Tercel

Well, unfortunately beyond my own reasoning abilities and intuition I don't really have any means of working out what is true. Unless you're suggesting I presuppose things eg the Bible to be the literal and Inerrant Word of God?

To blow my own trumpet a bit: experience suggests I am rather more than averagely intelligent, so I have reasonable confidence that my search for truth will lead me in an above averagely accurate direction.

Why do you think I quoted it?

I'm not exactly a big fan of huge amounts of divine inspiration, so I don't bother getting wound up about every single ambiguous word like some do. Rather I use the idea that Christianity is generally accurate and the writers generally knew what they were talking about and hence try to solve specific problems via the application of general themes not individual verses. It's the spirit of the thing not the letter that matters ie it's back to Augustine's notion that we need to know what sound doctrine is before we can start interpreting obscure passages.

Well the truth of Christianity is obvious something that must be accepted or rejected prior to involving in any sophisticated interpretation. Personally I see a number of cumulatively good reasons to believe that a God with pretty similar properties as generally understood by the Christian God exists. And my critical evalution of other Christians reported experiences combined with my own feelings and analysis of Christianity's moral teachings leads me to believe that the Christian faith is the most true representation of God and his workings.

? I'm not a presuppositionalist who decides the Bible to be the Inerrant word of God before they read any of it! My idea that the bible is generally true stems from that it contains the beliefs of the early Christian believers who, I am lead to believe, were generally accurate in their beliefs.

Well I am more intelligent and better educated than probably well over 99.999% of those believers, and I can learn from their thoughts, agreements and disagrements.

Oh, okay - I thought you were referring to the earlier Christian writers (pre 500AD) who as a general rule took things less literally than the vast majority would take them today.
I suspect the Medieval masses' thoughts were probably due more to a lack of education than anything else. -Assuming you are actually correct about that, 'cos I understood that in medieval times the popular model of interpreting scripture was to understand it in "Four Senses" - that every passage had four valid interpretations - literal, anagogical, allegorical, tropological.

Bible Humper

Well, reason doesn't enter the picture because you can only apply the latter to religion, ignoring the former. By adopting a supernatural explanation as an answer, you have abandoned reason in exchange for intuition for this question.

There is no way, if you allow for supernature, that your reason can be used to conclude that Jesus was not a sorcerer pretending to be a deity, a psionic causing onlookers to hallucinate, Loki playing a joke on man, etc, etc, etc. You have "intuitively" decided that he was indeed who he allegedly said he was. You have also "intuitively" decided that Mohammad was not who he allegedly said he was.

So if your intuition is an insufficient tool to use to answer the question of whether or not Yahweh exists, the only alternative is presuming that the bible is literal truth? This is what I'm talking about, the question asking if Yahweh is real is skipped, and you go straight to the question how Yahweh is real.

This seems reasonable until you acknowledge that there are people more intelligent than either of us who believe in other religions, or no religion at all, as well as your own.

It seems incredible, does it not, that religion is the one and only subject that has tons of intelligent people absolutely convinced that their own conclusions are true, and everyone else is dead wrong! The closest parallels in science can be found between advocates of certain hypotheses and theories, but religion is not seen as a mere hypothesis!

Why is this so? Because religious beliefs don't follow the usual procedure, the answer is given first and then it your task to figure out how to obfuscate the question enough to fit. A powerful emotional investment is nurtured in the answer so that it retains it's position outside of the believer's critical scrutiny.

Having observed that there are intelligent people of all religions, you have to acknowledge that being intelligent is not nearly enough to protect us from believing false religions.

You find that compelling? How can you naysay anyone, much less literalists and Amos, if you think that it is reasonable to decide how to interpret scripture based on what would be required in order to make it "say" something that agrees with your own doctrine?

This is also rather circular, your christian doctrine is supposed to come from scripture, but you interpret what scripture "really means" by figuring out a way to bring it's message in line with your doctrine!

Well, your intuition has led you to this, the intuition of Amos has led him to believe it is all inspired but symbolic, the intuition of the literalist has led him to believe that it is all true, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc.

Well, instead of "using the idea" that Christianity is generally accurate, why not "ask the question" of whether Christianity is generally accurate, or even at all accurate?

You can see that intuition has failed trillions of others on this point, it would be foolish to blindly trust your own!

We discover sound doctrine by reading scripture, to understand what we read, though, we need to know sound doctrine, we gain sound doctrine from reading scripture, to understand what we read in scripture we need to know sound doctrine, we gain sound doctrine from reading scripture........

I don't think that you can appreciate the true importance of what you just said, how can you accept the truth of something before you even know how it's supposed to be interpreted???

Dude, it's damn hot in hell, share this proof with us!!!!

I would like to hear what you found different between the experiences of Christians, Muslems, and Hindus that you perceived that the experiences of the believers in the deity you worship were credible whereas all the rest were not.

