bd-from-kg

Tercel:

This post is a little rough, since I’m about to leave for a few days to go to a wedding. I’ll get back to you when I return (perhaps Monday).

Neither am I. My point is that your interpretations are in many cases extremely strained, which is a clear sign that you are trying to justify preconceived ideas rather than making an honest, good-faith effort to understand the intent of the authors.

Your approach is made abundantly clear by the comment:

In other words, if it cannot be shown beyond a shadow of a doubt that the only possible interpretation of a given author flatly contradicts your position, you’re OK. And even if this can be shown, you’re still OK. The authors are only human, after all; they could be wrong as easily as you. In fact, come to think of it, more easily than you. So it really doesn’t matter what the Bible says. As you say:

In other words, what’s the fuss all about? After all, we’re all in the same boat. So:

Indeed, it’s quite clear that you not only don’t care whether I think your position is “sufficiently Biblical”, you don’t care whether it is “sufficiently Biblical”. Your only real use for the Bible is to “mine” it for snippets that seem (at least superficially) to support your position.

Your treatment of the perfectly clear passages from John and Paul displays your methodology as well as anything. Of John you say:

Are you seriously proposing that in the numerous passages in John where Jesus refers to those that “believeth in me,” He means anyone who trusts that He has the ability to do certain things? Do you know of a single serious scholar who supports this interpretation? Obviously Jesus is referring to those who believe that Jesus is the Savior, the Son of God, and who trust His word that He will save them from death and guide them to eternal life. (Which is exactly the same thing that Paul means by “faith”.) He is saying that those who believe this and have faith in Him to keep His word will have eternal life.

Why? Is there any reason even to speculate that this is what he meant? Is there any evidence that the early Church interpreted it this way? Is there some nuance in the original Greek that suggests this? Or are you just casting around desperately for some interpretation, no matter how weird and implausible, that’s consistent with your own views?

As for the quotations from Paul’s letters, you claim:

No, he’s saying that we are saved by God’s grace through faith in Jesus and His blood. Odd that you should forget about that part. Paul only mentions it, oh, a few hundred times.

Your fondness for using selective, out-of-context quotations to support preconceived ideas is illustrated again by your choosing to quote from Amos. Here’s what the Encyclopedia Britannica has to say about this book:

In other words, Amos is not saying that God does not care about being worshiped, etc., but that he (naturally) rejects worship directed at rival gods. So this whole passage is completely beside the point.

By contrast, the quotation from Matthew really does support “salvation through works”. But it also flatly contradicts universalism. It’s remarkable that you should use this passage to support one part of your position when it is absolutely fatal to another part.

As for the passages from James, it must be recalled that James is addressing believers who have begun to backslide – i.e., their behavior is in many cases starting to revert to what it was before they converted. His purpose is the entirely practical one of arresting this process. His epistle was never intended to be read as a theological treatise; its whole tone is clearly to inspire good conduct among the faithful, as anyone can easily see by reading the whole thing. (In fact, it is one of the more beautiful books in the Bible.) As to why it does not conflict with Paul’s teachings, I can do no better than to refer you to the <a href="http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/13156a.htm" target="_blank">article on Romans</a> in the Catholic Encyclopedia. (This article also has a nice exposition of Paul’s view of the relationship between faith, works, and salvation.) Here it should be sufficient to note that James says only that faith without works is dead, not that faith is not a prerequisite for salvation. Again, one must keep in mind that he is addressing believers, and so sees no need (unlike Paul) to emphasize the need for faith.

By the way, I never said that a Christian must believe that salvation is through faith alone, or that works are irrelevant; I said only that he must believe that belief is relevant to one’s ultimate fate. The traditional position, of course, is that (as James says) faith without works is dead. A person who mouths the correct formulas, or even who believes them as abstract propositions, does not “believe in” or have “faith in” Jesus in the relevant sense. According to Christian doctrine, a true faith will inevitably give rise to good works. Thus it can be said that only those who “do good” (as described in the passage from Matthew that you cited, for example) will be “saved”, even though it is actually because of their faith that they received God’s grace; the good works are merely a sign of this faith.

