Why Are Christians Afraid To Doubt?

You're thinking backwards. There's no evidence that God is able to preserve His message. The way of honest inquiry is to look for positive evidence, not lack of negative evidence. So do suicide bombers. We need to examine the beliefs themselves, not just the fanaticism of the believers. Happens all the time: Pranks Gone Wrong.But you're missing the point: we have to look honestly at the motivation of "martyrs for the cause" - any cause - not just make assumptions. Yes, finding the truth can take time - and even effort. So now you want a short cut?I didn't say the disciples were deceived. I said it's a possibility that we shouldn't dismiss a priori (as you have done). The mere fact that you believe in these fictitious "hype mongers" indicates that your opinion is not to be trusted. But you haven't "called" anybody - you haven't even named anybody. All you've provided is innuendo with nothing whatever to back it up. Lazy thinking. Certainty without evidence to back it up. Homo sapiens. That's the point of the thread, isn't it? You really haven't verified your beliefs at all. You can "truly trust" in the Tooth Fairy or Mother Goose or Bigfoot if you want. But "we" can't trust your conclusions because of the distance you jumped to get to them. If you were willing to doubt your conclusions and examine them with the possibility that you are wrong, "we" would be more inclined to trust your verification process. Not at all. I would like you to peek around the shield once in a while to see what you are shielding yourself from. Hiding behind a shield is not necessarily the best form of defense. Doubt that God exists opposes none of those things. It doesn't matter if "all" are circular. It matters that all are subject to scrutiny, to doubt.

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Ringo, I have to disagree. There is plenty of evidence if one is looking for it. Looking in the right places that is.What do you want?Do you want a collection of books that are accurate to the letter?Do you want a group of people that are no more than clones of each other? Do you want to see zombies in action preaching the gospel?You might get lucky there actually. If you want to see a community devoted to following the message of Christ, if you want to see mere humans rejoicing in the resurrection of the dead, if you want to see a love that binds all true Christians, you will see then that preservation of the message of God still continues. Not perfectly, not infallibly. It is preserved after-all by men. But indeed the best possible things which were ever put into the gospels are still preached and lived by simple people. The messages have lost nothing to those that understand them.One can doubt anything. Doubting the preservation of the message of Jesus is not high up on the list. There are definitely degrees of seperation from truth. I am waiting for someone, anyone, to address the point in the OP about 'when it is good to take a stand'.This going on about questioning is silly in a way. We are all taking a stand until we know better. We take a stand every day. It is part of doing what is best now. There is no way to judge what we do now except based on what we know now. Tomorrow we may have remorse, tomorrow we may learn. For now, I know that the message of Jesus still has meaning. I know that the gospels have meaning. I know that if anything in this world is preserved it is the good that can come from following the simple teachings of Christ. When this all becomes irrelevent and meaningless, then you may tell me that whatever was or could have or should have been there, is gone.

I see you are well practiced at circular reasoning. If, during the evaluation procedure, we assume a story to be false... Kind of rigs the evaluation, doesn't it? And wouldn't rigging an evaluation by employing circular reasoning be a means to avoid changing one's mind in the face of new evidence? What a coincidence. Thank you for this insight into the motive. Your recommendation is noted. But how do we determine in advance which evidence we'll honestly evaluate, and which evidence we'll rig the evaluations on? You seem to think I've belittled science by saying it is less than the ultimate form of knowledge. I care little if such be blasphemy in your opinion. So I have not succumbed to the conditioning, what of it?While the answer to your question depends on how one defines 'religion', I don't expect there's any evidence to support your answer. Looks more like hype. Is that its purpose?But you assume we are capable of making advances in 'religion', which may not be the case. A Christian could very well argue that the knowledge we already have exceeds our ability to master it, and the last man who successfully mastered it gave us the New Testament.So if we were to compare knowledge beyond mastery to an ongoing (rapidly, you mention) process, I can't say I'd favour the field which is known to be incomplete.I'm confident people of various religions also have arguments which would slam your arrogant contention, but I shall not presume to speak for them. I do hope someone pipes up. See above.And if unchanging things are unreliable, science is in trouble. Have you seen how many constants they've got in those equasions? And say, what would that say for the Old Earth "data"? You might want to retract that part or something. It's ripe for in-context quote mining. Believe me, I could go on and on! The evidence is abundant, but none of it is scientific. See above. Why not confuse them? Both are subject to doubt, and both are built-up by the same means (repetition of good results, etc.) I notice you make no mention of the other motorists. Do you also "trust" them not to endanger you? Or is that a matter of faith, and thus unmentionable? How strong is your trust/faith in them? Are these total strangers worthy of so much confidence? Could it be that there's no evidence because it's all been screened out in rigged evaluations?

