-DM-

I'm also waiting for Tom's answers to my questions to him in that thread.

--Don--

-DM-

Pretty damned handy considering that no original exists of even one book of the Bible.

--Don--

-DM-

... and faith is next to useless insofar as being a reliable path to truth is concerned. There is nothing whatsoever that cannot be believed on the basis of faith.

--Don--

HelenM

Well, it does say "we believe"

love
Helen

Tom in KC

Thanks everyone for the responses. I’ll do my best to answer the following questions and thoughts raised here:

Muad'Dib says: “With no disrespect intended, I see you as communicating not what kind of deity you serve, but what sort of person you are. There is a gaping chasm between "I'm a decent person" (which I think you probably are, from what little I know of you) to "the God I believe in actually exists," a gap I tried desperately for several years to jump, without success.” And, Doc58 says: “You feel guilty that you aren't "doing Christianity right”.

I can see why you may have gotten these impressions. Let me clarify that my motives were based less on guilt than being convicted or challenged to support my faith with more empathy and understanding. Also, I wanted to get the feedback of other Christians as well as non-Christians.

Ghandi had a great quote on this subject, though I can’t remember it verbatim: ‘I like their Christ, but not their Christians.’ I know that the actions of Christians have made people disillusioned with faith or have dissuaded people from “seeking God”. Please see David Gould’s post. He makes this point more eloquently than I.
Orpheous99: “Faith is meaningless without facts.”, and
Don Morgan: “... and faith is next to useless insofar as being a reliable path to truth is concerned. There is nothing whatsoever that cannot be believed on the basis of faith.”, and
Proud Atheist’s reference to Christianity as a “wrecked old car”., and
Idaho, regarding my post: "I would guess that most if not all of us were lead to faith by a believer who just loved us and didn’t pass judgment. They provided a good example of what it means to be a Christian." “Tom, I would guess that you are including yourself in this statement. Please don't take this the wrong way but it sounds like you became a Christian because of acceptance. You found someone that would accept you if you would accept Christ. If I am wrong please enlighten me. Seriously Tom I would like to know why you believe in any God much less the Xian one?”

I’ll attempt to respond to these comments as a group. I understand the desire to “see facts” and your suspicions that Christians came to faith “for acceptance” or other non-rational reasons. First, I believe that – if God provided the level of proof that you appear to be asking for - he would in effect force you to believe in Him (rather than faith being an act of free will). That feels more like an insecure God rather than an omnipotent one.

Don’s post on the ‘Case for Faith’ thread says: “I would agree with you 100% that it is possible to be a thinking person and a Christian.” The fact that there have been so many brilliant theists throughout history is too obvious to require amplification. In light of this fact, the ‘wrecked old car’ analogy is really a statement of personal non-belief than statement of truth. The interesting question to me is how, as I said in the Case for Faith thread, thoughtful investigation leads different people completely different directions. Jesus says, “seek and you will find”. Does “seek” mean diligently study, or does it mean, “look for God with the hope of finding him”, or “try to apply Jesus’ teachings in our life and see if they work?” Do we need to start with the belief that it might be true? I’d say yes.

Helen’s makes an interesting point: “They probably hold a view which is neatly diametrically opposed to yours: you think that people accept Christianity for rational reasons and resist it for emotional ones. They think the opposite. Perhaps the truth is somewhere in between.”

So, why do I believe? I pretty sure that my answers won’t be sufficient for most of you, but I’ll resist from giving the cop out answer “you’ll have to try it for yourself and see because every believer is different”. Here goes nothing:

Jesus’ teachings have been a huge boost to me personally, my marriage, my job, and my relationships with others. If God created us, he should know how we should live and I believe that – from experience – Jesus has it right. A related point is looking at cultures that have a Judeo-Christian influence vs. cultures where Christianity is discouraged or banned. Western culture is FAR from perfect, but there is much less despair and much more value placed on the value of people. I believe that God and His teaching should at least partially get credit for that.