But the ultimate in use of selective quotations is your concluding from of Romans 5:18-19 alone that – well, I don’t want to be accused of misrepresenting you, so I’ll quote your own words:

To believe this you have to willfully misinterpret virtually the whole of Paul’s writings. A snippet from a long, complex theological treatise like Romans really needs to be put in the context of the entire document, not to mention the other epistles. It seems impossible to me that a remotely honest reading of Paul’s work with a view to understanding his intended meaning could lead anyone to think that Paul was a universalist. If he was, this fact was completely unknown to the early Church – which is odd, since Paul practically single-handedly created the early Church.

Also, I have been unable to find a single Bible commentary that suggest that Paul meant that everyone will be saved. In every case this passage is interpreted as meaning that everyone is “put right with God” in the sense that the effects of Original Sin are “undone”. According to Paul’s thinking, this is a necessary prerequisite for receiving His grace. Thus, as a result of Jesus’ sacrifice, salvation is available to all. Perhaps you know of some commentary that agrees with your interpretation?

And which part of the Bible did you derive this belief from? I understand that there are passages that suggest that those who died before Jesus became incarnate will be given a chance to accept Him. And it is reasonable to extend this to those who never received the Gospel. All this is consistent with traditional, orthodox ideas. But this applies only to those who never had a chance to accept Jesus in this life. To my knowledge, there is nothing in the Bible to support the idea that those who heard the Good News and had it explained adequately to them, but rejected it, will be given a second chance after they die. And this flatly contradicts even the greatly liberalized (post-Vatican II) teachings of the Catholic Church, much less its traditional doctrine.

Once again, it looks very much as though you’re making it up. That is, you believe this, not because it is a reasonable interpretation of the Bible or consistent with orthodox theology, but simply and solely because it seems to you, based on your unsupported reason, that this is how things “ought to be”. But if we could figure out how God works by pure reason, what need would we have revelation and incarnation?

This is a red herring. One would have to be insane to suppose that God has a positive desire for people to disbelieve in Him! I’m sure that no one understood you as saying this.

As for belief in God being only a means to an end, this doesn’t seem tenable. The ultimate nature of things is radically different if God exists from what it is if He doesn’t. Thus a belief or disbelief in God (or an agnostic position, for that matter) will have far-reaching implications regarding how we view practically everything else. If God exists and we believe that He doesn’t, our entire worldview will necessarily be hopelessly wrongheaded. Thus if God loves us and cares about our being at least remotely in touch with the truth, He must care whether we believe in Him on this account alone. If God exists, to believe that He does is to believe a profound, fundamental truth about the universe. This is a final end – something that is good in itself, quite aside from its consequences.

Of course, it is also a necessary prerequisite for believing other things, such as that Jesus is the Savior. A Christian must suppose that God cares whether we believe this as well, since this is again a profound, fundamental truth about the ultimate nature of things. And Jesus’ mission on earth, and his instructions to the disciples to spread the Gospel to all nations and peoples, is unintelligible except on the understanding that He wanted all people to believe in Him.

Not at all,. But as I pointed out before, it’s one thing to interpret the Bible in the light of reason and common sense and quite another to ignore what the Bible says in the name of reason and common sense.

Is this your standard? If anyone who called himself a Christian has speculated about whether something might be true, it’s OK to believe it? That’s pretty much a definition of what I mean by “making it up”. How about this standard: if, after studying the evidence as thoroughly, objectively, and dispassionately as possible, ignoring any preconceived ideas about how things “ought” to be or what Jesus “ought” to have taught, you are honestly convinced that this is what He taught and believed, then it’s acceptable to believe it.

Well, uh, it could be true. God is omnipotent. He could have arranged to have true, accurate accounts of what Jesus said and did, and what it all meant, produced, and to have these accounts, and only them, accepted as canonical.

Failing that, it could be true on the whole when interpreted in the obvious, straightforward way.

What does not seem to me to be a reasonable attitude toward the Bible (for a Christian) is that the truth is “in there somewhere,” buried in obscure places like the Book of Amos, while far better-known, major books like the Gospel of John or the Epistle to the Romans are full of passages that are highly misleading at best if not flat-out false.

