[quote]Karado wrote:
Where in Scripture can we find other people getting Stigmata, or the prediction
in Scripture this phenomenon would occur with other people in the future?
And what is the very best air-tight argument in your arsenal that would justify this as
being extra-Biblically legit if not Scriptural?..where is this stuff in the Bible?
Where can we find it in there?
[/quote]
Oh now wait a minute, lets not derail a thread with this catholic/noncatholic stuff. So far this has been mostly philosophy and the rationality ofbelief and mority, or lack thereof.
It is comparable. We only know that things in the past happened because people have told us. [/quote]
But we generally parse what they say for the believable stuff.
We don’t teach our children that the gods intervened at Delphi during the Persian War, despite the fact the Herodotus says as much.
The simple point, and it is very simple, is that a claim that is incredible, and I use the term literally, must be proved with incredibly solid evidence. No such evidence exists for these things you’re talking about. Your criteria–“people said so, they weren’t liars as far as I know”–are far, far, far too lax, and I sort of suspect that you know this.
First of all, for almost all of those people, you have but one document by which to know them–the one in question–meaning that you have no real reason to believe them to be liars or not. You say that they were truthful elsewhere in their life, but you cannot possibly know this in any kind of comprehensive or meaningful way. Yes, if your wife came home to you and told you she’d seen a flying, singing loaf of bread, and you’ve known your wife for years and years to be an honest and serious person, then you might conclude that she is probably not lying per-se (I’d go with fever delirium or something). But a guy who lived millennia in the past and wrote a few thousands words? No, you don’t know him anything close to well enough to vouch for his trustworthiness, and, in fact, given the rate at which people were making things up about gods in those days, you have great reason to doubt him.
I could bring you a thousand claims by tonight which exactly meet the criteria by which you’ve chosen to accept the resurrection of Jesus. There will be magic, and flying, and there will be mountains moving, and Hindu gods in sky-chariots. There will be Zeus and Hera and there will be Chinese river gods and there will be little anthropomorphic foxes making mischief and there will be wolves chasing the sun and moon through the sky. There will be gnosis and the demiurge and there will be Asgard and Yggdrasil and Parinirvana [b]and you will have to accept all of these things with as much faith and fervor as you hold up to Christianity.[/b]
The simple fact, Pat, is that nobody thinks the testaments constitute sufficient proof of Christianity. Of course they don’t–a bunch of words, written thousands of years ago, about miracles and gods? Such stories are a dime a dozen–a penny a score, even, in human history. Faith is required, and real faith, not “I believe that my eyes aren’t tricking me and that I’m not living in a hallucination caused by a trickster demon” faith, and not “I believe there was a man called Thomas Jefferson” faith either.[/quote]
I would like to meet you someday. I think you would be a fascinating person to know in real life.
[quote]Varqanir wrote:
I would like to meet you someday. I think you would be a fascinating person to know in real life.
[/quote]
That’s very kind of you to say, sir, and the feeling is very much mutual.[/quote]
You two need Jesus![/quote]
My neighbor’s name is Jesus. He has a landscaping business. I may indeed need him to get my yard into shape before I put my house on the market. [/quote]
His name is Jesus and he has a landscaping business. Color me suprised.
[quote]Varqanir wrote:
I would like to meet you someday. I think you would be a fascinating person to know in real life.
[/quote]
That’s very kind of you to say, sir, and the feeling is very much mutual.[/quote]
You two need Jesus![/quote]
My neighbor’s name is Jesus. He has a landscaping business. I may indeed need him to get my yard into shape before I put my house on the market. [/quote]
[quote]Varqanir wrote:
I would like to meet you someday. I think you would be a fascinating person to know in real life.
[/quote]
That’s very kind of you to say, sir, and the feeling is very much mutual.[/quote]
You two need Jesus![/quote]
My neighbor’s name is Jesus. He has a landscaping business. I may indeed need him to get my yard into shape before I put my house on the market. [/quote]
Is his brother’s name Angel?
