Nature of salvation (response to comments about Hitler and his victims)

Wad Cheber

00:17

@LeeWoofenden The point is that God has more power to stop such atrocities than we do. But we're left to deal with it ourselves.

@LeeWoofenden At home and church, a liberal form of Methodism. At school, a fairly conservative form of Lutheranism.

Lee Woofenden

@WadCheber But the other point is that we cause such atrocities. For God to stop them would be to take away not only our freedom but our agency as human beings. God does work to stop those atrocities, but God works where the work has to be done: in the human heart and mind from which those atrocities flow.

@WadCheber Well, that doesn't help my thesis that atheists tend to come from fundamentalist backgrounds. :-\

Wad Cheber

@LeeWoofenden Since most of us don't commit atrocities, and the ones who do are hard to stop, it would seem that the vast majority of us wouldn't be surrendering anything if God stopped murders, rapes, child molestation, genocide, etc.

Lee Woofenden

@WadCheber What you're saying is that you want God to allow human beings to do only good things, not evil things. That would mean taking away human freedom, which is at the core of what makes us human.

Wad Cheber

@LeeWoofenden No, the religion I was brought up in was morally sound. Tolerance, equality, and love for our fellow human beings.

Lee Woofenden

@WadCheber Well, I'm glad to hear that.

Wad Cheber

00:22

@LeeWoofenden I would be happy with that.

Lee Woofenden

@WadCheber Do you have any vices?

Wad Cheber

I just finished watching The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951). An alien comes to earth and says "you have harnessed the power of the atom, and are now a threat to other planets. If you attack another planet, you will be destroyed"

"This doesn't mean giving up any freedoms, except the freedom to act irresponsibly"

That is a morally sound argument.

Lee Woofenden

@WadCheber As I remember, it says that if the people of earth continue attacking one another, they will be destroyed. But regardless, it seems particularly contradictory to say that if we kill each other, he's going to kill all of us. What sort of moral sense does that make?

It's a classic movie, but it makes a fundamental ethical blunder.

Wad Cheber

@LeeWoofenden No, he says "Kill yourselves all you want, but don't bring other planets into your mess"

The premise is that the only thing we can't do is act aggressively toward other worlds.

Lee Woofenden

@WadCheber Hmm. I did watch the remake more recently than the original. Perhaps that's where I got it. Regardless, it's really only a matter of scale. The ethical issues are the same.

Wad Cheber

00:27

@LeeWoofenden I'm as imperfect as everyone else, but I try to avoid hurting others. I smoke, I drink sometimes, I can be mean at times.

Lee Woofenden

@WadCheber So the robot is fine with killing men, women, and children on earth as much as we want to, but don't touch any other planets? Still a poor ethical stance. It's a fun movie to watch, but its premise has always bothered me.

@WadCheber Do you think God should step in every time you smoke, drink, and are mean to others, and stop you from doing it?

Wad Cheber

@LeeWoofenden Most of my vices affect me, not other people.

I don't rape, fight, kill, etc.

Lee Woofenden

@WadCheber Everything we do affects other people. Being mean affects other people.

Is there some cutoff point at which God should say, You can be this evil, but not that evil?

Wad Cheber

@LeeWoofenden I said "most"

@LeeWoofenden Yes, the things that the majority of us think are crimes. Physical harm.

Lee Woofenden

So the real question is, should God step in and prevent all evil. Because any line that's drawn would involve deciding that some evil is okay, but other evil is not.

Wad Cheber

00:30

Being mean makes me a jerk, but it doesn't cause irreparable damage.

@LeeWoofenden If he's anything like Christians say he is, he is better suited to judge the appropriate limits than we are.

Lee Woofenden

@WadCheber From a spiritual perspective, no physical harm, even murder, causes irreparable damage. At least, not to the victim. Nothing that someone else does to a person causes him to go to hell.

Wad Cheber

@LeeWoofenden That is a monstrously evil claim.

Lee Woofenden

@WadCheber That's what revelation is all about. God telling us what's appropriate and what's not.

Wad Cheber

It is the argument conquistadors used to justify baptizing babies and then stomping on their skulls.

Lee Woofenden

@WadCheber No. It's a contrast between spiritual fairness and material fairness.

Wad Cheber

00:32

@LeeWoofenden No, it makes murder acceptable.

Lee Woofenden

@WadCheber Stomping on skulls is evil, and it probably sent the conquistadores to hell. But it didn't send their victims to hell.

Wad Cheber

@LeeWoofenden The conquistadors disagreed with you.

Lee Woofenden

@WadCheber Not at all. Murderers are still culpable, and must still be punished. What they do is wrong and evil. And if they have murder in their heart, it is spiritually evil as well.

@WadCheber And I disagree with the conquistadores. What they did had nothing to do with the Christianity that Christ taught.

Wad Cheber

But it doesn't matter as much because this life is only a trial run.

Lee Woofenden

@WadCheber No, not a trial run. An apprenticeship.

Wad Cheber

00:34

@LeeWoofenden Jesus taught Judaism.

Lee Woofenden

@WadCheber Or it's like the time of gestation in the womb. The entire rest of our lifetime depends on the foundation developed in the womb.

@WadCheber Jesus differed fundamentally from ancient Judaism. But that was his background.

Wad Cheber

Everything I have learned about the history of Christianity has led me to believe that Jesus, if he were here today, would consider Christians to be heretics for worshipping him.

