Why did Paul suggest that people should not marry?

[iNow]

5 minutes ago, Night FM said:

we don't see animals with "larger" brains building supercomputers

We didn’t see humans doing it until this generation, either. Your positions here are laughable and childish. 

[CharonY]

10 minutes ago, Night FM said:

Science is irrelevant since

I think you are on the wrong forum, then.

[Night FM]

20 minutes ago, iNow said:

We didn’t see humans doing it until this generation, either. Your positions here are laughable and childish. 

We've seen people with the intellectual ability to since as far back as recorded human history.

16 minutes ago, CharonY said:

I think you are on the wrong forum, then.

I've already explained it. It's not that complicated.

The zoological definitions are based solely on biological similarities that humans have with animals. Since they ignore the types of activities and needs which humans pursue that make them distinct from animals, they are irrelevant to the argument, since whether these claims about human biology are "true" or not does not in any way change the argument, and no one is saying that humans "don't" share a common ancestor.

There is nothing compelling people to ignore human achievements in sciences, arts, philosophy, and so on and reduce humanity to the level of purely biological characteristics.

And there are multitudes of other arguments to be made that humans are unique and should be treated as unique. For example, do you believe that laws against murder should apply to killing fruit flies? Or do believe that it should be legal to kill and eat a human because it's legal to kill and eat a cow? I doubt it. Common sense alone is enough to dictate that humans are unique regardless of what biological traits they share with animals.

Edited October 22 by Night FM

[TheVat]

On 10/20/2024 at 5:49 PM, Night FM said:

(As an example, we could classify creatures into categories based on how philosophical they are,

I knew it!  The French ARE a different species!  

[iNow]

13 minutes ago, Night FM said:

We've seen people with the intellectual ability to since as far back as recorded human history.

We don’t need to go “as far back as recorded human history.”

Please name one human being who had the ability to “build supercomputers” before 1900. Just one. Go ahead. I’ll wait.

If you cannot, then we have yet another example of you arguing in bad faith. 

[Night FM]

24 minutes ago, iNow said:

We don’t need to go “as far back as recorded human history.”

Please name one human being who had the ability to “build supercomputers” before 1900. Just one. Go ahead. I’ll wait.

If you cannot, then we have yet another example of you arguing in bad faith. 

People had the same intellectual potential. Obviously, they wouldn't have the practical ability to "build one from scratch" since doing so relied on pre-existing technology.

But if a genius from the days of ancient Greece was time-warped to the present day, he would be significantly more intelligent than the average human.

[iNow]

You share many unfounded personal opinions as if they were indisputable facts. You should stop doing that. 

On another note, unsurprised you failed to name even one. Thanks for confirming you’re not here engaging in good faith. 

[Night FM]

When someone argues that it should be legal to kill and eat humans since they aren't an endangered species, then maybe I'll consider the idea that humans aren't special in some way, but as of now I believe it's more than obvious that they are, regardless of their common ancestry.

 

49 minutes ago, iNow said:

You share many unfounded personal opinions as if they were indisputable facts. You should stop doing that. 

On another note, unsurprised you failed to name even one. Thanks for confirming you’re not here engaging in good faith. 

I was talking about the intellectual potential, not the practical ability to do so without the required pre-existing technology.

Another example of how humans are different than animals:

https://www.jstor.org/stable/29762596

Sexual aggression, or behaviors which would be considered rape if humans did it exists as a mating behavior in the great Apes. However, humans recognize that this behavior is morally wrong despite it having a biological basis. Humans don't believe that simply because "other apes do this" that they should do it as well.

Edited October 22 by Night FM

[iNow]

28 minutes ago, Night FM said:

then maybe I'll consider the idea that humans aren't special in some way, but as of now I believe it's more than obvious that they are

Also known as the egocentric / self-serving biases

[Night FM]

2 minutes ago, iNow said:

Also known as the egocentric / self-serving biases

My arguments stand. We don't believe it's acceptable to murder people. If we believed that humans weren't special in some way that other animals aren't, we would likely have less problem with killing a person than killing a gorilla, since humans aren't an endangered species.

I'd argue, if anything, there is a hierarchy of complexity to nature, and humans happen to be on the top of it. This is why we find it more acceptable to kill a mammal than a human, and more acceptable to kill an insect than a mammal, and so on.

Edited October 22 by Night FM

[iNow]

31 minutes ago, Night FM said:

Another example of how humans are different than animals

This is a category error since humans ARE animals… but we’ve already covered this and you’ve already chosen to ignore it. Lather. Rinse. Repeat. 

1 minute ago, Night FM said:

My arguments stand

Righty-oh. Got me there. Lol

[Night FM]

2 minutes ago, iNow said:

This is a category error since humans ARE animals… but we’ve already covered this and you’ve already chosen to ignore it. Lather. Rinse. Repeat. 

Human's aren't animals unless people decide to apply that arbitrary category to them. Having biological similarities to other living things doesn't automatically make the categorization valid.

