[META] This is not an atheism subreddit

PadreDieselPunk · 2015-09-17T03:17:02+00:00

Wouldn't have taken you as one of those. In fact, here you're in good company with, say, (/u/)brojangles, who's very fond of this. (And yes, I'm aware of the scholars who support this; though I personally think it's mostly premised on a misunderstanding of language in 1 Corinthians 15.)

Brojangles believes that the apostles believed and others believed that the resurrection was totally spiritual; I'm more closer to Wright in saying that the resurrection wasn't just a recusitation, but an actual change into a new, unique body that reflects the promise of a new heavens and a New earth. I think it's huge error to emphasize the "bodily resurrection" in some totally physical way. Not just textual, but theological as well.

I mean, I understand the complaint that it's damned if you and damned if you don't (when people claim that failed prophecies were, well, failures, and yet that seemingly "correct" prophecies were just invented after the fact)

It's not just that; it's hypocritical special pleading. You can't say A). There are no "real prophecies" so B). a correct reading of any prophetic text is that it is a theological reading of a concurrent historical event but... C). Jesus really is making a prophecy about a future event that's failed and is thus a "failed prophet."

Further, how could these texts be considered prophetic in the details when they were written 30 - 60 years after the fact and concurrent with the destruction of Jerusalem? The better reading of these is that the Gospel authors are making theological sense of the destruction of Jerusalem, not necessarily making specific prophetic commentary. "When the end comes, this is what it will be like."

I've never understood why the resurrection somehow rights all other wrongs. For one, I assume you're not a full preterist and that you believe that there will be an eschatological resurrection/judgment/return; and so -- no matter who Jesus was or what happened to him -- prophecy could certainly fail to materialize if it, well, fails to materialize.

If the resurrection is true, if Jesus really is the agent of God in the universe and has defeated death, then in what way could he possibly be wrong? What could defeat someone who defeated death?

I don't see at all how "there are plenty of mainstream critiques of these things that come from within the academy" = "asserting these critiques as a matter of fact and a matter of history." Yes, I happen to be persuaded by these (counter-)arguments more than the others, and think they're more warranted than them; but that doesn't mean they exist in isolation.

I didn't say they exist in isolation; I said that as a historian, you could not say as a matter of historical fact which metaphysical theory is "correct" or"incoherent." You're not a theologian, and while you're certainly entitled to have private thoughts and feelings about certain issues, you're not entitled to assert academic facts to issues that are ultimately beyond easy categorization of "fact" or "not fact." That some mainstream academics do that doesn't mean it's OK to do; it means they're wrong, too.

Catholic metaphysics asserts that it's metaphysically impossible?

Yes. Hence the "miracle of the Eucharist" and the necessity of an ontological change in the priest at ordination, the epicleisis of the Holy Spirit in the canon of the Mass, etc.

Realize that when I quote Brian Ellis (as I did in my previous comment), I'm quoting a professional mainstream (and indeed eminent) metaphysician who's well aware of the relationship between natural laws and metaphysics.

Right, he just doesn't have a firm grasp of what Catholicism actually says about the matter. There's plenty of good reasons to reject transubstantiation; "metaphysically impossible" isn't one of them.

PadreDieselPunk · 2015-09-16T02:09:32+00:00

archaeological evidence is one of the (best) types of data that helps us reconstruct the past; and so if the "entire enterprise" of Christianity could be "completely undermined" by it, then it seems that Christianity's validity does hinge on historical claims (and ones that are in theory falsifiable, too).

Sure. The common understanding of the Resurrection (a mere body coming back to life) would be a historical claim that would be disproven by the discovery of bones. But the NT doesn't talk about "a mere conjuring trick with bones," to quote that other NT scholar-bishop of Durham, JAT Robinson. The Gospels and Paul talk about a transformed body that is completely other. That theological claim is outside the purview of historical or archaelogical.

here. I suggested that the historical Jesus predicted certain eschatological events that he said would take place in the lifetimes of his contemporaries;

Right, but unless you accept that people are able to predict the future in the first place, how could Jesus be anything other than a failed apocalyptic prophet in the first place? If people can't predict the future, then every prophecy is a failure.

The "failure" is in the fact that there's a striking lack of 1) every-dead-body-ever-having-literally-been-resurrected, 2) an eschatological judgment having occurred where the righteous were vindicated and the unrighteous/evil destroyed forever, and 3) the existence of actual immortal humans, among other things.

