We met at Joe and David’s farm for a Potluck dinner on Saturday May 22 at 3pm.

~Update: We had a big crowd for Loring’s talk about christianity. He talked about his story, the history of christianity, and answered a bunch of questions. It was great! The food was also awesome, and of course the socializing was wonderful too.

Here are my notes that I took from Loring’s talk:

• The view of fundamentalism is “verbal plenary inerrancy”
• fundamentalists are separatists, they can’t associate with people who don’t think like they do. Evangelicals are theologically the same and often share a lot in common, but they are willing to deal with the wider church, to work with people who might think differently (if I recall, in hopes of converting them at some point)
• Why should atheists know the bible? Because if we are going to argue with christians, we can’t afford to make a mistake about christianity.
• The old testament was written by around 160-150 BCE. It started to come into shape in the first century CE.
• A great author is Bart Ehrman
  • Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why
  • Jesus, Interrupted: Revealing the Hidden Contradictions in the Bible (And Why We Don’t Know About Them)
  • God’s Problem: How the Bible Fails to Answer Our Most Important Question–Why We Suffer
  • A 24 part course on DVD on the Historical Jesus.
• Crucifixion was a penalty reserved for people undermining the Roman state. It was a political statement: do not oppose the Roman empire. It wasn’t for thieves like Barabbas. (To note an error in the Gospels)
• Christians modified the order of the old testament. The Jews have it in a different order.
• The Apocrypha: predates christianity. The Palestinians said it wasn’t scripture. The Egyptians said it was. Protestants reject it, Catholics accept it.
• The new testament took shape around the 300′s CE. Constantine had his conversion in 312.
• The Council of Nicaea was 325 CE. It asked the question, who was Jesus?
• Orthodoxy: a description of who won politically to decide what is orthodoxy and what is the “truth” and who ended up being heretics.
• Think of fundamentalism as a cone, with Jesus and his disciples at the point at the bottom. Over time things change and it gets farther from Jesus, things change. Fundamentalists are trying to get back to the base where it was pure, how it was with Jesus.
• Whereas regular christianity is more like an hourglass. At the base it starts with Jesus and grows. Then in the 300′s CE, there is a narrowing of doctrine and the orthodoxy is set. Then it branches back out again like the top of the hourglass. Now we have all kinds of christianity.
• Anabaptists are sects that baptize adults instead of babies. They baptize believers.
• Victor Stenger is another great author to consider
• Why I Became an Atheist: A Former Preacher Rejects Christianity by John Loftus is another great book, according to Loring. It has great documentation and is rational, theological and philosophical.
• Loring talked about the different versions of the bible. He uses the New American Standard Bible.
• Epistemology: how you know what you know
• The gospels: A book called Synopsis of the Four Gospels compares the gospels in chart form with original text as well.
  • Mark is the oldest – about 70 CE
  • Matthew appears to be from Mark, Q and M and was written in the 80′s CE
  • Luke was also written in the 80′s CE and appears to be written from Mark, Q and L
  • John is the newest, from about 95 CE and is very different than the other three.
• Paul Kurtz is another great author. He wrote, among many other books, Science and Ethics: Can Science Help Us Make Wise Moral Judgments?.

~ Read the rest of this entry »