Given that you said it 'destroys any attempt at proselityzation' I imagine that the vast majority of people would interpret it the same way as me, so hopefully they'll read down far enough to see your clarification.
The church didn't like him cutting up dead bodies. That's hardly an attack on science; it's simply a position on how to respect the dead.
The churches stood in the way of science throughout their histories, that's a fact, and your attempted whitewashing of history won't change it.
If you calm down long enough to read my post rationally, you'll see that I was pointing out that Christians are not fundamentally opposed to science. Members of the church have opposed certain scientific theories and methods of gathering evidence in the past, but that does not equate to a fundamental opposition to science. Indeed the Bible praises God as Creator, encourages the examination of his Creation in order to praise him and declares him to be a God of order, meaning that his Creation is one which can be studied.
Going from 'prayer is private and not about boasting' to 'evangelism is wrong' is a fairly spectacular non-sequiter, as is 'evangelism for profit is wrong, therefore all evangelism is wrong.'
That's a novel interpretation of the Sermon on the Mount. I don't quite see how Matthew 6 could be interpreted as being anti-evangelism. Matthew 5, with the whole 'You are the light of the world bit' would certainly contradict your thesis.
They weren't kids. They were a mob of aggressive young men, likely in their late teens, early twenties who were mocking him as the successor to Elijah. They were mocking God and his prophetand were likely a physical threat to Elisha. They got what they deserved.
3) Haven't we figured out by now religion and science don't mix? Copernicus, Galileo, Da Vinci, and who knows who else?
Copernicus was a Roman Catholic who was encouraged by his bishop to spread his research about heliocentrism. Galileo ran into trouble because of remarks he made about the hope - politics was the problem, not science. I don't recall Da Vinci running into any problems re: science and religion and he is recorded as wanting to die catholic with confession etc. If you take a look at two of the greatest ever scientist, Faraday and Maxwell, you'll see that they were evangelical Christians who played in active role in teaching the Bible in their local churches. Alister McGrath, the previous principle of Wycliffe College, the theological college of Oxfod University, got his first PhD in Biophysics. A large proportion of Christian students in Oxford are scientists, medics, mathematicians and engineers.
Try telling them that Christianity and science don't mix.
Am I the only one that finds it odd that a bunch of nutballs who don't even bother to read their own holy book
Wow, no sweeping generalisations or assumptions there.
swear that the it is the literal word God even though it was originally written in Aramaic, translated in to Hebrew, then to Latin, then to Greek, and the back to Latin, and then to English? And that's a best case scenario for most of the books of the "Bible"
Actually, the OT was written in Hebrew and the NT in Greek, with a handful of Aramaic. Translations have been made into a variety of languages over the years, but when a new translation is made, people don't take the most recent translation in another language then put it into their own; they take the most reliable Greek and Hebrew manuscripts and start over from them. seriously, read the translation notes from something like the NIV or the English Standard Version and see how absurd your allegation is. Modern translations are superior to older ones because we have more and better manuscripts available and are better at translating them.
Am I the only one who really questions the validity of the King James version, the one that most of the swear is "true and correct"?
Where do you get the idea that most people swear the KJV is the only true and correct version? There are quite a few vocal people about it, but most churches use one out of NIV, NRSV, ESV, NASB, NLT and serious scholars end to recommand translations like NASB and ESV.
7) What about the places where the Bible contradicts itself? Since its the literal word of God, that makes God wrong and since God is infallible, he can't be wrong, therefore - using their own logic - God did not write the Bible OR God isn't God.
Sure, if we go along with your false dichotomy that anything you think is a contradiction must be a contradiction and the explanations of those who know the Bible better, have studied it considerably more and arrive at a different conclusion are clearly wrong.
Oh, but we can ignore all of the historical facts because we have "faith".
The hilarious part of it all is that MS overhauled Window's GUI to be more competitive with OSX, an operating system that market's itself around it's built in features and pulls a lot of it's functionality from Linux
It pulls a lot more from Mac OS 9, NEXT Step and BSD than Linux.
There are visual clues as to which window as foremost, such as shadows, the close/minimize/zoom buttons (along with other controls) being coloured rather than grayed out. And when you go to the menu bar itself, the application name is on display.
I used to use a computer with, IIRC, 18 monitors. I can't imagine what a pain in the rear end that would have been if it were running OSX.
If they designed OS X around having 18 monitors available, the experience for the majority of users, who have onlye 1 monitor, would be a lot worse. Quite a few people do use 2 or even 3 though, so it's a valid criticism in those cases. IIRC, there are keyboard shortcuts to access the menu, so you could try those.
Sure, lack of evidence doesn't PROVE that there is no god, but OTOH it also doesn't PROVE that there is no tooth fairy. However given a lack of evidence it would not be rational to believe in either.
