@Greg phil,
Greg;64769 wrote:
Well I am refering to a good, creator, omnipotent god, so yeah, roughly a judeao-christian model. But I disagee that they have is spelled out: even between different Christians there is massive disagreement as to what God is e.g. whether He is everlasting (temporal) or timeless (supratemporal) or whether His will forms moral law or whether He wills an independant moral law etc.
Thanks for your reply. I'd like to ask you to please focus most conscientiously on what you have written, above. Who would you take that '
they' to have been, then (and please do notice the verb tense). By what process of thinking or information gathering are we able to claim
knowledge of any fact such as '
someone has not defined something properly or fully' when our very basis for any understanding at all, on that very same matter, does not come chronologically prior to that most basic source?
Can it not be said, with a very high degree of factuality, that Christianity today, as Judaism today, has these problems due to the fact that they have passed through time (all the while, what the '
closer-to-the-autographers' claim to have known to be universal truth being closed)?
Your last line in your reply to Kielicious is the very reason why you would better off using the word 'god,' rather than YHWH (which is basically what is happening with "God" in English). Is it not more correct--or at least pragmatic--to conclude that if the H. sapien cannot not know something that it has created, and cannot satisfactorily demonstrate to the universal set the true factuality of what it has created, then what it has created is much more likely nothing more than the associative power of the big brain that it (H. sapien) has evolved into? (in other words, a practical figment of misassociation)
If taking this view, I'd be very tempted to argue that yes, god would be a thing (on a practical level), due to the fact that synaptical connections and neurons are actual, living, physical things (on the practical level . . . no left hemisphere neglect patient checks into the hospital to have their quantum fields re-spun, or arranged, or whatever....you know)?
---------- Post added at 10:56 AM ---------- Previous post was at 09:00 AM ----------
Oh boy...oh girl...it got merged....sorry. (it wasn't supposed to be so long)
Thank you for your feedback there, DT. Regarding the matter of biblical exegesis, along with textual criticism, hermeneutics (which latter can be very much nuanced by
form criticism, redaction criticism, and audience criticism) and historical method lines of thought, we very much arrive at the point where it is understood (in spite of the choice to ignore the above methodologies) that with these religio-culture inspired documents, we do, in fact have exact intention to communicate specific ideas into the minds of the intended audience (in most cases . . .some wisdom works and poetic works being different, as well as some degree of prophetic symbolism).
When the writer of that main portion of Genesis, for example, described the building of the ark, it was with the specific intention to report on a historical undertaking by a specific actual person (usually '
historical person' is the term used). When, in the scroll of Nehemian (Second Temple stuff) the author retells the story of the nation of Isreal taking the land of Canaan, he most obviously does so as per his understanding and intent to give an historical event.
When, as a second example, the author (probably Luke, an educated man) of Acts wrote (and this was a private work in the first instance, for a single recipient) how one Stephen gave a witness to the Jewish priestly council and told them the story of Moses, and some of its detail, the author very clearly intended to report as history, the story inside the story (of Stephen . . . although the author would not have witnessed that personally). Intention to communicate a specific idea is very common a thing.
Regarding the Jewish scholars, if you had written Israeli scholars, or biblical scholars, or scholars of judaic studies, I'd probably understand the academical stance, and would not have pinned any '
emotional-content-due-to-being-believing-members-of-a-particular-belief-system modifier on them. If, as you have worded it (and this is simply looking a possible facts, not on how you have presented it, in any way) those who object to the far greater bulk of many of the documents of Judaism (canonical or not) as presenting a specific and determined description/prescription of YHWH, are members of the Jewish religious belief-system, then it is religious emotion which has most surely led to making such a claim. . . so, I say emotion.
Basically, we will find three main catagories: scholarly religionist, religious scholars, and scholars of religious knowledge. As you would guess, the first class especially, do have an agenda. The second class, while being quite reasonable with much of the understanding brought to the table of discussion, will, more invariably, lean towards a certain '
participating religious belief-system' protective position; to varying degrees. The last group, as far as I have seen, communicated with, and have read, are the far more objective with the greater spread of data and methodologies.
By looking, for example and more specifically, at Jewish authors such as Flavous Josephus, it is easy to determine that such a view that you have reported on, would be due to modernity. Even ...uh oh...can't remember his name...a Medival Jewish writer...exemplifies such so as to clinch this understanding.
Regarding the '
only-begotten' matter, it'd best come under the
Biblical Texts thread, so I'll work that in . . . some day (help me remember) but basically, due to linguistical matters (such as the definite article, for example) we can construe that the understanding that the authors of John more didactically emphasized, may have been behind such wording, but no intention of the author to express that concern to the audience can be seen.
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