[/quote]
I think his brothers are named Jaime and Juan, and his parents are Jose and Maria.
[quote]Varqanir wrote:
I would like to meet you someday. I think you would be a fascinating person to know in real life.
[/quote]
That’s very kind of you to say, sir, and the feeling is very much mutual.[/quote]
You two need Jesus![/quote]
My neighbor’s name is Jesus. He has a landscaping business. I may indeed need him to get my yard into shape before I put my house on the market. [/quote]
Is his brother’s name Angel?
[/quote]
I think his brothers are named Jaime and Juan, and his parents are Jose and Maria.
[/quote]
Just checking. I know brothers that are Angel and Jesus, and neither are.
I had a Mexican friend who crossed the border and went to a Baseball
soon afterwards, sat in the nosebleed seats and was brought to tears
when everyone at the game stood up with concern and sang to him: “Jose can you Seeeee…”
It is comparable. We only know that things in the past happened because people have told us. [/quote]
But we generally parse what they say for the believable stuff.
We don’t teach our children that the gods intervened at Delphi during the Persian War, despite the fact the Herodotus says as much.
The simple point, and it is very simple, is that a claim that is incredible, and I use the term literally, must be proved with incredibly solid evidence. No such evidence exists for these things you’re talking about. Your criteria–“people said so, they weren’t liars as far as I know”–are far, far, far too lax, and I sort of suspect that you know this.
[/quote]
You believe the claims are ‘incredible’, I do not. You say you require evidence and claim interest in the fact, but I suspect you are not willing to really put in the work and connect the dots, but rather you feel entitled to be ‘wowed’ without any effort from yourself. If you are waiting for a miracle in your life, if you are looking for a sign you wait in vein. It will never come. Like anything else, it takes work and commitment. And if you are not willing to put that in, you will never get the answers you are looking for.
Do you really want to know? What are you willing to do?
You do not gain wisdom, you do not find the truth without putting in the work to know it. This does not apply only to the stuff of religion, but to anything that’s true. Let’s take for example another incredible claim. The existence of black holes. You believe they exist and are what they are because other people have told you about them. I am willing to bet you have not put in the effort to find out for yourself, but believe what scientists tell us without question. Do you not believe this is an incredible claim? Something nobody has ever seen, nobody can experience or measure directly, can not just destroy matter, but the very fiber of the information that makes things what they are? That can potentially have infinite gravity. Infinite gravity? A mass that is so incredibly dense, that what could fit on the head of a pin, could weigh thousands of tons? Can generate speeds within potentially faster than the speed of light?
How do you know that shit exists? Something that violates every rule and law of physical existence, cannot be observed or measured directly Yet you believe it, without question because some people who appear to be credible, have a bunch of letters after their name and have a good education said so.
You don’t know they exist. I am pretty sure you haven’t given it extensive study on your own, and certainly nobody has proven it. How do we know? People have told us. They use math that very few of us knows is correct and have interpreted in a way that may or may not be correct. They math itself, does not tell us it must be interpreted. What else do we have? Observation. But not observation of a black hole itself, but things that appear to react to their existence. Things, that if we did not have the theory of black holes, we would not understand why they behave the way they do.
I can guess what you would say to most of this, but the fact I am trying to illustrate, is that, also is an incredible claim, a claim of which we have no actual evidence of, none. We have reason to believe it, but lack sufficient, direct, ‘slam-dunk’ evidence that they exist. You believe that, which is an incredible claim, without requiring somebody to shove droves of indisputable evidence for you to believe it, yet for other ‘incredible’ claims, you do not require that, but believe them simply because somebody told you. You do not require they prove it, or show you something that you can sink you teeth into, you just believe that something as whacked out and incredible as a black hole exists.
However, you criticism of those who believe is that they have not gone in and proved that it happened at least in a way you deem acceptable. You want extraordinary proof for extraordinary claims, but not all extraordinary claims, just religious ones.
