alt.education

"Joe Irvin" wrote:
>"Bob LeChevalier" wrote in message
>news:o0mjr3l9qbc7er5j104ttsrdiqtjrgqngl@4ax.com...
>> "Joe Irvin" wrote:
>>>> And it doesn't matter. The Bible is just substituting for the
>>>> "religious teacher" with the added problem of subjective reading
>>>> comprehension.
>>>
>>>Probably the biggest problem ... one has to study and ask questions of
>>>people who know more
>>
>> No one knows more. They are all guessing.
>
>No, there is serious Bible scholarship.

Only the sort of textual analysis that can be applied to any sort of
text to determine questions of date, style, authorship.

As to "meaning", there is 'scholarship' that purports to be serious,
but which doesn't actually KNOW any more than you or I do, except
about what other putative scholars think.

>>>I guess when you
>>>come down to it, its what the individual believes. They are the basic
>>>beliefs that all believe.
>>
>> Not all.
>
>You don't believe that Christianity has basic beliefs?

That EVERY (without exception) Christian believes. No. Not even that
it has something vaguely to do with Jesus Christ.

Proof: in some sects, an infant is deemed a "Christian" by being born
to Christian parents and being baptized. Such a "Christian" doesn't
have a clue about beliefs in the supernatural.

>... The death of Jesus is not a basic Christian belief??

Among those who believe that someone named Jesus existed, I am pretty
sure that most of them believe that He died (with or without the
capital letter). But then most non-Christians who believe that there
ever was such a person living also believe that he died.
Specifically, Islam believes that Jesus was a great prophet who lived
and died, but that he was no more than another in a long series of
prophets.

>> A couple of percent of self-labeled Christians don't believe in God.
>
>That is just what they are then 'self-labeled',

That is all that matters for the meaning of the word. NO ONE can
define the meaning of the word in contradiction to the way large
numbers of people use it, which way has nothing to do with the beliefs
of the putative Christian.

>they are not Christians.

Your opinion vs their opinion. When it comes to them, they win.

>> Somewhat higher percentages don't believe in any other belief you
>> might think that "all believe".
>
>There are some basics beliefs to be a believer in the Christian religion.

I won't even admit that, since there is no singular Christian
religion. There are several thousands sects of DIFFERENT Christian
religions

I wouldn't be so bold as to declare without examining each and every
one of them that there is a single belief that every different
Christian religion holds.

And of course, not every person who is a member of a sect believes
everything that sect teaches.

The problem is - you want the your beliefs to somehow be validated by
"what everybody believes", and your presumptions as to what they
believe is false. You can't even go by what they *say*, since many
people have learned that the best way not to be harangued about
religion, is to mouth the supposed majoritarian 'belief' as a
platitude.

What makes this especially funny is that in another post you decried
morality-by-poll, and now you are invoking Christianity-by-poll as
some sort of standard.

In still other posts you have invoked the fear of the destruction of
Western civilization in Europe, presumably because you think Europe is
mostly Christians.

http://www.prnewswire.com/cgi-bin/stories.pl?ACCT=104&STORY=/www/story/12-20-2006/0004495063&EDATE=
< Great United
< Britain France Italy Spain Germany States
< % % % % % %
< Believer in any
< form of God or
< any type of
< supreme being 35 27 62 48 41 73

75% of English people under 25 have never been inside a church
building. In Sweden and Norway, which have an official state
religion, only 4% consider themselves "active" Christians.

According to a standard reference work (Encyclopedia Britannica), 75%
of Germans were Christians.

http://darwincatholic.blogspot.com/2005/08/post-christian-europe.html
< registered Catholics attend church every Sunday, down from 22 percent
< in 1990 and 50 percent in 1950. Fewer than half of all children are
< baptized in a Christian denomination; in the urban centers of
< Hamburg, Bremen and Berlin, only one in 10 children is baptized. The
< church is scoring only with funerals: 92 percent of Catholics who
< died in 2003 had a Catholic funeral.
< April 2005, some 65 percent of Germans believe “in some kind of God,”
< and 59 percent believe that they can “directly talk to God through
< prayer.” But most Germans see faith as a private matter that has
< little or nothing to do with the church. Only 7 percent say that
< faith needs to be experienced in the community of the church.
< Sixty-one percent say that they do not believe in the church’s
< teachings.