Also, the experiences of certain believers that are hard for me to attribute to anyone else but God, are (for me) compelling proof. Good examples are: Saul of Tarsus, who set out to stone Christians and suddenly began to lead people to faith; Sinead O’Connor (I know this will generate some sarcasm!), and her story about being comforted by God after being locked up alone in a room by her mother as a child; and Rachel Scott, the victim at Columbine High School who predicted the event in her poetry and drawings to God. Finally, when I look at the world, I am in awe not about the existence of evil but the existence of good. I agree that “good” is far from limited to Christians, but if God created everyone I’m not sure why this argument is that significant. I marvel at life, and I can’t see why some non-believers are sure that the “intelligent design” concept is wrong – especially given the systematic complexity of life’s building blocks, and the naturalists’ difficulties supporting a reasonable concept of the very beginning of life or macroevolution.

I appreciate and respect your arguments, Doc58, about areas where you see flaws in the Bible or inconstancies with what you believe the qualities of a righteous God should be. I attempted to answer them in the other thread by saying that your arguments don’t nullify my core beliefs. None of us have a perfect understanding of the stories in the Bible, especially not from an eternal perspective. Even if we did, we’d have to start the discussion by agreeing that the Bible is “without error in the original writings” as Helen’s church says, and that the translations that you have read are without error. Perhaps, since as you pointed out in your post of the other thread that there are discrepancies in the transcripts, some of the discrepancies have altered the meaning of the passages that cause you problems. That may be a reach, but it’s fair to acknowledge that errors could exist in the parts that you find troubling if you claim there are errors in the parts that I find comforting. Also, I think that it’s hard to say that a handful of passages in a book the size of the Bible can invalidate the whole religion. Bottom line is that Jesus said those who believe in Him will have eternal life. It’s a simple message that is so prevalent and thoroughly corroborated inside and outside of scripture that it’s hard to refute he said it. He didn’t add that we also must embrace the inerrancy of scripture, or buy into the idea of the Pope, or any of the other interpretations that man has tacked on through various churches.

Love,
Tom

HelenM

Hi Tom

I suspect there is a lot of refutation of it on this site...probably since you are on the Secular Web the burden of proof is on you.

Can you elaborate at least a bit on what you mean by 'thorough corroboration', please?

Also, what does 'believe in Him' mean precisely? Did all the people here who said they believed in him and now don't, have eternal life once? Have they lost it?

Have you read this thread?

<a href="http://ii-f.ws/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=47&t=000007" target="_blank">You say you're "saved"? What's your proof</a>.

It might be a good one for you to read. (If/when you have time )

love
Helen

Muad'Dib

How so? What can be more secure than not hiding the truth, however painful it might be? Or comforting people who try to believe but find themselves unable to?

So would I, but in all fairness one ought to take this approach not just with Christianity (in all its forms) but with any claim--something that is not always logistically feasible. I don't presume to say what you should or should not believe, but I personally cannot justify uniquely privileging Christianity as the only potential system of belief in the supernatural.

Every believer is different, but you're right, that isn't an especially convincing answer, since I've heard exactly the same thing from my Buddhist and Muslim friends regarding their own faith.

The teachings of some of the Zen patriarchs have greatly enriched my well-being, though it doesn't mean I buy into all of their philosophy or metaphysics.

Looking at history, I see the Western emphasis on the importance of individuals and of life coming in after the Renaissance rediscovery of the Greek and Roman writings, whereas the medieval Christian church's track record in that area wasn't all that great. But I'm not a historian, just an interested amateur.

Believers of nearly all religions have similar experiences. I think that in most cases the experiences are there, but perhaps the interpretations could stand some scrutiny, since many explanations are mutually exclusive.