One of many questions is what difference is it to you if the resurrection happened or not? If it happened, there is no reason it should affect your life anymore than the existence of something as fantastical as something that violates every single scientific law and principle and something we have no actual proof of existing.
And if you think you can dig up direct proof of the existence of a black hole, good luck.
Being truthful in other matters lends credibility. It does not mean that they couldn’t possibly tell the truth on one thing and lie on other matters. But there is not just one document, a.k.a. the Bible there’s 2000 years of history and ‘incredible’ claims. It does not stand to reason that every single person for the last 2000 years, who has experienced something ‘incredible’ are all lying, delusional, or have agendas by which lying on such matters would prove useful. And all such claims tie back to these biblical claims.
Yes it’s technically possible, but not likely. Everyone of these people are liars or mentally irregular? Doubtful.
St. Paul said it plainly, if the Resurrection did not happen, we are fools of the highest order. Our existence is meaningless as is our beliefs. The only good news there is that our stupidity has no consequence.
No you couldn’t. You could not present a thousand claims with the exact criteria as belief in the Resurrection. You can present lots of stories of fantastical quality, but they are not the same as the resurrection account. They don’t mean the same thing, they do not have the same consequence.
And that’s not to say there is no truth in these other stories. They are all trying to convey a truth by expression in a story. They are not claiming an actual account. There are stories like that in the bible. Expression of truth through the telling of a story. The Resurrection, the new testament itself is a very different thing than these. It is truth made manifest, claimed and observed by actual people who were there to see it.
[quote]
The simple fact, Pat, is that nobody thinks the testaments constitute sufficient proof of Christianity. Of course they don’t–a bunch of words, written thousands of years ago, about miracles and gods? Such stories are a dime a dozen–a penny a score, even, in human history. Faith is required, and real faith, not “I believe that my eyes aren’t tricking me and that I’m not living in a hallucination caused by a trickster demon” faith, and not “I believe there was a man called Thomas Jefferson” faith either.[/quote]
Nobody claims that the testaments alone are the only proof of Christianity. Indeed, Christianity existed without the benefit of a concise Biblical texts for the first few hundred years.
What you guys don’t get and refuse to understand that a religious life an belief is a reciprocal thing. It’s not a belief in the claims of an ancient text that have no value or impact in a modern world nothing like the world today. There are transcendent truths that have value in all possible worlds. And while everything has changed, at the same time, not much has changed, just our tools.
Further, and I don’t really know how to impart this fact on non-believers, that this relationship ‘we claim’ to have with God is ‘reciprocal’ as previously mentioned. It is a relationship and there is both give and take. It is personal experience, there is no possible way to express it in a way another can understand but we see it, experience it and feel it. And it’s that, that keeps it alive. Not just 2000 year old words by a bunch of old people. You can choose not to believe that. There is no reason you have to, but it’s what’s now and real what keeps it going. This relationship is real, it affects us in real ways that are not necessarily tangible in a quantifiable way, but experienced in a personal way. And it’s based on this belief in a resurrected Christ.
Are we nuts? Maybe we are, but you cannot prove with all the nay saying you can muster, that what we experience isn’t real, isn’t the truth, isn’t profound. When it happens to you, it’s undeniable. When it happens to you, then you know, but it does not happen without effort, it does not happen without the willful seeking of truth. It takes effort to know the truth, no amount of jabber I can provide will replace your own effort.
All your efforts seems to be concentrating on disproving it and it has not sufficiently succeeded. It provides doubt, but nothing more. But seeking only to disprove is not seeking the truth. It’s good to have healthy doubt, but doubt alone provide truth. You seek it from both sides, not only from one side.
Pat, I simply can’t respond to all of that, and anyway, my responses are already here in this thread. A couple bullet points:
–Science is theory, theories are happily killed off when they’re exposed as weak, etc. I don’t live my life under the pretense that black holes exist, and, asked if I truly know that they do, I’d say, “Of course not.”
