Tribute Thread For the Recently Raptured Faith

Belief is based on experience. If we *knew* that no magic, supernatural, or otherwise unexplained solution to any of our problems ever happened, we would conclude that no God or gods exist. (nor leprechauns nor 7 foot rabbits.)But...
If we had experienced answers to prayers, miracles such as recovery from "incurable" cancer, lost things being found and/or restored to us, we could decide to chalk it up to chance or we could decide that belief was something that was based on experience...our own unique experience.Granted the product of God is a product promising a better life. You read the label and see all of the complications and side effects. Believers see only the promise.

But you do understand. You work at Safeway, don't you? You see those tabloids with SHOCKING! stories about bat-babies, etc., don't you? You don't accept them without evidence, do you?It's only the one example of your pet religion where you insist on parking your brain at the door. Santa Claus occupies much of human belief and practice. Christians are constantly complaining that he occupies too much of our belief and practice. And he wasn't all myth to begin with but most people today don't know anything but the myth. I started with the assumption that God exists, just like you did. I remind you of that once a week or so. I concluded that your God most likely doesn't exist. My argument is that your God isn't helping us. That's what the evidence shows.

Belief is sometimes based on misinterpretation of experience. Often it is based on nothing. Non sequitur.If we had no evidence of magical events, all we could conclude is that there are no entities using magic. We could not conclude that there are no entities capable of using magic.By analogy, if there are no nuclear attacks, we can not conclude that no nuclear weapons exist. We can only conclude that none are being used. There are no unique experiences. Every experience that you have, somebody else has had. You attach your experiences of prayer, miracles, etc. to your religion. Somebody else attaches the same experiences to a different religion, or to something sensible.

There are several reasons for this.
1) I believe that there is something (Someone) who is greater than anything my brain will ever do. Why did I adopt the "pet" in the first place? Because it provided comfort, security, and reassurance. You gave the pet up for adoption because it tore up your shoes, soiled the indoor carpet, and gave you no comfort nor security. What's more, you could never find it. It was an inviable pet to you...In some ways, if you were a believer today, your God would actually be more evolved than the God of most believers. Your God would be shrewd enough to allow humans to learn from life without Him and would allow us to encourage and help each other without leaning on Him. Edited by Phat, : No reason given.

Because it followed you home. You're the one who gives it comfort, security and reassurance. Do you see how little sense you're making? It is an invisible pet, yes, but the effects are invisible too.

My point is that you concluded that God was not real because you had no subjective evidence. Many believers have had answered prayers, newfound friendships, improved self-esteem, and a new feeling of hope. (not hype, mind you! )You may argue that no God nor religion was necessary as a cause of such events. I said the prayer. I asked it to become real to me. You may have done the same thing yet awaited evidence of confimation rather than trusting the pet existed. Believers dont wait for evidence. As you have said before, if there was evidence there would be no belief.Perhaps a new church should be started. The Temple Of Evidential Support.It would have no God, no Altar, and No Pastor. People would just gather there and bring spare change.

Empty claims unaccompanied by evidence require no rebuttal. Accounts of Paul preaching in synagogues come from Acts, not from Paul's epistles. Luke never met Paul, let alone accompanied him anywhere. The large amount of fiction in the Bible is why predictions based upon it, like raptures, fail.--Percy

There's no such thing as subjective evidence. I've seen more supposed "miracles", "answered" prayers, speaking in tongues, etc. than most people. The difference is that I know they are not evidence of anything supernatural. You said the prayer because that's what you were told to do. That's the tradition you grew up in. I can keep repeating it if you insist: I had the same experience that you did. I did trust that the pet existed. I did not wait for any kind of confirmation.The difference is that I grew out of it.

That's the Bible story, yes. Mentioning Christ in passing years later as the one Christians followed is hardly good evidence he was real. With all the disruption and difficulties that Jesus caused for the Romans, with all the miracles and the sermons to thousands, there's still nary a mention of any of it by historians, only that there was a sect of Christians who followed Christ. That's quite a semantic confusion, "more often than not" followed by "almost always." If you want to believe something like, "Since this is lore it very likely has a measure of truth," go ahead, make your decisions about what parts are true and what parts made up. I'll continue with, "If it's got sufficient evidence then I'll provisionally accept it."--Percy

Of course others say different. What's important isn't that some have a different opinion, but what they can bring to the party to support their opinion. Looking at this quote you provided: This is just a statement of opinion. There's no evidence offered, not of oral traditions, not of Jesus, not of apostles, not of synoptic gospels preceding Paul's epistles. This is from Bible Study Tools:

quote:

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Appendix 8: CHRONOLOGICAL ORDER OF THE BOOKS OF THE NEW TESTAMENT.

​

While no arrangement of these books can be made with absolute confidence, the following dates are sufficiently reliable to serve the purpose of the Bible student.

