Roman Historian admits Augustus was a Monarch

[C. Fabius Lupus]

Syllogisms cannot operate without a neurological basis, your arguing Epistemology without Ontological awareness.

They work perfectly in a computer program without any neurological basis.

Your making projections of dead matter in your case, which already underwent Syllogistic encoding in your mind, and tried to show that syllogist rules apply to syllogisms.

Syllogisms are tools that can be used to predict events in the physical world. This is because they have the same underlying principles than the physical world. The physical world could not exist in a stable form without them. This is why they are a priori. They do not need a world to be valid or neurons formed out of physical matter.

But since they are abstracta, physical phenomenons have indeed to be encoded into abstract terms. Then the results of the syllogisms have to be decoded back from their abstract form into physical reality. This is what language does. And it does it quite successful, even if natural language is often flawed (e.g. words with ambiguous meanings).

 

The very syllogistic rules you proposed as always right and always wrong can easily be be shown to be incorrect, and prone to unintended paradox (a paradox exists in every idea, its just how our brains process information).

Say I made a pun, or used a word with a dual meaning, or substituted a emotional response inspired by my wording of a phrase to add to the syllogism (I threw a cup in a debate once at a moderator once in a debate to prove a point). Or I referee to a Noun by a characteristic, say "White" for Horse..... it was debated for centuries in China if something could be "Horse" and "White" at the same time.... the way nouns are categorized in a language determines syllogistic rules, and no language is perfect in this.

They cannot be proven to be incorrect and your example failed to do so too.

Using words with dual meanings are a formal logical fallacy called ambiguous middle term that results in a quaternio terminorum. The use of emotionally loaded words is another fallacy (pathos) and the use or threat of physical force is also one (argumentum ad baculum).

You have not made a point here by mentioning clear violations of syllogistic rules (fallacies) and showing how they result in incorrect results. This is exactly what logic states: The violation of its rules may lead to incorrect conclusions.

I have to assume that you either argue in a sophistic manner for the sake of the argument and to practice your rhetorical skills or you simply have not understood the principles of syllogisms and potential errors in their application.

 

 

Due to knowing the abstract to visual spectrum of Syllogisms, I know they are price to pattern recognition falsification, known as Lateral Inhibition. The rules you just presented are a example, they appear congruent and stable, but why? Honestly, why? There is a lateralization process in our visual process that staggers like to gradients of unlike yet similar, effecting depth and haptic assumptions, and thus our spacial thinking. We inhibit further (using neural inhibitors) so we can process the info back through our visual cortex from right to left to rework its abstract properties.

Have you ever asked yourself why a rule begins or ends? There is a neural inhibitor at work, as well as constraints in neural processing the information in packets.

You can structure Syllogisms via a system similar to molecular geometry, using Di-Polar Spheres. The rule base is much larger and less restrictive than they thought possible in the 19th and 20th century. It is neurologically based. In the mind, not outside of it. Even in pure mathematics.

 

The rhetorical trick you are attemping here is called ignoratio elenchi, opening a new topic, which is irrelevant for the original one. If you show how syllogisms are processed in a brain, it does not contribute anything to the question, whether syllogisms are universally valid or not.

BTW I have a Master degree in biology and am therefore not unaware of how neurons work. However I am aware that you simplify mechanisms in the brain that are currently not fully understood.

The fact that syllogisms can also be expressed in a geometrical form only strengthens the point that they are universally valid.

 

And to eliminate a misunderstanding, Chryssipus didn't declare one a formal logical fallacy.

I have very well understood that your argument was hypothetical and my answer was to this hypothetical statement.

It had not mattered what Chryssipus had said about one being a number or not. It makes no difference who is making a statement, a philosopher or a schoolboy. What is a fallacy or not is not decided in an arbitrary manner by any authority. You have to get rid of this concept, if you want to understand how logic works. 1 can be treated as a number and the conclusions do not change he truth value of the premises. Therefore it is no fallacy. Later philosophers would have easily figured that out and have realized that Chryssipus was wrong in this point, supposed they would not have fallen victim to the argumentum ad auctoritas fallacy.

[Onasander]

Abstraction and concrete does not exist independent of reality, again, you aren't aware of the processing error underlining the awareness and integration of causality, as I mentioned in a previous post here in this topic, it goes left to right hemisphere.

