JEST2ASK

Do you ever think "Hey they could be right and I might be wrong"

Because without acknowledging that possiblity what you respect is that person as a human and not the worth of their belief.
Are you not saying " certainily you have the right to hold what ever foolish idea you wish and I respect that right" or something to that effect.

In My Opinion = IMO / I some times use IMMVO where MV = most valued I seldom use IMHO as I do not consider my opion to be Humble - relative to anyone elses'



No only because one can consider themselves a Christian without beleving that Jesus is God or even divine ... ( e.g. Jehovah Witness or Philosophical follower of Jesus Christ's teachings)

What I really wanted you to consider was the process on how / why certain books are in the version of the bible you use and not in others.

Examples would be the books of Sirach, Tobit or the Macabees...
the ending / additions to the book of Esther ...

There are questions raised about authorship, dates of composistion and purpose (political commentary - rival authority i.e. Samaria (Isreal) vs Jeruasalem (Judah) - Pre Exile vs Post Exile etc etc ) simply looking into the text never deals with these questions.

The devolpment of the New Testament was not the simple process of some figure writting letters to religious communities and these preserved writtings being collected ... There were many forces at work that the large (IMO) majority of Christians never consider (both willifully ignoring the possible underlaying motives or naively accepting the finished product without question).

I myself have just started to take responsibilty for my beliefs by investigating them (IMO) objectively, so I also am a novice in this whole process.

Starboy

Mullibok, that's a good point. If people today were presented with the same evidence as described in the bible but in a contemporary setting the vast majority would not conclude that Jesus was resurrected. What the bible does is very sneaky, very deceptive. They present the circumstances and then the explanation and declare it to be the "truth". The obvious alternate explanation is completely ignored. I have always thought that if Christianity had any value for humanity then the cheap �supernatural� tricks would not be necessary.

Starboy

BrazenPenguin

Oh yes, I think about that. I also wonder what I would believe if I was raised in an Islamic home, or an atheist home, or a Buddhist home.
haha yeah, i guess I am saying that. Isn't that what you believe also? But I also respect their actions (the good ones).

Magus55

Do you ever think that too?

Rhaedas

We're constantly examining the potential here for various parts of religions to be right...many here have started from the point of believing that one or another was right, but found flaws that made them question the validity of that religion.

If that wasn't the case, there'd be very few posts questioning religion, it'd be assumed that atheism is the only right answer. But a closed mind can never learn, so atheists continue to re-eximine old questions, and try to answer new ones about religion...atheism is only a belief until a religion presents convincing evidence. So far, religion fails that for myself, and many others.

Maybe some people's standards for validity are different than others, and that's why some lose their faith, and others cling to theirs.

DBT

I will readily admit that I dont know what the ultimate nature of the universe is,so does it then mean that I should start thinking that Allah created it or Zeus,Odin, Ra,Baal,oh no silly me of course it was Yaweh.

Wayne Delia

None of them are even identified, much less offering any testimony to that effect. Same thing with Paul's claim later on that Jesus appeared to 500 people after the resurrection. They don't even have their names mentioned, much less their supporting testimony.

Quote:

Or the healings? What about raising from the dead?

You're making very elementary mistakes in your line of reasoning. The Bible's stories are nothing more than a restatement of what is to be supported, and do not qualify as actual support for the original statement. Would you accept claims from the Qu'ran (the Islamic holy book) as valid evidence for the claims of Islam?

Quote:

yes, it is difficult, if not impossible, to prove that Jesus healed a man's hand.

That's why we don't accept them at face value.

Quote:

But there is a lot of evidence relating to the resurection of Jesus. There is a book where a former atheist who is a journalist investigates the claim the Jesus rose from the dead. You should read it, if only I remembered the title. I'll try to find it out tonight.

Don't even bother. It's either "The Case for Faith," by Lee Strobel, or "Evidence that Demands a Verdict," by Josh McDowell. Both have been rather extensively debunked. They're notoriously poor for convincing skeptics; rather, the authors made a boatload of money selling their books to people who already believe.

WMD

Wayne Delia

The original question (Do you ever think "Hey they could be right and I might be wrong") solicited a "Yes" or "No" answer, which you neglected to give. Instead, you dodged the question. If it will help, I'll show you how it can be answered, by answering it myself.

Q: Do you ever think "Hey they could be right and I might be wrong"

A: Yes, of course. The reason our difference of opinion still exists is that the theists have consistently failed to produce any evidence supporting the validity of their position, so I have no reason to accept that they are, in fact, right.

If you'd like to take a shot at answering the question again, it would be helpful if you included a "Yes" or "No" in your answer. Your kneejerk reaction will be to parrot my answer above, turning it around against atheists, but that would depend on the strawman argument that atheists have made a specific claim similar to "God exists." My actual claim would be "Sufficient evidence does not exist which would persuade or compel my belief in God." The evidence for that statement would be that if sufficient evidence WAS presented, then I would not be an atheist, nor would I have any reason to misrepresent myself as an atheist.

In any case, your refusal to answer the question in the post to which you responded is noted.

WMD

Magus55

So why do so many atheists claim as a fact, that God doesn't exist? I've yet to see many (if any) atheists on this board examine the potential for parts of religion to be right. And then again, what if not parts of a religion are right, but the entire religion is right? How can you honestly say that a religion is 100% wrong without having full knowledge of everything? How does coming to a conclusion, that is complete opinion, in anyway remove the possibility of a religion being completely right? For example, everyone on this board would say Christianity is wrong, definately the fundamentalist view. Now that is 100% opinion. Science does not have even close to all the answers, and can't touch the Bible and the supernatural. Yet all atheists on this board conclude Christianity can't be true because they say so. How does that work? You don't like something and don't agree with it, so its wrong? Atheists are not open minded. The Atheist stance is all science and atheists are right, all religion is false. How is that not close minded?

Starboy

Let me ask you this Magus55, do you think that Hinduism is right or wrong? Do you think that Hinduism is just mythology?

Starboy