One can read the Gospels for their message only. — Olivier5

Yes and no. As we have seen throughout history what people think the message is depends on who is reading. If Jesus is not the son of god and was not resurrected, his message collapses in the eyes of most followers for whom the promise of everlasting life is the central attraction. Whether a few secular humanist still find some quaint and useful messages about ethics in the ruins of what's left over is a separate matter.

As we have seen throughout history what people think the message is depends on who is reading. If — Tom Storm

That applies perfectly to Socrates and Plato too. In fact it applies to quite a few philosophers.

If Jesus is not the son of god and was not resurrected, his message collapses in the eyes of most followers for whom the promise of everlasting life is the central attraction. — Tom Storm

But these points have all to do with religious belief and nothing to do with historical facts, so I don't see the relevance. An historian is not going to come out tomorrow with a paper proving factually that Jesus' DNA doesn't match his putative Father.

But these points have all to do with religious belief and nothing to do with historical facts, so I don't see the relevance — Olivier5

You're joking right?

I'm not.

Historically some Christians have taken the resurrection as figurative, ie Jesus showing himself to his followers but not in the flesh, rather as a vision. These folks' religious beliefs did not include literal resurrection, and yet they were still reading some gospel or another...

In contrast, modern historians will have nothing to do with faith. They don't intervene in theological disputes. So the idea that the historicity of Jesus constitutes some sort of Achilles's heel of Christianism is ill-founded. In the current state of evidence, it is not an important or fruitful historical field. If additional evidence come to light -- eg archeological evidence -- then it may become a more interesting and fruitful historical subject.

In the meantime historians will study the historical data they actually have, pertaining to other topics than Jesus, Buddha, or Socrates, on whose lives we have very little evidence. For instance the Qumran community is a hot historical topic right now because of the Dead Sea Scrolls discovery and study. New evidence came to light, and historians started to study it. That's how it works. If we found a throve of 1st century Christian writings hidden in a cave somewhere, you bet that the field would open up.

Let me explain once more and if this doesn't hit the mark, let's just move on. Christians mostly believe that the words in the Bible, the resurrection and Jesus' divinity are historical facts. Their entire faith is predicated on its alleged factuality.

If Christians were to accept that Jesus was just an itinerant preacher who was killed and left on the cross to rot (as per, for instance, Professor Bart Ehrman's work) and that the New Testament is essentially a series of whoppers, attempting to depict that preacher as a superhero, then faith would largely collapse.

Christians mostly believe that the words in the Bible, the resurrection and Jesus' divinity are historical facts. — Tom Storm

You'd have to tell me where in the Bible does it say that Jesus was a god.

If Christians were to accept that Jesus was just an itinerant preacher who was killed and left on the cross to rot (as per Professor Bart Ehrman's work) and that the New Testament is essentially a series of whoppers, attempting to depict that preacher as a superhero, hen faith would largely collapse. — Tom Storm

Maybe. Most Christians are only vaguely committed to the actual teachings nowadays, so you may be right. They have made Jesus into yet another empty idol.

But others would recognize in the itinerant preacher who was killed something holly, something obstinately glorious, something radically novel, like they recognize as an important saint John the Baptist -- another itinerant preacher who was killed at about the same time (and not resurrected).

I was once on an interfaith christian-jewish dialogue internet board. Not much dialogue but much dispute happened there, the christians were mostly douches. But I the ex-christian turned atheist, kept interest in a few of them zionists and haredi and another more mystic Jew called Old Bear. They would all know the Talmud very well.

So as they explained, in the Talmud written in the 2nd to 4th century, there are bits and pieces about Jesus here and there, that compose the image of a poor yeshiva student, unruly and temperamental, who turned magician, a miscreant who was killed by hanging on a stick just before Passover. It's a sort of anti-gospel designed to protect Jews from christian proselytism. And of course all my interlocutors took the Talmud as authoritative.

And yet, now and then when I would post a parable or another from the Gospels, Old Bear would crack: "What a beautiful Jewish thought!"

In spite of their anti-gospel, the message was still resonating in him. In spite of loathing anything christian, he could openly admit to seeing deep, spiritually meaningful compassion in some of those passages.

Jesus is a resilient philosopher. You could say he is not so easily buried. :-)

esus is a resilient philosopher. You could say he is not so easily buried — Olivier5

Nice line. Thanks for the chat.

Most welcome!

Christians mostly believe that the words in the Bible, the resurrection and Jesus' divinity are historical facts. Their entire faith is predicated on its alleged factuality. — Tom Storm

There's another big book on Amazon I've noticed that I'll probably never read, called The Bible Made Impossible by Christian Smith, a sociology professor. The gist is that the literalistic reading of the Bible that is characteristic of modern American evangelical Christianity in fact completely distorts its meaning (hence the title). I don't think this means he rejects the actual resurrection narrative, but the many other aspects of Biblical fundamentalism ('Biblicism') make the grave error of intepreting symbolic, allegorical and mythological language for literal truth. It is very much the attitude behind creationism and the fundamentalist anti-science rhetoric of American conservative Christianity.

