Why Are Christians Afraid To Doubt?

I confess there is no evidence which circular reasoning cannot reject. End of discussion. Fine. Have you any plausible scenario by which the martyrs who testified to the resurrection of Jesus were deceived? If so, you're welcome to submit it. If not, please say so. My observations give me no evidence with which I might honestly dispute this statement.

You are right, it is not a tool to guarentee perfect results: nothing can.'Intuition' is so prone to error it's not even funny. If an answer is based on intuition all kinds of bias (observer bias for starters) will creep in and confound ones conclusions.

But that possibility is vanishingly small and getting smaller every day. This is because we know so much more about the world since we stopped saying 'goddidit'. We learnt to doubt what we were taught and found conscistantly and increasingly more accurate answers.

But that possibility is vanishingly small and getting smaller every day. This is because we know so much more about the world since we stopped saying 'goddidit'. We learnt to doubt what we were taught and found conscistantly and increasingly more accurate answers.

I think what crashfrog proposes is that if a liar managed to infiltrate a Christian church, it invalidates Christian beliefs. Or if a liar wrote a fake Bible, it invalidates the true Bible. Or if a liar merely formed his own belief system, and called himself a Christian.Maybe it would take more than one. Maybe a handful. I was trying to help clarify the situation; but I guess we'll have to wait for crashfrog to give us a logical number. And maybe some reasoning to back up this contention.

They were delusional. I'v met people who believe they have to keep their hand on their head at all times or their head will fall off.I'v met people who attempted suicide because of what they believed was true.We've all read about cults who do kill themselves because of what they believe to be true.And it's all bollocks you know.It's all a brain malfunction, an attribution error and an inability to disconfirm erroneous perceptual information.Why do you think paranoid schizophrenics sincerely beleive they are being victimised? Are they right?No, they are not.The brain can do some wonderful things but it can also fuck up in a catastrophic, terminal way; I present your martrys.

I think the point here is that you have no way of knowing what the "true" Bible is. Any or all of the available versions might have been altered - knowingly or unknowingly - by liars or fools.To believe that that could not have happened is the height of credulity. That's why everything has to be examined.

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I don't know what you're talking about. You seem to have mistaken my reasonable skepticism for complete intractability. Please, don't confuse the complete impotence of your arguments with some failure to be reasonable on my part. Sure. They belonged to a religion based entirely on falsehoods, and only believed because everybody else they knew believed. (Go back to the Asch conformity experiments.)It's not like there are any corroborated eyewitnesses to the resurrection. Indeed, it's all but impossible to say that many of these martyrs actually existed. But, of course, you'll go on believing anyway, long after the rational basis for belief has fallen out from underneath you. And I'm the unreasonable one. Got it.

Don't assume that everyone has your lack of discernment. Why? Why should your woulda coulda's have anything to do with what God does? Your intuition is not going to solve anything either. No one says that God has to preserve a message in every telling. He only has to preserve it once for it to be so. Besides, the 'Telephone' scenerio doesn't fit very well with Christian history anyway. You would have a picture where there was a pyramid game, the RCC and the Jewish people, a few others have been 'playing' the longest, and the vast majority of these other sects created a new message and started their own games. They are hoping that they have it right by accident.The honest and best way to 'play' is to do the good old Bible studies, the research into tradition, to look and compare through the ages in the way that PD and others will do.She will take the concept of 'surrender to God' as it has developed through the ages, and match it up to the Bible. If it fits, it does. The Bible conversely is 'fitted' to history. These are the things that Christians do every day. The purpose of this thread is to ask them what they do when they doubt that things 'match', and whether this negates their faith or negates reality for them.Your table example is not very mysterious. Because of the side view of the table, which includes a view of the thickness in both cases, one table will appear longer or wider. It is an optical illusion. It needs to go in a puzzle book, not a science class. Well, you can use it for either. Just remember that people who do puzzles, architects, artists, and such, are not going to be 'fooled'. The folks who are afraid to doubt their own conclusion even if they find out it is incorrect, are the brunt of this thread. We are a long way from there in Christianity. We have only to deal with YEC's and that ilk as far as 'proof' goes.Also, proving no message from God does not negate God. Ask the deists. So, maybe Jesus was a magician. That is just one direction doubt can go in. Calling you pessimistic is calling you a name? You called me full of 'contrarianism'! You tell me I have my fingers in my ears and eyes! Do you see me getting upset? If you want to tell me in grammatical language, (you know, with verbs and pronouns and adverbs and all of that), how my sentence was incorrect, I am not against learning. While you're at it, fix my placement of commas. If I say"We can not begin the party, because all (guests) have not arrived".I still don't see the problem. There is no implication that I am standing in an empty room.It is probably not the best grammar, but you have made me curious anyway.

