The Pre-Mortal Existance Refutes the Assertion that Intelligence is Genetically Determined.

[The Nehor]

1 hour ago, Chum said:

I've never considered this, as a thing.

edit: Son 3 says he's mostly like this, figures it's why he doesn't dream. I knew he didn't dream. I probably would have connected the two eventually.

I dream but I usually dream in abstract concepts and not visually. I have had visual dreams but they are rare. With a lot of work I can pull up a face from memory if I know it really well but it is fleeting.

If someone mentions what someone was wearing the other day or something like that I don’t remember it unless I noted something like color or style and I usually don’t. I am actually working on trying to take this down and restore visual memory but only had limited success so far. Most of the more reliable (not very reliable) methods of making it happen require illegal substances.

There are some advantages though. It is virtually impossible to traumatize me since I can’t really flash back to a memory. Even painful moments I can detach from. I feel emotion over it but not the visceral emotion of reliving a bad breakup or being yelled at or a physical fight. I can see connections people who think visually usually don’t and that leads to a vein of absurdist humor and sometimes helps with problem solving. On the downside I have virtually no sense of direction, am terrible at estimating distances, and often fixing something or adjusting requires a lot more mental effort as I can’t envision what I need to do and instead have to try to step it out mentally.

I also have a stronger memory of touch and auditory memory. I am very sensual in that I can remember how a breeze felt. Hopefully this doesn’t fall under carnal, sensual, and devilish.

[Chum]

7 minutes ago, The Nehor said:

If someone mentions what someone was wearing the other day or something like that I don’t remember it unless I noted something like color or style and I usually don’t. I am actually working on trying to take this down and restore visual memory but only had limited success so far. Most of the more reliable (not very reliable) methods of making it happen require illegal substances.

+1 on illegal substances. I have a relative with tough challenges who made real breakthroughs using Psilocybin.

9 minutes ago, The Nehor said:

There are some advantages though. It is virtually impossible to traumatize me since I can’t really flash back to a memory. Even painful moments I can detach from. I feel emotion over it but not the visceral emotion of reliving a bad breakup or being yelled at or a physical fight.

This is interesting. I think about trauma effects a lot but not sure I would have ever intuited this.

At the same time, a correlation between visualization acuity and the efficacy of trauma sounds like something I'd come up with in a 'thinker moment'.  Then I'd realize the concept boils down to see=feel - which sounds both thinky and obvious. Maybe I shouldn't try to boil everything.

[The Nehor]

4 hours ago, Chum said:

+1 on illegal substances. I have a relative with tough challenges who made real breakthroughs using Psilocybin.

I would love to try it. Stupid Word of Wisdom. If I ever start a blog I will call it “Stupid Wisdom”.

4 hours ago, Chum said:

This is interesting. I think about trauma effects a lot but not sure I would have ever intuited this.

At the same time, a correlation between visualization acuity and the efficacy of trauma sounds like something I'd come up with in a 'thinker moment'.  Then I'd realize the concept boils down to see=feel - which sounds both thinky and obvious. Maybe I shouldn't try to boil everything.

I can still feel. I can even be enraged at something. I just don’t have the ability to replay it. I instead channel my brain to more productive things like say…..VENGEANCE!

It is more the trauma where people have flashbacks or dreams that I am mostly immune to. Then again one possibility is that trauma caused me to suppress the ability to visualize. I think I may even know what it is. It is so stupid that, if it is true, it destroys much of my belief in the idea that resolving the original event will cure psychological stuff. I remember being able to visualize more when I was younger. I had vivid memories going back to being two years old and I remember visualizing them even if I can’t really do it now.

Sounds nice though to be able to remember things that you don’t specifically note. I would be the worst witness ever.

“Can you describe the person who detonated the bomb?”

”Ummm…..not really.”

”Can you work with this sketch artist?”

”He was male. Ummmmm………I think caucasian.”

”Large or narrow nose?”

”He had a nose.”

[Calm]

10 hours ago, The Nehor said:

am terrible at estimating distances

I a:extremely visual and still rotten at this….

[Stargazer]

On 11/25/2022 at 2:15 PM, Eschaton said:

What makes you think anyone was speaking of the pre-existence in that passage, and not, say, reincarnation? Reincarnation was a popular Hellenistic idea. 

Quantum physics and the law of conservation of mass and energy are not Hellenistic ideas.

For us to exist only in this form, and to not have a prior form of existence or a post form of existence, requires that the laws of physics be violated. God is god of law. He did not create a universe of chaos. Hence, if he created us, we are eternal beings. 

To believe otherwise is to believe in a god which doesn't exist, and cannot exist.

[Stargazer]

On 11/25/2022 at 2:17 PM, Eschaton said:

Yes, no one thinks GJohn was actually written by John. Nor does it claim to be written by John - it's anonymous. 

No one thinks that? 

I wrote something the other day. I did not attribute it to myself, meaning I didn't sign it or anything. In other words, it was anonymous. This morning my stepson found the paper I wrote it on in the recycle. He asked his mom "Who wrote this?" and she looked at it and said "The handwriting is Stargazer's." (She calls me that just for fun).

What was written on the paper? 

"Once upon a time there was a gazelle who had no tail. All the other gazelles were outraged by her lack of a tail. But the lion who had eater her tail quite pleased by the tail -- it had tasted very good, if a bit boney."

