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Post by WaterWizard on Apr 18, 2012 0:52:39 GMT -8
@nathan I'm going to read the PDF. Looks interesting. @all I think it's clear that there are intelligent men even today who believe that God is logically possible and they even argue that God is logically expected from what we observe in nature (order, law, etc). Consider this debate below: www.michaelshermer.com/2007/02/dinesh-shermer-debate3/A Christian apologetist is debating a Cal Tech professor and does a successful job (they also mention that this is the third debate and that they have each won one of the previous debates). In light of that, I find it ignorant for guys to say that Christianity is illogical/ridiculous/etc. It's not. It really isn't. Logic can be used to lean toward both theism and atheism. cheeseYou're right about faith not equaling blind faith. Christians accept one thing on faith and then the rest follows. We believe in the resurrection of Jesus Christ. If he was able to live a perfect life, fulfill all the ancient prophecies, be nailed to a cross, and rise again three days later, we believe he was telling the truth. Interestingly, history seems to lend to the fact that Jesus's resurrection did occur. Contemporary historians talk about it, even those who would be against it (Jews, Romans). Also, the explosion of Christianity in spite of adversity is really staggering. And the fact that thousands of Christians saw Jesus and then followed his teachings at grave personal peril is amazing and compelling. Many men and women were martyred for following Christ. Countless people. Would they do that if the story was all made up 30 years after Christ, by a bunch of men? It's doubtful. History is on our side. Furthermore, you all saw my other thread about the sheer influence of Christ. He has changed the world. That demands attention. We would be utter fools to ignore such a teacher. As educated men we at least owe it to ourselves to examine the life and teachings of Christ, the man who changed the world like no one ever before or after. Honestly, can you call yourself wise if you don't care to read the short best selling book about the most influential (wise) man in history? I read it (the new testament) and even the prequel (the old testament) and it changed my life.
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Dre
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Post by Dre on Apr 18, 2012 3:30:37 GMT -8
Firstly, Christianity only 'exploded' when Constantine became emperor and made it the official religion of Rome. It would never have become the force it is today if that hadn't happened. Besides, Islam has now surpassed it in numbers anyway.
Christianity has become rational because it is so popular. A person isn't irrational for believing what they are brought up with, what fills a hole in their, or something that has an appelaing community (these are the reasons people are religious).
If you took it out of that context, eg. if someone proposed an almost identical religion, the difference being it hadn't been believed by western civilisation for centuries, it would be irrational for someone to believe that in the 21st century.
Many things you assume to be historical fact are contested. For example we know the Barabarus story is a fabrication. The Romans never let the public choose to free one and persecute the other. That was adopted from a Jewish tradition where they'd free a goat to be claimed by the devil, and sacrifice the other one to purify their souls or something like that.
What's more is that Barabarus means 'son of man' which contrasts to Jesus, who is the son of God. It is completely poetic, not historical. Most of the Bible is like this, most of the main characters in stories have poetic names.
Having people die for it simply means they believed it. Given what people believed in those days, they seemed relatively gullible anyway. They believed that the souls of bodies could appear to people (not the phsyical body) before Jesus came along, so it's nothing special that they believed Christianity.
I don't need to get into specifics. What Christians don't understand is that using historical evidence to justify theology is a completely different ball game to using it to justify ordinary events, yet Christians apply the criterion for ordinary events to theology.
I've read lots of Christian apologetics, and all they ever do is simply show that what they believe is logically conceivable, in the sense that it is not self-defeating or an internal contradiction. They never actually show why it's more rational for the neutral person to believe it over alternate options.
Religious people never do this because they themselves aren't neutrals. Being logically conceivable doesn't mean it's rational. It's logically conceivable to believe an elephant could charge into my room, but that certainly isn't a rational belief.