 

Secondly, there are neither A Priori nor Posteri Rules to Nature, and neither rules nor axioms hold nature together, only, like with Bishop Berkeley (which gets so voriciously attacked by any and all) his awareness of it (he thought Gid was holding it together). Its a very bad Solipsist argument, and if I was a shithead, I would start pointing out Solipsist and Sceptical fallacies here and hit you up on it, folding your argumentment up asymmetrically in a manner that successively undermines your every claim to fallacy listed.

 

But as you claim to be a biologist (I've known several, and much of my work currently involves Etiological theory pulled from Epidemeology) I'll go back to my original point, emphasizing "There are no logical fallacies" and will note the dialectics WE JUST ENGADGED IN, and could potentially engadge in, more or less proves my point. I can show how every "Fallacy" you position is conditional on a series of paradoxes that can nullify or, If I'm inclined, supported.

 

Yes, that's a rhetorical, and indeed Sophistic point, I can narrow down the antiquity of it in fact to Prodicus of Ceos, In Praise of Agriculture. We never got deep enough here yet on this site to discuss him, but he appears to of developed (or at least continued from earlier unnamed sources) a rational skepticism regarding the etiology of phenomena, but the skepticism wasn't a refutation of the underlining validity of the ideas, which is a ancestor of my position (fifth of it, I can point to Gorgias, William James, and Cynics and Ramon Llull too, I'm a bit of a eclectic).

 

Hus basic idea was (and it was mistaken as Atheistic) that he thought man took their various powers of discernment and intellectual capacities as Gods, and such gods were NOT REAL. I believe it was this thread where I added the quote of Balbus from John of Salisbury- he took a later stance that evolved to accept the indo-european pantheon, but it still had the earlier naturalistic formula to it. I won't say Prodicus was the ancestor to this late Republic outlook, as they don't exactly aline, but later christian authors defending the "theism of atheists" point out they weren't really atheists, they just didn't accept the rules and formulas built around these gods. The neon Pythagoreans and Neo-Platonists later evolved (mutated) this formula further.

 

I'm opposed to the Sophists on two grounds, they charged for providing instruction, and they standardized it. It allowed thinkers who's personality is based in the Thalamus to eventually flood and stagnate philosophy. But Prodicus' attachment to the finesse and exactitude of words, though a irritant, did allow technical formulas to evolve.... likewise Dialectics, and therefore SYLLOGISMS.

 

It is a common rhetorical exercise to argue a position, and counter-argue against it. I did this once in a debate in San Francisco, where I successfully argued there was more than nothing than something. This came from a stronger grasp of the Ontology of Operand-Operant thinking. I took every category of being brought up, and broke it down to English language and cultural dualisms, and nullified it. At the time, I had a fascination with the Banach-Tardski Paradox (still my favorite)

 

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banach–Tarski_paradox

 

and noticed medieval Scholastic categories of being (based on earlier, ancient ideas) and books like the Hamsa Gita which list several dozen dualism of aspects we process, underline the underlining mechanics of how we thought. You inevitably choose a aspect of a dualism, and favor ir .... you operate off its line of thinking, go through its modes of thought, accept its prejudices and limitations. Our very best theories, like Einstein's Theory of Relativity, accept it. Most ideas don't realize the fundamental paradoxes inherent in every choice. We just build on it, and when they are affirmed, IRS pragmatically useful, and thus valid. In the common approach to teaching etiology, I've noticed a lot of theorists conflate validity and precision as merely lacking qualities of random error and bias (a minimally trained philosopher could crush this argument).

 

If I know a feedback loop, or series of them, underlines complex thought on a operators operand basis at every reducible conjunction, and that lateral operations between the hemisphereas and areas of the mind are processing (Dialectics), then I know we as thinkers are favoring (and thus disfavoring) ways of thinking otherwise. A logical fallacy seeks for whatever reason to cancel this out. Sometimes positively, due to an awareness of a eminent danger (as in real, not the harmless intellectual danger of free thinking, which I'm abhorrently opposed to preventing). As the vast majority of logical fallicies do not seek to prevent immediate harm, I do not mind them. Reason why is:

 

1) Its a biologically valid way of thinking, and as man is a philosophical creature, as he is intelligent, I position thinking men are not born without an innate sense of philosophy, be we created or evolved. Impulse to react via a thinking approach matters more to me than impressing formal rules diminishing the course of thought.

