Examples of misunderstanding. (Though I think Jiro may have misunderstood your statement that I fail to understand important things about Christianity as saying that the LW population at large fails to understand important things about Christianity.)
Because I don’t see any of them. Just saying “you misunderstand Christianity” isn’t really an example. Give some details about what in particular the person misunderstands.
You did not give even one. Another user gave some hypothetical arguments against different varieties of Christianity because hardly anyone agrees what the religion entails, and you hadn’t explained what you believed. You still haven’t explained it clearly. Instead you act like “The holy trinity” has a clear and accepted meaning, and “the Gospels” can only be read in one (trinitarian?) way.
If you write in this impossible-to-engage manner, you should expect people to engage with different positions instead. And gjm most definitely did not assume you believed anything on his list (I assume “his”).
Dude, Jiro asked for examples of people who misunderstand, he did not ask for examples of what I believe. As for The Holy Trinity, it is found in the Nicene creed, in the Apostle´s creed and finally precised in the Athanasian Creed. It has a clear and accepted meaning amongst theologists. Before you say anything more, know that I got an Laudatur in religion (Evangelisk-luthersk religion, which I can´t translate but it refers to lutheranism,) on my matriculation exam and I won´t tolerate nonsense.
Actually, this is getting to the point where it doesn’t seem worth anyone’s time. You seem to have said:
that you reject the Hebrew Bible, or at least consider it irrelevant
that the Gospels have a clear meaning which we should understand without explanation from you (and which you believe).
This may not contradict itself directly, but it certainly seems impossible to maintain once we admit that countless Christians read passages like that one differently. Why would the Gospel accounts of Jesus be clear to us, when your co-worshipers don’t agree on what they mean?
If you do continue the conversation on this topic, please try to explain yourself more coherently.
I note that you are talking about other comments (not related to Jiros weird question) here. Well, you are a bit ignorant. I never said the gospels should make clear sense to anyone, I said that the holy trinity should make sense. You are the one off topic. I don´t find it useful to discuss christianity with you either, so we can cut off the chat on this so called “topic”.
I didn’t downvote you, but you should be aware that this seems like trolling, because the Mystery of the Trinity is seen by most Christians as a famously hard problem.
Thank you Vaniver, these comments are one of the reasons that I don´t yet have given up on this community and only stick to reading Eliezer´s articles. Yeah, well the malicious/outright stupid people who downvoted me fail to understand/pretend to fail to understand that what I obviously referred to was my earlier comment, about that The Holy Trinity is a widely accepted concept, studied and defined by professional theologists with ACTUAl knowledge on the subject.The implications of the Holy Trinity is indeed a mystery, but the dispute about what it is, is settled since long ago, meaning that there is an actual, real, consensus there.
Yeah, well the malicious/outright stupid people who downvoted me fail to understand/pretend to fail to understand that what I obviously referred to was my earlier comment
The beauty of theological study (and the internet) is that you can look at the source material and translations in detail and directly yourself. You have access to the very small amount of source data on the subject. Most of what people ‘know’ about the Trinity was made up hundreds of years after the fact.… and quite obviously these theories about the holy trinity have been untested.
Far from that. The Orthodox Church fervently rejects filioque, which is official doctrine for Catholics, but not for Anglicans. And that’s without mentioning the rest of the entire spectrum of interpretations, ranging from the strong unitarianism of Jehovah’s Witnesses to the blatant tritheism of Mormonism.
Yes, yes you are right, That is an article I should reread. I´ll do it before I answer anything else. It is also wrong of me to assume that everyone here is very rational and also to think that just because you are very rational, that means that you are [well informed and intelligent].
Yeah go ahead and downvote me for not wanting to talk to you. How dare I refuse to answer all of your questions immediately, even though you don´t pay any attention to my answers?
Pretty sure you’re getting downvoted for some combination of the following: unclear, incoherent, unspecific, and impolite. Compared to your growing wordcount in this conversation so far, you have shown little evidence of having something to say.
That is because I waste time on replying to comments while trying to be polite. I think that I have tried very hard to be polite, and it is hard to be specific when people go off topic all the time. It is confusing aswell. I only tried to be critical on my own belifes, but apparently it is forbidden to ask “weak points of christianity” unless you explain all of christianity and everything you believe in at the same time. (When you say that you are a physicists, no one asks if you believe in string theory or inflation, they find out subsequently.)
