You said:
STOP. First, millions of people all over the world have given their lives for millions of causes, so someone's strength of belief or willingness to die is worth precisely zero when it comes to evaluating whether their claims are TRUE. Your statement “would not have given their lives for Christ if,” is completely false.
This point you bring up is meaningless. My point is that the disciples would have known if Jesus truley did miracles. They would have known if He died and rose from the dead. They were there. No one who knew the ressurection was a lie would give up their lives to gain nothing which is what they did.
You said;
The point about hearsay is that a certain select number of people in history supposedly got it straight from the horse's mouth. The rest of us, on the other hand, are not only expected to take their word for it, not even their firsthand word for it. All we’ve got is this crummy book, with all its glaring flaws.
Do you believe George Washington was president of the USA. Obviously you do, but you were not there. You trust that information, yet you were not there. Hmmm. Oh and what you call a crummy book has only predicted the future accurately hundreds of times throughout history even up until today. This crummy book has changed lives, and given the hopeless true hope. I'm sorry you see no value in it, but the flaws you are referring to are not found in scripture, but they are in your own heart. I can see this just in the angry tone you have taken with me in these few posts. If this book is so obviously flawed, why would you bother to waste your time to debate with an idiot like me?
You said:
I repeat: you have it utterly backwards. I started from a position of faith, of belief, and through reading and study and following the evidence came to the conclusion that the Bible is a work of historical fiction. You have the end of the road confused with the beginning
Well if you had true faith, it would have been established on God's word. Your faith was not in His word, but more likely you had an emotional experience, or you trusted in the church you were brought up in. As for you following the evidence, well lets just say I doubt that. Are you an Aramaic scholar. Have you actually studied the Bible, or did you just believe what Athiest.org fed you. Or maybe you took some religious classes in some liberal college. If I am wrong, I am sorry, but I have spoken to so many people who sound like you, and usually their information comes from a source that rejects the Bible not because of evidence against it, but because it is a book full of miracles like Jesus walking on water or rising from the dead. However to deny these miracles, is to deny life and the origins of our universe, because these are miracles as well.
You said:
Your personal self-loathing is irrelevant, though I hope you get some counseling. I do hope you’re not gearing up to tell me how much I must love sin, because that would be an ad hominem attack as well as an incoherent statement, and you’d never go there, right?
I did not loathe myself, I loved my life, but thanks for your sincere concern. Linking the validity of the Bible to your love of sin is not an ad hominem. It is a valid point, because the Bible is all about people rejecting God's word because of their love of sin. Now are you saying you do not love your sin?
you said:
And again, I say: if this book is the preferred vehicle for an omnipotent, omniscient being to transmit the most important information in the universe, he did a pretty asinine job of it--why should God Almighty's inspired word have any need for broader apologetics?
To be honest, God's word does not need apologetics. God can reach people in many ways and does. He so chooses to use things like apologetics because of our lack of faith. If you actually studied and understood His word, you would marvel at its beauty, power, design, and brilliance. If you study it to prove your own agenda, you will never see these things.
You said:
By the way, your skills at picking things out of context and reading your own preconceived notions into things are as sharp as they ever were--I've read your posts on biblical "prophecy," and that's a perfect description of your work. Much of Christian commentary on most any subject, actually. Disgust over the rampant intellectual dishonesty among prominent Christian "thinkers" did much to push me away from the faith.
Ok, tell me where I misquoted or misrepresented what scripture says.
My point is that the disciples would have known if Jesus truly did miracles. They would have known if He died and rose from the dead. They were there. No one who knew the ressurection [sic] was a lie would give up their lives to gain nothing which is what they did.
ReplyDeleteYou're simply wrong, I can't make it more plain than that. People die for all sorts of reasons. Based solely on willingness to die, the truth of what they are dying for or whether the claims they make are actually true is quite simply indeterminate.
Willingness to die is not evidence of anything, not even genuine conviction. People have died for lies, consciously or in ignorance, throughout history.
Furthermore, when it comes to Paul, in many ways willingness to believe in the absence of evidence, when one is NOT an eyewitness, is the main idea of much of his writing. He attests that his revelation was spiritual in nature, not personal. The entire thrust of his message is not to exalt those who saw and believed, but who have conviction of things not seen.
Do you believe George Washington was president of the USA. Obviously you do, but you were not there.
I have evidence that Washington existed. I can go many places that have preserved documents with his signature, objects that he owned. There is not one single extrabiblical source that corroborates one single event from Jesus' life, including his birth, ministry, death or supposed resurrection. There are no primary sources.
Nor, for that matter, is anyone claiming to me that G.W. is the son and incarnation of God Almighty, for which I would require much more evidence than simply "did this person exist?" I'm pretty content with accepting that some person named Yeshua made something of a name for himself in first-century Galilee, though it's not anything concrete. But as to whether any of the stories, teachings, or events attached to him are fact, I have no good data.
Oh and what you call a crummy book has only predicted the future accurately hundreds of times throughout history even up until today.
