Hard News: For Good Friday
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People are always finding ways of incorporating good ideas and criticisms into their personal positioning strategies. It makes me want to not. I am such a rebel like that.
It's not the good ideas I mind obviously, it's the scarcely concealed implication, 'this is how neat I am', which leads to the feeling that you're less having a genuine conversation than participating in someone's extended image management effort. I dunno, maybe I have this wrong.
I'm not entirely sure what you're getting at here: could I ask you to expand on this.
Are you suggesting we shouldn't actually be discussing our personal positions because it makes us look like egotistical fools?
There's going to be an element of that in any discussion we have, surely?
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Why do pakeha have more trouble with the concept of an afterlife than Maori who acknowledge the presence of ancestors on formal occasions?
Here in Bali at the mo' there's a bit of a rabies scare and the street dogs are being culled in large numbers (which, if done humanely, sadly not always the case here, is a good thing) with official enthusiasm.
It does, however cause a problem as the dogs are regarded as the lowest form of reincarnation by the Hindu Balinese, thus culling is killing your badly behaved ancestor, and removing their cahnce to move upwards again as it's an unnatural death. It's caused much discussion and concern in the local press and on talkback.
Although strangely enough that concern doesn't really extend to caring for the poor mutts when they are alive.
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Why do people talk about death as passing on or over if they don't think there is a destination?
Some people. I'd dearly love to believe that some of my family have 'passed on' to the Elysium fields and are keeping a seat warm and a pint cold for me. I'd also like to believe that there's a place reserved in the brimstone jacuzzi for, say, Robert Mugabe.
But I can't. We're born, we live, we die. Those are the only facts we can be certain of. So what we do in the middle bit is down to us and us alone.
Why is it that people a long way away geographically sometimes know the time that a person died?
Quantum entanglement....? :)
There's a lot of unexplainable phenomena out there, certainly.
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Passed away is probably more common, but any are surely just to give some comfort to those left behind. 'She's / he's dead' doesn't have the same implied sense of placidity that we need to assign to the departed to make ourselves feel better.
Another way to explain "passed away" is that the languages we have inherited were used and developed over the centuries by people who for the most part did in fact believe in the afterlife. Joining che choir invisible, and all that.
Incidentally, the Italian equivalent for "passing away" is "mancare", which literally means to go missing. Not much of a consolation there.
"They've gone to a far better place"
Shelbyville?
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Why do people talk about death as passing on or over if they don't think there is a destination?
I suspect for a variety of reasons. Euphemism being one. People are funny about death, I've noticed.
About the only tenet of my religious upbringing I still have is the idea of meeting loved ones again in another world.
It's not something I can claim to actually believe, but its something I'd like to believe. No one knows what happens when we die: maybe nothing; maybe we do see our loved ones again; maybe there is a bright light and a very angry voice saying 'What did I say about eating bacon??!!'
The only time Jesus actually describes heaven, he says it is like a wedding feast. This suits me fine. I've been to some great weddings over the years. Sounds better than harps and cherubs, anyway.
I remember arguing, one drunken night when I was about 20 and was still clinging somewhat precariously to old Bible Class boy beliefs, that Jesus had said 'in my fathers house are many mansions' and that one of those houses is bound to be a slightly disreputable bar where a few irreverent souls could gather.
It's also a matter of biblical record that JC liked a drop himself - the church leaders of his day were rather critical about this - and would probably spend quite a bit of time there.
I sort of envisaged him popping in for a drink, having a laugh or two, but sighing regretfully and saying saying he didn't have time for another beer, because he had to go and talk to the bloody Baptists now.
Which, now I read all that back, sort of sums up my own attitude to all this stuff.
I do believe people have a soul and I don't believe the life I see in people I know and love dies when their body does.
Where it goes I don't know, and I instinctively distrust any pat answers to that question - whether those delivering those pat answers are waving a bible or a physics text book.
And I also believe irreverent laughter is one of the holiest things we have on this earth.
None of which is particularly rational, but what the hey.
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Not entirely. We are social creatures, To do absolutely what we want could land us in jail.
But whether we want to act in a social or an antisocial manner is, arguably, a matter of free will.