It feels to me that almost the majority of those who have commented here, totally disregarded my request that they would only answer after seriously thinking about my question and actually be familiar with christianity.
I don´t have time to explain christianity to everyone and I don´t want to, and it don´t help me either.
Here is what I can say about my belief: I am an evangelic christian, I confess to the Apostles’ Creed and I believe in a personal God. I am enrolled as ev. luther, and I can live with that, but I don´t agree with everything the church does, just as a democrat doesn´t agree with everything Obama does. If there is anything more people need to know, they can ask me personally and treat me with respect, or they can have it and everyone can be happy.
To be blunt, I’m not really seeing answers from you. Most of your responses to most people’s claims have been “well I don’t believe that anyway”. Meanwhile, you haven’t even read most of Christianity.
Your specific responses seem to say very little:
No. But I haven’t fully read any non-canon gospels yet.
You haven’t done even your basic due diligence. You believe your eternal soul is controlled by God, but you can’t be bothered to read a few documents that claim to have worthwhile information? This is absurd. Instead you’ve randomly latched on one set of documents, which you fully acknowledge are contradicted elsewhere.
I am an evangelic christian and within my belief the gospels override everything else that is or can be seen as contradictory. I have to value the words of Christ higher than the words of his followers and mortal predecessors.
There are direct contradictions WITHIN the gospels. How can something with basic logical error be an ultimate truth? Moreover, most theologians acknowledge that the gospels were not written during Jesus’s claimed activities… let alone BY Jesus.
I just “like” the gospels more than the rest of it.
You like something, fine… that doesn’t make it true. That fact that you liking something doesn’t make it true is simply a fact. Having not even read the alternatives, why does what you ‘like’ even matter?
If the only ice cream you’ve ever had is broccoli flavored, a statement that ‘you it more than the rest’ doesn’t mean anything. You need something to compare it to.
Actually read and investigate the various documents across ‘flavors’ of Christianity that claim to talk about your God. Honestly ask yourself why you only choose the Gospels, and try to think about the various contradictions. You don’t need us for this.
but you can’t be bothered to read a few documents that claim to have worthwhile information?
Not true. I intend to read non-canon gospels, do you know how many there are? I don´t NEED to read non-canon gospels to believe in Jesus, just like I don´t need to read Feynman to believe in physics.
Most of your responses to most people’s claims have been “well I don’t believe that anyway”. Meanwhile, you haven’t even read most of Christianity.
Not true, I did not respond that way to “most people´s claims”. Prove it. I haven´t even read most of christianity? Yeah? how do YOU know that? The fact that I was amongst the top 5% of all Finnish people who took the matriculation exam in religion the year I did is proof enough that I am not ignorant, at least amongst academics.
You like something, fine… that doesn’t make it true.
Never said it would, Totally irrelevant comment, you purposely try to make me look stupid by taking that out of context. Why do you think I used the quotations mark?
There are direct contradictions WITHIN the gospels. How can something with basic logical error be an ultimate truth?
Feel free to refer to those contradicitons you talk about. Meanwhile, in the gospels JESUS do not contradict himself. If he does, prove it.
Honestly ask yourself why you only choose the Gospels
Haha, how silly. I never said I disregard everything that is not the gospels and you know it. I said I prioritize the gospels more, which is 100% logical if I believe that Jesus was a God. Why would I NOT give the gospels higher priority? Yeah, I can´t know that they aren´t falsified, but I can´t know that about any other NT scripture either!
errancy.org is a good reference. A simple reading of the first page should be sufficient to put doubt in the fact that the gospels are completely ‘true’.
While this is not enough to convince someone that the Biblical God is false, it at least is a good gate to further discussion. If someone can’t acknowledge that there are factual errors and contradiction… I’m not sure what there is left to talk about.
don´t NEED to read non-canon gospels to believe in Jesus, just like I don´t need to read Feynman to believe in physics.
Absolutely true, but if your belief on some specific part of physics is based on a single untested book which has demonstrable errors, you should read some other sources. Especially when there really isn’t a huge volume.
[As a side note ‘belief in physics’ doesn’t really mean anything. If you believe that a dropped apple will fall, you ‘believe in physics’… you have direct evidence of it.]
I intend to read non-canon gospels, do you know how many there are?
It’s shorter than A Song of Fire and Ice. In your world view, your religious documents should be much more important than George R Martin’s musings are to millions.