Biblical prophecy is a joke. More on this below.
This crummy book has changed lives, and given the hopeless true hope. I'm sorry you see no value in it, but the flaws you are referring to are not found in scripture, but they are in your own heart. I can see this just in the angry tone you have taken with me in these few posts. If this book is so obviously flawed, why would you bother to waste your time to debate with an idiot like me?
For one thing, you're hilarious. Changing lives and providing hope comes from all sorts of false sources, so that's no help to you--so has the Torah, the Koran, the Bagavad Gita, the writings of Buddha, the Book of Mormon, the freaking Scientologists.
If I sound angry, it's primarily because you continually ignore what I'm saying and come back with stock answers which are irrelevant to the points I'm trying to make, and I have to make my point more forcefully. I'm frustrated that you don't seem to be paying attention--you are responding to what you think I am saying rather than closely reading what I am saying. I'm baffled by how you can't see how transparently shallow your arguments are. I can summarize our entire exchange with the phrase, "don't pee on my leg and tell me it's raining."
You said:
ReplyDeleteI repeat: you have it utterly backwards. I started from a position of faith, of belief, and through reading and study and following the evidence came to the conclusion that the Bible is a work of historical fiction. You have the end of the road confused with the beginning.
Well if you had true faith, it would have been established on God's word. Your faith was not in His word, but more likely you had an emotional experience, or you trusted in the church you were brought up in.
How convenient that your answer comes up basically as "well, if you had true faith, you would have agreed with me." What a joke.
As for you following the evidence, well let’s just say I doubt that. Are you an Aramaic scholar. Have you actually studied the Bible, or did you just believe what Athiest.org [sic] fed you. Or maybe you took some religious classes in some liberal college. If I am wrong, I am sorry, but I have spoken to so many people who sound like you, and usually their information comes from a source that rejects the Bible not because of evidence against it, but because it is a book full of miracles like Jesus walking on water or rising from the dead.
I'm not aware of any sources which reject it solely on the basis of miracles or resurrection. The flaws and contradictions make the miracles suspect. Granted, no textual account can meet the burden of proof to demonstrate a miracle occurred, David Hume dispensed with that in 1748, but it's not quite the same thing anyway.
However to deny these miracles, is to deny life and the origins of our universe, because these are miracles as well.
I've never been to Atheist.org or taken religious classes. This is all from my own research, reading the bible itself and realizing that when it says "X" in one place, "Y" in another and "Z" in yet a third place, and the only way to reconcile it is to play fast and loose with standards of evidence and logic, that is not the work of a perfect God.
For that matter, you really don't want to get into "life and the origins of our universe" with me; I doubt you have the education for it. The palpable ignorance of Christians when it comes to all that science has discovered about the universe and our place in it was a HUGE reason for me to conclude that these people don't know what they are talking about.
Linking the validity of the Bible to your love of sin is not an ad hominem. It is a valid point, because the Bible is all about people rejecting God's word because of their love of sin. Now are you saying you do not love your sin?
You need to look at the definition of an ad hominem attack. Rather than engaging with the actual matter at hand, you instead focus on some supposed character flaw such as "love of sin." If you want to speculate on my motivations, keep it to yourself and stick to the actual points under discussion. Subject closed.
To be honest, God's word does not need apologetics.
Let's see, I've got your statement here, versus tens of thousands of books, films, Sunday sermons, web sites, discussion boards, podcasts, radio shows, campus preachers, ad nauseam that tell me that if there's ever been a book more incapable of standing on its own merits, it's the bible.
Pull the other one, it's got bells on it.
You said:
ReplyDeleteBy the way, your skills at picking things out of context and reading your own preconceived notions into things are as sharp as they ever were--I've read your posts on biblical "prophecy," and that's a perfect description of your work. Much of Christian commentary on most any subject, actually. Disgust over the rampant intellectual dishonesty among prominent Christian "thinkers" did much to push me away from the faith.
Ok, tell me where I misquoted or misrepresented what scripture says.
The statement, "[the bible] predicted the future accurately hundreds of times throughout history even up until today." is a lie. Back to front, top to bottom, inside and out. It's probably the single weakest argument for Biblical validity that I have ever seen, and don't think you're the first.
For example, The passages in Isaiah, Zechariah and Matthew you cited last month are maddeningly vague, completely cherry-picked to apply to events recognized only after the fact, if not completely unremarkable predictions of mundanely foreseeable events.
Matthew 24 seems to be a perennial favorite among Christians, but not only was Jesus specifically predicting that everything would go down within their lifetime (another great example of apologist acrobatics to get around that problem) but almost everything he predicted happens every day. He might as well have issued a proclamation that the sun will rise in the east and set in the west a day later. Hardly "hundreds of times throughout history." If you can give me even ONE that holds up to scrutiny, it will be the first. I've read Christian websites on prophecy, and it's 100% reliant on, as I said, picking things out of context and reading your own preconceived notions into them.
In the final analysis, I care whether my beliefs are true or false, and I want to eschew beliefs that are clearly false or that cannot be supported.