I'd argue that humans are defined far more by what they create than merely by their biology.

Edited October 22 by Night FM

[Phi for All]

43 minutes ago, Night FM said:

Human's aren't animals unless people decide to apply that arbitrary category to them.

What's arbitrary about the "animal" category? Nothing, nothing at all. We fit it perfectly.

Your supernatural beliefs blind you to the obvious classification and its merits. Humans are animals who have evolved an intelligence at the cost of other natural traits like big teeth or fins or wings. We gave up a lot to have this capacity, and many of us prefer to use methodologies that synchronize well with such intelligence rather than primitive, cave culture fear worship. We have unique brains, and we should be filling the gaps in our ignorance with high-quality knowledge rather than guesswork and superstition.

[Night FM]

1 hour ago, Phi for All said:

What's arbitrary about the "animal" category? Nothing, nothing at all. We fit it perfectly.

Your supernatural beliefs blind you to the obvious classification and its merits. Humans are animals who have evolved an intelligence at the cost of other natural traits like big teeth or fins or wings. We gave up a lot to have this capacity, and many of us prefer to use methodologies that synchronize well with such intelligence rather than primitive, cave culture fear worship. We have unique brains, and we should be filling the gaps in our ignorance with high-quality knowledge rather than guesswork and superstition.

Regardless, people frequently use the categorizations of humans as "animals" and "apes" in a reductive way, to imply that humans are purely materialistic or hedonistic (based on the assumption that animals are purely materialistic, which may not even be the case).

[Phi for All]

9 hours ago, Night FM said:

Regardless, people frequently use the categorizations of humans as "animals" and "apes" in a reductive way, to imply that humans are purely materialistic or hedonistic (based on the assumption that animals are purely materialistic, which may not even be the case).

Which people? Can you cite some examples? I think your bias is making the classification seem insulting to you. I know your beliefs give you supremacy over the other animals, and that your perspective makes you want to view everything as a totem pole hierarchy where your god is on top and everything else is below that. Do you think people are trying to deny you your rightful place in the hierarchy by calling you an animal? It's based on observations amassed over centuries, once science was able to operate without being under the thumb of the church. 

[swansont]

12 hours ago, Night FM said:

Regardless, people frequently use the categorizations of humans as "animals" and "apes" in a reductive way, to imply that humans are purely materialistic or hedonistic

Since other animals exhibit altruism, this is trivially falsified. We are classified as apes because the evidence is that we are descended from a common ancestor with other apes. There is nothing biologically distinctive that would put us in another family, only in a different genus.

 

12 hours ago, Night FM said:

(based on the assumption that animals are purely materialistic, which may not even be the case).

But if it’s not the case, then there is even less reason to claim that we are in a separate category.

[toucana]

 

 

To return briefly to the point of the original OP - Two points come to mind:

i. One of the reasons why Paul addressed the issue of marriage and offered guidance to Christians in the way that he did was because most of the early Christians were Chiliasts (from the Greek  - χιλιαστες  ‘a thousand years’) -  meaning that they believed as a matter of faith that the Second Coming would occur within their own lifetimes, and that the risen Christ would return to earth and establish a Messianic age of universal peace and brotherhood prior to the Last Judgement.

Quote

“Verily I say unto you there be some standing here who who shall not taste death before seeing the Son of Man coming in his kingdom” (Matthew 16:28).

Given that schedule, it was reasonable for Christians to ask  - Why get married at all when the Second Coming was just around the corner ?  Paul’s advice was primarily aimed at those members of the faithful who really couldn’t control their lustful drives and wait chastely for a decade or so until the eschaton arrived.

We know a certain amount about what early Christians believed from the surviving texts of patristic writers like Papias Bishop of Hierapolis (c.60 -130 AD) who visited various parts of the Holy Land and interviewed many other travellers passing through Hierapolis. Papias was said to have heard the apostle John speak, and to have met with Church elders of the first generation of Christians who had received their teaching and baptism directly from the original apostles of Christ. Unfortunately most of his writings (extant until the middle ages) have now been lost apart from some that survive in quotation. According to his principal commentator Eusebius, Papias himself was definitely a Pre-Millenial chiliast.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Papias_of_Hierapolis

ii. Pauls most explicit advice on marriage is found in the epistle 1 Corinthians :

Quote

“To the unmarried and the widows I say that it is good for them to remain single, as I am. But if they cannot exercise self-control, they should marry. For it is better to marry than to burn with passion” (1 Corinthians 7:8-9)

There is some debate among contemporary Christians as to whether he was advocating celibacy or simple abstinence, but given the apocalyptic mind-set mentioned above, it is difficult to see his advice as anything other than a form of short-term tactical pragmatism.

One further point is the question of quite how many of the epistles attributed to Paul were actually written by him ? There was an interesting stylometric analysis of these texts done a few years ago using Rasch analysis which offers some useful insights:

https://www.rasch.org/rmt/rmt151k.htm