Never said [liking something makes it true]
You’re missing my point. Tour reason for believing the Gospels appears to have no foundation other than your ‘like’, and as you seem to agree, you liking it doesn’t make it more true than all the other religious documents. If you have some other reason for believing it, share THAT and we can discuss. Currently you’re leaving everyone to guess why you believe what you believe. If you go ask 10 fellow believes ‘why’, I guarantee you won’t get the same answer each time.
I never said I disregard everything that is not the gospels and you know it.
I never said you did; I said you choose the Gospels over everything else… you have multiple sources, all of which are easily available to you; and you appear to randomly chose a subset. Even worse, you appear to have randomly picked a complete religion.
Your chance of having picked the right religion is near zero. Hopefully any real supreme being doesn’t send you to some analogue of hell for believing in the wrong god.
Meanwhile, in the gospels JESUS do not contradict himself.
To be clear, almost nobody claims Jesus wrote the gospels. Different gospels have Jesus saying different things in the same situation. For a straightforward indisputable example refer to Matthew 26:34 and Mark 14:30. A response that the above example may be misquoted could apply to everything Jesus is quoted as saying.
(You can Google other examples, but many could be argued as Jesus telling a story in which he describes different activities. This one is more straightforward.)
Feel free to refer to those contradictions you talk about.
Again, you can easily Google this. The Old Testament is demonstratively wrong on facts, but I suspect you’ll say you don’t follow that. Mark has a large number of demonstratively wrong facts as well. You’re trusting Mark to correctly quote Jesus, when his stories have numerous other mistakes,
Okay then, could you please answer my earlier question about scientific consensus in one particular instance? State your own opinion. It seems meta-relevant to the discussion.
(My impression so far is that you are not as accepting of d-separation as the general public here. As in, the set of mammals and the set of unicellular organisms are d-separated, and at least one set that ‘blocks’ mammals from unicellulars is ‘part of reptiles’. It means that learning some new feature about mammals, you can theorize about the corresponding feature/lack of it in reptiles, but you can’t infer much about unicellulars. Consider this model: God → Physics → Civilization. God and Civilization are d-separated, with Physics as the blocking set.)
I, too, hadn’t known about it before joining LW. Make a search on the site or on Wiki, and there is a book by Judea Pearl about causality that can be downloaded from web. It is a bit heavy, though, I am struggling to read it.
Really? Name the two best examples of people here misunderstanding.
I don´t understand what you mean. Examples of people?
Examples of misunderstanding. (Though I think Jiro may have misunderstood your statement that I fail to understand important things about Christianity as saying that the LW population at large fails to understand important things about Christianity.)
Examples of misunderstandings by people.
Aha. Well I couldn´t give you 2 examples, I think I already gave you one. Why would you otherwise comment?
Because I don’t see any of them. Just saying “you misunderstand Christianity” isn’t really an example. Give some details about what in particular the person misunderstands.
You did not give even one. Another user gave some hypothetical arguments against different varieties of Christianity because hardly anyone agrees what the religion entails, and you hadn’t explained what you believed. You still haven’t explained it clearly. Instead you act like “The holy trinity” has a clear and accepted meaning, and “the Gospels” can only be read in one (trinitarian?) way.
If you write in this impossible-to-engage manner, you should expect people to engage with different positions instead. And gjm most definitely did not assume you believed anything on his list (I assume “his”).
Dude, Jiro asked for examples of people who misunderstand, he did not ask for examples of what I believe. As for The Holy Trinity, it is found in the Nicene creed, in the Apostle´s creed and finally precised in the Athanasian Creed. It has a clear and accepted meaning amongst theologists. Before you say anything more, know that I got an Laudatur in religion (Evangelisk-luthersk religion, which I can´t translate but it refers to lutheranism,) on my matriculation exam and I won´t tolerate nonsense.
Actually, this is getting to the point where it doesn’t seem worth anyone’s time. You seem to have said:
that you reject the Hebrew Bible, or at least consider it irrelevant
that the Gospels have a clear meaning which we should understand without explanation from you (and which you believe).
This may not contradict itself directly, but it certainly seems impossible to maintain once we admit that countless Christians read passages like that one differently. Why would the Gospel accounts of Jesus be clear to us, when your co-worshipers don’t agree on what they mean?
If you do continue the conversation on this topic, please try to explain yourself more coherently.