Finally, in a later post you ask:

This is a fair question. The problem here is fundamental. It is impossible to arrive at Christianity through pure reason. Thus, to be a Christian at all, one must accept the authority of the Church, or of the Bible – in other words, of the revealed word of God. If one does not believe that the Bible is the revealed word of God, or that the Church is the repository of such revelation, there is absolutely no way that belief in Christianity can be justified. But if one believes that the Church is (or even that it once was) such a repository, one is led irresistible to the conclusion that the Bible is as well, because it is the Church that chose the books we now call the Bible and declared them canonical. So it is simply not possible for a Christian to regard the Bible as merely an interesting book, worthy of consideration. Nor can a Christian ignore the interpretation that the early Church put on the writings that eventually became the Bible, because it was on the basis of this interpretation that it declared them canonical. “Mining” the Bible for quotes to support beliefs arrived at independently of it is to treat it with disrespect – as an object to be used for your own purposes, rather than with reverence and respect, as the source of revelation, inspiration, and guidance.

It is your treatment of the Bible as merely a source of quotations to cite in support of positions arrived at independently of the Bible, rather than as the source of your opinions, that seems incompatible with both the spirit and logic of Christianity.

[ July 26, 2002: Message edited by: bd-from-kg ]</p>

RogerLeeCooke

And you weigh evidence carefully in the light of the principle that contradictions don't matter? Do whatever you like. I won't respond again.

Tercel

Of course they do.
I'm not sure I see the point of your argument. You keep complaining that stuff requires previous evidence to support it. Well yes of course it does, and we can trace the line of support back however long you want if you want to continue this discussion 'till Christmas. So: What's the point, is this a giant Cosmological Argument for Solipsism?

I don't know the holy spirit guided them, but it seems reasonable that God might guide his Church somewhat and it gets a mention in the Bible.

If I may head this whole argument of at it's base...
I believe in God because of rational argument. I am convinced that belief in the existence of God can be justified through a number of logical arguments.

Becuase of this I might be religious, but I would not be specifically Christian. It is the evidence for the Christian Church I see in today's world which make me specifically a Chirstian. Be these Miracles, Near-death experiences, spiritual feelings, personal testimonies etc.

This gives evidence for a fairly general confirmation of "Christianity" as a whole. Making points of Christianity more likely to be true, in turn these things when accepted suggest other ideas as more likely etc in a spiral.

I'm an advocate of errancy and am hardly going to believe something 'cos it claims to be divinely inspired.
Scholarly analysis by others plus my own use of liberal doses of critical thinking.

That's nice. You're wrong but accuse away.

I am concerned about exactly the same thing. That is why I am here. Over the past more than a year I have continually reanalysed my beliefs to make sure I wasn't taking anything on "blind trust". One of my main reasons for posting to these forums in the first place is exactly that.
One thousand posts and one and a half years later I think I can confidently declare that my beliefs do not have copious amounts of blind trust involved anyway and that they are about as consistent as is logically possible. If a few short posts in this one thread have made you think otherwise, why should I care?

Accuse all you like. I, Tercel, directly accuse you, Didymus, of being utterly wrong in your accusations against me.

I think everyone bases the vast majority of what they believe on what others tell them. I've never been to America for example, but I'm prepared to take people at their word when they claim that. Perhaps I'm mistaken... blind trust...

1. The Bible also says I don't need to do that. Apparently Jesus' sacrific was once and for all.
2. I find there to be a fairly low probability of such a god existing.

Tercel

As usual its absurdly long though. Why do you always do big posts? I'm sure I've told you more than once how I really hate dealing with large posts.

Frankly, this is just stupid. On salvation I hold a position that is exactly that which is the standard teaching of the Eastern Orthodox Church. I mean hellooo that's the oldest Church there is... just how many theologians does that put in my boat? Quite a few. And here you are taking me to task for it not being sufficiently Biblical etc. Well that might be okay sometimes, I'm a liberal, I reject inerrancy and that I might not be as sufficiently Biblical in my beliefs as someone else would like me to be is expected. But on this issue?!? The EO Church accepts Biblical infallibility, and it is the learned opinion of their numerous Church theologians over the centuries that my opinion is right and your opinion is wrong.

