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    The symbol system thing is interesting to me.

    On the one hand, my experience has been that if you have some familiarity with one, others tend to resonate to a certain degree as long as you aren't Talebanic about your own belief.

    On the other hand, if one believes that one was Hoodwinked by familial traditions, one is more likely to look at anything labelled "spiritual" with a very jaundiced eye.

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      Originally posted by ursus arctos View Post
      Still very much a thing amongst Catholics

      Yeah. Probably moreso in places like Italy and Poland, but I'm not sure.

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        I wish I had some belief. It would be a comfort, of nothing else.

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          That's actually Canadian, but even our local parish always notes the liturgical date prominently in the bulletin

          There's also a major commercial tie-in with florists when it comes to saint's days. Few Continental florists worth their salt will eschew the calendar and notice board reminding punters that today is when they need to buy friends and colleagues named X flowers for their name day.

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            Name days are ace. The few cafflicks in my school were looked on with envy and wonder when the concept came up. One celebrant claimed to be a relative of Sean Connery, and being the second cousin of Jason Connery seems too random and not that impressive to make up.
            Last edited by Lang Spoon; 11-02-2020, 21:11.

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              Originally posted by ursus arctos View Post
              That's actually Canadian, but even our local parish always notes the liturgical date prominently in the bulletin

              There's also a major commercial tie-in with florists when it comes to saint's days. Few Continental florists worth their salt will eschew the calendar and notice board reminding punters that today is when they need to buy friends and colleagues named X flowers for their name day.
              Is this why Dion O'Bannion was able to be a florist without people laughing? It was just part of the Catholic religious complex?

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                Going back to Hot Pepsi's post. 1) one random journal article isn't particularly convincing. The book I read recently is the main source cited on that Wikipedia entry, for contrast. 2) Mithras =/= Mitra from Persia so the ZoriastrIan thing is interesting but not hugely important

                Re Lang Spoon's post, 1) Josephus's comments are disputed, and his comments first appeared in a version presented by Eusebius in the 4th century. Later interpolation? 2) AD70 is a guess for the gospel of Mark and even then we are talking about 40 year gap from the events it claims to represent.

                ​​​​​​​

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                  A 40 year gap isn't much really but. The chances are a tonne of folks would have been alive to call bullshit if you were just pulling everything out of your arse, or whose kids would remember the auld folks talking about that there Jesus. Lots of people lived to their 60s/70s back then even when general life expectancy was bleak.


                  Agreed the Jospehus bit could be a later interpolation. But it remains that Jesus as a real historical figure is almost beyond question. There are very few folks outside the emperors and bigwig senators and the likes for whom we have as much of a historical record.

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                    That's true of one version of Mark. Later versions have him coming back. I can't recall off the top of my head the whole story behind that, but it is instructive that Mark got included in the canon anyway.

                    The genealogy is only in Matthew, IIRC. I read something about that but can't remember it all. I think it was supposed to establish Jesus' bona fides as a Jew and match the audience's expectations that the messiah would be connected to David and Abraham and/or be the culmination of their tradition. It also emphasizes that he a human being.

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                      Yeah as far as I recall there's fuck all in Jewish conceptions of Messiah that would make them a God on Earth (indeed that would surely have been blasphemy prior to contact with Greek thought). Rather the Messiah would have been a Chosen One, a Liberator.

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                        Originally posted by Lang Spoon View Post
                        A 40 year gap isn't much really but. The chances are a tonne of folks would have been alive to call bullshit if you were just pulling everything out of your arse, or whose kids would remember the auld folks talking about that there Jesus. Lots of people lived to their 60s/70s back then even when general life expectancy was bleak.


                        Agreed the Jospehus bit could be a later interpolation. But it remains that Jesus as a real historical figure is almost beyond question. There are very few folks outside the emperors and bigwig senators and the likes for whom we have as much of a historical record.
                        And Paul was doing his thing much closer to the time of Jesus, even without the Gospels. So it wasn't like the stories just appeared in 70.

                        There are also a bunch of apocryphal gospels that some think are more "accurate," somehow. I don't think that's widely accepted among the scholars.

                        There aren't many simple straightforward answers. What draws me to it is that it's the story of a bunch of people who came together to take care of each other under brutal conditions that surely seemed hopeless.

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                          I've paid £500 for several pair of shoes and boots, and been quite happy about it.

                          Sometimes worth it to get exceptionally beautiful, unusual and well-made shoes and to feel good in them.

                          I probably have one or two pairs too many and those are the ones I'm flogging on eBay.

                          So there.

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                            Originally posted by ursus arctos View Post
                            The symbol system thing is interesting to me.

                            On the one hand, my experience has been that if you have some familiarity with one, others tend to resonate to a certain degree as long as you aren't Talebanic about your own belief.

                            On the other hand, if one believes that one was Hoodwinked by familial traditions, one is more likely to look at anything labelled "spiritual" with a very jaundiced eye.
                            Yes, that is true. There are lots of people who leave and never come back.

                            But there are lots of stories of people who felt really burned by their family's religion but eventually came back to a different version of what they grew up with because they miss the good parts - the community, the hopefulness, the service stuff, whatever.

