Evolution? How?

You know, i've gone back to read the good Pastor Richard Bucher again, and find him very entertaining. He knows sqat about Roman history. Here's a wonderul example:



This displays an immense ignorance of the means by which the empire collected revenue in provinces and tributary kingdoms. Judea was a tributary kingdom--they paid tribute, and the Romans didn't give a rat's ass how it was collected, as long as it was paid on time. This statement on the part of the Pastor is completely without foundation. It is noteworthy that he refers to "an official listing of citizens"--which i will deal with next.



Without doubt--although there is no other existant record of a census being conducted at that specific time. Here the good Pastor displays his ignorance of what citizen meant then in the Roman empire. He is peddling an anachronism. In today's world, being native to a country makes you a citizen. That was not at all the case in the first century BCE. When the people of Rome established their hegemony over Latium, beginning in about 700 BCE, they established their dominance over the Latin and Hernican tribes--and granted them what became officially known as "Latin status." Latin status meant that those who possessed the privilege had all the rights of a Roman citizen, but not the franchise--only Roman citizens could vote. Taxation was not a capitation (which means it was not based on population), but was levied on each hearth--the Romans and the Latins and Hernicans tended to pack as many people into an apartment or house as possible as a result. The same thing can be seen in early Romanov Russia, when Mikhail Romanov (the first Romanov Tsar) imposed such a hearth tax--the Russians have been packin' 'em in the house ever since.

As the Romans expanded into the Italian penninsula, they gradually extended Latin status and citizenship depending upon whether a tribe freely allied with them or was conquered. If a tribe were conquered, they would be sold into slavery, and the land settled by Roman citizens, Latins or Hernicans. If a tribe freely allied with them, they would be granted Latin status. The first people outside of what we know as Italy to ally themselves to Rome remained faithful down through the centuries. They were the Narbonensii, the people descended from Greek and Punic settlers at Marsala (Marseilles) in what we would know as Provence in France. At the time that Augustus established the principiate empire, people native to Cispadane Italia (Italy below the river Po) who were not born into slavery were Roman Citizens (including the descendants of the Latins and Hernicans). The people of Transpadane Italia (Italy beyond the river Po) had Latin status. Most of the Gauls had Latin status because they had remained loyal during the civil war in which Iulius Caesar had defeated Pompey. The people of Narbonensus had been granted Roman citizenship because of their centuries of faithful alliance. The people of much of Iberia had Latin status, and some cities had been granted Roman citizenship because they had allied themselves to Caesar during the civil war. There were no other parts of the empire in which the native inhabitants had been granted either Latin status or citizenship.

So certainly, Augustus wanted an accurate record kept of the number of citizens--which did not include Gallilean carpenters and the teenaged girls they had knocked up. This is the silly basis upon which so many christian "scholars" have asserted that Luke's passage is plausible--they simply don't understand what citizenship meant in Augustan Rome.

For those who wish to dispute the foregoing, there are any number of sources--i recommend going back to basics--Polybius, History, and Titus Livius (Livy) Ad urbe condite, From the Foundation of the City, are the best places to begin.

When you've read those, come back, and i'll give you some more titles.

Since this thread is already seriously off track, I may as well ask what in the world you are talking about.

Your quotations of vague 'problems' with the NT , derived from your reading of Misquoting Jesus and probably others, haven't given any specific examples yet of contradictions between the gospel writers (your original charge). Nor do I know if you intend to, since you are making allusions to textual criticism now (again without specifics).

Though you have a hard time accepting it, and think I am dodging, I'll tell you again that writers giving different emphasis to various events or themes doesn't equal contradiction or inaccuracy.

OK so you didn't like my example of my family writing my bio, try this:

A writer may chronicle Reagan's presidency and emphasize his achievements in foreign policy dealing with Communism, for instance.

Another may write mainly of his success in fixing the American economy after the disaster of the late 70's.

Still another may deal primarily with his importance in laying the foundation for later political gains by cultural conservatives and a Republican congress in the 90's and beyond.

Which one is right? Which one is wrong? Is one or more revisionist? Are they all just making it up? Or did they simply choose to write about different aspects that they saw as important themes?