It's notable that the Moslems find stories of Moslem miracles credible but the Christian stories to be "tall tales" by credulous believers, and Christians find the reverse true. I hate to say it, but the only determinant seems to be bias.

Did you see my earlier thread regarding the fact that the early Christians believed in a wand wielding Jesus?

What are your thoughts on that, seeing as you, and indeed all Christians, concede prodigious amounts of the benefit of the doubt towards the credibility of the early Christians in order to justify being Christians in the first place?

[ November 07, 2002: Message edited by: Bible Humper ]</p>

Tercel

I'm afraid I do not agree...

So you think that it is the fact that I "allow for supernature" causes all these difficulties. What pray tell is your solution to being afflicted with these difficulties yourself? Perhaps you simply discount supernatural explanations and therefore resolve these difficulties by what is an arbitrary decision on your part? And now, you're accusing me that my belief that Jesus was not a sorcerer or Loki etc is bad because it's an arbitrary decision based on my own intuition. Well isn't that just the pot calling the kettle black?

Anyway, that's not how it works, the extraneous hypotheses are simply removed -as always- by the application of Occam's Razor. The simplest solution to the problem as it presents itself should be taken as a working hypothesis: complex hoaxes, conspiracy theories etc which involve non face-value interpretation of the evidence are be discounted until reason to seriously consider their possibility arises. This basic principle of reason is applied day in, day out in our own lives and the suggestion that as soon as we get to the supernatural our reasoning falls apart is absurd.
Or perhaps you think the police when investigating an obvious case where all the witnesses and evidence agrees should not be able to form any definite hypothesis because there will always be an infinite number of hypotheses that fit the evidence - eg there is an international conspiracy of the form X which is causing persons Y to lie because Z and the rest of the witnesses are saying A happened when B really happened because of C and the evidence was tampered with by a fellow officer who's involved in another conspiracy D and there isn't any evidence to suggest any of this to be true but that's because there's a cover up by E etc. Or perhaps you'd agree that instead the face value explanation is better than suspecting everyone of conspiracy and lying etc without any hint of evidence to suggest that?

Come on, you use your basic reasoning skills to strip non-face value hypotheses every day in order to stop yourself sinking into epistemological quicksand. Please allow me the same courtesy for the supernatural, since there is nothing about the supernatural as opposed to the natural which has any effect on this basic principle of reasoning.

I don't simply assume God is real, if that is what you are accusing me of here. I'm saying: You can either assume that God exists or not and be a presuppositionalist (whether that be as an atheist or theist) or you can try to use your own reasoning abilities (intuition included) to determine the truth.
I do the second, is that a problem?

Certainly. However I am in the habit of believing the things I see to be evidenced as opposed to simply throwing up my hands and saying "it's all hopeless! How can little I succeed in finding truth where others have failed?".

On the other hand, the situation is not as bad as you suggest. For while "intelligent" people may differ in opinion - whatever exactly defines "intelligent". Those people (past and present) who have earned my respect as wise, clear, sensible, brilliant people have been vastly disproportionately Christians.

It's rather an oversimplification to suggest that "christian doctrine is supposed to come from scripture". If you look at it like that, then your system falls prey to some problematic circular logic in the form that Christians wrote and selected scripture. Scripture is hardly an external standard from which we can somehow pull True Doctrine from. But rather a product of the Church. The Christians who wrote the scripture had to know doctrine to write it, the ones who selected what was and wasn't scripture had to know doctrine to discern what contained "Truth" and what did not.
My interpreting it is line with doctrine seems to me no different.

Very amusing...

For goodness sake, please stop telling me to question my beliefs! I'm a damn hyper-skeptical liberal - I've questioned my own beliefs about five times a day since when I was about seven and wondered whether I could prove or disprove the hyptheses that 1. other people were self-aware and 2. that they existed in reality as opposed to merely in my perception of them.
I said I "used" the idea that Christianity is generally accurate without mentioning "questioned" simply because the latter goes without saying.

Well done.
You're basically right though (even if you were poking fun at it!) that understanding is best gained in a cumulative processs of learning new truths and applying what has been learnt to better improve your knowledge of those truths and to learn new ones. In science, being the primary example of this methodology, the source of information for this model is the theoretical models, practical experiments, and reasoning. Whereas in theology the sources for input into this cumulative model include natural revelation, scripture, church teachings, widespread moral teachings, special revelation and reasoning.

