Why is Faith a Virtue?

Big fat semantic hangup you created for no good reason. Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

em, no. It's not a "semantic" hang-up, in many cases, if the witness is unable or willing to appear in court to back up their statement (which I guess is what you are calling a "witness report"), it's ruled inadmissible to the court.So it's a BIG difference and not something that you can cal a "Big fat semantic hangup you created for no good reason".Edited by CK, : No reason given.Edited by CK, : No reason given.

Alright. Well just so you know, oral testimony is different than a written declaration which is different than an affidavit. All three have different levels of admissability. Generally speaking, an out of court declaration, written or oral, is barred from admissione into court because of the hearsay rule. It's improtant to be precise with language.

1. You created it.
B. I would not have said anything if you had not said that you "proved me wrong."

I was precise. Witness report describes the witness testimony of the Bible just fine. That was the context. You then made an issue of it saying it doesn't apply in court. I didn't have a clue you were doing a semantic nitpick over my choice of words. I answered according to my understanding that it was synonymous with witness testimony. It's important to give the benefit of the doubt once in a while.

removed by author.Edited by CK, : no point stating the obvious.

I'm sorry that you were unable to give me the benefit of the doubt. Please, let us both reflect on what we said in this thread.

I didn't ask you whether it was fascinating. I asked you if it rung hollow. Like, does it fit? And if your answer (in the heel of the hunt) was "no 'compelling' evidence" and He replied "had I done so that you would have HAD to believe (making you an automaton)" what would your repost be? He doesn't require that you do beg. That's your strawgod your not begging of.

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The point is that there is NOTHING INHERENTLY UNTRUSTWORTHY about witness reports or secondhand witness reports.

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Yes, there is, most assuredly.As I have explained to you many, many times, memory is not a videotape.It is a reconstruction produced by your brain that is very easily influenced by many factors. Your brain fills in details and constructs things out of whole cloth in order to make sense. You can quite easily influence many people to construct extremely real-seeming, yet entirely false memories just by telling them that something has happened to them and that people saw them do it.Therefore, eyewitness testimony is generally inaccurate.This has been demonstrated many times.Why do you refuse to acknowledge that this is the case?Why do you simply ignore these FACTS regarding memory?Why do you keep repeating your very WRONG claims about eyewitness testimony?Do you think they will be made true if you repeat it often enough?

Why don't you just acknowledge the fact that you depend upon witness testimony and hearsay just to get through the day, as I've said, and stop all your irrelevant pedantic lecturing. Think about it.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Well there are a couple things wrong with what you've said. First off, what you're saying is insulting. Second, who was the eye witness to god blowing life into the dust when he created adam? Who was the eyewitness to the conversation between satan and god in the book of job? Third, if I do rely on the weather report (or choose to ignore it), this is a little bit different than dubya relying on his faith when dubya said "god told me to invade iraq."Even if I do rely on hearsay, there is a big difference between my day to day activities and the decisions that homocidal fundamentalists make based on their faith. (And I am not saying all people of any certain religion are homocidal or anything even close to that.)These days, we have a system that keeps liars in check - an inaccurate weatherman gets fired, people lose credibility, etc - or at the least I can check another station to see their weather report, or find another source.There is a difference between inductive and deductive reasoning. There is also a difference between subjective and objective observations. By saying that someone would have to "believe to see" or whatever, especially in light of all the mistakes that man has made based on faith and different personal revelations, makes what you see as evidence of your faith subjective. I'm not basing my knowledge that the sun will rise on faith - it's logic.Lastly, if you really feel that what I say is "irrelevant pedantic lecturing" then you are free to stop reading my posts - I assure you that I am not after you personally and not trying to offend anyone. You can also stop posting in the thread if I am offending you that much, something that you have mentioned a couple times now. Edited by Chief Infidel, : No reason given.Edited by Chief Infidel, : No reason given.

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Why don't you just acknowledge the fact that you depend upon witness testimony and hearsay just to get through the day,

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I never said I didn't.But what does that have to do with the accuracy of the Bible?If a whole bunch of self-proclaimed "eyewitnesses" told me that some guy who had been very, very dead for three days suddenly came to life and started appearing to his friends, walsking and talking, I surely wouldn't rely on their information.And, if these supposed "eyewitnesses" were faceless, nameless people from 2000 years ago, and there were no original copies of the manuscript they wrote their accounts down into, and if most of the accounts were relayed in the oral tradition for dozens, sometimes hundreds of years before being written down, and if those manuscripts were translated and copied by fallable men hundreds, perhaps thousands of times, and if other powerful, politically-motivated men used their influence over the translators to shape the translations in a way which would benefit their rule, then I am not at all sure I would trust much of anything that those "eyewitnesses" said.THAT'S the difference, Faith.You make a judgement call, just as you say.

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Why don't you just acknowledge the fact that you depend upon witness testimony and hearsay just to get through the day, as I've said, and stop all your irrelevant pedantic lecturing. Think about it.

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So this works in reverse, too, Faith.You propose that secondhand accounts should be considered vital to getting through the day, and should therefore be depended upon to confirm or deny various events.In Luke, the sun is said to darken between the hours of 6 and 9 PM. This was said in the Bible to affect the entire Earth.Now, shouldn't we look to confirm this event by seeing if the various astronomers around the world, or heck, even everyday historians, also recorded this event?What should we conclude if none of the other cultures, including those with advanced astronomy (which included the Romans who were occupying Israel at the time) recorded such an extrodinary event?Surely the Romans and the Chinese and the Celts and the Incans weren't in cahoots to conceal this remarkable astronomical occurance?And besides, why don't any of the other Gospels record it? Surely the other authors wouldn't have simply forgotten that it happened, or considered it unimportant?

That was addressed to Schrafinator who completely ignored my whole argument just to badger me with her usual lecture / interrogation.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

That is considered to have been revelation passed down to Moses or given to Moses by God personally, who after all spoke with him face to face on the mountain for forty days. Prophecy (edit: The word means direct revelation from God, not merely foretelling} on someone's part. That has been denied by Bush. Somebody made it up. Actually I tracked it down a while back. Some middle eastern leader claims he said it. Nobody else. And he denies it. I posted that here somewhere. I've said it's wrong to equate "faith" in different gods. But why do you assume there weren't lots of people to correct everything written in the Bible? That would have been true all through the Old Testament as well as the New. In the New, there were thousands of people who witnessed all the acts of Jesus, there were 120 in the upper room when the Holy Spirit fell (Acts 2) and 3000 witnessed their speaking in tongues. No way anybody was going to write a gospel and not have a hundred readers of it finding fault with it if there was fault to be found. What got into the canon was what hundreds, or even thousands, of believers, over the first three centuries deemed authentic. And they threw out lots of contenders, showing there was certainly careful discrimination involved. I can tell you that getting lectured on THAT is insulting. What do you think you are saying? This boils down to a judgment call as I have said over and over and over. If you do not recognize the authenticity of the Bible, that's your business. I've said all I can say about why I do. At some point there is nothing to debate. Again, you failed to notice that I was responding to Schrafinator, not you. I didn't say the reason I was through with the thread was that I felt offended, just that there seemed to be nothing more to say on the subject. Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.