₦airaland Forum

Part 1:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XduMIK4u65s
Part 2:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V_w9SueUNBM
Part 3:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c7nniGYUihk
Part 4:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tfho7M0Quzo
Part 5:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gWkP6oRCyb4
Part 6:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=20mZS-UPtU8

I received a call from my brothers today informing me that they had travel from Cameroon to Lagos to visit with Pastor TB Johua. This came as a big surprise as I was in contact with them only a few days earlier and no such escapade was mentioned.  One of my brothers (the most fundamentally oreinted) was speaking in very effusive terms about TB Joshua's premises, Synagogue Church of all Nations.  I was at work at the time and had to restrain my reaction at such a foolhardy project.  Or am I too previous in judging this a foolhardy project?

                                                  The coming evangelical collapse
by                         The Christian Science Monitor, Michael Spencer

Reposted from:
http://www.csmonitor.com/2009/0310/p09s01-coop.html

An anti-Christian chapter in Western history is about to begin. But out of the ruins, a new vitality and integrity will rise.

ONEIDA, KY. - We are on the verge – within 10 years – of a major collapse of evangelical Christianity. This breakdown will follow the deterioration of the mainline Protestant world and it will fundamentally alter the religious and cultural environment in the West.

Within two generations, evangelicalism will be a house deserted of half its occupants. (Between 25 and 35 percent of Americans today are Evangelicals.) In the "Protestant" 20th century, Evangelicals flourished. But they will soon be living in a very secular and religiously antagonistic 21st century.

This collapse will herald the arrival of an anti-Christian chapter of the post-Christian West. Intolerance of Christianity will rise to levels many of us have not believed possible in our lifetimes, and public policy will become hostile toward evangelical Christianity, seeing it as the opponent of the common good.

Millions of Evangelicals will quit. Thousands of ministries will end. Christian media will be reduced, if not eliminated. Many Christian schools will go into rapid decline. I'm convinced the grace and mission of God will reach to the ends of the earth. But the end of evangelicalism as we know it is close.

WHY IS THIS GOING TO HAPPEN?

1. Evangelicals have identified their movement with the culture war and with political conservatism. This will prove to be a very costly mistake. Evangelicals will increasingly be seen as a threat to cultural progress. Public leaders will consider us bad for America, bad for education, bad for children, and bad for society.

The evangelical investment in moral, social, and political issues has depleted our resources and exposed our weaknesses. Being against gay marriage and being rhetorically pro-life will not make up for the fact that massive majorities of Evangelicals can't articulate the Gospel with any coherence. We fell for the trap of believing in a cause more than a faith.

2. We Evangelicals have failed to pass on to our young people an orthodox form of faith that can take root and survive the secular onslaught. Ironically, the billions of dollars we've spent on youth ministers, Christian music, publishing, and media has produced a culture of young Christians who know next to nothing about their own faith except how they feel about it. Our young people have deep beliefs about the culture war, but do not know why they should obey scripture, the essentials of theology, or the experience of spiritual discipline and community. Coming generations of Christians are going to be monumentally ignorant and unprepared for culture-wide pressures.

3. There are three kinds of evangelical churches today: consumer-driven megachurches, dying churches, and new churches whose future is fragile. Denominations will shrink, even vanish, while fewer and fewer evangelical churches will survive and thrive.

4. Despite some very successful developments in the past 25 years, Christian education has not produced a product that can withstand the rising tide of secularism. Evangelicalism has used its educational system primarily to staff its own needs and talk to itself.

5. The confrontation between cultural secularism and the faith at the core of evangelical efforts to "do good" is rapidly approaching. We will soon see that the good Evangelicals want to do will be viewed as bad by so many, and much of that work will not be done. Look for ministries to take on a less and less distinctively Christian face in order to survive.

6. Even in areas where Evangelicals imagine themselves strong (like the Bible Belt), we will find a great inability to pass on to our children a vital evangelical confidence in the Bible and the importance of the faith.