I note that you are talking about other comments (not related to Jiros weird question) here. Well, you are a bit ignorant. I never said the gospels should make clear sense to anyone, I said that the holy trinity should make sense. You are the one off topic. I don´t find it useful to discuss christianity with you either, so we can cut off the chat on this so called “topic”.
I didn’t downvote you, but you should be aware that this seems like trolling, because the Mystery of the Trinity is seen by most Christians as a famously hard problem.
Thank you Vaniver, these comments are one of the reasons that I don´t yet have given up on this community and only stick to reading Eliezer´s articles. Yeah, well the malicious/outright stupid people who downvoted me fail to understand/pretend to fail to understand that what I obviously referred to was my earlier comment, about that The Holy Trinity is a widely accepted concept, studied and defined by professional theologists with ACTUAl knowledge on the subject.The implications of the Holy Trinity is indeed a mystery, but the dispute about what it is, is settled since long ago, meaning that there is an actual, real, consensus there.
Insulting people is seldom helpful.
The beauty of theological study (and the internet) is that you can look at the source material and translations in detail and directly yourself. You have access to the very small amount of source data on the subject. Most of what people ‘know’ about the Trinity was made up hundreds of years after the fact.… and quite obviously these theories about the holy trinity have been untested.
Far from that. The Orthodox Church fervently rejects filioque, which is official doctrine for Catholics, but not for Anglicans. And that’s without mentioning the rest of the entire spectrum of interpretations, ranging from the strong unitarianism of Jehovah’s Witnesses to the blatant tritheism of Mormonism.
Assuming you’re going through in chronological order, you are likely to find the upcoming Illusion of Transparency helpful.
Yes, yes you are right, That is an article I should reread. I´ll do it before I answer anything else. It is also wrong of me to assume that everyone here is very rational and also to think that just because you are very rational, that means that you are [well informed and intelligent].
Yeah go ahead and downvote me for not wanting to talk to you. How dare I refuse to answer all of your questions immediately, even though you don´t pay any attention to my answers?
Pretty sure you’re getting downvoted for some combination of the following: unclear, incoherent, unspecific, and impolite. Compared to your growing wordcount in this conversation so far, you have shown little evidence of having something to say.
That is because I waste time on replying to comments while trying to be polite. I think that I have tried very hard to be polite, and it is hard to be specific when people go off topic all the time. It is confusing aswell. I only tried to be critical on my own belifes, but apparently it is forbidden to ask “weak points of christianity” unless you explain all of christianity and everything you believe in at the same time. (When you say that you are a physicists, no one asks if you believe in string theory or inflation, they find out subsequently.)
It feels to me that almost the majority of those who have commented here, totally disregarded my request that they would only answer after seriously thinking about my question and actually be familiar with christianity.
I don´t have time to explain christianity to everyone and I don´t want to, and it don´t help me either. Here is what I can say about my belief: I am an evangelic christian, I confess to the Apostles’ Creed and I believe in a personal God. I am enrolled as ev. luther, and I can live with that, but I don´t agree with everything the church does, just as a democrat doesn´t agree with everything Obama does. If there is anything more people need to know, they can ask me personally and treat me with respect, or they can have it and everyone can be happy.
To be blunt, I’m not really seeing answers from you. Most of your responses to most people’s claims have been “well I don’t believe that anyway”. Meanwhile, you haven’t even read most of Christianity.
Your specific responses seem to say very little:
You haven’t done even your basic due diligence. You believe your eternal soul is controlled by God, but you can’t be bothered to read a few documents that claim to have worthwhile information? This is absurd. Instead you’ve randomly latched on one set of documents, which you fully acknowledge are contradicted elsewhere.
There are direct contradictions WITHIN the gospels. How can something with basic logical error be an ultimate truth? Moreover, most theologians acknowledge that the gospels were not written during Jesus’s claimed activities… let alone BY Jesus.
You like something, fine… that doesn’t make it true. That fact that you liking something doesn’t make it true is simply a fact. Having not even read the alternatives, why does what you ‘like’ even matter?
If the only ice cream you’ve ever had is broccoli flavored, a statement that ‘you it more than the rest’ doesn’t mean anything. You need something to compare it to.
Actually read and investigate the various documents across ‘flavors’ of Christianity that claim to talk about your God. Honestly ask yourself why you only choose the Gospels, and try to think about the various contradictions. You don’t need us for this.
