Jeff and Me: The Unending Saga

EJ:
"Supernatural" is not my term but how God is defined in the Bible, dictionary, etc.

SR:
Really? Let’s test your hypothesis:

God:

Oxford: “The creator and supreme ruler of the universe.”

Webster’s: “1 capitalized : the supreme or ultimate reality: as a : the Being perfect in power, wisdom, and goodness who is worshipped as creator and ruler of the universe.”

From this exercise, I think we learn two things: 1. It’s just you; and 2. you tend to hold your opinions independently of either logic or evidence.

EJ:
You already admitted math is empirical when you classified a couple of apples as "two apples."

SR:
Empirical; Oxford: “based on observation or experience rather than theory or pure logic.” Mathematics is pure logic (“reasoning conducted or assessed according to strict principles of validity”), or nothing is. Although it can be applied to the empirical.

EJ:
The example you gave is easy to refute, for I don't accept a god whatsoever and exist in the physical world completely.

SR:
And if someone told you “I live in the 19th century court of Napoleon Bonaparte completely,” would that too be proof that it were so?
You are too uncritical in your thinking.

EJ:
Catholics don't take the Bible literally? That's news to me. I read about them standing up for myth as if it were history all the time in the paper.

SR:
I expect you are imagining the latter. You’d better cite a specific example if you want to demonstrate otherwise.

EJ:
But if you consider the good book as metaphorical, then great, you've evolved far beyond the average Christian.

SR:
The average Christian is a Catholic, making your statement untrue. But note, “metaphorical” is not one of the four senses in which the Bible is read. “Allegorical” is close; but it is only one of four. You seem to have simply replaced your old reductionism of seeing the Bible as only “literal” with a new one of seeing it as only “metaphorical.”

EJ:
Name one historical figure who thought Jesus was the son of God before Paul.

SR:
Peter, Nicodemus, John the Baptist, Longinus, Anna, Simeon … the list is long. Of course, the source for all this is the Bible. There are few other documents of any kind surviving from near that time.

EJ:
According to Norman Cantor in "Antiquity" Rabbi Saul (Paul) had a "vision" that Jesus was the "Lamb" mentioned in the Old Testament. This was how the whole concept started. (Meanwhile, Paul never even met the man!)

SR:
I’m not sure what Norman Cantor is actually maintaining, based on your description. He is, of course, entitled to his opinion. But without knowing exactly what it is, and the reasons he gives for it, it cannot be evaluated here. It is hard to imagine he has any special knowledge of the visions Paul had, outside what can be gleaned from the Bible. There are no other sources here.

EJ:
Re Christian sects that thought the deification of Christ was sacrilege, read up on the "Arians" (not to be confused with white supremacists).

SR:
You misunderstand Arian doctrine—which I have already cited. The Arians too believed Jesus was divine. However, they believed he was not co-equal with the Father.
Here’s how Wikipedia (not, granted, always a reliable source) summarizes Arianism: “Arius taught that God the Father and the Son did not exist together eternally. Further, Arius taught that the pre-incarnate Jesus was a divine being created by (and possibly inferior to) the Father at some point, before which the Son did not exist.”

EJ:
As for Exodus, see "The Bible Unearthed--There was no Exodus," (Finkelstein and Siberman).

SR:
Without seeing and being able to evaluate the arguments given, it is impossible to comment. But you do seem to have the title wrong. It is The Bible Unearthed: Archaeology’s New Vision of Ancient Israel and the Origin of Its Sacred Texts. It contains one chapter titled “Did the Exodus Happen?”

EJ:
Imagine when people realize death is not the end of existence regardless if they believe in a god or not.

SR:
Jeff, the religious are way ahead of you there.

EJ:
Tyrants will lose control over those they manipulate with the false threat of hell, false promise of a heaven.

SR:
That seems a non-sequitor: if everyone realizes there _is_ continued existence beyond death, it would seem your tyrants would have a field day, by your logic.

But tyrants hardly need to threaten their subjects with threats of what might happen after death: they can threaten them with immediate torture and execution, after all.

EJ:
If there was a soul, where does it go when people lose control of their thoughts and feelings after a head injury?

SR:
Nowhere, as it was in no specific place to begin with. It perhaps simply loses full contact with the brain or with the nervous system. If you believe the soul lives on after separation with the physical body, as Christians do, this explanation is almost automatic. Jim Brady, say, is still the same person after being shot in the head as he was before; he has simply lost control over his nervous system and is less able to communicate with us.

The soul of a mentally retarded person, in Christian teaching, is as complete as a soul as the soul of the greatest genius.

Conversely, if you believe that the brain is the whole ball game, that there is no separate entity involved, how do you explain documented cases of people with severe brain damage, or born with very little brain, who nevertheless seem to function normally? Obviously, there are two things here: the brain and how something else uses it. You can think if it as the difference between hardware and software, if you like.

EJ:
Don't trust the Globe and Mail? Do you really think a right wing paper would make stuff up about the Pope? The article I have quoted JP2 directly from his proclimation.

SR:
We have already established, by reference to the original document, that the quote you thought was from this document was not. What either of us thinks of the Globe is now irrelevant.

Though I do think your description of the Globe & Mail as “right wing” is bizarre. After all, Conrad Black launched the National Post as a right wing alternative to the Globe.

EJ:
Religon does have ways to force dogma onto its followers. We've already discussed how they terrify followers with the notion of eternal burning, we've already discussed sick rituals, like pretending to drink blood.

SR:
You have remarkably little respect for your fellow human beings if you believe this is something too difficult for them to sort out on their own. Small children may be effectively frightened by bogeymen, but not adults.

