[quote]forlife wrote:
katzenjammer wrote:
By the way, if “nothing warrants that level of conviction,” that means that faith is involved in nearly everything. Even science.
Some ideas warrant a higher level of conviction than others, depending on the amount of objective evidence that exists to support that particular idea.[/quote]
yes, but any ideas, convictions, actions always involve faith, consciously or not.
[quote]thebigbus wrote:
IrishSteel wrote:
OK - Historical records outside of Scripture mentioning Christ
Cornelius Tacitus - Governor of Asia
Suetonius - Roman Historian
Pliny the Younger
Lucian of Samosata
The Letter from Mara Bar-Serapion
Julis Africanus
Thallus
Phlegon
Hegesippus
Those are just a few - plus over 5,000 manuscripts of the NT Scriptures alone, many (over 800) within 60 years of Christ’s death.
How many manuscripts of Plato? 7 - the oldest more than 1200 years after his death.
Aristotle? only 5 and none less than 1400 years after his death
Herodotus? - only 8 and all 1300 years after the original
Euripedes? - 9 and all 1300 years after the original.
Homer’s Iliad, the most renowned book of ancient Greece, is the second best-preserved literary work of all antiquity, with 643 copies of manuscript support discovered to date. In those copies, there are 764 disputed lines of text, as compared to 40 lines in all the New Testament manuscripts. 8 In fact, many people are unaware that there are no surviving manuscripts of any of William Shakespeare’s 37 plays (written in the 1600’s), and scholars have been forced to fill some gaps in his works. 9 This pales in textual comparison with the over 5,600 copies and fragments of the New Testament in the original Greek that, together, assure us that nothing’s been lost. In fact, all of the New Testament except eleven minor verses can be reconstructed outside the Bible from the writings of the early church leaders in the second and third centuries AD.
ANYWAY - the point is -there is more evidence that Christ lived than any great historical figure of that era.
Whether or not he was the promised Messiah, the Annointed Christ? - well that is for each individual to decide, but stop wasting time disputing what has been definitively proven already.
Diety or not - he lived. You have to decide what to do with his message and his claims.
That’s why it is called Faith.
Josephus mentions him as well. 
[/quote]
You have totally missed the point (deliberately or accidentally.) None of those writers reference Jesus as a fact. They talk about the beliefs of Christians, which is a totally different thing.
Jesus Christ as one person / deity never existed. There were numerous figures; the stories about them were conglomerated with long standing myths and legends into one story and one person. This is extremely common with the development of religions. If you have a hard time with that then there is no point continuing the discussion because your faith blinds you to logic.
The other famous figures who you mention also most likely were conglomerations of numerous real people who lived.
Your talk of textual reconstruction of the New Testament is farcical. There may be 5,600 documents but most of them are copies of each other. Many of the copies are error strewn. An entire branch of study is dedicated to piecing together the history of which document copies from which document.
There have been plenty of books about this; a good starting place is Misquoting Jesus by Bart Erhman. Don’t worry; Bart is a believer so you don’t need to be scared about the tissue thin fabric of your beliefs being destroyed.
Unequivocally there is not more evidence that Jesus lived than any other major figure from history, to say so is beyond idiotic. It has not been definitively proven. To state that it has is a flat out lie.
That is why religion clings so strongly to faith as a value. The last thing they want you to do is ask questions.
[quote]pat wrote:
That which cannot be proven deductively will require a certain degree of faith. Almost everything we know and believe is based in faith. We have faith that historians and scholars are not lying to us about what happened in the past, faith in our media that what they say is the truth, faith in science that the conclusions they draw are statistically significant enough for us to trust the results, faith that the next moment will not be our last, faith in the people around us, we live mired in faith because if you do not you will be paralyzed.
I think it is silly to think that one’s five senses and limited ability to draw conclusions based on the assembling of previously conceived ideas, means there is nothing else in existence. [/quote]
This is true if you have no education or you are stupid. Other than that you will be able to deductively reason most things based on logic.
If you do the research apply a bit of logic you can understand what the agendas of any given group of historians would be and make a reasonable conclusion.
