My Great Awakening

[L Verge]

I admit to being a fan of such shows as Criminal Minds, Law and Order, NCIS, and others. Last night, I was catching up on a 2017 episode of Criminal Minds and had an epiphany because it was devoted more to analyzing a crime than in portraying the horror of it -- and all of a sudden, I realized that they were dealing with the same situation that we have been dealing with here: a community of conspiracy theorists who manipulate past and present events to attempt to convince folks that all of our lives and situations are controlled by government and certain elements of society.

All of a sudden, the word "truthers" was used. Merriam-Webster Dictionaries define the word as a noun: one who believes that the truth about an important subject or event is being concealed from the public by a powerful conspiracy.

But it is not flattering to be called a "truther." The term originated, as far as anyone can tell, to characterize people who embraced alternative explanations for the Sept. 11 attacks.

Recent Examples on the Web
These Shazaam truthers were all riffing off one another, giving each other subtle suggestions to form a false narrative that exists in their minds.
— Brian Resnick, Vox, "We’re underestimating the mind-warping potential of fake video," 23 July 2018
Alex Jones, the shouty man behind InfoWars and a Sandy Hook truther, took to Twitter at the start of last week to try and incite more fear amongst his fanbase.

While this source traces the term to 9/11, we certainly know that conspiracy theorists have been making news since the 1930s, since Roswell, the Kennedy assassination, and now they are heavily into the Sandy Hook shooting - which they believe was a staged event and that no deaths occurred. There are talk shows devoted to these theories, lawsuits stemming from Sandy Hook where parents of slain children have been harassed tirelessly, and of course a multitude of sources online. Name an event, and they have a theory.

In another posting yesterday, I quoted John Adams regarding "facts." Last night's show on Criminal Minds had another excellent quote from Daniel Patrick Moynihan (which I'm paraphrasing): "Everyone is entitled to his own opinion; however, no one is entitled to his own set of facts."

In verifying that quote, I did find reference to two other men having said words to the same effect: ... proceedings of a Senate Intelligence Committee in 1980 attribute the identical quote to James R. Schlesinger (at p. 110), possibly made during the course of 1973 Congressional testimony. Also see Bernard Baruch, who said "Every man has a right to his own opinion, but no man has a right to be wrong in his facts." in the January 6, 1950 issue of the Deming (New Mexico) Headlight

[Christine]

It takes a despicable kind of evil to torment and harass a parent who has lost a child to unspeakable violence. No words for that.

[Warren]

Second that.

I can' tell you the number of very intelligent friends I have that swear there was no moon landing. One is a former Rolls Royce Trent aircraft engine engineer.

Don't get me started on the Holocaust Deniers.

[John Fazio]

Laurie:

Some people are simply incapable of reason, and I'm sure it has always been that way. A few nights ago, at a gathering, the subject of the historicity of the Christmas story came up. One of our number said she believed it. I asked her which one she believed, inasmuch as the accounts given in Matthew and Luke are very different and not reconcilable (Mark and John are silent on the subject). She said she believed both of them. I said: "With respect, you cannot believe both of them, because they are radically different and not reconcilable, so please tell me which one you believe." Her answer? "I can believe anything I want to". I considered asking her whether or not she believed that 2 plus 2 equals 6, but thought better of it. One has to know when to stop. With the likes of Alex Jones, I do not even begin.

John

[Gene C]

I will politely disagree with you John, about Matthew and Luke.
Matthew was a Jew and wrote to a Jewish audience. Luke was a Gentile and wrote to a Gentile audience.
The both wanted to emphasize different, but not mutually exclusive points regarding the birth of Jesus,
that would be important to their readers who had different cultural backgrounds.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled Lincoln and related subjects forum

[John Fazio]

(01-03-2019 12:45 PM)Gene C Wrote:  I will politely disagree with you John, about Matthew and Luke.
Matthew was a Jew and wrote to a Jewish audience. Luke was a Gentile and wrote to a Gentile audience.
The both wanted to emphasize different, but not mutually exclusive points regarding the birth of Jesus,
that would be important to their readers who had different cultural backgrounds.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled Lincoln and related subjects forum

