I Corinthians 15:1-11

[bandit4god]

This is also rather the pot calling the kettle black, as you did exactly the same thing in your posts on 'a less selfish Pascal's wager', lifting things from this website without mentioning that your posts were directly cut and pasted from the site;

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/pascal-wager/

I went beyond just providing a link, instead resolving the link into the "Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy" in the below:

From the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy:

In any decision problem, the way the world is, and what an agent does, together determine an outcome for the agent. We may assign utilities to such outcomes, numbers that represent the degree to which the agent values them. It is typical to present these numbers in a decision matrix, with the columns corresponding to the various relevant states of the world, and the rows corresponding to the various possible actions that the agent can perform.

In decisions under uncertainty, nothing more is given — in particular, the agent does not assign subjective probabilities to the states of the world. Still, sometimes rationality dictates a unique decision nonetheless. Consider, for example, a case that will be particularly relevant here. Suppose that you have two possible actions, A1 and A2, and the worst outcome associated with A1 is at least as good as the best outcome associated with A2; suppose also that in at least one state of the world, A1's outcome is strictly better than A2's. Let us say in that case that A1 superdominates A2. Then rationality surely requires you to perform A1.

In decisions under risk, the agent assigns subjective probabilities to the various states of the world. Assume that the states of the world are independent of what the agent does. A figure of merit called the expected utility, or the expectation of a given action can be calculated by a simple formula: for each state, multiply the utility that the action produces in that state by the state's probability; then, add these numbers. According to decision theory, rationality requires you to perform the action of maximum expected utility (if there is one).

[bandit4god]

Please provide a specific example, quoting the post, highlight the section in the post that you feel has been copied from from another site and provide a link to the site.

Thanks

Sure thing.

Here's a paragraph from Gawen's post...

Of course, Walker goes on; continuing canon polemics of those who standardized and censored the texts in the first place, right in step with most other apologists. And these apologists seem to think designating a passage as a redaction or interpolation can only be a grudging last resort and an admission of the inability to account for it in any other way. In other words, any solution is preferable to admitting the text in question is an interpolation or redaction.

...and here's the paragraph from the article:

Wisse seems to think it unremarkable that all textual evidence before the third century has mysteriously vanished. But according to Walker, the absence of the crucial textual evidence is no mystery at all. It was a silence created expressly to speak eloquently the apologetics of Wisse and his brethren. Today's apologists for the new textus receptus are simply continuing the canon polemics of those who standardized/censored the texts in the first place. But, as Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza says in a different context, we must learn to read the silences and hear the echoes of the silenced voices.6 And that is what Walker and previous interpolation theorists have learned to do. The only evidence remaining as to a possible earlier state of the text is internal evidence, namely aporias, contradictions, stylistic irregularities, anachronisms, redactional seams. And this is precisely the kind of thing our apologists scorn. As we might expect from an apologetical agenda, the tactic of harmonization of "apparent contradictions" is crucial to their enterprise. Consensus scholarship is no less enamored of the tool than the fundamentalist harmonists of whom their "maximal conservatism" is so reminiscent.7 Wisse is forthright: the judicious exegete must make sense of the extant text at all costs. "Designating a passage in a text as a redactional interpolation can be at best only a last resort and an admission of one's inability to account for the data in any other way" (Wisse, 170). In other words, any clever connect-the-dots solution is preferable to admitting that the text in question is an interpolation. If "saving the appearances" is the criterion for a good theory, then we will not be long in joining Harold Lindsell in ascribing six denials to Peter.8

Article found here:  http://www.depts.drew.edu/jhc/rp1cor15.html

And I was wrong, it's the SECOND Google search result for "corinthians interpolation"...

[Davin]

This is also rather the pot calling the kettle black, as you did exactly the same thing in your posts on 'a less selfish Pascal's wager', lifting things from this website without mentioning that your posts were directly cut and pasted from the site;

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/pascal-wager/

I went beyond just providing a link, instead resolving the link into the "Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy" in the below:

I'm pretty sure that's not what Too Few Lions was talking about, try this though where you didn't cite the source:

So Pascal's wager is pretty much 'you might as well believe in god because if he exists then your going to heaven for believing' right?

