Biblical Figures' Historicity Confirmed by Extra-Biblical Sources - Do you care?

[Mfbnew]

error

Edited December 6, 2024 by Mfbnew

[Robert F. Smith]

On 12/4/2024 at 6:54 PM, Mfbnew said:

Moroni 10-4-5 IS a major part of my conversion and life.   I could tell the story and maybe I will here, though it is too sacred for me to tell it here.   I find it impossible NOT to see it as "Revelatory" and I am not sure what you mean by "concrete rather than figurative".   Who is pouring the "concrete"?

Bottom line: I got clobbered big time.   

OK I will tell the story leaving out the parts I feel are "too sacred" to mention in this context.   I don't know if it will help anyone but I hope it does- hope for things UNSEEN!

I am not sure what you are saying here.  This was the most amazing REVELATION I have received- PROVING to me that God wanted me in this church.   It was an incident where I was lost in another city, pondering the first words I had read of the Book of Mormon.  I was 30 years old, and had all my courses done to get a Master's in philosophy, on a path toward my PhD.

............................................. 

I did, and suddenly in front of me, there was and LDS chapel.

There is no way that these experiences were NOT "revelatory"

That is beyond my comprehension, I'll give you that.  And it is the Latter-day Saint (and authentic Christian) ace-in-the-hole when it comes to faith, and leads to a powerful unity of the faithful.

Reminds me of the occasion last year when NT scholar and atheist Bart Ehrman corrected an evangelical opponent (Justin Bass) in debate that the Book of Mormon witnesses held their testimonies till their dying day.  “Bart Ehrman vs Justin Bass • Did Jesus of Nazareth rise from the dead?” Premier Unbelievable? April 6, 2023, online at

.  Actual historians, like Ehrman, take witnesses seriously.

[Robert F. Smith]

16 hours ago, Mfbnew said:

Well I guess this shows we agree, finally.  I am not sure that was your intent, but that is how I see it.

.......................

"Seeing clearly" is exactly the problem !  As I SEE it  - there we go- using our symbolic linguistic grunts to describe a world which does not "correspond" with reality-which is all about how we see the world, not the world itself. 

This is exactly my view, but in my case, it indicates that -very clearly- they have NOT FOUND the "concrete reality" you appear to me, to be seeking.  I know you are familiar with the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle.   .............

And with Quantum Physics, and super position, and with Schrodinger's cat, but I don't really understand any of it.  And God the Father is still laughing at all of us trying to figure it all out, and failing.  Reminds me of Hugh Nibley's out of body experience (NDE) when he was 12 (he died for a while in Loma Linda while undergoing an appendectomy).  He said that he was able to do advanced math on the other side, but not here.

16 hours ago, Mfbnew said:

.....................................

Well, as a pretty orthodox believer in Pragmatism, I certainly agree with that, and would never argue against it.  But if the human limits are obvious, what are we talking about?  Even in this conversation, it seems to me that "human limits" are precisely what I WISH were "obvious".   Perhaps one could say that precisely what I want to emphasize is that "human limits" make it impossible to know "reality as it is"- which incidentally is also scripture: "Now we see through a dark mirror (I would add "created by our limited perception), but THEN, face to face".

As I see it, that means that there IS a state possible for us to reach, in which, perhaps by revelation, we WILL see "face to face".

Yes, but on the other side of the veil.

16 hours ago, Mfbnew said:

But quite obviously our lives are deeply re-constructed by science in ways that are "useful".   ....................

Yep.

16 hours ago, Mfbnew said:

............ Moody Blues.......

Cold hearted orb that rules the night

Removes the color from our sight

Red is grey, and yellow white

But we decide which is right

"And which IS an illusion!"

............................

It seems these "ordinary folk" do occasionally wonder about existential questions.

That poet is far from ordinary, and that is the highlight of the entire piece, IMHO.  The poetic is noetic.

[Mfbnew]

9 hours ago, Robert F. Smith said:

Yes, but on the other side of the veil.

I am not sure what this means.   

YES of course it would be on the other side of the veil, but then it appears that you are acknowledging that we only see "things as they are" - "on the other side of the veil".

That is my position.   So what happens on THIS side of the veil then becomes by definition where the "illusion" happens?   So then we agree on that?

That has been my point- that all the "science"- in the world, in it's state today- does not deliver "things as they are", but only human perception OF the world.