7. The money will dry up.

WHAT WILL BE LEFT?

•Expect evangelicalism to look more like the pragmatic, therapeutic, church-growth oriented megachurches that have defined success. Emphasis will shift from doctrine to relevance, motivation, and personal success – resulting in churches further compromised and weakened in their ability to pass on the faith.

•Two of the beneficiaries will be the Roman Catholic and Orthodox communions. Evangelicals have been entering these churches in recent decades and that trend will continue, with more efforts aimed at the "conversion" of Evangelicals to the Catholic and Orthodox traditions.

•A small band will work hard to rescue the movement from its demise through theological renewal. This is an attractive, innovative, and tireless community with outstanding media, publishing, and leadership development. Nonetheless, I believe the coming evangelical collapse will not result in a second reformation, though it may result in benefits for many churches and the beginnings of new churches.

•The emerging church will largely vanish from the evangelical landscape, becoming part of the small segment of progressive mainline Protestants that remain true to the liberal vision.

•Aggressively evangelistic fundamentalist churches will begin to disappear.

•Charismatic-Pentecostal Christianity will become the majority report in evangelicalism. Can this community withstand heresy, relativism, and confusion? To do so, it must make a priority of biblical authority, responsible leadership, and a reemergence of orthodoxy.

•Evangelicalism needs a "rescue mission" from the world Christian community. It is time for missionaries to come to America from Asia and Africa. Will they come? Will they be able to bring to our culture a more vital form of Christianity?

•Expect a fragmented response to the culture war. Some Evangelicals will work to create their own countercultures, rather than try to change the culture at large. Some will continue to see conservatism and Christianity through one lens and will engage the culture war much as before – a status quo the media will be all too happy to perpetuate. A significant number, however, may give up political engagement for a discipleship of deeper impact.

IS ALL OF THIS A BAD THING?

Evangelicalism doesn't need a bailout. Much of it needs a funeral. But what about what remains?

Is it a good thing that denominations are going to become largely irrelevant? Only if the networks that replace them are able to marshal resources, training, and vision to the mission field and into the planting and equipping of churches.

Is it a good thing that many marginal believers will depart? Possibly, if churches begin and continue the work of renewing serious church membership. We must change the conversation from the maintenance of traditional churches to developing new and culturally appropriate ones.

The ascendency of Charismatic-Pentecostal-influenced worship around the world can be a major positive for the evangelical movement if reformation can reach those churches and if it is joined with the calling, training, and mentoring of leaders. If American churches come under more of the influence of the movement of the Holy Spirit in Africa and Asia, this will be a good thing.

Will the evangelicalizing of Catholic and Orthodox communions be a good development? One can hope for greater unity and appreciation, but the history of these developments seems to be much more about a renewed vigor to "evangelize" Protestantism in the name of unity.

Will the coming collapse get Evangelicals past the pragmatism and shallowness that has brought about the loss of substance and power? Probably not. The purveyors of the evangelical circus will be in fine form, selling their wares as the promised solution to every church's problems. I expect the landscape of megachurch vacuity to be around for a very long time.

Will it shake lose the prosperity Gospel from its parasitical place on the evangelical body of Christ? Evidence from similar periods is not encouraging. American Christians seldom seem to be able to separate their theology from an overall idea of personal affluence and success.

The loss of their political clout may impel many Evangelicals to reconsider the wisdom of trying to create a "godly society." That doesn't mean they'll focus solely on saving souls, but the increasing concern will be how to keep secularism out of church, not stop it altogether. The integrity of the church as a countercultural movement with a message of "empire subversion" will increasingly replace a message of cultural and political entitlement.

Despite all of these challenges, it is impossible not to be hopeful. As one commenter has already said, "Christianity loves a crumbling empire."

We can rejoice that in the ruins, new forms of Christian vitality and ministry will be born. I expect to see a vital and growing house church movement. This cannot help but be good for an evangelicalism that has made buildings, numbers, and paid staff its drugs for half a century.