There is a significant difference in quantity and quality of evidence between the tooth fairy and God. People only believe in the tooth fairy as children because their parents tell them it exists. People come to believe in God as adults, even after many years of being strongly opposed to the idea.
I guess you're talking about miracles, since I'm not disputing that there was a historical (normal human) Jesus. You've listed the resurrection as a seperate issue, below. To keep this at least reasonably brief I'll just provide a number of bulletted points:
I'm not saying the miracles provide concrete evidence; I'm saying that they leave open the possibility that it could have been God. If the testimony of the gospel writers is to be believed, then there were some miracles performed which would have been pretty hard to duplicate.
Aside from miracles, they also record the fulfilment of a multitude of prophecies made centuries beforehand.
If Jesus was perfoming anything that appeared unique (certainly not!) and truly extraorinary at the time, then why did only 4 of his 12 disciples bother to record it,
Because once a few people had recorded the details and disseminated them, there wasn't any need for further accounts to be recorded. Their time was better spent talking to people about Jesus and running churches.
and of those 3 only 30 years after the fact and one 60 years after the fact?
We don't know when they started writing, but liturgical details and early creeds would have been circulating between churches in oral and written form before the gospels were published. Telling people about the gospel and having them spread the message to others was a quicker and cheaper way of spreading the word int hose days than writing it down and a vastly better use of the disciples' time. It makes sense that they would only sit down and record the gospel in a more permanent form in their later years when they knew they would soon be unable to pass it on orally and the church would have need of first hand accounts to refer to.
Why is this "evidence" primarily in the synoptic gospels,
As opposed to John? Because each gospel writer had an objective in mind when writing. Each one was a central theme to communicate and recorded the appropriate material which best illustrated certain aspects of Jesus in order to get the theme across. In John's case, his objective was best served by focusing on the final few days of Jesus' life. If his was the last written, there certainly wouldn't have been much need to repeat what was already recorded in the synoptic gospels.
missing from the non-cannonical gospels,
Because they were made up hundreds of years later to promote gnosticism, rather than with the intention of accurately recording what happened.
missing from any other contemporary account?
There isn't much literature surviving from the day, but what we do have backs up the gospels. Just because they didn't record something doesn't mean it didn't happen.
Makes you wonder what happened to the miracles, doesn't it
Not particularly. Narrative accounts are bound to contain more miracles than letters. The emphasis of the gospel writers is generally on the resurrection as evidence for Christianity. Following it, there was little need for Jesus to prove his divinity.
Maybe he was seen alive after his crucifiction, maybe not.
Hundreds of people died claiming to have seen him.
If you're rational about it, that's like asking where is the glaring evidence that there is no tooth fairy.
There's plenty of evidence that there is no tooth fairy i.e. parents leaving money under the pillow for their children, taking the tooth and then claiming it was the tooth fairy.
The obvious evidence that there is no god is the complete lack of evidence of any such entity.
That's a massive logical fallacy. Absence of evidence does not mean evidence of absence. It's also plain wrong given the existence of the gospels, the epistles, the testimony about the resurrection, the existence of the Jewish religion for millenia, the way the church has thrived in the face of persecution, personal experience of miracles and answerer prayer by some people. In some cases, some of these things do not constitute great evidence, but to suggest that there is no evidence God exists is really quite laughable.
Why presuppose something that you can't see, touch, feel and that doesn't make itself known in any way? (rhetorical question)
Are you replying to the correct post? Because I'm talking about the Christian God who is claimed to have acted in history in ways people could see, touch and feel; the Christian God who is claimed to have made himself known through Jesus Christ, particularly in his death and resurrection; the Christian God who many Christians claim has made himself known to him?
If you're religious you will probably argue the "feel" part of that based on subjective experience, but note that non-religious people assign the same subjective experience to rational causes.
How about you address me, rather than the 'probable religious person'? I'm talking primarily here about the objective truth of the historical event of the resurrection.
I'm not sure what you mean by "falsifying god", and that's not what I said.
I got the impression you were trying to falsify a god theory by showing that an experiment designed to show if he exists would fail.
What I said was that any experiment to prove that god DOES exist will fail, and I'm specifically talking about a god that has any power over the physical world. i.e. any experiment where you look for a result not explicable by science - proof of action by a supernatural force - will fail.
All such an experiment would suggest is that God may not be an experimental variable who can be controlled by experimenters. I mean really, can you not see that a God could exist who can influence the physical world and chooses not to take part in an experiment?
Fine, but that's really just a philosophical distinction.
No, it's important distinction between science and reality. Science is merely a model, which is constantly being improved upon. It doesn't tell us what reality is; it merely gives us a model that seems to resemble reality as closely as we can measure.
If you want to ascribe the name of "god" to nature you can
I don't, primarily because God created nature and the Creator != his creation.
