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PaperclipPerfector  1d ago (text post)   6564 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of November 2, 2026

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Atheism vs. Christianity, the Existence of God, and the Biblical Canon

Anybody want a throwback to some old-fashioned culture war? I was thinking about religion recently. I was also reading the State of the Motte thread and somehow wound up in this old thread about atheism.

In it is some interesting commentary on the state of the atheism vs Christianity debate:

The religious have never stopped trying to prove how the atheist's position is logically false. The new tactic is presuppositional apologetics, from what I understand, but even that is a decade old and the atheists have consistently demonstrated how these arguments are also wrong or not as strong as the theist wants.

I broadly agree with this, but not how you might think. I think that logically, it is probable that God does exist, so I am not an atheist. In particular my favorite argument is the argument from causation. There must be an uncaused cause; this can be identified with God.

However, that's a long way from being a canonical Christian. Consider:

An account of the genealogy of Jesus the Messiah, the son of David, the son of Abraham.

Abraham was the father of Isaac, and Isaac the father of Jacob, and Jacob the father of Judah and his brothers […] and Jacob the father of Joseph the husband of Mary, who bore Jesus, who is called the Messiah.

So all the generations from Abraham to David are fourteen generations; and from David to the deportation to Babylon, fourteen generations; and from the deportation to Babylon to the Messiah, fourteen generations.

— Matthew 1:1–2, 16–17

When Adam was 130 years old, he had a son in his own likeness, after his own image; and he named him Seth. And after he had become the father of Seth, Adam lived 800 years and had other sons and daughters. So Adam lived a total of 930 years, and then he died.

When Seth was 105 years old, he became the father of Enosh. And after he had become the father of Enosh, Seth lived 807 years and had other sons and daughters. So Seth lived a total of 912 years, and then he died.

[…]

After Noah was 500 years old, he became the father of Shem, Ham, and Japheth.

— Genesis 5:3–8, 32

This is the account of Shem. Two years after the flood, when Shem was 100 years old, he became the father of Arphaxad. And after he had become the father of Arphaxad, Shem lived 500 years and had other sons and daughters.

When Arphaxad was 35 years old, he became the father of Shelah. And after he had become the father of Shelah, Arphaxad lived 403 years and had other sons and daughters.

[…]

When Terah was 70 years old, he became the father of Abram, Nahor, and Haran.

— Genesis 11:10–13, 26

The full lists in Genesis 5 and 11 go on like this, generation by generation. Adding up each father's age at his son's birth gives 1,948 years from Adam to Abram.

Now if you add this up, as a canonical Christian you must believe that from creation of Adam to the birth of Jesus around 4 BC, there were roughly 4000 years. Also, my Genesis is from the Hebrew Torah. The Septuagint gives older ages at fatherhood, so it makes 5500 years. Which is correct?

Unfortunately I don't think any amount of presuppositional logic could get canonical Christians out of this conundrum.

One thing I noticed however is that the source of all Biblical errors-according-to-empirical-science is Hebrew scripture. Almost no errors are in the New Testament outside of the books that go hard on Hebrew Scripture, like Matthew.

If you care about this and having a coherent theology to defend, you may get into New Testament criticism. It's a humanities field with low certainty, so it's possible to hold a lot of positions in it. But one popular idea is that of Markan priority. Mark was an earlier Gospel than Luke and Matthew, which are edits of Mark. You will notice that Luke and Matthew are the most egregious offenders of Hebrew scripture injection. Mark reads very differently. In Mark, Jesus mocks the Sabbath and declares kosher laws void. In Matthew, this is re-written so that he comes to fulfill the law and not abolish it. We are treated to excessive Hebrew genealogies that don't match archeology, quotes from the Torah a lot, and general arguments that he's a Messiah sent by Yahweh because he does all of the things that were prophesied about that Messiah, except, of course, making Judea the king of the world.

There's a lot of fulfillment of those Hebrew prophecies missing in canonical Mark and John (this is important because critics believe these were edited by the Matthew and Luke people later to align them, so they are not even in their original states), but a main one is Jesus's relation to David. In Matthew we are slapped with that genealogy. In Mark we get

Jesus responded, as he taught in the temple, “How is it that the scribes say that the Christ is the son of David?

For David himself said in the Holy Spirit, ‘The Lord said to my Lord, “Sit at my right hand, until I make your enemies the footstool of your feet.”’

Therefore David himself calls him Lord, so how can he be his son?” The common people heard him gladly.

— Mark 12:35–37

In John we get:

Others said, “This is the Christ.” But some said, “What, does the Christ come out of Galilee?

Hasn’t the Scripture said that the Christ comes of the offspring of David, and from Bethlehem, the village where David was?”

— John 7:41–42

Matthew and Luke give mutually exclusive birth narratives that fail historical tests (one claims there was a massacre of 2 year olds, one claims an empire-wide census that isn't recorded anywhere and doesn't fit Herod's dates) that make him born in Bethlehem. But in John and Mark he's just from Nazareth.

So the canon of the bookshelf Bible is extremely hard to defend scientifically, yet the original Gospel seems to be more defensible, as long as you accept that Jesus could do magic.