It's not a matter of "I'm right and you're wrong." It's a matter of "I have questions and have gotten no good answers."
It's time after time, "I have problems, issues, criticisms, and the paltry excuses provided to me are difficult to describe without scatological profanity."
You, on the other hand, are clearly coming from the perspective, "if you had your head screwed on right you'd agree with me, so I'm free to speculate on all your moral and intellectual failings."
On the other hand, the study of science, of physics, cosmology, evolution, is utterly stunning in its clarity. If I may paraphrase a quote you'll recognize--when I study and understand science, I marvel at its beauty, power, clarity, and brilliance. If you study it to prove your own agenda, you will never see these things. What a relief it was to let go of the cognitive dissonance between the truly cosmic and the falsely transcendent; I've never been happier.
Again if you are so amazingly intelligent and I am so stupid, why are you here? Tell me oh wise one how was the universe created?
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ReplyDelete[minor edit]
ReplyDelete"Name one instance where there was no kind of benefit or pay back. Paul, Peter and the rest gained nothing from their assertion of faith."
First of all, way to move the goalposts on "no kind of benefit or payback." Many of the examples I could cite most definitely have a benefit or payback, for instance, if a person were accused of a crime their child committed and they took the fall, or if--and there were thousands of these--if it would make the Christians stop torturing them and admit to witchcraft or heresy.
But I'll still give you one: Joseph Smith Jr, founder of the Mormon Church. His use of "seeing stones" caused him to come under accusations of fraud as a young man, these same "seeing stones" which he would later use to translate the golden plates via remote viewing, since he never produced them for anyone not benefiting from the con. He would later "translate" the Book of Abraham from a papyrus he bought from a curio dealer, which later turned out to be a common funerary scroll. We have good reason to regard his ministry and writings to be a cynical fraud. (Note to self, if I ever declare a doctrine of polygamy, do so before schtupping my best friend's wife.)
Smith surrendered to authorities after attempting to silence a newspaper critical of him and the Mormon church, even though the charge was treason and would probably result in his hanging. As it turned out, he was killed by an angry mob while in prison, not the first he'd inspired for that matter. He never recanted his many frauds and fabrications.
To this day, Mormons will use the "die for a lie" argument in favor of their own ostensible prophet. So tell me, do you believe the Mormons' claims? Or do you hold a double standard for religions other than your own?
"History has shown there is pretty much no extreme people will not go to in defending that which they have a great stake in. If you had spent decades defending the proposition that Jesus rose from the dead, even if you had originally merely surmised or guessed it, even had you made it up, you might well give your life than back down from the claim, to save face, because otherwise your life would be revealed as one big joke, and some people simply cannot live that down. The second-century writer Lucian of Samosata tells us that Proteus Peregrinus, a charlatan prophet, immolated himself because he could not resist such a grandstanding opportunity."
ReplyDelete--Robert M Price
The examples you gave do not compare to what the thousands of earlyChristians did who witnessed the ministry of Jesus. I think you should study up a little more on what first and second century Christians went through. Maybe then you will understand they needed a pure motive that cpuld only be found in the truth of Jesus
ReplyDeleteYou said in your email to me, "Name one instance where there was no kind of benefit or pay back. Paul, Peter and the rest gained nothing from their assertion of faith."
ReplyDeleteI met your challenge with specific examples twice. For you to come back and say they don't compare is blatantly moving the goalposts and is completely dishonest. (Par for the course for apologists.) Also for that matter, totally wrong. A hundred pieces of weak evidence--even if you did have evidence of all these martyrs, which you certainly do not--is still weak evidence. You can stack cow pies as high as you like, and it's still a pile of...well, you know.
"Weak evidence" would even be an improvement on what you have. The point stands as proved: willingness to die is of limited value in determining whether a person believes their own claims, and is of no value whatsoever in determining whether or not what they believe is true.
My previous post stands
ReplyDeleteI think you should study up a little more on what first and second century Christians went through. Maybe then you will understand they needed a pure motive that cpuld only be found in the truth of Jesus."
ReplyDeleteI think you should study up a little more on human psychology and history. "Pure motive"... LOL.
Oh, and I noticed you moved the goalposts again. First it was eyewitnesses to the resurrection. Now it's first and second century Christians, who could not have been eyewitnesses. The dishonesty goes on, and on, and on. Thousands, even. Well, as they say on wikipedia, [CITATION NEEDED].
First let me warn you I deleted one of your comments do to the inappropriate language used. If you use such words again I will delete any post you put forth. There is no reason you cannot remain civil in this discussion, but the fact that you resort to insults and swearing in rage shows your instability and insecurity in your own beliefs. You said you could not be happier. Well I have yet to see your joy or peace. As for moving goalposts I did no such thing. I was making the case for the authorship of John who would have had contact with scholars in both the first and second centuries. As I wrote on a previous post I am not going to argue with you. I will post answers to your top ten issues but dont expect me to respond to any comments you make unless you have a legitimate question.
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