dog-on

So you redefine death to mean something other than death?

Why not use another word? Like eternal damnation...

Deus Ex

Life after death cannot be proven empirically. It is upon the theist to provide evidence.

Paul was just a man. Who cares what he said?

show_no_mercy

It seems as though "death" actually doesn't exist in the Christian paradigm. Either you live forever in heaven, or you live forever in hell. You never actually "die" - as in at the very least a cessation of all consciousness.

dog-on

and as such, there is no nobility in this belief system. It is simply play or pay...

aa5874

Well, my father died and it has been documented. My mother-in law died and it was documented. You tell me where they are living right now.

I know where their bodies were left, I expect them to be there.

You tell where I can see them alive.

Your propagate false information.

So, why tell NATURAL man about God, if you know in advance NATURAL man CANNOT understand or receive the things of God.

Now, if you understand the things of God, you must be UNNATURAL.

Are you for real, am I responding to a dead man that has already shed his bag of bones?

I think so. You cannot be for real.

John 3.16 was good news for the UNNATURAL, good news for the DEAD.

show_no_mercy

Where has the validity of what the Bible says been demonstrated or corroborated? Who decided which books were Bible-worthy and which ones weren't?

bacht

This is supernaturalism, which is beyond historical or scientific access.

Everything that lives eventually dies, this is the law of nature in all times and places. Belief in life after death is against all the evidence for universal mortality. This is wishful thinking, to put it politely.

If the supernatural elements are removed from Christianity what is left? Some leftover pseudo-cynicism from a kingdom of heaven philosophy? Some simplified ethical teachings from Hebrew scripture?

Doug Shaver

I think there are too many variables to allow any neat formulas. There is certainly nothing that is going to tell us that what any ancient document says is infallibly true. Every last thing that was ever written was written by a human being, and nobody has to be dishonest to say something that happens not to be true.

They don't have to be incompetent, either. With the best of intentions and all the knowledge accessible to the brightest people of his time and place, any writer can be wrong about anything.

Given a report that some event happened, in a document of known authorship, and given the question "Could this author have been wrong about that?" the absolutely best answer we can hope for is "Probably not." And if the reported event is improbable on its face, that is going to be a hard answer to come up with.

Of course, with some events, reasonable people are going to disagree about their prima facie probability. Given that a document reports that an X-type event happened, if you're already convinced that some events of an X nature have happened and I'm already convinced that no such event can happen, then we're going to have different ideas about its prima facie probability.

I just now took another look at your request. It was:

I guess I have to say there are none. We cannot look at any ancient document and justify a categorical conclusion "This is true" or "This is false." Now, if two documents have contrary claims, then we can categorically state that at least one must be false, but we cannot with perfect certainty say which one it is.

I don't agree that the alternative is simple reservation of judgment. There are sources we can trust, but to say that is not to say that they are infallible sources. It just means that if they say something happened, then we reasonably believe that it probably did happen. And if there are many such sources for a particular event, then the probability increases -- but never to p = 1.0.

rhutchin

That is what I concluded. Without the ability to duplicate an event through a repeatable experiment, there is no way to conclude one way or the other.

OK. I have no problem with that.

rhutchin

OK.

And if man could discover a natural mechanism to create the universe and then create life, we might be able to discount a supernatural influence. Given that the universe and life require supernatural origins, the supernatural cannot be discounted.

Take out the supernatural and you have no Christianity and no reason for Christianity.