Another question of coherency is what does Jesus save us from? The canon claims Jesus saves us from ... himself. Yes, in this canon, Jesus is one person of the Trinity, a single being that will torture you if you don't accept his salvation. That's kind of an odd way to behave ... I'm not judging morally since I accept theology is above morality, but it still seems intuitively odd.

This brings me to John 8:44 and its controversy. It says:

ὑμεῖς ἐκ τοῦ πατρὸς τοῦ διαβόλου ἐστὲ καὶ τὰς ἐπιθυμίας τοῦ πατρὸς ὑμῶν θέλετε ποιεῖν. ἐκεῖνος ἀνθρωποκτόνος ἦν ἀπʼ ἀρχῆς, καὶ ἐν τῇ ἀληθείᾳ οὐκ ἔστηκεν, ὅτι οὐκ ἔστιν ἀλήθεια ἐν αὐτῷ. ὅταν λαλῇ τὸ ψεῦδος, ἐκ τῶν ἰδίων λαλεῖ, ὅτι ψεύστης ἐστὶν καὶ ὁ πατὴρ αὐτοῦ.

— John 8:44

I have read that the most natural translation here was,

You are of the father of the devil, and you want to do the desires of your father. He was a murderer from the beginning, and doesn't stand in truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaks a lie, he speaks on his own, for he is a liar, and so is his father.

In this case Jesus is talking to the practicing Jews who do not believe in him. So he is pointing out their father created the devil and is a liar. Which fits the empirical errors in Hebrew scripture noted above.

Alternatively this was declared too supportive of Marcionite and Gnostic heresy so the orthodox reading prevailed:

You are of your father, the devil. ...etc

And this is weakened to mean that the Jews were the children of the devil because, I don't know, they rejected their own Messiah or something, as Matthew and Luke make clear, wherein the Jewish majority oppose Jesus with little motive beyond malice, despite Jesus fulfilling their law exactly as written. What is more likely, Jesus mocked their God and they killed Jesus, or that Jesus proved he was their God and they killed their own God that they worship?

Technically I suppose it doesn't matter how you translate this, the Jews were very devout and are called children of the devil either way. Unless they were having secret black sabbaths, I think this line is pretty clear about what it means for the Hebrew God.

Going back to Salvation, this goes best with the idea that Jesus is saving us from a deity like the Hebrew God, something that created the tarnished world, is wrathful and violent, which kills and writes lies.

Now, is this a crazy reading? Not at all. It's a popular historical reading that lost out but not without a fight. It fits the theology of Marcion and some Gnostic groups, who were declared heretics in the mid-to-late 2nd century by proto-orthodox writers. Before around that point, this idea was more popular. I have a radical, maybe unfounded idea, that this theology even could be the original theology of the Gospels, but this is controversial in the Church and the Academy. In the Church it's obvious why: it's the same Church that called it heresy. In the Academy we have atheists who claim Jesus was an essene or something. I will admit my belief is somewhat loaded on the idea that Jesus actually performed miracles. I lean towards this because I don't have a restricted prior against magic, I think all things are possible for the right being, and I think Jesus was obviously somebody because otherwise we would not have a religion about him, particularly one where he died very quickly, a material failure, with only a handful of followers. Other prophets accumulate riches and a harem.

I will stop here, but I thought this could be a fun discussion to be had, because I think it deals with the main adversary of atheism from a different perspective. Also, if you can convince me that the canon is untarnished, I will convert to Catholicism or a similar branch. I originally got into this because I was born secular and was memed into looking for a Church, but this forces me into a predicament in the world of schism. Which Church? The only proper way is to get into theology if I'm serious about it. And this is what I think so far. My priors haven't converged.

Why couldn't God save his followers in Lisbon from getting obliterated by an earthquake on All Saint's Day, 1755? They lit their candles, gathered in churches. The earthquake knocked them down and the resulting firestorm, earthquake and tsunami razed the city.

What kind of omnipotent, all-loving God treats his followers this way? It goes against reason to conclude that God is benevolent and actively interferes. Ours is not the kind of world we would expect from such a deity. There are all kinds of disasters that happen for purely mechanical reasons. I conclude that God acts mechanically, the Blind Watchmaker set up the universe for whatever reason and doesn't take actively support humans generally or Christians specifically.

I think that's a much more fitting stance for a true deity, a true universe-creator. If God doesn't want something to happen, he could make it so that it couldn't, not merely punish or instruct or send messages but to render things physically impossible per the structure of reality. He could constrain choices or outcomes so that the acceptable range is whatever he wants or outright rewrite time and history to correct things. That's what a real deity does, that's boundless power. God is not going to be frustrated by humans sinning against eachother or have to set up elaborate and invisible mechanisms of reward or punishment that need human prophets to explain (without proof... why can't see heaven or hell with instruments). God could trivially create a system where it's impossible to sin while maintaining freedom of choice. I cannot choose to flap my arms and fly like a bird, it simply isn't possible. That's a constraint based on the strength of my muscles, gravity, air pressure, physics, the real forces of creation. If God didn't want adultery or any other transgression, he could make it just as impossible. There would be no need for God to ever provide moral instruction to anyone. The mechanics of the universe are what actually teaches moral lessons by directly affecting results. Sometimes the adulterer gets beaten to death, other times he spreads his genes and gets others to raise his kids.

