The Tension of Faith

I'm sure you wouldn't feel free to give your utterly uneducated opinion on some authoritative scientific treatise, in fact you'd be very polite and deferential to those who have studied it more than you have, but for some reason ignorami feel quite free to slather the Bible with their ignorance. Millions of people who revere, believe and follow the revelations in the Bible, even the source of all the blessings westerners receive in this world, should be enough of an answer, but arrogant antiChristianity rules the world today. And that includes the "scholars" who make it all up as they go along too instead of submitting to it as God's word.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Sorry, a simple descriptive report of a miraculous event is a simple descriptive report of a miraculous event, it's history.

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I'm sure you wouldn't feel free to give your utterly uneducated opinion on some authoritative scientific treatise, in fact you'd be very polite and deferential to those who have studied it more than you have, but for some reason ignorami feel quite free to slather the Bible with their ignorance.

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Indeed you do. Perhaps you should show proper deference to those who have studied it instead of lying about them and dismissing their work.

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And that includes the "scholars" who make it all up as they go along too instead of submitting to it as God's word.

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But, of course, you won’t.

Ah, the fallacy of argument from authority. In other words you have no answers, only fallacies and insults. There's that "50 million Frenchmen can't be wrong" fallacy again. Fallacies aren't much of an answer. I'm just having a discussion here. All the arrogance is coming from you. So in your view antiChristianity rules the world today, even though Christianity is the largest religion in the world.
Well, it's the largest before you subtract all the Christian sects that to you aren't truly Christian. You know, you haven't ended up actually saying anything, just like your previous post. There *is* a discussion taking place here. Did you want to say anything germane to the discussion? Maybe respond meaningfully to what I said in Message 609 to KBertsche that the Gospels lack evidenced facts and are a combination of truths, fallacies, unverifiabilities, internal and external contradictions, and impossibilities.--Percy

Well, there's a healthy non-response. We already know your opinion - the question concerns whether you can provide any support for it. All that study you did, all those books you read, all those people you conversed with, all those videos you've watched, everything that provided you the evidence for your faith, you can't bring any of that into the discussion?--Percy

Well, that is riddled with errors and falsehoods and unsupported assertions.But to deal with the central point, evidence does not have to be infallibly true. Only tautologies are infallibly true and they are useless as evidence. That something might be wrong or untrue is not a good reason to disregard it as evidence - because everything we use as evidence MIGHT be wrong or untrue.

Sorry Faith but there is no anti-Christianity in pointing out that there is no evidence Jesus ever lived or the fact that there is no such thing as "The Bible" or that the Bible stories contain factual errors and contradictions or the so called "Bible Christians" deny what is actually written in the Bible stories or that all of the various Bibles and the stories included or excluded in those "Bibles" are all just the work of man.Edited by jar, : fix sub-title

Gee, I had no idea discussion was so easy. Just skip all the arguments and get right to the smears. Reality is always infallibly true. Evidence that results from real events is reliable, dependable, true. The written word could be true, false, anywhere in between, or a combination. That something might be wrong or untrue, especially something like the written word that has a long and well-established history of often being wrong and untrue, should be setting off alarm bells, not leading one to argue that it should be accepted as evidence anyway.There is a profound difference between evidence produced by real events versus what is produced by filtering reality through the meanderings of the human mind, or not even involving reality at all. Reality cannot be wrong or untrue.It feels like you're arguing this way only because you believe the NT is true on the general details except where they misinterpreted some natural phenomena as miracles. You *want* to believe the NT, so you have to believe it somehow represents evidence. It doesn't. It's a typical religious work, like the Old Testament, the Koran, the Book of Mormon, the Bhagavad Gita, etc.--Percy

By and large, the words and parables, lessons, admonitions, and instructions contained within the books of the Bible are useful. It is humans themselves, using these lessons out of intended context, that is the problem. As an example, almost all of the Proverbs contain some useful instruction, in my opinion. The point of argumentation, however, is evidence. Cold hard facts.I used to think and believe virtually the same thing that Faith does. I believed and still tend to believe that humans are by and large selfish, greedy, and manipulative at our core. I believed that there was a spiritual war between inner good and inner selfishness. For that reason, I would agree that there was nearly a conspiracy amongst scholars between believers and non-believers. Now...I'm not sure. It would be nice to believe that those of us who believe are somehow enlightened and equipped to resist selfish motives more than the unbelievers, but my own observations of my own character show this to be false.I don't like these arguments, for they have burst some bubbles in my preferred fantasy of how God is and what He is doing and will do for me. I never wanted to doubt my beliefs. For that reason, I can only question them. I have never seen examples of the written word being wrong or untrue. Can you elaborate? However, our perception of reality might be warped. I have not dismissed the possibility of a fallen human nature. I see too much wrong with myself to doubt that everyone experiences something similar at some point in their lives...even Mother Theresa or Gandhi or anyone (except possibly Jesus) and that leads to another cognitive dissonance within my beliefs. If Jesus were as imperfect as the rest of us, what hope for humanity would we collectively or individually have?

