Are religions manmade and natural or supernaturally based?

Excuse me but the Bible reports ARE evidence and have always been taken as evidence and if they can't be regarded as evidence in the Faith forums you've so stacked the deck nobody can say anything. It should be regarded as evidence, PERIOD, in any forum. Do you discard all the historical writings about other events in the distant past because they are written? What nonsense Percy.

Of course it is far from clear that there ever was such a tomb. The earliest report we have is more than twenty years after the event, and tells us that the witnesses did not pass in the story - at least at that time. The story itself is somewhat unlikely, and really, a missing body is very poor evidence of a resurrection anyway.The empty tomb story is not important evidence.

Faith does not depend on evidence. Yet people who claim to have faith are constantly trying to come up with evidence for their faith. Seems like weak faith to me. You should just admit that there is no evidence for the resurrection and have faith that it happened.

It would help if unbelievers would stop telling us believers why we believe what we believe, because you haven't a clue.CHRISTIAN faith DOES depend on evidence and most of us would say it does and we are not just "trying to come up with evidence," we wouldn't believe what we believe without it. The evidence is in the credibility of the Biblical witnesses, whose reports, as GDR said, have the "ring of truth." The attitude of the writers, the simple narrative style, the choice of facts they report, the general lack of anything like whitewashing or hagiography or glossing over human failings, is all evidence of its credibility. Some of the writers actually SAY they are giving the particular facts they give IN ORDER to provide evidence so that the crucial events may be believed.As was just being discussed, a fair comparison of the Biblical reports with, say, the gnostic gospels, ought to demonstrate the credibility of the Bible over such blatant silly fiction.Have you read anything or much of C.S. Lewis? He writes about how as a scholar in mythologies he knows the sound or style of myth and the sound or style of truth and the Bible has the sound and style of truth. He didn't use those words but that was the gist of it.Oh yes indeed we need evidence for Christian faith and we have evidence for Christian faith. Tons of it. First recognize the credibility of the biblical writers and whole worlds of evidence of remarkable things opens up to you.But not if you give in to the prevailing nonsense that requires an actual miracle to manifest before you'll believe any of it. The whole point of the incident in which Thomas refused to believe what the witnesses told him about the resurrection, that Jesus graciously proved by appearing to him and showing him his wounds, is that we are to believe honest sincere witnesses and have the "ears to hear" what honest sincere witnesses tell us. Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Gee, all that narrative about who went to the tomb and saw what, the order of who witnessed what and who believed what and so on and so forth, all that was somehow just made up? That's impossible. It sounds like a factual report. It doesn't sound like anything anyone but a literary genius could have made up and there is no literary genius anyone could possibly point to who could have done that. Read the gnostic gospels. No genius wrote those, they are typical silly fiction. Ears to hear, PaulK, that's what its all about. It's all about believing what sincere honest trustworthy people reported.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Then it isn't faith; it's pseudoscience. Does he recognize a talking snake as myth?

Which of the different narratives isn't made up? Which one is true and how do you tell ?

All of them.I've argued it as well as I can. You might ask God to illuminate you.

*Groan*

Really? All the different versions are all true ? It doesn't seem very plausible, does it ?And how do you tell ?

Seems very plausible to me that all are true because I think the supposed contradictions either aren't contradictions but resolved in terms of different angles of perception, or are actually evidence of authenticity because they reflect the natural misperceptions human beings are prone to, which is more or less what GDR was getting at.I already said how I tell and said it in many ways: By the style and tone of the writers, by their choice of facts, by their lack of whitewashing, by their sincere honest personas etc. And again, you could ask God for illumination if you would REALLY like to know the truth, as opposed to being content with debunking the testimony of sincere honest reporters.

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Seems very plausible to me that all are true because I think the supposed contradictions either aren't contradictions but resolved in terms of different angles of perception, or are actually evidence of authenticity because they reflect the natural misperceptions human beings are prone to, which is more or less what GDR was getting at.

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So really it comes down to the fact that your claim to have evidence is based on your faith rather than vice versa. We've seen how you deal with the Bible and you've made it very clear that you put your beliefs ahead of even what the Bible says.As for GDR he'll say that evenwhen it is obviously ridiculous, so his opinion is equally worthless.

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I already said how I tell and said it in many ways: By the style and tone of the writers, by their choice of facts, by their lack of whitewashing, by their sincere honest personas etc.

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And I know that you've said much the same about Chiniquy which makes it quite laughable.In reality we have a fairly clear example of a story growing over time.And, just to go back to an obvious point that you haven,t addressed. If this is such great evidence why don't we see any mention of it for more than twenty years ?Edited by PaulK, : No reason given.

Call me a sceptic if you will....But an account written in an appealing writing style wouldn't normally be considered an evidential basis for concluding that a dead person had come back to life.

A story can be written about anything. Stories aren't evidence. The difference between the faith forums and the science forums is that in the faith forums you don't need evidence. That doesn't mean that in the faith forums faith *is* evidence. You have faith that the Bible stories are true, and in the faith forums that's all you need. If you don't want to provide evidence for your beliefs in the faith forums then you don't have to, but that doesn't mean faith is evidence.I think you could correctly argue that people shouldn't be raising issues of evidence in the faith forums. These are the forums to argue, for example, how well one's faith accords with the Bible, not whether what the Bible says is true in any evidence-based sense. The right forum for arguments like that would be The Bible: Accuracy and Inerrancy.But I won't be moderating this thread because I don't usually moderate in the faith forums.--Percy

No. It is evidence. These are not "stories," they are historical accounts and they have all the requisite marks of authenticity and believability.