You say alot of things about me which isn´t true.
Not true. I intend to read non-canon gospels, do you know how many there are? I don´t NEED to read non-canon gospels to believe in Jesus, just like I don´t need to read Feynman to believe in physics.
Not true, I did not respond that way to “most people´s claims”. Prove it. I haven´t even read most of christianity? Yeah? how do YOU know that? The fact that I was amongst the top 5% of all Finnish people who took the matriculation exam in religion the year I did is proof enough that I am not ignorant, at least amongst academics.
Never said it would, Totally irrelevant comment, you purposely try to make me look stupid by taking that out of context. Why do you think I used the quotations mark?
Feel free to refer to those contradicitons you talk about. Meanwhile, in the gospels JESUS do not contradict himself. If he does, prove it.
Haha, how silly. I never said I disregard everything that is not the gospels and you know it. I said I prioritize the gospels more, which is 100% logical if I believe that Jesus was a God. Why would I NOT give the gospels higher priority? Yeah, I can´t know that they aren´t falsified, but I can´t know that about any other NT scripture either!
Lots of examples:
http://www.evilbible.com/contradictions.htm
http://www.skeptically.org/bible/id2.html
http://errancy.org/
http://debunkingchristianity.blogspot.com/2012/06/contradictory-and-chaotic-gospel-lies.html
http://www.christianitydisproved.com/bible.html
errancy.org is a good reference. A simple reading of the first page should be sufficient to put doubt in the fact that the gospels are completely ‘true’.
While this is not enough to convince someone that the Biblical God is false, it at least is a good gate to further discussion. If someone can’t acknowledge that there are factual errors and contradiction… I’m not sure what there is left to talk about.
Absolutely true, but if your belief on some specific part of physics is based on a single untested book which has demonstrable errors, you should read some other sources. Especially when there really isn’t a huge volume.
[As a side note ‘belief in physics’ doesn’t really mean anything. If you believe that a dropped apple will fall, you ‘believe in physics’… you have direct evidence of it.]
It’s shorter than A Song of Fire and Ice. In your world view, your religious documents should be much more important than George R Martin’s musings are to millions.
You’re missing my point. Tour reason for believing the Gospels appears to have no foundation other than your ‘like’, and as you seem to agree, you liking it doesn’t make it more true than all the other religious documents. If you have some other reason for believing it, share THAT and we can discuss. Currently you’re leaving everyone to guess why you believe what you believe. If you go ask 10 fellow believes ‘why’, I guarantee you won’t get the same answer each time.
I never said you did; I said you choose the Gospels over everything else… you have multiple sources, all of which are easily available to you; and you appear to randomly chose a subset. Even worse, you appear to have randomly picked a complete religion.
Your chance of having picked the right religion is near zero. Hopefully any real supreme being doesn’t send you to some analogue of hell for believing in the wrong god.
To be clear, almost nobody claims Jesus wrote the gospels. Different gospels have Jesus saying different things in the same situation. For a straightforward indisputable example refer to Matthew 26:34 and Mark 14:30. A response that the above example may be misquoted could apply to everything Jesus is quoted as saying.
(You can Google other examples, but many could be argued as Jesus telling a story in which he describes different activities. This one is more straightforward.)
Again, you can easily Google this. The Old Testament is demonstratively wrong on facts, but I suspect you’ll say you don’t follow that. Mark has a large number of demonstratively wrong facts as well. You’re trusting Mark to correctly quote Jesus, when his stories have numerous other mistakes,
Okay then, could you please answer my earlier question about scientific consensus in one particular instance? State your own opinion. It seems meta-relevant to the discussion. (My impression so far is that you are not as accepting of d-separation as the general public here. As in, the set of mammals and the set of unicellular organisms are d-separated, and at least one set that ‘blocks’ mammals from unicellulars is ‘part of reptiles’. It means that learning some new feature about mammals, you can theorize about the corresponding feature/lack of it in reptiles, but you can’t infer much about unicellulars. Consider this model: God → Physics → Civilization. God and Civilization are d-separated, with Physics as the blocking set.)
Sorry, I am too stupid to understand what you ask of me. I don´t even know what d-separation is.
I, too, hadn’t known about it before joining LW. Make a search on the site or on Wiki, and there is a book by Judea Pearl about causality that can be downloaded from web. It is a bit heavy, though, I am struggling to read it.