You are the one who insists on an explicit question mark for anything to register as a question.
no i specifically asked that any question you MUST have answered be pointed out in some way, since it is a waste of time to answer ad hom questions.
And where did you get the idea that I thought you were criticizing anything? It is hard to imagine you would have trouble understanding the usage you were using yourself, as you have repeatedly used the collection of all concepts of god to call them sketchy. If that is not your point, why do you keep making it?
again with what i didn't say. I specifically said your definition might be different from mine. Your definition fits that. Mine does not, otherwise i could just point out all the different faiths represented in one of the polls you posted and be done with this, having shown "sketchy' should apply. My idea however, is that there can be a hundred disagreeing statements, and one of the statements can be perfectly UNsketchy. I have not moved once from that. If you want to call statements that happen to have opposition "sketchy", that is your right, but don't say i did.
I have already explained that most certain concepts of god have very thorough theological explanations of any supposed internal contradictions.
so what? my definition of sketchy includes those concepts which are self-contradictory, unless they are logically explained, and I have yet to hear a logical explanation of many of the core concepts, such as a good god who creates an evil world. I personally don't think this lack of applicability of pure logic has any negative impact on God or the belief in God, because there is obviously quite a bit of life that cannot be put into words, and i assume the metaphysical world even less completely describable, but I am certainly not willing to just call the "thorough" explanations a logical and functional removal of sketchiness.
You just really cannot help but castrate your own argument, can you? You cannot both argue that church attendance generally increases certainty in a concept of god and that you just so happen to talk to more people in church whose concept is sketchy.
you can't help twisting my words into straw i guess. Do you have a an english to straw conversion program on your computer? I didn't say more people in church have a sketchy concept. The point the actual me made was that, in church, some people have sketchy concepts, and the people who are highly religious, and who go to church very regularly, usually exhibit the most solidly held and detailed definitions of the God they believe in. I can't contradict my own experience, that is what i have gathered over twenty years of discussion with people who have sketchy concepts of God, and not so sketchy ones, along with thousands of other exposures to people's ideas. At least you are saying, "not necessarily" in your answer about whether frequent church-goers have a more thorough and detailed concept of God. Like i said earlier, if you can just answer the question we can move on. I am perfectly willing to say, it is not necessarily true that frequent church-goers have a more thorough and detailed concept, but my experience leads me to believe otherwise. Also your poll, the new one that actually deals with the question, has 8 out of ten questions being answered with a preponderance of people who neither strongly agree nor disagree, or are completely undecided. 80% of the concepts listed show fewer people have a strong feeling, and choose one of the two choices for strong preference, than one of the middle three choices. Please explain how you interpret that to show there is a preponderance of people who have a strong concept.
You should notice that most of the highest percentages are in the "Strongly agree" or "Strongly disagree" columns. This would indicate a strong certainty in quite a few of the details of a concept of god. There is another poll on that site that is much more detailed with ALL of the highest percentages in the extreme responses.
80% of the questions are answered with more of the "no strong feeling about" responses.
Do you have anything to support your argument other than the denial you are projecting on me?
your poll. Hey but, all poking and joking aside, i appreciate you finding that poll because that poll is much closer to answering that specific question about strong concepts than anything i could find.
It is not reasonable to assume things contrary to EVERY reference on the subject.
a few of the references on the subject clearly point out that the gnostic label is quite possibly misplaced and misunderstood, and at minimum incomplete. The book that river recommended (i love my city library) has this statement. (regardless of your belief in his legitimacy as a scholar, the point being that even the modern gnostics say things like this) not in his image p.364- "The Nag hammadi codex presents an imbalanced, incomplete, and incoherent record of second- and third-hand versions of Gnostic teachings."