He was a Jew who taught Jews about Judaism.

Lee Woofenden

@WadCheber The Gospels and the book of Revelation make a number of references to Jesus' followers worshiping him.

Wad Cheber

Christianity is more reflective of Paul's beliefs than Jesus'.

Lee Woofenden

In no case does he rebuke them for that.

Wad Cheber

00:37

@LeeWoofenden And none of them were written by witnesses.

Lee Woofenden

@WadCheber I agree that much of what passes for Christianity is based more on Paul than on Jesus.

Wad Cheber

@LeeWoofenden My understanding is that the Ebionites were closer to Jesus' beliefs than anyone else.

Lee Woofenden

@WadCheber According to current secular scholarship, we have no actual witnesses. According to many Christian scholars, we do. That will probably be argued forever. What we do have is the Gospel accounts, which are accepted by Christians as Scripture. So that's what Christians have to go by.

Wad Cheber

The proto-Orthodox faction would have been totally alien to Jesus' message.

Lee Woofenden

@WadCheber I know that's a current theory. I don't necessarily agree with it.

Wad Cheber

00:39

@LeeWoofenden Christian apologists aren't really scholars, they are pushing an agenda.

Lee Woofenden

@WadCheber So are secular scholars. Everyone has an agenda.

Wad Cheber

Most of my professors are Christians. They still teach facts instead of beliefs.

Secular scholars are concerned with the facts.

Most of them are Christians in their personal lives.

Lee Woofenden

@WadCheber That's another way of saying that secular scholars are concerned with material reality, and not with spiritual reality, which they reject for the purposes of scholarship.

Wad Cheber

Of my professors at Princeton Theological Seminary, I think 1 out of 10 or so is not a Christian.

Lee Woofenden

There really isn't much that's spiritual left in the major seminaries today. It's been taken over by secular modes of thought.

Wad Cheber

00:42

@LeeWoofenden And this is a very good thing.

Lee Woofenden

If spiritual reality is accepted as an actual reality, rather than as something to be studied as a thing that humans believe in, then it changes our approach to understanding and knowledge, and especially our approach to religion.

Wad Cheber

Academics is the realm of fact and evidence, not devotional beliefs.

@LeeWoofenden Since many of us don't buy the idea of spirit, spirituality has no place in academic circles.

Lee Woofenden

@WadCheber From a secular perspective that rejects the actual existence of God and spirit, yes. But if there is no God and spirit, then there's really no point to religion, except as "the opiate of the masses."

@WadCheber I actually agree with you on that. Academia is fine for studying physical phenomena. But it is not a very good way to come to an understanding of God and spirit. Some of its tools are useful for spiritual study. But most of them just completely miss the point.

Wad Cheber

@LeeWoofenden None of my professors would say that there is no God. Not one. Even Dr. Ehrman, the whipping boy of the evangelicals, is not an atheist.

Lee Woofenden

@WadCheber Do they believe that God has an active, present influence on the world?

Wad Cheber

00:46

I used to be what some people refer to as a "militant atheist", but I've grown up.

@LeeWoofenden Almost all of them.

Lee Woofenden

@WadCheber Well, at least that's good! :-P

Militant atheists aren't much better than Christian fundamentalists.

Wad Cheber

@LeeWoofenden Ehrman doesn't

@LeeWoofenden I have come to agree with that.

Lee Woofenden

Why are you in seminary, anyway? What is your plan for the education you are getting there?

Wad Cheber

@LeeWoofenden The "Jesus Myth" morons are as bad as the "NT is literal truth" morons.

Lee Woofenden

@WadCheber Exactly!

Wad Cheber

00:49

@LeeWoofenden I spent years being unnecessarily hostile to belief, but then I mellowed out and started reading the scholarly work on the subject, and I found it fascinating. It began when I was typing papers for my father while he was attending Union Theological Seminary.

Lee Woofenden

@WadCheber Did your father go into the ministry?

Wad Cheber

I audited a couple of courses there, then moved to New Jersey and started auditing courses at Princeton Theological Seminary.

Lee Woofenden

@WadCheber Incidentally, I have nothing against secular scholarship as far as it goes. It does yield some good information. But it's mostly beside the point for any really spiritual approach to God, Jesus, the Bible, and so on.

Wad Cheber

@LeeWoofenden He studied to become a Methodist minister after high school, but he started a family and went into business instead. After he retired, he decided to go back to school. The experience turned him from a convinced Methodist to a deist.

@LeeWoofenden I'm interested in the history, textual criticism, Patristic theology, early Christology, the writing of the bible, and the history of the early church. The spiritual aspect is lost on me.

Lee Woofenden

@WadCheber Traditional Christianity really doesn't have what's necessary for intelligent, educated people to have a sound faith. An awful lot of people abandon their faith when they hit the major mainline seminaries.

@WadCheber Is this something you plan to go into professionally, or simply something that's of interest to you personally?

Wad Cheber

00:53

@LeeWoofenden Dogma rarely survives contact with the true unreliability of the record.

@LeeWoofenden Just for fun, as sad as that sounds. :)

I have no intention of being an atheist who writes about religion.

Lee Woofenden

@WadCheber "Dogma" tends to be based on a shallow and literalistic view of Scripture.