I, of my own free (?) will, make certain choices on a day-to-day basis. Some of which will benefit me more than they benefit society locally or globally. And some of which are more altruisic. I attempt to pick a path through my more selfish desires, and what I think I should be doing as an individual social creature interconnected with a whole bunch of similar creatures, for the benefit of the 'tribe' as a whole.
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Where did the term, kicking the bucket come from?
Suicides. Stand on upturned bucket, rope round rafter, t'other end around neck.
Kick bucket, say hello to next world.
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The only time Jesus actually describes heaven, he says it is like a wedding feast.
So heaven consists of watching drunken relatives dancing to Come on Eileen?
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So heaven consists of watching drunken relatives dancing to Come on Eileen?
Noooooooooooooooooooooooo!
Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani?
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It's also a matter of biblical record that JC liked a drop himself
Correct me if I'm wrong but there is no contemporary record of JC, either biblical or otherwise. We really have little idea what he did or did not like, or for that matter whether he actually was.
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Correct me if I'm wrong but there is no contemporary record of JC, either biblical...
No bibical evidence? The New Testament is entirely about the guy. Apart from the Gospel of John, that is really mostly about what a swell guy John was.
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No bibical evidence?
Hardly evidence, mostly 2nd or 3rd generation stories. There's been a whole industry going back centuries attempting to verify the NT, but it's largely come up empty handed to date.
Evidence is the stuff you can use in court, y'know.
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3410,
We really have little idea what he did or did not like, or for that matter whether he actually was.
We do at least know that he was a Capricorn, he ate organic foods, he believed in love and peace and never wore no shoes.
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Must resist bible discussion... must resist.... must... cannot resist.
None of the Gospels are contemporary. Matthew and Luke both take the story told in Mark and embellish it. John, as Giovanni says, is mostly about John. So it is not as if we have four independent witness statements.
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Evidence is the stuff you can use in court, y'know.
Yes, but Rob wrote "a matter of biblical record", not historical. Although the matter of the historical Jesus has a century of scholarship behind it and most historians agree that the guy did actually live.
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Carpenter, I heard. Built ornamental eggs and suchlike.
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There is quite a lot of evidence that a Jewish religious leader called Jesus lived.
He's mentioned a couple of times by the historian Josephus, a first century Jewish historian who became a Roman citizen.
Tacitus, the Roman historian of about the same time, mentions Jesus, as well as the fact that he was killed by Pontius Pilate.
And Suetonius metions a "Chrestus" in passing when talking about the Jews - which some people have taken as a reference to Jesus. (though Suetonius is unreliable, being mostly interested in imperial tittle-tattle)
There are also references in Pliny the Younger and in Lucian.
However, little is known about his life or deeds. Most importantly, we don't know what his position was on s92A.
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Don't you go summoning the candyman..
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Don't you go summoning the candyman..
How else are we going to get this thread to 80+ pages?
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Carpenter, I heard. Built ornamental eggs and suchlike.
That's the guy. Also a handy bloke with fish and bread if a few extras unexpectedly drop by.
Good with lepers. Not so good with church leaders, interestingly.
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Hmmm, lots of interesting stuff on wikipedia, now you've prompted me to go and have a look.
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Catering competition got up priestly noses, perhaps. Who wants a wafer when the other guy is offerning tuna sammies?
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The passages in Josephus are generally thought to be fake, inserted into the text later.
Tacitus and Pliny are both writing more than 80 years after the supposed crucifixion, Lucian later still. They write about Christians and refer to their worship of Christ, but Tacitus is the only one who is clearly speaking of a man.
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Good with lepers. Not so good with church leaders, interestingly
He probably wouldn't like these guys
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The passages in Josephus are generally thought to be fake, inserted into the text later.
Rather than "fake", I think the consensus is "possibly altered". That doesn't mean all of the passages are fake, though.
Tacitus is the only one who is clearly speaking of a man.
Indeed, and Tacitus is generally one of the more reliable Roman historians.
No one peice of evidence is itself conclusive. But on balance it seems more probable than not that Jesus lived. That doesn't mean we have to accept the Jesus that lived did all the things described in the New Testament.
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