We need new evangelicalism that learns from the past and listens more carefully to what God says about being His people in the midst of a powerful, idolatrous culture.

I'm not a prophet. My view of evangelicalism is not authoritative or infallible. I am certainly wrong in some of these predictions. But is there anyone who is observing evangelicalism in these times who does not sense that the future of our movement holds many dangers and much potential?

• Michael Spencer is a writer and communicator living and working in a Christian community in Kentucky. He describes himself as "a postevangelical reformation Christian in search of a Jesus-shaped spirituality." This essay is adapted from a series on his blog, InternetMonk.com .

Watch this video

Nigerian Christian, especially followers of these Big Pastors are some of the most dumbest people on the planet. The Pastors steal their money in broad daylight and flaunt the ill-gotten goods bought with these stolen money in their faces. What do the sheepish followers do? They open their loud mouths and cry - Praise the Lord.

May kelly:
no one can explain it better than the Holy BIBLE. stop beating about the bush

Did you watch the video, the entire video?

How delusional Christians can be! AS their god lets them down, the draw closer to him. What is the point of serving such a god if he cannot do anything to help his followers?

Hello Smile4Kenn,

And nice to hear your position on the religion issue and this is one of the more important decisions you will have to make as it will determine how you lead your life. Consequently, you need to exercise great care and diligence to help you make a rational decision.

To begin with, you have got to want to set yourself a standard for accepting and evaluating ALL claims that are presented to you. Let me set the scene with the following proposition:

Supposing someone came up to you and claimed that they have a mechanism for talking to dead relatives, whose advise to you would open the door to great financial success. And that to avail yourself of this mechanism to will have to give them 1 million naira.

Now, how would you go about evaluating this proposition? Would your methods be any different from the methods that you use to look into the claims of the various religions?

If you think religion is worthy of rejection, then it is even more worthwhile to development good and strong reasons why it ought to be rejected.

Very interesting video

Hesperus:
So do I. In these times, churches should be more concerned with matters of salvation and how to uplift those who need help.
I must say I expected more from RCCG.

Why were you expecting more from RCCG? Is such venality not consistent with the corrupt nature of the doctrine they preach?

This is actually a very deep and troublesome question than may appear at first sight. Christian theology is built on the idea that freewill was the bane of humankind. But if God knowingly endowed human with freewill, then he should have known that this would lead man into "sin". If he did not know this, then he cannot be omniscient.

Further, what is god going to do with freewill in the long term? If all beings have freewill, will there be a time when freewill will be removed from said beings? Will the much-longed-for new world have beings with freewill?

Do all beings in heaven have freewill and will god purge heaven of those who missuse their freewill.

If god had created beings without freewill, would we have known that we are missing this apparently essential element of what makes us humans?

I just listened to Pastor Adeboye (yes, shock & horror). Yes, the full nearly one hour. This is really bad and dangerous stuff and if your are of really weak minded disposition, please don't listen or your mind may be damaged irrevocably. These are some of the things the pastor claims;

1) That he is in direct 1-to-1 communication with god, with god speaking (audibly) and directly giving him instructions

2) That through his prayers, he was able to raise a dead woman from the dead.

3) That giving your life to Jesus amounts to surrendering one's possessions to the service of his church.


In fact, the theme of the sermon he preach was "Giving Your Life To Jesus", and he bangs on and on about what it means to give one's life to Jesus. He calls for TOTAL SURRENDER to Jesus. Well, if you did not already know, TOTAL SURRENDER TO JESUS, especially in an organised church environment is the door through which the church thieves get into your lives and exploit and dispossess you.

It has got to be listened to be believed just how inane this man's words are.

Bastage:
Are you sure about that? I can't really see an altruistic claim of "stimualting thinking" as being the the main aim unless you're talking about stimulating your own thinking. Your agression does seem to point otherwise at times though.
Whilst I find your posts interesting I do sometimes get the feeling that your attitude to atheism borders on fundamentalism.

