uziq
Member
+492|3422
of course he’s wrong. he gets more exaggerated and theatrical the more wrong he knows he is. like a small child who refuses to admit a mistake and be humbled.

dilbert: jews have not developed at all in 2500 years.
also dilbert: science and logic and math are so awesome!

lol. how many literally paradigm-changing scientists, philosophers and mathematicians were jewish? lol. spinoza? EINSTEIN? heisenberg? it was literally called ‘jewish physics’ ffs by the racists and detractors of the time.

how many of the thinkers that gave us ‘modernity’ effectively as a category were jews? marx? freud? the vienna circle of logicians? wittgenstein? lol the entire circle around godel et al were jewish, literally reinventing logic and paving the way for modern computing.

how many great cultural figures of the 20th century have been jews? authors, film makers, philosophers? isaiah berlin? hannah arendt? novelists like saul bellow, phillip roth, etc, who literally are considered the summing greats and voices of american experience?

nah, they haven’t advanced at all from a levantine cult.

Last edited by uziq (2020-09-18 04:41:37)

uziq
Member
+492|3422

Dilbert_X wrote:

unnamednewbie13 wrote:

Apart from certain obvious pack dynamics, packs of feral dogs don't behave like packs of wolves.
Erm OK

Same as people don't behave like packs except when they behave according to certain obvious pack dynamics.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-09-17/ … t/12670090
lol you love cod science and quackery so much. anything pseudo-scientific you lap up, totally suspending any critical eye or scrutiny. scientific-sounding nonsense is your entire brand. too bad, being an engineer has not equipped you to understand the human animal. you are extremely arrogant.

human beings do not have ‘pack instincts’ for racism. sounds like wishy-washy film flam from a debunked discipline like evolutionary psychology. i’m sure you can justify all sorts of unreconstructed or atavistic behaviour by appealing to our ancient evolutionary heritage as reptiles, or amoebas, or carbon, or something. race is a CONSTRUCTED category, dilbert. we do not have a hard-wired pack mentality to stick with our race because ... they didn’t exist when the mammal brain was in beta testing.

herd behaviour makes sense in very limited contexts, like discussing how crowds interact and engage in a panic or crush. it can be used analogously to things like ‘leaders’ and ‘followers’, but, like the highly problematic alpha/beta male stuff, the science is basically non-existent. it’s a neat theory that’s too neatly transposed from animals (these hierarchies are not so simple even in wolfs or chimps). you can’t appeal to herd behaviour to describe highly complex, contingent or emergent attitudes like nationalism and racism. that is stretching the science beyond any credibility.

the fact you're so stubborn that you claim anti-racism is 'brainwashing' is just deluded beyond all belief. ever thought that maybe people just ... disagree with you, dilbert? and don't feel that way? aren't fearful? don't harbour hate and resentment? are just happier, better put-together humans in general? more generous? more altruistic? you come across like an edgy teenager that projects his nihilistic stroppiness onto the whole world. it's not big and it's not clever. most people living in material comfort in this world, for e.g. the middle-class of western liberal democracies, are not susceptible to hate ideologies like racism. the fact you have to explain that as 'brainwashing' is fucking funny. ever thought that there just ISN'T a hard-wired biological cause? i don't think a vast majority of the western world are under hypnotism.

Last edited by uziq (2020-09-18 05:12:42)

Dilbert_X
The X stands for
+1,810|6075|eXtreme to the maX

uziq wrote:

of course he’s wrong. he gets more exaggerated and theatrical the more wrong he knows he is. like a small child who refuses to admit a mistake and be humbled.

dilbert: jews have not developed at all in 2500 years.
also dilbert: science and logic and math are so awesome!

lol. how many literally paradigm-changing scientists, philosophers and mathematicians were jewish? lol. spinoza? EINSTEIN? heisenberg? it was literally called ‘jewish physics’ ffs by the racists and detractors of the time.

how many of the thinkers that gave us ‘modernity’ effectively as a category were jews? marx? freud? the vienna circle of logicians? wittgenstein? lol the entire circle around godel et al were jewish, literally reinventing logic and paving the way for modern computing.

how many great cultural figures of the 20th century have been jews? authors, film makers, philosophers? isaiah berlin? hannah arendt? novelists like saul bellow, phillip roth, etc, who literally are considered the summing greats and voices of american experience?

nah, they haven’t advanced at all from a levantine cult.