@WadCheber I thought that's what atheists liked to do most! :-P

It always cracks me up how the open public religious forums almost invariably have a bevy of atheists hanging around saying that it's all bullshit. ;-)

Wad Cheber

@LeeWoofenden Exactly. That's what happened to Ehrman. He started out wanting to bring fundamentalist, literal biblicism into the academic community, and considered Jerry Falwell and Billy Graham to be too moderate. He realized that "the bible is literally true" is meaningless if you haven't read the oldest manuscripts...

So he learned to read Coptic, Latin, Koine Greek, etc. The variant readings became a problem for his predetermined beliefs, and he gradually became an agnostic.

He said the epiphany came when he wrote a paper at Princeton Theological Seminary, in which he argued that an apparent instance of Jesus misquoting scripture was really just a misunderstanding of what Jesus meant. His professor wrote "Maybe Matthew just made a mistake", and Ehrman's mind was blown.

Lee Woofenden

@WadCheber It all stems from a fundamental modern misunderstanding of the nature of ancient religious texts. They're not about literal accuracy. They're not about history, science, or any of the things modern texts tend to be about. They're about the moral and spiritual betterment of their readers. The history and such is really just a vehicle for that.

"Accuracy" as we see it today basically had no meaning for the ancient writers.

Reading ancient Scriptures as if they are some sort of textbooks of science and history is entirely anachronistic, and completely misses the point of the texts.

Wad Cheber

@LeeWoofenden This is true. It is likely that people at the time the gospels were written would have known that they weren't trying to tell a historically accurate story, but a moral truth.

Our modern sensibilities don't correspond to ancient understanding of religious and philosophical texts.

Accuracy wasn't as important as moral truth.

Lee Woofenden

@WadCheber And the Christianity that existed up until the Age of Enlightenment is simply no longer adequate for the post-Enlightenment world. It's tried to adapt to the scientific worldview, but has largely failed.

Fundamentalism and Biblical literalism is really a case of "Christianity" being invaded by scientific thinking, and not being able to deal with it.

Wad Cheber

01:04

But the same principle applies to the modern interpretation of books like Revelation. The author was describing his own historical context (666/616 = Nero), not future events.

Lee Woofenden

@WadCheber I think the author was using those sorts of ideas swirling around in his culture as imagery to speak of spiritual events. Almost the entire book of Revelation is presented as happening in heaven (aka the spiritual world), not on earth. It's contrary to the text itself to interpret it as being about worldly events and cataclysms.

Wad Cheber

Whether you think it is appropriate or not, historical analysis is useful for determining the authenticity of scriptures. Like the passage in Matthew about "The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath, therefore the son of man is lord of the Sabbath". The word "therefore" is a non sequitur in Greek, Latin, and English, but it is logical in Aramaic.

In Aramaic, the passage makes sense: "the sabbath was made for enash, not enash for the sabbath, therefore bar enash is lord of the sabbath"

Lee Woofenden

@WadCheber That sort of study can help understand the meaning of the words and phrases in the text, and to that extent it can be quite useful.

Wad Cheber

@LeeWoofenden It's more than that. The quote is considered likely to be authentic, because Aramaic is the language of Jesus.

Contrast that with John, where Jesus says to Nicodemus "you cannot enter the kingdom of God unless you have been born from above". Nicodemus is confused, and thinks Jesus said "you must be born again". The words for "born again" and "born from above" are totally different in Aramaic, but identical in Koine Greek. The passage is not authentic, because it only makes sense in a language Jesus didn't speak.

Lee Woofenden

@WadCheber I'm only moderately concerned with the "authenticity" of the text. From my perspective, the fact that texts changed over the centuries is simply an opportunity for them to be molded, under God's providence, into a text and a narrative that more cohesively tells a spiritual story that God wants to convey to humankind.

The idea that only the original authors of a particular text could be inspired, and that God is limited to what the original texts said, seems to me to be a basic error if we're viewing the texts as divine revelation rather than as cultural records.

Wad Cheber

01:12

@LeeWoofenden I have a problem with the idea that the Jewish God approved of alterations to the text that encouraged anti-Semitism.

Lee Woofenden

@WadCheber Who says that God is Jewish?

Wad Cheber

@LeeWoofenden "The Jewish God", i.e., the God of the Jews.

Lee Woofenden

@WadCheber But beyond that, one of the interesting features of the Hebrew Bible is that in many ways it is quite unvarnished, and does not paint a very flattering picture of God's "chosen people." If human beings had wanted to construct a text to make themselves look good, and specially favored by God, the Old Testament would be rather a flop.

Wad Cheber

The majority of the bible is about god's relationship with the Jewish people.

@LeeWoofenden They're still the chosen people.

Lee Woofenden

@WadCheber True. But from a theistic perspective, the bigger question is what God was accomplishing through that relationship between the Jews and their (Jewish) God.

Wad Cheber

01:15

Jesus himself supposedly said he came to the lost sheep of Israel, not the Gentiles.

He refers to Gentiles as dogs at one point.

Lee Woofenden

@WadCheber Yes, but there is a perceptible progression even in the Gospels themselves from focus exclusively on Israel to reaching out to "all nations."

@WadCheber That very passage is commonly seen (by more liberal Christians) as a key point in Jesus' evolution from focus exclusively on his own people to a broader view that the message was for non-Jews as well.

Wad Cheber

And the fact that his disciples seem to have mainly remained in Jerusalem until it was destroyed by the Romans suggests that they believed that he wanted them to limit their mission to Jews.

Lee Woofenden

@WadCheber Sometimes God has to whack us over the head to break us out of our small-minded views.