Only humans need to spread religious teachings about morality or norms, they are a second-level construct. Only humans need to build churches to worship God, only humans need religious ceremonies and special religious holidays for communal reasons.

Take a look at the opening of John, I quote here John 1:9-11

9 The true light, which gives light to everyone, was coming into the world. 10 He was in the world, and the world was made through him, yet the world did not know him. 11 He came to his own, and his own people did not receive him.

In the context this is very clearly talking about Jesus, so Jesus preaching against the Demiurge of gnosticism identified with the Hebrew God seems very implausible if the author of the same book you quote in support also claims the world was made through Jesus. Also the interpretation of the Jewish people rejecting their own messiah, which you find implausible, is kind of literally stated here in the intro to the book "He came to his own, and his own people did not receive him".

It's quite possible John should start at 1:19. The beginning hymn looks like an interpolation to some scholars. It is widely believed by scholars that 1 John and 2 John are later writings meant to reign in a lot of the Gospel of John, so we know people were active trying to tone it down. Or it wasn't inserted later. Or it was inserted later but not by the proto-Orthodox. It's hard to tell because it can fit with gnosticism.

which you find implausible, is kind of literally stated here in the intro to the book "He came to his own, and his own people did not receive him".

It can fit with gnosticism because it does not say people. The word people is not in the greek.

9 The true light, which shines in everyone, is coming into the world. 10 He was in the world, and the world came to be through him, yet the world did not recognize him. 11 He came to his own, but his own did not receive him.

His own can mean everyone who has his light, not Israel. It says the world came into being through him, not that he crafted it. So there is some ambiguity.

Listen, I understand the instinct to be contrarian, I really do. But if you're going to try to understand Christian theology you shouldn't start from the weirdest fringe interpretations and non-standard translations, and then work backwards to conclude that actually this is a totally normal perspective and it's the early Christians who suppressed this clear truth. This is conspiracy-brain thinking.

Maybe you're just new to Christianity, but these objections have been dealt with over and over again. The fact that one of your big objections is inconsistency in the birth narratives shows that you haven't made the most basic effort to seek out the standard Christian answers to these questions. Though to me perhaps the bigger absurdity in your thinking is that you found that the genealogy of Adam adds up to 4000 years and decided this means you should throw out the entire Old Testament. This is deeply unserious thinking.

This is deeply unserious thinking.

Rude. I want my spiritual writing to have correspondence with observable reality, otherwise it's just LARP.

The fact that one of your big objections is inconsistency in the birth narratives shows that you haven't made the most basic effort to seek out the standard Christian answers to these questions.

The logical OR, which is unconvincing. That's the answer to all of the gospel inconsistencies, IIRC.

Maybe you're just new to Christianity, but these objections have been dealt with over and over again.

I've seen sciences that were settled, that were in fact settled wrong. Sciences, with an s. The objections I have seen are unconvincing; maybe you didn't notice but a major way we learn about Marcion and Valentinus are through his detractors which « settled » them. These detractors often just come off as ignorant and illogical, just like an HBD denier arguing in favor of a popular dogma, contra superior evidence.

This is conspiracy-brain thinking.

This is name calling. I think we have good evidence for a process of redaction in the gospels. I think it wasn't a conspiracy, but rather a competing religious group.

Overall, your comment is mostly sneering. Please try to explain where I am actually wrong, instead of just calling it a conspiracy to have doubts about a religious canon. Surely you don't believe every word of the Quran, every hadith, and so on are accurate, right? Why not? Is it because there's a math mistake in the Quran? Because there is some other empirical embarrassment in there? « That is deeply unserious thinking. »

But if you're going to try to understand Christian theology you shouldn't start from the weirdest fringe interpretations and non-standard translations,

I have read the Gospels multiple times, I know standard Christian theology though I never picked a church; the trinity, the fall, salvation, judgement, the resurrection, all of that. I am not expert but I am familiar, it's not like at all if I were a 14 year old that had never opened the Bible who decided to start spouting some heresy to own his parents. You are just sneering.

Rude. I want my spiritual writing to have correspondence with observable reality, otherwise it's just LARP.

This assumes that 'observable reality' doesn't change over time. The most reasonable interpretation of, e.g., much of what's in Genesis is that reality used to be one way, and now it's different. Sort of like how in The Silmarillion the earth used to be flat, but now is round (unless you're an elf). Spiritual reality, on the other hand, can independently remain constant.

I think material reality is downstream of, and manifested from, spiritual reality, and that the nature of that manifestation can and does change. Including retroactive evidence. Starlight from billions of years ago, for example.

This is the sort of thing which seems to be indicated by the Fall.

Genealogies are not there to provide a timeline in the way a modern reader might try to fit in. For one, it's not required to list exact father-son dyads, but someone listed as a son of someone may actually be a grandson or great grandson.

For another, Matthew is writing David, David, David in his genealogy and you don't see it because you aren't a first century Jew. In ancient writing, numbers are represented by letters. Think Roman Numerals. The name for King David and the number 14 are represented the same way in the language gMatthew was written in.