There's a famous passage of Augustine's that I've mentioned before in this context:

Usually, even a non-Christian knows something about the earth, the heavens, and the other elements of this world, about the motion and orbit of the stars and even their size and relative positions, about the predictable eclipses of the sun and moon, the cycles of the years and the seasons, about the kinds of animals, shrubs, stones, and so forth, and this knowledge he holds to as being certain from reason and experience.

Now, it is a disgraceful and dangerous thing for an infidel to hear a Christian, presumably giving the meaning of Holy Scripture, talking nonsense on these topics; and we should take all means to prevent such an embarrassing situation, in which people show up vast ignorance in a Christian and laugh it to scorn. The shame is not so much that an ignorant individual is derided, but that people outside the household of faith think our sacred writers held such opinions, and, to the great loss of those for whose salvation we toil, the writers of our Scripture are criticized and rejected as unlearned men.

If they find a Christian mistaken in a field which they themselves know well and hear him maintaining his foolish opinions about our books, how are they going to believe those books in matters concerning the resurrection of the dead, the hope of eternal life, and the kingdom of heaven, when they think their pages are full of falsehoods and on facts which they themselves have learnt from experience and the light of reason? Reckless and incompetent expounders of Holy Scripture bring untold trouble and sorrow on their wiser brethren when they are caught in one of their mischievous false opinions and are taken to task by those who are not bound by the authority of our sacred books. For then, to defend their utterly foolish and obviously untrue statements, they will try to call upon Holy Scripture for proof and even recite from memory many passages which they think support their position, although they understand neither what they say nor the things about which they make assertion. — Augustine, on the Literal Meaning of Genesis

Origen, another early Church father, likewise ridiculed those who read the allegorical meaning of Biblical texts in a literalistic way. In about the 2nd Century AD!

I think it would be fair to say that virtually all US creationism would fall under that criticism.

But there's another side to that also. Just as it is ridiculous to hold up Biblical literature as a failed empirical science, it's just as lame to claim that science 'proves' or 'shows' that such literature is false, as the Dawkins of this world are so easily prone to do. In other words, if you've never believed that the mythological narrative is not literally true, then the fact that it's *not* literally true is hardly news.

Augustine also justified the eternal suffering of those who gave up on their second chance of redemption. He was not speaking allegorically.
Paul was saying 'this world' was coming to an end and another would follow. It wasn't a footnote to a comment on a Greek text. It was front and center to what one was being asked to be a part of as a believer.

The gist is that the literalistic reading of the Bible that is characteristic of modern American evangelical Christianity in fact completely distorts its meaning (hence the title). — Wayfarer

Yes, it's important for people to understand that OT literalist readings are a more modern phenomenon and held by Christians rather than Jews. I think I have posted that here somewhere a couple of times.

But aside from creation stories and other spurious tales in the OT, literalism around Jesus' divinity, mission and resurrection has largely been consistent.

Augustine also justified the eternal suffering of those who gave up on their second chance of redemption. He was not speaking allegorically. — Paine

Folk don't like it when you point this out.

Oddly, even many of those who profess to be faithless.

I don't have a dog in any of those fights.

But I can call out what is claimed to be allegorical or not, within a certain body of text, without claiming what I believe or not.

Just as it is ridiculous to hold up Biblical literature as a failed empirical science, it's just as lame to claim that science 'proves' or 'shows' that such literature is false, as the Dawkins of this world are so easily prone to do. In other words, if you've never believed that the mythological narrative is not literally true, then the fact that it's *not* literally true is hardly news. — Wayfarer

Yep. It's hard to see who's more of a dork, between a religious literalist and an atheist proselytiser.

Folk don't like it when you point this out.

Oddly, even many of those who profess to be faithless. — Banno

I wonder sometimes if we live in different universes. Most folks I know don't care about St Augustine or even know who he was. Count me in too: i've never read his confessions and probably never will.

Wayf's quote i took as showing that literalists have been an embrassement to Christians right from the start. One could say that Jesus himself was fighting off Jewish literalists.

I don't see how the scientific evidence for determinism makes science at odds with Christianity. To be sure, it's at odds with some forms of it, but hardly a universal problem.

What you see with in Romans 7-8 is Paul dying a personal death from lack of agency due to being ruled over by desires, instinct, social pressure, etc. and being ressurected in Christ, the Logos, universal reason.

Like Aristotle, the intellect ranks at the top of the appetites vis-á-vis its perfections. Man sits within the circuit of cause and effect, yet can apprehend the universal laws that define it. This is what gives him some bit of agency, what makes him in the image of God. But this share in the Logos is small, unable to master man's animal nature.

Christianity is the cultivation of the Logos through prayer, discipline, and self-reflection, and ultimately an appeal and submission to the absolute Logos for the redemption of the self lost to sin (uncontrolled action).

Modern determinism focuses on man becoming a machine. Ancient philosophy and particularly early Christianity is focused on man degenerating into a beast. The root concern, freedom, is still the same.

Early Christianity is all about diefication through grace, and an internal change that leads to an inborn share in the Spirit and Logos.