And yet they're still striving to bring about Armageddon.

They haven't progressed at all.
Русский военный корабль, иди на хуй!
Larssen
Member
+99|1857
How is a tiny country of 8 million going to 'bring armageddon'? They're not exactly one of the new great powers Dilbert.

I'm thinking you and shahter would make a wonderful leadership team.
Larssen
Member
+99|1857
I see you're derailing because you refuse to come to terms with your own bigotry and BS, this is pointlessly stupid. For the third time, you can't pick and choose your reality; you're projecting internal fantasies on the real world.
uziq
Member
+492|3422

Dilbert_X wrote:

uziq wrote:

of course he’s wrong. he gets more exaggerated and theatrical the more wrong he knows he is. like a small child who refuses to admit a mistake and be humbled.

dilbert: jews have not developed at all in 2500 years.
also dilbert: science and logic and math are so awesome!

lol. how many literally paradigm-changing scientists, philosophers and mathematicians were jewish? lol. spinoza? EINSTEIN? heisenberg? it was literally called ‘jewish physics’ ffs by the racists and detractors of the time.

how many of the thinkers that gave us ‘modernity’ effectively as a category were jews? marx? freud? the vienna circle of logicians? wittgenstein? lol the entire circle around godel et al were jewish, literally reinventing logic and paving the way for modern computing.

how many great cultural figures of the 20th century have been jews? authors, film makers, philosophers? isaiah berlin? hannah arendt? novelists like saul bellow, phillip roth, etc, who literally are considered the summing greats and voices of american experience?

nah, they haven’t advanced at all from a levantine cult.

And yet they're still striving to bring about Armageddon.

They haven't progressed at all.
once again, the hardcore nationalists and ex-irgun types are not all jews, they're barely a majority in israel itself if recent electoral politics/protests are anything to go by.

it's like saying the christian west hasn't developed at all since 2000BC because the amish and latter day adventists exist.

you're a racist idiot.
SuperJail Warden
Gone Forever
+634|3689
On my town's facebook page a girl with a Spanish name was asking if there was any Muslim women's group she could join. That angered me a lot. She is a literal race traitor and probably mentally ill. Why would any woman want to join Islam?
https://i.imgur.com/xsoGn9X.jpg
Dilbert_X
The X stands for
+1,810|6075|eXtreme to the maX

uziq wrote:

it's like saying the christian west hasn't developed at all since 2000BC because the amish and latter day adventists exist.
If the amish lived in a nuclear armed outpost and kept bombing their neighbours and expanding their borders your analogy might be useful.
Русский военный корабль, иди на хуй!
uziq
Member
+492|3422
erm aren't evangelical christians one of the most powerful factions in electing/re-electing trump?

a huge number of christian conservatives in the USA believe in the prophecy of Israel and are de facto zionists.

why aren't you forever claiming that all of white western civilisation is a death cult, as a consequence?
Dilbert_X
The X stands for
+1,810|6075|eXtreme to the maX
I'm sure I've said the Christians have been thoroughly brainwashed into believing jewish armageddon is somehow good for christianity.

They're just as bad as the zealots, only stupider.