There are ways to sync up the nativity narratives but your specific objection is weird. "But in John and Mark he's just from Nazareth." In Matthew Jesus is taken from Bethlehem when he is around the age of 2 and goes to Egypt, and then after a few years goes to Nazareth. Let's say you were born in Georgia but moved to New York City when you were four. Later on, you travel around the US and people say you are from NYC. Are they wrong or inconsistent?

You are using an intentionally gnostic translation of John instead of a more neuteral source. Lattrimore is my go-to secular translation of the New Testament. He made waves with his Odyssey translation and is generally respected and far from a Christian hack. His translation of John 8:31-47 is:

Then Jesus said to the Jews who had believed him: If you remain with my teaching, then you are truly my disciples and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free. They answered him: We are the seed of Abraham and have never been enslaved to anyone; how is it that you say: You will be made free? Jesus answered them: Truly truly I tell you that everyone who commits sin is the slave of his sin. But the slave does not remain in the house forever. The son remains forever. If then the son sets you free, you will be free in truth. I know that you are the seed of Abraham. But you are trying to kill me, because my teaching does not work in you. What I have seen with my father, I tell you; do then what you have heard from the father. They answered and said to him: Our father is Abraham. Jesus said to them: If you are the children of Abraham, then do what Abraham did. But now you are trying to kill me, a man who has told you the truth I heard from God. Abraham did not do that. You are doing what your father did. They said to him: We were not bred from promiscuity. We have one father, God. Jesus said to them: If God were your father, you would love me, since I issued from God and come from God; for I did not come on my own account, but he sent me. Why do you not understand what I say? Because you are not able to listen to my reasoning. The father you come from is the devil and you wish to do your father’s will. He has been a man killer from the beginning, and he does not stand upon the truth because there is no truth in him. When he speaks his lie he speaks from what is his own, because he is a liar and so is his father. And because I speak the truth you do not believe me. Which one of you proves me in error? If I speak the truth, why do you not believe me? He who is from God listens to the words of God. That is why you do not listen, because you are not from God.

And Lattrimore is not a Christian, he's translating from the Greek according to the most natural translation.

Jesus is not saving us from the Hebrew God but from our own sin and error.

Christian theology starts with this basic truth: we are made in the image and likeness of God and this comes with responsibility, which we have failed at. We have wills and intellects and were supposed to participate in Creation by taking dominion over the material world and instantiating the good over it, not as automatons but as free beings. We chose otherwise. Because of our choices we can never be happy unless there is a way to reconcile our current miserable poor choices with the original good we were made for.

This was impossible for us to accomplish on our own but it was possible for God. Our creator sent His begotten Son on a Rescue Mission for our sake. Jesus accomplished this Rescue Mission by being a Human of infinite worth, as He was also God. This Human offered something that was His to possess - His Divine self - as a sacrifice on the behalf of the human race, of which He also was. His life, death, and resurrection is humanity's sole boast through which we have accumulated infinite merit. Because of this infinite merit our redemption is made possible.

From his Wikipedia:

For many years, Lattimore accompanied his wife Alice to services at the Episcopal Church of the Good Shepherd, Rosemont, near Bryn Mawr College, a church with an Anglo-Catholic worship tradition. He chose to be baptized on Easter Eve 1983 and confirmed as a communicant there. He stated that his doubts about his faith had disappeared "somewhere in [the Gospel of] Saint Luke," which he had recently translated.

Now, this does not mean that his translation is wrong or that he cannot be trusted; it is entirely possible that his knowledge of Greek somehow led to his faith, and not the other way around. However, that argument would be stronger if he had been persuaded by John and not Luke, the latter being a Gospel about which I have reservations regarding its fundamental legitimacy as a record of the original teachings of Jesus. To me it seems far too plausible that it is a radically edited version of Mark and/or some earlier document.

You argue from authority as well. I will admit, I cannot read the Greek myself; I really, really wish that I could read Classical Greek. Since AI is coming, maybe I will learn it, but it obviously takes years... I have authorities that go either way on this passage. At any rate, it is not a fundamental problem for gnosticism either way, as I noted in my post. There is also the fact that at least some scholars believe John, like all the documents in the NT canon, was subject to an arbitrary redaction process; the original might shine through in a modern version, but character by character it can be arbitrarily incorrect. IIRC the Greek that we have for every book is post-canon, unfortunately.

For many years, Lattimore accompanied his wife Alice to services at the Episcopal Church of the Good Shepherd, Rosemont, near Bryn Mawr College, a church with an Anglo-Catholic worship tradition. He chose to be baptized on Easter Eve 1983 and confirmed as a communicant there. He stated that his doubts about his faith had disappeared "somewhere in [the Gospel of] Saint Luke," which he had recently translated.

Omission says something, and the Catholic logical OR never was convincing to me.

Genealogies are not there to provide a timeline in the way a modern reader might try to fit in. For one, it's not required to list exact father-son dyads, but someone listed as a son of someone may actually be a grandson or great grandson.

This is not getting past the archaeological and geological issues with the creation of Adam and the Garden of Eden, sorry. You can easily add another 10,000 years and it's still wrong.

