The Father Bob Show #64 – “Knee Mail!”
Today Bob and I are joined by Cameron Reilly for handover, as I take a break for the next few weeks and Cam takes the helm. We discuss the new wiki, which you can be part of if you email me at michaela_w at hotmail dot com. Will Australians be voting by SMS in a federal election in 10 years time? We have the listener question of the week from Eddie from Texas. Bob reviews “The Blood Diamond” and watching DVDs on a portable player. Cam updates us on his progress with SMS donations and we reflect on Paris Hilton! Would you be interested in a listener call in show? Donate to the Fr. Bob Maguire Foundation at www.fatherbob.com.au, and subscribe to the RSS feed for Bob’s own blog. Subscribe to the blog for this podcast on this website.
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June 16th, 2007 at 12:04 am
[...] For those of you who can’t get enough of me (which isn’t many of you), I’m on this week’s edition of The Father Bob Show. I’ll be taking over co-hosting the show again for a few weeks while Michaela takes a holiday. Someone want to start a book running on how long it will be before Bob and I get into a screaming argument over the evils of religion? [...]
June 16th, 2007 at 12:38 pm
cameron, there’ll be no such thing! Your lot has no argument!BobMaguire.
June 20th, 2007 at 1:04 pm
Hey Cam, Thanks for the shout out. Looking forward to reading your book or booklet. My only advice is you might want to personalise things a bit to avoid getting people’s backs up (if you wanted to avoid that) so instead of saying “10 things that Xns have no answers for” you could say “10 things that Xns have yet to give me an answer for”. To me this avoids the fundamentalism that can often come from both sides were people come across as (even if not their intention) unwilling to change there own minds and just wanting to show the other side up as foolish. Personally I think foolish arguments will and points of view will come to the surface anyway. Oh and I’ll guess 25mins as the time it takes to start talking about the evils of religion ;)
June 20th, 2007 at 3:45 pm
chris, cameron will listen to you so keep advising him on the etiquette of intelligent discussion.Walt Whitman advises never to argue about religion.Discussions, these latter days, seem to easily drift into arguments or, at best, “taking the piss”.BobMaguire.
June 20th, 2007 at 9:12 pm
Chris, good advice. Might make you my editor? Someone tell Bob Walt Whitman died 115 years ago. The times they are a’changing. We paved over Walt’s Leaves of Grass 100 years ago. Dawkins, Hitchens, Harris all have intelligent questions about religion. I’m merely parroting their intelligence. Was listening to a podcast today about “The Jesus Project” –
http://www.pointofinquiry.org/?p=114
Would be interested in your respective thoughts.
June 21st, 2007 at 7:52 am
some listen to podcasts about the Jesus project.excellent.others do the Jesus project.Hitchens, Harris and Dawkins confuse the Jesus project with the Church project.The whole thing’s a Russian doll…has to be persevered with.Keep at it.It’ll take Eternity. BobMaguire.
June 21st, 2007 at 2:37 pm
Hey Cameron,
I think you could be chasing a red herring as far as trying to prove that Jesus didn’t exist. Although I know Dawkins quotes a few scholars in the God Delusion as far as I’m aware most scholars will still argue that Jesus exists, so at best you might be able to say the scholars are divided.
In my humble opinion, whether Jesus was just some itinerant Jew with a small group of followers who once caused some trouble in the temple and got executed or whether he was something more than that would possibly be a more fruitful area to explore. Having said that Jesus non-existence would certainly be a knockout blow for all but a few Xns. I will download and listen.
By the way I’m still thinking about the “what would it take for you to become an atheist question?†Since I’m not a theologian, don’t get involved in Xns vs atheist debates and don’t want to parrot the ideas of others, but give a genuine personal reply. I’d like to explain why I believe what I believe, how this might differ from what some might expect from a Chrtistian (including why I think it’s important to defend an atheist being attacked on a Christian blog :) ) and then what it would take for me to become an atheist. I’ll post it all on my blog and then let you know when it’s there.
