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A defense of Christianity helped unlock the secrets of the brain

nautil.us

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Re: A defense of Christianity helped unlock the secrets of the brain

#41

Post by Retric »

eneifert wrote: post #22
badkungfu wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I am reminded of Fulton Sheen's comments on Jesus - a man that claimed to be God is either a liar, a lunatic, or God; to say such a man is a great teacher but not God stretches the limit of rationality. That always sounded like an unimaginative argument. Another possibility is that his followers exaggerated his words and deeds after his death.

But his followers were all willing to die because they believed Jesus rose from the dead and they saw it. Seems unreasonable that they would die for something they know is a lie. https://www.wikiwand.com/en/List_of_Christian_martyrs

That's only relevant for martyrs who knew him in life, saw him 'die', and come back.

Everyone else died from a story making every single person on that list irrelevant.

ed: There is a very long list of people who where assumed to be dead before 'coming back' so even people who where 'there' don't mean much. It's not like someone was beheaded and the head grew back.

Re: A defense of Christianity helped unlock the secrets of the brain

#42

Post by lucozade »

sanderjd wrote: post #27
lucozade wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The value of Bayes' work is somewhat orthogonal to his use of it to prove the truth of the Resurrection. It was valuable to show that Hume's approach was flawed but limited value to prove the truth per se. To apply probabilities to the events you'd have to make an awful lot of assumptions about the accuracy of the, non-eye witness, reporting. However, it was an excellent approach for such an evaluation. As to the Ful…

It seems to me that the most useful definition of "lie" is one where it does not include un-truths due to diminished faculty or simply being mistaken. I would not call Newton a "liar" because he wasn't aware of relativity...

Indeed. But one can't have it both ways. You either use your definition and call out ignorance/mistaken explicitly or you define lying as covering all unthruths.

Fulton Sheen cheats by pretending to use your definition but subsuming more than deliberately lying under the liar banner. Very sneak these philosophers.

Re: A defense of Christianity helped unlock the secrets of the brain

#43

Post by inkaudio »

jabv wrote: post #10
zzalpha wrote: post #7

Clickbait title. A great deal of science is rooted in the works of individuals who held a variety of religious beliefs, and in many of those cases, their works were directly motivated by those beliefs. So the fact that Bayes came up with his theorem because of a desire to justify a belief in the resurrection of Christ is, I suppose, somewhat interesting, but not so much so that it needed to be the headline of the sto…

The fact that Bayes' work, which is more popular and possibly relevant than ever, answers a serious philosophical challenges to claims about the nature of reality (a consequence of any claims of divinity) is a mere historical accident worthy of overlooking? I am reminded of Fulton Sheen's comments on Jesus - a man that claimed to be God is either a liar, a lunatic, or God; to say such a man is a great teacher but not…

Jesus Christ never claimed to be God but the Son of God, one single verse was taken completely out of context, but if you're familiar with his teaching it clearly emphasised his subordination to God.

Bible book of John chapter 14 verse 28 latter part: the father is greater than I am

The vast majority of mainstream Christian is corrupt. This is important to note cause much debate about the merits of Christianity are based on teachings & behavior that are not Christian

Re: A defense of Christianity helped unlock the secrets of the brain

#44

Post by tsm »

inkaudio wrote: post #43
jabv wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fact that Bayes' work, which is more popular and possibly relevant than ever, answers a serious philosophical challenges to claims about the nature of reality (a consequence of any claims of divinity) is a mere historical accident worthy of overlooking? I am reminded of Fulton Sheen's comments on Jesus - a man that claimed to be God is either a liar, a lunatic, or God; to say such a man is a great teacher but not…

Jesus Christ never claimed to be God but the Son of God, one single verse was taken completely out of context, but if you're familiar with his teaching it clearly emphasised his subordination to God. Bible book of John chapter 14 verse 28 latter part: the father is greater than I am The vast majority of mainstream Christian is corrupt. This is important to note cause much debate about the merits of Christianity are b…

He's "truly God and truly Man". The Chalcedonian Definition is a good summary of orthodox thought on the issue:

Following, then, the holy Fathers, we all unanimously teach that our Lord Jesus Christ is to us One and the same Son, the Self-same Perfect in Godhead, the Self-same Perfect in Manhood; truly God and truly Man; the Self-same of a rational soul and body; co-essential with the Father according to the Godhead, the Self-same co-essential with us according to the Manhood; like us in all things, sin apart; before the ages begotten of the Father as to the Godhead, but in the last days, the Self-same, for us and for our salvation (born) of Mary the Virgin Theotokos [God-bearer] as to the Manhood; One and the Same Christ, Son, Lord, Only-begotten; acknowledged in Two Natures unconfusedly, unchangeably, indivisibly, inseparably; the difference of the Natures being in no way removed because of the Union, but rather the properties of each Nature being preserved, and (both) concurring into One Person and One Hypostasis; not as though He were parted or divided into Two Persons, but One and the Self-same Son and Only-begotten God, Word, Lord, Jesus Christ; even as from the beginning the prophets have taught concerning Him, and as the Lord Jesus Christ Himself hath taught us, and as the Symbol of the Fathers hath handed down to us.