Jesus is not saving us from the Hebrew God but from our own sin and error.

People back then seemed to think sin caused disease, like, directly. We now know creation causes disease. That's another mark against your theology in favor of a Marcionite/gnostic idea. You have to admit creation is corrupt, but that humans deserve it because our ancestor (?) sinned and so do we. I personally do not dismiss the idea that it is sinful to be here, so this is not entirely foreign to me.

Christian theology starts with this basic truth: we are made in the image and likeness of God and this comes with responsibility, which we have failed at. We have wills and intellects and were supposed to participate in Creation by taking dominion over the material world and instantiating the good over it, not as automatons but as free beings. We chose otherwise. Because of our choices we can never be happy unless there is a way to reconcile our current miserable poor choices with the original good we were made for.

I can accept this. I think what I advance here expresses it more clearly. Jesus is in fact the way to that reconciliation. Here's where I think we differ:

We are made in the image and likeness of God

People are made more or less in the image of the higher God. Valentinus gives us three types, like Plato. Modern science aligns with this the most (although it is taboo to say). Your theology is silent on this; Calvinists keep the canon and say there is an elect, so the idea is not entirely foreign, but it's the clearest in Valentinus and his forebears.

We have wills and intellects and were supposed to participate in Creation by taking dominion over the material world and instantiating the good over it, not as automatons but as free beings.

Will and intellect: thelema and nous. I agree those are important, and this is a real point of contact between us. In the Apocryphon of John, Christ is accompanied by exactly these: Nous, Thelema, and Logos. Where we part ways is Genesis. I know you'd say the sin was disobedience, not knowledge itself, but the thing forbidden was still the tree of knowledge, and reaching for it is what brings the Fall. In gnosticism, nous is good. The demiurge, by contrast, is ignorant of what is above him; he boasts that there is no other God beside him. As I read it, he acts mostly from will without real knowledge, which is why the world is poorly made.

We chose otherwise.

Who is "we," and how did he choose otherwise, other than by coming into the world?

Because of our choices we can never be happy unless there is a way to reconcile our current miserable poor choices with the original good we were made for.

Indeed. I think we must follow Jesus's example. I feel that hasn't been going too well. I know you'd say there is real joy in the Christian life now, but in practice the canonical theology puts the weight of happiness in the future and asks for blind faith in the meantime; in this other theology, one can gain a first happiness through coherent knowledge of Christ and then more happiness after death.

So I think that I agree with most of what you say, but I am just seeing it as too... covered up in the canon. It doesn't seem like the Old Testament should be there.

Omission says something, and the Catholic logical OR never was convincing to me.

There was no intentional omission here, I misremembered a few details (I was thinking he was a more recent translation but this was from the 70s, for example.) My point that he's not a religious scholar but a linguist still stands, along with he did not start off as a Christian when doing his translation.

This is not getting past the archaeological and geological issues with the creation of Adam and the Garden of Eden, sorry. You can easily add another 10,000 years and it's still wrong.

What genre do you think the first chapters of Genesis are? They are clearly not biography or history. As the USCCB writes:

The seven-day creation account in Gn 1:1–2:3 tells of a God whose mere word creates a beautiful universe in which human beings are an integral and important part. Though Gn 2:4–3:24 is often regarded as “the second creation story,” the text suggests that the whole of 2:4–11:9 tells one story. The plot of Gn 2–11 (creation, the flood, renewed creation) has been borrowed from creation-flood stories attested in Mesopotamian literature of the second and early first millennia. In the Mesopotamian creation-flood stories, the gods created the human race as slaves whose task it was to manage the universe for them—giving them food, clothing, and honor in temple ceremonies. In an unforeseen development, however, the human race grew so numerous and noisy that the gods could not sleep. Deeply angered, the gods decided to destroy the race by a universal flood. One man and his family, however, secretly warned of the flood by his patron god, built a boat and survived. Soon regretting their impetuous decision, the gods created a revised version of humankind. The new race was created mortal so they would never again grow numerous and bother the gods. The authors of Genesis adapted the creation-flood story in accord with their views of God and humanity. For example, they attributed the fault to human sin rather than to divine miscalculation (6:5–7) and had God reaffirm without change the original creation (9:1–7). In the biblical version God is just, powerful, and not needy.

How should modern readers interpret the creation-flood story in Gn 2–11? The stories are neither history nor myth. “Myth” is an unsuitable term, for it has several different meanings and connotes untruth in popular English. “History” is equally misleading, for it suggests that the events actually took place. The best term is creation-flood story. Ancient Near Eastern thinkers did not have our methods of exploring serious questions. Instead, they used narratives for issues that we would call philosophical and theological. They added and subtracted narrative details and varied the plot as they sought meaning in the ancient stories. Their stories reveal a privileged time, when divine decisions were made that determined the future of the human race. The origin of something was thought to explain its present meaning, e.g., how God acts with justice and generosity, why human beings are rebellious, the nature of sexual attraction and marriage, why there are many peoples and languages. Though the stories may initially strike us as primitive and naive, they are in fact told with skill, compression, and subtlety. They provide profound answers to perennial questions about God and human beings.

