Is faith the answer to cognitive dissonance?

The problem with all this, and in fact the whole discussion at EvC about these things is that we do NOT have faith without evidence, and Jesus is NOT saying that, CS and Phat, what we have is faith without the kind of scientific evidence EvC regards as the only kind of evidence, but we have tons of witness evidence.Jesus chided Thomas for not believing all the other disciples who had told him that they'd seen the risen Christ. He was willing to back up their testimony with physical proof in Thomas' case, so WE could see that behind the witness evidence there IS real physical evidence and all of today's Thomases should get the point from that story. But they simply refuse to believe any of it. They say they want evidence but they throw out all the evidence they've been given.You too, Phat, probably believe to some extent on the basis of this witness evidence, though you seem to have fallen for the EvC debunkery bit that says witness evidence isn't evidence.Believing Jesus, believing the Bible, is all based on a willingness to believe the witnesses that it musters for us. The Levitical Law required that two or three witnesses be produced to determine any case, and the Bible gives us a lot more than two for all the great claims it makes about God and Jesus, and the story of Thomas is about how he'd ignored the witness testimony of all the other disciples who had seen the Lord, that's a lot more than two.But the point of having multiple witnesses is that witness testimony is known to be unreliable, which is always thrown at me when I bring this up here but without recognizing that scripture also recognized this and made abundant provision for it. The Biblical authors recognized that too, and God commanded that there never be just one witness. But it doesn't matter how many we give them they will knock themselves out to discredit all the witnesses given and leave themselves without the evidence they say they want to have.They think they want to see the wounds that Thomas saw? Why don't they just believe that Thomas saw them? They think they want to see the Red Sea part? Why not just believe Moses and all those who experienced it? As Jesus told the rich man in Hell, if they won't believe Moses and the Prophets they would also not believe even if someone came back from the dead to show it to them. This describes our "honest skeptics" at EvC. Well, they are just so much smarter than all those "bronze age" people they can't trust a word of it. So they leave themselves without the evidence they claim to want.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

The Bible is clear that multiple witnesses are required to validate any claim -- ABE: well, not any, but extraordinary claims such as the Bible makes /ABE -- as I said, and the Bible provides them abundantly. Both Mohammed and Joseph Smith have no other witnesses than themselves.ABE: Plus character witnesses against them.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

The principle of multiple witnesses is very clear in the Bible and clearly exemplified in its accounts. So much of Moses' accounts is testified by multiple others there is no reason to doubt it when he gives a singular testimony as well. But deny any particular instance if you like, there are hundreds more that are extremely well attested, about miracles among other things. My original point was about the need for multiple witnesses and the Bible's supplying them, and that remains true.Mohammed on the other hand has himself alone as witness to his encounter with "Gabriel." And even so I actually don't doubt that he had an encounter with a supernatural entity that called himself Gabriel. However, there is not one thing in the Bible that we are required to believe that is attested only by a private encounter.All stories I've read about Joseph Smith's finding of the golden tablets have him finding them alone. You produce a document about eleven witnesses but we know they weren't there at the time of the finding and if you just read that document it's highly doubtful that any of them truly saw the tablets anyway: As for character witnesses, if you believe the Pharisees and not Jesus, oh well. And if you believe Joseph Smith and not the many locals who had known him as a con man, oh well. That's your bad choice to make.

Oh but they were eyewitnesses, all the writers of the New Testament except Luke and Paul were eyewitnesses of the events of Jesus' life, and Luke had contacts among all the eyewitnesses and had studied all their claims, and Paul was illuminated by Jesus Himself from heaven.Nobody says Moses literally scribed all of the Torah, only that the books ascribed to him covered his time, and he probably did write most of it, and we assume he had either oral or written records to work from.Why do people keep saying such silly obvious things as that Moses couldn't have written about his own death as if nobody had noticed before they came along?.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

It's a Levitical Law that requires two or three witnesses to any claim, and the Bible provides many many more than that to all the major events our faith rests upon.And by your quoting of passages about faith you seem to have the usual false idea that faith does not require or have evidence. Hardly, our faith is built on the evidence of the witnesses given in the Bible, lots of it. There is no such thing as genuine faith without evidence, and as I already argued back upthread about the incident of Thomas' demanding physical proof, the lesson is that believing what the witnesses had told him would have given him that same evidence he got by actually seeing it, and that's the evidence we all have when we trust the Biblical witnesses.ABE: Once we have that faith then faith leads us to further knowledge. If Thomas had believed the reports of the disciples who had seen the risen Christ he'd have had that "substance of things unseen" that faith gives us. But things we can't otherwise witness such as the creation of the world and the Flood, we also know by faith.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