There is always a risk that you were missing a vital piece of the evidence however this is a far more reliable method than taking a badly translated 1,500 year old political agenda and choosing a few small parts of it to base your life around.
[quote]IrishSteel wrote:
forlife wrote:
pat wrote:
I think it is silly to think that one’s five senses and limited ability to draw conclusions based on the assembling of previously conceived ideas, means there is nothing else in existence.
I agree, but who said this? Absence of evidence isn’t evidence of absence. Then again, it isn’t evidence of evidence either.
Instead of concluding “there is nothing else in existence”, the honest approach seems to conclude that “we don’t know”. This means concluding that Christianity could in fact be objectively correct, but it is no more likely to be correct than Islam, Buddhism, or atheism.
Which is why I’m an agnostic. I’m not afraid to admit that I don’t have all the answers. I try to live my life fully each day, informed by my core values, and if it turns out there is more to life after I die, all the better.
Fantastic! An intellectually honest agnostic! That is a rarity these days. Most agnostics are intellectual cheapskates that have become more dogmatic than the worst Inquisitioners.
You see, I have chosen my belief system based on my best reasoning and by my faith. My faith will not take me anywhere that my reason cannot follow. It is critical that it happen in that order. I choose my belief and then verify it by thought and action. I be than I do -(my mantra for life is be-do be-do be-do) then I observe the result.
This is the way that Christ taught and the path of the true follower of Jesus. My faith is resting in what I cannot prove (thus it is faith), but my faith does not violate rationality or reality (thus it is sound). If I had faith in something that rational thought would deny the possibility of - then I am a fool. But since what I believe is possible by rational thought - then I am a just a man following his Savior.
[/quote]
Interesting, my mantra for life is do-be-do-be-do-wap-shewap-daddy-do-wap-de-do-wap-diddly-dop. This is the way that the Scatman taught and the path of the true follower of Jazz.
[quote]Cockney Blue wrote:
pat wrote:
That which cannot be proven deductively will require a certain degree of faith. Almost everything we know and believe is based in faith. We have faith that historians and scholars are not lying to us about what happened in the past, faith in our media that what they say is the truth, faith in science that the conclusions they draw are statistically significant enough for us to trust the results, faith that the next moment will not be our last, faith in the people around us, we live mired in faith because if you do not you will be paralyzed.
I think it is silly to think that one’s five senses and limited ability to draw conclusions based on the assembling of previously conceived ideas, means there is nothing else in existence.
This is true if you have no education or you are stupid. Other than that you will be able to deductively reason most things based on logic.
If you do the research apply a bit of logic you can understand what the agendas of any given group of historians would be and make a reasonable conclusion.
There is always a risk that you were missing a vital piece of the evidence however this is a far more reliable method than taking a badly translated 1,500 year old political agenda and choosing a few small parts of it to base your life around.[/quote]
You simply don’t know what you’re talking about. Logic, the scientific method, all reasoning, etc… all depend upon things that cannot be proven. Scientists call them axioms, for example.
Your notion of Christianity is just a complete farce. You either know this and you’re being an asswipe, or you’re just plain uninformed by anything but prejudicial stereotypes.
[quote]Mick28 wrote:
Hey, anyone else notice that most…if not all…of the anti Jesus crowd also welcome gay marriage. Funny how that works out huh?[/quote]
What you mean that people who do not have their lives run by selected parts of a badly translated set of ancient fairy tails are also able to see that if someone has formed a life attachment to someone then they should have the same rights tp presence at their hospital bed, inheritance, taxation etc regardless of the sex of their partner?
[quote]Cockney Blue wrote:
IrishSteel wrote:
forlife wrote:
pat wrote:
I think it is silly to think that one’s five senses and limited ability to draw conclusions based on the assembling of previously conceived ideas, means there is nothing else in existence.
I agree, but who said this? Absence of evidence isn’t evidence of absence. Then again, it isn’t evidence of evidence either.