The difficulty you have is that when you want people to have a change of heart, you're really no different from those you oppose.

Don't get me wrong, Huxley. I do believe that the religion forum benefits from your balance, but I would ask you to be honest when stating your intentions.

I meant exactly what I said earlier and in that order, namely 1) stimulate thinking 2) possible change of heart.

From you experience of living in a religious community you will only be too aware of the lack of objectivity, rationality and intellectualism amongst many of the diehard religionist. I see this as a danger to our civilisation. It is such people who are easily manupilated and fleeced by their religious leaders. Religious fundamentalism is characterised by wholesale acceptance of dogma and a desire to interprete religious text in the most narrow sense. Thus nearly all fundamentalist accept their religious text as literally true and should be observed as stated in the text. This is the sort of religion I have a problem with.

Now, I know you revealed to us that you are a Christian (shock & horror) which came as a big surprise to me. I did ask you to define the nature of you believe in the deity of Jesus, but you avoided the issue. On the whole, I have got no bone with you, for you appear to be an enlightened christian (if that is not an oxymoron). On the other hand, the likes of Davidylan are the objects or my critical ire. Look, for example at the threads in which we have debated subjects like The Big Bang, Evolution, Historicity of the Bible/Gospel and Jesus, etc, etc.

You and Davidylan are on opposite ends of the debate spectrum on these questions and I suppose on all major issues regarding verifiability of Christian narratives. It is not that you guys are at variance - it is that your approach are at odds. You tend to adopt scientific rationalism in dealing with these issues and tend to accept the outcome, however conflict it might be to your "faith". Contrarily, Davidylan is palpably dishonest in his attempt at dealing with this.

Like I said, I ordinarily have no bone with you. I have NOT sought to attack and criticise you on account of your benign Christian belief, although it seems to me very logical for you to make that one last step into agnocism or atheism.

dexmond:
HUXLEY

It does not cease to amaze me the veracity with which you attack the Christian faith, the people I pity are those who did not know much, I mean those who are not really grounded in the Truth. Not withstanding, the scriptures said in Mark 4:25
“For whoever has will be given more, but 1 whoever does not have, even what he has will be taken from him.” I pray that the simple will not fall for your antics.

Why is your so-called "truth" any more true than the truth of the Koran, Verda, or any of the other hundreds od religions? Why should I believe the bible?

Does it not occur to you just how circular your thinking is? You are using the bible to justify the very bible. How bizarre!

The majority of contributors to this thread are a disgrace to commonsense and exemplifies the very mentality that creates the problem - the tendency to congregate along ethnic and religious lines. It is this mentality that is at the root of the problems and by calling for "Black Africa" to stand up for their own only fuels the them-and-us mentality. Right thinking people of all shade should come together, not under the banner of Black Africa or any such defunct titles, to oppose the immoral government of Sudan.

Okija_juju:
I will start with question 1.

ANSWER

1. He was arrested for treson.

1. Breaking the law of Sabbath.


1. Blasphemy

1. Terrorism




ANSWER 2

2. Yes.

ANSWER 3.

Faced with the evidence of the prosecution?? He was guilty as charged. Although I would have sentenced him to life behind bars or a psychiatric ward.


MY OPINION


OKIJA_JUJU^TM

If you were one of his followers, say Peter, would it have seemed to have been a fair trial? Why was Pilate so reluctant to convict him if the charges were clearcut and fair? If you were Peter, would you have convicted him?

ud4u:
May God forgive you.

Why did you not deal with the point I am making but has resorted to preach and pitying me? Verily, Verily, Christians are really mentally challenged. For goodness sake, this is your fucking bible which you follow like a sheep and with your sheepish mind you obviously cannot defend it.

Watch this video and this

Bastage:
I would say improbable. We are limited by our own perceptions.
Anything we view as water is water.

Incidentally, that link is cool. It went clockwise for me and then anti-clockwise. Then I found that I could change direction at will.