Wad Cheber

Paul's main point of contention with the 12 was related to his decision to preach to pagans.

@LeeWoofenden The God of the Old Testament is incredibly small minded.

Even racist.

And unquestionably genocidal.

Lee Woofenden

Much of the massive misunderstanding of Paul in Protestantism arises from a completely anachronistic and ahistorical reading of his letters. He was engaged in a battle with the Jewish Christians in Jerusalem over whether Christ's message was merely a sect of Judaism or an entirely new religion.

Without understanding that, much of what Paul wrote makes no sense at all.

Wad Cheber

01:20

@LeeWoofenden The pseudo-Clementines suggest that Paul literally tried to kill James, the brother of Jesus, because James kept chastising Paul for heretical teaching.

Lee Woofenden

@WadCheber But that is God as the culture in which the Bible was written was able to see God. When you're dealing with five-year-olds, you have to speak in the language of five-year-olds. When you're dealing with "bronze age nomads" (a favorite atheist whipping boy), you have to speak in terms that bronze age nomads can understand.

In general, God has to work with us where we are. Otherwise we would reject God altogether.

Wad Cheber

@LeeWoofenden Regardless of the context, the God described in the Old Testament is not worthy of worship.

Lee Woofenden

@WadCheber Not by present-day, educated people, no. But to the ancient Israelites, he looked like a pretty cool and powerful God.

Wad Cheber

"You were misled by a serpent, and did something wrong, because I prevented you from distinguishing between right and wrong? Okay, all your descendants will suffer for what I made you do"

"You spared the lives of some people after I told you to kill everyone in the city? You're not allowed to be king anymore, because I love genocide"

"You let an angry mob rape your daughters so that some invulnerable Angels weren't inconvenienced? Yay, you're the only people who get to live after I destroy your town"

Lee Woofenden

@WadCheber That's a literal reading. But those are ancient myths. They were never meant to be taken literally. Their message is in the symbolic meaning of the characters and events in the text. It's about the loss of innocence from doing things our own way based on the blandishments of the senses rather than following the inner voice of God.

Wad Cheber

01:26

"Satan bet me that Job would stop worshipping me if I killed his entire family? Okay, I'll murder dozens of people to win a bet with the devil"

Lee Woofenden

Consider the idea that God actually is infinite, omnipresent, omniscient, omnipotent, and all those other omnis. Then consider that we are finited, localized, limited in our knowledge and power, and subject to all kinds of fallacies and illusions. Will we ever have a full and accurate picture of God?

Wad Cheber

These are the actions of a sociopath.

@LeeWoofenden If he wanted us to, we presumably would.

Lee Woofenden

In reality, our understanding of God cannot go any farther than our own limited cultural experience and level of moral and spiritual development. Every culture and era can conceive of God only at the limits of its own best thinking abilities, moral sense, and so on.

Wad Cheber

Our limitations are his doing.

He made us this way. It is his fault if we're stupid.

Lee Woofenden

That's where God has to speak to us. Not from some absolute perspective, but from the elements present in our experience and perspective. And from there, God can move us gradually forward.

Wad Cheber

01:28

@LeeWoofenden Then it is odd that our progress has generally been correlated with the decrease of belief.

The less we believe, the better we become.

Lee Woofenden

@WadCheber Not really. God actually made us with the ability to have direct communication with God, and to learn from God by an inward route. At least, that's how it's presented mythically in the Garden of Eden story. We were the ones who chose the Tree of Knowledge over the Tree of Life--which means choosing crude and external knowledge over subtle internal knowledge.

So we made ourselves stupid. And God had to deal with it.

@WadCheber Belief goes in cycles. When the old religious paradigm has run its course, and become corrupt and inadequate to the new level of human development, a period of rejection of religion ensues until the old religious paradigm has been extirpated, and a new one is available to take its place.

Wad Cheber

@LeeWoofenden Nonsense. He denied us the ability to distinguish between right and wrong, so we didn't have any way to know that disobedience was wrong. He knew we would eat the fruit, and he made us in such a way that it was inevitable, but he punished us for it anyway. And he punished the descendants of the allegedly guilty party.

Lee Woofenden

@WadCheber But back to "God's fault," the "fault" of God is that God made us with free will, so that we could choose whether to be good or evil, smart or stupid, spiritual or materialistic. That's what makes us human rather than being just like the other animals. And giving us that freedom, and the responsibility that goes along with it, carries the risk of our abusing that freedom and turning to evil, falsity, and stupidity.

Wad Cheber

He punished humanity as a whole for something that he made inevitable.

Lee Woofenden

Which is exactly what we did.

Wad Cheber

01:32

We had no other choice.

He ensured that we would fail.

Lee Woofenden

@WadCheber Sure we had a choice. But it is a complex story. In one way of viewing it, it was simply the progression we humans make as we assert our independence from our parents and become self-responsible adults in our own right. The story of the Fall can be read that way.

In another way of viewing it, God made it quite clear what we were and were not supposed to do. The serpent presented a different view of things. And we chose the serpent over God. We didn't have to. God didn't want us to. But that's what we chose to do.

Wad Cheber

@LeeWoofenden But we were incapable of knowing that we shouldn't do it, because he made us incapable of knowing it.

@LeeWoofenden He knew exactly what would happen. He ensured that it would happen. He built us in such a way that it was guaranteed. Then he punished future generations for doing what he made us do.