Pascal's wager says something quite different.


1.  Either God exists or God does not exist, and you can either wager for God or wager against God. The utilities of the relevant possible outcomes are as follows, where f1, f2, and f3 are numbers whose values are not specified beyond the requirement that they be finite:

                           God exists   God does not exist
Wager for God                 ?            f1
Wager against God         f2            f3

2.  Rationality requires the probability that you assign to God existing to be positive, and not infinitesimal.
3.  Rationality requires you to perform the act of maximum expected utility (when there is one).
4.  Conclusion 1. Rationality requires you to wager for God.
5.  Conclusion 2. You should wager for God.

What "wagering for God" means has been a subject of considerable debate for a few centuries, and Pascal addresses it directly by saying, in effect, "this is too important to scoff at, so I'd suggest you give your all to diligently figure it out."

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/pascal-wager/

Either God exists or God does not exist, and you can either wager for God or wager against God. The utilities of the relevant possible outcomes are as follows, where f1, f2, and f3 are numbers whose values are not specified beyond the requirement that they be finite:

             God exists    God does not exist
        Wager for God    ?    f1
        Wager against God    f2    f3

    Rationality requires the probability that you assign to God existing to be positive, and not infinitesimal.
    Rationality requires you to perform the act of maximum expected utility (when there is one).
    Conclusion 1. Rationality requires you to wager for God.
    Conclusion 2. You should wager for God.

[bandit4god]

This is also rather the pot calling the kettle black, as you did exactly the same thing in your posts on 'a less selfish Pascal's wager', lifting things from this website without mentioning that your posts were directly cut and pasted from the site;

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/pascal-wager/

I went beyond just providing a link, instead resolving the link into the "Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy" in the below:

I'm pretty sure that's not what Too Few Lions was talking about, try this though where you didn't cite the source:

So Pascal's wager is pretty much 'you might as well believe in god because if he exists then your going to heaven for believing' right?

Pascal's wager says something quite different.


1.  Either God exists or God does not exist, and you can either wager for God or wager against God. The utilities of the relevant possible outcomes are as follows, where f1, f2, and f3 are numbers whose values are not specified beyond the requirement that they be finite:

                           God exists   God does not exist
Wager for God                 ?            f1
Wager against God         f2            f3

2.  Rationality requires the probability that you assign to God existing to be positive, and not infinitesimal.
3.  Rationality requires you to perform the act of maximum expected utility (when there is one).
4.  Conclusion 1. Rationality requires you to wager for God.
5.  Conclusion 2. You should wager for God.

What "wagering for God" means has been a subject of considerable debate for a few centuries, and Pascal addresses it directly by saying, in effect, "this is too important to scoff at, so I'd suggest you give your all to diligently figure it out."

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/pascal-wager/

Either God exists or God does not exist, and you can either wager for God or wager against God. The utilities of the relevant possible outcomes are as follows, where f1, f2, and f3 are numbers whose values are not specified beyond the requirement that they be finite:

             God exists    God does not exist
        Wager for God    ?    f1
        Wager against God    f2    f3

    Rationality requires the probability that you assign to God existing to be positive, and not infinitesimal.
    Rationality requires you to perform the act of maximum expected utility (when there is one).
    Conclusion 1. Rationality requires you to wager for God.
    Conclusion 2. You should wager for God.

Wikipedia has it in roughly this construction as well... but I'm curious, where in the above did I say it was "bandit4god's wager"?

You guys are too much....

[Davin]

Wikipedia has it in roughly this construction as well... but I'm curious, where in the above did I say it was "bandit4god's wager"?

You guys are too much....

The same place you didn't cite your source.

[bandit4god]

Wikipedia has it in roughly this construction as well... but I'm curious, where in the above did I say it was "bandit4god's wager"?

You guys are too much....

The same place you didn't cite your source.