They were both amused and puzzled by this writing, and I explained that I had been testing my new fountain pen, and it was a just bit of stream-of-consciousness writing.

On 11/25/2022 at 2:17 PM, Eschaton said:

No, not a forgery. But it's very late, and the sayings material in John is completely alien to the sayings material in our earlier synoptic sources. The writing style of John's sayings material matches the writing style of the narrator, indicating it is the creation of the narrator. 

I'm thick, I guess, because it took me a few minutes to figure out what the heck you meant here. Finally the light dawned. And then I laughed! I almost laughed right out of my chair. 

Let me first of all agree entirely with you that "The writing style of John's sayings material matches the writing style of the narrator". Of course it does. How can it be otherwise?

It's blazing obvious, even to me, that the people who wrote these works (whether it was Matt, Mark, Luke, and John, or John, Paul, George, and Ringo) are writing years, perhaps decades after the events they are reporting. Do you seriously expect that they are going to remember, word for word, what Jesus said back then? Of course not! And it gets worse! They are writing in Greek. Jesus spoke Aramaic and Hebrew. Do you know what kind of burden all that imposes on reportage? 

You (and others) are using sophistry to deny what the scriptures say. You might as well claim it is all science-fiction. 

I don't think there's any conversation about this possible with this level of denial.

Edited November 28, 2022 by Stargazer

[Stargazer]

8 hours ago, Calm said:

I a:extremely visual and still rotten at this….

Depending on what is in the visual field it can be very difficult. If one is standing in the middle of Death Valley, for instance, it is rather difficult to estimate how far away the hills in the distance are, because there's very little frame of reference.

But I spent a few years in the infantry and field artillery, and am not bad at estimating how far away a tank is, because I know how big they are. And the smaller they look, the further away they are. 

[Stargazer]

18 hours ago, The Nehor said:

I dream but I usually dream in abstract concepts and not visually. I have had visual dreams but they are rare. With a lot of work I can pull up a face from memory if I know it really well but it is fleeting.

My dreams are full visual and with sound effects. I don't know who the editor is, but he's darned peculiar sometimes.

18 hours ago, The Nehor said:

If someone mentions what someone was wearing the other day or something like that I don’t remember it unless I noted something like color or style and I usually don’t. I am actually working on trying to take this down and restore visual memory but only had limited success so far. Most of the more reliable (not very reliable) methods of making it happen require illegal substances.

Kind of like how I am. I worry that if I go shopping with my wife, and we lose track of each other and I'm forced to describe to someone what she was wearing, I'd be like "Uh...."

18 hours ago, The Nehor said:

There are some advantages though. It is virtually impossible to traumatize me since I can’t really flash back to a memory. Even painful moments I can detach from. I feel emotion over it but not the visceral emotion of reliving a bad breakup or being yelled at or a physical fight. I can see connections people who think visually usually don’t and that leads to a vein of absurdist humor and sometimes helps with problem solving. On the downside I have virtually no sense of direction, am terrible at estimating distances, and often fixing something or adjusting requires a lot more mental effort as I can’t envision what I need to do and instead have to try to step it out mentally.

Interesting! It's also virtually impossible to traumatize me, and I easily detach from painful memories. But I am not sure what it means to "flash back to a memory." 

I usually have an excellent sense of direction. At least that's what my lieutenant wrote in my evaluation report one time. "SGT Stargazer has an excellent sense of land navigation." This was after he spent two hours trying to adjust artillery from a point 1 kilometer offset from his actual position. The firing battery's fire control center was getting really annoyed with him because he kept walking fire all around the target, but never onto it. I kept trying to tell him we were HERE, not THERE, and he finally believed me. Even worse was the time the operations officer of a tank battalion I was serving as the forward observer for, insisted that his front line was right here. It was night-time when I joined them, and had to take his word for it. So I planned his final protective fire according to his directions, and the next day when I tried to confirm his data, it turned out that the FPF I planned based on his information (and gave to my firing battery) would have landed right on his own troops. Thank goodness this was an exercise and nobody was actually shooting anything. That same lieutenant was with me at the time, and was again amazed that I knew where I was. 

There is nothing more dangerous than an officer who thinks he knows where he is.

18 hours ago, The Nehor said:

I also have a stronger memory of touch and auditory memory. I am very sensual in that I can remember how a breeze felt. Hopefully this doesn’t fall under carnal, sensual, and devilish.

I had a really amazing dream one night. I woke to a very warm and tender kiss to my lips, but when I sat up the only other person in the bedroom was my wife who was sound asleep beside me. I can still remember that kiss.

[Stargazer]

21 hours ago, The Nehor said:

Not me, I have near complete aphantasia. I can’t relive memories. Or very rarely can. Possibly when I dream.

Well, that sucks. 

But I'm not entirely sure what it means to experience this condition. Hyperphantasia is the name of the extreme opposite of the condition, apparently. I suppose a lessened form of it might be called hypophantasia. The condition was first noted by a researcher back in 1880, but hasn't been greatly studied until more recently.

Had to look it up. There's a Wikipedia article about it. One thing in there was stated that coincides with what you wrote above: "He identified that aphantasics lack voluntary visualizations only; they are still able to have involuntary visualizations such as dreams."

I am amazed. It turns out that there are things out there in the world that I'd never previously heard of. Who knew?  