 

2) As all thought is dialectic (by default), and all precise thinking is rhetorical and rule based (based on neurology, not rules imposed on neurology DERIVED from neurology observing neurology (which is perception x apperception x perception of apperception (perceiving/judging), making for your weak earlier arguments), all arguments will be paradoxical. It really doesn't matter to me if the paradox is conscious or unconscious, arrives early or later in the discussion. You can't have a position unless paradoxes are present, every statement eluding to a greater holism or hierarchy possesses them.

 

3) Even when "wrong" in many senses, people still argue and think. If there was a sense of moral relativism, or even its near opposite, absolute right or wrong (you argue the latter here, if I get you right) you would think a sense of intellectual economization would exist that would allow men to naturally disengage from invalid points of thought. Heck, yould think we would of evolved to prevent them from arising. But we haven't, quite the opposite, they are so predominate in man it suggests they are a natural part of our way of thinking, and in truth, are more essential and necessary to our survival than highly isolated academic logicians can ever claim. Did our logical fallacies evolve? If so, what positive functions do they provide? Is it safe to remove them? Should I start informing army Snipers, scouts, and foreword observers to reduce the use of logical fallacies when conveying SALUTE reports, when their own eyes and reasoning says otherwise, however odd? Should I tell Intel units to accept only the Orthodox, and not Unorthodox data? Should deception, disinformation, and camoflague be discouraged? If they see a Centaur, so be it. I'll report a Centaur.... let command debate if I just misidentified calvary. It gives them insight, and they can query MY STATE OF MIND, and possible observational and linguistic paradoxes.

 

4) No Position is immune to dialectic exchange. Anything can be built upon, and negated. We have always done this, and hopefully always will. Though both hemispheres are largely symmetrical and symbiotic, the symbiosis is asymmetrical, favoring one aspect of mind at a particular turn of thought. Many ideas can be approached from many directions, though at the same time most are quite limited the initial few steps. If someone finds a different way, more power to them. I find exploration, the thinking outside of the box, real or intentional, great. Doesn't always work. We only know it doesn't work however due to our wiring, not external floating abstractions that exist outside of the body holding spacetime together as in your apparent point of view. I can claim a few fallicies on your part here, but your logical fallacies allow you to assert your logical fallacies in the first place, and I'm okay with your warped way of thinking as neurology obviously allows you to inhibit the thinking process. You started this argument, and continue it under false conditions, but yet.... continue to argue it. You may in time even assert scientifically ascernable facts from these "false ways of thinking", which supports my fundamental position..... No matter how very wrong you are Lupus, you are still human, and are therefore a philosophical animal. Your willingness to overlook your own paradoxes here is perfectly natural. You can't possibly be consistent in asserting every logical fallacy (to do so would surely lead to advocating for death to self and all), as your assertions are also prone to dependencies on other fallacies.

 

That's okay, that's just dialectics. That's rhetoric. That's the mind at work. What matters is our pragmatism here, and how we let it effect our thinking. Your argument sucks, but your midway through it. You might get somewhere. I may nullify it (if I care to) or I may accept it, and build on it, in parts or whole. Theory of Mind Stuff.

 

My common saying is "You gotta trust in the Dialectic". It runs the polytheistic fallacy in getting persona to a impersonal phenomena, but I'm okay with that as it gets the point across on many levels. It suggests the long running of the man, of the ideas of mankind stretching out to infinity past the individual perspective, the rivers and streams crisscrossing experience and the reflection of the ages.

 

Your going to have a near impossible task of convincing 21st century thinkers that laws of nature hold the universe together, and that ideas are external things in themselves. Your rejection of Lateral Inhibition rules out the Pre-Cartesian Hypnogogic theories of vision (such as Aristotle had), so I'm very interested in knowing where your going to take this. I got my popcorn ready to go. More than likely you'll be wrong, but as you know, I see validity in wrong answers. I'm a bit like Wittgenstein in this regard, it excites me. Shows another way of thinking. Another way foreword. It excites me when done in earnest. I sometimes wonder if a theory of everything is only possible by mapping out our every mistake, which would be our total sum of positive knowledge, as a root system. Yould likely get a map of the mind! Every junction or divergence a minimum or two fallacies.