I'd ban all religion, let people obsess over Game of Thrones or something, but then people call me an extremist.
Русский военный корабль, иди на хуй!
uziq
Member
+492|3422
both religions are eschatological and are based around the intervention of god in history, i.e. revelation to man. that is what differentiates them from other nature-based religions in the region, which had cyclical views of time and did not believe in the 'culmination' of history.  apocalypse in ancient greek literally transliterates as 'an uncovering'.

christians weren't 'brainwashed' into anything: it was there right from the start in the religion.

the ancient egyptians, including their 'engineers', also believed in armageddon-type myths too, but i'm wasting my fucking time trying to explain basic history to you.
Dilbert_X
The X stands for
+1,810|6075|eXtreme to the maX
AFAIK There's nothing in the New Testament related to the jewish end-of-times.

Any linkage is contrived.
Русский военный корабль, иди на хуй!
uziq
Member
+492|3422
erm, the book of revelation is the final book of the new testament. it is literally a book about apocalypse.

do you even have the most perfunctory fucking grasp of these things you spend so much time dismissing and railing against? what a huge waste of energy. you puff and you blow and you pettifog and you haven't even the faintest clue what you're on about.

the jewish 'end of times' and messiah myth is a lot less, erm, world-ending than the book of revelations, by the way.

Last edited by uziq (2020-09-21 04:57:27)

Dilbert_X
The X stands for
+1,810|6075|eXtreme to the maX
Seems to have been tacked onto the end and looks more like something David Koresh would have written though eh?

But my point was there's not much overlap between the jewish vision of end of days and the new testament version.

It seems the christians have been conned.
Русский военный корабль, иди на хуй!
uziq
Member
+492|3422
tacked onto the end? it was written likely by john, the most mystical and serious of jesus’s apostles, and is consistent with his portrayal throughout the other gospels; other historical hypotheses have it as another titular follower of john, who came later. either way, it’s history is evident in the gospels. it is part of the christian canon and new testament. you claim it’s ‘tacked on’ to suit your own pet theory and nothing else.

if you really knew anything about theology, especially the abrahamic religions, you’d see how senseless it is to divide between the apocalyptism of all three faiths. they are intrinsically tied into the same (novel) view of god and history/man/the world. that god will directly intervene in the course of human history. that god will assume messianic forms. sorry but it’s just illiterate to make out that jews are a crazy end-of-days religion and christians aren’t. there are churches and factions in both faiths that accentuate and emphasise this aspect; and it is an ever-present part of the faith.

and what do you mean there isn’t much overlap? it’s entirely the same fucking prophecy! the main disagreement seems to be that jews don’t agree jesus is THE messiah that their own prophecy portends. both end up with an armageddon, a pitched battle or climax, and a restoration of a kingdom to the tribe/flock and a bringing about of a ‘new eden’.

why do you persist in these arguments when you simply don’t have a clue? you’re that much of an anti-semite that you’ll argue from a position of total ignorance. pretty impressive. it’s like me arguing with you over the best construction of a bridge. get a grip, egads.
Larssen
Member
+99|1857
The older I get the more concerning religion and faith is to me, despite growing up protestant and having a pastor in the family. In his case he's a very progressive christian and incorporates modern theology and historiography in his faith: to him deducing the overall/core message in the books is more important than specific verses in the text. He's good natured & flexible in his belief system, I would say a model of faith in the 21st century. But still.

I wonder how one can keep up their faith in the knowledge that various editors went over the bible and that it is written from the limited context and knowledge of a person who was alive in the 1st century.  That the old testament often references the pissing contest between the various peoples who lived in the levant and that the historical record shows their tiny squabbles were a large part of religious life/experience. Hard to accept that the infinite wisdom of god/christ were revealed in such an environment. Even harder perhaps to look back and see how much the religious interpretation and experience has changed over time.

Still, modern christians have adapted and found a version of faith that I take little issue with, but every once in a while religious dogma finds its way in their views on life, society and politics in a less positive manner. It's worse in religious communities where dogma is very important, such as for most muslims. The grip of the faith on the community, its identity and  dictation of what life should be like absolutely makes for a somewhat uncomfortable existence within a society that is not regulated according to the prevailing dogmas.