I did add an edit to take that into account, but the point is that although there is tons of actual physical evidence described in the Bible (including all kinds of miracles that were witnessed by many, millions in the case of the Exodus from Egypt, hundreds in many other cases) none of us now can have direct knowledge of those events, just as we can't for any other one-time historical event. That's simply the situation with historical events. You have to decide whom to trust about those events and put your trust in their witness accounts. {ABE: Their accounts ARE evidence. What the disciples told Thomas about seeing Jesus WAS evidence that He had risen. He'd have had the same knowledge they had IF HE HAD BELIEVED THEM. See? Same for us. If we believe them then we have that knowledge too. /ABE} Believing in miracles requires faith in the Biblical accounts of the miracles. Once you believe in some of them then you have a platform based on faith for understanding a lot more than those things, so that then faith leads you to all kinds of knowledge through the Bible that is available no other way. Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

"Testimony" is an OK word, I guess, as long as it means the same thing as eyewitness account.You do of course have a problem in the case of one-time miracles in that there is no other evidence for such things. It's the witness accounts or nothing, unless God has mercy on you and gives you a special experience of a miracle. If He doesn't, then you have to decide if the witnesses are credible or not. If you think they are not you will simply never believe in the Biblical miracles.And by the way, the translations are quite reliable, many having been translated directly from the Hebrew and Greek; but I'd recommend the KJV because it's based on the best Greek manuscripts. A miracle by definition is the suspension of physical laws. God being God who put the laws in place can certainly override them if He so desires. The miracles in the Bible are in fact very few, but a real miracle IS a real miracle. The pillars of cloud and fire that guided the Israelites across the wilderness, are certainly miracles, and so was the parting of the Red Sea. Gideon's fleece involved a miracle. If you refuse to believe the witnesses to these things because they violate normal physical laws, then you've simply cut yourself off from the possibility of believing in miracles. Pretty weak evidence if you ask me. The parting of the Red Sea is also a physical impossibility according to physical law. So is an axe head floating on water, which is a miracle Elisha performed, also the miraculous supply of oil he provided for the widow; so is the multiplication of a few fish and loaves of bread by which Jesus fed thousands of people, plus the turning of water into wine among many other things Jesus did. Such miracles are given as evidence that we are actually talking about the real omnipotent God. If you refuse to believe the witnesses to those things that the Bible gives us, because you refuse to allow Him to suspend His own natural laws, then you've simply made it impossible to ever believe in Him.

The point I've made a few times here is that BECAUSE witness testimony is notoriously unreliable Levitical Law required two or three witnesses to validate a claim, and many more than two or three are given for the great events such as the miracles in the Bible.The example of Moses I gave was in response to a challenge, it's not the norm. The parting of the Red Sea was experienced by millions, who are all eyewitnesses. If it hadn't happened surely we'd have heard reports from that time debunking it. If you don't believe in the basic honesty of the Biblical writers you might as well forget the whole thing of course, you'll never believe in anything God gave us to prove His reality and doings and that's your choice. All the books of the NT were written by eyewitnesses to the life and miracles of Jesus except Luke and Paul, who received knowledge of those things indirectly as the rest of us must. But if you don't like them or want to believe them nobody can make you.

First, I'd never "start with the assumption that there is a God" I am saying that the Bible provides abundant evidence that there is a God, a lot of it eyewitness evidence to miracles.Second, it's a strangely weak omnipotent God who couldn't guide human beings to an honest report of witnessed events.Three a: the physical universe has to be interpreted too, there is nothing straightforward about what it presents to the human mind or it wouldn't have taken thousands of years before we learned anything of use about it.Three b: Show me where the physical universe gives evidence of what the Bible reveals of the Creation and Fall or the Flood or God's plan of redemption or the need for salvation answered by the incarnation of God Himself to die for us? "First attempt?" I'm sure there were lots of writings about God before the Bible. We simply believe the Bible is the undistorted truth given by God Himself. And as I say above there are plenty of things about the nature of God and especially His provision for our salvation that we'd never get from any other source than the Bible, certainly not from the physical world, nor from any other "attempt at describing God."