This type of god is 100% impotent
And is also not the Christian God.
No doubt Jesus, the jewish preacher/militant
A Jewish militant who didn't fight the Romans? What a novel theory.
who joinded the cult of John the Baptist, and stepped into his role after his death,
John pointed to Jesus and saw himself as one of his followers, not the other way around. Jesus had a bigger ministry which John's disciples were jealous of. Many of his disciples left to join Jesus. If anything, John joined Jesus' 'cult.'
Yes, its just a shame about all that eternal suffering for those who aren't saved. Its quite a harsh punishment for his children that get squashed by a falling piano before they repent, or die as babies, or believe in a different religion, or whatever.
The babies thing is a contentious issue and there is some debate about whether they are actually saved or not. As far as the rest go, the punishment is in proportion to the crime which is failing to give glory to God. The crime in this case is in proportion to how much God deserves glory. As an infinitely glorious being, it is infinitely sinful to fail to give him glory and therefore deserving of a terrible punishment. In fact, it demands such a punishment from an infinitely holy God.
Couldn't he have come up with something a little more... forgiving?
What could be more forgiving than punishing his own innocent son in our place? He can't simply pretend there was no crime. That wouldn't be forgiving - it would be unjust. If a crime is committed than a holy, just, good God must punish it. You cannot demand that God deal with evil, then expect him to overlook for any you may have been responsible for.
When Jesus returns, does this mean that there will be no more evil?
Yes.
Is this because we suddenly lose our free will
No; it is because Christians are transformed to be more like Christ and develop the same will as him. People won't want to sin and will see that a life lived for God is more glorious and more rewarding and more pleasurable than a life lived against him.
or just that only the nice people will be left
Christians aren't defined as 'nice people,' and aren't saved on the basis of being nice. Christians are those who have repented and been forgiven. 'Niceness' is a product of being saved, not a cause of it. In a sense that means that only nice people will be left, but it is no way a reflection on people prior to salvation. There are plenty of people who are 'nice' without being Christians and plenty of Christians who have lived lives that aren't 'nice.' But everyone has failed to give glory to God, so everyone needs saved and only the saved can be made 'nice' enough for God's standards.
If I believed in a God, it would not be this one, sorry.
You chose to believe in God depending on how much you like him? That's interesting because Christians are frequently criticised for believing what they want, rather than believing on the basis of evidence. I believe in the Christian God based on evidence and would you ask you to reconsider and make your decision based on evidence rather than emotion.
Never attribute to malice what can be adequately explained by incompatance. Remember that the gospels were written by leading church figures at least 70 years after the death of Jesus.
Nonsense. Scholarly opinion is that they were written before the end of the first century. Paul's letters are dated around the 60s AD and attest to the same events as the gospels. Luke, the author of the eponymous gospel was also the author of the book of Acts and was a companion of Paul, meaning that his would have been written fairly early. He also was very scholarly in researching the gospel, speaking to eye-witnesses of events, etc. Mark probably came before Luke and is traditionally assumed to have originated from Simon Peter's testimony. The gospels really aren't very divorced at all from the events they describe, especially when you compare them to other historical documents which are much more divorced, yet are accepted as accurate.
Just look back at accounts of events 70 years ago to see how information can be distorted through time and retelling. For instance a large number of people beleive and have written about how JFK was not assasinated by oswald. Or that the moon landings did not occur.
What do the eye-witnesses say? They say these events occurred. What do the eye-witnesses of the resurrection say? That it happened. The gospels don't record society's collective view of what happened; they record eye-witness accounts, so it is not a matter of myth, but rather of reliability of witnesses.
Now imagine 300 years from now a group of historians selected only "fake" moon landing accounts to include in their definative 20th century history.
It would be very strange to take the minority view. I fact, you would expect myths to become more prevalent as time goes on, and in the case of the gospels, the apocryphal ones appear after two or centuries, claiming that Jesus didn't die or didn't rise. If you have no accounts of an event, one rooted in eye-witness accounts and recorded within a couple of decades of the event and non-eye-witness accounts from centuries alter, which would you deem more trustworthy?
The new testiment was written by a biased third partys after the fact
There is no such thing as a neutral source. Just because they believe it happened doesn't make them liars. If you want evidence that an event happened, then rule that evidence from people who believe it happened is inadmissible, then of course you're going to conclude that it didn't happen. Would be a terrible way to reach a conclusion though. Given the pressure on the writers and their sources to recant what was claimed, it is obvious that they believed what was written and given that they were in a position to whether or not it happened, they were either deluded in their hundreds, or were correct and true.
editoralized by another biased third party to form the bible.
The canon was formerly ratified relatively late, but was already in broad use for a long time and the gospels themselves weren't seriously doubted. Certainly no-one doubted the doctrine of the resurrection.