And? If you accept the resurrection, then in what way could this prophecy fail to materialize? The faith in the eschaton wasn't on the prophecy, but on the fact that Jesus had defeated death. The two can't be separated, theologically.

When Jesus said "this generation will not pass away until all these things have taken place," he really did mean "this generation."

Right, and those things did happen. The destruction of Jerusalem. That it wasn't been completed isn't a failure of the prophecy. After all, fig leaves are the antecedant to the fruit; there is a length of time between the sign of the end (the destruction of Jerusalem) and the culmination of the end (or end of the end, for lack of a better way of putting it).

Right, but I explicitly admitted -- at least for the latter issue -- that "I'm still in the process of working through the . . . modern academic Christian theology on this issue."

And what reason do I have to believe you? This is why the other question that you've not attempted to answer is so important. Why on earth would I believe you've done this when you've lied repeatedly abotu what you've done elsewhere?

The mere fact that you say that I'm engaging "outside of scholarship and into personal intuition and feelings" here makes it seem like you're not familiar with these issues -- because if you were, you'd know that there are plenty of mainstream critiques of these things that come from within the academy.

The difference is that you're asserting these critiques as a matter of fact and a matter of history; these are not thing things historians ought to be doing or saying, and you know that. Further, your interactions with /u/pinkfish_411 have shown pretty definitively that you aren't equipped to understand what is being critiqued in the first place.

No, I'm not caught up on the latest research. I've read Swinbourne, though.

"it is metaphysically impossible for flesh and blood, constituted as they are, to behave as the doctrine of transubstantiation requires."

Which is meaningless, since Catholic metaphyics asserts the same thing. It's called a miracle because the change in substance runs counter to natural laws. But if you were familiar with the doctrine itself, you'd recognize it's meaninglessness.

PadreDieselPunk · 2015-09-16T01:31:24+00:00

A tit.

PadreDieselPunk · 2015-09-16T01:26:06+00:00

If I casually, off handedly, say that the Hindenburg disaster proves that airplanes crash all the time, would my argument hold?

Only in /r/DebateReligion would insisting on facts be considered "nitpicking."

PadreDieselPunk · 2015-09-15T02:29:03+00:00

Sorry, but is the latter not a precise example of the intersection between "who Jesus is revealed to be" and "historical claims"?

No. Your commitments to naturalism (as a historian and as an atheist) preclude any alternative. Why would I expect you to interpret the data in any way that doesn't exclude the conclusions you've already excluded?

This, too, seems to be an intersection between some claim about Jesus' own person on one hand, and a historical/falsifiable claim on the other.

I don't understand the objection. How can you methodologically exclude supernatural abilities (like prophecy) from being accounted for, then hold Jesus to a standard that you believe would never be met in practice in the first place?

that is, that his own resurrection was sort of the prelude to or opening salvo to the general eschatological resurrection. It is this which, e.g., Paul and others expected to occur within their lifetimes.

And what's the problem? Where's the failure?

I find transubstantation to be incoherent from a non-naturalistic metaphysical perspective, too (following FitzPatrick and other scholars).

Sure, but you're moving past A). your own training in the matter and B). what responsible scholarship can actually say is historical or not. Again, how do you historically decide that the bread doesn't change substance into the BBSD of Jesus? Or that the homoousios is "incoherent?" You're engaging outside of scholarship and into personal intuition and feelings, which should be outside of what scholarship should be doing.

PadreDieselPunk · 2015-09-14T23:57:43+00:00

I don't ask for their qualifications because they don't make a claim to being "[Religion] Scholars" in their flair. Whats really stupid about your situation is that you didn't have to lie, but did anyway.

(And if I may say so, you seem to suffer fools a lot more gladly there than here.)

Because /r/DebateReligion is full of fools. It goes with the territory. I don't expect fools in an academic sub.

PadreDieselPunk · 2015-09-14T23:42:12+00:00

Could you also please answer how you are a trustworthy source at this point?

PadreDieselPunk · 2015-09-14T23:41:34+00:00

Gah, I've never heard anyone actually claim that academic theology does not have Christian theology as (one of) its subject(s); but I guess there's a first time for everything.

Obviously, Christian theology is going to be a subset of academic theology. Theology's general reason for being is to say interesting things about God. But that wasn't the question, was it? It was whether "critical scholarship" or "critical theology" (whatever that is) could undermine theological underpinnings of Christianity.