Double standard? No, I have the single standard that the Bible reveals the truth and the "reliable historical evidence" isn't reliable and the historians don't know what they are talking about. If you trust the historians that's your choice of course. Oh hardly. "Without any doubt?" You just choose to believe the Bible debunkers, but they are the unreliable source. There is nothing at all of lies in the Bible, and apart from the fact that the Bible is not primarily a "book on morality," there isn't a single immorality condoned in the Bible except what you choose to regard as that.Usually what is called immorality is God's severe judgments for sin. Well, that's not fun but it's justice, not immorality, which God is incapable of. Oh the effrontery of the created being to judge God!If you discredit your source you'll never learn anything, but so be it.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Yeah, well since millions of people didn't write down what they witnessed, or we don't happen to have those millions of individual reports, we do have to believe those who wrote down that millions witnessed it. But of course feel free to believe that because millions didn't write it down they didn't witness anything, or they didn't exist or whatever makes your day, that's fine with me.Of course if you think Moses, or the writer of the Torah, was lying about there being millions of people who experienced the parting of the Red Sea, then you don't have those millions of witnesses or the one witness either.You're very adept at getting rid of the truth along with the myths. I would think that eventually there wouldn't be anything left you could trust at all.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Oh there's tons of evidence outside the Bible that the Bible is true too.But you missed the context. Someone said I have a double standard so I answered no, my standard is single. It's always nice to get the context straight you know.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Then believe the w4riters of the books, duh.

I haven't said anything I don't believe. If you don't believe me that's your problem.

Maybe you would, I don't know. The water into wine? The turning of a few fish and loaves of bread into enough to feed thousands? The healing of a blind man, the raising of dead people? Or back about 1500 years, the parting of the Red Sea, the dew on Gideon's fleece -- and off it; the fire from heaven that burnt up Elijah's water-soaked sacrifice, the floating of Elisha's ax head, the miraculous filling of the widow's empty vessels with oil. As John said at the end of his gospel, "these were written that you might believe." But I suppose that someone determined enough could just assume a priori, without proof, based on prejudice against such things, that there must be naturalistic explanations and defeat John's purpose. Must happen quite a bit actually. Properly speaking that's not a miracle, but it is what is called "Providence," meaning God's provision of something needed when needed. In this case it's answer to prayer given in response to a prompting by the Spirit. God provided a dog and a chicken to save the person from death. If you don't believe in such things, then such stories won't convince you. But there are a lot of such reports these days, especially in charismatic and Pentecostal circles. Some of them are quite believable I think. But again, they aren't miracles. Miracles involve the suspension of natural law, such as seen in the multiplication of fish and bread, water into wine, instant healing of the blind, raising of the dead, floating of an ax head etc. Answered prayer must seem miraculous to some, but properly speaking it's not. I wouldn't offer that kind of example as evidence for the existence of God myself, as I would offer the Bible with its God-chosen witnesses. Hm. But why can't God use ancient shepherds the same way He could use anyone? If you agree that He should be able to "guide human beings to an honest report of witnessed events" why are you so picky about whom He chooses? And as I said before, what's to guarantee 1) that human beings have the capacity to interpret these things correctly, especially 2) the Moral Law that runs the universe and the destructive effect of human violations of that Law, the death of living things for instance; in fact the evidence of such destruction in the planet itself -- you all don't see that, you assume that what you see is what you get, i.e. it's the way Nature just IS, as expressed in the principle of Uniformitarianism that never dreams there could have been a better original Creation. We'd never figure that one out on our own. We'd never figure out that we're less than we were originally created to be either, that sin has corrupted us in essential ways and in fact blinded us to what meanings there ARE in Nature; or that sin condemns us all to a miserable eternity, from which God planned to save us by sending God the Son to die in our place. The rocks and stars could not tell us that, not in our fallen condition. This is why we need special revelation from God Himself. Sure, if you HAVE to be able to apprehend everything through your senses and simply refuse to believe that there are things you cannot know by those means, you'll ignore it. You have that prerogative. I thought the point was that we should be able to understand all we need to know about God and His Creation from the rocks and stars. To my mind that suggests we shouldn't have had to stumble around in the dark for thousands of years with the loss of untold generations of human beings to misery to get the first glimmers of what it all means.And what little we DO know about all that even now convinces very few of the existence of God anyway, which rather defeats your idea, doesn't it? I mean, just listen to all the strident cocksure voices of Science that tell you that the physical universe is "all there is or ever was or ever wiil be," and how we've sent rockets into space and nobody has seen God out there and so on and so forth. So tell me again how God communicates with us through the rocks and stars? Not that the fallen mind would ever discover on its own, that's for sure. It takes words to communicate clearly, not that words always accomplish that, but some words that tell me to stay away from that rock because there's a rattlesnake behind it are of far more value to me than my own inadequate eyesight.I'm sure cave men sat and contemplated rocks and stars endlessly. I can imagine them yearning in their heart of hearts that the God who made it all would come down from heaven and explain it all to them, or if they could read would write something down for them so they could understand it all.Well, He did. I for one am VERY grateful. But perhaps I have no way of convincing you. That's up to God I guess.