Because on a cumulative spiral-type model of increasing understanding as outlined above it is necessary to determine the truth value of a proposition prior to re-entering it into the system to gain further insight.
eg. I have to convince you that God exists before we can use that information to try to understand God's motives for doing X. (The exception being if you are alledging a contradiction in my beliefs since the basis of contradiction is to start by assuming true one of the contrary beliefs)

What makes you think I believe you're going to hell? I'm a liberal, remember?
It's not a proof either. It is a number of considerations when taken cumulatively suggest to me the truth of the proposition of God's existence. These are things I have spent a few years looking at and it would probably take well in excess of 100,000 words to discuss fully my understanding of them even if it could be put entirely into words, for experience suggests I am not the best at conveying complex points simply. And there are people who I've discussed some considerations with who saw no value in them since they did not view the world in the same way I do. And to that end perhaps it is best to start by asking you a few questions related to a few of the more popular ideas of how God's existence can be shown (since I am far more likely to get you to believe God exists by allowing you to construct your own arguments within your own premises than try and force-fit one coming from my worldview):
1. What do you think it means for something to "exist"?
2. What does it mean for something to cause something else or for it to be the reason why X obtains and not Y?
3. If we trace the causal chain backwards is it legitimate to to have an infinite chain with no final explanation but with everything depending on something else backwards ad infinitum?
4. And if so where does the principle that it is necessary for things to have causes fit into this system?
5. And if it is not possible to have a infinite causal regress, then if something could be said to be causally "first" then what properties might that thing have? If there is no thing which actually exists but everything potentially does so, then which potential should be actualised and why one as opposed to another similar?
6. Call this reality A where A is everything causally connected to this moment. Why is it that A obtains and not B -some other possible series of events? Do all possible realities exist - why? And if the why involves causal connections then how has it not merely subsumed the all possible realities within A? Or is there some greater power that selects which one is to exist? And how does this not make the power part of A? Or does reality A exist necessarily - and what makes it necessary?
7. Matter appears to conform to describable "laws" of activity. eg F=MA, the Schrodinger Eqn, perhaps even one day a Grand Theory of Everything. What is the relation between matter and those laws that describe it? Is it possible to have matter without the laws? What is the likely ontological status of these laws and of matter?
8. What is the nature of awareness/consciousness and how does this compare to matter? Is there any fundamental distinction to be made between that which is aware and that which is not? Can awareness be explained completely as an illusion or as an emergent property of matter?
9. What propositions do you have absolute certainty are true? That you exist? That you are aware? That an external world exists? That matter exists? etc (any others?). To what extent is it reasonable to assume the existence of something non-certain that is significantly different in nature from the known certains and proceed to attempt to explain the certains in terms to the non-certain? What effect does this consideration have on the intrinsic reasonableness of naturalism and supernaturalism?
10. Do you agree or disagree that your actions and beliefs are determined along the lines of the idea that what you do you do because you see it as being the course of action that is ultimately likely to be most beneficial to you. (ie a course of action giving the highest expected value of the resultant state of affairs, judged from your point of view) -Consider especially unprovable beliefs such as the existence of an external world, the validity of memory etc. Is this criteria a reasonable one, or why not? If so, are there any ways of applying it to the question of God's existence or that of the supernatural?

Of those who experiences I have heard, I simply found the Christian ones more convincing. Certainly I have heard many many more Christian ones, so this is not exactly the most unbiased of criteria.
I do not deny that it is possible for Moslems and Hindus to have religious experiences since I understand God to be God of everyone not just Christians. -I simply have not heard any convincing non-Christian religious experiences.

Quite possibly. Though even if I was raised in a Moslim country I find it unlikely that I would be one, since much of what I reject in the fundamentalist Christian theology seems to be even more prominant in Islam and much of what I like about Christianity is missing in Islam.

No. I may have skipped over it unconsciously since Rodahi used to keep going on about Jesus as a magician and rather dulled my interest in discusing the matter.

My thoughts are: 1. What exactly is your hypothesis and 2. What exactly do you intend use it to argue against? I'll have a look for the thread...

Bible Humper

Oh, thanks for responding Tercel!

I wasn't expecting an answer to my post, so I wasn't paying attention.

BC&A isn't a place I explore too often, since I didn't grow up Xian and so haven't studied the bible to the depth needed to follow much of what goes on here.

I'll answer tomorrow, it's too late to go through it all and give a good answer. See ya.

Frivolous

I am still waiting for your response. Or maybe you do not have one.

Tercel

How can you be waiting for a response, never mind "still" waiting when you have not yet posted in this thread?

Amos

Well thanks!

Amos holds that the bible is all metaphor except where it tells the reader that it is not. One such place is in John 6:55 where Jesus tell us that "my body is real food and my blood is real drink."

Now be honest, do you think that the above is a metaphor and the bible is wrong here or what? Don't forget here that I hold that the bible is inerrant and can defend the above passage.

What I am really trying to tell you is that you've got everyhting backwards. You read literal where you should not and you read metaphor where it is indicated that you should take the words as fact.

_Naturalist_

Well it's impossible to believe the story about Noah to be a true account of something that did happen, for many many reasons. It's just a story.

Doctor X

My Children:

Fix your codes!

These posts make my eyeballs bleed!

Did Noah Exist?

No.

However the immortal Summerian paradigm who explains to Gilgamesh why he can never be immortal did/does. Rumor has it he currently resides in Compton. . . .

--J.D.

Mageth

The bad codes are because this thread is a resurrected thread from before the transfer to (vBulletin?).