Are you saying that the documentation Bucher cites in the Acts of Augustus to show that as many as 3 census counts may have been taken during his reign is not accurate?

I am starting to agree with this Neo. Several of these recent diversionary issues may (or may not) make a good thread on their own.

But, I would like to keep a discussion on Evolution open without it being derailed, if that is possible.

Not at all; Setanta merely points out that Bucher either misconstrued or did not have a clue about what it was he read of Augustus; in either event, Bucher mischaracterized recorded events, their import and impact, and their relationship to the absurd Theory of Christianity. As is the wont of Creationists/ID-iots and their supporters, psuedo-academic Christian apologists such as Bucher typically, when refering to actual evidence at all, resort to a severely twisted realignment of documented evidence to make their baseless points. The principle at work there is the well-proven assumption that sufficient of the masses will be gullible and uncritical enough to unquestioningly accept such twaddle, as to ensure the propagation and prosperity of the dependent priesthood and its institutions. If ignorance is bliss, it is easy to understand the joy professed by Christians.

If ignorance is bliss timber you should be pretty much floating on cloud 9 yourself.

One presumes you mean that you are not "gullible"
and do not go in for "uncritical" modes of thinking and that you can recognise "twaddle" simply by calling whatever it is you wish by that name.

You really do need to address the functions of the "dependent priesthood and its institutions" and not just those negative ones which we might all agree on and which are the inevitable result of human nature.You also need to provide alternatives.

Your farrago of smears does a grave disservice to the SD side of the argument and can only result in you and it being taken less seriously by anyone with any pretentions to scholarship although I will agree that it might impress those whose critical faculties are somewhat attenuated.It is intemperate as,of course,was Augustus himself who has been reported in a less glowing light on many occasions.
This is understandable as he was a pagan and,as such,had a barbaric cast of mind,which is presumably something you seem to seek to restore to modern life.
Your focus on the minutia,following the example of others,may not be seen for what it is in general but it assuredly will be where the discussion is serious and of consequence.

A little learning is a dangerous thing they say and I would not dispute it and,like with invidious consumerism, the competition is fiercest the lower one goes on the scale and the procedures become more crass and tawdry and ridiculous.

Not in the least. Either your reading comprehension is seriously flawed, or you are willfully ignoring that i stipulate for censii occurring on a regular basis--while pointing out that there is no other record of a census having occurred at that specific time. You also ignore the issue of the Princeps personally ordering a census, which was not a function it were necessary for him to have fulfilled.

Of course, what you really wish to avoid is the core discussion of the inerrant character of canonical scripture. The passage in Luke constitutes an extraordinary claim, and those who advance extraordinary claims have the burden of proving them. You take up the gage in attempting to assert that Luke's contention is plausible, yet you fail of the proof. Instead, you deal in might-have-beens and references to other times and places.

The core issue is whether or not the scriptural canon of your preferred imaginary friend superstition is inerrant. If i and others here were to go after your scriptural canon on an historical and scientific basis, it were possible to rip it to shreds in a few pages. You'd be kept very busy indeed shuttling from one website to the next attempting to find the excuses to explain how the sun stood still for Joshuah, or how the Gaderene swine raced thirty miles to precipitate themselves into Lake Tiberius.

Spendi, i usually don't comment when you start babbling about scientific subjects of which you are superemely ignorant--i'll leave that to others. But here you are babbling about things historical of which you diplay a remarkable ignorance. Caesar Augustus was just about the most temperate of men ever to have risen to the dignity of emperor in history, let alone merely in the history of the Roman empire. To describe him as barbaric on the basis of him having been pagan reaches depths of religious bigotry into which even the most canting christians generally do not wade.

You do indeed seem to underscore the old saw that a little--in the case of history, it seems a very little indeed--learning is a dangerous thing.

So besides the record in Luke and the record in the Acts of Augustus, how many other sources[/b][/u] do you need before you conclude that there was indeed a census ordered by Augustus?

Got a link for the "Acts of Augustus?" When you provide a source other than Luke--the gospels are too notoriously unreliable to be considered historical sources--and, although it seems incredible to have to point this out to you, the issue is the passage in Luke--so referring to it as you do is one of the most blatantly laughable examples of begging the question which i have ever seen. Do you contend that we are to accept the passage in Luke on the evidenc of the passage in Luke ? ! ? ! ?

