one under god,

Will come back to you. Have a good day.

Yours faithfully,

O.

Oliver,

Apologies if you think that this has moved way past your questions but I really don't relate to many of the posts in here. Some atheist ones (whether or not I agree with them) made more sense to me then the many of the theistic ones. Perhaps I am just not clever enough or too lacking in faith for the present discussion. So I'm just going back to your questions and keeping it simple.

Ideas including Mary the legal but not actual virgin and Jesus being just some inspiring Jewish man who went off and got married and lived happily ever after, ideas that somehow don't affect the foundation of Christianity, are not my cup of tea. I'd like to see some reasonable evidence before adopting such beliefs and I'm not sure if I could get my head around how it doesn't change the foundation of Christianity. Thus I wouldn't know how to continue that line of thinking. Hence my reversion to your questions.

"1. How do you "explain" the existence of God? …”

Firstly I’d like to adopt the list of the other standard explanations already presented. You were targetting the "something must have caused physical stuff" explanation. The scientific evidence suggests a beginning for the physical stuff. The sourcebook of my religion commences with "In the beginning..." in the claim that there was a beginning to the physical stuff. A decision needs to be made as to what explains the unexplained.

Faith can be put in some unidentified infinite regress of natural forces (or some equally incredible speculation based on string theory or landscape etc.) or an eternal God. Due to the implausibility of both from a natural cause pre-'big bang' perspective the supernatural seems to make more sense as it neatly resolves the problem. Being supernatural it doesn't have to be natural. Of course if you are not open to supernatural then you need to put faith in the other versions. Personally I prefer to economise the amount of faith required as faith isn’t a strong point.

I don't share your confidence in Dawkins' reasoning.

CONT

"2. Why did god allow the Pre-Cambrian Extinction?”

The point has already been made: what reason is there to think they died needlessly? You don't know whether or not they made a necessary contribution. You focussed on space availability at the time. Now a lot of the earth is inhabited and some believe overpopulated. Would there still be space for them? Plug in an infinite omnipotent God and God would have known that there wouldn't be space for them in the future and you have an answer.

"3. Given a loving god, why is the insect kingdom so cruel?"

I don't believe that they have the intellectual capacity to be cruel. They function as part of the checks and balances that keep the ecosystem going.

"4. How was Jesus born with Mary's hymen intact?"

I presume you are referring to the virgin birth belief. Virgins used to be identified by intact hymens but a virgin is someone who hasn't had sex not someone who has an intact hymen.

"5. Would James have a stronger claim on the Davanic throne than Jesus, given James’ legitimate birth?"

No Jesus was the firstborn son. As a Christian I can hardly consider a divinely provided son an illegitimate birth as you seem to imply.

Dear Oly and Foxy

I'll have to pass on any further discussion on this :) I've provided some alternative views re Thiering, and Foxy has replied.. that's enuf for people interested to go the next step and sus it out more deeply and decide for themselves.

My familiarity with the Biblical text, and its background, and the broad knowledge of how the books inter-relate just give me supreme (relaxed) confidence in their integrity.

Then..there is the 'mysterious' area of personal experience.. always a minefield :) but also completely prone to nit picking and try hard pseudo psycho-analysts.

I leave you with the best answer of all :) (which I think I already gave earlier)

<<Jesus did many other miraculous signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not recorded in this book. 31But these are written that you may[a] believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.>>
John 20:30-31)

John was muccccch closer to the action than Ms Thiering :)

Pericles, you might be interested:

Love and God;

Part Abstract Scientific American Book Review:

“In The Accidental Mind, the Johns Hopkins University neuroscientist shows us that the brain is a cobbled-together mess that was formed over millions of years of evolution. He argues that it is precisely the lack of optimized design that has led to some of our most cherished abilities: to feel love, to have memo ries and dreams, and to create religious concepts…

The ancient design of our neurons makes them slow and inefficient processors, he contends, so the brain requires an extraordinary amount of them and needs to interconnect them with even more synapses. The brain's neuronal network is too big to have its point-to-point wiring diagram explicitly encoded in our genes, which is why we are born with only a moderately developed brain and have to complete the fine-scale wiring by learning from experience during our species' unusually long childhood. That alone, Linden asserts, is the reason for the existence of our memories and, ultimately, for the development of our individuality…

Religious thought and practice, Linden reasons, result from the general tendency of our brain to mess with incoming data to create coherent, gap-free stories. Our brain makes visual perception seem continuous and flowing, for example, even though the pictures our neurons receive through our rapidly jumping eyeballs are not. Linden believes that it is solely because of poor brain design that this narrative-constructing function is turned on at all times, whether it is relevant for the particular task at hand or not.

In a situation where we lack evidence or a logical explanation — when contemplating the reason for our existence, say — we are driven to invent one, even if it leads humanity to appeal to a supernatural, godly power.” -cont-

I have haven’t read the Book. I have three years of Psych. From Sydney U., and, understand that with age regression hypnosis the patient, “confabulates”. That is say yiu taken back to your age seven birthday. Because information has been lost you might build a story using your 5th , 6th , 7th and 8th birthdays. Its not a lie, rather a mild delusion. This phenomenon is better known than the above and supports Linden’s general hypothesis.
Book: The Accidental Mind: How Brain Evolution Has Given Us Love,
Memory, Dreams, and God by David J. Linden

I came across this while searching for an article, which explains the biochemistry of love.

Boazy,

Thiering is to be taken on the same level, as Quell, in my opinion.

If you don’t believe in something like the Q document, then the Gospels are more in doubt.

Was Herod alive when Jesus was born? Thiering’s calendar supports the idea better than the Bible. I know virtually nothing about secret codes, believe these have been widely used thoroughout history, the Templers & Masons, for example. I have been to a lecture on ancient calendars and believe me they can be very comples, especially lunar-solar ones. [as member of the Asian Civilizations Museum, Singapore]

I will need to research it, but think the Gospel of Thomas was written before John. The former being even “closer to action”, I yhink. The churches dismiss it, like the Gnostic gospels, but it probably isn’t Gnostic. If Jesus was the new Genesis, we do not need priests or churches. Jesus did it all. No need for cardinals et al., no tithes.

Can your knowledge of the interrelation between the Gospels, explain the existence of God, in the first instance?

One under god & mjpb,

Will come back to you.

Mjpb, I am not a fan of Dawkins outside of genetics. He should have edited an anthology with subject experts: Less money for him, no doubt.

Note:

I will attempt am interim summary of our opinions at the end of week.

Please excuse any typos. It's been a long day.