Instead of concluding “there is nothing else in existence”, the honest approach seems to conclude that “we don’t know”. This means concluding that Christianity could in fact be objectively correct, but it is no more likely to be correct than Islam, Buddhism, or atheism.
Which is why I’m an agnostic. I’m not afraid to admit that I don’t have all the answers. I try to live my life fully each day, informed by my core values, and if it turns out there is more to life after I die, all the better.
Fantastic! An intellectually honest agnostic! That is a rarity these days. Most agnostics are intellectual cheapskates that have become more dogmatic than the worst Inquisitioners.
You see, I have chosen my belief system based on my best reasoning and by my faith. My faith will not take me anywhere that my reason cannot follow. It is critical that it happen in that order. I choose my belief and then verify it by thought and action. I be than I do -(my mantra for life is be-do be-do be-do) then I observe the result.
This is the way that Christ taught and the path of the true follower of Jesus. My faith is resting in what I cannot prove (thus it is faith), but my faith does not violate rationality or reality (thus it is sound). If I had faith in something that rational thought would deny the possibility of - then I am a fool. But since what I believe is possible by rational thought - then I am a just a man following his Savior.
Interesting, my mantra for life is do-be-do-be-do-wap-shewap-daddy-do-wap-de-do-wap-diddly-dop. This is the way that the Scatman taught and the path of the true follower of Jazz.[/quote]
That’s really interesting Cockblue.
Is this “mantra” of yours two thousand years old? Is its shape the result of two thousand years of thinking by some of the greatest minds in Western Civilization? Has this “mantra” of yours shaped and inspired an entire civilization and its greatest scientific and artistic achievements?
[quote]katzenjammer wrote:
You simply don’t know what you’re talking about. Logic, the scientific method, all reasoning, etc… all depend upon things that cannot be proven. Scientists call them axioms, for example.
Your notion of Christianity is just a complete farce. You either know this and you’re being an asswipe, or you’re just plain uninformed by anything but prejudicial stereotypes.
[/quote]
Really? An Axiom is not a term used in science, it is a term used in logic. There are two types of axioms. The first is something that can be taken to be self evident. The second is something that you will assume to be true for the purposes of the logical process.
The scientific method is based on things that can be tested. Of course for any consistent, effectively generated formal theory that proves certain basic arithmetic truths, there is an arithmetical statement that is true, but not provable in the theory. Godel worked that out 80 years ago. The proof will form part of a larger theory set.
At route you have basic statements that cannot be proved but can be taken to be true within certain limits.
To compare this to religion is ridiculous. Relgion takes a model of a system that works perfectly and then adds an extra factor (the deity) that actually serves no purpose in the model. If the model functions without the deity, why add the deity?
This is not proof that the deity doesn’t exist of course however in a kind of reverse Pascal’s wager. Why would you waste your time and effort believing in a God when believing in that God serves no purpose.
If at the day of reckoning it turns out that there was a God. Either that God would respect your intellectual rigor or they would be so capricious as to negate any chance that you could have followed their religion in a way that would have pleased them.
[quote]katzenjammer wrote:
Cockney Blue wrote:
IrishSteel wrote:
forlife wrote:
pat wrote:
I think it is silly to think that one’s five senses and limited ability to draw conclusions based on the assembling of previously conceived ideas, means there is nothing else in existence.
I agree, but who said this? Absence of evidence isn’t evidence of absence. Then again, it isn’t evidence of evidence either.
Instead of concluding “there is nothing else in existence”, the honest approach seems to conclude that “we don’t know”. This means concluding that Christianity could in fact be objectively correct, but it is no more likely to be correct than Islam, Buddhism, or atheism.
Which is why I’m an agnostic. I’m not afraid to admit that I don’t have all the answers. I try to live my life fully each day, informed by my core values, and if it turns out there is more to life after I die, all the better.
Fantastic! An intellectually honest agnostic! That is a rarity these days. Most agnostics are intellectual cheapskates that have become more dogmatic than the worst Inquisitioners.