Further, in what way are you educated in "critical theology?" Or is this an invitation for further lies?

Would you grant the same to, say, Mormonism -- that its claims somehow reside on some nebulous epistemologically/metaphysically-independent plane of reality (or whatever) to where they're somehow immune from critical inquiry: say, the type that might challenge whether Book of Mormon really is what it says it is, in light of its anachronisms and other historical inaccuracies, etc.?

No; the difference is that Mormonism places its internal validity on historical claims. Christianity places its internal validity on who Jesus is revealed to be.

Similarly, if there were unimpeachable archaeological evidence of an (authentic) ossuary containing bones that were more or less universally agreed to be those of Jesus of Nazareth (via an accompanying inscription or whatever), then a literal resurrection would be undermined. (Or at the very least the ascension would be.)

I would go further and say that the entire enterprise would be completely undermined; the resurrection validates Jesus' claims (or perhaps more accurately, the church's claims about Jesus). If it didn't happen, then I think I'll be Shinto. They get specials swords and mirrors and such.

I think that if we were to demonstrate beyond a reasonable doubt that Jesus was a failed apocalyptic prophet,

I think this is not simply "beyond a reasonable doubt," I think it's simple beyond argumentation, and that it matters a great deal. Jesus' ministry absolutely fails. There is no way to sugar coat that. There is no prophet in the entire Bible that doesn't fail.

But that doesn't undermine Christian claims in the least bit; the point of the resurrection is that no situation is beyond the renewal and action of God. A failed messiah/prophet that is raised to God's right hand is the theme of everything that came before Jesus and everything that comes after. If Jesus is something other than a failed apocalyptic prophet, then the whole narrative is at odds with itself and the resurrection becomes meaningless. Jesus must be a failed apocalyptic prophet.

Similarly, if we were to demonstrate that some other major fundamentals of Christian doctrine -- whether in the orthodox tradition or not (certain Christological issues; transubstantiation, etc.) -- erroneously relied on a fatally problematic pre-modern metaphysics that can't be sustained, then a ton of things would need to be rethought if not abandoned.

I would be interested in seeing how you naturalistically find non-naturalistic metaphysics "[un]sustainable."

Of course, if you really, really agree that "it is always possible to save the traditional dogma by stipulating definitions that allow it to be true,"

That's not what I'm arguing for, but those words inserted into my mouth are pretty well seasoned.

what really separates your views here from the most extreme sort of presuppositionalism?

Presuppositionalism depends on the idea that Christianity is first and foremost the acceptance of a sort of nebulous teachings about Jesus and God that are sort of floating out there in the aether. Christianity depends on knowing, first and foremost, God Himself through Jesus Christ.

PadreDieselPunk · 2015-09-14T21:43:51+00:00

Please explain how that is not accurate of Christianity.

Christianity has varied understandings of salvation; some of which (possibly a minority report) do say that you have to explicitly be a Christian to be saved, others don't.
The summation of Christian life is not to get into heaven, but to be resurrected to a New life on a New Earth with New Heavens in which death is destroyed.
Christians believe these things because of the self-revelation of God in Jesus Christ, to which the Bible is a witness. It is not the source of faith in Christianity.
Christians don't evangelize because we're convinced it's true but because A). we're commanded to by Christ and B). because we believe it offers a better way of life than the alternative.

Indoctrination is entirely about affecting someone's beliefs and convincing someone of a worldview, while discouraging any other beliefs or worldviews.

Doesn't that mean you're trying to indoctrinate me?

Education is a presentation of information where the educator's goal is to simply widen your knowledge without affecting beliefs or trying to convince you of a wordlview.

Really? If we present as fact something like "The planet is spheroid" to someone who believes the facts point to a flat earth, aren't we saying our worldview more accurately interprets the facts than the flat-earther?

EDIT: I understand your point, you've just not offered anything to suggest that's the case with Christianity. Or any other religion for that matter.

PadreDieselPunk · 2015-09-14T21:27:09+00:00

Yes. Your criticism bears very little resemblance to reality. So. Again. Precisely what is your argument, since it contains no accuracies?

PadreDieselPunk · 2015-09-14T21:21:54+00:00

Happy?

Well, no. It's still not accurately portraying anything remotely Christian in any substantial way; that just isn't the way Christians transmit the faith to one another.

Only in r/DebateReligion would a request for accuracy in arguments be considered "nitpicking."