Thanks for the feedback, Davin.  Hopefully you and others can discern the difference between posting 8 lines that represent the structured form of a well-known, established philosophical construct found in many sources (Pascal's Wager) and posting 4+ mega-posts of someone else's unique analytical work.  The former is a matter of expediency (evidenced by my quickness to cite the source when we left the well-trodden ground of Pascal's Wager into Stanford's explanation of decision theory) while the latter is tantamount to out-and-out theft.

[Ecurb Noselrub]

Bruce, the red herring is not my doing. It's not even a red herring. I am not responsible for what apologists think, I am just letting you know. What difference does it make? That everyone cannot seem to come to terms with it? That those scholars and apologists that do not agree with your interpretation of it seem to find a difference.

Did Paul ever visit Corinth? Did he do the things he said he did? On available yet spurious evidence it does not seem likely. Paul's supposed conversions in the Greek city are too quick and much too spectacular. He receives an encouraging visitation from Jesus, assuring Paul that He already had "many people in this city" (Acts 18.9-10). Who on earth converted them?

Paul's converts fall away just as rapidly as they are made, despite his unspecified "mighty deeds" and divine support. Paul, the "wise masterbuilder" seems to have only limited success in Corinth. If we are to believe him, he had a surprisingly strained relationship with "his" church there. The epistles make clear that opponents and rivals had a following even within the miniscule Christian community and apparently, the "whole church" of Corinth could meet in the house of Gaius (Romans 16.23), which far from suggests "many" believers.

Something is not quite right here and the existence of the Corinthian epistles, amounting to more than one-third of the Pauline corpus alludes to another and perhaps more sinister origin and purpose.
What/who is Paul?                                                                                                              Tireless founder of churches                                                                                   
Evangelist extraordinaire                                                                                                   
The first and most influential theologian of the Church

The seeds of predestination, original sin, the trinity and salvation and judgment theology are all found in his letters. How extraordinary that orthodoxy was defined so comprehensively at such an early date and battled triumphantly with hundreds of heretics all the way to the middle of the 4th Century. All that Paul says is orthodox – a remarkable achievement considering how many heretics two and a half centuries produced. Indeed, for the next couple centuries nearly every writer who wrote under the banner of Christianity, to a greater or lesser extent, strayed into heresy.

But not Paul. He provides the "proof text" of the resurrection, defines the sacrament of the Eucharist and determines the rules for Christian conduct. He remains a hero to the Orthodox, Catholic, Evangelical and liberal churches.

How does the saying go: If it's too good to be true...

To recap (and add a bit more), the most celebrated of the Corinthian letters is 1 Corinthians 15: 3-8. It claims a remarkably early date by Christian apologists and is used as evidence of the Resurrection. The so-called creed is a ubiquitous aide memoire of the first Christians lest they forgot precisely who saw the risen Christ!
Still, this "creed", is only found in this letter.                                                                   
Not one of the four gospels agrees with the list or the sequence of resurrection appearances.                                                                                                                   
Mark and John credit the first witness to Mary Magdalene yet 1 Corinthians has no women witnesses);                                                                                                                       
Luke credits "Cleopas and another" on the road to Emmaus;                                   
Matthew cites the "two Marys".                                                                                       
The gospels say nothing of any appearance to James,                                                         
to the "500" or,                                                                                                                     
to Paul, and,                                                                                                                       
the Gospels refer to eleven disciples, Judas being dead and Matthias not yet elected.

1 Cor. 15 gives Cephas/Peter/Simon primacy as witness to the resurrection even though Paul had "opposed him to his face" (Galatians 2.11) and was aggravated by a Cephas faction. Paul stresses several times the independence of his gospel from any man, yet appeals to a third-hand list of other witnesses.
The primary placement of Cephas/Peter alludes to a less than perfect 2nd century early Catholic harmonization of diverse apparition/appearance stories, with the Prince of the Apostles (second from the chief Apostle) who sinned the most and moved to top of the totem pole.

Late editing explains the awkward wording of Luke 24:34, where the 450-word story "on the road to Emmaus" is oddly eclipsed at its climax (the two witnesses have rushed back to Jerusalem but their own "good news" is upstaged by "The Lord has appeared to Simon,") without a word of explanation.

