The whole of Christianity? The story is far older than Christianity. By the time Deuteronomy was written in the 7th century BCE human sacrifice was ex...
First, what you skip over is that not only was this a human sacrifice, it was a sacrifice of his own son. Second, Abram's unquestioning obedience cont...
One question that arises is to what extent the original message is corrupt. For example, Abram's sacrifice of his son Isaac is held up as the height o...
None of us are without influence. That influence extends to everything we think and believe and know ... or at least that is what my influences say. W...
I can only speak for myself. I read and attempt to understand the philosophers whose work interests me because of what I can learn from them. Their wo...
As Wittgenstein uses the term 'proposition' it is not its expression. According to the Tractatus a thought with a sense is a proposition (4). It does ...
I'm afraid that I still miss your point. On the one hand, I don't see how it relates to the discussion. On the other, telling someone that telling som...
Well, that settles it! Here is one that highlights Socrates' irony and irreverence. In the Apology the oracle says that no one is wiser than Socrates....
We must understand how a term or symbol is being used in order to understand how it is being used to represent a state of affairs. The same term can b...
But Socrates too offered only opinion, including the opinion that knowledge of divine things is not something he found in human beings. His criticism ...
Can you find the section you are referring to? He rejects the idea that meaning is a picture or representation of reality, in favor of the idea that m...
The limits of reason is a common theme. How one responds to that may differ. I don't think there is anything equivalent to enlightenment through surre...
This is a more reliable indication of what the term means. Reasoning encounters a point beyond which it cannot go. A point at which we are confronted ...
I think this is more a reflection on Saul/Paul than on what Christianity might have been and in some cases was. He seems to have had conflicting impul...
But you seem to be doing exactly what you council against doing. You restrict the term to what is expressed in words. You say, for example: Unless you...
I agree, but I don't think he saw it that way. Indeed! But when one believes he is doing God's will he may draw no sharp line between acts that benefi...
If one limits propositions to spoken statements then the belief that we will find the parts of animals is not propositional if it is not expressed. Bu...
I'm not sure I follow. It seems that he did not believe he was acting on his own authority in either case. Before his conversion he believed the right...
A quick observation and a pointed question. Some will argue that black and white are the same. They are, after all, colors. Was Saul any less convince...
It is a package deal. One tree, one fruit. The ability for man to do good is the same ability to do evil. Neither the serpent nor knowledge makes us g...
A few remarks from OC: Some, Danièle Moyal-Sharrock, for example, take this to mean we should consider these things to be a matter of belief rather th...
I agree, but my point is that more generally we should not read the later Wittgenstein in the same way we read someone whose work leads from premise t...
I don't think that existence is the ability to be. We say of things that are or that we claim are that they exist. It is not the ability to be but tha...
Your unwillingness to examine anything that does not fit your long entrenched beliefs appears to be engendered by fear and existential self-preservati...
In response to my questioning the reliability of John as an historical account you repeat a story from John. What I said was: So where in the sermon d...
First, if you were the scholar you claim to be you would know that it is standard practice to cite your sources. Second, you would know that quoting J...
If he did not preach a single word about "observing a religious observance" then you have undercut your own tenuous distinction between the Law and re...
They are part of the Law. Plain and simple. There is no distinction between "mere religious observance" and other parts of the Law. What textual evide...
That is exactly what you are doing, but you are blinded by your unwarranted belief in the correctness of your opinions that you mistake them for the t...
Whichever side he chose he did seem convinced at the time that he was on the side of truth and that it was his unquestionable mission to promote it. B...
My own view is far more impious. I don't think his conversion was either a natural result of his own search for meaning or supernatural intervention. ...
But: Paul stands between us and whatever Jesus might have said. But not only Paul. We should be cautious in assuming that what human beings hear and u...
It is one thing to give your opinion, quite another to declare other readings that attend more closely to the text and do not bring assumptions to the...
I don't think it is a matter of development but of looking at things in different ways, giving different examples, reminders of what we say and do, so...
@"Joe Mello" How do you reconcile Jesus' strict adherence to the letter of the Law with Paul's telling the Gentiles that this was not necessary? When ...
Once again, which is it? Why are you so afraid of stating where you stand? And why are you so intent on burying this and other threads? Are you that i...
The point raised by @"Olivier5" was not about the religious claims found in the NT, but rather, the fact that Jesus the man was of his time and place....
That is the conclusion that follows from your appeal to the NT and the Son of God, not my opinion! and yet you claimed: You claim that what you quote ...
I can't tell if you are being serious or attempting to be clever. If you affirm (1) then why all the effort to argue influence? If you affirm (2) then...
You have to keep your eye on the ball. I was trying to put the problem of interpreting Wittgenstein in the larger context of the problem of interpreta...
It is telling that he attempts to make a connection, what he calls "an unquestionable connection", between Platonism and Christianity via divine knowl...
(Isaiah 45:7) Evil is a translation of the Hebrew 'rah' - bad, adversity. Plato in the Republic explicitly denies that the Good is the source of evil....
Right, and you fail to make the distinction between Plato and Platonism. Where did Plato say the Good is God? But rather than rehash that, what about ...
Actually, it is your questionable and overly simplistic interpretation of Plato. Anyone interested can search other threads here. I have no interest i...
See his earlier post: What he leaves out here is what he says elsewhere, that the Good is God. As he sees it, the revelation of divine knowledge goes ...
How so? You say: How could that be if a fact is not what is the case? For something to be the case we do not have to know that it is the case. We cann...
Another informative, well-written post. There are some here, perhaps most, who prefer historiography to a mythologized history designed to support cer...
I do not find Wittgenstein's use of 'fact' unusual. My comments here are in regard to hermeneutics and the history of philosophy. We tend to be more r...
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