We know that you don’t believe the Bible to be true, so the question is really about your response to the alleged message of Jesus. The tough thing is that the more I think about your original answer, the more it seems uncharacteristically flippant for you. Identifying “repent, the Kingdom is at hand” as the message seems a bit like a straw man. True, it’s what we grew up with, but that might have contributed to where we both are today. So maybe I’m wrong on judging your answer to be dismissive. Because I had considered asking you the same question, I was just hoping for a more thoughtful answer (like the honest reflection of Peter about Nietszche or Doug’s candid admittance that he uses other methods of “knowing” than simply cold, hard, logic). Having been a Christian for so long, I was hoping you would have a more substantive, genuine answer. Thankfully, your responses to the comments have been more in line with what I’m used to.

On to the points raised by my previous posts. I wish I knew how to make the cool quotes blocks for referencing others’ points.

Brendon, first, on the apples and oranges:

“1) Can a Christian reject parts or the whole of the teachings of Jesus?
2) Can an atheist reject parts or the whole teaching of Nietzsche, Harris, etc?”

It’s not so much a matter of “can,” so much as “should.” And then, what is the basis for rejection? Danny can reject Harris’ conclusions, but should/ought/must he? If a Christian rejects a teaching of Jesus, on what grounds would he or she do so? Appeal to a higher power :) ? Sure, an atheist can reject all or part of Nietzsche, but does that mean Nietzsche’s conclusions are truly wrong? If Harris wants to abolish religion, but another atheist thinks that is a bad idea, can they both be logically correct? These questions are my main point, and I’ll flesh them out more below.

“It seems to me, the point is steering towards the old “you can’t have ethics outside of religion” idea, which I disagree with.”

People can certainly live ethically without religion. People generally believe it is wrong to steal, regardless of their belief in the supernatural, so I’m not at all saying that you have to believe in god to behave morally. But I question whether they have a logical basis or compelling reason to do so. Atheist Kai Nielsen has said that it’s impossible to arrive at morality through reason alone. So how do people determine their ethics?

“Going back to mathematics, think of proofs; it could start properly, but go haywire halfway through.”

I’m glad you made this point, because it’s exactly what I’m getting at. In mathematics, we often use a technique called “proof by contradiction.” You start with a postulate and follow it through its logical implications, constructing theorems and corollaries along the way. If the conclusion you reach is obviously false, or contradicts the original postulate, you are logically forced to conclude that either the original postulate was false or you had a flaw somewhere in your steps of reasoning. So if Christians begin by positing that there is a god who has spoken through the Bible, endowed human beings with intrinsic value, and therefore instructed them to love their neighbors, I should/ought/must cry foul when I hear of Christians mistreating others. I would say such Christians have gone haywire in their reasoning, because their conclusion has strayed from their starting point.

But if atheists begin by positing that there is no god, and presumably then man is the measure of all things, we find that Danny reaches some conclusions, Nietzsche reaches others, and Harris reaches others. Have any of their conclusions gone haywire? How would “haywire” be defined? It could be argued that they all reached valid conclusions through following the logical implications from their starting point. Can Nietzche’s dickery then really be called haywire? Does it violate any of his original premises? Harris’ determination that religion is worse than rape is either (1) a valid conclusion from his viewpoint, (2) his reasoning is flawed, or (3) his original premise (or core message) is incorrect. In mathematics, if the steps are logically valid and the conclusions aren’t true, then the flaw must either be with the original postulate or one of the theorems along the way.

“Either or? I’d prefer my friends read some books on ethics and figure it out.”

Many of Jesus’ secondary messages are very different than Nietzsche’s or Harris’ and cannot be simultaneously accepted as good. Having read some ethics books, I’m not convinced that will lead to more clarity for your friends.

To Danny’s points:

“God exists” is not exactly a core message that puts me in camp with Fred Phelps. The core message would be what the nature of that god is, or what he/she/it has said. In that regard, I’m not sure what Phelps’ core message is, but the Christian message shouldn’t be evaluated by examining those who pervert it. His actions are not in keeping with what Jesus taught. So Phelps’ interpretation of Jesus’ core message would be wrong.