That said, mathematical evidence and evidence you gather through a telescope holds infinitely more water than ancient writings, because one of the defining characteristics of ancient writings is that they are heavily burdened by bullshit, and one of the defining characteristics of scientific evidence is that it had better be strong or else it’s getting the axe.
Apollo’s role in Herodotus, or his claim that the Persians were millions strong at Thermopylae, or the claims about Agni, et cetera, are not remotely like the evidence for general relativity, and you’re criminally self-deceptive if you think otherwise.
–You have a single criterion for believing in Christ’s resurrection, and that’s that it was written that it happened. That’s it. That you don’t believe that the notion of the resurrection of a dead man requires a little more proof than, “Hey you, this thing happened once,” is aggressively strange.
But I do know that the 2,000-10,000 instances of talking animals in the written record of human claim and thought also meet your criterion, so you should believe in them–foxes and bears and sparrows and all–if intellectual consistency is among your hopes and dreams.
–Most importantly, I’m going to boil it down to the basics, because, while I want to continue the conversation, I’d rather us not write in sweeping off-topic essays. I don’t know what you’re claiming.
This thing began with this: prove to me, in the way that it’s been ‘proved’ that HIV causes AIDS, that Christianity is true in a way that Hinduism and Zoroastrianism and atheism and every other ism is not. Do you think that you can do this? [It has never been done, by the way.]
Now that gets at why it’s no truer than anything else, and why you have really no reason to believe it over anything else, but why do I go further and say it’s probably not true? Well, it is significantly more common for mankind to mythmake and lie than for people to rise from the dead, and, thus, it is significantly more likely that people were lying about the resurrection than that it happened.
Have I “proved” it never happened? Nope. Can’t do that. But I’ve given fantastic reason to ignore it, at least insofar as it’s dressed up as literally true.
[quote]MattyG35 wrote:
Geez pat, nice straw man with the black hole rant.
Why didn’t you just say that it’s true because you believe it is?[/quote]
A straw man is an attempt to divert the argument to focus on lesser or different point. Had you actually read it, and the point of mentioning it and the analogies I was making, you would know it was not a straw man. I was using the belief in, and the barely believable nature of a black hole to illustrate a point about faith and what one is willing and not willing to believe. The point was not to divert the conversation to black holes which would have made it a strawman. The conversation stayed on faith and and what requirement of proof is needed in order to believe something ‘incredible’.
If you are going to point out logical fallacies, at least be accurate with which fallacy was committed.
And if you believe I said it’s true because I believe it, you clearly didn’t read it, or did not understand it, because that was the furthest possible thing from what I said.
I don’t expect people to read all that, I know it was a lot, but if you didn’t then you shouldn’t really comment on it.
You said his belief in black holes, which, unless it was stated many pages back, he never made the claim.
Guess I misunderstood your use of “you believe [black holes] exist”.
[quote]smh_23 wrote:
Pat, I simply can’t respond to all of that, and anyway, my responses are already here in this thread. A couple bullet points:
–Science is theory, theories are happily killed off when they’re exposed as weak, etc. I don’t live my life under the pretense that black holes exist, and, asked if I truly know that they do, I’d say, “Of course not.”
That said, mathematical evidence and evidence you gather through a telescope holds infinitely more water than ancient writings, because one of the defining characteristics of ancient writings is that they are heavily burdened by bullshit, and one of the defining characteristics of scientific evidence is that it had better be strong or else it’s getting the axe.
[/quote]
I had already addressed this. As a matter of fact, I put in special effort to address this. You cannot gather evidence through a telescope, it’s impossible. And while the math may be solid, it is interpreted. And the point of all this is that you are relying on other people to tell you this, you have NO experience of it yourself. It’s why I chose that particular phenomena.
I did everything I could to preempt and nullify this reaction, but there is only so much I can do.
