Morality or Obedience?

[element771]

Weak brother, but I suspect that you already know that.

??

There are a large number of translation that have die as opposed to depart.

[element771]

The Bible is not History...

lol

I stopped reading after that.

[JimL]

lol

I stopped reading after that.

Of course, what else could you legitimately do? If you're going to claim it to be history, you'd be stuck defending the ridiculous.

[seer]

??

There are a large number of translation that have die as opposed to depart.

Well look up the Greek...

[element771]

Well look up the Greek...

I would imagine the translators of the Bible know Greek a lot better than I do seeing as how I don't know it.

Running down the translations...

Depart

Go

Die

Leave this life

Strong showing for depart (the majority). I still think it should be interpreted as dying. For example...

When I depart this earth, I hope my family is taken care of.

That doesn't mean getting on a space ship and leaving...that means when I die.

If it was to be taken as a soul departing the body, wouldn't you need to say that to get that specific meaning?

[carpedm9587]

Which would make him wrong, not a liar.

Yes... agreed. A lie implies intentionality. I don't know how you could possibly come to the conclusion that someone dead 2 millenia was a "liar" when we have no original documents, we have only a handful of copies of letters, and the corroborating documentation is thin at best. I tend to prefer to give people the benefit of the doubt unless I have cause to think otherwise.

[carpedm9587]

The Bible is not History, you don't know that Paul was martyred, anymore than you know that jesus walked on water.

Ummm... no. Although it is true that "the bible is not history," it is NOT true that "the bible contains no history." The bible contains a lot of literature types (mythology, escatology, poetry, history, parable, etc.), and the bible is itself a form of history.

There are many part of the bible that are part of a historical puzzle because they have been corroborated by secondary and tertiary sources. So a great deal of the history of the Judaic kings is accurate. A significant amount of the history around the Maccabees is accurate. There are also confirmed historical elements in the new testament. For the rest, although much of the bible is not strictly historical, it does provide a histrical portrait of what the people of that era believed. So, for example, the birth stories of Jesus mix confirmed history (e.g., the reign of Herod, etc.) with legend about the birth of Jesus (e.g., the star, the Maggi, etc.), the stories do tell us what the early Christian community believed ABOUT Jesus at the time these gospels were written down (the second half of the first century CE).

So the statement that "the bible is not history" is a little too broad.

[element771]

Of course, what else could you legitimately do? If you're going to claim it to be history, you'd be stuck defending the ridiculous.

[element771]

Yes... agreed. A lie implies intentionality. I don't know how you could possibly come to the conclusion that someone dead 2 millenia was a "liar" when we have no original documents, we have only a handful of copies of letters, and the corroborating documentation is thin at best. I tend to prefer to give people the benefit of the doubt unless I have cause to think otherwise.

[JimL]

Ummm... no. Although it is true that "the bible is not history," it is NOT true that "the bible contains no history." The bible contains a lot of literature types (mythology, escatology, poetry, history, parable, etc.), and the bible is itself a form of history.

There are many part of the bible that are part of a historical puzzle because they have been corroborated by secondary and tertiary sources. So a great deal of the history of the Judaic kings is accurate. A significant amount of the history around the Maccabees is accurate. There are also confirmed historical elements in the new testament. For the rest, although much of the bible is not strictly historical, it does provide a histrical portrait of what the people of that era believed. So, for example, the birth stories of Jesus mix confirmed history (e.g., the reign of Herod, etc.) with legend about the birth of Jesus (e.g., the star, the Maggi, etc.), the stories do tell us what the early Christian community believed ABOUT Jesus at the time these gospels were written down (the second half of the first century CE).

So the statement that "the bible is not history" is a little too broad.

Yes, I understand that there is history, and that the biblical myth is woven into that history, but the myth is still a myth.

[JimL]

Depends what literature your're talking about, but there's no need really. All one need do is read the Bible to understand it to be a fraud played on a naive people.

[element771]

Depends what literature your're talking about, but there's no need really. All one need do is read the Bible to understand it to be a fraud played on a naive people.

[Tassman]

Liars don't become martyrs for their lies.

They do if they believe the lies of other people or if they believe their own lies.

[Tassman]

Of course you flat out contradicted yourself, you said:

To devise a working morality I think that it has to closely align with our natural instincts, if it does not, it won't work. I don't believe a society can be forced to behave against its natural urges and instincts. And, from infancy onward, we are inculcated in community values by family and the society at large. These values include mutual reciprocity and the importance of overriding our selfish instincts in favour of community cohesion.

Of course it can and does. Our positive instincts, such as mutual reciprocity and cooperation, exist as a means of restraining individual selfishness and building more cooperative groups. If it were not for our negative instincts we would not need a moral code in the first place.

So no, morality can't align with many of our natural instincts like selfishness or cruelty. So one wonders why the evolutionary process selected for such behaviors that are antithetical to social cohesion.

Obviously 'self-interest' must have an important place in the survival process otherwise it wouldn't have evolved...provided it can be kept in balance with our more positive instincts of social cohesion.

But you're free to believe in the inherent depravity of Man resulting from The Fall, if you wish.

So religion both helps social cohesion and is destructive of social cohesion. One wonders what the survival value is then...

Religion worked well in the tribal era when the whole tribe could be made to conform to the will of the one true god, but not so well in the current multicultural era of many gods and none. Of course one could always revert to the good ol' days and slaughter the non-believers in the grand tradition of Moses.

See there you go again, making a metaphysical claim that can not be demonstrated scientifically or otherwise.

Science can't establish the existence of gods by definition, because its role is to study the physical, material world. But it can examine why people create social constructs including those of gods.

[seer]

Of course it can and does. Our positive instincts, such as mutual reciprocity and cooperation, exist as a means of restraining individual selfishness and building more cooperative groups. If it were not for our negative instincts we would not need a moral code in the first place.

So you were wrong when you said that for morality to work it must align with our instincts. As a matter of fact for morality to work it must go against some of our more basic instincts, like selfishness.

Religion worked well in the tribal era when the whole tribe could be made to conform to the will of the one true god, but not so well in the current multicultural era of many gods and none. Of course one could always revert to the good ol' days and slaughter the non-believers in the grand tradition of Moses.

Well if we revert to the good old days that would be as natural and driven by the evolutionary process as anything else.

Science can't establish the existence of gods by definition, because its role is to study the physical, material world. But it can examine why people create social constructs including those of gods.

Stop being dense Tass, that was not my point. You made a claim that you can not justify, that all gods are basically just made up. You can not prove that...