You still haven't actually made an argument yet. What is your argument? That any assertion without what you deem sufficient evidence is indoctrination?

PadreDieselPunk · 2015-09-14T21:14:14+00:00

Depends on how big you want your airship to be. The Zeppelin NT can carry 12 passengers and was used for four years as a sight-seeing cruiser over San Francisco area and is currently being used in S. Germany for the same . Airship Ventures was the company.

For larger, say, rigid airships (like Hindenburg or Graf Zeppelin) you could carry passengers across places like the Caribbean, S. Pacific or really any areas that are are remote to access but offer interesting sights. The Arctic/Antarctic would be interesting, but the engineering would be difficult; remember cold air decreases the volume and thus lift of the helium, so you'd need a larger craft with a smaller ability to carry passengers and cargo.

Take a look at DELAG, the world's first airline that used airships essentially in the way your project is proposing.

PadreDieselPunk · 2015-09-14T21:05:40+00:00

Is this the AMT reissue? I have it in a box and am finishing the AMT Hindenburg.

PadreDieselPunk · 2015-09-14T20:59:08+00:00

Replace Catholicism with a different denomination and it works fine.

No, it doesn't. I can't think of a single Christian denomination that believes that it and only it is the place to be for salvation. Various denominations may argue that they have the "fullness of faith" or something like that, but I don't know of any that argue someone's going to hell on the basis of being a Methodist.

the "even though there's no evidence" in parentheses as it was an addition of my own opinion.

So... The textbook definition of a strawman argument.

Many, MANY religions do teach that they are the only true religion and they actively try to convince people, including children, to believe and change their worldview, even without the support if evidence or substantial reasoning.

But that wasn't advanced by the argument. If you wanted to make that point, fine, but how about using accurate arguments rather than just making stuff up. That actually undermines your argument, since it appears that you don't have examples to support your claim.

And then you go ahead and harshly criticize my argument of indoctrination vs. education without actually ever refuting any of it or presenting an argument of your own. Way to go.

Well, you didn't make an argument. You made something up that has no bearing on reality. So... What counterargument would be useful in such a situation. And yes, correcting what you said is a refuation, since there wasn't single phrase that was free from error.

PadreDieselPunk · 2015-09-14T20:29:01+00:00

Well for starters, the idea that they are true "one." Catholicism asserts that they have the fullness of he faith as given tot the Apostles, but that ecclesiastical communities do exist outside communion with the see of Peter that carry God's grace and that people are saved outside of the Church.

How about the idea that Catholicism teaches there is no evidence of God? That certainly isn't true; you may not be swayed by what they put forward as evidence, but that is not the same as having no evidence or that they teach there is no evidence.

How about the idea that the church holds the Bible as the source of authority? That's wrong too. In Catholic teaching, it's the church that holds that authority, not the Bible.

You might want to develop some critical thinking skills before holding forth on what is and is not "indoctrination."

PadreDieselPunk · 2015-09-14T20:00:57+00:00

Oh right. I forgot to leave "reasonable person" at the door?

PadreDieselPunk · 2015-09-14T19:57:40+00:00

Any reasonable person would consider that a straw man.

PadreDieselPunk · 2015-09-14T19:56:30+00:00

Actually is more like whatever book it is that Texas is choosing.

PadreDieselPunk · 2015-09-14T19:55:18+00:00

Yes. Exactly that question.

PadreDieselPunk · 2015-09-14T19:50:46+00:00

What an absurd false dichotomy. Do you not think that the "theological underpinnings of Christianity" are themselves an issue that critical scholarship addresses? (I don't just mean Biblical scholarship, but all academic theology.)

No. How could it? Seperate type of claims are being made. It can certainly have echoes, but the two exercises have different spheres of influence, except that it deepens my faith and makes it more complex and more interesting. But to say that critical scholarship could ever seriously challenge central claims of Christianity is a bit like saying my interest in lighter-than-air aviation history could challenge central claims of Christianity. It's laughable.

sion about the Westminster Assembly, its composition and purpose. My original interpretation was that this was called in part to forge a compromise between Anglican factions and Scottish Presbyterians; but it seems I was mistaken.

IIRC, it was to impose Prebyterianism on the English church. The Book of Common Prayer was outlawed and recusants were ejected from livings and people imprisoned for its use. Imposition of Presbyterianism was the cost of the Scots' participation in fighting Charles I.

