The Christian Theology Education Thread

[Forest_Fifer]

10 minutes ago, Salt n Vinegar said:

Specifically in the case of the giraffe it's as spectacular an example of what could be called 'unintelligent design" as you could look for. It tweaked my interest. 

I must confess that I'd be interested to know if the candidates to lead the Scottish Parliament (which of course has responsibility for education) accept evolution.  If not.. sheesh. 

There's so many sects that it's hard to keep up. The Free Presbyterian Church website is, shall I say, a bit alarming on evolution and the Free Church website appears silent on the matter. As Abraham Lincoln is quoted as saying "“Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt." 

Edwin Poots of the Democratic Unionists is a young earth creationist who believes in a 6000 year old earth, and he almost became first minister of the NI assembly.

YECs make ordinary evolution deniers look normal by comparison. The amount of cognitive dissonance required to believe in Genesis as literal history, while knowing anything about actual history or science is off the charts.

[Salt n Vinegar]

4 minutes ago, Crawford Bridge said:

That's a stereotype. 

There's a significant amount of Americans who pronounce it "warter". 

Some of our cousins dahn saaf prefer to pronounce it "wowtah". 

Big fan of the Glaswegian "wo'ur" myself. 

[Jacksgranda]

9 minutes ago, Forest_Fifer said:

Edwin Poots of the Democratic Unionists is a young earth creationist who believes in a 6000 year old earth, and he almost became first minister of the NI assembly.

YECs make ordinary evolution deniers look normal by comparison. The amount of cognitive dissonance required to believe in Genesis as literal history, while knowing anything about actual history or science is off the charts.

No he didn't, he didn't want the job.

[The_Kincardine]

21 hours ago, Hillonearth said:

I've always found it distinctly worrying that anyone thinks they're getting the direct-from-the-tap version of the big message of Christianity from reading the bible, far less feel confident to pick and choose the bits they want to focus on.

None of the four canonical gospels in the new testament were written prior to 70ADish at the earliest, and parts of them might even date to the second century, which would strongly suggest them to be at best garbled word-of-mouth rather than anything based on eyewitness accounts.

It's far from cut and dried - and has been a debate for a long time - but a decent case can be made for the Synoptic Gospels all being complete by 70AD.  It's also a decent bet that all of them draw on older sources, anecdotes, written accounts etc so there has to be an eyewitness element to them.

[Salt n Vinegar]

8 minutes ago, The_Kincardine said:

It's far from cut and dried - and has been a debate for a long time - but a decent case can be made for the Synoptic Gospels all being complete by 70AD.  It's also a decent bet that all of them draw on older sources, anecdotes, written accounts etc so there has to be an eyewitness element to them.

That's certainly a view, but as life expectancy around 70 AD was about 35, memory might not be reliable as you might think. Also, eyewitness accounts are just not terribly reliable - https://www.crf-usa.org/bill-of-rights-in-action/bria-13-3-c-how-reliable-are-eyewitnesses#:~:text=Studies have shown that mistaken,errors resulted from eyewitness mistakes.

[coprolite]

8 minutes ago, Salt n Vinegar said:

That's certainly a view, but as life expectancy around 70 AD was about 35, memory might not be reliable as you might think. Also, eyewitness accounts are just not terribly reliable - https://www.crf-usa.org/bill-of-rights-in-action/bria-13-3-c-how-reliable-are-eyewitnesses#:~:text=Studies have shown that mistaken,errors resulted from eyewitness mistakes.

Just on the stats, the main thing that dragged down life expectancy in the olden days was infant mortality. So while average life expectancy was short, life expectancy of someone who’d survived childhood wouldn’t be a kick in the arse off modern figures, probably into their sixties at least.

Agree on the reliability of eyewitnesses though. 

[VincentGuerin]

43 minutes ago, The_Kincardine said:

It's far from cut and dried - and has been a debate for a long time - but a decent case can be made for the Synoptic Gospels all being complete by 70AD.  It's also a decent bet that all of them draw on older sources, anecdotes, written accounts etc so there has to be an eyewitness element to them.

It's a debate, yes, but I think it's fair to say the general view is that Mark was most likely written around 70AD, and then used as a source for the later ones. And it's not the common view at all that Luke was written by 75AD, it's most commonly placed around a decade later at best.

While there is the factor of oral tradition to be respected, I think that's a long enough gap to be extremely wary of eye-witness claims.

Any human being, for example, can imagine easily how a meeting with five or six people at it in a house could have evolved (!) so much as to become the feeding of the 5,000 after thirty-odd years of re-telling.

 

[Hillonearth]

16 minutes ago, The_Kincardine said:

It's far from cut and dried - and has been a debate for a long time - but a decent case can be made for the Synoptic Gospels all being complete by 70AD.  It's also a decent bet that all of them draw on older sources, anecdotes, written accounts etc so there has to be an eyewitness element to them.

From what I understand, the current consensus is that Mark is the earliest-written of the four and there are some references in it that date it to no earlier than 66 or 67AD...interestingly, that's the one that doesn't mention a resurrection or indeed a virgin birth.

