Tomb venerated as burial place of Christ exposed for first time in centuries
news.nationalgeographic.com
news.nationalgeographic.com
The whole mass felt very surreal. As it was being celebrated there was simultaneously an Armenian liturgy and Greek Orthodox liturgy being celebrated on other sides of the Edicule. If you've ever been to one of those liturgies, you know that there's an almost constant drone of chant throughout. At times it was hard to hear the priest in front of us! I'm still not sure whether to interpret the experience as being a wonderful illustration of the unity or the disunity of the Christian Church.
As for the Holy Sepulchre, as a non-Christian I found it pretty surreal. Clearly for the faithful it's a big deal, saw people outright crying coming out of the Sepulchre.
The church itself is beautiful, powerful artwork from all of the sects (Ethiopian included). Particularly the fresco at the entrance, Christ being laid to rest, the disciples in tears, pretty moving piece.
Unfortunately my experience was darkened by a group of troublemaker teenagers; saw them shove an old woman deep in prayer, just appalling. On leaving they followed me and one of them spit in my hair. When I turned around the kid said, "only water, only water".
Needless to say Jerusalem's a complex mix of cultures, history, and religions.
Wtf?
This sort of reaction is deeply troubling to me because I see it as evidence of the overwhelming grip that religions have on (some of) their followers. It reminds me of videos of teenagers crying at the sight of Michael Jackson or the Beatles at live performances. It is unnecessary.
My mother, for example, is unable to laugh at even the most trivial of jokes about her religion, things that aren't even attacking her religion but simply having fun with a play on words. I am constantly seeking to remind her that it is a lack of lightheartedness that is at the rock of extremism. I encourage her involvement at her church for social reasons while attempting to remind her that anything that can't be laughed about is being taken too seriously (this is the foundation for many unnecessary wars and acts of violence or discrimination).
I know the likelihood that I'll ever succeed is small, but it's important to me to wake people from what I consider to be a way of thinking that impairs sound judgement (say, when voting or choosing how to react to world politics). I'm not against religion or the right to practice religion, just its ability to cause hysteria.
People aren't robots.
Have you considered what is trivial and lighthearted to you might be deeply offensive to her? You might say "that is exactly what I am trying to change" but to that I would say "why". Unless a person is explicitly causing harm either by doing anti social things or inciting people with speeches to do anti social things, or forces their belief system on you, what someone believes in or finds funny is no one's business. I guess your mother isn't any of that - she's just a law abiding woman with a certain religious faith that makes her life feel meaningful - so leave her alone.
It also seems that you are to quick to relate religious people with religious extremists, which is flawed. The whole idea of atheists having to "wake up" religious people is quite cocky and indecent. Also the assumption that religious people have "impaired judgement" is deeply offensive. If anything, its the atheists who are extremists with impaired judgement because they think they are better then the religious people.
I used to be one of these cocky atheists in my early 20s and used to constantly bother my deeply religious mother until one day she told me off. She basically said why do I bother her when she doesn't force me to follow the religion (she did like any parent till I was a teen and rebelled and then left me alone). That was a wake up call to me. Of course, my cockiness will come right out whenever a religious relative or colleague tries to mock my lack of faith or give me unsolicited advice with religion based arguments. But in general, I don't try to be holier than thou and look down upon religious people or interfere with their faith.
No doubt. Perhaps I could have been clearer. There is no version of a joke about her religion that isn't offensive to her. And yes, this is indeed the basis for the beginnings of extremism, although not full blown extremism by itself.
If you can't hear or read something about your religion that is contrary to your strict beliefs without getting offended, you are 100% doing it wrong.
That's how it starts, then it escalates and finally you get crusaded against.
Of course they're OUR myths, so it's important that we describe them with serious sounding words, and pretend that they're a valid spur for hard scientific research.
There isn't any evidence, outside of mythology, that this place or slab of marble has anything special to reveal about our universe. Just because you're looking through a scientific tool, does not change the fact that what you're looking at is mythology. You're just looking at a communion wafer through a microscope.
Still, it's fascinating to me that we present it in the same tone and context that we present LHC results.