Last edited by Larssen (2020-09-21 07:38:31)

uziq
Member
+492|3422
the older i get the more a lack of faith is concerning to me. it seems it's important to recognize early on that the need to believe in something goes very deep, and you better choose something that serves you well. a lot of secular 'beliefs' end up eating us alive, or leading into all sorts of ideological dungeons.

do you think it's an accident that all these laypeople are becoming invested in conspiracy theories that talk about 'demonic cabals', shadowy organizations, the battle between truthbringing trump and the forces of darkness, etc? that people are susceptible to 'spiritualism', 'wellness', zodiac signs, and any other brand of cheap crap sold by snake-oil salesmen?

the need to believe in things is evidently a part of the human condition, one which the autist-dawkins lot can't beat out of humanity using taunts and their superior scientist's egghead brains. when you get rid of organized religion, you open a door to any other amount of harmful claptrap. better to come to an accommodation with faith, in my opinion. it's imperfect, but it's a realistic assessment of humanity. (even nietzsche, who supposedly got rid of religion in western philosophy, was plenty critical of the 'new' religion of 'scientific truth' ... read what he had to say about ranke.)

it goes without saying that most outwardly 'atheistic', not to say anti-religious, societies have ushered in their own dangers as well. dogma is not the sole preserve of the religious. faith-based thinking didn't disappear in the soviet union: it just went underground and manifested itself in any number of folkish beliefs and spiritualist garbage. or in viewing lenin-stalin as messiahs.

for every extremist-fundamentalist religious nutjob, there's probably a decent example of an average family who using their religion have kept their lives together, steeled themselves through life's challenges and vicissitudes, been kind to their neighbours, etc. so faith itself, per se, is not 'concerning' to me.

your comments about the bible-as-text and biblical scholarship just show a huge amount of ignorance. do you really think all those monks, clerics, bishops, theologians etc throughout the centuries didn't realize these things? much greater minds than yours have pondered these things and continued to believe, larssen. i don't have any religious faith myself but it doesn't seem like such an 'aha! gotcha!' moment to me to think that texts have, well, textual histories. the old testament's myths itself are just adapted myths from older civilizations. theologians know this, also. the great flood, for example. jesus is ultimately just a re-telling of the 'dying god' archetype, itself a vestige of nature religions, and present also in the myth of tammuz, osiris ... name your agrarian mediterranean civilization, basically, it'll have it. does it make it less 'true'/credible, or more so? not having any religious commitments myself, i tend to think of it as increasing its interest/curiosity, rather than debunking it. these are ultimately just legends and symbols passed down through various retellings, which have a truth of their own (in this case, if the seed does not die there will be no growth in the spring, etc).

the bible wasn't written by one person, by the way. nobody thinks that. not even individual gospels were put together by one person. and the old testament is explicitly understood, even by average religious folk, as a collection stitched together by many people. ecclesiastes and the song of solomon have a different author to the psalms -- both of which are a lot earlier than 1st century BCE.

sure, it's pretty unbelievable that god revealed himself to man in such a strange time, and to such an undistinguished tribe too (whether christian or jewish, strictly underdogs and poor mountain-folk). what's more interesting to me is that all these world religions kicked off in more or less the same century. so the levant is one thing; but the buddha was happening at the exact same time, with zero cross-contact. that's interesting.

Last edited by uziq (2020-09-21 08:09:51)

Superior Mind
(not macbeth)
+1,755|6662
Some people believe Jesus traveled to India and studied with the Buddha. Others believe Jesus traveled to and died in Japan. Some people even think Moses is buried in Japan.
uziq
Member
+492|3422
i do not think that's credible and haven't seen any convincing scholarship of it. about as likely as jesus doing an american tour.

interestingly, speaking of the far east, confucius was the exact same century too (550-480 BCE). all of the great world religions/thought systems which still pertain today came out of the same 100-150 years (with the obvious exception of islam).

and socrates-plato-aristotle? 470-320 BCE.