[Onasander]

Oh, I nearly went to bed without mentioning, we created machines that use syllogisms to meet our own needs, based out of our logic. We have software and hardware engineers trained in logic (I dated one, and know another who translated the Isagogue) who only know to detect problems using standard forms of logic, and in cases of hardware, if the stuff doesn't compute software as it is needed, it gets chucked. Computers are a extension of mankind. I think it was Issac Asimov who pointed that out in one of his works, prior to first contact, mankind never really came across a truely alien consciousness, closest we had was machines, but they were merely golem like extensions of ourselves. Likewise animals, who are related to man. This applies to ourselves in the present. God (in your case the Gods, likely Roman gods of a inspecific era) would be related to us, animals, out tools, offspring, etc. I'm not devaluing artificial intelligence, or denying Butlerian (Samuel Butler, Erewhon) style machine evolution like in Frank Herbert's Dune, or The Terminator, or Transhumanism, but the basis it would evolve from (Say Butlers intelligent trains spontaneously evolving from the complexity of the transportation system) from the initial formulas given in the human needs to rationalize the logistics and economies of said systems. It would still essentially be human, like the future aliens in Steven Spielberg's A.I. ..... We would essentially leave a fossil record of ourselves imprinted on all future intelligence. Aspects could be removed, but not all. If they use our number system, even binary base code, their rules of logic would allow for patterns similar to our theory of chaos to emerge whenever they seek to organize certain tasks we first taught and implanted into them, such as logistics. If they abandoned our inheritance for logistics and coding, and went truely alien, then they would lose our humaness. A hypothetical future machine society would only have to analyze its way of thinking to come to conclusions about its predecessors a creators mind and way of thinking. Its very approach to things would carry behavioral assumptions and technological biases which would point to creatures very similar to us, even if we created such intelligence unintentionally.

 

In Christianity, the tree of knowledge was merely knowledge of the world outside of eden, an idea whose qualities was alien to us, but not alienated to the world itself.... but it wasn't the world either, or the total sum of it. It was a product of God. Knowledge of the tree, did it involve Nouns? Undoubtedly, if it was knowledge, but Adam was already engaged in naming things without partaking of the fruit. He was interpersonal with God.

 

There is therefore, no reason for me to presume hierarchial rules built of a priori knowledge necessarily lead to knowledge being built into the Ontological Oceans of the universe, IT/They being the thing that holds the universe together. It is said merely in a temporal beginning, there was the word. Such a thing, its self referent back to God. I don't see a basis of a systems of logic existing before everything if it existed only in reference to itself. It runs into Conservation of Mass issues, if mass is based on rules verbalised adsurdum unto itself. The Laws of Nature built the Laws of Nature, and thus held the universe for man together? And we further this compact with the a priori rules via a compact of creating in our own image Logical Fallacies, a covenant of sorts?

 

Its difficult to say how accurate any creation myth is. The current scientific model has been in freefall collapse since Steven Hawkings admitted he was wrong with the Big Bang, and we've come to realize collectively accepting it leads to a impossible condition that three fundamental laws of nature contradict themselves.... but every long lasting or at least well debated system has its strengths. In the Judeo-Christian tradition, save for thinkers similar to you like Bishop Berkeley, we don't have much of a reason to proceed on such a basis. We had a period during the enlightenment from Newton to the near modern where that was accepted, but not any more. Our modern system of science has Babylonian and Akkadian roots, but spent its most productive years under the aegis of christianity. I doubt very much most of our modern knowledge therefore, as inherited, needs accept your position. I certainly have no reason to proceed, but can accept technological or methodological benefits from your seemingly crazy approach on a utilitarian basis, even works your flaws into the greater discourse in "The Republic of Science". But I don't have a inherent reason to accept it. I have free will, and I can rationalize enough to know I get things right often enough, as I'm still alive three decades after birth, despite wars and daily hazards. I can't be too far off the mark rationally if I've survived by my wits alone as a Cynic many times over. No pressing reason to accept your position, but your position, however flawed, still exists. It goes a great way in affirming my own, and weakening your own. If you prove yourself right, you prove me right by proving your position wrong. However, if I prove you totally wrong, you win, as I invalidate a central position of my own.

 

Notice this whole time we've been pussyfooting around the Objective-Subjective paradox, and its implications? Operand-Operator, we can take a dip into classical arguments here. Or you can choose another route. Doesn't matter. I accept them all. A love of the dialectic.

