The Tension of Faith

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Each appearance was a one-time event, Percy, that didn't leave anything but witness evidence. You can't study something that leaves only witness evidence. At least according to you. If you took that evidence seriously you could indeed study it, but you don't.

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We don’t have to believe the alleged witness evidence (which is mostly second hand, at best) to study it.To point to just one major example, The author of Luke and Acts is determined to place the appearances (other than Paul’s vision) in and close to Jerusalem. The author of Matthew, on the other hand places his one appearance in Galilee, with no hints of any appearances elsewhere.Now, the author of Acts is not regarded as an eyewitness to those appearances and I know that you regard the author of Matthew as an eyewitness. How, then, can you possibly believe Acts on the subject ?

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I'm talking about converts in the sense of free will choice.

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So? Where is the evidence ? Have you even investigated the matter seriously ?

In the course of this thread, I have:Given sound reasons why the Gospel of John should not be accepted as reliable:
Message 809Faith has yet to address these pointsI refuted Faiths arguments for reliability of the Gospels Message 878Faith has yet to address my pointsI have explained how we could have better evidence for the miracle stories in the Gospels. Which raises the question of why - if God was trying to provide us with goood evidence - the evidence is so much weaker than it could be. Message 1031Faith has yet to address this point.I have even produced an example of a significant disagreement between Matthew and Luke/Acts which demonstrates the unreliability of the NT Message 1143Faith has not addressed this point.This illustrates the emptiness of Faith’s case. And how an honest, rational person not only can, but should disagree with her.

One wonders if Faith believes in these miracles. Or does she not trust the witnesses.

I mean the miracles described in the link. They seem to be fooling a bunch of people who think they’re Christians as much as you think you are.

You are the one who tells us that witnesses must be trusted. Now you tell us that Christians can be easily deceived by demonic phenomena (and let us not forget those cases which did not check out)

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I have never generalized to say that all witnesses must be trusted.

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That’s not the way it looks. And you have never offered any viable criteria for when witnesses must be completely trusted. (Is their not being really witnesses a positive feature or just irrelevant, for instance ?)And your reasons seem to be just opinions. Like your opinion that the supernatural can be easily identified (so ALL the cases should have checked out, right? - or are Christians making very bad mistakes ?)

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Oh I've described the witnesses of the Bible as clearly trustworthy in their manner and also in the content of their writing.

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Of course you said much the same about Chiniquy - and you were obviously wrong.And you can’t make people who aren’t witnesses into witnesses by declaring them so, nor erase their bias or their credulity nor any other human weaknesses.

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But convincing you of anything is not exactly high on my list of priorities

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Then what is the point of telling all these silly falsehoods?

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You love to bring up ancient discussions without quoting me, I guess because you love to leave lies in the minds of the lurkers perhaps?

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Ah Faith. How you love making false accusations. And how you love to call the truth lies. And how you love to divert from points you can’t answer with manufactured outrage. And just for that I will produce a quote - if you have any decency you will apologise.

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Chiniquy was an honest man, I couldn't have said anything else about him.

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Chiniquy was at best a narcissistic fantasist and it clearly shows in his writing. Obviously his writing is less than entirely trustworthy. But you won’t say that.Instead you said: Message 138Which is pretty funny when you consider Chiniquy’s inventions and errors (discussed in the thread)

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I find Chiniquy's book to be completely trustworthy.

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Which proves my point. So what was your basis for causing me of lying ?To return to the point you are dodging. That you say you consider a writing trustworthy is worthless.In neither case do you offer anything that can be said to go beyond unsupported opinion - a weak basis for the complete trust you ask for. I don’t think I would fully believe anyone who said that - even if I was completely unfamiliar with the work.When I am familiar with the work and I know of good reasons to think otherwise - which you fail to address - and when you’ve said something similar about a work which has been shown to be untrustworthy - why should I believe you ? Why should anyone believe you ?Think about that.

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Christians must answer to God above all governments, and if it weren't for the perversity of our government's forcing gay marriage on us there wouldn't have been any conflict.

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That’s funny because you are really arguing that the government must answer to Christians. Look Faith, I know that denying rights to gays is a big part of Christianity and I know Christians told a lot of lies to stop it happening. (I say Christians because real Christians ought to know better.)But you lost because of the obvious injustice of your cause - and to go on lying and lying is the real perversity.The fact is that gay marriage is simply a matter of civil law. Christians are not commanded to take control of civil law, nor does gay marriage hurt Christians in any sense other than offending the bigots among them.

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Nice statement of pagan perversity, nice collection of lying accusations there too. Well done

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But it is all true. Gay marriage opens the civil and legal status of marriage to gay couples. Christians object to that and have openly sought to deny those benefits - such as coverage on a partner’s health insurance.It is also a fact that whenever you talk about gay marriage as hurting Christians you always talk about anti-discrimination legislation instead which is an almost entirely separate issue. And you cannot possibly be ignorant of that by now - aside from the fact that familiarity with the cases would tell you that - it’s been discussed to death here.When a Christian in the West claims persecution it is always almost a lie - a demand for special privileges. And so it is in this case.

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Looks to me like we'll become the equivalent of dhimmis.

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Funny how you constantly complain of being persecuted but can’t come up with anything beyond anti-discrimination legislation. And you even accept that anti-discrimination laws can override religious belief. So it can hardly be a serious problem. Especially when the same laws protect Christians.

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Mostly it's not a complaint, it's just a statement about the reality of the situation.

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But it isn’t. As I have pointed out.

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When a law can be written that forces Christians out of business for holding to our Christian beliefs, we've turned some kind of corner in American life.

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Anti-discrimination laws going against Christian belief are not new. By your argument African-Americans shouldn’t be protected either. Because accomodating Whites and Blacks together was against the Christian beliefs of the segregationists.

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Instead of dwise's worry that we're going to force our views on others, what is happening is the exact reverse and it needs to be acknowledged.

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And yet you ARE demanding just that. You want gay marriage ended - and you are telling lies to make it sound just. Indeed the whole business about gay marriage is one of Christians trying to force their views on others.

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All this attempt to deny this is happening is absurd. Give it up. It's happening and you should be cheering.

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I am glad that your attempts to force your views on others are failing, but that doesn’t seem a good reason to let your lies go unchallenged.

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Could a black couple be denied on religious grounds (imagine a religion where economic intercourse with blacks was "morally repugnant")?

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You don’t have to imagine it. The segregationists - the American version of Apartheid - did hold that the races should be kept apart. Whites-only establishments were a real thing. Interracial marriage was fundamentally wrong. And they thought it a part of their Christian religion (as Buzsaw demonstrated).

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Can an artist refuse service to anyone, say a black sculptor refusing to sculpt a cross for the Ku Klux Klan?

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In fact we already know the answer to this. Artists may refuse to create items they find offensive - so long as it is the item itself (construed broadly) and not who it is to be sold to. If Phillips’ objections had been limited to the decorations he would have had a much stronger case. This is why it is not nitpicking to point out that he refused to provide a cake at all.And even then only some groups are protected. The KKK are not.