Chris
June 21st, 2007 at 8:11 pm
Chris and bob
The Jesus Project is a scholarly attempt to determine a) what evidence if any there is to suggest he actually existed and b) if he did, what he actually might have done and said.
The Jesus Seminar, which ran from 1985 until recently, focused on what he said. According to the podcast I mentioned above, only something like 18% of the words attributed to him in the NT are likely to have actually been original and not just parroted from either the OT or other sources.
And that 18% is pretty superficial, run-of-the-mill rabbi statements.
Interestingly, whether or not Jesus actually existed probably shouldn’t mean a lot to Xns. I suspect Bob doesn’t care either way. And many other Xns are happy to ignore any evidence which runs contrary to their faith, so why should this be any different? After all, history is replete with religions whose founders never existed and their followers didn’t give a damn.
Mythologies were rarely intended (in ancient times) to be taken as literal. That’s something the Jewish tribes invented. Other peoples were happy to take the foundational myths as just that.
Personally, I think truth is worth pursuing.
June 21st, 2007 at 9:20 pm
more info:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesus%20Seminar
June 21st, 2007 at 9:41 pm
Hey Cam,
Just for your info here are the categories for the sayings of Jesus from the Jesus Seminar (18% according to the podcast was voted red)
red: Jesus undoubtedly said this or something very like it.
pink: Jesus probably said something like this.
gray: Jesus did not say this, but the ideas contained in it are close to his own.
black: Jesus did not say this; it represents the perspective or content of a later or different tradition.
The Seminar did not insist on uniform standards for balloting. The ranking of items was determined by weighted vote. Since most Fellows of the Seminar are professors, they are accustomed to grade points and grade-point averages. So they decided on the following scheme:
red = 3
pink = 2
gray = 1
black = 0
The points on each ballot were added up and divided by the number of votes in order to determine the weighted average. We then converted the scale to percentages—to yield a scale of 1.00 rather than a scale of 3.00. The result was a scale divided into four quadrants:
red: .7501 and up
pink: .5001 to .7500
gray: .2501 to .5000
black: .0000 to .2500
I’m still not sure if agree with the assesrtion in the podcast that wether Jesus existed or not would matter to most Xns – particularly those of the fundamentalist or evangelical persuasion. In some ways creationsim is an example of this. Creationists insistant on trying to scientifically justify the creation of the world in 6 days. Even though their arguments are scientifically laughable they still persue that line and I think many Xns and the certainly the overwhelming majority of North American Xns would do the similar about the the existance of a historical Jesus. Also, I’m pretty sure that someone like John Dickson (who you interviewed) would say that Jesus being a historical figure would be essential to his faith.
And just to clarify, when I said “I think you could be chasing a red herring as far as trying to prove that Jesus didn’t exist.” I meant a red herring in terms of debating with Xns about it. Things might be different in five and half years depending on the Jesus project finding though.
Hope this helps.
Chris
June 21st, 2007 at 9:46 pm
woops! Just missed Cam’s last post with the wikipedia link which makes half of my post a little superfluous. Sorry
June 24th, 2007 at 12:08 pm
Cameron & Chris,
please see this link for an essay from last Saturday’s Age.
Written by Robin Marantz Henig and originally published in the New York Times, it argues that all sentient beings bilogically programmed to search for meaning.
Let this be a meaningful God or as in Cameron’s case a meaningful belief in no God, as the article concludes:
“No matter how much science can explain, it seems, the real gap that God fills is an emptiness that our big-brained mental architecture interprets as a yearning for the supernatural. The drive to satisfy that yearning, according to both adaptationists and byproduct theorists, might be inevitable and eternal part of what Atran calls the tragedy of human cognition.”