I don't deal a lot with Gnostics so I'm not going to argue it with you. It's like diving into a Book of Mormon debate with a Mormon. Or a round Earth with a flat Earther. Someone who has spent 100s of hours on a topic is going to trounce someone who's only given it attention recently, even if the second person is correct. I am still confident in the historical record, Apostolic succession, and the vindication of present day Catholic spirituality and miracle claims.

There was no intentional omission here, I misremembered a few details (I was thinking he was a more recent translation but this was from the 70s, for example.) My point that he's not a religious scholar but a linguist still stands, along with he did not start off as a Christian when doing his translation.

I mean between the Gospels.

This is basically a huge mote in your eye so to speak and I just think you aren't getting rid of it properly:

The Christmas Proclamation from the 1584 Roman Martyrology was read for centuries:

"In the year, from the creation of the world… five thousand one hundred and ninety-nine; from the flood, two thousand nine hundred and fifty-seven…"

After Vatican II it was changed to «when ages beyond number had run their course from the creation of the world.»

Again, you really cannot get passed this, sorry. This invites Jordan Peterson right into your home, with his it was just a metaphor theology, and he talks about Jung ... and Jung talks about Nag Hammadi ... and Nag Hammadi talks about cosmic Adam. This is a very big problem for your canon. A gigantic problem, which is why your Church (you know them by their fruits) had to persecute Galileo and the others.

What genre do you think the first chapters of Genesis are? They are clearly not biography or history. As the USCCB writes:

The same as the Gospels? Both are men and a God doing things and talking to each other.

Someone who has spent 100s of hours on a topic is going to trounce someone who's only given it attention recently, even if the second person is correct.

Not true, I think this is a coping mechanism for being wrong mostly, and besides I have not spent 100s of hours.

I am still confident in the historical record,

Well I made it clear I think the record you refer to is suspicious. Why are you so much more confident in it?

Apostolic succession

Heavily disputed. Both between churches and on the basis of textual criticism.

the vindication of present day Catholic spirituality and miracle claims.

What vindications? If God did miracles on video in Rome once a year, or even once a lifetime, I'd convert.

The Christmas Proclamation from the 1584 Roman Martyrology was read for centuries:

"In the year, from the creation of the world… five thousand one hundred and ninety-nine; from the flood, two thousand nine hundred and fifty-seven…"

Yeah it's a very baller line. I recommend everyone visit a Easter Vigil mass and a Christmas Midnight mass once in their lives at a large parish to experience it.

Doesn't mean it's required to believe those are exact dates, or otherwise the exact dates wouldn't have been debated so fiercely. Bede disagreed with Eusebius who disagreed with Julius Africanus who disagreed with a bunch of Protestant scholars all working from the same text and genealogies trying to find the exact day of creation.

Most educated Christians for most of history regarded the first 11 chapters of Genesis as myths that present theological truths about our identity as humans in relationship with God. Reading the Garden of Eden as something that has to be literally true or else all of the Bible and Christianity is false is something that developed relatively recently.

Origen:

I do not suppose that anyone doubts that these things figuratively indicate certain mysteries, the history having taken place in appearance and not literally" (The Fundamental Doctrines 4:1:16 [A.D. 225]).

Augustine:

at least we know that [the Genesis creation day] is different from the ordinary day with which we are familiar" (Genesi Ad Litteram, AD 415).

Also St. Augustine:

It not infrequently happens that something about the earth, about the sky, about other elements of this world, about the motion and rotation or even the magnitude and distances of the stars, about definite eclipses of the sun and moon, about the passage of years and seasons, about the nature of animals, of fruits, of stones, and of other such things, may be known with the greatest certainty by reasoning or by experience, even by one who is not a Christian. It is too disgraceful and ruinous, though, and greatly to be avoided, that he [the non-Christian] should hear a Christian speaking so idiotically on these matters, and as if in accord with Christian writings, that he might say that he could scarcely keep from laughing when he saw how totally in error they are. In view of this and in keeping it in mind constantly while dealing with the book of Genesis, I have, insofar as I was able, explained in detail and set forth for consideration the meanings of obscure passages, taking care not to affirm rashly some one meaning to the prejudice of another and perhaps better explanation.

With the scriptures it is a matter of treating about the faith. For that reason, as I have noted repeatedly, if anyone, not understanding the mode of divine eloquence, should find something about these matters [about the physical universe] in our books, or hear of the same from those books, of such a kind that it seems to be at variance with the perceptions of his own rational faculties, let him believe that these other things are in no way necessary to the admonitions or accounts or predictions of the scriptures. In short, it must be said that our authors knew the truth about the nature of the skies, but it was not the intention of the Spirit of God, who spoke through them, to teach men anything that would not be of use to them for their salvation.

I do not want to give the impression that I think all Christians knew about evolution and the big bang since the 1st Century. Of course St. Augustine thought the Earth was created in a spectacular way by God. If I recall correctly "science" at his time thought the Earth was created in Spring and the Genesis account didn't indicate that (or something like that I can't look it up right now), which is why he wrote what he did about following the science instead of treating the creation accounts as literal.