Re: A defense of Christianity helped unlock the secrets of the brain

#45

Post by aidenn0 »

jabv wrote: post #10
zzalpha wrote: post #7

Clickbait title. A great deal of science is rooted in the works of individuals who held a variety of religious beliefs, and in many of those cases, their works were directly motivated by those beliefs. So the fact that Bayes came up with his theorem because of a desire to justify a belief in the resurrection of Christ is, I suppose, somewhat interesting, but not so much so that it needed to be the headline of the sto…

The fact that Bayes' work, which is more popular and possibly relevant than ever, answers a serious philosophical challenges to claims about the nature of reality (a consequence of any claims of divinity) is a mere historical accident worthy of overlooking? I am reminded of Fulton Sheen's comments on Jesus - a man that claimed to be God is either a liar, a lunatic, or God; to say such a man is a great teacher but not…

Sheen's comments were never convincing to me because myths can very quickly spring up around a strong personality, so while a few of the earliest disciples may have been either liars, lunatics or followers of God, that is not even necessarily true of the gospel writers.

Or another way of putting it: if the gospels are truly 4 witnesses accurately reporting what they saw, then Sheen's arguments hold true, but considering that it's likely that Mark was not written down until at least 30 years after the events described in it, it would take the presumtion of divine intervention for that to be the case even assuming that the authors were completely honest.

Re: A defense of Christianity helped unlock the secrets of the brain

#46

Post by opaqe »

zzalpha wrote: post #7

Clickbait title. A great deal of science is rooted in the works of individuals who held a variety of religious beliefs, and in many of those cases, their works were directly motivated by those beliefs. So the fact that Bayes came up with his theorem because of a desire to justify a belief in the resurrection of Christ is, I suppose, somewhat interesting, but not so much so that it needed to be the headline of the sto…

Agreed. You could pick a historical thinker at random and spin the same article making leaps into the future. Being self-identified as religious and influenced by God was the norm even well into Enlightenment. This sort of retrospective coronation is the positive version of "judging people without regard for their historical context." You could also pick any historical figure and say how their pro-slavery and anti-feminist thinking "helped unlocked the secrets of ____." But no one would praise or click that article on the face of it.

Re: A defense of Christianity helped unlock the secrets of the brain

#47

Post by bloaf »

jabv wrote: post #30
lucozade wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The value of Bayes' work is somewhat orthogonal to his use of it to prove the truth of the Resurrection. It was valuable to show that Hume's approach was flawed but limited value to prove the truth per se. To apply probabilities to the events you'd have to make an awful lot of assumptions about the accuracy of the, non-eye witness, reporting. However, it was an excellent approach for such an evaluation. As to the Ful…

See my reply above regarding the second paragraph - it's a good question. Regarding the final paragraph and implicit assumptions regarding the veracity of the content of the four canonical gospel accounts, I am not sure attributing it to "simple" assumption (i.e., the colloquial assumption where one just thinks something is true without examination) is reasonable given the education of both men and the body of work d…

Just be careful appealing to the imprecise, several century long corpus of work on the subject. By appealing to the works of the devout, people are apt to raise the equally hasty generalization described by Upton Sinclair:

“It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.”

Re: A defense of Christianity helped unlock the secrets of the brain

#48

Post by dkersten »

jabv wrote: post #10
zzalpha wrote: post #7

Clickbait title. A great deal of science is rooted in the works of individuals who held a variety of religious beliefs, and in many of those cases, their works were directly motivated by those beliefs. So the fact that Bayes came up with his theorem because of a desire to justify a belief in the resurrection of Christ is, I suppose, somewhat interesting, but not so much so that it needed to be the headline of the sto…

The fact that Bayes' work, which is more popular and possibly relevant than ever, answers a serious philosophical challenges to claims about the nature of reality (a consequence of any claims of divinity) is a mere historical accident worthy of overlooking? I am reminded of Fulton Sheen's comments on Jesus - a man that claimed to be God is either a liar, a lunatic, or God; to say such a man is a great teacher but not…

I am reminded of Fulton Sheen's comments on Jesus - a man that claimed to be God is either a liar, a lunatic, or God; to say such a man is a great teacher but not God stretches the limit of rationality.

You can be a liar (or a lunatic) and still be a great teacher.

Re: A defense of Christianity helped unlock the secrets of the brain

#49

Post by euyyn »

dkersten wrote: post #48
jabv wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fact that Bayes' work, which is more popular and possibly relevant than ever, answers a serious philosophical challenges to claims about the nature of reality (a consequence of any claims of divinity) is a mere historical accident worthy of overlooking? I am reminded of Fulton Sheen's comments on Jesus - a man that claimed to be God is either a liar, a lunatic, or God; to say such a man is a great teacher but not…

I am reminded of Fulton Sheen's comments on Jesus - a man that claimed to be God is either a liar, a lunatic, or God; to say such a man is a great teacher but not God stretches the limit of rationality. You can be a liar (or a lunatic) and still be a great teacher.

And even if not, to say that a man is a god does stretch the limit of rationality too.

Re: A defense of Christianity helped unlock the secrets of the brain

#50

Post by MisterBastahrd »

eneifert wrote: post #22
badkungfu wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I am reminded of Fulton Sheen's comments on Jesus - a man that claimed to be God is either a liar, a lunatic, or God; to say such a man is a great teacher but not God stretches the limit of rationality. That always sounded like an unimaginative argument. Another possibility is that his followers exaggerated his words and deeds after his death.

But his followers were all willing to die because they believed Jesus rose from the dead and they saw it. Seems unreasonable that they would die for something they know is a lie. https://www.wikiwand.com/en/List_of_Christian_martyrs

Lots of people die for lots of different reasons. That they die doesn't validate their beliefs.
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