Of course if you would rather have a scholarly scholar there is the whole book "re-thinking gnosticism" by R.G. williams. this book is basically a pulling apart and un-labeling of gnosticism which is of the utmost scholarship, and unless you can take into account all of the various traditions that have been labeled as Gnosticism, you really can't say i am contrary to EVERY reference on the subject. Like i said before, Iranaeus was highly biased and really should only be used for his transcriptions of gnostic texts if we are going to fair to the gnostics, and then you also referenced the wiki, so I would hardly say i have ignored every reference on the subject. just to be clear, let me summarize where i am at at this point with Gnosticism and you can see if you actually disagree with any of this
1 - creator god bad or defective
2 - instructions not salvific except for possible aberrations from the mainstream. (many christians believe the same BTW)
3 - labeling of gnostic ideologies not thorough or necessarily accurate
4 - some instructions were given on how to act.
5 - ultimate freedom from right and wrong may have been the goal, but that was the ultimate experience of those who achieved gnosis, not the general believer (similar to zen)
And you have conveniently omitted the context, as given in Leviticus 1:
1 The Lord called to Moses and spoke to him from the tent of meeting. He said, 2 “Speak to the Israelites and say to them: ‘When anyone among you brings an offering to the Lord, bring as your offering an animal from either the herd or the flock.
i didn't conveniently omit anything, as that context has no bearing on what i was saying. I merely pointed out that, in english, should or shall can be dropped at any time from an instruction, which is exactly what the niv translators did.
Anything from the Lord is always considered prescriptive, just as a command from a human to a dog (like you already pointed out), and this is the major difference between the Christian and Gnostic texts, as Gnostics lend no credence to the rules of any demiurge. This is the emphasis or context that makes everything that follows normative. And you really should not be trying to refute a literal "should" or "ought", as you just got done saying your "do" was not literal. Unless you intend to employ a double standard that is.
Or to take a page form your book, I never said prescriptive statements ALWAYS use such words as "should" or "ought".
well you did say they were ALWAYS needing such modifers, OR that "intent" be known. My point is that intent isn't always known or shown in the gnostic texts, so for you to show that the gnostics had no prescriptive points, and therefore, that all believers were left only with solipsitic descriptions of right and wrong and good and bad, contrary to the fact that they have instruction from jesus not to lie, and from valentinus to do a bunch of other stuff, i would like to see more evidence.
Completely unsupported. By guess and by golly seem to be the standard of your reasoning skills.
yep, it is all supported by guess and by golly. haha.
"May not be sure" is no argument to the contrary. Seriously, go read up on gnostic beliefs.
like i said, where i am at with this is that there is an ideology of ultimate freedom from right and wrong once the gnostic has achieved Gnosis, but probably not before. Still waiting for references within which you have seen your point, and like i said at the very beginning of this, i would gladly be willing to be enlightened on the subject by an actual expert, even if through a book written by such an expert.
Now as for you, if i were to put you up to your own standard of distrust and negative labeling, i would say that accepting a reference when convenient and rejecting it when in disagreement is "dishonest". Here is what you said to River regarding his reference when it supposedly supported you - "Thanks River. I did not have the time or inclination to find such a great example myself. " Later you say, "Do you mean John Lamb Lash? I mean a real reference, not someone who has drank the Kool-Aid." I am willing to let that go if you can back up off all this antagonism you try to throw at me, and we can treat each other politely. If you can't do that, I guess I will have to put that in my sig or something. But seriously, I am willing to give it another go at being polite, mainly because the impolite stuff, although fun, takes up too much time.
Btw, most Christians consider Jesus part of the trinity that is god, so commands from him are taken as equally prescriptive as those from god.
well, if most gnostics felt that way, you would be helping my argument by pointing that out. If the gnostics believed that, then there would be no doubt at all that they had a prescriptive statement from jesus telling them not to lie, and that would be case closed, my point made. Fortunately for your argument, the gnostics don't seem to hold the same view of jesus' category of divinity that most christians do. believe me, i would have gone straight there, with the jesus reference, if i could have.
