My Beliefs- GDR

You deserve some kind of cognitive dissonance award for this post.:abe:inb4 you say "what I actually meant was...."Edited by hooah212002, : No reason given.

Does god not exist now? Geez, I wish you would apply such reasonable logic for god. We are talking about the plausiblity of god vs bigfoot, not the resurrection. Remember, this is in regards to you saying you don't start with the position that bigfoot exists.Let me remind you again, of the two, you are skeptical of the one that doesn't require you to accept the supernatural and the one that even currently people are still claiming to have seen it. Finding Bigfoot is coming back for a 4th season!- OniEdited by onifre, : No reason given.Edited by onifre, : No reason given.

The bible is very arguably a mish mash of pagan beliefs repackaged, rebranded and manipulated over time.1) Genesis is in large part a rehashing of the ancient Gilgamesh myth (garden, naked, corrupted by woman, wickednesss into the pure world, great flood as punishment etc. etc.)
2) Mithra the Roman deity (also Mitra the Indian God of the Sun and Persian Mithra) was born of a virgin, crucified and resurrected 3 days later, his birth was celebrated on the winter solstice and his resurrection celebrated at the time we now call Easter, his followers took part in a ritual involving bread and wine and the first Christian places of worship were built on temples originally devoted to him
3) Among the religions of the day incorporating a crucifixion myth, for example, were the mystery religions of Attis, Adonis, Dionysus, and several others. Dionisus, for example, was depicted as being given a crown of ivy, dressed in a purple robe, and was given gall to drink before his crucifixion. The depiction on a Greek vase from the 5th century B.C.E. even shows a communion being prepared.

Aside from whatever supernatural involvement was required to get the universe beginning I'm sure you are right. Right - Follow the evidence. And the evidence alone. Absolutely.But no matter how times you or I say that it has proven absolutely impossible to get the likes of GDR or RAZ to understand that an atheistic position towards some undisprovable entities or events can be taken based on the available evidence.You say GDR is begging the question. A logical fallacy. He wouldn't deny it but would say an atheistic position demands the same but opposite. Read any of RAZ's posts on the subject (the Bluegenes challenge ones for example) and he perpetually accuses his atheistic opponents of begging the question. You have. And Mod has in other threads. And Bluegenes. And Dr A. And me. And PaulK. And Panda. And numerous others in thread after thread after thread. But still it never gets through.There is some difference of perspective between the two camps that seems impossible to overcome. OK. Let's see where GDR goes with that one. In terms of eye witness testimony and reasonably widespread positive belief it's a decent fit even if the empirical detectability aspect is likely to be cited as some sort of relevant difference. Let's see....

I think this is a big part of it.Things like tradition and religious texts being around for so long.
Thinking of the time and energy of so many lives that must have been put into writing these texts, protecting them, governing them, copying them (before print-machines)... that sort of thing. That's really true, I'm sure it took quite a lot of time and energy.Anything that adds to the feeling of the idea that "this can't just be for nothing... no one would waste this much time on nothing."
Add in a fear of being wrong. (Who wants anything to do with a possibility of something they consider a high priority being "for nothing"?)
Add in peer pressure (not the kiddie-kind from highschool, but the subtle kind from every-day real life of the people they look up to)And they're right. Nobody did any of it for nothing.
So it must be because a supernatural God exists.Nevermind that it equally could have been done for all sorts of other, mundane reasons. That would be boring.
Reasons varying from hopes and dreams and wanting to calm fears... all the way to control and conspiratorial politics.
None of that is nothing, and a lot of it is extremely important (to us humans, anyway).But this comparison cannot be presented either.Because, even though these mundane reasons obviously contain some very important junk, if it doesn't include a supernatural God, then it is "nothing" as far as certain corners of the theistic mind are concerned, which nulls the value of the point. The supernatural God is so much better than all those mundane reasons. Who would ever want to give up such a wonderful connection to the "better" source?Plus, identifying that it isn't "nothing" only confirms to other corners of the same theistic minds that God must be present in order to sustain such powerful emotions....and then all the bases are covered...
They may not be touching the ground, but they're covered (Just forget about the part where no idea about God has ever actually been shown to be "better" than mundane ideas anyway...)