Do we need to dance around that maypole again? There is no evidence that that message comes from God. Different people get the same message from different gods. Atheists get the same message. About the truth? "The truth" is the truth that works. If it works, stand up for it. If it doesn't work, throw it out.Have the courage to ask yourself: Does this "truth" work? Then the question is: What do we know now? Young-earth creationism used to be "what we know now". It was only by doubting it's eternal truth that we discovered that it isn't true. But those same simple, effective teachings come from most religions. We need to question the true source of what works. Does it come from outside or inside?You know very well that Christianity produces a lot of garbage as well as the simple, effective teachings. We need to question everything so we can distinguish the food from the garbage.

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Yes, we have evidence that God did not choose to use the methods of crashfrog. God is wise.anastasia has made a good post {197}. I'll not add more at this time. Try, try, try. What I said is clear, and you obfuscate in vain. I said the martyr does not die for something he himself knows to be untrue. Since you can't come up with anything better, you try to confuse other readers by bringing up Muslims.The Shiites in particular have a long history of martyrdom. Buddhist, Taoist, Sikh, there have been thousands of martyrs, probably millions. With so many to choose from, surely you can give one example where someone was martyred for something they knew to be untrue, and had only to recant if they were to be spared. You can manage one, can't you? With you evaluating the evidence, I'm confident we never could have any. But the rest of us will do our own evaluations, thank you.You give one definition of "false certainty" and Ringo gives another. If Ringo agrees, we can go with yours and revisit the issue as need be.

Glad to hear it.We need periods of stability. They give us an opportunity to grow in other areas. Faith is but one piece of our armour.

I see you didn't wait any longer to tackle that point yourself.ICANT gave a nice demonstration in Message 169. I reviewed it, but found nothing about timing.After reading your thoughts, I think the question might've better been phrased "when shouldn't we take a stand?"But at any rate, we should take a stand except when we are experiencing nagging doubt on an issue ourselves, or when the issue would cause our brother to stumble. There are perhaps a couple more exceptions, but that's what I've got for now.

All-time bestseller. Maybe you've seen a copy? We don't have to look very hard for positive evidence. I indicated I was likely to say more, but you're impatient. You need to learn patience. Sorry you're missing the point. I'm a failure when it comes to communicating with Ringo & crashfrog. I give up. Since you can't understand that part, you probably won't be able to understand anything more along that given line of reasoning either. But what is to be done? I don't believe I have dismissed it a priori. I have looked over the evidence and formed my conclusion. I am imperfect; so an example from someone with an opposing view might have given me a learning experience. Who knows? Maybe even cause for doubt?But (see above) since you don't appear to understand the basis for accepting the word of the martyrs as sincere, there's no point in proceeding to this stage with you. Really? Have there been no "Scientists create life" headlines? No. I'll stop. This issue is so well known that I need not even respond.Yes I believe IN hype mongers, in the sense that they exist. You BELIEVE hype mongers. And that's inexcusable for anyone with a basic understanding of science who advocates doubt. I refer to them as a group. You act like I should name names. Well, I'm too lazy to compile the list, and too lazy to type it. It would be enormous. Everyone else is too lazy to read such an OT list, so I made the choice I made. Didn't take long. No you would not. You have failed to demonstrate any invalidity in my reasoning beyond your faith in contrary conclusions, coupled with an above-average capacity for misunderstanding written words. If we were to hide behind our shields, we wouldn't be equipped with swords. We have no intention of adopting the ridiculously ineffective defensive posture you propose.Fellow Christians, take no tactical advice from this person. plugged in to: The point of the thread is not that I haven't verified my beliefs. Where did you ever get such an idea? That is just your baseless dodge. You have failed to demonstrate any invalidity in my reasoning beyond your faith in contrary conclusions, coupled with an above-average capacity for misunderstanding written words. So your original objection was an utterly baseless waste of time. I'm patient, but I don't yet have perfect patience. I'll have no more of this.

