From: nyikos@math.scarolina.edu (Peter Nyikos)
Subject: Re: Is it Christian values or chavinism?
Organization: USC  Department of Computer Science
Date:  6 Oct 92 15:39:33 GMT

In <10912@hogg.ed.ac.uk> iad@cogsci.ed.ac.uk (Ivan A Derzhanski) writes:

>In article <nyikos.717792761@milo.math.scarolina.edu> nyikos@math.scarolina.edu (Peter Nyikos) writes:
>>In <10880@scott.ed.ac.uk> iad@cogsci.ed.ac.uk (Ivan A Derzhanski) writes:
>>>I don't think unborn babies scream or
>>>wringle when ripped limb by limb, so they don't show suffering, fake
>>>or genuine. 
>>
>>"Wringle"? do you mean "wriggle," by any chance?

>Serves me right for trying to use an English word I didn't really know,
>and being too lazy to go consult a dictionary.  :-)  I meant "writhe",
>"squirm", and the like.  Maybe "wriggle" would do.

>In short, I meant what you do when you either feel an extremely strong
>physical pain or want to make it look like that (to fake suffering).
>Unborn babies aren't capable of the latter.  Jesus was.

Well, OK, let's substitute "simulate" for "fake".  Do you at least agree
that Nancyjo Mann's daughter-in-the-womb *simulated* suffering even in
the unlikely event that it did not actually suffer from the saline
solution which burned its eyes, nose, lungs, etc.?

>>>On the other hand, we are told that Jesus of Nazareth was conceived in
>>>a very particular way,
<...>
>>> and just why am I wrong to suppose that God
>>>didn't decide to make him so that he wouldn't feel pain?
{Restoration:}
>>> It is just a
>>>matter of a few nerve fibres leading from the limbs to the brain.
{end of restoration}

>>Maybe so, but the bible gives no indication of it.

>True.  Yet even normal people, not related to Yahweh in any way, have
>been known to control their sense of pain, as well as other functions
>of their physiology.  It doesn't take a virgin birth, but it takes a
>lot of training.  Many of the miracle stories about Jesus have a certain
>yoga flavour.  Maybe that was exactly the kind of capabilities he had.

In the sentence of yours that I restored above, you were hinting at
something different, more along the lines of:

>And, of course, gods don't feel pain, even when they have bodies.
>Isis once cut off the hands of her son Horus in a situation in which a
>human mother would have said "go and wash your hands".  It was quicker
>that way, you see.  And Horus didn't object.  (Needless to say, the
>lost limbs were promptly replaced by new ones.)

>>Here for once we have an *atheist* appearing to act in violation of
>>Occam's Razor.

>Appearing, maybe, but I think Occam's Razor cuts the other way.  I'm
>told that Jesus was a very unusual kind of human being, as testified
>by a lot of stories about him, and therefore I try not to assume that
>he shared much with the rest of mankind.

But neither does the Bible indicate much resemblance between Jesus and
gods like Isis.  Back in the mid-'60's I read a book, published a number
of years earlier, _The Son of God_, by Karl Adam, in which he devotes
quite a bit of space to the contrast between Jesus and the various 
gods, and between his "Sacrifice" and the sacrifices of the various fertility
cults.  If you can't find a copy, I could quote from it. 

>-- 
> `If ye hiv ears oan yer heid - then use them tae lissen.' 
>(The Glasgow Gospel)

Is this a translation, or a pseudepigraphical "Gospel"?

Peter Nyikos

Newsgroups: talk.abortion,talk.religion.misc