Of all the properties of water is one is the most intrinsic to its waterness? Is it the fact that it is a clear liquid? Is it the fact that it taste a certain way? Is it the fact that it has a certain density, viscosity, etc, etc.

Do you need all of these properties acting together to make it water? What if you modifiy one or more of its properies, say by heating it or subjecting it under some pressure, thus changeing some properties. Is it still water?

Some useful videos about ERVs and evolution;


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i1fGkFuHIu0&feature=related


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-CvX_mD5weM&feature=related


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K11knFKqW4s&feature=related


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eblrphIwoJQ&feature=related

transitional fossils


Some more


1)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_5AR5S_2S0E&feature=related

2)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CIsCTocAPO8

davidylan:
the usual shallow thinking. Go back a little . . . the scientific argument that ERV similarity in apes and humans is proof of evolution is based on the unfounded theory that ERVs are the result of "failed viral infections" in the germline. i.e. these pieces of junk DNA that are useless to the cell eventually got passed down from a common ancestor.

But we now know that these "ERVs" are infact very active regulators of gene expression and are involved in maintaining pregnancy in mice. How did that happen? If these ERVs just got there by accident, which cellular components where responsible for their functions as we know them today and why did they lose those functions?

ERVs by themselves are TRANSPOSABLE ELEMENTS, which means they are not fixed to specific sites but are able to move around the genome. I'm not sure huxley knew that.

I repeat - enough of useless rhetoric, bring FACTS.

Yes, I did not know that.   If you knew, how did you come to know it?   Did you discover this yourself?   Did you read it from a book or journal or relied on some experts in the field for this fact?  Is it possible for me to come to know about it just as you have?

davidylan:
Retroviral promoters in the human genome

2008 Bioinformatics paper:

We report the existence of 51,197 ERV-derived promoter sequences that initiate transcription within the human genome, including 1743 cases where transcription is initiated from ERV sequences that are located in gene proximal promoter or 5' untranslated regions (UTRs). A total of 114 of the ERV-derived transcription start sites can be demonstrated to drive transcription of 97 human genes, producing chimeric transcripts that are initiated within ERV long terminal repeat (LTR) sequences and read-through into known gene sequences. ERV promoters drive tissue-specific and lineage-specific patterns of gene expression and contribute to expression divergence between paralogs. These data illustrate the potential of retroviral sequences to regulate human transcription on a large scale consistent with a substantial effect of ERVs on the function and evolution of the human genome

More scientifically validated proof that ERVs are NOT junk DNA or careless mistakes of germline mutations by viral infections. They do have functions that are not only tissue and lineage specific but are clearly species specific.

It is the presence of ERV on specific sites that represent strong evidence for common descent, NOT whether they are junk DNA or NOT.

davidylan:
we are back to the same poor use of words to convey false meanings. Can you please CLEARLY explain what you mean by "shared hierachialy" with relevant examples pls? I will share an example at the end of this post myself.

sorry, i seem to have noticed this trend among atheists . . . they NEVER answer a question you put to them, rather the burden of proof for creationism AND evolution they shift to others. You answer the question yourself. You told us man evolved from apes no?

Good. Pls keep this in mind for later.

i've been explaining them for ages . . . you and bastage have simply been mentioning them with NO explanation of what they are. If you know any better then tell us. I know its easier for you to use condescending language to avoid facing your own claims. Its the KAG style so no surprises.
HIV behaves like an ERV . . . but it still produces viruses from proviruses . . . why not ERVs?

Pls pay close attention here:

1. ptERV1 and 2 are found ONLY in chimps but not humans - so if humans descended from chimps (as you earlier claimed) we only have 2 possibilities: either these were a result of more recent viral infections in chimps after humans had evolved OR humans just did not inherit these genes from her chimp ancestors.