There are numerous surviving account of Jesus that do not describe his ressurection.
Such as? If you're talking about the gospels of Thomas or Mary, they are from centuries later and are massively unreliable. Do you have any sources from the first century saying that Christians did not believe in the resurrection or that anyone had disproved it? If not, then you're working form sources that are much less reliable than the gospels.
they only cannonized those that agreed with the dogma of the early church.
They canonised the ones accepted as reliable by the church. Quite a sensible, scholarly thing to do.
Even modern news stories are hearsay and third/second
They already have. God gives the Holy Spirit to Christians to help them live better lives. Thanks to the resurrection they have the promise that they too will rise to be in heaven, rather than suffering the effects of having committed evil acts and go instead to hell.
God could come down and destroy everything evil at any moment. What people don't like to consider is that they themselves would be destroyed in such an act because God is holy and just and must therefore deal with us as people who have lived imperfect lives. The fact that God doesn't destroy the world right now is actually described by the Bible as an act of mercy because it is demonstrates God's restraint in giving us time to repent and be saved by him, rather than being destroyed. Allowing people to live does mean that they will continue to do evil until Jesus returns, but it does mean there is an opportunity for them to be saved, which is God's objective.
I rather see it the other way around - there is no reason to presuppose that God exists when on the surface of it it's obvious that he does not
How, exactly, is it obvious that he doesn't? Where is this glaring evidence that there is no God?
any theory that a matter-affecting god exists would be repeatedly proved false by experiment.
That makes no sense whatsoever. What experiment would you propose that falsifies god and what sort of god are you falsifying? Certainly not the Christian God, unless you have a better idea about the capabilities of experimental science than guys like Faraday and Maxwell, both of whom were strong evangelical Christians and among the greatest physicists of all time.
Having said that, of course science can't prove that something doesn't exist (note this is not the same thing!), but given that no scientist has ever seen an atom or neuron behave other than as predicted by science, it does seem that the existing laws have it covered - no need (or room!) for an unnown force (whether natural or supernatural) to be assumed.
I'm not talking about a philosophical need for a god to exist. The Christian God is not a god of the gaps. He is a God who is claimed to have acted in history and of whom there are historical records and testimony. A God who created the universe and therefore the physical laws that keep it running. Performing experiments can tell you nothing about God; all it can do is allow you to test a model that seems to produce the same results as the universe, but does not necessarily work in exactly the same way.
I had never heard of this edition, but it seems interesting, I'll try to get a copy.
It's a web site that consists of plucking verses out of the Bible and saying they contradict each other, without having made any attempt whatsoever to understand the passages. In other words, it is the very antithesis of reliable, scholarly work.
However, if we start looking for reasonable explanations and understanding the context we very quickly drop any kind of religious motivation for the Bible. The most reasonable explanation is that priests make their living from donations by religious people. In that context, they have a strong motivation to make people believe in a supreme being who is represented by the clergy.
This perfectly illustrates my point about not knowing anything about content or context. How well are the priests represented in the Bible? Not very. A lot of the time, they're pretty corrupt, particularly in the prophetic books where Israel and Judah are condemned for their pluralism and synchretism. In the NT, the Pharisees are largely condemned, the temple has to be cleared out because of corruption and the ordinary man is told to look to the scriptures for himself and go straight to Jesus, rather than having to go through a priest. The letter to the Hebrews is particularly strong on this point. Furthermore, the disciples and early leaders of the church, who were in the best position to know whether Christianity was true or a lie, were happy to die proclaiming the gospel. Some of them died claiming to have seen the risen Lord Jesus Christ. If they were just in it for the money, why one earth would they die for a lie?
It's entirely reasonable to assume that the people who wrote the Bible were telling shameless lies when they wrote it.
Why, when it's back up so well by history, continues to be by archaeological finds and frequently paints people, including the author, in a bad light?
More recently, there is no historic evidence at all that Jesus even existed, much less perform the miracles described in the Bible.
If you suggested that to professor of history specialising in the time period, he would laugh in your face. Really, there is no serious scholarly debate about the existence of Jesus. Even Richard Dawkins, when trying to find a professor who would cast doubt on his existence, had to resort to speaking to an English literature professor, rather than a historian because the historians had no doubts.
One can just as well find "evidence" that Jesus did not resurrect and his tomb was identified, as was reported in the news some time ago.
The evidence for the resurrection is significantly better then the evidence against. The tomb story was quite frankly laughable. The scholars who found the tomb and the rest of the archaeological community, who have known about it for 20-odd years, look with scorn upon Cameron's 'documentary'. Just take a look at this roundup of the responses.
If you want to pick some parts of the Bible in which you want to believe, it's your right
I don't pick some parts; I believe all of it.
but do not call it "reasonable", because it's not, it's blind faith that goes against reason.