[Eschaton]

2 hours ago, Stargazer said:

Quantum physics and the law of conservation of mass and energy are not Hellenistic ideas.

No, but they don't appear in scripture either. 

2 hours ago, Stargazer said:

For us to exist only in this form, and to not have a prior form of existence or a post form of existence, requires that the laws of physics be violated. God is god of law. He did not create a universe of chaos.

In traditional Jewish thought, our "prior existence" was the dust of the earth. Which is more or less scientifically accurate. 

 

2 hours ago, Stargazer said:

 

Hence, if he created us, we are eternal beings. 

To believe otherwise is to believe in a god which doesn't exist, and cannot exist.

Ancient Jewish people didn't believe humans were eternal beings, and yet they believed in God. 

[Eschaton]

1 hour ago, Stargazer said:

No one thinks that? 

No major scholar thinks that, is what I mean. 

1 hour ago, Stargazer said:

Let me first of all agree entirely with you that "The writing style of John's sayings material matches the writing style of the narrator". Of course it does. How can it be otherwise?

It's blazing obvious, even to me, that the people who wrote these works (whether it was Matt, Mark, Luke, and John, or John, Paul, George, and Ringo) are writing years, perhaps decades after the events they are reporting. Do you seriously expect that they are going to remember, word for word, what Jesus said back then? Of course not! And it gets worse! They are writing in Greek. Jesus spoke Aramaic and Hebrew. Do you know what kind of burden all that imposes on reportage? 

The synoptic Gospels do actually contain some real sayings of Jesus, and they do not all match the writing styles of their respective authors. The Jesus sayings most likely to be preserved are short, memorable aphorisms, like the first shall be last and the last shall be first. In the synoptic gospels, Jesus shares wisdom teachings, talks about the coming Kingdom, and his focus is on the father, not himself. Suddenly in John Jesus sounds like a Greek philosopher and he's always talking about himself and his own importance.  

 

1 hour ago, Stargazer said:

You (and others) are using sophistry to deny what the scriptures say. You might as well claim it is all science-fiction. 

I don't think there's any conversation about this possible with this level of denial.

What you call "sophistry" is just ordinary, mainstream historical scholarship. I assume you're hostile to it because you don't like what it's saying, not because you have something of substance to say about its methodology? 

[Stargazer]

On 11/26/2022 at 5:07 AM, The Nehor said:

I am scared of people who say that if they doubt their faith they intend to go hog wild with sin. I am not saying this is you but I have met people who assume that people who don’t believe in God are all just monsters who are kept from rape, pillage, and murder only by fear of getting caught.

Well, they do exist, even if they're rare. There's a few well-known examples, and not just among communist and fascist dictators.

I am quite confident that the Light of Christ lives in everyone from atheists to popes. It's just that some of them work hard to ignore it. Regardless of any belief status.

Just as an exercise, I once tried to picture myself whipping out a knife and stabbing some random person to death with it. The attempt at picturing myself doing so made me sick to my stomach. And not because I was afraid of being caught. It was because it was just wrong. I wasn't even worried about being caught. Just the act itself was sickening to me.

[Stargazer]

6 minutes ago, Eschaton said:

No major scholar thinks that, is what I mean. 

Only the non-major scholars think that? Who decides who is a major scholar? The other major scholars, who dread the thought of someone contradicting them and ruining their reputations?

6 minutes ago, Eschaton said:

The synoptic Gospels do actually contain some real sayings of Jesus, and they do not all match the writing styles of their respective authors. The Jesus sayings most likely to be preserved are short, memorable aphorisms, like the first shall be last and the last shall be first. In the synoptic gospels, Jesus shares wisdom teachings, talks about the coming Kingdom, and his focus is on the father, not himself. Suddenly in John Jesus sounds like a Greek philosopher and he's always talking about himself and his own importance.  

Oddly, some people, including some theologians (whom I imagine you think are Platonists), consider the gospel of John to be a precious insight into the nature of the Lord Jesus Christ.

And how do you know that the synoptic gospels "do actually contain some real sayings of Jesus"? Just because the quotations don't match the writing styles of their narrators? Nobody now alive was there, hotshot. It has been posited that Matthew and Luke both plagiarized Mark for their material, and that whoever wrote those two gospels may not have even been alive when Jesus was alive, and were just going on what other people said, who themselves may or may not have been present when Jesus spoke. Is this the case? I have no idea. 

The same arguments are made by atheists to assert that Jesus didn't even exist, and he was actually a fictional character constructed by an early clique of dissident Jews who sought to reform Judaism. Prove that they're wrong, I dare you.

6 minutes ago, Eschaton said:

What you call "sophistry" is just ordinary, mainstream historical scholarship. I assume you're hostile to it because you don't like what it's saying, not because you have something of substance to say about its methodology? 

Methodology can lead to bogus conclusions, sometimes. I may not like what it's saying, or I might be perfectly OK with it. You and your scholars are being quite specific about whether the words of Jesus found in John can be rightly attributed to Jesus. I'm saying that just because they don't seem to fit the narrative as interpreted from how they were expressed in the synoptic gospels doesn't mean Jesus didn't say them, or something approximating them.

Here's my problem with it all. 

