Why is Faith a Virtue?

Disregarding the first part about a lack of empirical evidence, does such witness testimony include members of groups outside of the mideast?The Chinese, among many others, actually did have a written language back before flood days. Why is their "testimony," or lack thereof, discarded?

Discarding the claim of a culture surviving the flood (they descended from Noah just like all the rest of us, and developed their culture after the flood), who's discarding their testimony? I'm sure they have many true things to say, and I have no reason to doubt their witness testimony to anything either, at least not a priori, if they have documents of that sort.All I'm saying is that the Bible witnesses are completely trustworthy and what they witness about is a zillion times more important than what anybody else on the earth ever witnessed.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Faith Yet all of these were "fallen" men according to you. What is it that makes their testimony of greater veracity than all others since, like all of us, {according to you} they, too, have sinned and are capable of deciet and being decieved.
It is only by blind acceptance of that which you wish to be true that you can claim that all are fallen and sinful in nature while yet giving special dispensation to those within the narrow confines of biblical origin.You're hypocrisy shines through here Faith. Perhaps you should hide it better.

Logically this is incorrect. IF all men are fallen AND God gave the special dispensation AND let Faith in on that fact THEN hypocrisy it would not be. Would it?You could always withdraw the ad hom before too many log on and see it Sidelined

Thanks Iano. We're supposed to be learning that ad homs and other misrepresentations and insults are for rejoicing, but it's hard to do. They don't know what they're doing, that's the best that can be said. They just chase us around the board with their nasty accusations. Oh well. Rejoice and be glad.

I never said fallenness meant that everybody lies all the time, and the Biblical witnesses were trained in the fear of God. Not perfect, of course not, but that's why there are MULTIPLE witnesses, as per God's Law, not just one like Joseph Smith or Mohammed.

You are equating philosophical empiricism with scientific empiricism.

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All the people who experienced it and reported it. All the writers of the OT and NT, and all the people they describe as witnessing the evidence.

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Yes, I get that.WHO were they?Like, what were their names? Where did they come from? Where did they go and what did they do? Where are their graves?Where is the outside verification from non-Biblical sources that they even existd, let alone wrote and did all the things you claim they did?

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Eyewitness accounts cannot possibly be "completely untrustworthy" or you wouldn't dare get out of bed in the morning.

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Memeory is not a video tape, Faith.Memory consists mostly of your brain reconstructing your personal perception of events. It fills in blanks and constructs details out of whole cloth, and changes things around to be more consistent with your past perceptions, biases, experiences, and prejudices.Furthermore, the ability to form accurate memories is greatly influenced by your attention and emotions.All of this is very easily demonstrated and as a result of this research the influence of eyewitness testimony in courtrooms has been diminished and the importance of physical evidence has become much more important.That's why it doesn't matter how sure a woman is that the man sitting in the defendant's chair was her rapist if his DNA doesn't match that of the samples collected from her after the attack. It couldn't have been him.Of course, you don't believe in the validity of DNA testing...

What I was pointing out was that Dawkins tea party was an example of philosophical empiricism. "We can't disprove Thor but nobody actually believes in Thor... we just go one god further".Why does Richard not believe in Thor or any other god do you think?

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The Bible is self-verifying. It is patently authentic, its authors patently honest witnesses.

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Upon what outside verification and evidence do you base this judgement?Or, are you sayig that you don't need any extra-Biblical verification?That, essentially, "the Bible is true becaise the Bible is true"? Edited by schrafinator, : No reason given.

Empiricism, Empiricism. All is empiricism.Can you not tell when someone is telling the truth or lying Schraf. I know your in retail so the skills might need some honing. But like, can you not just tell?

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The context was SCIENCE. The Bible is history. When you have witness reports you have real evidence of the past.

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But historians do not declare something they read in a single book (particularly a religious book) as historical fact unless they have verified it with numerous outside sources that have nothing to do with that book.You cannot claim the reliability and respectability of academic historical scholarship and also be completely lax and sloppy in your methodology, which is exactly what you are doing.

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Why does Richard not believe in Thor or any other god do you think?

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For the same reason YOU do not believe in Thor. Edited by schrafinator, : No reason given.

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Can you not tell when someone is telling the truth or lying Schraf. I know your in retail so the skills might need some honing. But like, can you not just tell?

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Someone can be telling me something that is untrue and not be lying.They are simply wrong. Mistaken.That's why I don't believe everything people tell me just because THEY believe it to be true, especially if it involves some kind of claim of fact.People believe things for all sorts of reasons, and mopst people believe the truth of the things they hear without checking to find out if they are based in fact or not. Haven't you ever heard of urban legends?Faith's claim that the Bible is an accurate historical document might be correct, and might be incorrect, or might be a combination of the two.Let me ask you, ian.How does one go about finding out if something, say, a crime, happened? Edited by schrafinator, : No reason given.Edited by schrafinator, : No reason given.