Lee Woofenden

Have you noticed that God put the Tree of Life explicitly in the center of the Garden, but by the time Eve recounted the story to the serpent in Genesis 3:2-3, she put the Tree of Knowledge in the center of the garden? These are the subtle touches in the text that show that the original writers were speaking of what today we would call "psychology," but what to them was spiritual reality.

@WadCheber I think your understanding of the text is colored and vitiated by traditional Christian interpretations. The text itself requires no such interpretation.

Wad Cheber

Our laws recognize the fact that people who don't understand the difference between right and wrong can't be guilty of a crime. God doesn't understand that. Our laws recognize the immorality of punishing people for the sins of the father. God doesn't understand that.

The story itself says that we didn't understand the difference between good and evil until we ate the fruit. That means we didn't understand that doing bad things was bad.

Lee Woofenden

@WadCheber Eve was well aware of what she was and was not supposed to do. She calmly and clearly articulated it to the serpent. And she wasn't even present when God gave those instructions to Adam. She was perfectly capable of understanding God's instructions. But she chose to listen to the serpent instead.

Wad Cheber

01:37

This is the internal logic of the text.

@LeeWoofenden The text disproves that interpretation.

fredsbend

@WadCheber One's goals in convincing others of an argument has little to do with whether that person is a scholar on the topic or not. And even if they are or are not a scholar, that also has little bearing on the validity of the argument. yourlogicalfallacyis.com/genetic

Wad Cheber

Knowledge of good and evil came from the fruit. We didn't know eating the fruit was bad until we had already done it.

Lee Woofenden

@WadCheber That's true in a sense. However, the Hebrew word for "knowledge" there is not the sort of intellectual, scientific knowledge that we think of as "knowledge" today. It could also be translated, "the tree of the experience of good and evil." What Eve and Adam did not have previously was the experience of evil.

fredsbend

I'm sorry, but that line "believers are not scholars" bothers me greatly because even if it is true, it is irrelevant.

Wad Cheber

@LeeWoofenden Knowledge comes from experience.

Lee Woofenden

01:39

But they did have in their mind the instructions of God not to do it. So intellectually (as we see that today), they did know that it was wrong.

Wad Cheber

@fredsbend Good thing I never said that.

Lee Woofenden

@WadCheber There are different kinds of knowledge.

Wad Cheber

@fredsbend I said apologists are not scholars.

Lee Woofenden

However, I don't want to entirely discount your understanding of the text. It is a text that has many layers of meaning. And one of those layers of meaning is all about the loss of innocence--of going from a state in which we have know knowledge or awareness of evil to a state in which we do. That's the import of the line, after they ate from the tree of knowledge:

> Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized they were naked. (Genesis 3:7)

fredsbend

@WadCheber This is also bothersome. The demands of the majority has no bearing on the validity of an argument or course of action. yourlogicalfallacyis.com/bandwagon

@WadCheber And that is a false statement at least some of the time. And even when it is true it is irrelevant to the validity of their argument.

Lee Woofenden

01:43

The mode of Bible interpretation that I subscribe to attributes various layers and levels of meaning to the text. One of those layers is that the text tells the story of the spiritual development or unfolding of humanity as a whole. Another layer of it tells the story of the spiritual (aka psychological) unfolding and development of an individual human being.

Wad Cheber

@fredsbend I didn't suggest that, or at least I didn't mean to suggest it. I was saying that spirituality is personal, and not really suitable for academic research and study, because it is not objectively understandable. You can't verify the truth of a person's beliefs. Scholarship is suited for historical study, etc.

Lee Woofenden

On the latter level, the story of the Fall is the story of our moving from the innocence of infancy, in which we have no knowledge or awareness of evil, but only an almost organic connection to our mother/parents, to one in which we sense separation, and do have a sense of right and wrong, of wholeness and shame. This is simply part of our early development--something that we all go through--and it is represented in those early stories of Genesis.

The myth-makers who originated those stories were talking about that sort of thing, and about the early humans' emergence from an innocent, almost animal state to one of self-awareness and the ability to distinguish between good and evil that has characterized humankind ever since.

To read them as literal stories of two literal human beings created by God in the way literally described in the text is to completely and utterly miss the meaning and depth of the story.

Wad Cheber

@fredsbend If the argument is predicated on belief, it isn't particularly useful or credible, in my opinion. If you begin from a position of trying to validate your preexisting beliefs, you aren't really interested in historical accuracy, you're going to reject everything that doesn't conform to your beliefs. Cognitive dissonance is the enemy of academic validity.

@LeeWoofenden Obviously, but the moral lesson is kind of appalling.

Lee Woofenden

@WadCheber I think it's more sophisticated than you're giving it credit for. But to see those depths of meaning, you have to leave behind a literalistic interpretation of the text.

Basically, almost everything traditional Christianity has said about the Bible is wrong. As long as people are stuck in that view of the Bible, they will never be able to have anything but a rather shallow and appalling view of the Bible.

Wad Cheber

@fredsbend I have a low opinion of people who aren't open to being proven wrong. I started studying these subjects because I was open to being proven wrong, which I was. I used to be 50/50 on the issue of Jesus' existence, and I learned how ridiculous that position really is. I expect scholars to be equally willing to change their minds in light of new evidence.

In my experience, apologists are fundamentally opposed to changing their views in light of new evidence. That is what makes them apologists.