Gene:

I quite understand the audiences to which the two evangelists wrote, and therefore their general orientation, but that does not alter the fact that the two birth accounts are radically different and therefore cannot both be historical. In Matthew,
the birth occurs in a house and wise men come from the east, with gifts, following Jesus's star, at Herod's behest. Joseph then takes Mary and Jesus into Egypt, being warned by an angel of danger if they remain in Bethlehem, during which period Herod massacres the innocents and after which Joseph returns to Israel, but not to Bethlehem, but to Nazareth. No taxation, no inn, no manger, no shepherds. In Luke, Joseph takes Mary to Bethlehem because he is to be taxed there, being of the House of David. While there, she gives birth to Jesus in a manger, because there is no room for them in the inn. Shepherds come to the manger, having been told of the birth by angels. No house, no Herod, no wise men, no journey to Egypt and then to Nazareth and no massacre of the innocents. The two accounts are, obviously, very different and therefore cannot both be believed. Belief is not a matter of volition; it is a matter of faith and conviction. Two and two cannot equal six just because one wants to believe it. We all need to learn how to reason better than we often do.

John

[Gene C]

(01-03-2019 04:54 PM)John Fazio Wrote:  Gene:

I quite understand the audiences to which the two evangelists wrote, and therefore their general orientation, but that does not alter the fact that the two birth accounts are radically different and therefore cannot both be historical. In Matthew,
the birth occurs in a house and wise men come from the east, with gifts, following Jesus's star, at Herod's behest. Joseph then takes Mary and Jesus into Egypt, being warned by an angel of danger if they remain in Bethlehem, during which period Herod massacres the innocents and after which Joseph returns to Israel, but not to Bethlehem, but to Nazareth. No taxation, no inn, no manger, no shepherds. In Luke, Joseph takes Mary to Bethlehem because he is to be taxed there, being of the House of David. While there, she gives birth to Jesus in a manger, because there is no room for them in the inn. Shepherds come to the manger, having been told of the birth by angels. No house, no Herod, no wise men, no journey to Egypt and then to Nazareth and no massacre of the innocents. The two accounts are, obviously, very different and therefore cannot both be believed. Belief is not a matter of volition; it is a matter of faith and conviction. Two and two cannot equal six just because one wants to believe it. We all need to learn how to reason better than we often do.

John

In Matthew, it does not state where in Bethlehem the birth takes place, it does say when the wise men come to worship the child, they come to a house.
In Luke's telling of the story, it seems the Shepherds may have reached Bethlehem before the wise men and find Jesus in a manger.
In Matthew, by the time the wise men show up, we don't know how much later, Joseph has been able to find better lodging for his family.
I find it reasonable that Mathew would want to emphasize the ruthless actions of Herod, as his readers would be very familiar with the massacre of the innocents and some of the prophecies regarding the birth of Jesus found in the Old Testament. No contradiction, just different details told by the different writers.
Yes, the two accounts are different, but that does not mean they both cannot be believed.

[John Fazio]

(01-03-2019 05:47 PM)Gene C Wrote:  

(01-03-2019 04:54 PM)John Fazio Wrote:  Gene:

I quite understand the audiences to which the two evangelists wrote, and therefore their general orientation, but that does not alter the fact that the two birth accounts are radically different and therefore cannot both be historical. In Matthew,
the birth occurs in a house and wise men come from the east, with gifts, following Jesus's star, at Herod's behest. Joseph then takes Mary and Jesus into Egypt, being warned by an angel of danger if they remain in Bethlehem, during which period Herod massacres the innocents and after which Joseph returns to Israel, but not to Bethlehem, but to Nazareth. No taxation, no inn, no manger, no shepherds. In Luke, Joseph takes Mary to Bethlehem because he is to be taxed there, being of the House of David. While there, she gives birth to Jesus in a manger, because there is no room for them in the inn. Shepherds come to the manger, having been told of the birth by angels. No house, no Herod, no wise men, no journey to Egypt and then to Nazareth and no massacre of the innocents. The two accounts are, obviously, very different and therefore cannot both be believed. Belief is not a matter of volition; it is a matter of faith and conviction. Two and two cannot equal six just because one wants to believe it. We all need to learn how to reason better than we often do.