How do I know that you and your scholars are operating from an objective point of view? John has Jesus saying this or that which can be understood as teaching the doctrine of pre-existence of souls. You obviously don't like that. You find scholars who argue that the "voice" John gives to Jesus sounds like his own, and it differs from the "voice" that Matthew, Mark, and Luke give. Therefore, Jesus didn't say these things. And thus they are not Jesus's words. And thus they are not true doctrine.

I say "balderdash" to that. Let me ask you this: is the Johannine Comma false doctrine because it was demonstrably inserted into Mark by a very late editor, and is not to be found among the earliest manuscripts? Well, I happen to believe that it is false doctrine. But not because it was inserted by a late editor. A late editor is perfectly capable of inserting true doctrine. But the important question is not whether Mark actually wrote what is found in Mark, but whether or not the doctrine that is written is true doctrine. And that cannot be ascertained from the identity of the author. 

It reminds me of the story of the professor of classical Greek literature who spent his life trying to prove that the Iliad and the Odyssey were not written by Homer, but by another Greek author of the same name.

It's blazing obvious, even to me, that the people who wrote these works (whether it was Matt, Mark, Luke, and John, or John, Paul, George, and Ringo) are writing years, perhaps decades after the events they are reporting. Do you seriously expect that they are going to remember, word for word, what Jesus said back then? Of course not! And it gets worse! They are writing in Greek. Jesus spoke Aramaic and Hebrew. Do you know what kind of burden all that imposes on reportage? 

I speak German. Not like a native, but I've been mistaken for a Swiss by a German before. This morning, after the affair with the anonymous writing I mentioned earlier, as I was dressing I started singing a German song I knew, that I heard originally on a sea-ballad album. It was a cover of this one: "Hejo, hejo, Gin und Rum". My English wife had heard me sing this before, but she doesn't speak more than a few words of German, and she's never asked me what the song was about. But she did this time. So I explained the story to her in broad terms. There's a line in the song that goes "Blacky, Mackie und der Jacky waren ein Gespann". I translated this as "Blacky, Mackie, and Jacky were best friends" but literally it means "Blacky, Mackie, and Jackie were yoked together." You know, "yoked," like a team of oxen or horses? It's a German idiom that's probably viable in English, but whatever.

Anyway, I had to adapt and improvise in order to tell the entire story in the song so that it made some sense and conveyed what the song was telling about. I shan't burden you with the song any further, but it's quite cute and endearing, in my personal opinion. But there was no bloody way for me to convey to my wife the story of the song in the speaking or writing style of Udo Jurgens, the original lyricist! 

Just to avoid confusion, my English wife mentioned above is my second wife. My first wife was German, and she died about 7 years ago. I remarried afterwards, and the following concerns my German wife's family.

I wrote a book once. You can find it on Amazon: The Bones of My People. You'll note that the author on the cover is Gertrud Baltutt. She was my mother-in-law. I ghost wrote it from a transcript of a verbal recording in German. It's her story of what happened to her in the end stages of World War II when she and her husband were taken captive by the Soviets and sent as forced laborers into the Soviet Union. The book came about in the following manner:

• Mother-in-law told the story verbally, in German, to her other daughter, Rita, my wife's sister. Rita recorded it on cassette tape
• Years later, Rita transcribed the story off the tape using a typewriter onto foolscap paper, also in German
• Rita wrote her own story as a book, in English, and a few years after she tried and failed to find a publisher, I took it on, edited it, and gave it another try. Nobody was interested.
• So, with Rita's permission published it myself. Her book is this one: Yesterday's Sandhills. 
• At the same time Rita handed the manuscript of her book over to me and my wife, she also provided the transcript of her mother's story, which we had not previously known existed.
• My wife and I translated the transcript into English.
• Since the story lacked cohesion, due to being told in several sessions, with the storyteller rehashing some events, and occasionally interrupting the narrative to explain something out of sequence, it was completely unpublishable as such. So I spent a few months making it cohesive and making it flow. I tried to give the writing a similar flavor to my mother-in-law's German voice.
• And then we published the two books within a few days of each other in 2014. They've sold a few thousand copies over the past eight years. We didn't expect even that much, so for us it was a success.

In my opinion, the book I ghost-wrote tells my mother-in-law's story quite well. But anyone reading the book could justifiably say "the writing style of the material matches the writing style of the ghost-writer, indicating it is the creation of the ghost-writer."

Using the literary style of the narrator of John to say that Jesus didn't say exactly what the narrator says he said is fair. Using it to say that the narrator of John made it up and Jesus never said anything like that is utter BS. There is no way to know this. My mother-in-law never said these words, even in German: 

"By the time the authorities finally ordered the civilian population of East Prussia to evacuate, the Russians were nearly at our doors."

I had to write this as the first sentence in her story because when she told her daughter the story, she started with what it was like sitting on the floor of a box-car of a train moving northwards away from the Russian onslaught in January 1945. The first sentences in the book, however, had to inform the reader what was going on in the greater picture. Later in her narrative she went back to what was happening at the family home, then the train station, and so on. Things bounced around a bit. In the book she described the clothing the Soviets issued her and the other forced laborers for working in the forests. In her narrative she didn't describe the clothing at all, just used the Russian name for the clothing. Which would have done nothing but puzzle the reader who didn't know what the Russian word meant.

In all of this, despite the fact that I had to put words in her mouth from time to time, everything that the book describes did actually happen. 