The majority opinion is that the putative Jesus was born in 4 BCE. (That of course refers to those who accept that there is any actual, plausible evidence that such a specific individual existed.) Come up with some evidence, other than Luke, for the Princeps having personally ordered a census of the entire population of the empire, and not simply Roman citizens, to take place in the year 4 BCE--and you will have sustained your point.

Otherwise, you're just whistling past the grave yard.

Setanta wrote-



I agree that he seems to have been fairly temperate compared to his peers but nevertheless he certainly wouldn't be thought of as temperate by our standards which is an impression I fear you are trying to create.Is the tale of him putting out someone's eyes with his fingers not true?Did he exile ladies of the court to remote and barren islands for mere high spiritedness and dear Ovid to the bleak shores of the Black Sea?Did he preside over events of the circus?

But he was a flat out IDer of the cynical persuasion believing,as John Buchan puts it,"that externals count for much,since they sway opinion,and opinion sways fashion,and fashion is reflected in conduct."

He is also reported as regulating manumission and limiting the freedman class,of restricting divorce and providing heavy penalties for seduction and adultery.Tacitus reported that six years after the great man's death his marriage laws were "a failure in practice" and Tertullian called them "vanissimae leges".

There is much to admire in the man though but to suggest he wasn't barbaric seems to me to be a little specious.

And he gave the world that pathological spirit Tiberius,his dear step-son.

"Canting" Christians never wade into territories they don't understand and neither do their opponents.

real life. I (and not a few "real" Biblical scholars) call the differences between just those points of the passion of Christ bas chronicled by Mark and Luke as "contradictory" . Ok you wont agree nor will you (seemingly) try to add some scholarship.
I shall remeber that the next time you ask me a detailed geology question. From here on out maybe Ill entertain you with
"Well the fossil record is really well documented, there are scads of books and well logs and fossil collections and researchers out ther who would be available to you"

I think Ive been very polite and most civilized in our disagreements on the science beneath evolution. Ive given illustrations , quoted research that I was familiar with, my own experience as a trained worker, and literature citations > Many others have given URLs that were quite detailed and they gave their own opinions that were scholarly.
Now, when I ask why a contradiction in the synoptic gospels seems to show a hint of question of the divinity of the swupposedly historic figure, you getr all clammed up and all attempts at erudition just seem to leave and you sink to irrelevant comparisons of chronicing first , your life, then Ronald Reagan (as seen only by Conservatives). You , by saying too much, have actually made my point in analogy much better than I did. eg Wheres the Iran Contra , or the rape of the environment, How about his starting the logarithmic acceleration of the national debt spiral. Whos Mark and whose Luk in the case of reagan? ARe we talkin about this great god-like "leader", or was he just another flawed president who had a great stage presence.

Damn, when you make my cases, you do it well

Not so's I've noticed - both feet firmly on firm ground.


One so presuming proceedes in significant foundational error.


I submit I need do no such thing - I submit further I have well established my case in such regard, as opposed to your ineffectual and counterproductive attempts pertinent to that particular endeavor.


I submit that by definition a statement of factual observation cannot be termed a "smear" - it is a fact. I will however, given the evidence to be found in your posts, stipulate to your pretentions of scholarship.


I submit your conclusion is non sequiturial, presents a straw man argument, borders on ad hominem, and serves your proposition no more ably than have your previous relevant submissions. I'll grant your commentaries are consistent.

Good retort, timber. I, as a simpleton, find spendius an arse.

Well don't try any fancy stuff c.i. because I'm no receptacle.

timber-

I simply find it difficult to believe that grown men who have spent their life in erudition and whatnot have completely missed the function of Christianity.
Wnen one derives one's beliefs from a body of literature or history and then quotes that literature and history,however doubtful,to support those beliefs one is circulating around something about the size of a ping-pong ball.

