Are religions manmade and natural or supernaturally based?

You don't need to tell me or anyone why we believe (which you did in the post about the Gospel of Thomas). I know why I believe and what I believe and I've heard all your gnostic stuff already.As for Constantine, he did a lot to destroy the purity of the original church by aligning the Roman bishop with the powers of the Roman Empire, thus planting the seeds of Roman Catholicism, which corrupted that branch of the church until the Reformation (although true churches did remain outside that institution), but he did not determine the outcome of the Council of Nicea. There were hundreds of representatives of Christian churches from all over the then world at that council and they knew a heresy from the real thing. Constantine's role was to enforce it with the powers of the empire and start the downward slide of the Roman church into the worldly corruptions of the RCC.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Remarkable. Everybody is a liar who disagrees with you. In fact everybody is a liar but you. I guess we should all bow down and worship you.

You and GIA are going to have to fight it out for the honor of being the only one who never lies. All your opponents lie. That's really your only argument, they're all liars.

ha ha, of course I'm lying, everybody but you lies. The gospel writers were "partisan" therefore we can't trust what they wrote, and Morrison can't be trusted because he appears to take their accounts as truthful. That's really all you're saying.

I don't know if anyone even knows which tomb it is. The point is that the one Jesus was laid in figures prominently in the Bible reports as found to be empty on the first day of the week after the crucifixion. All we've been discussing is the Biblical reports of the finding of the empty tomb and then the encounters with the risen Christ.

Excuse me but the Bible reports ARE evidence and have always been taken as evidence and if they can't be regarded as evidence in the Faith forums you've so stacked the deck nobody can say anything. It should be regarded as evidence, PERIOD, in any forum. Do you discard all the historical writings about other events in the distant past because they are written? What nonsense Percy.

It would help if unbelievers would stop telling us believers why we believe what we believe, because you haven't a clue.CHRISTIAN faith DOES depend on evidence and most of us would say it does and we are not just "trying to come up with evidence," we wouldn't believe what we believe without it. The evidence is in the credibility of the Biblical witnesses, whose reports, as GDR said, have the "ring of truth." The attitude of the writers, the simple narrative style, the choice of facts they report, the general lack of anything like whitewashing or hagiography or glossing over human failings, is all evidence of its credibility. Some of the writers actually SAY they are giving the particular facts they give IN ORDER to provide evidence so that the crucial events may be believed.As was just being discussed, a fair comparison of the Biblical reports with, say, the gnostic gospels, ought to demonstrate the credibility of the Bible over such blatant silly fiction.Have you read anything or much of C.S. Lewis? He writes about how as a scholar in mythologies he knows the sound or style of myth and the sound or style of truth and the Bible has the sound and style of truth. He didn't use those words but that was the gist of it.Oh yes indeed we need evidence for Christian faith and we have evidence for Christian faith. Tons of it. First recognize the credibility of the biblical writers and whole worlds of evidence of remarkable things opens up to you.But not if you give in to the prevailing nonsense that requires an actual miracle to manifest before you'll believe any of it. The whole point of the incident in which Thomas refused to believe what the witnesses told him about the resurrection, that Jesus graciously proved by appearing to him and showing him his wounds, is that we are to believe honest sincere witnesses and have the "ears to hear" what honest sincere witnesses tell us. Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Gee, all that narrative about who went to the tomb and saw what, the order of who witnessed what and who believed what and so on and so forth, all that was somehow just made up? That's impossible. It sounds like a factual report. It doesn't sound like anything anyone but a literary genius could have made up and there is no literary genius anyone could possibly point to who could have done that. Read the gnostic gospels. No genius wrote those, they are typical silly fiction. Ears to hear, PaulK, that's what its all about. It's all about believing what sincere honest trustworthy people reported.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

All of them.I've argued it as well as I can. You might ask God to illuminate you.

*Groan*

Seems very plausible to me that all are true because I think the supposed contradictions either aren't contradictions but resolved in terms of different angles of perception, or are actually evidence of authenticity because they reflect the natural misperceptions human beings are prone to, which is more or less what GDR was getting at.I already said how I tell and said it in many ways: By the style and tone of the writers, by their choice of facts, by their lack of whitewashing, by their sincere honest personas etc. And again, you could ask God for illumination if you would REALLY like to know the truth, as opposed to being content with debunking the testimony of sincere honest reporters.

No. It is evidence. These are not "stories," they are historical accounts and they have all the requisite marks of authenticity and believability.

Who said anything about "appealing?" They are written the way someone would write a careful account of real events. As Jesus said to the rich man in Hell who wanted to go back and warn his brothers,, some people wouldn't believe even if someone came back from the dead to prove it. So here we have someone who did come back from the dead and there's no way to convince you is there?But I've said it all already, you aren't persuaded and there's nothing more to say.

Comes down to faith? No, comes down to honest and fair judgment of the truthfulness and normal perception of other human beings.

C. S. Lewis had his flaws of judgment in my opinion, but nevertheless I've always thought he did a good job of answering some kinds of skeptics, such as in the following quotes: Exactly what I've been trying to say about the credibility of scripture vs, for instance, the gnostic gospels, but even without any contrast at all it's got all the marks of authentic historical reporting.On that same page is Lewis' description of his own experience as an author and how the critics did to him exactly what they do to the Bible in interpreting how it was written: Yup.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.