Raf

Come on, get it right! It's spelled "phony." You are welcome

Well argued.

I don't think he was concerned about debating. I think he was concerned about his followers. He probably felt he could hold his own. But he also knew where to stop, as evidenced by the fact that instead of telling his followers "here are the facts to refute their arguments," he had to tell them "it's a spirit thing. They can't understand."

Human, if you have a puzzle for us, go ahead. Otherwise I'll get to it when I get to it. But I'm already holding up a few threads...

I'll read both posts in more depth, but my initial reaction is, I have no reply that does not merely repeat what I've already said.

Oh let's not get started with what <<<some>>> Christians say...

Messenger of the Gods: Mercury. Juno... this is tougher. I'm going to guess Jupiter, her husband, as opposed to Saturn, her father.

Ok, a lot to unpack here, but thank you for the follow-up post, T-Bone. It reduces the amount of time I need to spend replying (and this is still a long-@$$ post). Obviously you guys think you're right and I won't change your mind. And I think I'm right and I won't change my mind. Best I can do is articulate my reply in light of your responses so that others reading can see that we're listening to each other and not just talking past each other. With that in mind: Chockfull: Yes, I did use rather strong terms. But consider the terms used by the Bible's writers to describe those who reject their message. We are "without excuse." We're "lawless." We're the "darkness" to your "light." We are "ignorant" and "hard-hearted." "Blinded." We are numbered among the "cowardly, detestable, murderers, sexually immoral, sorcerers, idolaters, and liars." Did I get to "evil" yet? [Checks notes. Nope.] "Evil." We've been captured by the devil and doing his will. Pollutants. Defiled in mind and conscience. Like a dog eating its own vomit. So yeah, I use words like "magic decoder ring" to describe something that you need in order to decode (discern) a message. But (T-Bone says) a ring is external, whereas spirit is internal. Fine. Call it "taking the blue pill" to allow you to see the truth. We unbelievers take the red pill and enjoy living blissfully in the Matrix. I use words like gullible. Emotionally strong? I submit these terms I used are TAME by comparison to the terms used by the Bible to describe me. Which is not to say that you've used those terms. Back to T-Bone: I did not say religion IS a vaccine against reason. I thought I was clear. Religion HAS a vaccine against reason. So let's explore what I mean by that (without going into unnecessary detail). Paul goes to great lengths to differentiate between the wisdom of the world and "God's wisdom." Why distinguish? In context, we see that it's because "God's wisdom" leads to a conclusion that the wisdom of the world finds "foolish." So what IS the wisdom of the world? It's wise. It's persuasive. It's human. It's reason. It's "senses reasoning" as we would call it in TWI (hooray! they got something right!). As T-Bone said, "just my take on it; I could be wrong." Here's MY take on it: I could be wrong. Paul knows that reasonable people listened to his pitch and rejected it as foolish. He knows other Christians are going to face the same opposition he did when they try to preach the word he was teaching them. So he needs something to counter the "philosophies of men" (aka reason) his people are bound to encounter. So I develop the imperfect analogy that reason is a disease, and it's in need of a vaccine. What's the vaccine? Verses that redirect the debate from the subject matter to the participants in the discussion. "You have the spirit of God. You get it. You took the blue pill. You have the decoder ring. Not those people. They don't understand our message because they can't. It's not because the message makes no sense. It makes perfect sense... to people with the ring, people who took the right pill, people with Spirit. People with humility. You ARE humble, aren't you? You have God's wisdom, right? Not like those people." Yeah, that is the definition of ad hominem. When you say "those people lack the capacity to even understand what I'm talking about," you have changed the debate from being about ideas to being about people. That verse, that tactic, is the vaccine. It doesn't address the conclusion reached by the natural man. It addresses the natural man himself and declares him incapable of properly assessing the evidence. Religion can employ reason, and it often does. But there comes a point when reason ceases to agree with what a religion is peddling. Where it outright rejects it. "Maybe there were six denials instead of three." No. That makes no sense. They all said three. "Maybe there was more than one cursed fig tree." No, that's just excuse-making to account for the discrepancy in the accounts. "Maybe Judas didn't immediately go and kill himself." No, Paul just screwed up when he said Jesus was seen of the Twelve. Or maybe he counted Matthias. Or maybe it was so tangential to the point he was making that he just didn't care. The point is Matthew was pretty clear on the timing of Judas' death. "There were two fields of blood..." No, there was just one. I chose examples we are most likely to agree on, but the ones that are relevant to this discussion are weightier. Like the ransom. To whom was the price paid? Why is a human sacrifice necessary in the first place? Why does redemption require a brutal death? And it gets deeper. I'm not inviting a debate on those questions, primarily because we are not going to resolve them. But Paul is terrified of that debate and needs to short-circuit it before we get there. That's why he redirects it. The rejection of his message couldn't possibly be due to a flaw in the message. It has to be a flaw in the person rejecting it. "Of course he doesn't get it! What do you expect from a natural man?" And that was the SHORT version of my reply.

Episode 1 Didn't laugh once

Lorelei Lee. No idea why i temember it. never saw Gentlemen Prefer Blondes

Now we're at the point where there are more comments than I can possibly answer efficiently. So either I get long winded and address every point, thereby making myself look obsessed with this topic, or I just let some points go unaddressed, leaving the impression that I do not have a comeback. Fortunately I have enough of a record here that I can honestly ask: Do you really think I could not write a book-length reply to these points complete with footnotes and hyperlinks? And I think you all know the answer is, yeah, he could probably do that. But on a relaxed timetable. Hope you don't mind...