2. However the ptERV1 insertion has very close similarities to those found in baboons and rhesus monkeys.

3. Infact the ptERV2 has an 88% ORF similarity to the Baboon ERV . . .

4. Since both ptERV1 and 2 unlike the HERV's still have full length copies and 2 intact LTRs (most older HERVs have one LTR due to recombination), this suggests very recent infections . . . how then do we find strikingly similar ERVs in baboons and rhesus monkeys? Where did they evolve from? Where they infected by similar viruses at EXACTLY THE SAME TIME INTERVAL?
Why then do we NOT find any such ERVs in other simians and humans?

I think we have had enough of rhetoric, now is the time to discuss facts and specifics.
Thanks.

The highlighted point above is actually a good point. Can it be tested experimentally? I submit you can.

Pastor AIO:
I'm not really interested in what that site says about left brain or right brain. What I get out of the experiment is that fact that Interpretation occurs at the most basic levels of perception. So . . . Is it conceivable that water is not H2O? I say that whatever water really is, one interpretation of the experience of water is as H2O.

Interesting. You experience water by experiencings its properties. OK, is it possible for something to have ALL the properties of water and yet not be water?

REAL TRUTH:
Huxley pls take it easy,I had mentioned to you that you re Bitter b4,but I really don't understand the reason why you re so bitter!As concerning what you mentioned,similar issue was raised in the Bible to Paul in 1stCorinthians7 but particularly in verses 15,U can read up.In the old testament,the only condition for divorce is infidelity, but with pauls explanation in verse I mentioned,a woman can never be held bound if the man decided to walk out or quit a marriage,such woman can remarry.
So once again, I hope this anwers ur question and I say to you again with all assurance,God loves you so much and with thesame zeal,intellect you re using to question d Bible and Jesus,thesame zeal shall you be used of the Lord.It did happen to saul who became paul in the Bible!God bless you man!

But is it right for Paul to contradict God's (Jesus's) word. Are you saying that Paul's injunctions take precedence over Jesus's?

davidylan:
Talkorigins? What a laughable irony on its own. Huxley has posted false claims from that same website.

The above is nothing but unproven speculation THAT HAVE NO SHRED OF SCIENTIFIC EVIDENCE THAT THEY ACTUALLY DID HAPPEN.

Lets use common sense -

1. 99% of ape DNA is shared with humans, it therefore is no surprise that ERV insertions in humans are similar in apes. I mentioned earlier the clear fact that hundreds of genes are virtually identical in several species . . . NF-kB is found from yeast to man, ditto for HDACs which is virtually the same in terms of amino acid compositions in chickens and mice. Does that mean man and yeast evolved from the same ancestor? The beta globin gene from chickens has been key to understanding the functions of the human homolog . . . was a chicken on the road to evolving into man?

2. Why have apes FAILED to develop human traits in millions of yrs since their bones were first discovered? Has evolution suddenly stopped?

3. ERVs do NOT generate independent viruses in human cells like exogenous RVs do, why? Afterall arent they all about gag, pol and env?

4. We know that the vast majority of germline mutations in man are actually deleterious, why are the ERV mutations all beneficial? why are modern RVs which sometimes behave like ERVs deadly to man? Ebola, HIV, Marburg to name a few.

These are the pertinent questions neither you nor those from which you copy long meaningless stuff want to tackle. Its easy to write an entire textbook to bambozzle people on talk forums.

What do you think explains the fact humans and apes share 99% of DNA? I think this is a fact that deserve an explanation.

For instance, you and your siblings share a great deal of DNA than you and me. Now, how would you explain the fact that you and your siblings have a great deal of DNA in common?

davidylan:
Give us just one example of these "lots and lots".

You've given us ERVs which is simply nothing but conjecture at the moment. There is no valid scientific proof . . . what we simply know is that these TEs behave like proviruses from exogenous retroviruses.

One small problem, exogenous RVs will use the cell machinery to generate more viruses but ERVs surprisingly do NOT. What happened?

