[quote]Maiden3.16 wrote:
[quote]Aragorn wrote:
[quote]Maiden3.16 wrote:
[quote]smh_23 wrote:
[quote]H factor wrote:
[quote]Varqanir wrote:
Pat, you know as well as anyone that one cannot “prove” a negative.
All one can do is attempt to verify a claim of veracity with evidence supporting it, and failing that, conclude that the initial claim was false.
SMH can no more “prove” that the whole Bible is false than you could prove that elves and pixies and the gods of Asgard don’t exist. Absence of evidence of elves and pixies and Asgardian gods not equalling evidence of their absence, after all.
What SMH can do, and likely does, is view extraordinary claims such as those found in the Bible with no evidence supporting them, such as nine-hundred year old men, a planet stopping its entire rotation for several hours so that a battle on a dusty field may continue in sunlight, or five loaves of bread and two fish increasing parthenogenically so that they were able to feed a crowd of five thousand people, with a degree of skepticism and incredulity.
You’re not stupid, Pat. Not a caveman by any stretch, which probably adds to SMH’s amazement: that you find it so easy to believe the entirety of the implicit claims of the Bible without evidence, going so far as to say that they have been proven, by virtue of their being in the Bible, and that you find it just as amazing that anyone would not believe them.
No, one cannot “prove” the Bible is false, and it would serve no purpose to do so. A believer would still believe, because faith requires no proof. I actually envy people who are able to believe so completely in something without skepticism. It must be a wonderful feeling, one that I have missed out on all my life. [/quote]
Well said V. I agree even on the point of being somewhat envious. My skepticism won’t allow me to believe just like my skepticism won’t allow me to think the Holocaust didn’t happen or 9/11 was done by the government. Even being raised as a Methodist I reached a point where I said, I think this all sounds like a load of crap.
It’s not really something I feel like I could change even if I wanted to. [/quote]
Seconded, very well said, and an apt description of my view of things. And I, too, have experienced times–especially in the wake of loss–when I was envious of the devout.[/quote]
I doubt most believers haven’t had moments of skepticism about it all. The skepticism may be blamed on the devils work or brushed over by faith, but it’s still there. Personally, and of coarse I could be wrong, I feel that many deny their skepticism because they are so invested in their religion and in too deep to turn back. Imagine a 60 year old man who worked in the church for a number of years and raised 5 children to believe. It would be extremely difficult to change at that point no matter how skeptical. But once you do turn away, there is no going back. [/quote]
I believe from my experiences you would be wrong in this. There is no doubt that some fraction may do this. That is to say, I think that in any statistically wide spread of population pool claiming to be Christian–and by this I don’t mean “go to church on Christmas and Easter Christian”–that there is a fraction who abide by this. Just as there are those who have been proponents of just about any belief or political position that would do the same because of the time they spent trying to convince others or giving fundraising or whatever.
However in my experience you misunderstand the way they deal with it, as a whole. There are a lot of Christians going through crises of belief and there always have been. Even the illustrious C.S. Lewis, when his wife died, went through a period of years of this. They don’t bury it or gloss over it, whatever the outcome. They wrestle with it pretty intensely for a long period of time. Also, although I understand the sentiment you made with your last sentence I disagree with it. Pat (or maybe Sloth, I can’t remember?) made this point earlier in this thread about most of his family having turned away for years–quit going to church, quit believing, quit pretty much everything–and then coming back to it. So it is to say, there is going back for some people, even after choosing to disbelieve in God for years. You would probably be tempted to simply say “well they never left” or “they’re just returning to childhood indoctrination” but I do not think this is the case.[/quote]
I don’t necessarily disagree with anything you wrote. I was probably putting my own feelings into it as far as no turning back, which is easy to do! Now, I’m not saying they never turned away in the first place (but maybe kind of am?), but in the examples you have they seem to have turned away due to grief and maybe anger at God. I don’t know for sure and wasn’t there obviously. But how many people that have objectively looked at the evidence and made their own conclusion that it wasn’t true have turned back? [/quote]
That’s fair. I noticed you seemed to be injecting some personal experience, which isn’t wrong by any stretch (after all, what else do we have to judge by?). I did however want you to recognize that fact. I was more concerned with the idea you presented that there is this widespread ideological pathos where these people’s skepticism is just swept under the rug and never dealt with. I think that is inaccurate and unfair. I do believe it is true that most people cannot believe without any skepticism–at some point in their life. However I tend to reject the generalized notion that this skepticism is a constant carried with them, never dealt with and never leaving. Like everybody else, most of them deal with it and then move on, or leave completely as you did. It doesn’t just sit there, or isn’t a sort of superficial issue I suppose. The difference I believe is that when they decide to deal with the skepticism the belief is strengthened for those who do not leave the faith. That, I suppose, could give off the impression that “oh how can they do that, it has to be covered up somewhere in there”.
No, I do believe you’re correct on that. I find the idea of these people magically blindly convinced without any skepticism rather laughable. But it seemed to me you were trying to link that with your hypothetical man who raised 5 kids Catholic and doesn’t want to stop because he’s invested. I do not believe the two are any more strongly linked in religious belief than in any other endeavor in which a person invests a large part of his time and mental resources. Certainly not any less than politics or anything remotely comparable.