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/james/

Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

Quote

 

 

James’s chapter on “Pragmatism and Humanism” sets out his voluntaristic epistemology. “We carve out everything,” James states, “just as we carve out constellations, to serve our human purposes” (P 100). Nevertheless, he recognizes “resisting factors in every experience of truth-making” (P 117), including not only our present sensations or experiences but the whole body of our prior beliefs. James holds neither that we create our truths out of nothing, nor that truth is entirely independent of humanity. He embraces “the humanistic principle: you can’t weed out the human contribution” (P 122). He also embraces a metaphysics of process in the claim that “for pragmatism [reality] is still in the making,” whereas for “rationalism reality is ready-made and complete from all eternity” (P 123). Pragmatism’s final chapter on “Pragmatism and Religion” follows James’s line in Varieties in attacking “transcendental absolutism” for its unverifiable account of God, and in defending a “pluralistic and moralistic religion” (144) based on human experience. “On pragmatistic principles,” James writes, “if the hypothesis of God works satisfactorily in the widest sense of the word, it is true” (143).

A Pluralistic Universe (1909)

Originally delivered in Oxford as a set of lectures “On the Present Situation in Philosophy,” James begins his book, as he had begun Pragmatism, with a discussion of the temperamental determination of philosophical theories, which, James states, “are just so many visions, modes of feeling the whole push … forced on one by one’s total character and experience, and on the whole preferred—there is no other truthful word—as one’s best working attitude” (PU 15). Maintaining that a philosopher’s “vision” is “the important thing” about him (PU 3), James condemns the “over-technicality and consequent dreariness of the younger disciples at our American universities…” (PU 13).

James passes from critical discussions of Josiah Royce’s idealism and the “vicious intellectualism” of Hegel to philosophers whose visions he admires: Gustav Fechner and Henri Bergson. He praises Fechner for holding that “the whole universe in its different spans and wave-lengths, exclusions and developments, is everywhere alive and conscious” (PU, 70), and he seeks to refine and justify Fechner’s idea that separate human, animal and vegetable consciousnesses meet or merge in a “consciousness of still wider scope” (PU 72). James employs Henri Bergson’s critique of “intellectualism” to argue that the “concrete pulses of experience appear pent in by no such definite limits as our conceptual substitutes are confined by. They run into one another continuously and seem to interpenetrate” (PU 127). James concludes by embracing a position that he had more tentatively set forth in The Varieties of Religious Experience: that religious experiences “point with reasonable probability to the continuity of our consciousness with a wider spiritual environment from which the ordinary prudential man (who is the only man that scientific psychology, so called, takes cognizance of) is shut off” (PU 135). Whereas in Pragmatism James subsumes the religious within the pragmatic (as yet another way of successfully making one’s way through the world), in A Pluralistic Universe he suggests that the religious offers a superior relation to the universe.

Essays in Radical Empiricism (1912)

This posthumous collection includes James’s groundbreaking essays on “pure experience,” originally published in 1904–5. James’s fundamental idea is that mind and matter are both aspects of, or structures formed from, a more fundamental stuff—pure experience—that (despite being called “experience”) is neither mental nor physical. Pure experience, James explains, is “the immediate flux of life which furnishes the material to our later reflection with its conceptual categories… a that which is not yet any definite what, tho’ ready to be all sorts of whats…” (ERE 46). That “whats” pure experience may be are minds and bodies, people and material objects, but this depends not on a fundamental ontological difference among these “pure experiences,” but on the relations into which they enter. Certain sequences of pure experiences constitute physical objects, and others constitute persons; but one pure experience (say the perception of a chair) may be part both of the sequence constituting the chair and of the sequence constituting a person. Indeed, one pure experience might be part of two distinct minds, as James explains in a chapter entitled “How Two Minds Can Know One Thing.”

 

 

[Teancum]

On 12/3/2024 at 1:38 PM, Mfbnew said:

What scientific evidence is needed to vote Republican or Democrat?  Or that abortion is murdering a baby, or the rights of a woman over "her own body"?  What scientific evidence is needed to show that we should treat people the way we want to be treated, or that "all humans are created equal"?  Or that we should support Israel or their enemies, whoever they may be?   How about picking a mate based on the "knowledge" that you will be with that person in 50 years?   What evidence do you have that YOU will pick the right school and get the best education for the jobs you would like to have? Or even knowing WHAT job you would like to have "when you grow up"?  Or that it's wrong to grab the purse of an old lady in a store?   Or just steal stuff from anyone you can?

