Wow,
Caramel Frappe. It seems to me you are awfully eager to be offended. If this is an argumentative tactic in this debate (indeed, it is a common ones in the present political clime), we're not going to get very far and no-one will learn anything. Otherwise, you might want to be more careful in how you parse and interpret my words.
Uriel-238 said:
In the age of the internet, being merely nineteen doesn't necessarily excuse you (or anyone) for ignorance regarding the controversies that surround your own faith...
Caramel Frappe said:
...There was nothing in my post of ignorance, but you clearly state I was ignorant because I expressed that I believe Jesus was a real person and though it's okay you feel that he wasn't- to not shoot down my belief along with insults.
Ignorance may be an insult to some, but
a) it is also a quantifiable state; we are
all guilty of ignorance to some degree, and
b) it is one of the more remediable states (contrast
willful ignorance,
stupidity, or
malice), provided you are open to material you haven't considered before. Furthermore, I wasn't necessarily saying you were ignorant. I certainly wasn't saying you were
irredeemably so (which is, I think, the insult you inferred). I was simply saying your youth isn't an excuse for ignorance, especially when much can be attained by looking it up on the 'net. And especially when you go about saying things such as...
Caramel Frappe said:
You know.. Jesus was real. You don't have to believe that he was the son of God, but there is proof that he existed as a real person.
This certainly implies that you know something of the evidance that substantiates Jesus' place in our archeological history. This is not a mere
expression of belief in his existence, but of actual
proof.[footnote]
Disclaimer: Again, I'm not interested in this devolving into a war of semantics, and
proof outside of pure mathematics or logic is a sloppy term. So, let us say that for
proof regarding hard physical science (e.g. physics or chemistry)
verifiable, reproducible results is adequate. For
proof in softer sciences (psychology, cultural anthropology, paleontology)
substantial evidence from multiple sources will suffice.[/footnote] Hence, again, I ask, what evidence is this of which you speak; as a scholar, myself, I'd be interested in reading about it. Likewise, I'd be interested in what
rancher of monsters encountered when he claimed...
rancher of monsters said:
Not exactly, there are historical text that talk about a Jesus who was a leader of a sect or cult, whatever they reffered to it as in their writngs...
or the anthpological veracity of...
Master_of_Oldskool said:
Jesus is real. There's historical evidence of his existence outside of the Bible. His burial site is a popular tourist destination in Jerusalem.[footnote]There are at least three graves of Robin Hood. The one at the site of Kirklees Abbey is the most popularly recognized.[/footnote]
But I digress.
Uriel-238 said:
Your faith in the supernatural is as meaningless to me as my trust in the natural, so we have to find evidence in the real world to create common ground.
Caramel Frappe said:
So, my beliefs are meaningless to you then? How can we debate if you do not value my own ideals while I at least acknowledge yours?
You may acknowledge that I have beliefs, but I would be surprised if my belief in ideas would lend them merit in your eyes. The same is true vice versa. Do you see how that works? Many Christians regard those of us non-believers as either on the path to finding Jesus or deceived by Satan. I find far more stomachable the secular supposition, that we are all subject to human biases [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases] which causes many of us to trust in hypotheses about which we'd be skeptical in other circumstances (e.g. my juxtaposition between Perseus and Jesus, which you didn't address), and that silly religious beliefs (say, the story of Eve's temptation by a serpent) are due to conventional flukes in our thought processes.
Not to mention you keep calling my religion based on supernatural, while your belief is to find solid evidence in the real world to make life for what it is.
To the last, all the forms of Christianity (actually of all Abrahamic faiths) that I've encountered regards God (that is Yahweh) as a Asherah [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supernatural] that motivated him to start anew by denying him sex until he complied.) At that time, he might have been considered
natural, that is, a being of this universe, perhaps the spirit atop Sinai the way the Hellenistic gods roosted atop Olympus. But as this was before Aristotelian methodology, and way before Newton, nature, spirit and superstition were deeply entangled in human understanding of them.[/footnote]
It may certainly be possible that, out of forty-thousand-plus denominations, there exist some that regard Yahweh and miracles as natural phenomena, but that would lend to the supposition that He is not divine, but merely an alien with superior technology.[footnote]Of course, the existence of supernatural qualities (such as souls or Heaven) does lend to the hypothesis that this reality isn't real [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simulated_reality], considered very strongly by the Gnostics before they were wiped out. Of course, most people don't like the thought that this reality is a dream of a god through which he sorts the worthy and unworthy by some unquantifiable set of measures.[/footnote] If you see Yahweh as a creature of our manifold, please do enlighten me, as your denomination is a rare one. What denomination is yours, incidentally?
But, let me ask you this- how did the Big Bang happen? You can say that a spark of energy created the universe, but let me ask you... how did the spark get there? How did life suddenly become possible on Earth? A scientist believes that a crystal from space, with a single cell came down to Earth and though I shall not bash him for the belief- you think that sounds actually 'realistic'? That sounds supernatural, but it's possible. That is my point indeed.
Not
supernatural, but maybe
highly improbable[footnote]I don't think
supernatural means what you think it means.[/footnote]. I'd also speculate said scientist did not so much
believe as
conjecture. Richard Dawkins speculated once that ectospermia (seeding my aliens, not necessarily intentionally) could account for life on this world, but that abiogenesis [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abiogenesis] is more likely.[footnote]And one of the great failings of popular understanding of science is the scope of time, and how eons can provide for a very improbable event to become probable.[/footnote]
One of the joys of naturalism [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metaphysical_naturalism] is being comfortable with saying
I don't know. So to answer your question, I do not know, but I would wager abiogenesis occurred via natural processes, and not the direct intervention of a sentient force outside this universe, if nothing else, then on the bases that no higher power has revealed itself thus far in all the aspects of nature we
do understand. If a supreme being exists and intervenes in the universe, there will be evidence, and the gaps in which such evidence can hide gets smaller with each discovery.
As for the origin of the big bang, with Brane theory [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brane_cosmology] we hypothesize that new universes are created quite commonly (over the scope of cosmological time, in which human existance is but a blink), possibly with the collision of two branes. But just as we exist in the film of atmosphere on a mote, our known universe (that is all that has shed light our way so that we may detect it) is just a speck in the universe we occupy, and that, in turn, is a subatomic particle in the great Bulk in which countless universes occupy. So the scope of our understanding has exceeded our ability to observe, hence there's a lot we don't know.
Getting back to things, as I noted before, you seem quick to take offense, and that is going to impede further academic dialogue. If you still want to exchange ideas, let me know and I'll address some of the points in your previous post to me. We can also take it to PM if you don't want to clog up this thread.
238U
God I love pizza haha.