Just because you or some scholar doesn't think that John's style of writing Jesus's words doesn't match how the synoptic writers would have written it, doesn't mean Jesus never said it. And it certainly doesn't mean he was making false doctrine.

As I said, it isn't the author's name that determines truth or falsehood. It is this: is it true or not?

And you cannot answer that.

 

[Stargazer]

1 hour ago, Eschaton said:

No, but they don't appear in scripture either. 

Does scripture have to hue to reality, or not? Does scripture have to describe all reality? Why isn't Newton's Law of Gravity in the Old Testament, if it was still in force at the time of Moses?

1 hour ago, Eschaton said:

In traditional Jewish thought, our "prior existence" was the dust of the earth. Which is more or less scientifically accurate. 

Ancient Jewish people didn't believe humans were eternal beings, and yet they believed in God. 

Do you care what ancient Jewish people believed? Did God vouchsafe to Moses all the laws of the universe, or just the laws He wanted the children of Israel to obey?

Is it possible that the ancient Jewish people believed things that were not true? Is it possible that the ancient Jewish people made things up because they sought to explain things that God had not explained to them?

When the Messiah finally turned up, they wanted him dead, mainly because he was teaching them things they didn't believe. So why does it matter that they didn't believe humans were eternal beings? Was it possible they were as wrong about that as they were about who Jesus was?

And why on earth did Jesus tell that story about Lazarus and Rich Man, with the Rich Man in hell and Lazarus in paradise, if neither of them were eternal beings? Was he lying about that?

[Eschaton]

24 minutes ago, Stargazer said:

Does scripture have to hue to reality, or not? Does scripture have to describe all reality? Why isn't Newton's Law of Gravity in the Old Testament, if it was still in force at the time of Moses?

No, scripture is imaginative and creative. It's not about science or even history. 

 

24 minutes ago, Stargazer said:

Do you care what ancient Jewish people believed?

Yes, of course, otherwise I wouldn't bother talking about it. 

 

24 minutes ago, Stargazer said:

Did God vouchsafe to Moses all the laws of the universe, or just the laws He wanted the children of Israel to obey?

Moses probably never existed. But to your point, yes, the point of scripture isn't to describe scientific laws, but to pass on the values of the religious community that produced those writings. 

 

24 minutes ago, Stargazer said:

Is it possible that the ancient Jewish people believed things that were not true? Is it possible that the ancient Jewish people made things up because they sought to explain things that God had not explained to them?

More than possible. 

 

24 minutes ago, Stargazer said:

When the Messiah finally turned up, they wanted him dead, mainly because he was teaching them things they didn't believe. So why does it matter that they didn't believe humans were eternal beings? Was it possible they were as wrong about that as they were about who Jesus was?

Rome certainly wanted Jesus dead. It's debatable whether or not he faced the kind of opposition from Pharisees and Sadducees described in the gospels. Some of it likely reflects the conflicts of the day they were written in. 

 

24 minutes ago, Stargazer said:

And why on earth did Jesus tell that story about Lazarus and Rich Man, with the Rich Man in hell and Lazarus in paradise, if neither of them were eternal beings? Was he lying about that?

That story is likely an invention of the author of Luke. We get nothing like that in Mark, Matthew or Q, our earliest sources. 

[Eschaton]

45 minutes ago, Stargazer said:

Only the non-major scholars think that? Who decides who is a major scholar? The other major scholars, who dread the thought of someone contradicting them and ruining their reputations?

Basically it would be limited to a few fundamentalists who have signed contracts with evangelical universities obliging them to hew a certain theological line. 

 

45 minutes ago, Stargazer said:

Oddly, some people, including some theologians (whom I imagine you think are Platonists),

Why would I think that? 

 

45 minutes ago, Stargazer said:

consider the gospel of John to be a precious insight into the nature of the Lord Jesus Christ.

It's definitely an insight into what the Johannine community believed about Jesus. All the things they thought Jesus was, they put onto the lips of Jesus. If you agree with them, then it's precious, although the Johannine view of Jesus isn't fully believed by any modern religious denomination. 

 

45 minutes ago, Stargazer said:

And how do you know that the synoptic gospels "do actually contain some real sayings of Jesus"? Just because the quotations don't match the writing styles of their narrators? Nobody now alive was there, hotshot. It has been posited that Matthew and Luke both plagiarized Mark for their material, and that whoever wrote those two gospels may not have even been alive when Jesus was alive, and were just going on what other people said, who themselves may or may not have been present when Jesus spoke. Is this the case? I have no idea. 

A quite careful and methodical analysis of the text is required, applying various historical criteria. It comes out to probability - these sayings are more likely to go back to Jesus, those ones are less likely. It's enormously complex. 

 

45 minutes ago, Stargazer said:

The same arguments are made by atheists to assert that Jesus didn't even exist, and he was actually a fictional character constructed by an early clique of dissident Jews who sought to reform Judaism. Prove that they're wrong, I dare you.

Again, this is a fringe idea only believed by a handful of scholars. The vast majority say Jesus was a historical person. There are a lot of reasons why they think that, but I won't rehash that now. This is already becoming quite a long conversation. 

 

45 minutes ago, Stargazer said:

Methodology can lead to bogus conclusions, sometimes. I may not like what it's saying, or I might be perfectly OK with it. You and your scholars are being quite specific about whether the words of Jesus found in John can be rightly attributed to Jesus. I'm saying that just because they don't seem to fit the narrative as interpreted from how they were expressed in the synoptic gospels doesn't mean Jesus didn't say them, or something approximating them.

