No, he does not see this. And he isn't going to see it no matter how often it is explained to him. He refuses to entertain the notion that maybe--just maybe--the story recounted in the gospels (as confused, contradictory and hodge-podge as it is) may not really have happened. The evidence presented to support the idea that the story is a fiction will not be examined any deeper than it takes to rail against it without sounding completely clueless. There is no attempt to understand it and when you want to know why he thinks that way, you get some apologist link because he can't explain it himself due to his lack of any true understanding of what he's railing against and he hopes this fellow can. We call that a smokescreen.

He lacks a rational thought in his head and so is able with a straight face to tell you that atheistic and ahistorical perspectives of Jesus and god are crazy and too fantastic to be believed while he indulges himself in what he thinks is a perfectly sane idea that the creator of the universe was born on earth as his own son so he could be murdered, rise from the dead and somehow in so doing pay for everyone's sins.

The more you try to engage him to think rationally for a moment, he descends into madness with OT prophecy in the NT which is so ridiculous that it disproves itself and is not worth arguing. It's all to baffle you with bullshit because you will NEVER get a straight answer out of him. It's against his very nature. So I quit talking to him. All debating him does is encourage him to continue his lunacy. Maybe he's a nice guy IRL but underneath it all, you see how utterly confused he is. But don't try to help him sort it out. Your efforts are not appreciated.

Where is the kingdom Flann?

Interbane wrote:First of all, you keep referring to what is written in the text as if it was testimony written at the precise moment things happened, without any embellishment or storytelling after the fact. We've been over this. We are going in circles, you're right.

You can't support the chain of custody, so stop appealing to the documents. You have to support the documents before you appeal to them.

You are misrepresenting what I've said throughout this thread in relation to the history of early Christianity and about what was written when.
Ancient historians,N.T.scholars and textual critics don't see a "chain of custody" problem and believe a history of early Christianity can be determined by scholarly methods. That's a big subject, but you're no expert on it.

There is a dividing line in scholarship between those who are philosophical naturalists and those who are conservative Christian scholars,yet they do agree on many historical facts.

Interbane wrote:As if my explanation is more fantastical than believing a person came back from the dead. The ridiculous things you have right under your nose, Flann.

You're a philosophical naturalist Interbane. Like I said previously,Craig Keener has written a book on miracles in the present time. So I don't know how you can be so sure there are not miraculous events in answer to prayer.

I've given many reasons why Christianity is credible, and if God does exist then of course he could have raised Jesus from the dead.
It's been instructive and educational hearing and examining the arguments of the new atheist critics and those who claim reason and science as their foundations, in their rejection of theism and Christianity.

There's Dawkins who follows Krausse who says; "nothing isn't nothing anymore in science." I've even heard it said that "nothing is unstable!"
And Krausse like a fairground magician, pulls rabbits out of a hat while trying to conceal something up his sleeve.

They pour scorn on philosophy while propagating their own philosophy of reductionist materialism and scientism.

If nothing for origins is a problem,you can turn to the fantastical hypotheses of the string theorists who postulate an infinite number of other universes, where everything however absurd,is not only possible but guaranteed.

These Alice in Wonderland worlds are taken as real possibilities. One journalist described one of their conventions,as being like attending a party where everyone was high on hashish.

Then there's Sam Harris who says morality can be derived from scientific facts. This is nonsense of course as morality's source is not found in physics.
We shouldn't rely on gene splicers,rabbit cloners or those who experiment on real human embryos to determine the ethics of their actions. Science doesn't decide the ethics of Mengele's barbaric human experiments.

In reality Harris offers his personal favourite philosophy of ethics,which is reheated utilitarianism.

And then he tells us we don't actually make real moral choices anyway. No,we don't make free choices at all, and it's all an illusion which he can see in action by looking at brains with neuroscientists.

Everything is predetermined biochemically,and environmentally and it's just the luck of the draw that Sam Harris wasn't born Saddam Hussein.
Daniel Dennett thinks Darwinism is the great explanatory key to all things. The universal disinfectant of erroneous thought.

Dan thinks we have more freedom than Sam, except for those people infected with parasitic viruses of the mind which remain stubbornly immune to his universal disinfectant.

The real heretics are those who question the great doctrine of Darwin. If you think there might be a problem with a land based raccoon like creature gradually morphing into a whale,then you have a problem.
It could have been some other ancestral creature and it just depends where you look, but Darwin himself could easily imagine a "race of bears" morphing into an aquatic giant.

And then somewhere along the line of evolution consciousness "emerged" Just where the unconcious living things became conscious ones they don't say,or how it got there.

We know of course that abiogenesis doesn't happen and life comes from life. So we get a singularity against all known laws of physics or maybe aliens seeded life on earth.

The origin of the universe entails another singularity not consonant with the known laws of physics.

And yet this universe contains realities that are not reducible to physics. These include thoughts,dreams,imagined things,laws of nature and of logic and the informational content of genes which is not reducible to matter or energy.

Richard Carrier rushes in to refute fine tuning for life armed with Bayes theorem,and gets torn to shreds by cosmologist Luke Barnes on all counts.
Has anyone ever abused probability as much as Carrier? Probably not.

And so we find the advocates of reason and science attacking belief in God and Christianity,while utterly blind to the sheer nonsense of their own ideas.

These are the masters who see beneath the surface illusions under our noses and tell us all about it in their popular books.

Of course you will complain about my arguments from ignorance but as Ant shrewdly observed, you think your ignorance trumps mine.
It's more inference to the best explanation.

