Tribute Thread For the Recently Raptured Faith

It makes total sense; it may not be what you want to believe and it may not even be true, but it makes total sense. It's just as likely that it was invented ad hoc and grew from there. Either way, the very least likely is that the resurection actually happened - that's magical nonsense spun into political oportunism. You've already admitted that there are chunks of the bible that you can't explain - or explain away. And the major one - the return in the generation of the listeners - is the killer for you and yours. You have to shut your ears to that one.

And What Jesus told you was not necessarily what Yahweh said either. It was another opinion. Nonsense. You can't decide a priori that Jesus was right about everything and everything else must be warped to fit. You have to take what Jesus taught in the context of what He learned.

This is an interesting and difficult argument! So to begin with, the questions in my mind are whether Jesus was anything more than human, whether sacrifice and devotion led to the group members being any more empowered to overcome the natural human tendencies of greed, dishonesty, and less need for power than any normal group...among other questions. The question in my mind is whether the power in following Jesus is greater than the power to follow any other movement, cause, or belief in History. If so, this leads to hope. It all boils down to two views:
1) Belief follows Evidence.
or
2) Evidence grows stronger following Belief and practice.If one presupposes the former, it would thus make sense that the stories were made up and that the Apostles and other humans within the movement were no stronger than today's revolutionaries throughout the world...simply humans pushing a cause. Though this hypothesis makes sense, it disallows for any actual communion between God and humanity that transformed the world from that point onward. It basically turns our belief and religion into ringos dreaded secular humanist responsibility rather than an encouragement and subsequent Spiritual equipping by God through a Risen Christ. But that's because your belief only follows evidence and you would never even be open to such "magic" being manifest in your life. You are quite happy to be responsible, go fishing, and lead a life without what ringo calls an "alien overlord" influencing your conscience and daily decision-making. I don't see your arguments as necessarily wrong---they are just unsettling to my belief paradigm. I don't like them. Keep in mind, however, that for me, evidence follows belief. I won't simply become an atheist or agnostic and wait at the altar forever for God to be validated by humanity. It may never happen.

Fine, but also keep in mind that whatever it is that you find using that 'method' it can't be evidence. Evidence, or facts, are independent of belief and subjectivity. Your method will force you to ignore or undervalue contrary evidence. Which is what you routinely do, just as Faith did in her rapture belief here. It *won't* and can't ever happen. You're quite safe.

I just want to point out that a book was written some years ago by a self-described skeptic, titled "Who Moved the Stone?" (the link is to a review which is also a summary) in which the author reports on his research into the reported incidents surrounding the death and resurrection of Christ. The title suggests that for his resurrection to have been a hoax you have to account for such things as why nobody could produce the body, which would presumably have been stolen from the tomb. There were plenty of people among the Jews who would have wanted to prove He wasn't alive. Not necessarily. The problem could be the typical one of modern readers imposing an interpretation on the word from their point of view that misses other meanings it had in the original context.Just a moment...Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

The term "authoritarian" is some sort of pejorative psychobabble. I don't have such a "view of God and the Bible," I believe the Bible is God's own communication to the human race. Known fully and accurately, yes, but the Bible itself says He can be known through Nature. No. I may feel His presence though, which gets stronger the longer I pray. I really don't know what you are trying to say here. For starters I never said that "God only speaks through the book," He speaks to us in many ways, but the Bible is our standard for knowing if other communications are really of God. If they contradict the Bible they aren't of God.Abraham didn't have the Bible, nor his son Isaac, nor Isaac's son Jacob nor any of Jacob's sons either, nor any of the multitude that left Egypt for Canaan. The Bible was only begun under Moses, the first five books called the Torah, and continued to be added to down the centuries by various scribes and prophets, completing the Old Testament four hundred years before the Lord Jesus came. And now of course we have all the New Testament books as well. Now that we have it all though, it is a great treasure that gives us an advantage over people in earlier times, and greater responsibility too since we have more complete knowledge than they did.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Which ignores an awful lot about who Jesus is though you think you are honoring Him by cherry-picking the things He said that you happen to like. Ringo is right: although you have convinced yourself you are following what Jesus taught you are really just writing your own Bible, your own idea of Jesus, and imposing it on the text.So here's just one New Testament writing among many you can pretend are lies while only your chosen passages are the true ones. Just a reminder that it isn't only in the Old Testament but also in the New Testament that there's a lot said about Him that doesn't square with your image of Him. Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