Somewhat older (1995), but more detail about beliefs:
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0SOR/is_n2_v59/ai_20913878
< God, now only 56 percent do so. No fewer than 12 percent
< (representing about 5.6 million people) have lost their belief in God
< or have grown up without it. [For the US, the P.R.R.C. reports that
< 96 percent of the national sample (N = 1016) believe in God (Gallup
< 1996: 20).]
<
< the son of God, today only 29 percent believe this. For 43 percent
< Jesus was considered to be just a human being, but a great one, who
< even today could be considered a good role model. However, another 23
< percent indicated that Jesus had no meaning for them, and 3 percent
< questioned that he had even existed.
<
< the Bible was the word of God. Today only half of them believe that,
< and only one in ten believes that there is nothing false in the
< Bible. There was an even greater change in the extent to which people
< believed in the miracles which are reported in the Bible. No matter
< whether the Ascension, the Raising of the Dead, the Feeding of 5,000,
< or the Walking on Water was questioned, in each case only a minority
< were of the opinion that these events had really occurred. The only
< proposition which the majority of Germans still believe is true is
< that Jesus healed the sick [Contrast this with the P.R.R.C. finding
< that 79 percent of the US national sample say that they believe in
< the (religious) miracles (Gallup 1996: 23).]
<
< thirty years of age only half as many believe in Jesus, the Son of
< God, as do their older countrymen.

Now what was this about what "all" Christians believe?

>> We don't agree as to what those are, so even that is impossible.
>
>One has to believe in Christ to be a Christian.

false as evidenced above. Maybe they have to, in order for YOU to
consider them a Christian. But face it: no one but you gives a damn
what you consider them to be.

>The word makes no since as a religion if one says he is a Christian but doesn't believe in Christ.

Of course it does. Thomas Jefferson said, in a much-repeated quote by
fundies "I am a Christian". Of course he then made it clear that he
consider Jesus Christ the greatest moral teacher ever, and that he
totally rejected all the supernatural and miraculous tales of the
Bible. It was his teaching and not his person or his godhead that
made TJ a Christian.

>>>> Why is that relevant? We're talking about human morality.
>>>
>>>He is the gold standard of morality.
>>
>> Not human morality.
>
>Yes, human morality unless you think man is supreme.

Binary thinking. Human morality isn't God's morality, whatever that
may actually be. Human morality is what humans decide that it is. We
may face judgement for it, but it is still ours to decide.

>> He did not face all the gray areas that existed then, and He didn't
>> face the ones we deal with today. Therefore, the standard is lacking.
>
>We don't know what He faced in the desert?

Take away the question mark. We don't know anything about Him in the
desert. All we have is tales told decades after He died by people who
may never have heard Him say a word about what happened in the desert.

>... He could have.

He couldn't have. There are very few moral choices to be made while
alone in the desert.

>The standard is solid.

Except that no one agrees as to what the standard is, so it isn't
really solid.

>He gave man the capacity to reason.

Biology did that. People reasoned before Jesus Christ was born.

>> the answer to the question WWJD usually should be "We have no idea".
>
>I agree ... we couldn't possible know WWJD.

Therefore, we have no real standard.

>We do know his nature from the time he was on Earth.

No we don't. We can at best believe that we know. Belief is not
reality.

>>>Against pagan Rome ...
>>
>> That was the only Rome that there was. Jesus never said anything
>> against Rome.
>
>Man can reason ... Jesus didn't answer all lifes questions ... he gave man
>the ability to reason.

We had the ability to reason before Jesus Christ.

And He still didn't say anything against Rome, regardless of whether
you change the subject.

>>>We are suppose to obey civil authority, to the extent it doesn't conflict.
>>
>> Jesus said nothing to that effect.
>
>You may want to read Romans 13

That is what Paul said. Paul was not Jesus.


>1 Peter 2:13


That was what Peter said. Peter was not Jesus. Peter denied Jesus
three times on the night before the crucifixion.


>>>I could say that about the sun rise ...
>>
>> Good example. The sun doesn't rise. That is our subjective impression
>> that results from the Earth's rotation.
>
>You know what I meant ...

That may be so, but it still is an excellent example of how most
knowledge is relative and subjective. The difference is that when it
comes to God, we have nothing but the words of others and our own
subjective experiences. There is no real evidence, as there is with
the sun "rising", so we remain like the ancients did with regard to
the sunrise.

>>>>>Do you think one rationalizes when they call Hitler evil?
>>>>
>>>> Yes. Even though I call him evil too.
>>>
>>>I don't understand what the rationalization is/are?
>>
>> That is obvious.
>
>Not to me explain?

You are rationalizing that your standard of good and evil is THE
standard, or something approximating it. In this case, most of
humanity agrees with you, but you have rejected morality by poll.

You cannot turn to the Bible, because that tome of virtue describes
how God commanded the Israelites to kill all of the natives when they
invaded the "promised land". It also describes the Babylonian
Captivity of Judah and the Assyrian destruction of Israel as being
God's will.

The Bible thus "teaches" that killing infidels and those who fail to
keep His commandments (which is all of us) can sometimes be God's
will. Thus we cannot *with absolute certainty* claim that the Bible
doesn't sanction what Hitler did.

All we can do is rationalize.

Thank God we are usually pretty good at rationalizing, though quite
imperfect.

lojbab