Jack Cummins

Many thanks for your reply, and definitely the extent to which the ideas in The Bible are read literally is of critical importance. This does bear par...

I have just looked at the Michael Langford article and it is fairly useful, in looking at the genres in The Bible,and I am hoping to be able to look a...

I have not heard of that being the main view within Judaism. My own understanding is that many Jews simply did not believe that Jesus was the expected...

It is true that the authors of The Bible presume a belief in God but this does not mean that everyone who reads it has to come from that angle. People...

I have never come across the band, The Jesus Cult, but I am familiar with The Jesus and Mary Chain. My favourite Biblically inspired track is one by U...

I just logged in to the site before going to bed, and I noticed you have written your first post, so welcome to the forum. I realise that the thread q...

Thanks for your link to 'Philosophy Now' magazine. I do read it sometimes, in paper form, but have not read the particular issue on God, I think that ...

Yes, I am probably on a wider path of reading in my own life, beyond the forum itself. The way which I see any ideas which I draw upon from any other ...

Of course, I and, I am sure others don't have time to build an encyclopediac thread . I will look at it, and I am hope to try to draw out ideas which ...

I think that I probably have a slightly wider view of philosophy than you do because even I look at philosophy texts I do believe in drawing on ideas ...

I am hoping for some discussion from outside of mere textual analysis of The Bible. I am not a theologian and have more of a humanities and psychology...

Thanks for the links, I have just woken up but I will read them. I don't know how far this thread will go because I only started it about 5 days ago. ...

I am sorry if I am sending you off the bus, and I do wish to keep the discussion on the philosophical. But, the Bible is a big topic and I wish to loo...

I don't think that it is particularly helpful to focus on proving or disproving miracles, and any experience of these which people have are probably b...

I think that the ten commandments can be seen as a basis for laws, as derived from Moses. Jesus was emphasising the importance of the first two comman...

So, are you saying that the picture is Banno?

Yes, I keep looking at the picture representing Banno and feel a bit puzzled too. Perhaps it is his girlfriend, daughter or Banno's inner female side.

I think that the issue of the supernatural is one of the aspects of The Bible which many people have difficulty with, including miracles. However, the...

I can't see why inserting philosophy leads to confusion, especially as the have a shared history. You say that the main purpose of philosophy is about...

Armstrong's interpretation of the ethics of the NT is the idea of my own. My own view is more about how there is a basis for compassion, especially av...

There are some people who believe that Jesus did not even exist at all. But, my own understanding is that of him being one of a wandering Jew, and tha...

Karen Armstrong suggests the importance of contemplation of texts. But, I do think that a critical reading is also important, especially in some of th...

I think that understanding of any set of ideas is aided by thinking about the person who wrote them, because the ideas arise in the context of a perso...

I still feel that it is important to know about the nature of the historical Jesus, in order to think about and contextualize Christian thinking and T...

I have just finished reading 'The Bible: A Biography' by Karen Armstrong(2007), who was a nun, but left her life in the convent eventually. One idea s...

The idea of speaking in many languages is interesting to me, mainly because I am in the position of only speaking English. As a philosophical possibil...

I do believe that there is so much going on in the ideas behind the ethics of Judaeo- Judaeo- Christian thought about human nature. To what extent are...

I think that it so interesting to think about the fusion of thought which underlies the Christian worldview. I believe that many people have not taken...

I wish that I had enough time and money for philosophy, and in the meantime I am improvising. I would love more time and money to spend on philosophy....

I may not have have forwarded my answer properly to you, so please see the answer in the post above.

One aspect of this debate which I believe is important is the prescriptive approach and of more scrupulous analysis. On the surface, it may be that it...

I was so puzzled by how many children believed in Santa Claus, when I knew that there was no evidence for such a person. I knew that my parents gave p...

If anything, The Bible may be a starting point for thinking, even if any critique develops in the opposite direction. Therefore, my own position is on...

I do believe that so much of our thinking is based on the thinking of The Bible, in superficial and deeper aspects of thinking. I do think that Kantia...

I am not in favour of seeing The Bible as 'special' but trying to understand these ideas, as part of the ongoing developments of metaphysics and philo...

I think that it can be problematic if the focus within thinking is upon death too strongly. This is possible within a religious context, or any discus...

This discussion is a bit different to the debate about God's existence in logical terms, because it is about looking at The Bible, as a source for thi...

I definitely plan to write later today, but I am staying with my mother, who gets so cross with me writing so much. But, I definitely wish to develop ...

I read as widely as possible, but have probably not paid that much attention to the Old Testament writings. At the moment, in conjunction with the thr...

Yes, my understanding is that the Gospels were written a long time after the death of Jesus, and that the authors are different from the names of thos...

Of course he was the founder and master rhetorical , although based on my reading about texts he only wrote about half of the writings attributed to h...

I can see why you see Gnosticism as antirealism, but from my reading of some Gnostic texts I think that there is some variation among authors on how t...

'The Book of Job' is one of my favourite books in The Bible, and if you look at it closely, Job does waver and question why he is suffering. I think t...

In a way, Paul's writings are a source for fundamentalism but I think that it questionable how many of those writings attributed to him were written b...

I think that Joseph Campbell is a very useful thinker for enabling people to think about the mythic aspects of existence. I believe that he and Carl J...

There do appear to be parallels between Indian ideas about Atman/Brahman and Gnosticicism. One other esoteric tradition which draws upon this is Celti...

I can't say for sure that my friend committed suicide just on account of Paul, because I didn't see him in the 2 weeks before he killed himself. But, ...

You say that we are simply sinners in Christian thinking but I do believe that many people do worry that they are evil. There is also the potential fe...

I think that your response is a very interesting one because it does raise the continuum from the fundamentalist to the Gnostic, and funnily enough El...

Your research ideas may be useful, but looking , but it does appear to me that people can find studies on Wikipedia on the internet increasingly to ba...