“the assumption that people who agree on one idea will agree on another idea is wrong.”

I disagree with this statement for a couple of reasons, primarily because it needs more qualification. Will two politicians who agree on environmental policy issues necessarily agree on military spending? Of course not, because they are mutually exclusive ideas. In such a situation, you’re correct. My point is about resulting ideas from a larger previous idea – theorems based on postulates. If we agree that parallel lines never intersect, then you and I should/ought/must agree with all of the resulting conclusions. You could indeed produce many Christian quotes that I would not agree with, but I doubt any of them would promote stealing or mock humility. They also probably wouldn’t suggest that atheism is worse then sexual assault. And even if they did, I could appeal to Jesus’ teachings as evidence they are wrong.

Thus the quotes I listed are very relevant for reasons mentioned earlier in response to Brendon. I know you don’t agree with either of those quotes from Nietzsche and Harris. That wasn’t my point. It’s about whether those conclusions are logically valid given an atheistic starting point. If you disagree with Nietzsche, how would you convince him that he is wrong? I can sit down with Fred Phelps and look at the Bible to try to convince him of where he’s gone wrong. He probably won’t listen. Phelps perverts Jesus’ teachings, but is Harris really perverting the atheistic viewpoint? I’m interested in why you disagree with Harris and how you would convince him he is wrong.

All this is to say that I don’t think you arrive at a valid metric in the same way that I do. Having decided God exists and believing that he has revealed himself and spoken through people as recorded in the Bible, I do my best to use that as my metric for living my life and denouncing Fred Phelps. But whence comes your metric for saying Harris is wrong?

I’ll need some examples of what you mean when you say that Dawkins’ conclusions are supported by other objective sources. Are you referring to things like research studies on whether prayer works?

Lastly, and most importantly, I sincerely apologize for making you think I want you to say that life is meaningless without god. That’s not my intent at all, and I was surprised to hear that you felt that’s what I was getting at. You’ve said that you find meaning in life, and I take your word on that. My question is that if another atheist determines that life is meaningless, like Sartre or others, can you say he or she has reached an invalid conclusion? How would you convince that person otherwise?

I fully admit that talking of non-rational ways of knowing is indistinguishable from madness or even the knowledge claimed by other religions which I would consider false. Fine. I think a lot of religions have in them fragments (some more than others) of the True God, which may resonate with the spirit of the believers in ways that generate experiences similar, perhaps even indistinguishable, from my experience with Christianity. Perhaps it is all madness, but, then, the insane person cannot cease to be mad because he is told he is not rational, and I feel this particular brand of madness more often produces more moral, happier, and well-adjusted people than it harms. There is ugliness in religion, I admit it, but it also produces a lot of beauty, a LOT of beauty, which should not be so quickly discarded.

Back to your question. I suspect the Mark story originally went something like–then, when disciples showed up, they asked the women why they were so afraid. “We think we have seen the Lord,” they replied. Then Peter and John ran to the tomb. Peter, who by the way is my homie, got there first. Surely, he was the coolest of the apostles. And behold, there was Jesus.

In any case, if we are to believe Paul’s own account of his life in the epistles and Luke’s account in Acts, Paul was persecuting the church for a while before he had his vision. He surely knew something of the Jesus thing when he stood around holding coats. When he says he didn’t receive the message from man, I think he’s differentiating himself from the Jerusalem church which seems to have had a problem with his inclusive approach to Gentiles (maybe the James section of the early church). I think he just wants to say that he didn’t go back and get a stamp of approval from those folks, especially in a letter to the Galatians where he is trying to contradict those he sees as the Judaizers.

The theology of the resurrection may be just as developed in Paul’s writings as in the Gospel of John, but don’t you agree that John depicts Jesus quite differently from Mark? The Johannine Jesus is bold and open while the Markan Jesus is quieter and more secretive. So, theology of the resurrection aside, the character, sayings and stories of Jesus did develop and change between the first and last gospels. Does that give you pause?