With 11,000 individual Christian denominations? I don't have to assume anything. It's obvious that nobody can correctly discern the message. Ah, right. "God works in ways we can't understand."Funny, though - that didn't seem to stop either you or CTD from purporting to know exactly what God set out to do and how he did it. How come the argument from ineffability is only trotted out to oppose my arguments? How come God's ineffability doesn't stimulate a little humility on your part? When it comes to God and his messages, you seem to be of the opinion that you know perfectly what God would and wouldn't do. Sure. But the basic principle of Telephone is sound. (And each of the conditions you mention only makes it worse for you.) Telephone works because of the weakness of the basic Telephone duple - I speak a message that you hear. But you don't hear it quite the way I spoke it, and you don't quite remember it the way that you heard it.You could do it in writing, too, if each element in the chain or pyramid had to re-write the original message.As, you know, they had to do before the days of printing presses and photocopies. Telephone definitely applies to what we're talking about. Right, right. Because you say so. Of course, from what I can see - as an ex-Christian - that's exactly where you are. Caught up in a "faith-based illusion."

No, no. I am not trying to know anything. It just gets boring to hear how 'God can't be real' because of YOUR personal logic. You must feel the same way when you hear someone say 'God MUST be real because of MY personal logic'. Every 'case' that is presented is just one possibility amoung many. There is no valid reason to say God needs to preserve 5 million copies of one message. There is no reason to say He can't, or He did, or He should, do anything. Thus all that we speak on this matter is personal opinion. It is not about who is right, but about accepting the possibility that we are wrong. I only try to state the possibilities fairly. I believe it is fair to note that there is no compelling reason to rule out a message.Edited by anastasia, : No reason given.

You keep acting like this is all in my head, but the things I've told you are real facts about the world you live in. If you don't believe that there are so many translations of the Bible, go to a bookstore and see for yourself. If you don't believe that there are so many different denominations, look it up yourself.If you don't believe me when I say that there's almost nothing that they have in common, then read about what they believe. These aren't things I'm making up in my head. Except then I show them the evidence that suggests that they're wrong. I listen to their logic and try to show them the flaws. And when, inevitably, they throw their hands up and tell me they were mistaken to think they could justify their faith with logic, I leave them alone. I can't reason someone out of a belief they don't think is reasonable.Of course, even then I can't win, because Phat rolls up in here to tell me what an asshole I am for thinking he's unreasonable. And then the circle goes around again.What are you doing, though? Telling me it's all in my head? I've gone out and sought out the facts that corroborate my views. What have you done besides imply that I'm making it all up? Nothing that I can see. I've accepted that possibility, and given you ample opportunity to show that I am with the production of evidence that supports your view. You've done nothing but ignore my view and my evidence, and certainly provided none of your own. Do you really think, when one side has evidence and the other is dissembling, that it's unreasonable for spectators to arrive at a conclusion about who is most likely right and wrong?

I did my source says 1,200 denomintions in the US and worldwide 34,000 seprate Christian groups.

Thanks for another data point. The counts do vary widely, largely since there are so many "micro-denominations" that are difficult to track in surveys.Edited by crashfrog, : No reason given.

If there's something in this topic that you think merits further discussion, propose a new topic.Adminnemooseus

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