Thus says 'science and reason'.
Nature only looks designed,time doesn't really have a direction(ask Carrier),we don't make real choices and even our sense of self is just "a bunch of tricks in the brain".

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NZsFTjW7mvs

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nl3wx8DGLjc



Vanity of vanities,says the preacher, vanity of vanities!

Flann, where is the kingdom?

where does Jesus say it is?

youkrst wrote:Flann, where is the kingdom?

where does Jesus say it is?

It's wherever the rule and authority of God is manifested. So Jesus said;"But if I drive out demons by the finger of God,then the kingdom of God has come upon you." Luke 11-20

It could be in human lives and relationships that are in obedience to God. In a word it's wherever God rules.

well i thought the obvious answer was

Neither shall they say, Lo here! or, lo there! for, behold, the kingdom of God is within you.

ahhhhh, so that's where the kingdom is.

youkrst wrote:well i thought the obvious answer was

Neither shall they say, Lo here! or, lo there! for, behold, the kingdom of God is within you.

ahhhhh, so that's where the kingdom is.

It's hard to say whether within you or among you is the best reading there. Take the guy he casts a demon out of. He's controlled by it but then God's power is exerted and he's free from that control, or rule if you like.

I know you don't believe in these beings. The problem I find is that those who take the gnostic view think that it means that they themselves somehow become gods, and then reckon they can pass judgement on Christ's teachings and select or reject what suits them.
Gnostic Bishop does this to an entertainingly absurd level. I would have thought that if it really was the kingdom of Christ his words would be obeyed.

He asked; "Why do you call me Lord,Lord and not do as I say." I can't say I do this consistently myself, but that's the general idea.
So in the end the gnostic interpretation is "I'm god and I do whatever I think is good or bad in my own eyes."

Obviously I understand that you interpret things mythically. I think it's mistaken, and I wouldn't say it's all literal because not everything is literal, but I think that the straightforward common sense meaning is true.

There are parables and use of metaphors but overall I take an historical view which includes the miraculous.

Flann 5 wrote:Ancient historians,N.T.scholars and textual critics don't see a "chain of custody" problem and believe a history of early Christianity can be determined by scholarly methods. That's a big subject, but you're no expert on it....Vanity of vanities,says the preacher, vanity of vanities!

The bare faced impudence of such comments is a sight to behold. The absence of evidence regarding a chain of transmission for the New Testament makes its claims entirely unreliable. And indeed, when those claims are examined without confessional motives, they point inexorably and consistently to the invention of Jesus Christ as pure myth, and the assertions of historicity as pure parable, and if not parable then fraud.

Vain assertions that critics don't see a problem are another example of the neologism I presented recently, nethereal.

The Bible is so far short of chain of custody requirements for admissible evidence in a court of law or even historical claim that such assertions are entirely laughable, a great example of why apologetic rationalisation is broadly viewed as intellectually bankrupt. Those who don't see a problem are deliberately not looking.

In accordance with the following verses in the New Testament and after the example of the great man of God known as brother bob...

…4In the name of our Lord Jesus, when you are assembled, and I with you in spirit, with the power of our Lord Jesus, 5I have decided to deliver such a one to Satan for the destruction of his flesh, so that his spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus. 6Your boasting is not good. Do you not know that a little leaven leavens the whole lump of dough?

I have decided to hand Flann over to Satan for the destruction of the flesh

Flann wrote:Ancient historians,N.T.scholars and textual critics don't see a "chain of custody" problem and believe a history of early Christianity can be determined by scholarly methods. That's a big subject, but you're no expert on it.

Meanwhile, other ancient historians and textual critics do see a chain of custody problem. My my, who do we believe? As I said before, appealing to other people's conclusions is meaningless. For every yay there's a nay. Show me the reasoning, not the conclusion.

Flann wrote:You're a philosophical naturalist Interbane. Like I said previously,Craig Keener has written a book on miracles in the present time. So I don't know how you can be so sure there are not miraculous events in answer to prayer.

I think the reason we go in circles is because you don't understand my replies. Or perhaps you don't remember them.

As I've said often before, I'm not "sure". There are many events that I'd label miraculous. But if you are trying to tell me that they are supernatural miracles, the onus is on you. Induction is on my side. Our investigations, whenever resolved, are unanimously naturalistic. Nothing more has ever been shown. And as I explained in the thread on the supernatural, it isn't even possible to show anything more.

Flann wrote:I've given many reasons why Christianity is credible, and if God does exist then of course he could have raised Jesus from the dead.

Your reasons are all snakes eating their own tails. You appeal to the texts to prove many of your points, without supporting the texts. You appeal to the conclusions of scholars to support the texts, without ever showing what that support actually is. You believe the scholars you agree with are right, and the scholars you don't agree with are wrong.

Why should I believe you Flann? The reasoning doesn't hold up.

There's Dawkins who follows Krausse who says; "nothing isn't nothing anymore in science." I've even heard it said that "nothing is unstable!"
And Krausse like a fairground magician, pulls rabbits out of a hat while trying to conceal something up his sleeve.

And even if they are dead wrong, that does not make you right. That's a classic argument from ignorance, which I've also repeated many times.

Of course you will complain about my arguments from ignorance but as Ant shrewdly observed, you think your ignorance trumps mine.
It's more inference to the best explanation.

I'm not complaining. The arguments truly are arguments from ignorance. Blaming me won't make it otherwise.

To infer the best explanation, you need positive evidence in favor of the chosen explanation. Your arguments above do not fit. Casting doubt on existing explanations does not count as positive evidence in favor of a different explanation. It's what's known as an argument from ignorance, and is a fallacy.

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/abduction/