Summations Only

If pressed, my personal view is that it is a blend of historical truth and some legend built around it. Frankly however, it isn't critical to my faith one way or the other.IMHO there are only two essentials to my Christian faith. The first is that God is good, loving and just and the second is the physical resurrection of Jesus. The remainder of what I believe, including the Bible flows out of that.

The first, (that God is just and good), is important as to how we live our lives. The second, (that Jesus was bodily resurrected), is important as it validates Jesus life and message which is in part that God is just and good. It also validates Christ's message that this life isn't all that there is and that we are here for the purpose of serving one another and all of creation for that matter.

I don't see the problem. Even"IF" the whole thing was legendary and not historically true that doesn't mean that the story doesn't convey a truth greater than the story itself, in ways that I mentioned earlier.

I have gone around this several times with Faith and others on this forum. If you treat the Bible as inerrant or even as one book then you can paint God as cruel, unforgiving and genocidal. However, the Bible is a collection of books written over centuries with a variety of authors.However if we read the Bible as a narrative of God reaching out to His people, with them sometimes getting and right and sometimes getting it horribly wrong, we can start to make sense of it.The key is the resurrection. If the NT writers got it right when they wrote that Jesus was resurrected then as I just told Percy we can start to have confidence in what the Gospel writers also told us about what Jesus said and did. We can then use Jesus, who several times in the Gospels corrects what is in the OT, as a lens in into the OT so that we can understand where they got it and where they got it wrong.AbE If you are really interested in my views on this just read through my discussion with Faith earlier in this thread.Edited by GDR, : No reason given.

The Bible is evidence. Somebody wrote those books, and I realize that all sorts of things are written that we know to be false, but still it is evidence. I agree that there is no collaborating evidence.We can look at the evidence that is the Bible on its own and form our own conclusions which we have all done. If the evidence that is the Bible didn't exist then we wouldn't be having this discussion at all.Edited by GDR, : No reason given.

It is evidence but I wouldn't agree that it is as strong.

There is no hard evidence however somebody wrote the Gospels and we come to our own conclusions as to whether or not to accept it as historical, metaphorical, partly true or of no substance whatsoever.The claim had been that there was no evidence. The mention of the virgin birth in two of the Gospels is the only evidence we have, but it is evidence. There is no other supporting evidence that I know of. Essentially I agree, however in defence of Faith, it does suggest that we give it closer scrutiny than jar's "Book of the Dead" due only to the fact that there is a large segment of the population believes the one and nobody that I have ever heard of believes the other.

Most of that I agree with. However, that there is a conclusion called for indicates that the Gospel accounts constitute evidence. Without the Gospel accounts nobody would be having to conclude anything. As for the Holy Spirit I think that we would agree that there is such a thing as morality leading to an understanding of moral choices roughly based on the "Golden Rule". That is evidence of something and although I don't imagine that you would agree I suggest that the Holy Spirit is one possibility. No problem with that. I agree that the Bible should be read with scepticism but I would add that the we shouldn't give all books in the Bible equal credibility.Incidentally I'm, not a Christian of "hopes for an afterlife, answered prayers and divine blessings". I'm a Christian because I believe that it is essentially true and that the God that I see as incarnate in Jesus is a god worth serving.

I quoted you about it being a conclsuion when you said: "if you conclude that the Gospel account....". I do think that we can conclude what it is that we believe about any of the Biblical accounts. I'm not sure why you would question what "calling for conclusions" means.Tolliken made it clear that what he was writing was fiction. We have no evidence to tell us whether the authors of the nativity narrative including the virgin birth were writing metaphorically, historically or fictionally. (If there is no such word you know what I mean. )The fact is we don't know so we can come to our own conclusions based on the fact that somebody wrote it leaving open the possibility that it was written historically and that it was correct. However I agree that in the end it is faith.However once again it still all goes back to the resurrection. If Jesus was resurrected then the story of the virgin birth does gain some credibility, even though it doesn't confirm it. If the resurrection is not historical then there is absolutely no reason to believe that the virgin birth was historical IMHO. By real world I assume you mean the natural world as we perceive it. The resurrection and/or the virgin birth if they happened are assumed to be non-repeatable events. Actually the claim, at least for the resurrection is that the claim is made in a book that claims that the source was from observations and evidence of what you are calling the real world. We don't actually know that those things didn't happen.Our experience in life tells us that they can't happen which doesn't mean that there is more than what we directly experience couldn't happen. Personally I don't believe the story of the pillar of salt or the whale and I believe the story of the virgin birth with the reservation, as I said earlier, that it really does read like a legend.However all of that is a matter of belief and my Christian faith wouldn't be affected even if I knew conclusively that the story of the virgin birth was legendary and not historical. I agree that we have to form our conclusions from a variety of sources. Many of the Biblical authors believe and wrote about the Holy Spirit. Many other authors, including yourself in this thread have argued against there being a Holy Spirit. We have to form our conclusions mostly subjectively based on our own life experiences and whatever we can glean from the world in general.I know that when I see and hear about the tragedies of people I have never met I feel empathy for them. I know that I feel a compulsion, or a still small voice that I should do what I can about those less fortunate than myself which is probably about 99% of the world's population. I can attribute these feeling and emotions to my parenting and other human influences, I can attribute them to my genetic make-up or I can attribute them to something that is not directly perceivable to me and believe it to be the Holy Spirit. (Or all of the above for that matter.)So yes, I do call it evidence but not in the scientific sense. It isn't concrete, it isn't provable and in the end it is a faith. However, as Bob Dylan said, "you've got to serve somebody" and we all make our own choices.