[C. Fabius Lupus]

Repeating the same false arguments, does not make them true. But perhaps I did not express my point properly, so you were not able to understand it. Therefore let me try to explain it in a simpler way. Hopefully this way we can keep focused on the essential point and avoid excessive thought jumping.

 

Logic and mathematics are a priori valid.

No stable world can exist without them. They are necessary conditions for any possible world including our own physical reality.

 

The brain has evolved based on the laws of nature. It has developed neurological patterns that emulate the physical reality and its laws in order to make usable predictions. It is not the other way around as you assume - the brain creating the laws of nature based on its own neurological structure with nature itself being incomprehensible.

Therefore the discussion of brain and personality structures (or how you scored in disputes with others) is irrelevant for the topic.

 

Machines may be extensions of human ways of thinking when it comes to higher programs like the apps on your smart phone, but you would find it hard to find human behavioral assumptions and biases in numerical machine code. It is this low-level programing where the rules of logic and mathematics are used. And they cannot be circumvented because they are intrinsic to nature and machine code programming takes place on the physical hardware level.

There is a fundamental difference between the digital processing of machines and the analog processing of neurons in the brain. Nevertheless both have to obey to the same rules, which proves their universality.

 

Instead of making claims what you can disprove by showing paradoxes and contradictions, let us keep it simple. Let us use the simple example of a modus ponens inference. Show us which paradoxes it implies or how it is only the product of our personality structure. Or show us how a theoretical world that does not obey to his a priori rule can exist without collapsing in itself due to contradictions in its reality.

Show us how the related fallacy (affirming the consequent) can be a valid form of reasoning.

To make it easy for you, I am going to provide an example:

- Antecedent (p): Brutus stabbed a dagger in the heart of Caesar.

- Consequent (q): Caesar is dead.

Modus Ponens: [(p -> q) AND p] -> q

IF Brutus stabbed a dagger in the heart of Caesar THEN Caesar is dead AND it is true that Brutus stabbed a dagger in the heart of Caesar. THEREFORE it is true that Caesar is dead.

Truth value preserved, valid way of reasoning.

Fallacy of affirming the consequent: [(p -> q) AND q] -> p

IF Cicero stabbed a dagger in the heart of Caesar THEN Caesar is dead AND it is true that Caesar is dead. THEREFORE it is true that Cicero stabbed Caesar in the heart.

Truth value not preserved, invalid way of reasoning, i.e. logical fallacy.

It is possible that Caesar is dead for other reasons than Cicero having him stabbed, e.g. Brutus could have stabbed him.

 

Now go ahead and prove that this fallacy is not a fallacy.

Please avoid excessive thought jumps referring to medieval scholars, military applcations and annecdotes from past disputes that you might have had with other people. Also be aware that mentioning famous names and their opinions do not contribute to the topic.

 

P.S. Hawkings did not admit that he was wrong about the Big Bang, but that he was wrong about Black Holes. Therefore this theory is not yet in freefall collapse, although it should be for other reasons, but this is off topic and has no place here.

Edited April 30, 2015 by C. Fabius Lupus

[caldrail]

 

 

In Christianity, the tree of knowledge was merely knowledge of the world outside of eden, an idea whose qualities was alien to us, but not alienated to the world itself.... but it wasn't the world either, or the total sum of it. It was a product of God. Knowledge of the tree, did it involve Nouns? Undoubtedly, if it was knowledge, but Adam was already engaged in naming things without partaking of the fruit. He was interpersonal with God.

The 'Tree Of Knowledge' is an allegorical description of everything that could be known, including that stuff God didn't want us to know.. Since by definition humanity has lived outside of Eden since Adam and his missus were expelled for behaviour unbecoming, you can hardly claim the world we know is alien to us.

 

In fact, christianity has always had a difficult relationship with science simply because it's a religion that relies on ignorance, with priests supplying the wisdom to their congregations rather than society revealing all. After all, the story of the 'Tower of Babel' confirms this, as God inserts an obstacle to human progress by forcing them to speak in lots of languages instead of one, a clear recognition that communication spreads ideas, and ideas were not a good thing as far as the fixed messages of christianity were concerned. The initiative to translate the Bible into english so that every common man could read it not only threatened the social influence of the priesthoods, it sparked wars on religious differences, and encouraged colonial ventures to the new world to escape the restrictions of religious argument at home. Of course it has to underlined that the 'stuff God didn't want us to know' is never decided by God - it's always human beings who decide that.