You and the others have given my hypotheses some fair criticisms. I would like to hear what you think of the idea that the resurrection was unheard of until it came to Paul in a vision. Is there any evidence against this? Is this possibility more or less likely than a dead person coming back to life?

To be fair, though, to me at least you’ve more or less answered the question about what you think about the message of Jesus. You say you approve of the non-violence, social action stuff but question some of the apocalyptic teachings and the miracles. Fair enough. I guess I just disagreed with your statement that Jesus was an apocalyptic rabbi who aimed to “restore the glorious kingdom in Jerusalem and right all the wrongs Israel had endured.” For that sort of claim I think you actually have less evidence than Christians do for the resurrection.

I want you to know, brothers, that the gospel I preached is not something that man made up. I did not receive it from any man, nor was I taught it; rather, I received it by revelation from Jesus Christ. (Galatians 1:11-12)

Paul had visions. Lots of them (2 Corinthians 12:1-7). Do you know who else had visions? The founders of most religions. How can you assume that Mohammed’s visions were not valid and Paul’s were? If Paul’s writings represent the earliest evidence of belief in the resurrection of Jesus, then there are several possible explanations:

1. Paul received the doctrine of the resurrection from earlier Christians and had that teaching confirmed by visions from God. He explicitly denies this explanation in Galatians.

2. The important parts of Paul’s knowledge about the resurrection came directly from visions that God gave him.

3. Paul dreamed up the resurrection on his own, possibly after eating some mushrooms he found on the side of the road. This wouldn’t mean that Paul didn’t believe everything he said.

Which of these is most likely?

I’ve said all along that none of my theories are airtight. The point I’m trying to make is that there are any number of possible explanations for the facts that are more plausible than a dead person coming back to life. We may never know exactly what happened. If you can look at the evidence and decide that Jesus was a deity and he came back from the dead, that’s cool. I just don’t find it convincing.

I am not religiously devoted to the idea that dead people stay dead. I do think, based on the sum of human experience, dead people do tend to stay dead. It’s possible that there are exceptions to this rule. In order for me to believe that an exception has occurred, I would have to see some very good evidence. Evidence should be in proportion to the outlandishness of the claim.

Here’s a brief illustration of that principle. If I tell you that I can run 100 m in 30 seconds, you could probably believe that just based on my word in an comment. If I told you that I could run it in 11 seconds, you might be more skeptical and ask to see some evidence. Maybe a video would suffice. If I told you that I can run 100 m in three seconds, you would certainly not take my word for it. In fact, even a video would probably not do the trick, because videos can be faked. It would take some very substantial evidence for you to believe that. Maybe you would even ask to see it with your own eyes.

I’m not sure what evidence it would take for me to believe that someone came back from the dead, but the evidence for the resurrection of Jesus is nowhere near good enough to override its outlandishness.

The original topic of this thread was the message of Jesus. So far, only Doug has attempted to explain what the message was and to define the kingdom of God. Do you all agree with him? In my reading, I found that there are various explanations given about the message and the Kingdom. Why is there no consensus about this? The infallible son of God preached his message for three years and yet his followers are still unable to agree on what that message was and what the kingdom is? That seems like a failure on his part (or another indication that the actual events were very different from the surviving accounts).

No, I don’t agree with either of the quotes in your third paragraph. I don’t even see their relevance. I could just as easily produce two or 200 quotes from Christians that you wouldn’t agree with. But it doesn’t matter, because the assumption that people who agree on one idea will agree on another idea is wrong.

You said, “I’m not sure how you arrive at a consistent, valid metric for determining the quality of their ideas.” I do it the same way you do.

I’ve never claimed that Dawkins is objective. But, here’s the difference between him and the author of Luke. We can check some of what Dawkins says against other sources, and some of them are objective. We have no way to check the accuracy of the Gospel authors. Everything we know about the subject of their books comes from biased sources.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but you seem like you love me to say that life is meaningless without God. It’s not.