Perhaps I'm better informed about why I believe than you are? It's certainly not 'blind faith,' it's faith in the evidence presented to me in the testimony of the Bible and the historical sources that support it. This idea that faith must be blind is a ridiculous strawman that people attack so that they don't have to intellectually engage with Christianity.
When you believe in something, either your belief is strong enough to stand alone without proof, or you should have stronger
We can be fairly certain that the disciples died proclaiming the message of the New Testament and that the manuscripts we currently have accurately reflect the original gospels and letters. We can therefore be fairly certain that these people died proclaiming that Jesus rose from the dead. If he didn't, then they died for what they knew to be a lie, which would be bizarre. If he didn't, then his body was still around somewhere, yet none of the many groups with an interest in squashing Christianity were able to produce the body to silence them. It seems more likely that people couldn't produce a body because there was no body and the disciples died for what they knew to be true: that Jesus Christ rose from the dead and ascended into heaven.
I can't prove this, but it seems the most reasonable explanation.
If you are so convinced it is a lie, then Christianity cannot fall under your third category and therefore either isn't a religion, or religion does not exclusively fall under that category.
That depends what kind of god you believe in. The existence of a god that has any power in the material world can easily be disproved because any experiment to show nature behaving counter to the predictions of science (i.e laws of nature) will fail.
That doesn't disprove god. In fact, it shows that science cannot disprove god. the failure of science to observe something does not equate to a disproof of that something's existence.
The Bible contains statements that we know to be false because they contradict each other. For instance, compare the first chapter of Matthew with the second chapter of Luke, both of which have the genealogy of Jesus. How come there are missing generations mentioned in one of them but not on the other? A man can have several sons, but not several fathers. Therefore, at least one of the gospels, either Matthew or Luke, or both, is proved by the Bible itself to contain false statements.
This is what is known as a false dichotomy is one of the many reasons why you shouldn't get your information from something like the Sceptics Annotated Bible where there has been zero effort made to understand the context and see if there is a reasonable explanation.
In this case, the explanation is that the gospel writers were selective in which generations they recorded. Matthew, for instance, selects sufficient generations to highlight David as an ancestor and the exile is an event, in order to clue us in to what Jesus' mission is going to be. When he says that someone is the son or father of someone else, there may well have been intermediate generations that he did not mention. You could compare this with CS Lewis' Narnia books where the boys are called sons of Adam int he sense that they are descended from him, rather than in the sense of being immediate descendants.
Things that we can never know are wrong. These are called religion.
What do you call Christianity then? It as after all routed in historical events and as Paul said, regarding the resurrection, if it never happened then Christians are to be pitied because they are trusting in a lie.
Slashdot Mirror
Given that you said it 'destroys any attempt at proselityzation' I imagine that the vast majority of people would interpret it the same way as me, so hopefully they'll read down far enough to see your clarification.
Where did I claim that? I was simply pointing out that Christianity is not inherently opposed to science and the given examples were poor.
The web page clearly shows that his ideas were taken seriously and that he himself considered his work to be in the service of God.
The church didn't like him cutting up dead bodies. That's hardly an attack on science; it's simply a position on how to respect the dead.
If you calm down long enough to read my post rationally, you'll see that I was pointing out that Christians are not fundamentally opposed to science. Members of the church have opposed certain scientific theories and methods of gathering evidence in the past, but that does not equate to a fundamental opposition to science. Indeed the Bible praises God as Creator, encourages the examination of his Creation in order to praise him and declares him to be a God of order, meaning that his Creation is one which can be studied.
Going from 'prayer is private and not about boasting' to 'evangelism is wrong' is a fairly spectacular non-sequiter, as is 'evangelism for profit is wrong, therefore all evangelism is wrong.'
That's a novel interpretation of the Sermon on the Mount. I don't quite see how Matthew 6 could be interpreted as being anti-evangelism. Matthew 5, with the whole 'You are the light of the world bit' would certainly contradict your thesis.
There's the small matter of Paul and others regarding it as a literal story and therefore a lot of NT theology hinging on it.
They weren't kids. They were a mob of aggressive young men, likely in their late teens, early twenties who were mocking him as the successor to Elijah. They were mocking God and his prophetand were likely a physical threat to Elisha. They got what they deserved.
Copernicus was a Roman Catholic who was encouraged by his bishop to spread his research about heliocentrism. Galileo ran into trouble because of remarks he made about the hope - politics was the problem, not science. I don't recall Da Vinci running into any problems re: science and religion and he is recorded as wanting to die catholic with confession etc. If you take a look at two of the greatest ever scientist, Faraday and Maxwell, you'll see that they were evangelical Christians who played in active role in teaching the Bible in their local churches. Alister McGrath, the previous principle of Wycliffe College, the theological college of Oxfod University, got his first PhD in Biophysics. A large proportion of Christian students in Oxford are scientists, medics, mathematicians and engineers.