 

These principles are further confused by the history of christianity in that we have to accept our current version is neither conformal nor the same as ancient texts, which were subject to censorship and rwrites. Indeed, the attempts to create a universal christian faith went hand in hand with censoprship, as valid ancient texts were either approved or discarded, and in any case, no version of the Bible contains a consistent account.

 

The 'apple' story is merely there to illustrate an aspect of undesirable female behaviour and a warning to restrain it.

[C. Fabius Lupus]

In fact, christianity has always had a difficult relationship with science simply because it's a religion that relies on ignorance...

 

Indeed. So it does not really come as a surprise when a Christian tries to disprove the rules of logic.

[indianasmith]

This topic has wandered considerably from its original focus.

I would make a counter-argument, however, that Christianity, whatever its relation to science, is absolutely grounded in history.

If Jesus of Nazareth did not live, die, and rise again as the New Testament describes, then the faith as a whole is utterly meaningless,

as Paul pointed out most effectively in I Corinthians 15.

 

Also the original text of the New Testament has been passed down with a remarkable degree of purity - in excess of 98%, according to

most textual scholars.  The few passages where the original wording is in question do not affect a single cardinal doctrine.

[caldrail]

 

 

Also the original text of the New Testament has been passed down with a remarkable degree of purity - in excess of 98%, according to

most textual scholars.

That's because of the Council of Nicaea, designed to create a consistent and universal form of christianity (in which it failed, though considerable censorship took place, which is where the purity comes from. All sources considered non-conformal were rejected and anyone using them thereafter was considered a heretic)

[indianasmith]

The Council of Nicaea did come up with a common creed for Christianity, but it did not finalize the New Testament canon.  That's a common myth.

Of the 27 books that make up the New Testament, 23 were already widely accepted and recognized as Scriptural by the early church in the two centuries before the Council.  Four very short books (II and III John, Jude, and II Peter) were not as widely circulated but were still recognized as authoritative by many. A few other books (The Shepherd of Hermas, I and II Clement, and the Didache) were considered Scriptural by some Christians but not by others.  The Council of Hippo, in 400 AD, issued a final ruling that divided early Christian writings into three categories:  Scripture (the 27 NT Books), Not Inspired but Profitable Reading (Hermas, Clement, and many other Second Century works were included in this category), and Spurious (this included all the Gnostic Gospels and Epistles - all of which postdate the life of Jesus and his Apostles by a century or more).  Manuscripts of all these works have survived in great abundance, especially the works of the New Testament itself - there are over 5000 Greek manuscripts composed before 400 AD that our current translations are based on.  That has made it very easy for scholars to get past copyists' errors and reconstruct the original wording.  No other work of antiquity is as well documented as the New Testament.

[caldrail]

The Council of Nicaea was the first attempt to create a consistent christian message. That there were others doesn't suprise me - I did state that the attempts did not work. The relationshipm of the Trinity, the primary subject at Nicaea, was not agrrd until the Council of Constantinople in 360 for instance. However, the significance of Nicaea is that Constantine presided over it and used the meeting to try and unite Christianity, not for spiritual reasons, but to use a common religion to bolster his fragile empire. The unification prcess was not going to be so simple of course and required more councils to resolve debates (which again never fully succeeded)

[indianasmith]

I agree with most of what you said.

Christianity had been officially illegal since 65 AD, with persecutions proceeding off and on throughout that time.

Unable to publicly meet and settle disputes, factions and splinter cults had arisen from the end of the First Century onward.

The glue that held the Church together were the Apostolic writings that would become the New Testament - which is why

the splinter sects (mostly Gnostics) produced a host of works in the Second, Third, and Fourth centuries that they tried to

pass of as apostolic.  The mainstream church, such as it was, rejected most of these outright.  When the Council of HIppo

met to finalize the canon in 400 AD, they imposed a threefold test before any book could be considered canonical:

   1.  Was it authored by or associated with one of the Apostles of Jesus (which included the Twelve, and Paul, and the "Lord's Brothers" James and Jude.

   2.  Was it recognized by the earliest church leaders as being an Apostolic work?

   3.  Did it line up, doctrinally and factually, with the well-established works of the Apostles?

The books that could pass that test were included, the ones that didn't were either labeled as "spurious" - forgeries by various splinter sects; or "profitable" - works that were doctrinally solid and good for devotional reading but not directly associated with the Apostles.