And as another great philosopher once sang:
“Always look on the bright side of life… ta ta tatattatta…”
Link:
http://www.theage.com.au/news/general/god-only-knows/2007/06/21/1182019281595.html
June 24th, 2007 at 2:48 pm
Andrew
I’m sure that’s probably correct. In his book “The God Delusion”, Richard Dawkins suggests a number of reasons why evolutionary biology may favour humans who are highly suggestible and who are prepared to believe anything they are told by an elder, no matter how preposterous.
However, I belong to the camp that says that false hope and believing in nonsense is destructive, damaging and demeaning. Give me truth or give me nothing.
June 24th, 2007 at 3:24 pm
I read that article yesterday, but felt it didn’t make its argument. It was interesting though.
My “emptiness” is filled with friends, family, and things like helping Bob out. I gave up believing in guardian angels and the supernatural around the same time as I gave up believing in the boogy man in my closet.
June 24th, 2007 at 3:32 pm
Chris, the summary from the wikipedia link I sent sums the results of the JS as:
The Seminar concluded that of the various statements in the “five gospels” attributed to Jesus, only about 18% of them were likely uttered by Jesus himself (red or pink). The Gospel of John fared worse than the synoptic gospels, with nearly all its passages attributed to Jesus being judged inauthentic.
June 28th, 2007 at 5:04 pm
I’ve just listened to the podcast and I just want to comment on how rude Cameron is. Cameron you stereotype and homogenise the Christian world! I too dislike the Christian Right but I don’t lump them in with the likes of Martin Luther King or Archbishop Oscar Amulfo Romero.
It’s the equivalent of me reminding you of the work of Josef Mengele and claiming he represents medical reserach in the C20th.
On the topic of science, I’d be interested to know if you’ve studied anything in the field of History and Philosopy of Science. May I recommend “Darwinism” a 1st year unit at Uni of Melb. I think you over state science’s objectivity, in a similar way to someone from the 50′s. Science has fallen off it’s pedastool since then.
You have set up quite a duality. “Science” is “Good”, “Rational”, “Benevolent” and “Now” whereas “Religion” is “Bad”, “Irrational”, “Destructive”, and “Stone Age”. With you one the side of the “good” fighting tirelessly against the other side. I think it’s more reasonable to see both good and evil in science and religion.
For the record, I’m not a Christian. I listen to this podcast because I love Father Bob. It really upsets me to hear someone being so rude to him. It makes me feel sick and I want to turn the podcast off. If you really want to argue against religions, perhaps you could do it with out insulting the intelligence of Christians and other religious people. You seem like a nice man Cameron so I wonder if you realise the offence you are causing.
That’s enough for this post except to say thank you for all the great work you do.
Kim.
June 28th, 2007 at 7:03 pm
Kim, please explain what I said or did that was rude. I certainly don’t intend to be rude or cause offense, I’m just speaking my honest opinion. If people take offense to that, then I’m sorry, but if I said something particularly wrong or rude then I am happy to be picked up on it. What made you sick in particular?
I don’t believe your analogy with Mengele is solid. All Christians can be grouped together because they have the same belief system. That’s why they are called ‘Christians’ and not something else. So I don’t see what you are objecting to. All Christians (unless I am mistaken) believe that an Arab Jewish Rabbi once lived who had supernatural powers, performed some magic tricks, spoke to a group of followers and didn’t die but
instead still exists 2000 years later as some kind of ethereal ghost with supernatural powers. Even the Latter Day Saints believe that much and they are on the fringe.
Regardless of what they taught you at University, science is the objective search for answers about how the universe works. It *is* rational, it *is* logical, even if the people practicing it don’t always live up to the standard. Science is a discipline. And therefore it *is* superior to mythology. In the search for truth, evidence beats no evidence. Rational thinking beats mumbo-jumbo. Anything which helps move the human race closer to truth is good. Anything which prevents it from discovering answers, is bad. Religion, by its very nature, instructs its followers to ignore evidence when it conflicts with “faith”. That is bad. There are no two ways about it.
If you disagree, tell me why. If you think I’m rude, tell me why. I’m open to the discussion.
July 20th, 2007 at 3:32 pm
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