You see, I have chosen my belief system based on my best reasoning and by my faith. My faith will not take me anywhere that my reason cannot follow. It is critical that it happen in that order. I choose my belief and then verify it by thought and action. I be than I do -(my mantra for life is be-do be-do be-do) then I observe the result.
This is the way that Christ taught and the path of the true follower of Jesus. My faith is resting in what I cannot prove (thus it is faith), but my faith does not violate rationality or reality (thus it is sound). If I had faith in something that rational thought would deny the possibility of - then I am a fool. But since what I believe is possible by rational thought - then I am a just a man following his Savior.
Interesting, my mantra for life is do-be-do-be-do-wap-shewap-daddy-do-wap-de-do-wap-diddly-dop. This is the way that the Scatman taught and the path of the true follower of Jazz.
That’s really interesting Cockblue.
Is this “mantra” of yours two thousand years old? Is its shape the result of two thousand years of thinking by some of the greatest minds in Western Civilization? Has this “mantra” of yours shaped and inspired an entire civilization and its greatest scientific and artistic achievements?
[/quote]
Not yet but I am working on it. Incidentally, Christian beliefs are way older than two thousand years. Most of them were directly lifted from far older religions.
[quote]katzenjammer wrote:
yes, but any ideas, convictions, actions always involve faith, consciously or not. [/quote]
Again, I agree. My point is that it’s not a black and white, all or nothing case, where you either know something perfectly or you know nothing at all. If you are being intellectually honest, you will base your conclusions on what is most probable to be true, as supported by objective evidence, and even then you will acknowledge that your conclusions could change, if evidence warrants doing so.
Instead, what you typically find in religion (and sometimes in science) are people who insist that their world view is correct, and that the world views of those that disagree with them are incorrect, without having compelling objective evidence to support that level of conviction.
It’s rare to find people who are honest enough to admit that they simply don’t know, and leave it at that.
[quote]Cockney Blue wrote:
thebigbus wrote:
IrishSteel wrote:
OK - Historical records outside of Scripture mentioning Christ
Cornelius Tacitus - Governor of Asia
Suetonius - Roman Historian
Pliny the Younger
Lucian of Samosata
The Letter from Mara Bar-Serapion
Julis Africanus
Thallus
Phlegon
Hegesippus
Those are just a few - plus over 5,000 manuscripts of the NT Scriptures alone, many (over 800) within 60 years of Christ’s death.
How many manuscripts of Plato? 7 - the oldest more than 1200 years after his death.
Aristotle? only 5 and none less than 1400 years after his death
Herodotus? - only 8 and all 1300 years after the original
Euripedes? - 9 and all 1300 years after the original.
Homer’s Iliad, the most renowned book of ancient Greece, is the second best-preserved literary work of all antiquity, with 643 copies of manuscript support discovered to date. In those copies, there are 764 disputed lines of text, as compared to 40 lines in all the New Testament manuscripts. 8 In fact, many people are unaware that there are no surviving manuscripts of any of William Shakespeare’s 37 plays (written in the 1600’s), and scholars have been forced to fill some gaps in his works. 9 This pales in textual comparison with the over 5,600 copies and fragments of the New Testament in the original Greek that, together, assure us that nothing’s been lost. In fact, all of the New Testament except eleven minor verses can be reconstructed outside the Bible from the writings of the early church leaders in the second and third centuries AD.
ANYWAY - the point is -there is more evidence that Christ lived than any great historical figure of that era.
Whether or not he was the promised Messiah, the Annointed Christ? - well that is for each individual to decide, but stop wasting time disputing what has been definitively proven already.
Diety or not - he lived. You have to decide what to do with his message and his claims.
That’s why it is called Faith.
Josephus mentions him as well.
You have totally missed the point (deliberately or accidentally.) None of those writers reference Jesus as a fact. They talk about the beliefs of Christians, which is a totally different thing.
Jesus Christ as one person / deity never existed. There were numerous figures; the stories about them were conglomerated with long standing myths and legends into one story and one person. This is extremely common with the development of religions. If you have a hard time with that then there is no point continuing the discussion because your faith blinds you to logic.