Hi GDR,I respect your beliefs.That is why you labled this thread"My Beliefs"We all believe things, we must to function in this world. Everything just about is taken on faith because we can not possiby verify every single fact.The difference I think is that some people choose to believe things simply because that is what they want to do. They want to believe and therefore they do, dispite anything to the contrary. It gives them sense of comfort, belonging and fellowship. It is deeply rooted in tradition and the past and gives promise for the future.It is a matter of personal choice to believe or not to believe.
Evidence or no evidence, that makes no difference it seems.
All that matters is what one feels inside.
Otherwise one can become conflicted.I leave you with the words of Polonius from Hamlet.
"To thine ownself be true."

No, I accept the possibility of miracles because I believe in God.. The plausibility is a different issue. Yes, but as I pointed out resurrection in those instances did not mean the same thing as it does in Gospels. However, even if the wasn't the case I don't see it as germane. IMHO God works through people's hearts, minds and imaginations so it wouldn't be unreasonable to see the foreshadowing ahead of something God was going to do in the future.Also the first followers were all Jewish. If they were going to invent the whole thing they would use Jewish mythology and not anyone else's. No resurrection account that I am aware of has anyone being resurrected in a way that they come through death and emerge in a new bodily form.

According to the stories. History shows that early christians were mainly gentiles. It was at a very early point a Greek religion, taking as much or more from the Greek mystery cults as it did from Jewish mythology. These cults also shared stories and myths with jewish mythology.

The only myth here is this nonsense. WHAT "history" shows this? The early church was all Jewish as GDR said, and later became predominantly Gentile. And then when it began to be corrupted by pagan elements as the RCC began to develop it was ROMAN paganism, not Greek. Nevertheless, those elements were kept out of the Bible as the gnostic texts were carefully excluded.

I agree with your mother.I give spare change to people who ask for it, even if they might spend it on alcohol or drugs. Like your mother, I'm giving them the opportunity to do what's right.

I don't know if specifically for god GDR would consider that position, but his opinion changes when we switch it from god to bigfoot.He had this to say:

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The more time that goes by without a confirmed sighting the less plausible its existence becomes.

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So both camps have the same perspective on how to guage the veracity of claims, but GDR does not choose to be rational about god. Only about bigfoot.Perhaps for all the reasons that Stile's presented.- Oni

Ok, so you accept the possibility of all miracles? Even the ones claimed by the holy man and his followers on how he miraculously cured the sick? Yes it did. Coming back from the dead. That is what resurrected means. Given that they were the slaves of Egyptian, clearly the source of Jewish mythology came from Egypt. I mean, we've covered this and you've already conceded. Yes, there have been. Many have come back in the body of animals.- Oni

Sorry. I thought you were comparing in Bigfoot to believing in the resurrection.I agree with your point except frankly I don’t think that believing in Bigfoot makes your point as strong as it could be. I’m curious about Bigfoot but it makes no difference to me whether it exists or not, so I’m going to be less inclined to believe in Bigfoot than I am in a deity that talks about life after death.From your POV I think it actually is more akin to someone who after reading their horoscope believes they are going to win the lottery, goes out and buys a ticket and runs their credit card up to the max.So yes, I see that as a valid reason to be sceptical but that that does not mean that what I believe is wrong.Here is a philosophical thought. I suggest that virtually everyone wants to have their life mean something, and that they will leave a mark, usually a positive one, on the world after they are gone. The most common method is having children, it might be through the work we do, people like to have plaques put on park benches with their name on it, we put our name on grave stones etc. The point is we want to accomplish something with our lives and we like to be in some memorable.Why is that? If there is nothing but oblivion after death why should we care? Why would evolution have produced this trait?Another thought is this. Our basic nature is that we want justice. I mentioned this before in other threads but there was a young boy abducted over 20 years ago very near where I live. Nothing was ever found of him and nobody was ever charged. This abduction still comes up on a regular basis in the news and people want to see justice done — both for the boy and for whoever it was who did whatever he did, even though it has absolutely no effect on our lives.These are a couple of deep seated yearnings that we have that just don’t IMHO fit with something that would evolve without there being something more than just natural selection and socialization. It is my belief that this life is a foreshadowing of something else. The Christian message is that the good we do in this life matters and that in some way it has an impact on the life to come when this world is renewed. The Christian message is that there will be perfect justice for the boy and the perpetrator.Yes, it could be cognitive dissonance that causes Christians like myself to believe that life does have ultimate meaning, and I can’t prove that it isn’t the case. I understand your point, and I agree that it is a valid argument but that doesn’t mean that you are right. I’ll go back to the quote of C S Lewis that I used earlier.