Not ignoring the posts. Just making sure I don't pounce on every line of every post I disagree with. Replying soon.

Maybe the Trinity WAS his basis for rejecting the New Testament. You don't have to read a holy book to reject it. I still haven't read the Quran. So "I reject this book as God-breathed because it conflicts with doctrines I accept as God-breathed" would still fit with my overarching thesis on this thread, for what it's worth.

Fine. Marilyn Monroe

Robert Redford, William Hurt, Angela Bassett

Fascinating. I wonder if he said anything about his basis for rejecting the resurrection or the New Testament. It sounds like you didn't go there. I definitely agree the Trinity is a stumbling block to many Jews. On topic: it raises so many tangents to this thread that I doubt we'd be able to keep up. I wonder what Jews make of Christians who don't accept the Trinity. Dovthey reject the New Testament because of what it teaches? Or because of what they THINK it teaches? [Never mind the tired question of "who's right about that, anyway?"]

Originally posted in the "God's accountant, etc." thread in response to a post that cited I Corinthians 2:14. We obviously don't look at I Cor. 2:14 the same way. I see it as Paul's way of inoculating his followers against the Reason virus. Usually, if someone disagrees with you, you respond by presenting additional evidence or reframing your argument. In one fell swoop, Paul makes that unnecessary by declaring his opponents incapable of grasping his concept because they lack what I [jokingly] call the Magic Decoder Ring. "How can he possibly understand the things of the spirit? He doesn't have what it takes?" "What's that? evidence?" "No, spiritual discernment!" "What's spiritual discernment?" "It's the God-given capacity to understand what I'm saying is true." "So it's a magic decoder ring that suddenly transforms your thesis from bulls hit to enlightenment." "Well when you put it like that it sounds silly and disrespectful. It's more like, when you humble yourself, God opens the eyes of your understanding." "Ah, so it's not a magic decoder ring at all." "Exactly." "It's gullibility." ... Note how in that conversation we go from "Paul's message doesn't make sense," which focuses on the message as the subject matter, to "It's a Yahweh thing; You wouldn't understand," which focuses on the rejector of the message as the subject. I Corinthians 2:14 is an ad hominem attack on anyone who hears or reads Paul's message and concludes it's a crock.

Pretty much. That's not to say it never applies. New birth. Morality. The difference between a fertilized egg and a baby. Science can't touch those topics [well, it can touch the last one, but not in a way relevant to this discussion]. NOMA has lots of applications. Until it doesn't. Considering that NOMA was developed to put an end to the debate over evolution v creation, it's an abject failure from the start. Those subjects are overlapping. [Reasonable minds disagree].

I don't recall saying "all" faith healing is a testable claim. In fact I thought I gave a clear example of how one claim offers a really limited ability to test. There have been plenty of tests on the healing power/effectiveness of prayer. Those tests demonstrate a result, but that's not the same as "proving" anything, if memory serves. Anyway, NOMA has its benefits and its limits. But I disagree with its central premise: you can't argue that science and religion are non-overlapping magisteria without ignoring gobs of religious claims that do indeed overlap.

Honestly, i just didn't want to argue anymore

Well, for one thing, when did I say anything that remotely equates to that?

This line is not accurate because the only thing that can be tested is the claim being made. "God exists" is not a testable claim. But if you claim God healed you of, say, the flu, I would be able to test whether you have the flu. If you have it, I could say with certainty that God did not heal you of the flu. Because you still have it. That does not prove God doesn't exist. It does not mean God never heals. It just means a particular claim is empirically false. I would never cite evidence to "disprove God." I would cite evidence to disprove a claim that is made in his name. But that's only when the claim is testable. "I've been born again" is not a testable claim. "Thomas put his hand in the side of the resurrected Christ" is a whole lot of untestable claims. I'd have nothing to say about it (except maybe that it was curious three gospel writers ignored this particular post-resurrection appearance, but that's not a scientific, empirical argument). But that last point. Wow. Just as false as it could be. Not sure where you got the idea that I was claiming it's "Benny Hinn" or "no God." All I said was that religion makes testable claims. Faith healing is a testable claim. But you don't see its adherents emptying hospitals. That doesn't prove all faith healing is false. But all faith healing is a testable claim, regardless of who makes it. For some reason, when I postited faith healing as a claim made by religion (which it undoubtedly is), the thought that popped into YOUR mind was not gnuine faith healers who genuinely exercise the power of God by healing people. You went straight to huckster charlatans. That's on you, not me. All I said was "You didn't see the CPR team getting out of the way of the faith healers." I don't recall that I have ever found it necessary to cite Benny Hinn or Creflo Dollar (winner of the ConManliest Name in Charlatan History award, better known as the Loy Medal). In any event, we were talking about non overlapping magisteria, which is one man's effort to short-circuit creation-evolution arguments, and my point is that religion makes MANY claims that cannot be defined as "non-overlapping." Any testable claim overlaps. The need for religion to undermine the reliability of empirical facts will never fade. If "facts" can be manipulated enough to sway toward confirmation bias, just imagine what can be done with "faith."

Close enough

This is not remotely true.

Ok, as long as we're agreed on that