Mark was used by the authors of Matthew and Luke as a source document, with the current guesstimates dating Matthew to 80-90ADish and Luke slightly later...maybe into the second century.

I've purposely left John till last...it's a strange outlier, and the jury's still out. Small elements of it  - though NOT the whole package, which was still being revised well into the second century - could conceivably be the earliest of the lot, and those elements might be the best bet for genuine eyewitness testimony. Parts of Mark could conceivably be as well, but the other two virtually certainly aren't.

[Jacksgranda]

1 hour ago, Salt n Vinegar said:

That's certainly a view, but as life expectancy around 70 AD was about 35, memory might not be reliable as you might think. Also, eyewitness accounts are just not terribly reliable - https://www.crf-usa.org/bill-of-rights-in-action/bria-13-3-c-how-reliable-are-eyewitnesses#:~:text=Studies have shown that mistaken,errors resulted from eyewitness mistakes.

Doesn't mean everyone was dead by the time they were 35.

[scottsdad]

2 hours ago, Jacksgranda said:

No he didn't, he didn't want the job.

 

21 minutes ago, Jacksgranda said:

Doesn't mean everyone was dead by the time they were 35.

You been at the pedantry pills today, chief?

[Jacksgranda]

3 minutes ago, scottsdad said:

 

You been at the pedantry pills today, chief?

 Just pointing out a couple of FACTS!

[Salt n Vinegar]

22 minutes ago, Jacksgranda said:

 Just pointing out a couple of FACTS!

Always useful in a thread about religion. 

[Salt n Vinegar]

29 minutes ago, scottsdad said:

 

You been at the pedantry pills today, chief?

Just as well someone is taking them. Yesterday I saw someone posting a comment that had an apostrophe s as a plural but said nothing. See?  I am becoming more tolerant in my old age! 

[Jacksgranda]

20 minutes ago, Salt n Vinegar said:

Just as well someone is taking them. Yesterday I saw someone posting a comment that had an apostrophe s as a plural but said nothing. See?  I am becoming more tolerant in my old age! 

You mean like MP's, MSP's Nazi's, that sort of thing?

[Salt n Vinegar]

6 minutes ago, Jacksgranda said:

You mean like MP's, MSP's Nazi's, that sort of thing?

Nope. I can't remember the exact example but it would be the more basic sort of error. 

[TxRover]

3 hours ago, Crawford Bridge said:

That's a stereotype. 

There's a significant amount of Americans who pronounce it "warter". 

That’s another stereotype, given there are roughly 30 different major accents/dialects in the U.S.

 

6 hours ago, Salt n Vinegar said:

The effects of religion at present in the UK are mostly at the minor end of the scale. You might describe it as being of the tea and sandwiches in the garden with the Vicar variety, that kind of thing. In the UK, religion has largely had its teeth pulled*. My suggestion would be not to worry about the issues around religion (particularly as it affects the lives of non or other believers) in places where it is weak, other than where there are concerns about were a person's religion might affect the principles of equality. Rather, look at it where it is strong, even dominant. The picture isn't quite as benign in them.  

(*although Bishops in the Lords, unelected religious reps in local authority education committees and claims of religious authority for the monarch as appears on every UK coin are, for some, sources of irritation.) 

 

Yea, pray () you never get back to the kind of Christian Nationalism that is so prevalent in U.S. politics these days.

[Jim McLean's Ghost]

2 hours ago, Hillonearth said:

From what I understand, the current consensus is that Mark is the earliest-written of the four and there are some references in it that date it to no earlier than 66 or 67AD...interestingly, that's the one that doesn't mention a resurrection or indeed a virgin birth.

The other guys read Mark and decided they needed an origin story and a bit of pizzazz in the ending. Probably gave Jesus a couple of zingers too.

Then the rest of Christianity is roman empire weirdos making stuff up and changing fundamental things like the Sabbath.

 

 

 

[Cosmic Joe]

This word of mouth passing down of information is interesting. 

My Great Grandfather died in 1938 aged 80. He received an obituary in the Tully on account of his death being unusual, having dropped dead "overcome by excitement" watching Lochee Harp. What intrigued me was the reference to having one arm. 

He was originally a stonebreaker to trade so I assumed that he had lost an arm building railways or suchlike - the proverbial 19th century Irish navvie.

But no, just recently I came into contact with a nephew a couple of times removed who was able to confirm through an elderly relative, a great granddaughter of my Great grandfather that he had been born with one arm. This would have been in 1858. 

This information would have been passed down through three generations simply by word of mouth. 

He didn't do anything especially noteworthy in his life, but was remembered over 150 years after his birth. 

[Mark Connolly]

18 minutes ago, Cosmic Joe said:

great granddaughter of my Great grandfather

My father's son is me, and this lass is your sister

[Cosmic Joe]

1 minute ago, Mark Connolly said:

My father's son is me, and this lass is your sister

We share a great grandfather, and my grandfather Tommy (born 1882) was the brother of her grandmother Lizzie. My grandfather was 59 when my mum was born.