They are also incredibly narrow minded, as has been seen in the recent destruction of ancient artifacts in a futile attempt to find scraps of early manuscripts.

This is the apologists' approach to historical research.

Destroying ancient works of art in the attempt to obtain a scrap of papyrus

No true scholar would dream of doing something so horrible.

Disassembling mummy cartonnage should be a crime.

Lee Woofenden

01:57

@WadCheber I've gtg soon, but before I do, I'll invite you to read some of the articles on my blog, such as: Can We Really Believe the Bible? and: How God Speaks in the Bible to Us Boneheads.

Whether or not you agree with my perspective on the Bible, it will at least give you a different perspective than you've probably encountered so far.

Wad Cheber

@LeeWoofenden I'll give it a look see. Thanks for the chat!

Lee Woofenden

@WadCheber Good talking. TTYL.

fredsbend

03:02

@WadCheber I think I agree with that.

@WadCheber Sorry, but again: yourlogicalfallacyis.com/no-true-scotsman

Now, I could imagine a scenario where that scrap is more valuable than the cartonnage.

In that case, I might approve of it's destruction if it was necessary to obtain the scrap.

fredsbend

03:24

> The majority of mummy masks were made from scraps of linen and papyrus, which were glued together into a kind of ancient papier-maché. Dismantling these masks yields a trove of ancient documents. Evans claims that in addition to Christian texts, hundreds of classical Greek texts, records of business transactions, and personal letters have been acquired. In the process, the mask itself is destroyed.

cnn.com/2015/01/21/living/gospel-mummy-mask

Wad Cheber

@fredsbend Then you don't understand the issue.

Evans is becoming a pariah in the field.

fredsbend

@WadCheber I think I rather do. We have many mummy masks. It seems that sometimes taking them apart to read the manuscripts they are made from gives us unique ancient documents, some of which can tell us more about the people who made the masks in the first place.

Wad Cheber

The problems are manifold: 1) we're getting close to a time when you can find the contents of the papyri scraps without damaging the cartonnage. 2) most of the scraps are old receipts, inventories, requests for donkeys to be sent down the river, etc. 3) we have a lot of papyri already.

fredsbend

That might be worth the trade, sometimes.

Wad Cheber

“Here’s a guy getting so excited about finding a first-century manuscript of a first-century text that he’s totally oblivious to the destruction of archaeological material it entails,” wrote Paul Barford, an English archaeologist living in Warsaw in his blog about private artefact collecting and heritage issues.

“By the way, they generally did not accompany sarcophagi. Getting the mask off the wrapping was usually accompanied by the destruction of the whole mummy.”

fredsbend

03:29

@WadCheber If 1) was true, then surely owners of these masks would not allow for their destruction. 2) implies that these things tell us nothing useful about the people, yet the mundane is more apart of regular life than the extraordinary. 3) is correct; we do have many papyri. I cannot contest that point.

@WadCheber I find that this scenario is common in archeology. You have to destroy one artifact to get to another. And there is always a disagreement whether it will be or was worth it.

Wad Cheber

1) There is not a single New Testament or early Christian papyrus published so far coming from mummy cartonnage. Correct me if I am wrong, please. Mummy cartonnage = a sort of papier-mâché constituted by various materials sometimes including recycled papyri and used for fabricating masks and other covering panels for mummies.

fredsbend

Yes.

Wad Cheber

@fredsbend The masks are being bought by the owner of Hobby Lobby. The provenance issues are enormously troubling.

2) According to current scholarship and archaeological finding, the use of recycling papyri for making mummy masks and panels ended in the early Augustan period, i.e. when Jesus was not even born or just a child.

3) Papyrologists have developed various methods for recovering papyri from cartonnage, which nowadays do not necessitate the complete dissolving or destroying of the masks or panels. If you pay attention to what Evans say in the video and interviews it seems clear that he does not know what he is talking about

facesandvoices.wordpress.com/2015/01/21/…

fredsbend

@WadCheber So you may be implying that they are hyping and destroying the masks to make a buck somewhere else? What's new? Welcome to the real world, where the dollar is king.

Wad Cheber

One of the things that I find disconcerting about all the discussion about whether it is legitimate to destroy mummy masks in order to get NT papyri is that the only people who seem to know anything about what has been found (this alleged first century copy of the Gospel of Mark) are not experts in the specific fields in which expertise is required, both to dismantle masks and to date papyri.

I'm implying anything, I'm quoting scholars

fredsbend

03:35

@WadCheber What we find doesn't have to be Bible manuscripts. Other fascinating things may be there too. I'm not focused on this one example, but on the process as a whole: destroying one valuable thing to get to a potentially more valuable thing.

Wad Cheber

Craig Evans is a New Testament scholar, but he is not a textual critic, let alone a papyrologist (expert in papyri) or palaeographer (expert in dating manuscripts). Dan Wallace, who first announced the discovery in a debate against me over two years ago, is in the same boat; he’s done lots of good for the academy by going around the world to photograph/digitize manuscripts, but he is not trained in either papyrology or palaeography and is expert in neither.

You're ignoring the fact that the experts have clearly stated that it is possible to extract papyri scraps without damaging masks and cartonnage.

fredsbend

@WadCheber The legitimacy of destroying these masks is entirely subjective. It depends heavily on what you value. The legality of it is another story, and there should be some level of protection for these ancient treasures.