Last edited by uziq (2020-09-21 08:32:25)

Superior Mind
(not macbeth)
+1,755|6662
It is interesting and makes me wonder if there are cyclical or periodical cosmic or terrestrial conditions outside human comprehension that influence our consciousness and the development of cultural styles- as suggested by some wisdom traditions.
SuperJail Warden
Gone Forever
+634|3689

uziq wrote:

sure, it's pretty unbelievable that god revealed himself to man in such a strange time, and to such an undistinguished tribe too (whether christian or jewish, strictly underdogs and poor mountain-folk). what's more interesting to me is that all these world religions kicked off in more or less the same century. so the levant is one thing; but the buddha was happening at the exact same time, with zero cross-contact. that's interesting.
The period is referred to as the axial age.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Axial_Age
https://i.imgur.com/xsoGn9X.jpg
SuperJail Warden
Gone Forever
+634|3689

Superior Mind wrote:

It is interesting and makes me wonder if there are cyclical or periodical cosmic or terrestrial conditions outside human comprehension that influence our consciousness and the development of cultural styles- as suggested by some wisdom traditions.
I think advancements in agriculture gave more people time to think and debate about life than they had before.
https://i.imgur.com/xsoGn9X.jpg
Superior Mind
(not macbeth)
+1,755|6662

SuperJail Warden wrote:

Superior Mind wrote:

It is interesting and makes me wonder if there are cyclical or periodical cosmic or terrestrial conditions outside human comprehension that influence our consciousness and the development of cultural styles- as suggested by some wisdom traditions.
I think advancements in agriculture gave more people time to think and debate about life than they had before.
Fair point and obviously part of or the whole case. What were some specific advances in agriculture which happened at that time?

By the same logic of agricultural conditions, can we explain the spiritually defunct global culture and extremist anti-humanist religious and secular ideologies apparently dominating the scene right now?

Last edited by Superior Mind (2020-09-21 09:00:16)

Larssen
Member
+99|1857

uziq wrote:

the older i get the more a lack of faith is concerning to me. it seems it's important to recognize early on that the need to believe in something goes very deep, and you better choose something that serves you well. a lot of secular 'beliefs' end up eating us alive, or leading into all sorts of ideological dungeons.

do you think it's an accident that all these laypeople are becoming invested in conspiracy theories that talk about 'demonic cabals', shadowy organizations, the battle between truthbringing trump and the forces of darkness, etc? that people are susceptible to 'spiritualism', 'wellness', zodiac signs, and any other brand of cheap crap sold by snake-oil salesmen?

the need to believe in things is evidently a part of the human condition, one which the autist-dawkins lot can't beat out of humanity using taunts and their superior scientist's egghead brains. when you get rid of organized religion, you open a door to any other amount of harmful claptrap. better to come to an accommodation with faith, in my opinion. it's imperfect, but it's a realistic assessment of humanity. (even nietzsche, who supposedly got rid of religion in western philosophy, was plenty critical of the 'new' religion of 'scientific truth' ... read what he had to say about ranke.)

it goes without saying that most outwardly 'atheistic', not to say anti-religious, societies have ushered in their own dangers as well. dogma is not the sole preserve of the religious. faith-based thinking didn't disappear in the soviet union: it just went underground and manifested itself in any number of folkish beliefs and spiritualist garbage. or in viewing lenin-stalin as messiahs.

for every extremist-fundamentalist religious nutjob, there's probably a decent example of an average family who using their religion have kept their lives together, steeled themselves through life's challenges and vicissitudes, been kind to their neighbours, etc. so faith itself, per se, is not 'concerning' to me.
I'm not exactly a dawkins type but the defence you put forward here seems rather weak; we should keep it around for the alternative may possibly perhaps for all we know be worse. I'm also not sure whether I agree that belief is necessarily part of the human condition. At present it most of all survives through the practices of initiation which usually start from birth, and much of the other stuff you pointed towards are often just remaining folklore/mythology/medieval pseudoscience that has survived to the present day alongside (not instead of) existing religious practice. In any case, I see myself and probably you getting along just fine without deferring to a deity or faith. In my case as I get older I find it easier to start being a little more critical of faith and religious organisation, whereas in the past I would often seek to justify its existence and accomodate it more. I'm not exactly a full-on atheist but I firmly believe that faith and religion are not necessary to live a good or fulfilling life and may even present itself as an obstacle to social organisation or progress, be it a faith in science or indeed one of the many religions. Just the practice of faith based organisation and dogma is not a very good one, however much some people in particular seem drawn to that sort of organising priinciple for their lives.