The other famous figures who you mention also most likely were conglomerations of numerous real people who lived.
Your talk of textual reconstruction of the New Testament is farcical. There may be 5,600 documents but most of them are copies of each other. Many of the copies are error strewn. An entire branch of study is dedicated to piecing together the history of which document copies from which document.
There have been plenty of books about this; a good starting place is Misquoting Jesus by Bart Erhman. Don’t worry; Bart is a believer so you don’t need to be scared about the tissue thin fabric of your beliefs being destroyed.
Unequivocally there is not more evidence that Jesus lived than any other major figure from history, to say so is beyond idiotic. It has not been definitively proven. To state that it has is a flat out lie.
That is why religion clings so strongly to faith as a value. The last thing they want you to do is ask questions.[/quote]
bart ehrman is not a Christian. He is a former fundamentalist Christian, who delights in breaking the faith of his students at UNC.
If you were looking for a believer why not use Ehrman’s mentor who is also noted as one of the best if not the best in textual criticism. Metzger
[quote]pat wrote:
katzenjammer wrote:
forlife wrote:
Choosing to have “faith” in something for which there is little to no objective evidence makes a lot less sense.
That’s the only thing you CAN have faith in - or else it isn’t faith. You’d have to be a retard to maintain faith in something that is objectively evidenced. Of course, very little in this world can be said to be so, which is why you (yes, even you forlife!) express this faith at every waking moment regarding things for which you have little or no evidence. You just don’t realize it because you haven’t thought about it. Or are too brainwashed by secular materialism.
That which cannot be proven deductively will require a certain degree of faith. Almost everything we know and believe is based in faith. We have faith that historians and scholars are not lying to us about what happened in the past, faith in our media that what they say is the truth, faith in science that the conclusions they draw are statistically significant enough for us to trust the results, faith that the next moment will not be our last, faith in the people around us, we live mired in faith because if you do not you will be paralyzed.
I think it is silly to think that one’s five senses and limited ability to draw conclusions based on the assembling of previously conceived ideas, means there is nothing else in existence. [/quote]
Man, I wish we could do “rep” points on here, cause you’d get 'em all day. This is absolutely true.
We use inductive reasoning (fallacy) every single day of our lives. I have “faith” that my truck will start every time i turn the key. I have faith this chair will hold me up every time I sit in it…etc, etc.
No one has yet to be able to show how sensory information can then proceed to knowledge without an appeal to non-sensory ASSUMPTIONS (aka, a priori presuppositions). Truth is, we ALL start with presupps. But, alas, this is an argument for a different time :>)
[quote]forlife wrote:
IrishSteel wrote:
My faith is resting in what I cannot prove (thus it is faith), but my faith does not violate rationality or reality (thus it is sound). If I had faith in something that rational thought would deny the possibility of - then I am a fool. But since what I believe is possible by rational thought - then I am a just a man following his Savior.
As I see it, believing something is possible, is different from believing something is real. Accepting the possibility of something being true means also accepting the possibility of it not being true.
In the context of Christianity, this means believing there is a chance that Jesus was the Savior of the world. However, it is equally possible that Allah or Krishna or Vishnu are god, or that there is no god at all.
We simply don’t know. We cannot know. All we can do is determine what our guiding values in life are, and try to live according to those values, recognizing our own ignorance in the face of the mysteries of the universe.[/quote]
Please do not misunderstand my point. my point is - I know it is possible (reason) that what I believe to be true (faith) is true.
And there it is - If I asked you to believe in Pink Walrus asteroid Hangers that could waltz solidly in alkaline heights behind her own shadow, you never would because you can’t even conceptualize it let alone understand it let alone believe it.
You do not have faith in any traditional religiously-based belief system only because you choose to have faith in your reason alone. I have faith in the revealed Christ and my reason supports the possibility of its reality. Your reason supports the possibility of the reality of Buddha, Krishna, whoever - but you apply faith to none because you believe (faith) that you cannot know for certain (reason).