John

In Matthew, it does not state where in Bethlehem the birth takes place, it does say when the wise men come to worship the child, they come to a house.
In Luke's telling of the story, it seems the Shepherds may have reached Bethlehem before the wise men and find Jesus in a manger.
In Matthew, by the time the wise men show up, we don't know how much later, Joseph has been able to find better lodging for his family.
I find it reasonable that Mathew would want to emphasize the ruthless actions of Herod, as his readers would be very familiar with the massacre of the innocents and some of the prophecies regarding the birth of Jesus found in the Old Testament. No contradiction, just different details told by the different writers.
Yes, the two accounts are different, but that does not mean they both cannot be believed.

Gene:

I find your attempt to reconcile the radically different accounts tortured. And I believe that any reasonable person would agree with that judgment. I recall Daniel Dennett's statement that many people do not really believe in the dogma of their faiths; they believe in belief, or as I prefer to express it, they believe in the desirability of professing belief. To begin with, there is absolutely no corroborating account in all of ancient history for the massacre of the innocents, which we would expect if it were historical (historians of the period, including Josephus, Philo, Tacitus, etc., say nothing about it). Secondly, there was no one there to record the event, as there was with the Passion. I believe the latter to be historical, because it appears in all four canonical gospels and because the accounts are essentially the same, the differences being only of minutia. And also because there were plenty of eyewitnesses who were still alive when the first three gospels were written and could therefore have contradicted the accounts, but none did. The far greater likelihood, re the Christmas stories, is that they were tacked on by two evangelists to invest the person of Jesus with a miraculous beginning, a common practice among the ancient writers and among peoples all over the world. Much else in the gospels was also tacked on---embellishments of the basic account of a life, again a common practice with ancient writers, especially when they were trying to persuade their audiences, which the evangelists clearly were. The facts that the accounts differ so substantially, that two of the four evangelists are silent on the subject (which we would not expect if one of the stories were true), and that Jesus himself never said anything about his birth (not that was recorded, anyway), condemns the stories as fiction. But that's nothing new; we all live with a lot of fictions.

Thanks for jousting. It stimulates the brain.

John

[Rob Wick]

I have to say that I tiptoe lightly around discussions like this, but especially here, because I consider Gene to be a dear, close friend. If every Christian I ever encountered had been like Gene, who knows how my life would have turned out. That said, I come closer to John's point of view, although I think I take it one step further. I've never made a secret of the fact that I'm an agnostic who leans heavily toward atheism. One of the main reasons (other than how an omniscient, all-powerful God could either be unable or uninterested in stopping suffering) are the contradictions evident in the Bible. I think writers like Bart Ehrman have opened several people's eyes as to the stories we've been told about how the Bible was created.

Best
Rob

[Steve]

It'll only be a matter of time before a certain somebody joins this conversation declaring that the differences between Matthew and Luke in the nativity story are evidence of a Roman conspiracy to frame Judas Iscariot; backing this up with a piece of papyrus "found" by Ray Neff but only available in a typewritten copy.

[John Fazio]

Steve:

You are too funny. You made me laugh out loud.

Rob, your beliefs are just about identical to mine. I too lean to atheism, but can't quite make it, because I haven't been able to figure out how the universe spontaneously created itself out of nothing. I read Steven Hawking's A Brief History of Time and Lawrence Krauss's A Universe From Nothing, expecting an explanation, but all I got were words. I sent Krauss a long letter pointing out all the flaws in his arguments, but never received a reply. That means he either had no good response to my critique or he thought I wasn't worth his time. I prefer to believe the former and assume he wrote his book for mercenary reasons rather than to truly enlighten. He postulates the spontaneous creation of positrons out of nothing at the atomic level. I told him that I had a hard time believing that positrons are responsible for the Himalaya mountains, especially when one considers that a positron is smaller than an atom and an atom is to an orange what a cherry is to the planet earth. I will become an atheist when someone explains the origin of the universe to me in terms I can understand, and I will become a theist when someone explains how, when and where this Ultimate Boeing 747 came into existence, i.e. an omniscient, omnipotent and omnipresent being who knows everything, even the future, can do anything and is everywhere at the same time. The Bible (the Old Testament) says we are created in his image. If that is true, it only deepens the mystery, because I have a hard time believing that a being who looks like us is everywhere at the same time. Bottom line: We don't even know how life began on this planet, much less how the universe came into existence. Put me down as a devout agnostic unless and until we have more evidence.

