Atheist Debates - Skepticism and the historical Jesus
|
| 1 comment
lørdag, november 05, 2016
fredag, juli 10, 2015
fredag, februar 20, 2015
tirsdag, august 20, 2013
onsdag, desember 05, 2012
torsdag, juni 26, 2008
Opening Statement
I remember a particular Superboy comic book in which the Boy of Steel somehow discovers that in the future, he is thought to be as mythical as Peter Pan and Santa Claus. Indignant at this turn of events, he flies at faster than light speed and enters the future to set the record straight. He does a few super-deeds and vindicates himself, then comes home. So Superboy winds up having the last laugh -- or does he?
Of course, it is only fiction! The people in the future were quite right! Superboy is just as mythical as Santa Claus and Peter Pan.
This seems to me a close parallel to the efforts of Christian apologists to vindicate as sober history the story of a supernatural savior who was born of a virgin, healed the sick, raised the dead, changed water into wine, walked on water, rose from the grave and ascended bodily into the sky.
I used to think, when I myself was a Christian apologist, a defender of the evangelical faith, that I had done a pretty respectable job of vindicating that story as history. I brought to bear a variety of arguments I now recognize to be fallacious, such as the supposed closeness of the gospels to the events they record, their ostensible use of eyewitness testimony, etc. Now, in retrospect, I judge that my efforts were about as effective in the end as Superboy's! When all is said and done, he remains a fiction.
One caveat: I intend to set forth, briefly, some reasons for the views I now hold. I do not expect that the mere fact that I was once an evangelical apologist and now see things differently should itself count as evidence that I must be right. That would be the genetic fallacy. It would be just as erroneous to think that John Rankin must be right in having embraced evangelical Christianity since he had once been an agnostic Unitarian and repudiated it for the Christian faith. In both cases, what matters is the reasons for the change of mind, not merely the fact of it.
Having got that straight, let me say that I think there are four senses in which Jesus Christ may be said to be a "fiction."
Link
|
| 0
kommentarer
lørdag, desember 22, 2007
lørdag, mars 10, 2007
Herr Price snakker om Jesus og slikt
MP3 filen kommer i fra Point of Inquiry Jeg får ikke hørt denne selv i dag, men jeg kan nesten garantere at det er ett bra program.
|
| 0
kommentarer
tirsdag, februar 20, 2007
The Jesus Project
Brian Flemming lagde en film som hevdet at Jesus aldri har eksistert. I denne filmen ble Robert Price intervjuet og han har nå startet ett nytt prosjekt, The Jesus Project. Jeg skjønner ikke riktig hvordan de har tenkt å gjøre det, men jeg gleder meg veldig til konklusjonen.
|
| 0
kommentarer
fredag, desember 22, 2006
The Psychology of Biblicism
For many years I have studied the theology underlying biblicism, the fundamentalist belief in the absolute authority of the Bible in every aspect of life, only to conclude that it is not theological in nature at all, but rather entirely psychological. That is, biblicism is not, as its adherents claim and think, an implication of a set of beliefs about the Bible but rather the outgrowth of a particular frame of mind. I am not impatient with theological claims; I just do not think they are the real source or motivation of biblicism, and this becomes evident once we discover certain inconsistencies in biblicism which make nonsense of its theological claims but are quite consistent with the psychological function of biblicism. If it were a matter of theology, surely biblicists would notice the problems. But since biblicism does the job biblicists want it to do, they simply never notice the problems.
Biblicism, again, is the term for that stance toward the Bible whereby a believer intends to obey whatever the text tells him to do, and to believe whatever the text asserts. If occasionally the commands of the Bible (say, to give away all one’s possessions) seem just too outrageous, biblicists may rationalize them away, but even this does not mean they are not taking them seriously; a non-biblicist would say he rejects the command of the Bible and leave it at that. And there are more liberal Christian theologies which do not entail biblicism, managing, as Reinhold Niebuhr said, to take the text seriously even if not literally. So what is it that attracts many people to biblicism?
Link
|
| 2
kommentarer
Heaven and Its Wonders, and Earth: The World the Biblical Writers Thought They Lived In
Reginald Finley Sr. (også kjent som The Infidel Guy) har med hjelp fra teologen Dr. Robert M. Price skrevet er en artikkel om bibelens kosmologi.
One day, I was contemplating what the ancients thought when they looked up at the sky. I pondered, "What did the Hebrews actually think about the sky?" My journey lead me to a most obvious realization: Heaven IS the Sky! It seems SO obvious I wonder how modern believers even miss such a right in your face reality!
Dr. Bob Price and I team up to look deeply into what the ancients thought about the sky above our heads.
Link
Er du for lat til å lese alt er denne teksten oppsummert i denne videoen.
|
| 0
kommentarer
tirsdag, desember 19, 2006
If You Dislike Christianity, You'll Hate Buddhism!
As a teacher of comparative Religion courses over many years, I have come to notice some surprising and even paradoxical things. It is no surprise to me when certain students keep their minds as closed as a clenched fist because their fundamentalist upbringing demands it. I know to expect it, especially since I felt that way myself when I was their age. I try not to let it rest that way, though. I have no trouble respecting various points of view, because I have no problem respecting individuals as persons, and their most intimate beliefs are a part of them. I think Rousseau had the same thing in mind when he observed that one cannot live in harmony with one's neighbor so long as one really believes one's neighbor is damned to Hell. But accepting their belief insofar as they cherish it is another thing than accepting it as on a par with other options when the belief has nothing going for it, no leg to stand on. For instance a servant of truth simply cannot dignify Creationism by treating it as a scientific alternative deserving equal time in the class room. Anyone who knows the first thing about scientific method and the nature of theorizing knows Creationism does not belong in the game. You don't enter a horse in a dog race. Thus as a teacher, your responsibility is to use Creationism as a foil to demonstrate what the scientific approach really is, and it is not a set of particular conclusions but rather a method of arriving at (tentatively held) conclusions.
In the same way, if education is your game, you cannot allow it to appear that you respect and thus appear to legitimate narrow-mindedness. Like a good Zen Master, your business is to ask disturbing Socratic questions, to coax the truth out from within the student. For instance, I like to suggest that the person who says "I've made up my mind; don't confuse me with the facts," is making me think the opposite of what they want me to think. Do they have great faith? Instead, I can't help but think that deep down, they already know the jig is up! You don't lock up the barn that tight unless you know the horse wants out! They must know their faith would never survive a close look at certain facts. Trying to preserve the illusion, they are only making it more obvious that they know it is an illusion after all. I merely point this out.
Link
|
| 0
kommentarer
torsdag, september 07, 2006
torsdag, juni 15, 2006
The Infidel Guy Show
Dette er sikkelig gammelt nytt for aktive Internettateister, men The Infidel Guy Show er et kult radioshow for nettopp ateister. Sjekk det ut.
Og The Bible Geek er tidenes beste radioprogram for oss bibelnerder.
Link
|
| 1 comment
Abonner på:
Innlegg (Atom)