You are confusing what can be confirmed by science and what cannot!

Matters of "the heart" cannot EVER be confirmed by science- they are about decisions YOU MAKE in governing your life, and how you want to live.  Trying to apply science in these matters is like alleging that we can find "evidence" of the future before it happens.   All of these are matters of FAITH!!

"HOPE for things UNSEEN"!

The question is not about historical accuracy and never has been.   

The choice is deciding on what stories work for you, to give you a happy life.   If that changes, it changes and you find another story, like that Science is useful in spiritual matters.

You don't use a monkey wrench to program a computer.

Category errors.

 

So much mental gyrations in the above post. I don't have the energy right now to engage you on the many topics above.  But no, many of the things you list above are not matters of faith, at least when faith is used in a religious belief sense. So why do you not accept the Quran is sacred scripture that you should live your life by? 

[Teancum]

On 12/3/2024 at 1:38 PM, Mfbnew said:

What scientific evidence is needed to vote Republican or Democrat?  Or that abortion is murdering a baby, or the rights of a woman over "her own body"?  What scientific evidence is needed to show that we should treat people the way we want to be treated, or that "all humans are created equal"?  Or that we should support Israel or their enemies, whoever they may be?   How about picking a mate based on the "knowledge" that you will be with that person in 50 years?   What evidence do you have that YOU will pick the right school and get the best education for the jobs you would like to have? Or even knowing WHAT job you would like to have "when you grow up"?  Or that it's wrong to grab the purse of an old lady in a store?   Or just steal stuff from anyone you can?

You are confusing what can be confirmed by science and what cannot!

Matters of "the heart" cannot EVER be confirmed by science- they are about decisions YOU MAKE in governing your life, and how you want to live.  Trying to apply science in these matters is like alleging that we can find "evidence" of the future before it happens.   All of these are matters of FAITH!!

"HOPE for things UNSEEN"!

The question is not about historical accuracy and never has been.   

The choice is deciding on what stories work for you, to give you a happy life.   If that changes, it changes and you find another story, like that Science is useful in spiritual matters.

You don't use a monkey wrench to program a computer.

Category errors.

 

Ah ok, You are not a new poster. I did not notice that this is the new @mfbukowski  We have been round and round with this have we not? 😁

[Robert F. Smith]

14 hours ago, Mfbnew said:

......................

YES of course it would be on the other side of the veil, but then it appears that you are acknowledging that we only see "things as they are" - "on the other side of the veil".

That is my position.   So what happens on THIS side of the veil then becomes by definition where the "illusion" happens?   So then we agree on that?

That has been my point- that all the "science"- in the world, in it's state today- does not deliver "things as they are", but only human perception OF the world.

.......................

Apparently so, although the reality may be that we are all part of a vast and harmless computer simulation, or other mode which clouds our limited and crippled perceptions.  What William James has to offer is talk therapy, not certainty.

We humans do the best we can with what we've got.  However, Yuval Noah Harari says that we humans are singularly stupid, and I tend to agree.

[Autonomous]

14 hours ago, Teancum said:

...why do you not accept the Quran is sacred scripture that you should live your life by? 

 

I love Mark Twain's statement - "The easy confidence with which I know another man's religion is folly teaches me to suspect that my own is also."—Mark Twain 

It is so important to approach our beliefs with humility and an openness to the wisdom found in other traditions. No one "knows" anything, no one "knows" their redeemer lives, silly song.  We only know our own cultural, philosophical, and spiritual upbringing.  

 

No one should ever claim to "know" anything, or assert that their group is the "true" one or that they hold exclusive "authority." Such attitudes are prideful, close-minded, divisive, and inherently disrespectful toward others.  

[Mfbnew]

https://www.patheos.com/blogs/thereligioushistorynerd/2024/12/was-there-a-historical-buddha/?utm_medium=push&utm_source=pushly&utm_campaign=5895952

Was there a Historic Buddha?

And who cares?

Heavy, dude.

It must be a bit of a virus going around.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-neuroscience-of-reality/

And for those of you who want more science here you go.

https://lab.cccb.org/en/anil-seth-reality-is-a-controlled-hallucination/

Maybe my views on this sort of thing go back to my Buddhist days.