I don't see that it's necessary to assume anything. It's sufficient to observe that scientific knowledge literally doubles every 2-3 years, and religious knowledge has not increased in several centuries. What evidence? That's it? A book? That was nearly 2000 years ago. That's the last thing your religion has produced?Color me not impressed, particularly when set against the achievements of science. In the face of the disparity of results? I don't see that you're operating rationally. None that we wouldn't change in the face of new evidence. I think maybe you've misunderstood the word "constant" in the scientific context. (Misunderstanding scientific terminology is something the religious do quite often.) Nonsense. Are you serious? Haven't you just made it clear, then, that your sole purpose is to confuse the issue?How can confusing things be a path to truth? You're clearly dissembling to protect your dogma.

I didn't suggest methods; I told you what the results would be like if God was preserving his message.He's clearly not. The proliferation of contradictory messages is proof of that. Anastasia's point is diametrically opposed to yours. Her position is that God doesn't want to preserve the accuracy of his message, lest we all be forced into believing the exact same thing. I'd think twice before you tried to employ her views in your favor; they don't fit. Then, obviously, his fervor is not evidence for the truth of his views, now is it?Yet, you offer it as evidence, anyway. You've gone from zero to disingenuous in a little under 2 posts. I doubt it's going to be confusing to anybody to be reminded that Christianity is not the only religion in existence. I don't see why it's necessary to do so. We've already established that martyrdom is no evidence for the veracity of religious dogma. You've directly admitted it, in fact. Ah, right. I'm biased. Somehow you've discovered this without actually presenting any evidence.Never mind, of course, that I was once a Christian just like you. Impossible, right? Surely I must have been born and raised an atheist. Of course, that's not true. I was a Christian for many years, and indeed, was a Christian when I came to the conclusion that there was no evidence whatsoever for the veracity of Christian dogma.It would seem that, in fact, if the evidence was going to convince anybody, it would have convinced me, since I was already sympathetic to the conclusion. Indeed I had a vested interest in finding the evidence, but I found none at all.What you're doing is called "poisoning the well", and it's a technique of disingenuous debaters. It's not so surprising to see that disingenuity is all you have to offer.

How about a collection of books that don't substantially contradict each other on nearly every basic point, including how many books are in the Bible? I'm of the opinion that's what we have now, but surely you must see that your position is that God doesn't take steps to preserve his message, so that it can spread and mutate and we can have these super-interesting religious wars, and more than 600 individual Christian denominations and sects (in the US alone.) Hrm. Who was it that was being accused of circular reasoning, again?Edited by crashfrog, : No reason given.

Irrelevant. Truth is not a popularity contest. We have a whole forum on Bible Accuracy and Inerrancy, you're welcome to present it there. That's just the first step. You have to continuously re-evaluate your conclusions. No. None that I'm aware of. You're welcome to show us (in the proper forum) instead of just making empty asseertions. Once again, if you want to show evidence that such an animal exists, you can do so elsewhere. For the purpose of this thread, you might as well be saying you believe in dragons or fairies.You are demonstrating lack of critical thinking, not discussing whether it is good or bad. That's the problem: making empty accusations is the lazy way out. Thinking about the issue would take effort and looking for evidence to back up your opinions would take effort. You're confirming what I've been saying. That's exactly what I'm saying: the shield (faith) is a backup device, a last resort, for emergencies only. I agree. What I'm saying is that verification is not a one-time thing, just like spring-cleaning is not a one-time thing. You have to do it every spring. And you have to do daily cleaning in between major cleanings.Edited by Ringo, : Changed "Thinking about the effort" to "Thinking about the issue would take effort".

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What is the message of God? A book? The one thing which I believe is that those who have gone sola sciptura have permeated the whole of Christian reputation to the extent that a written book is regarded as the only word of God. It is not. The Bible is a record. The message of God is a living tradition. I am not sure because of the phrasing what it is that you are saying. I apologize. God doesn't take steps to preserve a message so that it can spread and mutate and we can have religious wars? I don't know...Edited by anastasia, : No reason given.

Says who? You?Doesn't the fact that you can't even agree with other Christians on where the message is indicate that, if there even was an attempt to relay a message that would be accurate through all time, it completely failed? A Protestant tradition? Or a Catholic tradition? (Don't forget the Russian Orthodox, Christianity's forgotten third major branch.)Really, you should think twice before suggesting that Christianity's fractured history represents the unerring transmission of a singular message. Who knows? It's a funny thing - anything God does or doesn't do gets spun by you guys to be a good thing. I read yesterday that, worldwide, there's more than 11,000 recognized Christian denominations. And those are only the ones we know about.Surely you see the inherent ridiculousness in asserting "God has relayed his perfect message perfectly preserved through the years, but my church is the only one who actually knows what it is"? That's intellectual weak sauce.

When you have taken all you can it is time to take a stand. Message 169