[quote]Mick28 wrote:
Yes, they are out there, but it’s much easier to walk around saying that Jesus didn’t exist, the Bible is a fairy tale…bla bla bla…[/quote]
Why is that easier? A gay man can “have his cake and eat it too” by worshiping a god that loves him, regardless of his sexual orientation. That way, he can still be in a same sex relationship, and have the comfort of believing that a supernatural being is watching over him, and giving purpose to his life. Being gay doesn’t preclude believing in a god.
Acknowledging that there may not be a god is far from easy, because it is an honest recognition that this life may be all that there is. When someone you love dies, there is no guarantee you will get to see them again. Your own death is a looming spectre that you cannot deny. There is no divine purpose guiding your life, and any answers are hard fought for, rather than spood fed from the pulpit.
But it’s not about what is hard or easy, is it? It’s about what is real, regardless of how comforting you find that reality.
I really shouldn’t have responded to even that part of your post given your attacks on my character, but I wanted to do so for the sake of discussion with others following the thread. I won’t be responding to you further.
[quote]Cockney Blue wrote:
thebigbus wrote:
IrishSteel wrote:
You have totally missed the point (deliberately or accidentally.) None of those writers reference Jesus as a fact. They talk about the beliefs of Christians, which is a totally different thing.
Jesus Christ as one person / deity never existed. There were numerous figures; the stories about them were conglomerated with long standing myths and legends into one story and one person. This is extremely common with the development of religions. If you have a hard time with that then there is no point continuing the discussion because your faith blinds you to logic.
The other famous figures who you mention also most likely were conglomerations of numerous real people who lived.
Your talk of textual reconstruction of the New Testament is farcical. There may be 5,600 documents but most of them are copies of each other. Many of the copies are error strewn. An entire branch of study is dedicated to piecing together the history of which document copies from which document.
There have been plenty of books about this; a good starting place is Misquoting Jesus by Bart Erhman. Don’t worry; Bart is a believer so you don’t need to be scared about the tissue thin fabric of your beliefs being destroyed.
Unequivocally there is not more evidence that Jesus lived than any other major figure from history, to say so is beyond idiotic. It has not been definitively proven. To state that it has is a flat out lie.
That is why religion clings so strongly to faith as a value. The last thing they want you to do is ask questions.[/quote]
LOL - talk about starting with false presuppositions! Seriously, in my upbringing my father taught us that “Truth never fears a Challenge” and so I read and continue to read all of the competing philosophers, writers, thinkers, agnostics, atheists et al.
True Christianity encourages the examination of all beliefs and doctrines so that if ever there is an error or misbelief in my head - it can be corrected and I can continue in my path of following truth.
Your statement proves my point - if we belief that any historical figured ever existed - then Christ existed too as the evidence for his life outweighs that for any other historical figure.
You simply assume as fact something you cannot prove (conglomeration) and then deride me for assuming something as fact that I cannot prove (accuracy of historical records). You have modern writers who support your position and I have modern writers who support mine. Mine has born the weight of millennium of support - yours is a modern aberration.
As I said in another post - agnostics are often more dogmatic than the worst inquisitioners.
[quote]Cockney Blue wrote:
IrishSteel wrote:
forlife wrote:
pat wrote:
Interesting, my mantra for life is do-be-do-be-do-wap-shewap-daddy-do-wap-de-do-wap-diddly-dop. This is the way that the Scatman taught and the path of the true follower of Jazz.[/quote]
Awesome! I love it!
Walker Percy calls the new orthodoxy the “Holy Office of the Secular Inquisition.”
[quote]IrishSteel wrote:
my point is - I know it is possible (reason) that what I believe to be true (faith) is true.[/quote]
Absolutely. Do you also know that it is equally possible (reason) that what you believe to be true (faith) is actually false? That your god does not in fact exist?
If so, kudos on your intellectual honesty. That is relatively rare among Christians (especially among fundamentalist Christians), since most of them insist that their belief is fact, and that people who disagree with them must be wrong.
Even reason can lead you astray, but reason along with objective evidence will lead to accurate conclusions about the objective universe far more often than faith alone.