Try telling them that Christianity and science don't mix.
Wow, no sweeping generalisations or assumptions there.
Actually, the OT was written in Hebrew and the NT in Greek, with a handful of Aramaic. Translations have been made into a variety of languages over the years, but when a new translation is made, people don't take the most recent translation in another language then put it into their own; they take the most reliable Greek and Hebrew manuscripts and start over from them. seriously, read the translation notes from something like the NIV or the English Standard Version and see how absurd your allegation is. Modern translations are superior to older ones because we have more and better manuscripts available and are better at translating them.
Where do you get the idea that most people swear the KJV is the only true and correct version? There are quite a few vocal people about it, but most churches use one out of NIV, NRSV, ESV, NASB, NLT and serious scholars end to recommand translations like NASB and ESV.
Sure, if we go along with your false dichotomy that anything you think is a contradiction must be a contradiction and the explanations of those who know the Bible better, have studied it considerably more and arrive at a different conclusion are clearly wrong.
Pot. Kettle. Black. Do some research.
Ah, the irony of your sig, in the light of your comment. It's hardly Bungie who are being oversensitive; it's guys like you who can't take a joke.
It pulls a lot more from Mac OS 9, NEXT Step and BSD than Linux.
If you're having trouble telling if a window has focus, then it seemed like a possibility. Just trying to be helpful.
There are visual clues as to which window as foremost, such as shadows, the close/minimize/zoom buttons (along with other controls) being coloured rather than grayed out. And when you go to the menu bar itself, the application name is on display.
If they designed OS X around having 18 monitors available, the experience for the majority of users, who have onlye 1 monitor, would be a lot worse. Quite a few people do use 2 or even 3 though, so it's a valid criticism in those cases. IIRC, there are keyboard shortcuts to access the menu, so you could try those.
There is a significant difference in quantity and quality of evidence between the tooth fairy and God. People only believe in the tooth fairy as children because their parents tell them it exists. People come to believe in God as adults, even after many years of being strongly opposed to the idea.
I'm not saying the miracles provide concrete evidence; I'm saying that they leave open the possibility that it could have been God. If the testimony of the gospel writers is to be believed, then there were some miracles performed which would have been pretty hard to duplicate.
Aside from miracles, they also record the fulfilment of a multitude of prophecies made centuries beforehand.
Because once a few people had recorded the details and disseminated them, there wasn't any need for further accounts to be recorded. Their time was better spent talking to people about Jesus and running churches.
We don't know when they started writing, but liturgical details and early creeds would have been circulating between churches in oral and written form before the gospels were published. Telling people about the gospel and having them spread the message to others was a quicker and cheaper way of spreading the word int hose days than writing it down and a vastly better use of the disciples' time. It makes sense that they would only sit down and record the gospel in a more permanent form in their later years when they knew they would soon be unable to pass it on orally and the church would have need of first hand accounts to refer to.
As opposed to John? Because each gospel writer had an objective in mind when writing. Each one was a central theme to communicate and recorded the appropriate material which best illustrated certain aspects of Jesus in order to get the theme across. In John's case, his objective was best served by focusing on the final few days of Jesus' life. If his was the last written, there certainly wouldn't have been much need to repeat what was already recorded in the synoptic gospels.
Because they were made up hundreds of years later to promote gnosticism, rather than with the intention of accurately recording what happened.
There isn't much literature surviving from the day, but what we do have backs up the gospels. Just because they didn't record something doesn't mean it didn't happen.
Not particularly. Narrative accounts are bound to contain more miracles than letters. The emphasis of the gospel writers is generally on the resurrection as evidence for Christianity. Following it, there was little need for Jesus to prove his divinity.
Hundreds of people died claiming to have seen him.
There's plenty of evidence that there is no tooth fairy i.e. parents leaving money under the pillow for their children, taking the tooth and then claiming it was the tooth fairy.
That's a massive logical fallacy. Absence of evidence does not mean evidence of absence. It's also plain wrong given the existence of the gospels, the epistles, the testimony about the resurrection, the existence of the Jewish religion for millenia, the way the church has thrived in the face of persecution, personal experience of miracles and answerer prayer by some people. In some cases, some of these things do not constitute great evidence, but to suggest that there is no evidence God exists is really quite laughable.
Are you replying to the correct post? Because I'm talking about the Christian God who is claimed to have acted in history in ways people could see, touch and feel; the Christian God who is claimed to have made himself known through Jesus Christ, particularly in his death and resurrection; the Christian God who many Christians claim has made himself known to him?
How about you address me, rather than the 'probable religious person'? I'm talking primarily here about the objective truth of the historical event of the resurrection.
I got the impression you were trying to falsify a god theory by showing that an experiment designed to show if he exists would fail.