Here's my problem with it all. 

How do I know that you and your scholars are operating from an objective point of view? John has Jesus saying this or that which can be understood as teaching the doctrine of pre-existence of souls. You obviously don't like that. You find scholars who argue that the "voice" John gives to Jesus sounds like his own, and it differs from the "voice" that Matthew, Mark, and Luke give. Therefore, Jesus didn't say these things. And thus they are not Jesus's words.

I mean, it's a pretty basic tenet of the historical method that earlier sources are more reliable than later sources. John is the latest canonical gospel, and the words of Jesus in John simply don't sound anything like the Jesus of our earliest and best sources. 

 

45 minutes ago, Stargazer said:

And thus they are not true doctrine.

Scholarship doesn't comment on what is  "true doctrine" - this is you taking it to a theological place. 

 

45 minutes ago, Stargazer said:

I say "balderdash" to that. Let me ask you this: is the Johannine Comma false doctrine because it was demonstrably inserted into Mark by a very late editor, and is not to be found among the earliest manuscripts? Well, I happen to believe that it is false doctrine. But not because it was inserted by a late editor. A late editor is perfectly capable of inserting true doctrine. But the important question is not whether Mark actually wrote what is found in Mark, but whether or not the doctrine that is written is true doctrine. And that cannot be ascertained from the identity of the author. 

Again, "false doctrine" has nothing to do with scholarship. Everything Jesus says about himself in John can be true. It's just historically Jesus probably never said any of it.  True or false doctrine is a religious concern, not a concern of Biblical scholarship. 

 

[mfbukowski]

4 hours ago, Stargazer said:

You (and others) are using sophistry to deny what the scriptures say. You might as well claim it is all science-fiction. 

Good for you! The idea that things are "created" culturally by words is perfect contemporary philosophy, and ancient as well.

"All things were created by the Word".

John is by far, for me, one of the most profound and important books in scripture.

"What's that thing?"

"Oh it's a 'pipe wrench', it's made to hold on to a round pipe so you can turn it when you're, say, ..."

And now the pipe wrench exists as a word and function for another in human culture.

What if a pipe wrench was called a "zobo" after the name of the guy who made it?  Would it be less useful for its purpose?  What if it was invented in 1297 or in 1793?

Names are just that! A word that let's you hang onto a function and its context. 

So ultimately, calling Christ the Word implies that he is the messenger, a human who thinks as I do, a member of human culture,  creator, an inventor, an artist, not some cloud of spirit or  substance, whatever those words mean.

That could be in the book of Fred written last year, and still be scripture to me. But to know it is culturally ancient and that the ancients saw the world as I do, is profound.

Edited November 28, 2022 by mfbukowski

[Eschaton]

53 minutes ago, mfbukowski said:

Good for you! The idea that things are "created" culturally by words is perfect contemporary philosophy, and ancient as well.

"All things were created by the Word".

John is by far, for me, one of the most profound and important books in scripture.

"What's that thing?"

"Oh it's a 'pipe wrench', it's made to hold on to a round pipe so you can turn it when you're, say, ..."

And now the pipe wrench exists as a word and function for another in human culture.

What if a pipe wrench was called a "zobo" after the name of the guy who made it?  Would it be less useful for its purpose?  What if it was invented in 1297 or in 1793?

Names are just that! A word that let's you hang onto a function and its context. 

So ultimately, calling Christ the Word implies that he is the messenger, a human who thinks as I do, a member of human culture,  creator, an inventor, an artist, not some cloud of spirit or  substance, whatever those words mean.

That could be in the book of Fred written last year, and still be scripture to me. But to know it is culturally ancient and that the ancients saw the world as I do, is profound.

Christ as the divine Logos in John is actual a reference to Philo, a Hellenized Jew writing at around the time of Jesus and Paul. Although John is considered to have the highest Christology of the gospels, it's still fairly low compared to contemporary Christianity. The Logos was a demiurge - a creator demigod, or sometimes an angel. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philo's_view_of_God#The_Logos

Quote

Philo used the term Logos to mean an intermediary divine being, or demiurge.[9] Philo followed the Platonic distinction between imperfect matter and perfect Form, and therefore intermediary beings were necessary to bridge the enormous gap between God and the material world.[10] The Logos was the highest of these intermediary beings, and was called by Philo "the first-born of God."[10]

Plato strikes again! 

It's not too far off from the LDS view, but Latter-day Saints would never call Jesus a mere archangel or demigod. John's view is outright heresy from the perspective of Christian orthodoxy. 

 

Edited November 28, 2022 by Eschaton

[mfbukowski]

2 hours ago, Eschaton said:

Christ as the divine Logos in John is actual a reference to Philo, a Hellenized Jew writing at around the time of Jesus and Paul. Although John is considered to have the highest Christology of the gospels, it's still fairly low compared to contemporary Christianity. The Logos was a demiurge - a creator demigod, or sometimes an angel. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philo's_view_of_God#The_Logos

Plato strikes again! 

It's not too far off from the LDS view, but Latter-day Saints would never call Jesus a mere archangel or demigod. John's view is outright heresy from the perspective of Christian orthodoxy. 