But it is true that the average Christian looked to the first 11 Chapters of Genesis for allegorical, theological truths primarily, and a description of the actual beginning of the Earth secondarily. Same with the book of Joshua, it was primarily seen as an allegory for the importance of excising sin from the soul, and only secondarily as an actual historical record of something that happened. And this way of reading the narratives is not a post hoc rationalization in the face of evidence that should have disproved it, but rather just the natural way it's been approached applied to our present knowledge.

The beginning of the book of Genesis provides a thought provoking, textured, allegorical recounting of the origins of man. Everyone saw that there were two, contradictory accounts of the origin of man in the first two chapters. The purpose of handing down these chapters was not to present an accurate account of history but to present a Biblical anthropology. Most commentary on these stories focus on the relationship of God and man presented in the stories as perennial spiritual truths. They were also taken as the best account they had of the beginning of the human species, but we have since learned more through other means of exploration.

had to persecute Galileo and the others.

You don't know your history here. The Galileo affair was due to him being bad at politicking and writing a book where he called the pope an idiot. More than that, wrote a book where a character was called Idiot and had the Idiot character speak the Pope's lines.

The same as the Gospels? Both are men and a God doing things and talking to each other.

So confident and so wrong. The Bible is a collection of books of many genres. There is wisdom literature, proverbs, folklore, political satire. The Gospels are written in a very particular style - Ancient Biography. This was the most accurate way of recording events at the time and demonstrates a desire to stay to the truth. Genesis was not written in Ancient Biography, Ancient Biography was a style only developed in the centuries leading up to the Birth of Christ.

Well I made it clear I think the record you refer to is suspicious. Why are you so much more confident in it?

The textual evidence for the New Testament is by far the best we have for anything more than 500 years ago. The number of manuscripts, the spread of the manuscripts, the dating of the manuscripts eclipse everything else.

Not true, I think this is a coping mechanism for being wrong mostly, and besides I have not spent 100s of hours.

More's the pity. To try to explain with an example we would both agree with, let's say I debate a flat earther. I point to a basic trigonometric proof based on shadows. They then argue back that this effect was explained by the sun being a sphere, it does not mean the Earth is a sphere.

They were able to fire back this response in quick time because they have read a blog post or watched a video saying such. Another flat earther had already made a "Top 10 objections DEBUNKED" video. In order to refute this, now I have to break out the old waves and optics textbook, try to make a diagram, try to make it as simple as I can to someone with little knowledge of physics, and then I can maybe break it down enough to show why that objection does not hold.

The level of effort required to debate something you're not familiar with against someone who is obsessed with the topic to is not worth the effort. And gnosticism is esoteric these days.

Does it worry you that gnosticism isn't as popular as orthodox Christianity? If the truth disappeared shortly after Jesus's Ascension into Heaven, then I would doubt Jesus's power and significance. Even leaving aside all His comments that he was building a Church that would assault the gates of Hell and would be with us until the End of time, which I don't know are cannonical to you or not.

What vindications? If God did miracles on video in Rome once a year, or even once a lifetime, I'd convert.

You don't have to watch this video, I just want to share it to show it's not just one or two weird things, it's a ginormous ball of miracles: https://youtube.com/watch?v=7X_HmSQ6A1A?si=iwe66674GNuWpkrV

I do recommend these two videos though:

https://youtube.com/watch?v=ikdDzR-5EA8?si=zMNP1cBkcomQEuvV

https://youtube.com/watch?v=DgIduVknMnc?si=WGHRDpVVOxue89za

And these articles: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Jacalyn-Duffin/publication/5764868_The_Doctor_Was_Surprised_or_How_to_Diagnose_a_Miracle/links/654a6bc3b1398a779d6e12ee/The-Doctor-Was-Surprised-or-How-to-Diagnose-a-Miracle.pdf

https://apcz.umk.pl/SetF/article/download/SetF.2021.001/28737

If you want a video of a miracle performed on command, watch a Hollywood movie. I don't know why a video is considered gold standard for evidence over sworn contemporaneous eyewitness testimony, medical imaging records, lab tests, and other evidence which seems much more convincing to me.

And this is weakened to mean that the Jews were the children of the devil because, I don't know, they rejected their own Messiah or something, as Matthew and Luke make clear, wherein the Jewish majority oppose Jesus with little motive beyond malice, despite Jesus fulfilling their law exactly as written. What is more likely, Jesus mocked their God and they killed Jesus, or that Jesus proved he was their God and they killed their own God that they worship?

Given Jews' own gloating about how good they are about "tricking God" and rules-lawyering their way out of following His laws, the latter actually does seem far more likely to me. Look up the "oven of Akhnai" in the Talmud for a very specific and blatant example of this where the rabbis reject a voice from heaven proclaiming that they have interpreted the law incorrectly (and the Jews writing the Talmud treat the rabbi's rejection of a correction from God as a good thing).

Or, as the Book of Mormon put it:

Wherefore, as I said unto you, it must needs be expedient that Christ... should come among the Jews, among those who are the more wicked part of the world; and they shall crucify him—for thus it behooveth our God, and there is none other nation on earth that would crucify their God.

For should the mighty miracles be wrought among other nations they would repent, and know that he be their God.

But because of priestcrafts and iniquities, they at Jerusalem will stiffen their necks against him, that he be crucified.