Evolution does not talk about the origins of life so much as its development. If you have honest questions about why we reject intelligent design, or accept macroevolution (there's a lot more evidence for the latter than is commonly realized), you're more than welcome to visit the Evolution/Creation forum or read some of the library articles on the subject.

If I may make a distinction here, there is a substantial difference between the accuracy of a text's transmission and the veracity of its claims.

It's hard to refute a lot of things; that doesn't make them true. Would you like to advance an argument that he did, in fact, say those things? If so, the Biblical Criticism & Archaeology forum awaits.


Thanks for your reply, Tom; it's refreshing to find someone who's courteous and willing to discuss things, even with so many people to respond to. I hope I don't come across as sounding harsh in my responses above, but the bases of my Christian belief for many years were the very things you enumerated, but slowly, as I examined myself and the world, they began to fall apart; as such the subject is a touchy one for me.

KweschunThEAnserz

Going back to your original post:
The problem I'm finding with this kind of forum is that there is no room for love. Attempts at showing love in the way that can change lives seems to be futile amidst the scientific or philisophical loads of information that is required for a point to be made here. Now I'm not saying that people are not loving, its just that when it comes down to the issues of where we came from, or why we're here, or any other scientific mind provoking issue, love has no place. If you believe that we came from nothing and that there is no purpose to our existence, how can you believe that love will lead us to finding those answers? Love cannot have any place in the big questions of life because those are all scientific. My problem is that the very thing we deny in finding out answers just happens to be the most important thing in our lives. So, while love is really the key to sharing faith, it may not have much use here in making a point, no matter what context its represented in.

HelenM

Tom in KC

Hi Helen,

I'll try. Here are some excerpts from the Case for Christ taken from Chuck Colson's site (the URL is <a href="http://calvarychapel.com/redbarn/cchrist.htm):" target="_blank">http://calvarychapel.com/redbarn/cchrist.htm):</a>

Yamauchi replied. "We do have very, very important references to Jesus in Josephus and Tacitus. Josephus was a first-century Jewish historian who, because of his collaboration with the Romans, was hated by his fellow Jews. In the Testimonium Flavianum, Josephus writes of Jesus’ life, miracles, death, and resurrection. Josephus wrote, "On the third day [after his crucifixion] he appeared to them restored to life."

As Yamauchi explained, "Josephus corroborates important information about Jesus: that he was the martyred leader of the church in Jerusalem . . . who had established a wide and lasting following, despite the fact that he had been crucified."

Tacitus, the most important Roman historian of the first century, was an unsympathetic witness to the spread of Christianity. So, his testimony is especially credible. Tacitus wrote that an "immense multitude" held so strongly to their beliefs that they were willing to die rather than recant.

And the Jewish Talmud, Yamauchi notes, finished in AD 500, also mentions Jesus. Although it calls him a "false messiah," the fact that it mentions him at all is a corroboration of his life in ancient Israel.

Finally, we have the writings of the apostolic fathers," the earliest Christian writers after the New Testament. Among them was Ignatius, who went to his execution claiming that Jesus rose from the dead, and that those who believe in him would be raised, too, Yamauchi said.

Put together the writings of Josephus, the Roman historians, Jewish writings, and the apostolic fathers, "and you’ve got persuasive evidence that corroborates all the essentials found in the biographies of Jesus." And, he added, "Even if you were to throw away every last copy of the gospels, you’d still have a picture of Jesus that’s extremely compelling—in fact, it’s a portrait of the unique Son of God."

Jeffrey Jay Lowder’s review of Case for Christ (http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/jeff_lowder/strobel.html): counters:

There is no reason to believe that Tacitus or Pliny the Younger relied on independent sources. As for Thallus, the date of Thallus' writing is not known and therefore the reference could be based on Christian sources.

Are you trying to trap me? As you know, there is no concensus on the "once saved always saved" issue. I don't that I'm qualified to break the theological deadlock on that topic!

Love,
Tom

[ January 11, 2002: Message edited by: Tom in KC ]</p>