John

[Gene C]

Thank you for your kind words Rob.

Some of the writers you have mentioned John, I am unfamiliar with, but their arguments have been around for a long time. I do want to respond, I'm not as gifted with words and writing as you and Rob are. This is a bigger subject than this forum was created to address.

I appreciate your comments above John.
In the Bible, the book of Job discusses the problem of human suffering. Part of the answer is that we do not have the ability to fully comprehend and understand God. Our pride gets in the way of our accepting this. It's like Adam and Eve in the garden. We want to be like God and know it all. We can't, it's not our place. But there is still a lot about God that we can understand.

I do believe we have a loving and caring God. (John 3:16-17)
"16 For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. 17 For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him."
(John 3:16-17) https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?se...ersion=NIV

Eternal Life is something Atheism and Agnosticism can not offer.
God does.

There is a lot more we all can say on this subject, I will stop here.

Steve, I enjoyed your comment too.

[John Fazio]

Gene, Rob and Steve:

Thanks.

John

[Rob Wick]

First, Steve, I'm glad I wasn't drinking something when I read your post. Otherwise, my screen would have been soaked.

Given that Lincoln struggled with his religious beliefs (even up to the day he died, I believe) this kind of discussion is certainly apropos to the site, although I agree with Gene that such a topic is far too complex to be properly handled here other than in a cursory manner. Everyone comes to their point of view on just about any topic through a journey rather than a blinding light in the sky moment. Growing up I attended a fundamentalist church. Yet I could never get my questions answered. "You just have to accept it on faith," was the reply. Sorry, but if I had the faith in the first place, I wouldn't have the questions.

John, I stopped trying to figure out how the universe began a while back. While certainly a legitimate intellectual exercise, I question how knowing what started things would change the way I live my life. Even if it could be proven that a higher power put things into motion, I'm not sure what it would tell me that I don't already know. I don't know how my surgeon performed my quadruple bypass. I could learn if I chose to, but given that I'm still vertical I accept that what he did he did correctly. Knowing the procedure doesn't change the outcome.

What I can't understand is touched on by Gene. I don't accept that just because I can't understand God's reasons for allowing suffering in the world, that somehow it means I have to accept it. If God is all-knowing even to the point of taking care of the sparrow, he knows what I will face in my lifetime, up to the end. Yet, if he won't, or can't, make it so I don't have to suffer, but chooses to heal some other person with the same condition, then either he isn't all-powerful or is cruel. Either way, he's not someone I would chose to follow.

The other issue I have is in eternal punishment. No matter how evil someone is, at some point their evil will cease. Yet, for a determinate crime, someone faces indeterminate punishment. How is that fair? Christians are fond of saying that people have free will. Yet, if God gave me that free will, and I exercise it and decide that he doesn't exist, I'm condemned to an eternity of punishment for denying he exists. Again, how is that fair?

Finally, people often ask me "what if you're wrong?" Richard Dawkins, who can be too caustic for my tastes, had a good response. Most people are born into a particular faith. If you're born in America, you will likely be some type of Christian. If you're born in India, you'll likely be a Hindu, and so on. I turn the question around as ask "what if you're wrong?" Their usual reply is that they've lost nothing by believing (Pascal's wager). I then respond, "only if I'm right."

Best
Rob

[L Verge]

(01-03-2019 09:34 PM)Steve Wrote:  It'll only be a matter of time before a certain somebody joins this conversation declaring that the differences between Matthew and Luke in the nativity story are evidence of a Roman conspiracy to frame Judas Iscariot; backing this up with a piece of papyrus "found" by Ray Neff but only available in a typewritten copy.

Steve - I am loving you more and more...