Strictly speaking, proof is talked about in mathematics and logics.  In the natural science (and the law), we deal with evidence to support a claim (or case).  A proposition is accepted as scientifically plausible is the preponderence of evidence supports it.  As far as biogical evolution is concerned, nothing counts as proof, but there are many lines of evidence that support the fact that species change with time.

To see if the claims of evolution are false one only need find fossils of humans in the pre-cambrian.   Like all good scientific theories, evolution is falsifiable.  But to this day, NOT a single evidence has shown evolution to have been falsified.

Pastor AIO:
When you say science what do you mean? How old is this science you talk about? Thousands of years, or just a couple of centuries. I'm asking because there have been numerous scientific traditions and when you say paradigm shifts are rare and far between I'm confused. Once there's been a paradigm shift can we say it is the same tradition. Can we say that The Germ theory of disease belongs to the same tradition as the theories of Galen? If the tradition you are talking about is only 200 years old can we say that there has been enough time for a major paradigmatic shift.


I'm glad to see that you ask questions like that. What do you think of the image here?

http://delicategeniusblog.com/?p=552

What direction do you see it spinning and can you get it to spin the other way? Make this little experiment with yourself and then we'll talk more about it.

On a general level, science is a quest to knowledge about nature or reality. On this definition, humans have been practising science since time immemorial. However, there was a paradigm shift itself in the search for reliable accurate knowledge about 400 years ago. This gave birth to what is generally called The Modern Scientific Method. Two of the main aspects of the modern scientific methods are:

1) The development and testing of a hypothesis
2) The development of an explanatory mechanism that explains the observed data

Of course, there are other aspects to modern science, but these are key to the way science is practiced today. Science at the time of Aristotle lacked these features.

Einsteinian mechanics was a shift of the paradigm from the Newtonian view, although it did not invalidate it, but simply modified it.

I first was the dancer going anticlockwise, then clockwise. I wonder what that means.

Pastor AIO:
Yes, but the advantage that many scientists have is that Science is not often that political. Religionists too have their views peer reviewed. What else is all those Church Councils about? However the consequences of a shift in religious doctrine has grievous political repercussions for those who hold the former doctrine. Check out nestorius here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nestorius

Smear science with a little bit of politics though . . . , for instance making the mind boggling leap (which we all do) from science to ideology, eg Big Bang theory to Atheism, or Evolution Theory to Eugenics or Racial ideologies as is found in Nazism . . . and you'll find the same resistance to evidence.
Also if your job is based on a certain scientific theory and that theory is about to be disproved that will give you impetus to resist the challenge. That too is political.

If there was to be a new discovery that would require a large enough number of scientists to go back to school, I dare say that you find the scientific institution as a whole become dogmatic.

The council of Nicea comes to mind. This was the first council of the church, which basically split and already divided church. Am sure you are aware of the Arian affair and the controversy about the nature of Jesus. Basically, at Nicea, it was decided by a show of hands whether Jesus was fully God or not and the christian church lives with that decision today.

Wholesale paradigm shifts in science are rare and far between. Why is this so? Because the scientific institution meticulously and painstakingly checks and rechecks its work before anything is held out as an accepted "scientific fact". Look at most of the major scientific theories of the last 200 years - few, if any have undergone drastic revisions. That is not to say that they may not be changed, but the chances of major change are pretty small.

In fact, I have started to study such idea in more details in the areas of philosophy called metaphysics (ontology) and philosophy of science and I remember many years ago (about 20 years in fact) when I started having questions about the nature of reality. One of the questions that haunted be was;


Is it possible that there could be some other reality, distinct from our present reality, but available to us, that has not been captured by our current epistemologies?


Or simply put - Is it conceivable that water is NOT H2O?

Basically, science should be used to inform our philosophies if you agree that the scientific method is the ONLY way of determining objective truths about reality. This is my position and am aware that many people take objection to this position. Well, for such people, the onus lies on them to show what others means there may be for determining objectives truths. To my knowledge this has never been done.

naijacutee:
I agree with you, huxley - That seeing that the Romans were involved, a charge of blasphemy couldn't have been the isolated reason for Jesus' crucifixion. However, there is enough evidence to suggest that blasphemy on Jesus' part was the brewing point of all the problems he had with the law, which eventually led to his arrest and crucifixion. His crucifixion which was one of the major reasons why he came in the first place.