 

Why do I care what Philo the apostate said?  More proof of apostasy to me.  I find most of wikipedia good only for the references it provides.  It provides a fairly good bibliography to check out.

[mfbukowski]

Just now, mfbukowski said:

Although John is considered to have the highest Christology of the gospels, it's still fairly low compared to contemporary Christianity.

What is this alleged to mean?

[Eschaton]

31 minutes ago, mfbukowski said:

Why do I care what Philo the apostate said?  More proof of apostasy to me.  I find most of wikipedia good only for the references it provides.  It provides a fairly good bibliography to check out.

You were just saying how much you admired John's doctrine of the "word." It comes from Philo. 

I'm not sure how Philo could be called an "apostate," however. Apostate from what exactly? 

[mfbukowski]

9 hours ago, Eschaton said:

You were just saying how much you admired John's doctrine of the "word." It comes from Philo. 

I'm not sure how Philo could be called an "apostate," however. Apostate from what exactly? 

No, I do not believe that it comes from Philo.   CFR.   If it does, that is inconsistent with Plato, if my interpretation is correct.  My view requires meaning based on contexts so that something like "justice" may be defined differently in different situations.  See below

 I cannot take the time to answer all this and I suppose I should not have responded in the first place.  The God of Plato is the Form of Goodness itself, it cannot possibly be an embodied human.   For Joseph all things are material, including spirit.  The platonic world envisions reality to be abstract immaterial Forms

The bottom line is that for us, we believe in a God who has NONE of the qualities Plato and therefore Plotinus would find worthy of God.   He has a physical body- not acceptable. He created the universe from existing matter- not acceptible.  NOTHING material is "real" nor can it be, because mater is not real, only the realm of Forms are real.  Read the Republic Allegory of the cave.

That is NOT the God of biblical Judaism.  Period.  Drop the mike!

See how the Forms are different from Jewish thought- the religion evolved from Jacob/Israel who wrestled with the Lord:

Just read it- it should be obvious.  Note especially the passages on words and how differently they are perceived in Plato vs the master negotiators of Judaism, the debates in synagogues etc.  This is not even close to Judaism, especially on the issue of God being "THE WORD".  And 3 consubstantial beings being one "Person", ONE GOD, our Father in heaven? There is absolutely no possibility in Plato and therefore Plotinus.

https://faculty.washington.edu/smcohen/320/thforms.htm   Highlights are from the author, not me.

 

Quote

 

Arguments for Existence of Forms

Plato sometimes writes as if he takes the existence of Forms for granted, as a matter of faith. But sometimes he offers arguments for them. Each argument is connected to a function Plato has in mind for Forms to play. Some of these “reasons” for believing in Forms don’t really add up to arguments, but some do. Plato, in any event, was not very systematic about his arguments.

 

1. Forms are objects corresponding to Socratic definitions.
   A Form is supposed to provide an objective basis for moral concepts. A definition is correct just in case it accurately describes a Form. The definition of Justice, e.g., is that statement which correctly tells us What Justice Is.

    

2. Forms are objects of recollection.
   The knowledge we get when we are in possession of a Socratic definition is a priori, not empirical. So Forms are the entities for such a priori (= recollectible) truths to be about.

    

3. “Imperfection” argument.
   Forms are the real entities to which the objects of our sensory experience (approximately) correspond. We make judgments about such properties as equal, circular, square, etc., even though we have never actually experienced any of them in perception. Forms are the entities that perfectly embody these characteristics we have in mind even though we have never experienced them perceptually.

    

4. Argument from knowledge (“from the sciences”).
   What is our knowledge “about”? When we know something, what is our knowledge knowledge of? Plato supposes that there is a class of stable, permanent, and unchanging objects that warrant our knowledge claims.

    

5. “One Over Many” argument.
   A famous passage in the Republic (596a) suggests a semantic role for the Forms (“there is one Form for each set of many things to which we give the same name”). That is, when you use the word ‘just’ and I use the word ‘just’, what makes it one and the same thing that we’re talking about? Plato’s answer is: the Form of Justice, the “one over the many.”

   Plato believes that there is a non-conventionalist answer to questions of meaning: there is some one thing that is referred to by ‘just’ whenever it is used. Hence, when you talk about justice and I talk about justice, we are talking about the same thing. We belong to the same world, not each of us in his own private world. If we disagree in what we apply the term ‘just’ to, we cannot both be right.

 

1.  

Edited November 29, 2022 by mfbukowski

[The Nehor]

17 hours ago, Stargazer said:

Well, they do exist, even if they're rare. There's a few well-known examples, and not just among communist and fascist dictators.

I am quite confident that the Light of Christ lives in everyone from atheists to popes. It's just that some of them work hard to ignore it. Regardless of any belief status.

Just as an exercise, I once tried to picture myself whipping out a knife and stabbing some random person to death with it. The attempt at picturing myself doing so made me sick to my stomach. And not because I was afraid of being caught. It was because it was just wrong. I wasn't even worried about being caught. Just the act itself was sickening to me.

I can’t visualize it but I can come up with a knife attack mentally and go through where I need to plunge it to kill them or where to cut to drive them off. I don’t feel anything in that state. I doubt I could do it in person unless I was in actual danger. It is hard to know. I have had varied reactions to situations in which my life was threatened. Sometimes I mentally try to shut down and have to force myself to act. Sometime I dive into action and am excited and thrilled in a weird way. Not sure what causes the difference.