​

James - 50 A.D.
First Thessalonians - 52-53.
Second Thessalonians - 52-53.
Galatians - 55.
First Corinthians - 57.
Second Corinthians - 57.
Romans - 57-58.
Philippians - 62-63.
Colossians - 62-63.
Philemon - 62-63.
Ephesians - 62-63.
Luke - 63.
Acts - 64.
First Timothy - 65.
Titus - 65.
Second Timothy - 66.
Mark - 66.
Matthew - 67.
Hebrews - 67.
First Peter - 67-68.
Second Peter - 68.
Jude - 68.
Apocalypse - 68.
John - c. 85.
Epistles of John - 90-95.

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Of course I don't agree with this, but it at least places Paul's epistles before the gospels. My own view of the gospel order is roughly something like this (my dates are rough approximations, not gospel):

• Mark (75-85 AD)
• Matthew (80-90 AD)
• Luke (90-110 AD)
• John (100-120 AD)

That's an unsupported opinion. I don't understand what it is with this thread that makes people keep offering their opinions as if that settled anything. First you say we should study mythmaking, then you offer a completely unsupported opinion about mythmaking. This makes no sense. Myths arise about things whether they're based on real past events or not. No one was taking notes while Jesus spoke. None of the gospel writers or Paul were eyewitnesses to anything Jesus said, that is, if he even existed and actually said anything. They are not elaborating on or interpreting any of Jesus' actual words, who was speaking ancient Aramaic anyway and not Greek. And fabrication and confabulation. Look at all the religious shenanigans that take place today. You think it was any different 2000 years ago? Independent of how the apostles' accounts were communicated to the gospel authors, or even if they ever were actually communicated to the gospel authors, or even if the apostles were real, what evidence has GDR presented that they weren't disposed toward "mythmaking nor poetic license"? We have the evidence of Paul's letters that he was real. We have no evidence of anything he said about Jesus or his exploits. The original question was whether Christian religious beliefs could serve as a basis for making predictions of things like raptures and so forth.--PercyEdited by Percy, : Fix badly expressed 3rd to last para.

Now imagine that they waited 40 years before writing the accounts of the Osama bin Laden murder. Oh really? Matthew 14:25 Shortly before dawn Jesus went out to them, walking on the lake. Nothing unusual going on there, just reporting the news.--Percy

And your argument is that God *is* helping us? How do you see God helping you? You seem a prime example of someone definitely not receiving any help.This is yet another example of evidence against religious beliefs only making people double down on those beliefs. Everything in your life says, "There is no God," yet every year your belief in God deepens. Faith does the same thing - her rapture predictions fail, yet this makes her believe even more.Imagine if scientists worked this way. "The experiment not only failed to confirm the hypothesis, it showed the hypothesis to be likely false. This only strengthens our belief that the hypothesis will eventually be shown correct." You'd think them nuts, right? Why shouldn't the same logic apply to the reasoning displayed by the religious?--PercyEdited by Percy, : Grammar.

Experiences (which is how data is gathered) are real, all religions cannot be true, so religious belief cannot be based upon experience. There is nothing in your experience or anyone else's indicating magic or the supernatural is real. No prayers have been answered or miracles experienced, and the unexplained is just the unexplained. This I can agree with, but now you're saying something different. Before you said that belief was based on experience, now you're saying belief is based on what is hoped might happen.--Percy

Once again you're reading this with a 21st century understanding. Jesus was addressing 1st century Jews. Essentially He is saying that when you see the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple that it will be God's judgement on Israel, and that they will then see and understand the enthronement of Jesus, (again Daniel 7) and the establishment of the Kingdom. It is Jesus coming to the Father, (the Ancient of Days), not coming to Earth. I would add that it being about God's judgement does not mean that God punished by intent, but it is as a result of what naturally happens when we try to defeat evil with more evil. Jesus continually talked about not going down the road of violent revolution but about defeating evil with the weapon of love. It is about turning hearts away from evil. I've said before. All religion is man made. In the case of Christianity it is based on the belief that there is one creator god that is a god of love and that He resurrected Jesus, who embodied His nature perfectly or to put it another way carried God's spiritual DNA. Then we factor in the Bible and how to understand that and so yes, there probably aren't 2 Christians anywhere, (who have put in any time to actually study the whole thing), that will agree on everything. I didn't say He wasn't a prophet. I am saying that He foretold the future in the same way that you or I might tell the future. As a prophet you might say that there will be no Brexit deal and that thousands of jobs will be lost in your country. You would be simply assessing the situation from what you know. Jesus was doing that in forecasting the fall of Jerusalem and the Temple.A prophet is essentially one who puts into words the will and nature of God and then using that wisdom project the likelihood of what that will mean in the future. The future is open and unknowable with certainty, but Jesus could, and we can, forecast future events based on what we do know in the present.

Barring confirmation bias, I will agree except to say that a whole helluva lot is unexplainable! To question is fine, but to doubt causes a great degree of cognitive dissonance. I'm not sure I would even want to switch clubs.Moreover, I'm not even sure which club I am in anymore!