Duplicity Belief

Duplicity Belief?

It seems to me that young people who attend church and youth groups and such things, have a two part belief. It seems that these young people don’t examine their religious beliefs along with their “other” beliefs to make sure they coincide. I’ll explain.

Aristotle’s law of non-contradiction states that “One cannot say of something that it is and that it is not in the same respect and at the same time.”

Take this made up scenario;
A young girl goes to church, her family is very “in” to the church, she goes to the services on Sunday, the young people’s classes on Sunday, and the youth group on Wednesday… She goes to school also (what high school-er doesn’t?). When she is at church she nods and always says ‘yeah I believe what they say at church’ when asked she will say again ‘yeah I believe what they say at church’. When she is at school she says ‘yeah I believe what they say at school’. Someone asks her sometime, maybe they are not a Christian, and they are curious about her faith. They hear that Christians believe their God created the Universe and that Evolution or the big bang are wrong. This person has only learned about evolution and the big bang through school and is curious why anyone would believe anything else, but knows her friend goes to church and always says ‘yeah, go Jesus!’ (Not in those words).

She asks her church going friend if she believes God created the Universe, her friend says ‘yeah, Jesus is awesome, God is awesome, and I believe all that’. She asks the church going friend, well; don’t you believe evolution and stuff? Scientists say it is absolutely true right? The Christian girl says, yeah well, I believe that too. Now she is confused.

Do you get my point?

How do you believe two things that contradict?

Can two contradicting beliefs be equally true at the same time in the same way?

Lets take a look at that thought:

This brings us to Russell’s Paradox,
There was once a barber. Some say that he lived in Seville. Wherever he lived, all of the men in this town either shaved themselves or were shaved by the barber. And the barber only shaved the men who did not shave themselves.
That is a nice story. But it raises the question: Did the barber shave himself? Let's say that he did shave himself. But we see from the story that he shaved only the men in town who did not shave themselves. Therefore, he did not shave himself. But we again see in the story that every man in town either shaved himself or was shaved by the barber. So he did shave himself. We have a contradiction. What does that mean?

If something contradicts itself, it cannot be true. If your basic set of beliefs contracts itself, it cannot be true. So if your basic set of beliefs, includes contracting facts, your basic set of beliefs is a bunch of bull.

In the study of logic, if Q is the opposite of P and P is true, Q cannot be true. So if your set of basic beliefs includes both P and Q, then your set of basic beliefs as a whole cannot be true.

If you believe two contradicting things at once, you end up not believing in anything at all, because you believe in a fantasy world that doesn’t pay attention to facts.

How do these high school students believe anything at all?
Do they?
In logic, a contradiction consists of a logical incompatibility between two or more propositions. It occurs when the propositions, taken together, yield two conclusions which form the logical inversions of each other. Illustrating a general tendency in applied logic, Aristotle’s law of noncontradiction states that “One cannot say of something that it is and that it is not in the same respect and at the same time.”

A paradox can be an apparently true statement or group of statements that leads to a contradiction or a situation which defies intuition; or it can be, seemingly opposite, an apparent contradiction that actually expresses a non-dual truth (cf. Koan). Typically, either the statements in question do not really imply the contradiction, the puzzling result is not really a contradiction, or the premises themselves are not all really true or cannot all be true together. The word paradox is often used interchangeably with contradiction. Often, mistakenly, it is used to describe situations that are ironic.

You don’t want your belief to be a paradox do you?
That doesn’t even make sense.

Assess what you believe, don’t believe contradictory things.

J just some thoughts.

Proof for Jesus and the Ressurection, just something I wrote up here, not all the proof, but some.

This took me all morning. Just something I made up for a friend, not all the proof or in any way complete, but enough for a bunch of teenagers, and that is who I designed it for, it will probably never be seen by them though... long story.