I derive my beliefs from a study of human nature and while I recognise that some people are fascinated by why raindrops fall or why the stars hang up in the firmament I am more interested in why I'm in all this **** and have to go through these ridiculous routines such as having to have turkey on festive occasions,cranberry sauce mandatory, and shake hands with people who have just been for a piss and be tempted to book holidays in the sun etc etc etc.

Is it good rattling assertions off at a mile a minute.

Hi Farmerman

I would be glad to discuss any contradictions that you think exist in the gospels if you will BE SPECIFIC, as I have asked several times.

Your responses--

Jesus comes off looking like a biker

Jesus was out of the loop

Jesus was frightened

Jesus was transcendant

are too vague to really discuss.

Let's look at a specific reference in each gospel, both referring to the same detail or aspect of the event -- and tell me why you think they contradict.

--------------------

And my statement regarding discussions of these being abundant in books, study Bibles, etc was a specific response to your charge that Christian clergy 'hide from the faithful' those contradictions you think exist.

I was not blowing you off , or telling you 'go look it up'.

No link that I know of that gives the text of the Acts of Augustus. Could be one, but I've not seen it.

Bucher's reference was footnoted as you recall, but the volume is so old it probably is not online.

He is temperate in comparison to thousand of "christian" rulers well up into our own times. He comes off as supremely civilized in comparison to a good many Serbs professing the Orthodox religion in our own life-times. If he fails to meet our standards, and any number of "christian" rulers in the last two thousand years do, including many in our own life-times, your standards are pathetic.



He may well have done, although i know of no positive support for the assertion--shall we visit the torture cells of Torquemada, or relive a Protestant witch-burning? Once again, you attempt to suggest that Augustus was deplorable in a manner which differentiates him significantly from good christians since his time. If you really believe that, i suggest you need to do about twenty or thirty years of reading on the subject of the tender mercies christians of all descriptions have visited on those they deemed heretical or infidel.



Actually, the weight of scholarly opinion is that those banishments, as well as that of quite a few men of the Julian and the Claudian lines, were all part and parcel of Livia's plan to clear the way for Tiberius. Far from a barbaric attitude, the tender regard for Livia shown by Augustus positively made him look the love-besotted fool.



There is no doubt that Augustus was a prudish slave to the public opinion of the order of Patres, which hardly reflects upon him as barbaric. Ovid was grossly indiscrete--not to say simply stupid--in lending his literary talents to scurrilous satires of prominent and influential people. Were Augustus the barbarian you're attempting to paint him, Ovid would not have lived at all--quite apart from the satires which earned him the enmity of many of the Patres, he may well have been conducting an ilicit affair with the emperor's unfortunate daughter.



It was Augustus' illustrious predecessor who took an ancient Tuscan custom of two slaves fighting to the death as a part of the obsequies of powerful people and turned it into a public entertainment. That such public entertainments, already grown extremely popular, were conducted during his reign makes him no more barbaric than quite a few other emperors. Given the penchant that English monarchs have shown in the past for bear baiting, bull baiting and dog fighting, i wonder if you apply such standards to the "christian" luminaries of your own island's history.



Apart from the hilarious, specious, and typically confused and irrelevant attempt on your part to make this somehow relevant to the titular discussion--i wonder if you contend that this is evidence of his "barbarism."



Shall we review the introduction of slavery into North America by good English Protestants (although the Spanish Catholics had outlawed slavery in Mexico)? Shall we discuss the thriving slave trade of good "christians" from Holland and England, and England's North American colonies? Is this more evidence of barbarism in your contention? I've noted his prudery--do you (god you crack me up!) suggest that prudery is evidenc of barbarism? Where does that leave Victoria and Albert?



Which you contend is evidence of barbarism?



Your suggestion that he was barbaric, and that you have demonstrated as much is monunmentally specious.



Actually, you can thank his wife Livia for that.



There's no better response for this than an American classic--bullshit.

I can go on for pages with descriptions of "enlightened christian monarchs" who make Augustus look like a saint. I'll take just one example. In 1613, a convocation of Russian aristocrats, church leaders and members of the Commons pressed upon Mikhail Romanov the imperial dignity. He associated his son Alexei with his reign and secured from another convocation the assurance of Alexei Mikhailovitch's succession.