And even so, your priorities are wildly misplaced. Before you object to religion on this basis, you must, logically, first have it out with governments, families, schools, businesses, TV advertisements, video games, doctors, the Internet, and so forth.

EJ:
Re misogyny in Catholsism: Marry Magdalene, remember her? She was likely Jesus' # 1 disciple. What did Pope Gregory do? Turned her into a whore!

SR:
Sounds to me as though you have been reading some fiction here—perhaps The Da Vinci Code? – and taken it, to use your word, “literally.”

Jesus’s # 1 disciple was Peter; or perhaps his mother Mary. And Pope Gregory had nothing to do with “turning Mary Magdalene into a whore.” That she was probably a prostitute is deduced from the New Testament.

First, the name “Magdalene.” It might refer to a place, “Magdala”; but in the NT, Mary is from Bethany. That leaves the second possibility: that it is a Talmudic expression referring to an adulteress.

Second, the NT always identifies Mary Magdalene as a woman from whom Jesus has “cast out seven demons.” That does sound like a bit of a checkered past, wouldn’t you say? She is also traditionally identified with the woman who washes Jesus’s feet, of whom it is said she “had lived a sinful life in that town.” So much so that onlookers were shocked to see Jesus prepared to sit with her.

And the point of all this is obvious: Christianity is about the forgiveness of sins.
Let me also point out that it is highly sexist to interpret any criticism against an individual woman as referring to all women.

And it is also sexist to see the notion that Magdalene was a prostitute as oppressive to women, but not the notion that St. Matthew was a tax collector and a publican, or that St. Paul persecuted and killed the early Christians, or that St. Peter denied Christ, as oppressive to men.

EJ:
It's true the church threw women a bone by giving Mother Mary status (although many Christian sects believe it's sacrilege to worship her).

SR:
You have that wrong as well. All Christians consider it sacrilege to worship her.

EJ:
All a woman has to do to live up to the Madonna is have children without having (enjoying) sex! Not much of an impossible standard!

SR:
That, and still remain a virgin. Oh yes, and be born without sin, never sin, and ascend bodily into heaven. And accept probably death in order to do the will of God. And, as a widow, see her only son unjustly killed as a criminal.

Not a challenge for most of us, I’m sure.

EJ:
Almost all the major heroes in the bible are men. Women tend do be depicted as underhanded or subserviant (do I really need to give examples?).

SR:
You are thinking, no doubt, first and foremost, of Eve. There does indeed seem to be a belief, in the Bible, that women are ultimately less morally steady by nature than men.

But this perception seems to be universal: the Greeks thought evil came into the world through Pandora. The Gilgamesh epic blames Isis. The Gnostics blamed Sophia. The Korean creation story blames a female tiger who did not have the patience to become a human woman. The Italian saying, “la donna e mobile,” reflects the same belief: women are unsteady.

There are, of course, two possibilities: one, that all cultures everywhere are independently prejudiced against women, and have uncannily come up randomly with the same specific prejudice. Two, that women really are less morally steady by nature than men.

If you find this latter possibility unacceptable, compare some of the claims that modern feminists make against men: that they are more violent, less “nurturing,” less communicative, less sensitive, and so forth.

In any case, it does not start with the Bible.

EJ:
Consider the Commandment "Thou shall not covet thy neighbor's wife...: women are treated as man's property, like his man servant and barn animals.

SR:
A wife is indeed a man’s property, just as a husband is a woman’s; and in the same sense that one’s own body is one’s property. As this commandment is addressed to a man (Moses), it is not odd that the wife alone is cited.

But note the previous and separate commandment, “thou shalt not commit adultery.” This makes the marital bond something separate from and more important than the ownership of property generally.

While we’re on the Ten Commandments, note also “honour your father and your mother.” Male and female here are treated as equal, equally honourable and honoured. If ancient Israel were really a “patriarchy,” the greater honour would be specified for one’s father.

EJ:
Again, your scapegoating of society at large for the inequality of woman does not cut it. Where do you think it came from? The bible!

SR:
“Scapegoating of society at large?” That comes close to being a contradiction in terms.

But if what you say is true, it should follow that woman’s estate is clearly higher in societies where the Bible is not the basis of the social order.

In, say, Muslim lands. Or in Japan, or China, or Korea, Thailand, Vietnam, or India.
So what are all those feminists always on about? They seem to hate the social order in those countries.

EJ:
A woman who believes in Christianity is like a Jew who worships Nazism. During various crusades, tens of thousands of innocent women were tortured and killed to annihilate the notion of woman as divine, equal to man.

SR:
And where in the Middle East at the time of the Crusades were these cults of the divine woman found? And if woman is both divine and equal to man, does that mean man is divine as well?

Sounds like the promise of Eden. The serpent’s promise, I mean. Hard to fault Christianity if it dissented.

EJ:
Re your King of Spain analogy: it only works if you are not actually the said King. Humanists place humanity above all else. This is what it is to be humane: I.e compassionate, rational, without bias, believes in equality, etc.

SR:
You forgot a few: brilliant, incorruptible, invincibly good looking, and regular at brushing, for example.

EJ:
Steve, you were soothsaying when you spoke of the Dutchman who was the basis for Santa Clause. You know full well this is not what children believe in when they are duped; they believe in a supernatural entity that flies around the sky in a sled

SR:
You still have that wrong, Jeff. Saint Nicholas was not Dutch; he was a Greek from Asia Minor. Can he still influence events on earth? Surely, if you believe in the Christian doctrine of saints.

The deception is the claim that he is responsible for the presents under the tree.
But I think this is justifiable. For the parents, it is good moral discipline: Christians are supposed to do their good works in secret. For the children, it protects them from being spoiled.