uzique wrote:

your comments about the bible-as-text and biblical scholarship just show a huge amount of ignorance. do you really think all those monks, clerics, bishops, theologians etc throughout the centuries didn't realize these things? much greater minds than yours have pondered these things and continued to believe, larssen. i don't have any religious faith myself but it doesn't seem like such an 'aha! gotcha!' moment to me to think that texts have, well, textual histories. the old testament's myths itself are just adapted myths from older civilizations. theologians know this, also. the great flood, for example. jesus is ultimately just a re-telling of the 'dying god' archetype, itself a vestige of nature religions, and present also in the myth of tammuz, osiris ... name your agrarian mediterranean civilization, basically, it'll have it. does it make it less 'true'/credible, or more so? not having any religious commitments myself, i tend to think of it as increasing its interest/curiosity, rather than debunking it. these are ultimately just legends and symbols passed down through various retellings, which have a truth of their own (in this case, if the seed does not die there will be no growth in the spring, etc).
Well yes that is exactly my point. I do think it detracts from the story because it becomes obvious that religious formation was subject to already established beliefs and mythologies among the people who lived in that particular area of the modern middle east/egypt - to me it seems indicative of a conscious effort to incorporate these into the new belief system so as to have greater appeal with the masses, to be able to 'spread the word'. Or/and as an effort to simplify what at that time became an ever more confusing array of gods, origin stories and mythological arcs, in which ultimately it was people who edited and selected what they considered 'the right story' through an often convoluted process*. While you could optimistically or enthusiastically see the abrahamic religions as a  refining or evolution of sorts and see truth in its continuation of the old beliefs, I reckon it also rather casts a large shadow of doubt. i.e. Why were the old systems abandoned and do they seem to have less value? Is the split justifiable at all?

One of those great minds we talked about in the past, thomas aquinas. He was possibly agnostic by the way and rather nuanced when it came to the subject of god.

* speaking of convoluted process, in the case of the Qur'an one of the facts you'll have to assume as true is that when the editors were put in charge of compiling and writing out the oral version of the book, everyone in 600 AD knew word-for-word whatever Mohammed allegedly said at various events/places. I'm sure they corroborated before including it but I mean, come on.

the bible wasn't written by one person, by the way. nobody thinks that. not even individual gospels were put together by one person. and the old testament is explicitly understood, even by average religious folk, as a collection stitched together by many people. ecclesiastes and the song of solomon have a different author to the psalms -- both of which are a lot earlier than 1st century BCE.
I know, of course (the books often highlighting the fact), grammatical error on my part - I suck on phones.

uzique wrote:

sure, it's pretty unbelievable that god revealed himself to man in such a strange time, and to such an undistinguished tribe too (whether christian or jewish, strictly underdogs and poor mountain-folk). what's more interesting to me is that all these world religions kicked off in more or less the same century. so the levant is one thing; but the buddha was happening at the exact same time, with zero cross-contact. that's interesting.
The last part is interesting, but for the abrahamic religions there's certainly contextual explanations.

And well, confucius to mohammed - there's almost a milennium between the two. Nevermind that as you stated the abrahamic religions also strongly draw from myths that have histories as far back as 4000 bce.

