Simon Paynton

it’s also useful because it’s an alarm bell that something isn’t right and needs to be dealt with

That’s very true.  But sometimes people come up and decide to jam on your alarm bell for fun.

That would make a good post don’t you think?

Thanks for asking the question.  I’m certainly going to stick it on the end of my “fairness” page.

I can’t think of any other.

There’s also procedural justice (sticking to the rules of a fair and impartial procedure), distributional justice (deciding how to distribute goods or burdens), justice as fairness, and fairness as respect.

I think Justice is very individual.

I agree, the victim has to feel that justice has been done, and every s…[Read more]

Whatever justice is….

That’s an interesting question.  I think there are two kinds of justice: restitutional (victim is made good in some way) and retributional (offender is punished in some proportionate way).  I can’t think of any other.

That depends what your definition of “is” is.  The author is clearly implying that the following statements are attributed by experts to Jesus.

Simon keeps repeating this “truism” that Jesus’s message was some how revolutionary and new

He was saying old things in a new way.

Could you please quote the paragraph where it says that?

The last paragraph but one:

And embrace what modern Bible experts know to be the true sections of the New Testament. Jesus said, Don’t judge. He condemned those who pointed out the faults of others while ignoring their own. And he proclaimed, “Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. There…

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Davis wrote:

Which article are you referring to?

The article that Reg linked to above.  At the end, it says that a number of sayings attributed to Jesus are thought to be genuine.

_Robert_ wrote:

Are you implying that since the dawn of the Christian church that somehow the Holy Roman Empire and Western Europe, who benefitted from all this…

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Davis wrote:

Jesus’s so call words? We don’t know what they are

According to the article, some verses can be reliably attributed to Jesus.  It makes sense that some other stuff in the New Testament was manufactured.

the article about the Bible again.

several books of the New Testament, including some attributed to Paul, are now considered forgeries perpetrated by famous figures in Christianity to bolster their theological arguments.

It wouldn’t surprise me if the very patriarchal and narrowly presriptive sexual pronouncements of St Paul fall into this…[Read more]

I think there are special unique ways that organised religion can cause harm, in ways that just “believing in God” does not.  Mainly, this is where religious norms override human decency – or “new”, large-group morality clashes with “old”, small-group morality.  Jesus’ morality was of the second kind.

I’ve said it before, but Jesus’ teachings w…[Read more]

So, he believes in evolution.  I understand that he believes in “guided” evolution of some kind, but I’m not sure about the details, although he can provide credible evidence.

Reg the Fronkey Farmer wrote:

Simon here is a video from Tyler.

Where does Steve Taylor say that he believes in Creationism?

He says that “there is no evidence that consciousness is produced by brain activity”.

He’s entitled to his opinion.  Maybe he’s right.  I don’t know.