Re: The prophets. Again, I am not an expert, but around Jesus time it seemed to me that not many prophets were in the business of fulfilling prophesies. Israel was notorious for its tradition of killing prophets, and the last of the "prophesying prophets" had been exterminated 400 years before the birth of Jesus. I think the figures of authority were now Rabbis, Pharisees and Saducees. Post/during the time of Jesus, two "prophetic" characters that stood out in my opinion were John the Baptist and Barrabas (who was after Jesus' time). John the Baptist had his own prophecies to fulfill, and they did not include being the "lamb of God who came to take away the sins of the world". He was just a " voice in the wilderness". The second Barrabas, was the socerer who practiced magic during the time of Paul. He performed signs and wonders, and had a large congregation. However, he wasn't claiming to fulfill any prophesies. He was, if you like, a Derren Brown of his day, who was making a living out of doing cool tricks.

So this is what differentiated Jesus from any other who may have claimed to be "him". He has a message, fulfilled prophesy, and performed miracles to demonstrate his supernatural qualities.

If I was one of Jesus' disciples at the time. . . . Hopefully, faithfulness and loyalty would have been as much of an expected human quality as it is today. I would hope that I would stand him, and wish for his exoneration. However, his crucifixion was a big part of Jesus' mission here on earth - and he made this clear to his disciples at the last supper. They all knew that he had anticipated, and even accepted his fate. Therefore, doing anything other than nothing would have only been a wrench in his plans.   


Also, forgive me if I'm wrong but back there, you mentioned something about Jews having no history/evidence of prisoner exchange. But we don't have to look very far to see that prisoner exchange is something that has been prevalent in the Middle East, even in recent times. Did you hear just last year, of the exchange between Hezbollah and Israel, where 2 dead Israeli soldiers were exchanged for the release of 5 Hezbollah soldiers (One of whom was a murderer). See : http://www.rightsidenews.com/200807211497/global-terrorism/the-eldad-regev-and-ehud-goldwasser-exchange.html

Hello. Very nice and constructive post, but a few caveates.

Although by the time of Jesus, it was universally acdepted that the tradition of the great prophets was over, it was believed that some people still had the powers of the prophets of old. These prophets play a minor role in the religions - in facts there were marginal to mainstream judaism. Such was John the Baptist. This is discussed extensive by the historian Josephus in Prophetic Figures In Late Second Temple Jewish Palestine, Evidence From Josephus .

On the prisoner exchange, which is better described as prisoner clemency, there is no evidence that this was a custom or routine practice in antiquity. The gospel writers made this up to promote and agenda, namely, that the dead of Jesus was specifically called for by the Jews, thus demonising the entire Jewish people for hundreds of years.

Bastage:
Good post.

But,
Whilst I agree that scientists can be dogmatic, in general, they are no way as closed-minded as the extremists who inhabit religion. The nature of science is that is open-ended and dogma is seen by the vast majority as it's worst enemy.

I agree. Dogmatism is a human quality, just like selfishness, bravery and cruelty. And like all (most) human qualities, dogmatism can be learned and unlearned. The difference is that some cultural institutions deliberately promote and cultivate dogmatism.

Individual scientist may be dogmatic but I doubt the scientific institution as a whole is dogmatic. Scientists may have strong opinion about their ideas/views/hypothesis but I am sure they will all be willing to move their position should their position be contradicted by the evidence. In fact, it is important that scientist strongly fight for their ideas, otherwise who else would fight for them.

A case is point is Wagener who proposed plate tectonic. He was opposed by every geologist at the time. There was a measure of bulldoggedness on both sides, until he was able to provide the evidence to support his hypothesis.