1 Corinthians 15 is late, fake and casts a very dark shadow over the authenticity of the Corinthian letters. They are quite plausibly composites of documents melded together by and for didactic and proselytizing purposes. Who gains from the lie?

The more you explain your position, the more it sounds like a conspiracy theory.  If there was a catholic harmonizer redacting Paul's works, he did a piss-poor job.  If he was trying to reconcile with the gospels, he would have included the appearances to the women.  It's much simpler just to conclude that Paul's account is the earliest we have, that it lists the witnesses known to Paul from his encounters with the Jerusalem apostles, and that he includes information from his own personal knowledge and experience, such as his own encounter with the resurrected Jesus. 

At this point, we have both set forth our interpretations of the passage.  Thank you for taking the lead on that and stating your case.  It's all out there for anyone who is interested.  It seems to me that we've fully covered this subject.  I enjoyed the exchange.

[Davin]

Wikipedia has it in roughly this construction as well... but I'm curious, where in the above did I say it was "bandit4god's wager"?

You guys are too much....

The same place you didn't cite your source.

Thanks for the feedback, Davin.  Hopefully you and others can discern the difference between posting 8 lines that represent the structured form of a well-known, established philosophical construct found in many sources (Pascal's Wager) and posting 4+ mega-posts of someone else's unique analytical work.  The former is a matter of expediency (evidenced by my quickness to cite the source when we left the well-trodden ground of Pascal's Wager into Stanford's explanation of decision theory) while the latter is tantamount to out-and-out theft.

I'm not talking about a difference or some kind of childish coomparison between what you did and what someone else did, I'm just pointing out what you did. I haven't read Gawen's posts because I just can't be bothered to read that much about something that doesn't matter, however I did read your posts and noted that you did not cite your source. An honest person would simply say something like, "Yes, I did not cite the source for my post." Isntead of being honest about such a small thing, you compare what you did to what someone else did, I can see the Christian "morals" shining through your actions. Thank you for this example.

[Too Few Lions]

I'm pretty sure that's not what Too Few Lions was talking about, try this though where you didn't cite the source:

So Pascal's wager is pretty much 'you might as well believe in god because if he exists then your going to heaven for believing' right?

Pascal's wager says something quite different.


1.  Either God exists or God does not exist, and you can either wager for God or wager against God. The utilities of the relevant possible outcomes are as follows, where f1, f2, and f3 are numbers whose values are not specified beyond the requirement that they be finite:

                           God exists   God does not exist
Wager for God                 ?            f1
Wager against God         f2            f3

2.  Rationality requires the probability that you assign to God existing to be positive, and not infinitesimal.
3.  Rationality requires you to perform the act of maximum expected utility (when there is one).
4.  Conclusion 1. Rationality requires you to wager for God.
5.  Conclusion 2. You should wager for God.

What "wagering for God" means has been a subject of considerable debate for a few centuries, and Pascal addresses it directly by saying, in effect, "this is too important to scoff at, so I'd suggest you give your all to diligently figure it out."

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/pascal-wager/

Either God exists or God does not exist, and you can either wager for God or wager against God. The utilities of the relevant possible outcomes are as follows, where f1, f2, and f3 are numbers whose values are not specified beyond the requirement that they be finite:

            God exists    God does not exist
       Wager for God    ?    f1
       Wager against God    f2    f3

   Rationality requires the probability that you assign to God existing to be positive, and not infinitesimal.
   Rationality requires you to perform the act of maximum expected utility (when there is one).
   Conclusion 1. Rationality requires you to wager for God.
   Conclusion 2. You should wager for God.

spot on Davin, that was exactly the post I was referring to. b4g, my point is that it's a little hypocritical to complain about someone else cutting and pasting from another website without giving the original source when you've done exactly the same thing a few days earler

[OldGit]

I don't know what the fuss is about; after all, the writers of the New Testament cut and pasted whole slabs out of the old one.