Loaves and Fishes

[Robert Tulip]

SpiritofLife, I was happy to respond to your earlier comment because I found it a useful way to present comments on my own views. However, I don’t see how your latest input is relevant to the thread. Quoting Bible verses without commentary or rationale looks more like preaching than conversation.

My hope in this thread is that if there is anything I say that people disagree with or do not understand, they should ask what I mean, or give reasons for why they think differently. Neil Godfrey has tried to do this in a mostly constructive way, and our discussion has helped to illustrate that we have ways of thinking that are in some ways mutually incomprehensible. But where there is good will, there is always potential to assess conflicting views.

Why I say your views, SpiritofLife, remind me of fundamentalism is based on a fairly simple principle of epistemology, the theory of knowledge. Where people express a belief, and maintain that their belief is self-evident and not open to question, such beliefs may be classed as fundamentalist when they clash with broadly accepted knowledge. So I think it is reasonable to express a belief that the physical universe exists as described by science, but not reasonable to assert there is a supernatural intentional personal God who intervenes in magical ways in life on earth. Belief in the physical universe is acceptable because we have no more parsimonious explanation for our observations. Belief in God is not acceptable, because we do have a more parsimonious explanation, from Feuerbach, that such belief is a projection of imaginative psychological fantasy.

Applying this heuristic to the stories of Jesus, my view is that the more elegant explanation is that they are all fiction. So I see claims that the Jesus stories are factual as a species of fundamentalism. I recognise that this extends the term fundamentalism beyond its usual crazy creationist domain, but I see this extension as philosophically legitimate.

[The Crow]

The Secret Book of John

(The Apocryphon of John)

Translated by Stevan Davies

This translation is presented in The Gnostic Society Library by exclusive permission of the author.
All rights including right of electronic reproduction are reserved by the author.
© 2005 Stevan Davies

So you have copied it in full here without permission. The author gave permission for The Gnostic Society Library to publish his translation in full there. He did not give blanket permission for anyone to post it anywhere they like. I believe you are obligated to seek permission from Stevan Davies or the publisher before posting it in full here.

Extraordinary beliefs require extraordinary grasps at straws Neil.

[SpiritofLife]

I quoted Jesus saying you search the scriptures thinking you find life, but the life is in Me. You said you had not heard this. John 5:39
The Gospel of Nicodemus documents Jesus was charged with sorcery. He turned water into wine, raised the dead, healed all the sick, in Luke 8 accused of doing it by the power of Beelzebub.

So I think it is reasonable to express a belief that the physical universe exists as described by science, but not reasonable to assert there is a supernatural intentional personal God who intervenes in magical ways in life on earth.

The testament of Solomon records Solomon's using demons to cut stone tor the temple. So in Luke 8 the response to this charge, Jesus talks about doing His miracles, signs and wonders by the Spirit of God and not the devil, talking about casting out the devil by the power of the devil would be like a house divided against it self, it can not stand. Then he proclaims, a greater than Solomon is here.
Jesus is greater than Solomon, He is not bound by science, time or space. life is not in the scripture, or the stars, or science, Life is in Him. Satan did not kill Him because He was reasonable. The god of the cosmos, Satan, killed Jesus, because He showed the world for all eternity that He was above this world. This world will pass away, but His Kingdom is eternal, believe in Him and have everlasting Life.
When I was in high school I was driving drunk. The fuel pump came off the engine. I spent the night on the side of the road and called my parents in the morning. My dad opens the hood and sees the fuel pump hanging by the fuel line. Anecdotal, yes I know. Soon after I went through rehab my senior year. My mother asks me a couple years later if I thought that God did that to keep me from driving drunk. I said no, there had to be a scientific explanation for why the fuel pump just unscrewed itself from the engine. Today I believe, that it was God, call it what you want. He intervened to protect me from me. Call it my Guardian Angel; Divine Hand of Protection is what George Washington called it, when God worked to keep him safe and alive.
Independence from England was fought by men who believed in the supernatural power of God to over come the odds, numbers, science, against them.