I also addressed the issue of relying on ancient texts alone, though I disagree they are heavily burdened by bullshit. Relying solely on ancient texts is not what happens and is NOT how we discern the truth. I thought I made this clear…
Seems you missed the point here. I didn’t make this claim. The point was that you accept it based on hearsay and nothing more. You lend it greater credibility as a matter of consensus and nothing more. You don’t know it for yourself. You have not put in the work to know it as a matter of fact. By the simple fact that a lot of people agree with it, does not make it true, but you believe it. Why? Because other people told you it was solid. I am making a very precise point here.
Again, I addressed this, but you go back to the same thing. It’s not a matter of somebody said it and we believe it.
You try to put forth the notion that we are just suckers without testing the truth and validity of the event. We have put in the work and it’s that work combine with our experience that gives us every reason to believe in it.
It is a bias and a willful ignorance to believe that we just believe it because some old dudes wrote about it. That is not the case. We put in the work and you have not. And you simply cannot discount our personal experience and discount us as a bunch of suckers and be honest. In the end, that is a baseless bias used to discredit something you choose not to put in the work to understand.
No, you don’t. No instances of talking animals meet the requirements where careful study and personal experience lead to said event and require it to be true for other personal events to be true.
Like I said, you have to put in the work to know the truth and if you don’t you won’t. That won’t be my fault, it will be yours.
First, HIV does not cause AIDS. It creates the condition for AIDS to manifest, but it does not cause for you can be HIV positive and never develop AIDS.
Further, I have no interest in proving Hinduism or any religion untrue. It would require me to study them in detail to test their validity. I don’t know anything about Zoroastrianism, so I don’t know if it has any truth to it or not.
Hinduism I know a little more about and I know it is very misunderstood. In that on the surface it appears as a polytheistic religion, but it is not. Their multiple ‘gods’ are manifestations of one ‘God’ beyond that, I don’t know it in any detail. However, I am not arguing that these religions are mutually exclusive. I am not saying that Christianity is true and hence all others are false. Hindus may have damn good reasons for believing what they believe. I don’t say it’s false.
It’s their way of communicating with God and if it works for them then that’s great, I am not one to criticize.
Atheism is far easier to deal with, because logic and reason dictates that it is a false belief and they have many misconceptions on their own belief and what is required to justify it. They idea for instance, that ‘you cannot affirm a negative’ is pure unadulterated horseshit, because if not God, then what? The question of existence does not go away and it must be dealt with. Ignoring it does not work. Kicking the can down the road further does not answer the question.
Existence demands a reason. Existence is not because of nothing, that is logically impossible. So you either have something that causes without itself being caused, or you have nothing. You only have 2 choices here and one has no logical possibility of being true.
In case of atheism it’s a matter of either accepting the truth based on logic and reason, or not accepting it based on hubris.
[quote]
Now that gets at why it’s no truer than anything else, and why you have really no reason to believe it over anything else, but why do I go further and say it’s probably not true? Well, it is significantly more common for mankind to mythmake and lie than for people to rise from the dead, and, thus, it is significantly more likely that people were lying about the resurrection than that it happened.
Have I “proved” it never happened? Nope. Can’t do that. But I’ve given fantastic reason to ignore it, at least insofar as it’s dressed up as literally true.[/quote]
Sure people myth make, but myths are often exposed. You don’t actually have a good reason to believe it’s probably not true save for the fact that you haven’t experienced it yourself. Like I said there is 2000 years of pretty incredible experiences that all come back to that one event. And like I said it’s technically possible that everybody who has had an experience is a liar, but it not likely. It would be a pretty difficult deception to maintain.
But aside from that one thing is clear. You are not ignoring it. You are doing the opposite of ignoring it.
[quote]MattyG35 wrote:
You said his belief in black holes, which, unless it was stated many pages back, he never made the claim.
Guess I misunderstood your use of “you believe [black holes] exist”.[/quote]
It’s something I already knew about smh based on previous discussions, and certainly he affirmed it in his response. And don’t get me wrong, I like smh. I think he’s one of the most intelligent, honest and nicest people here. Doesn’t mean we agree, but it doesn’t mean we cannot discuss that which we disagree about in detail and explore the limits of truth and epistemology, yes even in a body building forum.