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I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen: not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.

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I’m fairly certain that to you that is just nonsense but I can truthfully say that it really resonates with me.

I don’t know which holy man you mean, but if you mean Jesus then yes I believe they happened. They are again a foreshadowing of the life when this world is renewed and sickness and death are no longer part of our existence. Lazarus came back from the dead and that wasn’t considered a resurrection. There certainly is a great deal in the OT that was not part of Egyptian mythology. Of course Straggler is right when he talks about Gilgamesh and the flood stories. I agree with C S Lewis as he talks about the message becoming more and more focused as we progress through the Jewish Scriptures. However, my point was that if the first Christians were going to make it up it would be based on Jewish texts alone. That sounds more like reincarnation.

Before we get on with the rest that posted, take note that it was YOUR point also. You said very intelligently:

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The more time that goes by without a confirmed sighting the less plausible its existence becomes.

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Now, you say if bigfoot is real or not then who cares. It doesn't matter. Well, sure, it really doesn't matter unless you're a biologist - then it would change a lot about the evolution of the homo genus. Who ever discovered it would probably win a Noble Prize in science. But hey, that's for the nerds to care about.You say you're more inclined to care about god because the books talk about life after death. Ok, that's a fair point. But it only becomes a concern once you've placed faith in what is written in those books. So it really isn't anything to be concerned about, but you've decided to make it a point of concern. To each his own.But I can address this: We can follow the emergence of rituals and belief in the afterlife and how it follows the evolution of our prefrontal cortex.

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The most typical psychological term for functions carried out by the prefrontal cortex area is executive function. Executive function relates to abilities to differentiate among conflicting thoughts, determine good and bad, better and best, same and different, future consequences of current activities, working toward a defined goal, prediction of outcomes, expectation based on actions, and social "control" (the ability to suppress urges that, if not suppressed, could lead to socially unacceptable outcomes).

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From this we can see, that having the belief that the person you loved so dearly, a fairly new emotion that early man dealt with, is waiting for you in the afterlife supresses urges and emotions that could lead to socially unacceptable outcomes. Such as depression, which leads to not taking care of your young, or looking for food, or may let your guard down and you don't see danger.Since there were no therapist in those days or delicious prozac, telling someone "Don't worry you'll see them in the afterlife" was comforting enough to help the person not fall apart. They continue living, and taking care of their responsibilities to their social group and offspring.So that is a good case as to why evolution selected spirituality, as a coping method for loss and to deal with the debilitating emotional effects due to death. There is literally a point in human history when we start to bury people in what looks like ritual funerals. Before that there was none of that. So at some point our brain developed so many new emotions that it also had to develop a method by which to control these emotions to not allow the species to be over run by them and die off. This could just be a byproduct of having created god's that punish people - we've had these stories in our culture for 5000 years, or more. You can't be certain this isn't a culturally influenced sense of justice. No, not at all. That is not the definition of the word. Why you have cognitive dissonance is because in one case you say "The more time that goes by without a confirmed sighting the less plausible its existence becomes" and then ignore that very reasoning when it comes to something you just want to believe like god. You hold two conflicting beliefs.- Oni