at the same time. It’s all a question of “to what degree?”

Similarly, if I destroy the tendency to hate how in the world could I intentionally harm someone?

When did I ever say it was justified. I clearly questioned the reality that Nazis were executed for their crimes whereas America were not.

The clear reason for that is not that one action was justified over the other. The clear reason is that the Americans won the war. And … they had the A-bomb.

Dropping the bomb was a “fuck you too” for Pearl Harbour. It was also a decisive step in the evolution of man and technology.

No. Mermaids simply do not exist. You can rest assured that you will never see one despite all of your efforts to.

Love and compassion are in fact possible for you to realize in your life time. You need only “open your heart”.

It’s a stupid comparison. The existence of invisible mermaids is highly implausible.

They’re completely different feelings leading to different intentions leading to different behaviour toward their children.

Love is devoid of cruelty. If you are capable of hurting your child maliciously, it is not love.

Why does this have a question mark at the end. Is this a statement or a question?

And thus without definitive meaning. Ie. empty.

In case you haven’t answered it; are your moral values inferior or superior to Charles Manson’s?

And who gets to call the shots?

So your moral system is only “subjectively” superior to Charles Manson’s? Because Manson obviously considers his superior to yours, there is no way to make an objective judgement?

And yet, he is rotting in a prison and you are out and about eating bangers and mash!

Why are you not imprisoned for your values? Why is he? Who are we to judge him for orchestrating the murders of Shannon Tate, et. al.

Like the Russians are with Putin …

So you do pass judgment on Charles Manson? How dare you! Don’t you know he has his own subjective, relative reasons for what he did!

And the best; the superlative; the utmost!!!

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Let me guess a variation on Hoyle’s fallacy? Creatards love that one.

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