The Genesis creation accounts are mutually exclusive so one or both must be wrong and reality shows that the truth is that both are wrong and untrue.

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Gee, I had no idea discussion was so easy. Just skip all the arguments and get right to the smears.

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Maybe if you bothered to lay out a coherent position I’d feel more like putting in the work to answer it. But after losing one post it just wasn’t worth the effort to rewrite it.

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Reality is always infallibly true. Evidence that results from real events is reliable, dependable, true. The written word could be true, false, anywhere in between, or a combination.

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Unfortunately for you we do not have reality, only our perception of reality which could be true, false, anywhere in between, or a combination. And it is impossible to be absolutely certain which it is.

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There is a profound difference between evidence produced by real events versus what is produced by filtering reality through the meanderings of the human mind, or not even involving reality at all.

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Our perceptions of reality go through the same filtering. When the writer is being honest we are getting their perception of reality. That problems exist does not mean that they cannot be dealt with adequately.

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It feels like you're arguing this way only because you believe the NT is true on the general details except where they misinterpreted some natural phenomena as miracles

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Which is a fine example of your perception of reality being utterly wrong. If anyone should be accused of bias, surely it must be the person who is taking the clearly unreasonable land extreme position - which would be you.In reality I have no problem dismissing parts of the NT as fiction. Both Nativity stories are in my view fictional. The Empty Tomb story is more likely fiction than fact. If you cannot distinguish between unctprituczlly excepting a story as fact and carefully evaluating it to pull out the bits that are likely true then the problem is yours and it is quite a severe one.

And as you observe every creationist that comes her lying through their teeth and being and remaining wilfully ignorant it must only reinforce this obvious truth. Our very own Faith is a great example of how dangerous irrational belief and certainty is and how it flies against everything Jesus himself taught.If you want further proof watch a few atheists, you'll find them to be perfectly normal people just as capable of 'resisting selfish motives,' as you put it as anyone else. (Of course they would never use that kind od masochistic language.)

We understand the distinction that you are making between written evidence and other kinds of evidence, and it is a useful one. Nonetheless, it is very idiosyncratic (and, I believe, wrong) to say that written accounts are not evidence. Historians routinely use written accounts as evidence in reconstructing the past. This is often their main evidence, in fact.

I'm not sure why you're asking this question that seems to have so obvious an answer, and it's not just the written word, it's also anything people say. The written word is receiving more attention in this thread because we're focused on the Bible, which is the written.How's this for an example of "the written word being wrong or untrue":

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"We’ve signed more bills -- and I’m talking about through the legislature -- than any president ever."

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Or this:

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"But you also had people that were very fine people on both sides."

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Or this:

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"I'm like, wait a minute. I made a speech. I looked out, the field was, it looked like a million, million and a half people."

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While I think our perception of reality is inaccurate, I wouldn't myself use the term "warped." I'd more say something like it is colored and filtered through our own biological senses and cognitive processing. Our biological deficiencies are shared by the rest of the animal world, and I don't see any fallen nature, human or otherwise.Sometimes what you write makes it seem that you feel as if there's a devil inside yourself that is your own fault and that you blame yourself for. I'd say accept and love who you are. If you're like me then you also have standards that exceed your reach and that make you regret not being better, but that regret doesn't mean we're not already being the best person we can be, and we shouldn't blame ourselves for not being able to perform miracles and transform ourselves into someone we're not.--Percy

Sorry you lost your post. If it was a crash then I guess it's gone, but if not then sometimes you can get stuff back by clicking the back button, or if you lost a tab then you can often get it back, at least in Chrome, using the History menu item.I'm also sorry you can't find anything coherent in the position I've layed out. The position itself can be expressed simply: The written word is not evidence. The rationale for that position is somewhat longer, and it become significantly longer as our discussion progressed. True, but that's a constant that applies to everything we view, whether the written word or true evidence. This is a clear statement of how you feel, but you include no justification. That what people say and write is frequently unreliable is hardly an "unreasonable and extreme position." To put your faith and trust in the written word is to trust reality after it's been put through a meat grinder. We're not so far apart as you think. We agree that some parts of the NT are true, some are false, some are unverifiable, some are internally or externally inconsistent or both, and some are impossible. Where we disagree is on our ability to accurately ferret out which category each passage falls into.--Percy