michael wellenberg

No, certainly not. What I meant is that trying to extract a firm factual base for belief only from the gospel narratives is disregarding Christian development up to now.
By the way, it is not only the gap of time which renders such a task unsuccessfull but also the difference in level : no sense in trying to prove faith by fact (sounds trivial but is continually done).

Doug Shaver

Do they have no answer, or do they have none that you agree with?

The reason they don't base their faith around only Jesus' words is that they believe the entire Bible to be God's words. Given that they do believe that, it logically follows that they should attempt to conform their faith to everything in the book.

David B

Yeah, that's true. Perhaps he's desperately trying to hang onto his faith. That's the impression I get. I don't see him as just trying to wind us up, though perhaps I'm wrong.

I'll give him the benefit of the doubt, though.

David B

jackrabbit

The point is that he is doing it, not how well he is doing it. Think of the millions who never question at all, never even conceive that the bible could be wrong about anything.

jackrabbit

Perhaps. But if that's what he is doing, he should know by now that every argument he makes is easily ripped to shreds, and he is basically playing straight man when people who really are questioning come through here. Poorly thought out religious arguments are fodder for lurker deconversion.

Spitfire

He COMPLETELY ignores me whenever I make any attempt to clarify things for him, however. In fact, I'm not even going to bother replying to anything he says anymore.

Febble

My understanding is that saints are simply people in heaven. Canonisation is a recognition of this. You don't need to be canonized to go to heaven, but you get to be canonized if it is clear that you did. Hence the requirement for a miracle - it proves you are there.

Canonisation simply gives the faithful a useful list of people to call on. But we have All Saints day, in recognition of all the saints we don't know about. And of course we are allowed to call on people we think are in heaven, even if they haven't been canonised yet (Mother Teresa, JPII) - in fact we are encouraged, because that way, we might get a miracle that would allow canonisation of said saint.

(The catholic church is at its worst when it comes down to these sorts of technicalities IMO).

punk77

I agree with jackrabbit. I was looking at this site for a good while before I plucked up the courage to make a post. The responses to questions on this site affect a far greater number of people than just the people taking part in the actual debate which is why I thanked some people in my first post even though I had not been in direct contact with them:notworthy:.

Sven

And my point is that if you can easily be swayed by simple arguments in one direction, you can also be easily swayed backed by simple (or even bad) arguments.

If you question something, you really have to invest some thought and logic in it.