So what is the point of this discussion? To prove that I can't locate enough verses of the top of my head to support my position to your liking? Would you prefer I go away and dig up theological tomes dealing with this and give you however many thousands of verses it is that the Church's theologians have scraped together on the subject?
It's not like I stand alone on this issue with the vastness of all other Christians opposed to me!

I am not a universalist. Sorry if I gave you the impression that I was.
Again I agree with the EO Church and affirm that it is valid to hope that all might be saved (even Satan) but heretical to believe that all must be saved.

Well I have no problem with that: So long as you grant the possibility of belief after death.

More installments later, if and when I have time.

Doubting Didymus

Produce these arguments, and then we can discuss whether you have a rational belief or not. How do you expect your claim to being logical to be taken seriously if you refuse to show any logical dissertation?

Assuming that we should believe for a second that any one of these is genuine and not a fake, a lie or a figment of the imagination, What about the hundreds of other religions that have the exact same phenomena? Do you discount them? Do you make the spurious claim that their miracles are actually from YOUR god? How do any of these support YOUR religion, and not every other religion?

Do miracles from Allah prove logically that Islam is true as a whole? Do spiritual feelings about Shiva make hinduism more likely to be true?

I would like to see your logical arguments in favour of some doctrine, and not another. I strongly suspect that your argument may boil down to an argument from idealism: basing your conclusion on what should be true. I may be wrong, but we will never know if you do not produce your argument.

Well, please demonstrate a logical argument. I don't care if you were the first poster on these forums. You will not share the evidence that you claim supports your position, therefore I assume you have none. Is this not a logical conclusion? I strongly resent the suggestion, implied or otherwise, that the number of posts you have contributes to the likelihood of your being right.

My accusation is that you have no logical arguments in favour of your position, and no real evidence to base any arguments on. This is a very easy accustion to deny, you simply need to produce the arguments, and display your evidence.

What if you ask them "Oh really, can I see your passport stamp?" and they consistently refuse, instead showing you historical scholars who believe that they have gone to America. Do you still believe them?

Well, yes. So do I, but why is he LESS likely than a nicer god? How, exactly, does niceness become statistical probability? Where is your logic? Where is your evidence?

Tercel

Well that takes no little time and effort. I am actually in the process of producing a list of arguments I find to be of value with the eventual intention of getting myself a website. I am also in the process of drafting what I see as the strongest argument for belief in God. (It's a kind of anti-materialism, dualistic, cosmological, occam's razor, ontological mix and it's currently sitting at about a few thousand words and I'm not even halfway through)
You ask me to just produce these arguments, well they will get produced, in a few weeks or months as my amount of free time and howevermuch I happen to feel like doing some work on them, allows.
If I'm going to write arguments I prefer to do them thoroughly and not simply a half-hearted attempt.

A while ago I wrote up an argument properly
<a href="http://iidb.org/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=50&t=000260&p=" target="_blank">http://iidb.org/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=50&t=000260&p=</a>
Though I hesitate to give you the link because I don't think the argument's a very good one, and if I was going to post it again anywhere I would want to modify it seriously. This is all to say that the above proves I can write an argument, but don't let it make you think I only make bad arguments!

In the meantime I'm happy to discuss my thoughts on any argument you'd care to name.

What is your justification for not believing such to be true? In general if observation of a phenomina is widely shared we accept that as true without further question. It would be rather stupid of me to deny that anyone has been to America just because I haven't - since many people consistently claim to have been to America.
Similarly there are a large number of people reporting religious experiences. It is inconsistent and special pleading to hold that such widely reported experiences are to be considered as all false until proven otherwise. Though we may of course doubt individual claims if we think the person is untrustworthy, there is no sufficient reason to doubt the entire class of claims.

Further to that, yes I think there is good reason to believe for more than a second that some of these claims are true. I have talked to many people about their experiences and read several books where I judged the speaker or writer trustworthy and capable of being accurate.

I see no theological problem that God might do miracles etc for non-Christians. However, I grant that it does cloud the issue of determining that Christianity is really the most true religion.
However, I have yet to see any remotely convincing evidence for miracles in other relgious traditions, while having seen a lot with the Christian tradition. Perhaps if I was born in a Muslim country, I might have been Islamic, who can say? I can only deal with the evidence I have encountered, such is the nature of things. If and when I encounter significant evidence in other relgious traditions then I will have to re-evaluate my beliefs.