Wad Cheber

A fundamentalist is using his billions of dollars to buy historical artifacts and have them destroyed unnecessarily in a futile attempt to further his agenda.

fredsbend

@WadCheber Like I said, I doubt that any reasonable person who works for their money would destroy something valuable and irreplaceable if they did not have to.

Wad Cheber

@fredsbend No, you are still ignoring the facts: the destruction is unnecessary because we can read the scraps without harming the artifacts.

@fredsbend You don't understand apologists and fundamentalists.

fredsbend

03:39

@WadCheber I used to be both!

Wad Cheber

The same mentality is responsible for the destruction of the Buddha statues in Afghanistan.

fredsbend

They are misguided in some of their logic, not retarded.

Wad Cheber

“The destruction of mummy masks, though legal, falls into an ethically gray area right now because of the difficult choices scientists have to make in the lab when working with them,” said Douglas Boin, a professor of history at St. Louis University.

“We have to ask ourselves, do we value the cultural heritage of Egypt as something worth preserving in itself, or do we see it simply as vehicle for harvesting Christian texts?”

fredsbend

@WadCheber Maybe. I'm unaware of what you're talking about. I would bet, being statues to a "pagan god" is more likely why Christians would destroy a Buddha statue.

Wad Cheber

@fredsbend Your optimism is unfounded. These people are obsessed with their devotional agenda and are happy to use their fortunes to destroy valuable historical relics in a search for something that isn't even there.

fredsbend

03:43

@WadCheber Black and white fallacy. There is an ethical dilemma alright, but there's more than Christian texts written on papyri.

Wad Cheber

And it is totally unnecessary because we can get the same result without causing any damage

fredsbend

@WadCheber You keep saying this, but like I said, even fundamentalist billionaires don't throw away money if they don't have to.

Wad Cheber

@fredsbend The researchers have admitted that most of what they find is receipts, requests for oxen and donkeys, orders for dates, etc.

@fredsbend He's trying to create the largest collection of papyri in the world, and limit access to the collection to apologists.

fredsbend

@WadCheber Yes, it's logical that trash is the first source for making mummy masks. But trash far outweighs the treasures in every scenario.

Wad Cheber

His researchers are under unprecedented nondisclosure agreements.

fredsbend

03:47

@WadCheber There's a buck to be made in there somewhere. I have more faith in the idea that a billionaire, whether fundamentalist or not, will often do questionable things to make more money.

Wad Cheber

@fredsbend No, it doesn't. Again, you're ignoring the fact that the destruction is useless and unnecessary. We can achieve the same goal by other means. High tech imagery techniques allow us to read the text without touching the cartonnage or mask.

fredsbend

Than I have faith in the idea that he could do this without destroying the mummies.

Wad Cheber

Keep in mind that the fact that these objects are burial relics. Destroying them inherently involves desecration of the dead.

fredsbend

@WadCheber I'm not ignoring it. I'm doubting it. If it's true, he wouldn't waste the money destroying them unless there was more to be had by doing so. This makes it about money, not apologetics.

Wad Cheber

@fredsbend Then why isn't he doing so? His methods consist of soaking the mask or cartonnage in soapy water and tearing it apart.

fredsbend

03:50

@WadCheber I personally don't care about that, nor do I understand the reverence for it.

Here's an interesting quote about that:

> For the living know that they will die, but the dead know nothing; they have no further reward, and even their name is forgotten.

Wad Cheber

He doesn't know anything about archaeology, and the only people willing to work for him are not papyrologists, they are textual critics.

fredsbend

@WadCheber Money, obviously.

billionaires don't toss away their fortunes for nothing.

Wad Cheber

@fredsbend No, ignorance and self interest.

fredsbend

Financial gain is not self-interest?

Wad Cheber

@fredsbend They absolutely do, if they are extremists.

@fredsbend He's spending money, not making it.

fredsbend

03:52

@WadCheber I'd bet money on it. He's going to be profiting on this in the future in some way.

Wad Cheber

He believes that he is doing god's work.

fredsbend

@WadCheber That's called business. Spend first, reap later.

Wad Cheber

@fredsbend I've been following the story. He's not interested in profit. He believes that he is doing god's work.

fredsbend

@WadCheber So perhaps he should hire one? Or, if papyrologists really cared that much, they'd offer their services.

@WadCheber Don't all religious people say that, right before they buy a boat?

Wad Cheber

@fredsbend Only if they have no morals.

fredsbend

03:56

@WadCheber What?! I've proposed that papyrologists should offer to show him how to do it, or offer to do it for a cheap price. They won't though because it's a bad tick on their CV. Academia is very much a popularity contest sometimes.

Wad Cheber

From the website for the Green Collection: "The Museum of the Bible - We exist to invite all people to engage with the Bible through our four pillars: research, traveling exhibits, education, and a museum currently under construction in Washington, D.C. In 2017, Museum of the Bible will open its 430,000-square-foot nonprofit museum in Washington"

"When the Green family, founders of U.S. retail chain Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc., purchased their first biblical artifact in November 2009, they never expected to assemble in only a few years what is now one of the world’s largest private collections of rare biblical texts, objects, and artifacts."

The Greens have gone from a collection of a couple of thousand scraps to half a million artifacts in a few years, and the archaeological world is seething over the unethical methods they've been using. They are probably breaking all kinds of laws, but they are too rich to pay the consequences for it.

fredsbend

@WadCheber "Nonprofit" doesn't mean people don't get paid.