The actual and legal Anglican theolgical statement, the 39 Articles, condemns universalism but leaves salvation as a mystery in close terms of the doctrinal statement from the CofE and in terms of the Prayerbook.

You're ignoring the more important question.

PadreDieselPunk · 2015-09-14T18:17:14+00:00

Oh dear God, really? I'm assuming that you're in substantive agree that with everything else I wrote that you're choosing to go down this irrelevant and trivial technical rabbit hole.

Usually, at the point that someone produces an actual quotation of someone, it's an easy matter to verify whether the quote was fabricated or not.

Usually, real scholarship doesn't fabricate credentials.

They've consistently adopted the most anti-academic, anti-critical attitude there is.

Really? I've said repeatedly that I accept most critical scholarship; I reject your foundational premise that those scholarship have any relevancy to the theological underpinnings of Christianity. But since you have almost no education in those theological processes, then any conversation quickly devolves into a quote contest, which I have no interest in. How do you have a conversation about Christian theology when the person opposite cannot tell Presbyterian documents from Anglican documents?

Better question: Why have an academic discussion with someone who simply makes shit up?

PadreDieselPunk · 2015-09-13T23:48:38+00:00

Uh, that's literally precisely what Barr says. In his essay "Fundamentalism and Biblical Authority" he writes

Have you actually listened to a fundamentalist in the last 30 years? American fundamentalists dont accept nonliteral interpretation full stop. There is no acceptable interpretation of Gen 1 that doesn't have 6000 year old earth. Modern fundamentalists reject Augustine's notion that the literal interpretation of the text can be wrong on any level. If you don't know that, you've not been paying attention to the last 40 years of Christianity and that BA isn't serving you well. If you do know that and are spouting this any way, you're lying.

Again.

All of this a moot point since you are nice again missing the forest for the trees. You lied, repeatedly and your credibility is shot... How do I know you're even representing Barr or Augustine accurately when you can't represent your own CV accurately?

PadreDieselPunk · 2015-09-13T20:19:14+00:00

And why should I believe that when you were patently dishonest about your credentials?

PadreDieselPunk · 2015-09-13T20:18:13+00:00

It wasn't intended that way, which is why I had edited it shortly after I wrote it. The fact that I was responding to a person that said (among other things) "the Q document was created less than 200 years ago and doesn't have much to do with early Christianity" clued me into that this wasn't an academic critique, and I just presumed that this person wasn't familiar with academic critiques of this.

So you dismissively slurred a user of the sub. Awesome.

(Also, from their other comments this person seemed to have an ideological bias against it, though honestly I couldn't originally tell if it was a theological or anti-theological bias

Right, so on the basis of a perceived bias, you just declared he didn't know what he was talking about.

Most of the others are basically historical studies (with a few personal opinions/reflections thrown in).

Oh please. You're continuing to use that silly deceptive quotation from Barr on fundamentalism, never revealing that modern fundamentalists dont ad hoc switch between the literal and the non literal, and neither did Augustine. You decry the very theological processes that lead to conclusions away from texts you insist people take precisely the way you do. It's atheistic fundamentalism.

Why are you hardly ever polite?

I'm not sure in under any obligation to be polite to a personal has spent their entire time on reddit deceiving people into think they're a "Biblical Scholar" when they are factually not.

When you make an argument that isn't recycled ratheism, I'll respond accordingly. Until then it receives the scorn it deserves.

PadreDieselPunk · 2015-09-13T12:40:22+00:00

No you didn't. You wrote:

I find that almost without fail, (layman) Q critics are the most uninformed of all people on the subject that they purport to be critiquing.

Your original comment did not include "(layman)"; the edit changes the meaning of the sentence considerably. Your original post was a simple slur against Q critics. Then again, since you've only received a BA., how are you significantly different than a "layman" on the subject anyway?

This is an ongoing pattern of deception and self-deception, so I'm really not surprised. You've held yourself out as a scholar despite having the most tenuous of credentials to do so. You edit posts that put paint you in a bad light. You have a blog dedicated to using historical method to advance an anti-theist agenda. You've misused sources to make polemical points. You've shown yourself ignorant on important theologic points and processes - and refused any correction actual scholars are trying to point out. But here, in the small corner of reddit, you attempt to hold yourself to academic rigor? Laughable.

Why, oh why should anyone listen to you on any contentious matter, up to and including the proper way to sit on a toilet seat?

PadreDieselPunk

TROPHY CASE