Apologetics for Jesus – Reasons to believe in Jesus our Savior C.S. Lewis: I believe in Christianity as I believe the sun has risen, not only because I see, but because by it I see everything else. Did Jesus really walk the earth? Did he actually live? There are many historians who wrote just after the time of Jesus’ life, who write that Jesus was in fact a real person, thus backing up the stories of the Bible. Cornelius Tactus: Who was vehemently anti-Christian, wrote in his historical record that Christus (or the Christ) was put to death by Pilate, he then mentions that Christianity is just superstition, but note that he cannot lie and say he never existed. Matthew 27:22 Pilate saith to them, What shall I do then with Jesus, who is called Christ? They all say to him, Let him be crucified. Suetonius: Suetonius was a Roman historian and a court official in Emperor Hadrian’s government. In his Life of Claudius he refers to Claudius expelling Jews from Rome on account of their activities on behalf of a man Suetonius calls Chrestus [another misspelling of Christus or Christ]. Josephus: Josephus was a Jewish historian who was born in either 37 or 38 AD and died some time after 100 AD. He wrote the Jewish Antiquities and in one famous passage described Jesus as a wise man, a doer of wonderful works and calls him the Christ. He also affirmed that Jesus was executed by Pilate and actually rose from the dead! Josephus, in the book Jewish Antiquities" wrote: "At that time lived Jesus, a wise man, if he may be called a man; for he performed many wonderful works. He was a teacher of such men as received the truth with pleasure. . . .And when Pilate, at the instigation of the chief men among us, had condemned him to the cross, they who before had conceived an affection for him did not cease to adhere to him. For on the third day he appeared to them alive again, the divine prophets having foretold these and many other wonderful things concerning him. And the sect of the Christians, so called from him, subsists at this time" (Antiquities, Book 18, Chapter 3, Section 1). The fact that a man from an poor family who was virtually unknown, would become the focal point of religion and controversy to this day – 2000 years later, is one of the greatest miracles of our time. The Bible, a reliable Historical Document: If we look at the Bible simply as a historic document, it should be among the most reliable on record compared with others. Historians routinely cite Herodotus as a key source of information. He wrote from 488 B.C. to 428 B.C. and the earliest copy of his work comes from 900 A.D. (1,300 years later). There are only eight known copies of his work. By contrast, the New Testament of the Bible (with all its information about Jesus) was written between 40 A.D. and 100 A.D. The earliest known copy is from 130 A.D. and there are 5,000 known copies in Greek, 10,000 in Latin and 9,300 in other languages. It is known that at the time of Jesus women were not thought of as reliable witnesses, a woman could not, say, testify in a court case. Therefore, the fact that women were the first to witness Jesus rising from the dead would make the story less ‘sell-able’ to the mainstream people. Why would you invent a story that was not sell-able? You wouldn’t. There exists no document from the ancient world, witnessed by so excellent a set of textual and historical testimonies . . . Skepticism regarding the historical credentials of Christianity is based upon an irrational bias. Clark Pinnock McMaster University If the New Testament were a collection of secular writings, their authenticity would generally be regarded as beyond all doubt. F. F. Bruce Manchester University For the New Testament of Acts, the confirmation of historicity is overwhelming. Any attempt to reject its basic historicity, even in matters of detail, must now appear absurd. Roman historians have long taken it for granted. A. N. Sherwin-White Classical Roman Historian Romans 1:20 states: "For the invisible things of him from the creation are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead: so that they are without excuse." Death and Resurrection: Jesus died on the cross and was resurrected on the third day. He did so an innocent man, for our sins. Many people saw him after he was resurrected, the most people who saw him at one time were about 500 people. 500 brethren at once, at an appointed place in Galilee 1 Cor. 15:6 After that, he was seen of above five hundred brethren at once; of whom the greater part remain unto this present, but some are fallen asleep. "After His suffering, he (Jesus) showed himself to these men and gave many convincing proofs that he was alive. He appeared to them over a period of forty days…" - Acts 1:3 I claim to be an historian. My approach to Classics is historical. And I tell you that the evidence for the life, the death, and the resurrection of Christ is better authenticated than most of the facts of ancient history . . . E. M. Blaiklock Professor of Classics Auckland University Some people say that those who witnessed Jesus after his resurrection were all having joint hallucinations; psychologists have researched this and stated that it is not possible that this was the case. What does all this mean to you? Where do we go from here? “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me” (John 14:6) Jesus gives us life; he offers us the free gift of salvation through faith in him alone. All he asks is that we follow him. "Come and follow me," said Jesus, "and I will make you fishers for men.” Mark 1:17 I wrote this is WORD and had some great changes in font and other such things, they all dissapeared when I copied it into here, so I decided to leave it that way, sorry. :)