Obviously yes if we can establish that they are reasonabley likely to be genuine. Alternatively in we establish that miracles in multiple religious traditions are likely genuine then we might reasonably end up being generically religious.

Of course they boil down to what I think should be true: that's what logical thinking is.
Perhaps you mean to accuse me of believing what I wish was true?

1) Napoleon was French
2) All French people are European
Conclusion: Napolean was European.


That is illogical . If my purpose of posting is to ensure logical consistency in my beliefs then number of posts does indeed increase the chances that my beliefs are now closer to being logically consistent.

He's close enough to being as likely as a God who punishes me equally badly when I don't do whatever it was that your God was punishing me for. It is up to you to present evidence to make your hypothesis more probable than the opposite one. I don't see such evidence.

Game theory would suggest therefore that there is little advantage to be gained by not doing whatever it is that's offending your example god.

Doubting Didymus

Alright, now we are getting somewhere. What about this one:

"Christian Supernatural Experiences are evidence that god exists."

In fact, if I may, I propose a formal debate on this topic.

I will advise you to be careful, here. If you are trying to claim that the religion with the most miracles is the most true then you will probably have no choice other than to become catholic. They have miracles every damn week.

What is your criteria for judging the accuracy of a christian supernatural experience? I strongly suspect that other religions' experiences will qualify equally.

You assume that, just because the person is probably not a liar, their experience is real. I suggest that the experience is genuine, but is not an actual impression of a real being.

Question: Do you believe that aliens are among us? If not, why not? There are many documented cases of abduction, surely not everyone is lying? I contend that the experiences are genuine, but that they are not experiences of real alien beings.

You are really painting yourself into a corner, here. You will have to believe in Hinuism, Islam, Christianity (including the huge variety of small cults), as well as believing in aliens, Faeries, and anything else that can claim that its miracles meet the same criteria as yours.

Yes, that is what I was saying.

You are completely wrong. You are not only appealing to authority, you are appealing to your own authority. If I had 5000 posts, would my arguments be more logical than yours? Would they be more logical than they were to start with? No, to think this is a monstrous assumption. Are David Mattews arguments more logically consistant, now that he is approaching 1000 posts?

Burden of proof is not on the atheist. The theist contends that their own particular god is the true god. The Atheist contends that no gods are true, an unrestricted negative. Nothing can 'prove' an unrestricted negative. Unrestricted negatives are true by default unless there is evidence against them. For example: 'Santa does not exist' is an unresricted negative. How do you prove that santa does not exist, somewhere in the universe? You can't. You reach this conclusion because there is no evidence to the contrary. The question, therefore, is what evidence you have for denying the unrestricted negative.

ishalon

I asked him to show me a sign before i became an atheist so that i would go the right way.I didn't want any condemning, its simple enough for a deity isn't it? I've done more than one version of this prayer, too. It never works...

(and don't use the "you don't have enough faith" argument, i got christians to pray for me too)

ishalon

I prayed that I be given a sign before I became atheist.

randomsyllable

Well, I'm lazy and I skipped over the last few point-by-point commentary posts, but I had a rather naive question?

What does Tercel's faith matter? Seriously, atheists complain about the inability to have a fair hearing in daily life because of our stance in the theological forum. Therefore, what right do we have to criticize his beliefs as "not-Christian" or "not the right religion"? A bit of the kettle/pot thing there.

Besides, my personal view is that I wished more so-called Christians were like Tercel here. His quasi-apathetic view towards the bible lends him a much more pleasent air and makes him someone I would far rather converse with than a hardliner. So maybe I missed something, but shouldn't we support people like Tercel? Its his choice to have faith in God, JC, et all. Its our choice not to. Prostelyzing (I know I spelt that wrong) isn't any prettier coming from us. Rational debate yes, criticism of the person's positions simply because they don't fit the stereotypical image of a "Christian"? I think we want more Christians talking to Tercel, not the other way around.

...but I'm new, and no doubt incorrect.

...just my thoughts

-random