                            People deconstructing what they grew up with and then reconstructing something else using many of the parts they were given is a theme that shows up over and over and over in the scene of writers/podcasters, etc that I'm into.

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                              Originally posted by Lang Spoon View Post
                              I wish I had some belief. It would be a comfort, of nothing else.
                              Love your neighbor and your enemies as best as you can, cultivate and share gratitude, accept that you’re not in control of much and take time for silence and contemplation.

                              Everyone can do that and the world would be infinitely better if they did.

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                                You are a wise man

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                                  Standing on the shoulders of giants and what not.

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                                    HP, Did the early christians believe that jesus was coming back in their lifetime, and did they have to retcon the story of jesus to cover for this unfortunate oversight on his part?

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                                      They expected him to return in their lifetime, but that hasn’t been edited out. There are lots of different ideas about why they thought that and what it means that it didn’t appear to happen as they probably expected.

                                      I’m not too worried about it. I think it just means that nothing lasts. People have often felt like they’re living in the end times because, in different ways, they were.

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                                        Thanks for those cricket posts all. I think it might have been a former poster here, a keen philosopher and cyclist, who put a paper up about how cricketers do what they do, and it was full of lots of interesting details that not even cricketers probably don't know – eg, after the bowler releases the ball, their eyes typically move to where they think it will pitch. They don't really follow the ball through the air, and they don't actually watch the ball onto the bat, as per coaching manuals.

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                                          A lot of even moderately athletic feats are kind of hard to believe. Like catching a ball in flight or running around a football pitch. It's proven extremely difficult to teach machines how to do that. The way our brains can make all those subconscious adjustments and calculations - or maybe that's not even what's happening - is remarkable.

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                                            I was a lower middle order batsman (8 or 9), not much expected but I would fluke the odd 4 or even slog an occasional 6, and usually hang around for an over or two.
                                            However, anything above a gentle medium pace and I was totally guessing where the ball was, it was just too fast for me to see. I guess years of practice (and a bit more bravery than I possess) help, and also specialising as a batsman or bowler, rather than virtually every player doing both as happens at lower levels.

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                                              I read something, I believe it was posted on here somewhere, about how the mind of a tennis player is such that it seems like on a serve the ball slows down. Sort of like in the Matrix when they start shooting and dodging bullets.

                                              This isn't the same article - but I've just looked through this when searching for the one I read before, and it goes into detail about all the little tells that tennis players use when facing a serve - https://www.telegraph.co.uk/tennis/w...eturn-a-serve/

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                                                It's moving stuff from system 2 into system 1 isn't it? Driving a car seems very complicated and hard. You're constantly making micro-adjustments to your line and speed based on what your senses are telling you; you're looking all around; you're operating various ancillary controls ; you're planning your route ; you're observing and interpreting signs and markings. But it all goes into autopilot eventually.

                                                Is hitting a fast moving ball harder than driving? If you played cricket as much as you drove - and, like driving, I mean cricket as 'the real thing', heat of battle, not just practising catches say - how good would you get?

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                                                  Originally posted by The Awesome Berbaslug!!! View Post
                                                  HP, Did the early christians believe that jesus was coming back in their lifetime, and did they have to retcon the story of jesus to cover for this unfortunate oversight on his part?
                                                  I went on a long wander a couple of weeks back through a few dozen of the 'top' questions asked on Reddit's AskHistorians thread, which was fascinating and enlightening as the moderators are shit-hot on deleting anything that isn't an in-depth, knowledgeable, sourced answer from someone with relevant expertise. This very question is one of the ones I looked at, if you're interested TAB:

                                                  "As I understand it, the earliest Christians expected Jesus to return imminently, or at least within their lifetime. How was the Church able to handle it, and even grow exponentially, when this didn't happen? At what point was this no longer the predominant expectation of new converts?"


                                                  There's various other questions I read there that are also along the lines of the discussion up this page, talking about the historical evidence (or lack of) for Jesus. Consensus seems to be that there's a real historical figure at the root of the myths, because aside from the specifics it's simply far too unlikely that the early disciples etc. went to all the trouble of making one up out of wholecloth at a time when – as has already been noted here – such itinerant preachers, prophets and 'miracle'-workers weren't at all an unusual sight in that part of the world.

                                                  The gap of a mere handful of decades between when he's said to have lived and the probable date of the first close sources like Mark's Gospel and Paul's letters is also something that historians don't generally seem to blink at. There are by all accounts an awful lot of figures whose historical existence we would never question, yet who can be attested to only in records from up to several centuries after their time – Hannibal is an example, I think, off the top of my head. As LS says, there can be few figures of such lowly status in life from that era that we have more evidence for having existed.

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                                                    My recollection is that it is not really always clear when the “age to come” is supposed to happen and it appears there were conflicting ideas about all that even among the writers that got into the New Testament.

                                                    I just tend to think of it more figuratively. They felt like they were living at the end of the world, but expected history to move forward, instead of just repeating the same cycles, and yet it is just a succession of cycles - death and rebirth.


                                                    Last edited by Hot Pepsi; 13-02-2020, 21:43.

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