All such an experiment would suggest is that God may not be an experimental variable who can be controlled by experimenters. I mean really, can you not see that a God could exist who can influence the physical world and chooses not to take part in an experiment?
No, it's important distinction between science and reality. Science is merely a model, which is constantly being improved upon. It doesn't tell us what reality is; it merely gives us a model that seems to resemble reality as closely as we can measure.
I don't, primarily because God created nature and the Creator != his creation.
And is also not the Christian God.
A Jewish militant who didn't fight the Romans? What a novel theory.
John pointed to Jesus and saw himself as one of his followers, not the other way around. Jesus had a bigger ministry which John's disciples were jealous of. Many of his disciples left to join Jesus. If anything, John joined Jesus' 'cult.'
That's a mighty big
The babies thing is a contentious issue and there is some debate about whether they are actually saved or not. As far as the rest go, the punishment is in proportion to the crime which is failing to give glory to God. The crime in this case is in proportion to how much God deserves glory. As an infinitely glorious being, it is infinitely sinful to fail to give him glory and therefore deserving of a terrible punishment. In fact, it demands such a punishment from an infinitely holy God.
What could be more forgiving than punishing his own innocent son in our place? He can't simply pretend there was no crime. That wouldn't be forgiving - it would be unjust. If a crime is committed than a holy, just, good God must punish it. You cannot demand that God deal with evil, then expect him to overlook for any you may have been responsible for.
Yes.
No; it is because Christians are transformed to be more like Christ and develop the same will as him. People won't want to sin and will see that a life lived for God is more glorious and more rewarding and more pleasurable than a life lived against him.
Christians aren't defined as 'nice people,' and aren't saved on the basis of being nice. Christians are those who have repented and been forgiven. 'Niceness' is a product of being saved, not a cause of it. In a sense that means that only nice people will be left, but it is no way a reflection on people prior to salvation. There are plenty of people who are 'nice' without being Christians and plenty of Christians who have lived lives that aren't 'nice.' But everyone has failed to give glory to God, so everyone needs saved and only the saved can be made 'nice' enough for God's standards.
You chose to believe in God depending on how much you like him? That's interesting because Christians are frequently criticised for believing what they want, rather than believing on the basis of evidence. I believe in the Christian God based on evidence and would you ask you to reconsider and make your decision based on evidence rather than emotion.
Nonsense. Scholarly opinion is that they were written before the end of the first century. Paul's letters are dated around the 60s AD and attest to the same events as the gospels. Luke, the author of the eponymous gospel was also the author of the book of Acts and was a companion of Paul, meaning that his would have been written fairly early. He also was very scholarly in researching the gospel, speaking to eye-witnesses of events, etc. Mark probably came before Luke and is traditionally assumed to have originated from Simon Peter's testimony. The gospels really aren't very divorced at all from the events they describe, especially when you compare them to other historical documents which are much more divorced, yet are accepted as accurate.
What do the eye-witnesses say? They say these events occurred. What do the eye-witnesses of the resurrection say? That it happened. The gospels don't record society's collective view of what happened; they record eye-witness accounts, so it is not a matter of myth, but rather of reliability of witnesses.
It would be very strange to take the minority view. I fact, you would expect myths to become more prevalent as time goes on, and in the case of the gospels, the apocryphal ones appear after two or centuries, claiming that Jesus didn't die or didn't rise. If you have no accounts of an event, one rooted in eye-witness accounts and recorded within a couple of decades of the event and non-eye-witness accounts from centuries alter, which would you deem more trustworthy?
There is no such thing as a neutral source. Just because they believe it happened doesn't make them liars. If you want evidence that an event happened, then rule that evidence from people who believe it happened is inadmissible, then of course you're going to conclude that it didn't happen. Would be a terrible way to reach a conclusion though. Given the pressure on the writers and their sources to recant what was claimed, it is obvious that they believed what was written and given that they were in a position to whether or not it happened, they were either deluded in their hundreds, or were correct and true.
The canon was formerly ratified relatively late, but was already in broad use for a long time and the gospels themselves weren't seriously doubted. Certainly no-one doubted the doctrine of the resurrection.
Such as? If you're talking about the gospels of Thomas or Mary, they are from centuries later and are massively unreliable. Do you have any sources from the first century saying that Christians did not believe in the resurrection or that anyone had disproved it? If not, then you're working form sources that are much less reliable than the gospels.
They canonised the ones accepted as reliable by the church. Quite a sensible, scholarly thing to do.
They already have. God gives the Holy Spirit to Christians to help them live better lives. Thanks to the resurrection they have the promise that they too will rise to be in heaven, rather than suffering the effects of having committed evil acts and go instead to hell.