Take for example when Christians defend the idea that evil and a good God and evil can exist together. They either say that we can't know for sure (we don't need to know for sure), accuse us of questioning God (fallacy of circularity, assuming he exists when his existence is in question) or resort to theology (also a fallacy or circularity). They never actually show why it is rational for the neutral to believe it, and why it is irrational to believe otherwise. In fact theists themselves were asking themselves the question of a good God and evil before atheists were allowed to voice their opinion. The fact that theists themselves didn;t think it appeared to be designed by a loving God alone shows how irrational that belief is.
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Post by jorgen on Apr 18, 2012 4:18:00 GMT -8
I'm pretty sure Christianity was hella popular before Constantine issued the Edict of Milan. The only thing that Constantine did was make Christianity legal, btw, not make it the state religion.
I myself can accept apologetic arguments of the feasibility of a God, at least as a prime mover. These are pretty strong. The problem is that this is more an argument for deism than for Christianity, the latter of which holds several beliefs that require pretty large or hopeful leaps of reason to accept. The "order in the universe" argument for a loving designer, for example, is far from universally accepted, and is actually quite disputed, particularly by those who hold the weak anthropic principle. Theodicy, too, as Dre has brought up, has been around since the beginning and struggled to reconcile God's 3 characteristic Omnis. Furthermore, these are just the basic jump-offs from "god likely exists" in Christian doctrine. Getting into the nitty-gritty, the claims of multiple risings from the dead are certainly absurd and have really no evidence supporting them, unless you want to count the Shroud of Turin, which is basically the equivalent of historians seeing Jesus' face in their toast.
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Post by cheese on Apr 18, 2012 4:38:58 GMT -8
I don't see why that would be the case. Other than the fact people are likely to be biased in the evidence they pick and choose (which is often the case of ordinary events too) I don't see anything wrong with trying to justify theology with historical evidence. Surely it's the best kind of evidence/proof that someone could gather?
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Dre
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Post by Dre on Apr 18, 2012 5:30:32 GMT -8
The shroud apparently wasn't originally considered dogmatic belief, they just eventually changed it to dogma and charged people to view it as a financial draw.
Cheese- Let me make myself clear. I'm not against using historicity to validate scripture, in fact I think that's the only way you can do it that isn't an imemdiate logical fallacy.
My point is that it's wrong to treat scripture as a collection of ordinary events, and assess it the same way we assess any other ordinary source. For example one argument Christians use is that the we have more evidence for scripture than Alexander the Great.
This is an example of applying the wrong criterion. The Bible is a different ball game for two reasons: it claims the supernatural, and it's a theology.
Historicity is about probability. We're more likely to believe an event referenced by ten sources than one referenced by only two because it's more probable that it's true. The supernatural, however, is by definition the most improbable explanation of any event. In fact the only reason why the supernatural isn't impossible is because the laws of the universe are contingent and not logically necessary.
So not only is basically any other explanation of the 'evidence' more probable, but you would need an astronomical amount of evidence to accommodate the astronomical improbability of the supernatural occuring.
The theology aspect is important because theologies are exclusive, two theologies can't both be true. So if you consider the current evidence sufficient to believe in the supernatural, then that means that if the same evidence was replicated for another religion in another context, then that religion would have to be true too.
That basically means that if Christianity is true, then it is logically impossible that the same amount of historical evidence is replicated in another context. You're basically saying that it's more rational to believe that the supernatural is true and that it is impossible for the evidence to be replicated in another context, than to believe that it is possible that the evidence can hypothetically be replicated, and that the supernatural didn't occur.
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Post by redemption on Apr 18, 2012 8:43:07 GMT -8
@ww I'm baptist. And the main reason that I disagree with calvinism is the fact that if man can't choose between eternal life and eternal damnation. Also it says in romans 6:23 that the GIFT of God. You have to Accept a gift. From all I've heard of Calvinism the accepting part is not really there.
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Post by WaterWizard on Apr 18, 2012 11:13:16 GMT -8
redemptionPM'ing @others Good discussion, will reply later.
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