Now. you can have what ever belief you want. When it comes to others, it is 'can you show that your belief is true' is the question. What can you show me ??? How can you provide what you believe to be true without what is known as 'confirmation bias'? Can you find a way to take testimony of people away, and show that your belief is more than "warm fuzzy feelings"/
People have always had experiences of the "gods" and know by experience that they are real. But the way Christians who believe in the Bible know the reality of God is by believing what the Bible says, believing the witnesses who testify to their experiences of the work of the true God in this world. It's not a blind faith, and it's not an experience, you are believing in testimony. And most Christians will tell you that once they truly believe then they also do experience God in various ways, speaking in a personal way through His word being the most common I suppose.
Well, the way I see it, people wrote down stories in the Bible, mixed in a bit of history, and then made a LOT of tall tales up. You can proclaim the 'Truth' of the bible all you want, but so far, no one has been able to show me that their 'religious expereinces' are anything more than confirmation bias.
God gave us no provision for demonstrating that He's real. He gave us many witnesses to His reality that we either believe or we don't. When we believe, as Christians will generally attest, then we know He's real. Interesting how that works.
Well, there are a lot of witnesses to the 'reality' of aliens kidnapping people, and for ghosts, big foot and the loch ness monster.
Now, why is it that 'God gave us no provision for demonstrating that is real' looks just the same as 'Gos isn't there at all'?
It might be 'witnessing', but the bible was not written by 'witnesses' for the post part. You are using the logical fallacy of 'equivocation' here. Isaiah might have been a 'eye witness' to the events in Isaiah part 1, since he was relaying his personal experience, although the self promotion there certainly gives rise to caution. The 'historical' section of 1 kings/ 2 kings might have been eye witnesses too.. but the gospels/? No.. they were decades later.
This kind of equivocation is quite obvious , and IMO deceitful. I have to wonder about that valdity of any faith that has to go through such lies to promote itself
Now, I object to being called a liar. .. particularly when I give accurate and truthful information.
I can do something that I don't see you being able to do.. and that is BACK UP MY CLAIMS.
For example.. the Gospel of Mark.
According to the church fathers.. , you know, the people that have reason to make it as early as possible, mark was written by the disciple of Peter after Paul and Peter died. That is about 65 C.E.. so that makes the writing of Mark to be 65 at the earliest. Matthew and Luke copied from Mark (read up on the 'synoptic problem'.
It is sort of sad when such a faithful believer doesn't even know the historiy of their own scriptures.
And all you have to show for it is the rather childish and immature threat (as well as being powerless) of 'you aren't going to be happy when you find the truth'?? Come on.. do you honestly think that will convince a skeptic? That is sort of like someone being brought up by a single mom telling someone 'my daddy will beat you up when he gets home'.
How more 'traditional' can you get than the early church leaders? Mind you , that does not mean they are right, but that is the tradition.
Now, I am not interested in 'tearing up' what the bible says.... although I do think that the fundamentalist interpretation is not supported by the biblicial text.. but from a purely academic point of view, my statement is correct. ... the evidence shows that the various texts were written between 65 (probably after 70) to as late as the early second century when it comes to both John and Luke.
Re: Jonathan Sarfati, of AIG, accepts General Relitivity (and AIG itself).
The ttrouble with pascals wager is that it looks at the Christian God in that wager, and doesn't take into account that Vishnu, Brahma , and Shiva are particularly discriminatory against people who believe in Jesus.
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