God could come down and destroy everything evil at any moment. What people don't like to consider is that they themselves would be destroyed in such an act because God is holy and just and must therefore deal with us as people who have lived imperfect lives. The fact that God doesn't destroy the world right now is actually described by the Bible as an act of mercy because it is demonstrates God's restraint in giving us time to repent and be saved by him, rather than being destroyed. Allowing people to live does mean that they will continue to do evil until Jesus returns, but it does mean there is an opportunity for them to be saved, which is God's objective.
How, exactly, is it obvious that he doesn't? Where is this glaring evidence that there is no God?
That makes no sense whatsoever. What experiment would you propose that falsifies god and what sort of god are you falsifying? Certainly not the Christian God, unless you have a better idea about the capabilities of experimental science than guys like Faraday and Maxwell, both of whom were strong evangelical Christians and among the greatest physicists of all time.
I'm not talking about a philosophical need for a god to exist. The Christian God is not a god of the gaps. He is a God who is claimed to have acted in history and of whom there are historical records and testimony. A God who created the universe and therefore the physical laws that keep it running. Performing experiments can tell you nothing about God; all it can do is allow you to test a model that seems to produce the same results as the universe, but does not necessarily work in exactly the same way.
It's a web site that consists of plucking verses out of the Bible and saying they contradict each other, without having made any attempt whatsoever to understand the passages. In other words, it is the very antithesis of reliable, scholarly work.
This perfectly illustrates my point about not knowing anything about content or context. How well are the priests represented in the Bible? Not very. A lot of the time, they're pretty corrupt, particularly in the prophetic books where Israel and Judah are condemned for their pluralism and synchretism. In the NT, the Pharisees are largely condemned, the temple has to be cleared out because of corruption and the ordinary man is told to look to the scriptures for himself and go straight to Jesus, rather than having to go through a priest. The letter to the Hebrews is particularly strong on this point. Furthermore, the disciples and early leaders of the church, who were in the best position to know whether Christianity was true or a lie, were happy to die proclaiming the gospel. Some of them died claiming to have seen the risen Lord Jesus Christ. If they were just in it for the money, why one earth would they die for a lie?
Why, when it's back up so well by history, continues to be by archaeological finds and frequently paints people, including the author, in a bad light?
If you suggested that to professor of history specialising in the time period, he would laugh in your face. Really, there is no serious scholarly debate about the existence of Jesus. Even Richard Dawkins, when trying to find a professor who would cast doubt on his existence, had to resort to speaking to an English literature professor, rather than a historian because the historians had no doubts.
The evidence for the resurrection is significantly better then the evidence against. The tomb story was quite frankly laughable. The scholars who found the tomb and the rest of the archaeological community, who have known about it for 20-odd years, look with scorn upon Cameron's 'documentary'. Just take a look at this roundup of the responses.
I don't pick some parts; I believe all of it.
Perhaps I'm better informed about why I believe than you are? It's certainly not 'blind faith,' it's faith in the evidence presented to me in the testimony of the Bible and the historical sources that support it. This idea that faith must be blind is a ridiculous strawman that people attack so that they don't have to intellectually engage with Christianity.
We can be fairly certain that the disciples died proclaiming the message of the New Testament and that the manuscripts we currently have accurately reflect the original gospels and letters. We can therefore be fairly certain that these people died proclaiming that Jesus rose from the dead. If he didn't, then they died for what they knew to be a lie, which would be bizarre. If he didn't, then his body was still around somewhere, yet none of the many groups with an interest in squashing Christianity were able to produce the body to silence them. It seems more likely that people couldn't produce a body because there was no body and the disciples died for what they knew to be true: that Jesus Christ rose from the dead and ascended into heaven.
I can't prove this, but it seems the most reasonable explanation.
If you are so convinced it is a lie, then Christianity cannot fall under your third category and therefore either isn't a religion, or religion does not exclusively fall under that category.
That doesn't disprove god. In fact, it shows that science cannot disprove god. the failure of science to observe something does not equate to a disproof of that something's existence.
This is what is known as a false dichotomy is one of the many reasons why you shouldn't get your information from something like the Sceptics Annotated Bible where there has been zero effort made to understand the context and see if there is a reasonable explanation.
In this case, the explanation is that the gospel writers were selective in which generations they recorded. Matthew, for instance, selects sufficient generations to highlight David as an ancestor and the exile is an event, in order to clue us in to what Jesus' mission is going to be. When he says that someone is the son or father of someone else, there may well have been intermediate generations that he did not mention. You could compare this with CS Lewis' Narnia books where the boys are called sons of Adam int he sense that they are descended from him, rather than in the sense of being immediate descendants.
God defeated evil on the cross and Jesus will return.
10 words, not even 10 seconds.
What do you call Christianity then? It as after all routed in historical events and as Paul said, regarding the resurrection, if it never happened then Christians are to be pitied because they are trusting in a lie.