 

I do think that the Nicene Creed codified the claims about Christ made by the Apostles quite well.  The Apostle's Creed, which it enlarged and elaborated on, was over 200 years earlier in origin, although most likely not, as the early church claimed, composed by the Apostles themselves.

[C. Fabius Lupus]

Christianity was not constantly illegal under all emperors since 65 CE. It was not even declared illegal by Nero. Only Christians in the capital were prosecuted by Nero and only in relation to the Fire of Rome of which they were found guilty. Outside of the city Christianity could be practiced freely until the reign of Decius.

Not all writings that were not admitted to the bible were of later origin, e.g. the gospel of Thomas. It was definitely composed before the gospel of John, perhaps even before those of Luke and Matthew.

There was no "mainstream church" before the council of Nicaea. Constantine created this mainstream church and it took several centuries till all other Christian sects (Arianus, gnostics) were finally suppressed. The Christian have always been well-known for the quarrels among themselves. And this has not changed since the present day.

The traditional Roman religion was much more standardized and in harmony with itself. Constantine tried in vain to bring this same level of standardization and harmony into the Christian faith.

We should not forget that there is not even today a commonly accepted version of the bible and Catholics and Protestants disagree about which books are canon and which are not.

[indianasmith]

It is true that some scholars, most notably the Jesus Seminar, have tried to place Thomas back into the First Century.  However, there are far more compelling arguments for dating it around 160-170 AD - specifically, that it mirrors the language of the Diatesseron in so many places that the author probably had a copy of that work on hand - and the Diatesseron was composed around 150 at the earliest.  On the other hand, the Rylands Papyrus fragment - about 6 verses from John 18 - was found in Egypt and firmly dated to the first quarter of the Second Century (110-125 AD).  Since John was composed at Ephesus, according to every early source, it would have taken a couple of decades for the Gospel to have been copied and circulated as far as the Egyptian hinterland where the Rylands fragment was found.  That would place John's date of composition right where the early church had it - around 90 AD.

 

Dating the Biblical Gospels is tricky work, but overall, the arguments for the earlier dates make more historical and archeological sense than the arguments for the later ones.

 

You are right, to a certain extent, about the Christian tendency to divide.  It was true in the Apostolic age and it was true today.  However, even in the Second Century, there was a core of church leadership that tried to hold to the teachings of the Apostles and reject the trends of Gnosticism that were so prevalent in the Second and Third Century.

 

As for the competing Catholic and Protestant Canon, it is worth noting that many Catholic scholars questioned the canonicity of the Old Testament Apocrypha, since they were written later than all the other books of the New Testament and were all composed in Greek rather than Hebrew, the language of the OT.

[Maty]

'The traditional Roman religion was much more standardized and in harmony with itself...'

 

Hmm. I'm not so much disagreeing as asking for some support for this claim. My understanding is that Roman state religion was standardized to the point of being formulaic but religion as a whole was pretty free-form. That is, there was no canon law and no concept of sin (as opposed to crime). There was also no doctrine as such, or any concept of heresy.

 

Basically, it was up to a particular social group to decide how they interfaced with the deity, with the general understanding that the deity would let them know if they were doing it wrong.

 

The 'harmony' was probably more because since Roman religion aimed at channelling the benefits of a deity to the group involved, there was no desire to spread those benefits by proseletizing  and if the neighbours were worshipping incorrectly, no-one was in a hurry to correct them.

[caldrail]

As I understand it, the concept of 'state religion' is a bit misleading. In pagan times the state did not rely on religion as such other thasn it organised communal festivals. Worship was very much an informal personal affair, where the worshipper goes to the temple to ask for divine favour in the same manner he went to his local patrician to ask for mundane favours. The presence of christianity was as a series of seperate cults led by individual and unattached bishops until Conbstantine attempted unification for his own purposes. Thereafter, christianity had a higher level of prestige and ivolvement. Marcellinus wrote about the  "roads filled with galloping bishops" as they got their act together and capitalised (I use the word in all senses) on their new found influence. However, even then, christianity was not absolute in terms of authority and would not be until the folly of the 12th century. Mithraism was competing for influence and both religions complained the other was using their ideas.