Last edited by Larssen (2020-09-21 09:40:28)

uziq
Member
+492|3422
i didn't say anywhere that people 'need' religion to get along or act ethically. that is an altogether different argument and is extremely spurious. i said for many people religion is a good conduit of their energies, a positive and constructive thing in their life that encourages good conduct inasmuch as for others it can lead to extremism, dogmatism, intolerance, hatred rather than love, etc. i certainly have never needed religious precept or the fear of damnation to encourage me to be moral or good to someone; that is not my point. my point is everybody worships, in some form or another, whether they worship money/status, their own intelligence or 'reason', their social tribe or nationality, etc. people are susceptible to all sorts of ideological hooks and crooks.

we live in the most secular and godless age, which many people celebrate; but we also live in an age of resurgent conspiratorial thinking and lapses into all sorts of irrational clap-trap. how is it that the most technologically advanced civilization in the history of the world is now full of people who even doubt that the world is round, a fact adduced by the ancient greeks using a stick and the transit of the sun? there's an interesting dynamic, i think, it's an expression of something beyond savage ignorance. people are still congregating in churches, just they're dedicated now to david icke or alex jones or whatever.

And well, confucius to mohammed - there's almost a milennium between the two. Nevermind that as you stated the abrahamic religions also strongly draw from myths that have histories as far back as 4000 bce.
yes, but, islam is still in large part based on the monotheism established by judaism. it still centres around jerusalem, and the similarities in their theologies are very similar. they share many of the same prophets. i am talking specifically about the emergence of the abrahamic monotheisms, not the loose collection of myths and gods that existed in the region before then. a big change took place ca. 550 BCE (hence all the stuff about moses and the early prophets smashing false idols, railing against those who worshipped baal/the golden calf, etc.)

judaism (from which followed the other abrahamic religions), buddhism, confucianism, and the socratic school of greek philosophy (from which specifically followed christianity when hellenism met judaism) all basically erupted in the same 100 years. all have been completely pivotal to the modern world, secular or not.

One of those great minds we talked about in the past, thomas aquinas. He was possibly agnostic by the way and rather nuanced when it came to the subject of god.
to call aquinas 'agnostic' is to misunderstand the term or to use it in a wrong historical context. the entire point of doubt was very different for medieval theologians. it was a necessary step to proving a higher faith, not of being 'in doubt' about the existence of god in the same way that you or i would be 'agnostic' in the 21st century. most of the church fathers, including augustine, were at one point or another 'agnostic', literally doubting the existence of god, or god as he is presented; several of jesus' apostles were agnostic and had famous moments of doubt, equivocation, crises of faith. hence you have 'doubting thomas', doubting peter, doubting simon (who became paul, literally the founder of the entire catholic church).

kierkegaard, in the 19th century, the great christian existentialist with his 'leap of faith' and talk of absurd belief, as well as pascal before him, extended this tradition of 'radical' religious doubt; descartes and cartesianism are extensions of this doubt, and similarly are concerned with 'rationally' proving the existence of god/the absolute. do NOT confuse these people as 'agnostics' in the sense we use today.

speaking of convoluted process, in the case of the Qur'an one of the facts you'll have to assume as true is that when the editors were put in charge of compiling and writing out the oral version of the book, everyone in 600 AD knew word-for-word whatever Mohammed allegedly said at various events/places. I'm sure they corroborated before including it but I mean, come on.
i mean this is more-or-less how every oral story became written down. homer was an oral tale for centuries, and they are considered the 'canonical' founding texts of western culture: the odyssey and the iliad were memorized. it's perfectly conceivable that an oral memory of what was exactly said was passed down, more or less. it's more complicated than that because we're talking about things deemed 'holy' and 'the words of god', etc, but still. there's very little that is actually directly attributable as 'the words of jesus' in the gospels or bible, fyi. biblical scholars generally tend to ascribe it to the paraphrase or oral testimony of intermediaries, too; it's very hard to get a sense of the 'voice' of jesus when you read the often very different versions in the gospels.

you should look up the septuagint, by the way. it's a similar part to the history of the bible's composition. christian thinkers are obviously familiar with these textual/compositional aspects.

Last edited by uziq (2020-09-21 10:06:03)

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