The problem is Golffly that you keep knocking down a straw man. There are a group of Christians that insist that the Bible should be read as essentially written by God. Faith is an obvious example of that.However, the majority of Christians don't read it that way and there is no good reason to do so anyway except that it provides something in black and white so that one can give authoritative answers to various questions.The Bible is a narrative of a growth in the understanding of the nature of God and His reaching out to His creation. The examples that you give are obviously written by men with either an agenda or a genuine misunderstanding of the nature of God.The questions that religions of all types have tried to answer over the years is firstly "who is God" and secondly "what is our purpose". The Christian answer to those questions are that they can be found in the life and teaching of Jesus Christ and to the first question the answer is that there is a god who is a god of love and cares what happens to us even though we live in an imperfect world with imperfect beings. And as an answer to the second question, we are to reflect God's love into creation as we are building for the time, whether it be tomorrow or millions of years from now when time as we know it comes to an end a new world is created from the old.The response could well be that we gain our understanding of Jesus through reading the Bible. True enough but the Bible is not one book by one author but a collection of books by various authors. It makes no sense to assign them all equal credibility. So yes, we can read the NT authors, and we can form our own conclusions about what they have written. I am convinced that what they wrote about the resurrection is essentially true while recognizing that there are variations in the times and places of the resurrection appearances. (Look at the various recollections by those witnessing a car accident. They do all agree though that the accident happened.) In my view the inconsistencies actually add plausibility to the accounts as if we found that they all lined up perfectly it would smell of collusion between the authors.In the end though it is a faith, and as I have said numerous times here my faith is based on the understanding of the nature of God is that He is loving, just and merciful, and as a Christian I have faith that God resurrected Jesus which affirms and validates the life and teaching of Jesus Christ.

Well yes. Various people contributed to the collection of books that make up the Bible. People nearly 2000 years ago wrote down those accounts in the NT and people have been working out over the centuries what to make of them. Certainly one can dismiss them entirely but they have to do that not based on evidence, but on the belief that we know those things just don't happen, and the fact that there is no other collaborating evidence. I accept them in the manner that I do on belief, but without any other evidence other than what is in the Bible. It is a belief or a faith.However, I contend that there is philosophical evidence. Frankly Christianity makes more sense philosophically than any other view that I am aware of. IMHO intelligent life that came into existence from an intelligent root cause is far more plausible than fro a non-intelligent root cause. That makes me either a theist or a deist.IMHO the theistic POV is more plausible than the deistic view as it doesn't sound reasonable to me to believe in an intelligence that would bring life into existence and then abandon the project.IMHO if we then have an involved intelligence that is responsible for life then it is also plausible that this intelligence could have a long term plan and could resurrect a Jesus in the middle of human history as part of that long term plan.If we accept the possibility of the resurrection then I contend that the resurrection as an historical event is a far better explanation for the rise of Christianity than any other explanation on offer. All arguments that I have heard opposing the resurrection are based on the idea that it couldn't happen so any other explanation is preferable.IMHO Christianity provides a more plausible explanation for selfless morality than does any other explanation including the idea that it evolved naturally along with physical evolution. (I don't dispute evolutionary theory.)One other point. I have been involved volunteering with seniors for over 35 years. (Apparently I have now been assimilated. ) One universal finding that I have made is the sense that as our bodies age we don't. I still have the same sense of being that I had when I was 20. Sure I have different ideas as a result of living this long but the essential "I" hasn't changed. There is a strong sense of our eternal nature. I also contend that Christianity provides the most reasonable explanation for why we feel that way.A long answer to a short question eh?

I never claimed that Jesus is the sole revelation of God.I'd suggest that unselfish love is an eternal truth. Mankind has always have an innate knowledge of the choice between selfishness and unselfishness. The interesting thing about the Jesus saying that loving our neighbour is a commandment is that it is a command unlike any other. A command that I should feed my neighbour when he is hungry is one thing but that is quite different than saying that I should love him. Sure, feeding my neighbour may very well be a result of the fact that I love him as I am prepared to put his interests ahead of my own. However, I might be doing it as I am hoping to get something more from him in the future, or maybe I am simply wanting to be well thought of.I think that Paul got it right in his first letter to the Corinthians when he wrote:

quote:

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Therefore judge nothing before the appointed time; wait till the Lord comes. He will bring to light what is hidden in darkness and will expose the motives of men's hearts. At that time each will receive his praise from God.

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In the end it is all about our hearts. Humans of all ages have all had the opportunity to make loving selfless choices and to reject the selfish choices. As I said in the post that you are replying to the differences simply point out that the differences simply make the basic story more plausible. As for the rest of it read No Nukes response as he covers it well.Cheers

I would agree that an argument can be made for any of these assertions which does not mean that any or all of them represent what actually happened. I'm bot sure what you mean by valid. If you are asking me my opinion on any of them I can give it to you, but it remains an opinion. None of us know the accuracy of any of those statements - all we can have is our opinion or belief.Does that answer your question or are you asking me to go through it point by point with my opinion.

Of course that is right but I wasn't trying to make an argument for my position, I was simply stating the conclusions that I have come to, which is why I kept inserting IMHO. I wasn't trying to make a case for my beliefs. I have done that in other threads.

I used the accident analogy - I don't think NoNukes did.