[The Nehor]

17 hours ago, Stargazer said:

Well, that sucks. 

But I'm not entirely sure what it means to experience this condition. Hyperphantasia is the name of the extreme opposite of the condition, apparently. I suppose a lessened form of it might be called hypophantasia. The condition was first noted by a researcher back in 1880, but hasn't been greatly studied until more recently.

Had to look it up. There's a Wikipedia article about it. One thing in there was stated that coincides with what you wrote above: "He identified that aphantasics lack voluntary visualizations only; they are still able to have involuntary visualizations such as dreams."

I am amazed. It turns out that there are things out there in the world that I'd never previously heard of. Who knew?  

I have a friend who has hyperphantasia. She is a brilliant artist. She can superimpose her “mind’s eye” on the real world. It borders on controlled hallucination I think. When I first heard that people visualize I assumed it was a metaphor. Now I realize it is not. I am trying to break out of the limitation but have had only limited success. One of my earliest memories suggests I used to visualize a lot more. I can remember what the image was but I can’t see it. It was a combination of the real world and something in a coloring book I was using. I was afraid because I was about to be moved from Nursery into Primary so I was probably two years old, maybe three.

[Eschaton]

8 hours ago, mfbukowski said:

No, I do not believe that it comes from Philo.   CFR.   If it does, that is inconsistent with Plato, if my interpretation is correct.  My view requires meaning based on contexts so that something like "justice" may be defined differently in different situations.  See below

 

 Here's some further reading for you regarding Philo's influence on the author of John in regards to the doctrine of the Logos. 

 

Divine Embodiment in Jewish Antiquity: Rediscovering the Jewishness of John’s Incarnate Christ (Deborah Forger 2017)

Quote

 

When, for instance, Philo describes the logos as the “eldest” of all created things (Leg. 3, 61, 173; Migr. 6), or the “first-born son of God” (Agr. 12, 51), or the “man of God” (Conf. 11, 41; cf. 14, 62; 28, 146), or the “image of God” (Conf. 28), or “second to God” (Leg All II.21, 86), or a “second God” (QE II, 62, Marcus, LCL), these labels suggest that though the logos shares in the divine identity, the logos does not possess equal standing with Israel’s God...

The author of the Gospel of John similarly emphasizes the unity between the divine logos and Israel’s supreme God (to whom he often refers as the Father), but he also maintains that the former is subordinate to the latter. This link becomes particularly significant after the logos of John’s prologue is explicitly identified with Jesus (cf. John 1:18), the Son of the Father. In John 3:35, for instance, the author stresses that the Son does not have his own authority, but that the Father “has given all things into his hand (πάντα δέδωκεν ἐν τῇ χειρὶ αὐτοῦ).” Likewise, in John 5:27, the author notes that the Father “has given to him [i.e. to the son] authority to do the judging (ἐξουσίαν ἔδωκεν αὐτῷ κρίσιν ποιεῖν),” but this implies that Jesus cannot act in this authoritative role without the permission of his Father (cf. John 10:29, 13:16, and 14:28)...Since the Gospel of John unequivocally states that the divine word became flesh in the person of Jesus (cf. John 1:14), depicts Jesus as being one with God the Father...

 

 

King and Messiah as Son of God: Divine, Human, and Angelic Messianic Figures in Biblical and Related Literature (Eerdmans, 2008)

Quote

The "word" in John 1:1 plays a major role in creation. All things are said to have come into being through it (or him, in light of vv.10-17), and nothing at all has come into being apart from him (1:3). This role in creation is analogous to the role assigned to the logos by Philo and Justin Martyr. Both writers adapted this aspect of Middle Platonic philosophy in order to explain how the transcendent God could also be the creator of the material world.

http://jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/10618-memra

Quote

It is difficult to say how far the rabbinical concept of the Memra, which is used now as a parallel to the divine Wisdom and again as a parallel to the Shekinah, had come under the influence of the Greek term "Logos," which denotes both word and reason, and, perhaps owing to Egyptian mythological notions, assumed in the philosophical system of Heraclitos, of Plato, and of the Stoa the metaphysical meaning of world-constructive and world-permeating intelligence. The Memra as a cosmic power furnished Philo the corner-stone upon which he built his peculiar semi-Jewish philosophy. Philo's "divine thought," "the image" and "first-born son" of God, "the archpriest," "intercessor," and "paraclete" of humanity, the "arch type of man" (see Philo), paved the way for the Christian conceptions of the Incarnation ("the Word become flesh") and the Trinity.

 

 

8 hours ago, mfbukowski said:

 I cannot take the time to answer all this and I suppose I should not have responded in the first place.  The God of Plato is the Form of Goodness itself, it cannot possibly be an embodied human.   For Joseph all things are material, including spirit.  The platonic world envisions reality to be abstract immaterial Forms

Yes, that's the whole reason for the Logos to exist - it's a way to give God some distance from the material. The Logos (son of God, creator, archtype of man) does the materialistic work of creation, giving God the father some distance from it. Even in more materialistic Mormonism Jesus is still the logos, son of God and creator. While LDS theology is different from Platonism, it probably wouldn't have the concept of Jesus as the creator and logos without that early seed of middle Platonism.