Well, I hope people are actually doing that. I think people believing in some phenomenon should aways encourage scientific inquiry into it.
I also can't see how the article's tone is "hard science". It uses words like "venerated", "Christian tradition", "sacred", and "cultural heritage" so I don't read presuppositions in it, and I don't recall seeing a hypothesis posed.
One of the main points of the article was that there are a lot of people and representatives of faith involved, and if the result of "hard science" research is "peace and mutual respect" (as the article quoted), then I would take that over LHC results every time.
'Religion has actually convinced people that there's an invisible ... all-perfect, all-knowing, and all-wise being that somehow just can't handle money!, Always needs a little more.'
Edit: find->found
"Modern scholarship has largely acknowledged the authenticity of the reference in Book 20, Chapter 9, 1 of the Antiquities to "the brother of Jesus, who was called Christ, whose name was James"[13] and considers it as having the highest level of authenticity among the references of Josephus to Christianity.[14][1][2][15][16][17]
Almost all modern scholars consider the reference in Book 18, Chapter 5, 2 of the Antiquities to the imprisonment and death of John the Baptist also to be authentic and not a Christian interpolation.[18][19][20]"
Among historians and biblical scholars, there's very little question that a person called Jesus from the Galilee was executed by the Romans for treason of some sort or other. Aside from name, place of origin, and death, however, everything else is very hazy.
There really are no historical records of Jesus that are contemporary. The earliest are the letters of Paul and they were written decades after Jesus lived. Paul himself says he never met Jesus (except by revelation).
But yes, agreeing with you again (hello from the other thread!) from the other end - the authentic bits tell us next to nothing about this character.
The rest is just writings by the followers of said religion. That's not evidence, that is hearsay by definition.
From your link:
"The primary conflicts, however, surrounding the ladder and its immovability have been disputed by a lasting conflict between the Greek Orthodox Church and the Armenian Apostolic Church."
Surely such insect activity could be interpreted as 'an act of God' and then all parties could get on with their lives.
But it looks like the church is actually in the Palestinian lands [1]. Is there political motivation here?
But unlike the west bank, it was formally annexed by israel, it contains jewish holy sites such as the west wall, it is not currently part of the PA and I doubt anyone is seriously expecting it to be part of a future palastinian state (in a two state solution at least).
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_recognition_of_t...
Not many scientists but many Christians believe that Jesus actually lay in this Church of Holy Sepulcher for 3 days.
But seriously, it should be an interesting read once they've fully studied it.
Like the shroud of Turin this is just another example of wishful thinking. They found some random tomb that has survived and announced that it was the tomb of this fictional character Christ. No chain of custody for evidence, just the wishful thinking of somebody who wants it to be true, just like the entire resurrection theory. Complete and total hogwash.
If we were to say this is the burial site of Joseph the plumber, the proponents of this idea would have no evidence to argue otherwise.
You know, like superheroes in the US. They don't exist (which is factually verifiable still), but people are fans of them. What if in 2000 years people forget or lose the origins but the story of e.g. Star Wars is passed on through the ages? It's not proven to be real, but it provides a moral example, a distinction of good vs evil, and a code to live by.
Short version of the evidence is these two (rather thin) things:
1. The Biblical texts include many theologically inconvenient details. A purely fictional character would just not have been written with them.
2. A near-contemporary mention, before the rise of Christianity, in a source (Josephus) without an agenda in promoting Jesus's story. (This is complicated by the fact that later Christian redactors added in extra references with more theologically convenient bits.)
This looks quite thin, but note that in this part of history sources are always hard to find - there are Roman emperors that we have much more tenuous direct evidence for! But it does mean that we can't really say much about this figure.
EDIT: On re-viewing - note Dr. Martin's interesting philosophical cartwheels trying to not look (to himself even) like he's going against articles of Christian faith.
EDIT 2: For the interested - skip to 27:00 after he's done hemming and hawing about theology vs. history and gets to actual information.
and here we all were thinking they'd irrefutably proved Christianity.
there's still history to be learned and an interesting story to be told about life thousands of years ago regardless of its lack of real supernatural content.
in other news Apple didn't revolutionize everything again with the touch bar, welcome to life :p