Wad Cheber

This is the same family that spends millions to support LGBTQ discrimination laws.

fredsbend

> the archaeological world is seething over the unethical methods they've been using. They are probably breaking all kinds of laws, but they are too rich to pay the consequences for it.

Wad Cheber

They are more than happy to spend millions to promote a narrow fundamentalist agenda.

fredsbend

04:01

On this, we probably agree. Some of them were probably stolen and all that jazz. And, of course they won't pay because they're rich.

This happens all the time.

Wad Cheber

Correction: The Green family has gone from one biblical artifact to half a million of them in less than 6 years.

This amounts to a massive expenditure of money to promote an ideological agenda.

The average price of papyri has skyrocketed since the Greens started buying everything in sight.

Academic institutions can't afford to compete with them.

fredsbend

@WadCheber Monopolies are very profitable. It surprises me that you don't see this bright green money trail.

The rich are usually very clever. They somehow manage to spread their ideology and get richer at the same time.

If I knew how they did it, I would be rich too.

But surely you've seen this, over and over again.

Wad Cheber

@fredsbend I don't see the profit in spending millions on promoting LGBTQ discrimination laws.

fredsbend

@WadCheber Like I said, you follow the money, you'll find that the wealthy very rarely don't get theirs back, and then some.

Wad Cheber

The guy is rich enough, now he wants to use his fortune to promote his agenda. If there is money to be made, it is incidental, but the primary motivation is zealotry.

facesandvoices.wordpress.com/2014/05/05/…

fredsbend

04:10

@WadCheber Perhaps, but I don't think so. To some extent, probably, but money to be made is never incidental. That's like saying money grows on trees. If making money were incidental, then we'd all have plenty.

Wad Cheber

I like the words Beau Quilter has added at the end as a comment to a quote of McDowell himself: “Apparently since they own it, it’s ok’.

This sentence underlines two important elements of this sad story. First, the incredible lack of any awareness about the importance of archaeological evidence that this man and others, like Scott Carroll (who apparently dismounted mummy cartonnage for the Green collection and possibly others in the past), demonstrate. The aggressive cultural discourse behind their words and actions would deserve a treatise on its own.

fredsbend

> where do these mummy masks come from? Where did the dismounting process take place? Who are the other unnamed scholars mentioned in the course of the talk as taking part to these most extraordinary discoveries?

Great questions that should be answered.

Wad Cheber

People like Josh McDowell and Scott Carroll are a threat not only for the damages they have procured to cultural heritage patrimony, but also for their misuse of ancient manuscripts in public discourses on the Bible. Their faith must be very weak if they need scraps of papyrus in order to prove the value of the Scriptures.

@fredsbend They aren't being answered because of unprecedented nondisclosure agreements.

Why Josh McDowell and other owners of antiquities are not revealing names of the dealers they have purchased masks and other cartonnage from, and do not publicly provide documents proving that their acquisitions are legal? Do they fear that the eventual legal owner of those artefacts (e.g. the Egyptian Government) will pursue them in court one day?

fredsbend

@WadCheber No, because the authorities are not verifying that these items are legally theirs to destroy. Or they have and the rest of the world is ignoring that fact. It is a travesty either way (assuming nothing valuable is coming from them), but if they have the legal right, then they don't have to answer to anybody.

@WadCheber With the sheer volume of artifacts, I'd bet there's some dubious stuff going on.

Wad Cheber

@fredsbend Again, not me talking, an archaeologist is talking p.

apologists’ speeches are not only misinformed, but can even encourage more people to buy mummy masks on the antiquities market and dissolve them in Palmolive soap – a method suggested publicly by one of them, Josh McDowell, close friend of the ex-director of the Green Collection, Scott Carroll. All this said, I must confess this pseudo-scholarship is procuring me endless, astonished entertainment…

fredsbend

04:17

@WadCheber What does this mean: Josh McDowell et. al are a threat "for their misuse of ancient manuscripts in public discourses on the Bible"?

@WadCheber Type > and a space before a text that is a quote.

> text

becomes:

> text

This makes is clear that it is a blockquote.

Wad Cheber

@fredsbend I'm not sure exactly what she's talking about. Perhaps the use of the discovery of a fragment of Sappho to justify destroying cartonnage?

fredsbend

@WadCheber In response to it, we're not arguing that it's bad, if all they get out of it is a scrape of Mark that we can't date. We're arguing that it's about money or not. You seem to think there's no money trail here. I've seen it enough to bet on it.

Wad Cheber

The quote you asked about is apparently related to this video:

Josh McDowell Destroys Ancient Artifacts

►

fredsbend

Well, this has been interesting, but I have to go now. See you around.

Wad Cheber

@fredsbend I'm not necessarily saying that money isn't a factor, I'm saying that I don't care if there is money being made, the destruction of historical artifacts is the only important matter.

@fredsbend Thanks for the chat

fredsbend

04:25

@WadCheber You did call it incidental ... But yes, if we're going to destroying something like this, it needs to be worth it.

@WadCheber Likewise.

Wad Cheber

@fredsbend I would argue that the fact that destruction is unnecessary means that there is almost no conceivable circumstance under which the destruction is acceptable.

Lee Woofenden

14:26

@WadCheber Incidentally, in addition to probably being more fun to read, the boneheads article is also more directly relevant to our previous discussion about the nature of the Bible and the God of the Old Testament.

Transcript for

Nature of salvation (response to comm…