To my mind, this synchs up pretty well with non-reductive physicalist philosophy of mind, and the role of top down causality vis-á-vis emergence as the mechanism through which decisions can be made. Of course said decisions are always constricted by physical circumstances and incomplete information, but there is also an argument to be made that absolute freedom is impossible, since choice only exists withing contexts, and context always restricts action (e.g., Hegel in the Philosophy of Right).

If you follow Lynn Rudder Baker on the claim that, for a choice to be free, one must understand the provenance of their wanting to make a given choice, and analyze that criteria in the context of a "truth is the whole" epistemology, then seeking the Absolute is the logical path to freedom. Since man cannot grasp this due to his finitude, you're left with the objective of I Peter 4, to live through God's will, essentially man striving for this absolute perspective.

Did you notice my recent thread on an article by Arendt? In it she finds that the muddled notion of free will came about as a way of melding St Paul and Classical philosophy, via Augustin.

Nor is science inherently deterministic. That's more a philosophical hangover from the days of materialism.

If the myth works for you, then you are welcome to it.

Physicalism is the position that everything that exists is "describable in terms of the entities explored by science", specifically physics... not materialism.

This seems like it has the problem of being a vacuous definition. What entities can't science attempt to study? This makes physicalism more a statement about espistemology than any sort of ontological claim.

The problem I see for non-reductive physicalism as an ontological position is that it's unclear what the truth makers of such a claim would be. And whereas Hemple's Dilemma doesn't seem like an insurmountable barrier for physicalist philosophy of mind, it does seem to be so on the ontological front.

At its worst it devolves into:

"What is, is" and "what is true is what can be proved by the methods I think can resolve truth," which isn't saying much of anything.

The precise definition of physicalism is, of course, a matter of controversy, and there are issues involving circularity, Hempel's dilemma, and so on.

But that's all sort of beside the point I was making, which was that Wayfarer was equivocating between "materialism" in its historical sense (as the position that everything is made of matter, a view virtually no one has held in a very long time) and "materialism" in the contemporary sense (which is just synonymous/interchangeable with "physicalism"), a consistent theme in his silly, dogmatic crusade against any traditions/positions that are critical of his preferred flavor of supernaturalist/spiritualist/mysterian woo.

What entities can't science attempt to study? — Count Timothy von Icarus

Even in principle there aren't any such "entities".

This makes physicalism more a statement about [epi]stemology than any sort of ontological claim.

Yeah, methodological (instead of "metaphysical") physicalism ...

The problem I see for non-reductive physicalism as an ontological position is that it's unclear what the truth makers of such a claim would be. — Count Timothy von Icarus

It's a "problem" of your own making, Count, because non-reductive physicalism is not "an ontological position" but a methodological paradigm (i.e. an epistemological criterion / paradigm) employed in the cognitive / neurosciences. Otherwise, if "non-physicalism", then account for

non-physical causation(?) — 180 Proof

:chin:

Otherwise, if "non-physicalism", then account for — 180 Proof

non-physical causation(?)..... Name a non-physical, or merely abstract, Y which causes such changes. — 180 Proof

Thoughts cause thoughts.

Thoughts cause thoughts. — ZzzoneiroCosm

Thus, they are physical. (not just "non-physical"). "Thoughts" also physically conditionally cause bodily movements, so how can they do so and not be, at least to some sufficient degree, physical?

Thus, they are physical. — 180 Proof

If thoughts are physical, is there something non-physical anywhere in the universe?

"Thoughts" also physically conditionally cause bodily movements, so how can they do so and not be, at least to some sufficient degree, physical? — 180 Proof

How can something be "to some... degree" physical? If we're measuring degrees of physicality and non-physicality, what instrument are we taking our measurements with?

how can they do so and not be, at least to some sufficient degree, physical? — 180 Proof

It's unknown.

What's known is that the distinction between physical and non-physical is centered on the idea that ideas are non-physical.

Without that distinction aren't we looking at another useless monism?

If thoughts are physical, is there something non-physical anywhere in the universe? — ZzzoneiroCosm

Yeah, abstractions ...

How can something be "to some... degree" physical?

It's a figure of speech which charitably concedes that 'the physical' may not be – speculatively – the complete "story" (certainly with respect to methodological physicalism, which is ontologically agnostic).

Without that distinction aren't we looking at another useless monism? — ZzzoneiroCosm

No. Ontological holism consists of 'beings & nonbeing' (ergo "known knowns" & "unknown unknowns"). Woo-of-the-gaps beg questions the way we do not know yet or cannot know" does not.

abstractions — 180 Proof

Abstractions never cause physical effects?

methodological physicalism, which is ontologically agnostic — 180 Proof

This is an important knottiness where folks like to get lost. Mistaking a methodology for an ontology.

Correct. (All too often "idealists" make this mistake.)

Yeah, that's the point I try to make in this post .

Correct. (All too often "idealists" make this mistake.) — 180 Proof

How do you describe the distinction between and relationship of thoughts and abstractions?

I suppose you might argue that abstractions like freedom and justice (non-physical) cause physical effects only by way of ("to some degree physical") thoughts...

How do you describe the distinction between and relationship of thoughts and abstractions? — ZzzoneiroCosm

Process and metric (e.g. walking and distance-duration). Or apples and fruit ...