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I just want to point out that a book was written some years ago by a self-described skeptic, titled "Who Moved the Stone?" (the link is to a review which is also a summary) in which the author reports on his research into the reported incidents surrounding the death and resurrection of Christ. The title suggests that for his resurrection to have been a hoax you have to account for such things as why nobody could produce the body, which would presumably have been stolen from the tomb. There were plenty of people among the Jews who would have wanted to prove He wasn't alive

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Obviously he wasn’t much of a skeptic. A real skeptic would have noticed that the Biblical accounts are hardly reliable sources.A missing body is just a missing body. But, more than that, we have no real evidence that anyone was interested in contradicting the story - even in the Bible. There is no crackdown on the people spreading the story. The authorities never see any real evidence that Jesus is alive - which they might well have been interested in. It is not at all clear that the authorities would have heard anything before the body would have decayed beyond recognition- and why tamper with a grave to counter vague rumours if it won’t even work ?

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Not necessarily. The problem could be the typical one of modern readers imposing an interpretation on the word from their point of view that misses other meanings it had in the original context.

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Given the fact that ancient readers seem to have taken it the same way - Paul and the John who wrote Revelation both expect the end to happen in the near future - it hardly seems that the problem is with modern readers.

Is this what you call a skeptic?

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The Very Reverend Edward Gordon Selwyn (1885—1959) was an English Anglican priest and theologian, who served as Warden of Radley College from 1913 to 1919; Rector of Red Hill, near Havant; and then as Dean of Winchester from 1931 to 1958. He wrote sermons and other books and was the editor of the liberal Anglo-Catholic journal Theology from 1920.[1]

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There was no need to remove a body - the stories about the resurection were written decades after the fact. There's no evidence about the removal of a body except what is written in the book. Who is going to be looking for this body decades later and if it was found why would the authors tell us? It's a political yarn. Fake news.

Selwyn wrote the review. The book was written by Frank Morison (not his real name). As I commented above Morison was not very sceptical at all - or he would have realised that the Biblical accounts are not trustworthy.

The evidence shows that belief does not improve behaviour. I wish you would stop even mentioning evidence and belief in the same sentence. It is not an either-or proposition. If you have evidence, there's no excuse for belief. Since there's no evidence of such a transformation, the hypothesis seems to be confirmed. It shouldn't. Evidence first; if no evidence, then believe if you must. Validation by God may never happen either. You might be a goat. Or He might be Zeus.

Well we don't really know, however the Gospels were all written by Jews as far as we know. If not then the material that they used to write the Gospels came from Jews. My point was that the Gospels as they are written are not something that a 1st century Jew would make up if they were trying to concoct a new movement. The question is not whether they lied or not, but whether they got it wrong or not.As I said before, there is no motivation to keep the Jesus message going. No Jew believed that the messiah would die on a cross. Paul had to keep on repeating that he wasn't ashamed to preach a crucified messiah, as it was such a shameful death. It certainly didn't improve the quality of life for any of them and just the opposite was the case.

From all that you have told me, the only fact that you have that would qualify as evidence against there being a living interactive God communing with humanity through the character of Jesus (or otherwise communicating with humanity) is the behavior of so-called believers. Thats it. All of the rest of the arguments regarding authorship of scripture, historical facts, and resurrections is all far from clear. I have seen persuasive discussions from both pro and con on this possibility, so there is no solid evidence that leads me to conclude anything definitive about Jesus Christ.You do bring up your basic point that if such a communion were in fact happening, it would be the believers themselves leading the way in areas that your logic and common sense find important...supported by your favored parts of the message itself.My only point is that there basically is no definitive evidence against Gods existence. Critics may say that there is no evidence period...thus unbelief and skepticism should be the standard pending.Why you choose that option is beyond me---unless your other observation about the behavior of Christians in general leads you away from that group and ideology.

This is a good argument. Critics may say that the whole belief sprang out of human attempts at political and social control but your point regarding what was actually in it for them leads support to the idea that the belief arose out of deeper reasons.

I see. My curiosity is why you never found it a must situation. Given that many in your family and circle of early friends were professing Christians, I see that what may have happened with you is that you found more genuine honesty and support from unbelievers whom you met later in life and that this became the basis for your reason that belief was most definitely not a must.Of course, you know me...I always speculate on how other people think. I am often wrong.