The word "Revolution"

In school you are always told that a revolution is a change from one form to another, usually of government. You are usually told that a Revolution is a good thing and that its a change that 'had to happen' because the people wanted it. You are never told that, revolutions, are dirty bloody battles between groups of people. The people as a whole, never want a revolution. A faction of the people, want a revolution, the whole never wants a revolution, if they all agreed it would not be called a revolution.

The beatles sang about a Revolution, as if a revolution were the best solution to any problem in the world.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gf-Q2rDd6Tw

What is a revolution?

From Wiki Pedia:
A revolution (from the Latin revolutio, "a turnaround") is a significant change that usually takes place in a short period of time.
Aristotle described two types of political revolution:
1) Complete change from one constitution to another.
2) Modification of an existing constitution.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolution

What kinds of revolutions are there?
Alexis de Tocqueville differentiated between
1) political revolutions
2) sudden and violent revolutions that seek not only to establish a new political system but to transform an entire society and
3) slow but sweeping transformations of the entire society that take several generations to bring about.
One of several different Marxist typologies divides revolutions into pre-capitalist, early bourgeois, bourgeois, bourgeois-democratic, early proletarian, and socialist revolutions.
(Ibid)

I suppose Revolution is only as good or bad as the action to which it is attached, so lets take a look at a few "Revolutions" that have taken place in History, and see what we can decifer.

I will choose one for this blog, and continue on with others in later blogs.

Today I will discuss the French Revolution, only because my mother has been reading up on it and sharing with me, and therefore I cannot get it out of my head.

Next I may choose the Bolshevic Revolution, as that is currently my favorite.





Watch the video, it's pretty good, what the strange mysterious female sounding voice doesn't mention is that some of these - common people - didn't want this "revolution".


"...and never heads enough..."
"Domestic carnage, now filled the whole year With feast-days, old men from the chimney-nook, The maiden from the busom of her love, The mother from the cradle of her babe, The warrior from the field - all perished, all -Friends, enemies, of all parties, ages, ranks, Head after head, and never heads enough For those that bade them fall."
William Wordsworth

"The French Revolution had opened an era of intense politicization. Perhaps the most significant characteristic of the dawning modern world, and in this respect it was a true child of Rousseau, was the tendency to relate everything to politics. In Latin America, every would-be plunderer or ambitious bandit now called himself a "a liberator"; murderers killed for freedom, thieves stole for the people."Paul Johnson"Modern Times"

"What we learn from the study of the Great [French] Revolution is that it was the source of all the present communist, anarchist and socialist conceptions."Prince Petr KropotkinRussian naturalist, author and soldierwriting in 1909 on the eve of the Bolshevik Revolution

From another blog I found -
"Stalin and Hitler could say the same in recognizing their debt to the concept of "the Sovereign" of Rousseau and its mystical identification with the people. 200 years later we have only millions and millions of innocents murdered in the "name of the people," etc. ad nauseam."



Was the French Revolution a bloody battle for power? Supposedly in the name of 'the people' when really is was in the name of those who saught power?
Were the people made to believe through propaganda techniques that they wanted something they didn't want?

I don't know, I do like to look into the darker side of history.

Is the French Revolution, or any Revolution, ever by the collective people? Or are they always propagandized. Do 'the people' ever think for themselves collectively?
Is that even possible?

Well, thats all for now.