Alexei Mikhailovitch first married Maria Miroslavskaya, and by her produced several sons and daughters. Two of those sons succeeded him as Tsar, and his daughter Sophia was to preside over the final Miloslavsky Tsar as regent, when Ivan was co-Tsar with his half brother Petr, the Narishkin son. Because Maria died before Alexei, who then married Natalya Narishkina. This meant that the Miroslavskis were out, and the Narishkins were in. When Alexei died, he was succeeded by his sickly son Fyodr, who was said (and not unkindly--he was truly unwell) to have ruled from flat on his back. Fyodr's accession meant the Miroslavskis were back in and the Narishkins were back in. This was unpleasant for the boyars, who had found it easier to pressure and manipulate the Narishkin's, as arrivistes and descendants of Tatars. When Fyodr died, the boyars moved quickly and chose Petr Alexeevitch as Tsar (then aged ten, in 1682), on the basis of the ill-health of his half brother Ivan. This meant the Miroslavskis were out again, and the Narishkins back in, and the boyars exercising the influence they had enjoyed while Alexei had lived and Natalya had been Tsarina. But the Tsaritsa Sophia Alexeevna was not satisfied--so she engineered a revolt of the streltsy, the soldier-colonists originally created by Grozny Ivan, and become the terror of Moscow from their own district across the Moskva from the Kremlin. They raged into the Kremlin, and as Natalya stood on the Red Porch, holding her ten-year-old son Petr and her fourteen-year-old stepson Ivan by the hand, they all watched as her friend and Alexei's old friend and counselor Artemon Matveev was literally hacked to pieces after being thrown onto the halberds of the streltsy. Then her brother, Petr's uncle, was thrown onto the halberds and hacked to pieces. Before it was all over, the stretsy had raged through every room and hall of the Kremlin, and filled Red Square with the dismembered bodies of Narishkins and anybody whose looks they did not like--the slaughter lasted for three days. One can understand how Petr might have conceived a mistrust of and dislike for the streltsy.

Sophia used the incident to become regent for Petr and Ivan who were declared "co-Tsars." She lasted for eight years. Finally, she misstepped so often, that she forced a show-down with Petr, which she lost. She spent the rest of her days in a convent. Petr Alexeevitch went on to become known to the world as Peter the Great.

In 1697, Peter went on his first tour of western Europe. In his absence, the streltsy rose again. His father's old trusted officer, General Gordon, put down the uprising and put thousands of streltsy in prison. Petr was grim indeed when he returned early from his tour. The streltsy were put to the torture before being executed. Petr would preside as each strelets was brought into be tortured with the rack, with fire and with the knout. He presided over literally thousands of such "interrogations." Although considered barbaric by other European monarchs, that was more a matter of having displayed the bad taste of doing in public what they had privately done in dungeons.

But there was a bizarre mirror of that event. In 1716, Alexei Petrovitch, maddened by what he considered the unreasonable dictates of his father, attempted to abscond. As one could have expected in the Europe of his day, he was quickly apprehended and returned to St. Petersburg. He was interrogated in the traditional Russian manner, with the rack, with fire and with the batog--which is to say he was caned into unconsciousness. His father, Petr Alexeevitch, attended the interrogations, and conducted several of them. Alexei Petrovitch was executed in 1718.

I submit that you Spendi, don't know what the hell you're talking about when you condemn a Roman emperor as a barbarian because he was a pagan, while you ignore the barbarism of two thousand years worth of "christian" monarchs. I submit that canting christians all too frequently wade into waters far deeper than they are capable of swimming in, be the waters historical or scientific.

Shall we visit, Spendi, the Tower and its bloody history? Shall we visit the murder of William Rufus, the civil war of Stephen of Blois? Shall we examine the tender mercies displayed by Edward Pantagenet toward David ap Griffith and William Wallace? Shall we do a dissection of the political intrigues, poison pen letters and murders of Elizabeth I in Ireland? Shall we examine the policies and actions of Parliament's Roundhead army in Ireland in the 1650's--or the SAS in Ulster in the 1970s, -80s and -90s? Believe me, Spendi, when i say that i am capable of a thorough examination of the barbarism of christians in all eras of the last two millenia and right across the map of Europe.