Given Jews' own gloating about how good they are about "tricking God" and rules-lawyering their way out of following His laws, the latter actually does seem far more likely to me.

They follow their God well. There is an apocryphal story about the harrowing of Hades which IIRC was preached by Marcion -- When Jesus enters the Egyptians and other pagans run to him and are rescued; Moses and Abraham suspect a trick from Yahweh and remained until Jesus left. They remain there to this day.

"Salvation will be the attainment only of those souls which had learned his doctrine; while the body, as having been taken from the earth, is incapable of sharing in salvation. In addition to his blasphemy against God Himself, he advanced this also, truly speaking as with the mouth of the devil, and saying all things in direct opposition to the truth, — that Cain, and those like him, and the Sodomites, and the Egyptians, and others like them, and, in fine, all the nations who walked in all sorts of abomination, were saved by the Lord, on His descending into Hades, and on their running unto Him, and that they welcomed Him into their kingdom. But the serpent which was in Marcion declared that Abel, and Enoch, and Noah, and those other righteous men who sprang from the patriarch Abraham, with all the prophets, and those who were pleasing to God, did not partake in salvation. For since these men, he says, knew that their God was constantly tempting them, so now they suspected that He was tempting them, and did not run to Jesus, or believe His announcement: and for this reason he declared that their souls remained in Hades."

— Irenaeus, Against Heresies 1.27.3 (ANF 1, trans. Roberts & Rambaut)

There must be an uncaused cause; this can be identified with God.

However, that's a long way from being a canonical Christian.

By including "canonical", you are papering over the distance in an egregious way - as if the way from that is not quite so long to being some sort of non-canonical, perhaps quite heretical, but still recognisable Christian.

In general, I noticed decades back that US Christians arguing with atheists often seemed to expend a great amount of effort to try and persuade the audience that some/any sort of supernatural force exists, but then took for entirely granted the leap from "something outside of physics" to "our version of Christianity is true". Your "uncaused cause" argument is that taken to an extreme: unlike, say, "intelligent design" or miracles, it does not even try to insinuate any sort of attributes of the supernatural thing that would give it a special connection to humans, but instead seems to be content with postulating the bone-barest of featureless mathematical artifacts. (I won't even go into how unpersuasive the argument itself is.)

This might have worked a little bit in a setting like rural parts US of 50 years ago, where Christianity was so dominant that people may not have had the meme pool to conceive of a supernatural "cause" that did not have the essential properties of the Christian god; but nowadays, when everyone is exposed to a dozen of world religions with their own creation myths and science fiction like Clarke's entropy-reverting VAC blending into science reality like AIs running convincing simulacra of humanity in fake environments, there is an infinitude of possible "uncaused causes" you would have to rule out that stand between you convincing a reader of a supernatural "uncaused cause" and you convincing them that the "uncaused cause" will punish them if they abort, fornicate or trans their kids.

If you believe in a maximally simple monadic God, then from my perspective any Church will do (or even if you don't believe in a God). All it takes is swallowing the distaste of pretending to believe.

Personally I'm partial to the conclusion that Churches are sociopolitical institutions first and philosophical institutions... somewhere very close to the end of the list. You don't choose a Church by its philosophy. The temples of men are not the temples of ideas.

Personally I'm partial to the conclusion that Churches are sociopolitical institutions first and philosophical institutions... somewhere very close to the end of the list. You don't choose a Church by its philosophy. The temples of men are not the temples of ideas.

But I think it is Christian to say the Temples of God are the Temples of Ideas (Platonic sense). Temples of men are indeed all the same, they all worship the same thing. But I don't think that is Jesus's message to men.

the Temples of God are the Temples of Ideas (Platonic sense)

Yes, X == X, but what difference does it make for which building to go to, which language to take your Mass in and whether or not to listen to the Pope?

I think it matters whether what is preached is true.

I'm not a Christian of any sort, but I will say this... the idea that a good god is trying to free us from an evil god makes more sense to me than the idea that there is only one god, this god is good, and this god also gives infants horrible diseases on a regular basis cause of muh free will or something.

At the end of the day though, the good god / evil god dichotomy doesn't make much sense to me either. It feels emotionally resonant in a way that is deep but still somehow superficial compared to true depth. It too is a bit brittle like the rantings of a crazy homeless man. Like Revelations.

The truth, I think, is something deeper than any of those Christian ideas... Christianity has nice symbolism and it points to some important true things, however.

Yes. It's more coherent to me that the highest God wants to allow the Demiurge to have some free will, and that human's original sin is entering the Demiurge's world to experience, I don't know, unique worldly things. But the Demiurge being a lower being, is not omnipotent or omniscient, or perfectly just, and so his world is flawed and has at least some malicious elements. This seems to be the gist of some of the earliest Christian theology in this vein that I can find.

This is also why God is absent today. The Demiurge is either dead (was mortal and got old, something else killed him, the higher God got sick of him and destroyed him but not his creation), or bored; the higher God won't lower himself to come here again.

The truth, I think, is something deeper than any of those Christian ideas... Christianity has nice symbolism and it points to some important true things, however.

I think the truth is better uncovered by this theology.

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