I sure hope so. 

 

 

 

 

Edited December 7, 2024 by Mfbnew

[Mfbnew]

6 hours ago, Robert F. Smith said:

What William James has to offer is talk therapy, not certainty.

Yep, it seems you finally got it.     I mean he was one of the guys who invented "psychology"  😁

As I said earlier, certainty IS the illusion.

Everything we know about reality is in that box just above our shoulders 

How did it get in there?

And certainty pretends that it is the Boss, when it is just another piece of gravel rolling around in there.

I actually prefer church doctrine-  FAITH is HOPE for things UNSEEN!

So that's MY two sense (s)! 

Edited December 7, 2024 by Mfbnew

[Mfbnew]

18 hours ago, Teancum said:

So why do you not accept the Quran is sacred scripture that you should live your life by? 

Who told you what I "don't believe"?   In fact there are many many things in the Quran which give good advice about how to live one's life. 

I don't think that anything that comes from a human brain is infallible though.  And yes, some human somewhere had to write it all down., and do so in a human language.   

OOPS there goes infallibility.

And that's where that great "translated correctly"- using the 1828 definition of "translate" -comes in.  There's a link above somewhere.

Look up "1828 Webster"

Edited December 7, 2024 by Mfbnew

[Mfbnew]

7 hours ago, Robert F. Smith said:

Apparently so, although the reality may be that we are all part of a vast and harmless computer simulation, or other mode which clouds our limited and crippled perceptions.  What William James has to offer is talk therapy, not certainty.

We humans do the best we can with what we've got.  However, Yuval Noah Harari says that we humans are singularly stupid, and I tend to agree.

Which of course must make him the only human who is NOT stupid.

[Mfbnew]

7 hours ago, Autonomous said:

. No one "knows" anything, no one "knows" their redeemer lives,...

Look up the Hebrew word "yada".

 

 

Edited December 7, 2024 by Mfbnew

[Robert F. Smith]

4 hours ago, Mfbnew said:

Which of course must make him the only human who is NOT stupid.

Comes under the heading of "Know thyself" (inscription on Temple of Apollo, Delphi), or as Clint Eastwood put it: “A man’s got to know his limitations”

Edited December 7, 2024 by Robert F. Smith

[Robert F. Smith]

42 minutes ago, Mfbnew said:

Look up the Hebrew word "yada".

From which is derived Yoda

"Your decision, or ours, it was not. The force it was."

[Autonomous]

5 hours ago, Mfbnew said:

Look up the Hebrew word "yada".

 

 

Look up the words Jnana, Vidya, Ma‘rifa, ‘Ilm, Ñāṇa, Paññā, Zhī, Jué, Gnosis, Khwarrah, Rigpa, Khshathra... 

Yada Yada Yada.

[sunstoned]

42 minutes ago, Autonomous said:

Look up the words Jnana, Vidya, Ma‘rifa, ‘Ilm, Ñāṇa, Paññā, Zhī, Jué, Gnosis, Khwarrah, Rigpa, Khshathra... 

Yada Yada Yada.

I thought yada yada yada was from Seinfeld.

[Autonomous]

10 hours ago, sunstoned said:

I thought yada yada yada was from Seinfeld.

 

Star Wars, Seinfeld, ... about 20%ish ?  Perhaps more?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jews_in_American_cinema

[Mfbnew]

On 12/7/2024 at 3:18 PM, Robert F. Smith said:

"Your decision, or ours, it was not. The force it was."

I love his Latin word order. !  You get to hear the whole story before you know what was going on!

"To the store, to buy watermellon I went."    There a Catholic in there must be!

 

[Mfbnew]

On 12/6/2024 at 3:37 PM, Teancum said:

Ah ok, You are not a new poster. I did not notice that this is the new @mfbukowski  We have been round and round with this have we not? 😁

So how am I forcing you to respond?

[Teancum]

13 hours ago, Mfbnew said:

So how am I forcing you to respond?

Huh?  What are you talking about?

[Mfbnew]

On 12/6/2024 at 3:37 PM, Teancum said:

We have been round and round with this have we not? 😁

We have.

And so all you have to do is ignore me.

No need to keep on repeating what has already been beaten to death.  🫣