Tercel

I was kidding.

Though like I said to Vork, I am doing a draft of a comprehensive argument for god...
(I'd just like to say I wrote some more today and it's now up to 15 pages of double spaced refill (around 4000 words), and I've almost finished the initial "preliminary considerations" section... (deals so far with defining God, Occam's razor, hard materialism as "proven" by "dependence of mind on physical brain shows mind is 'nothing more than' physical brain" (though there'll be another more general section on hard materialism later), and free will) and I'm just about to start on causality...)
... so in 2 years time when I'm finished you can read it.

In the mean time you can read this one by someone who's beaten me to it:
Enjoy...

Tercel

Okay Peter, I think I see what you're getting at.

Would it be fair to say that this is more a question of "why Christianity rather than any other religion"?
After all, the thing that makes Christians (be they orthodox or heretics, historicist Jesus believers, or gnostics) different from any other religious believers is that they believe Jesus to be divine (or at least close eg Arians).

Now, my belief that God exists is a philosophically arrived at one. It's pretty damn strong: as I find the logical arguments immensely persuasive. My belief that Christianity is the most true religion is (comparatively) weak.
I'm rather a religious pluralist: God is God is God whether one calls him YHWH, Allah, Djlasjfsad or anything else. Of course there is a gray area and black: Some cultures ideas of God seem to me fairly dodgy, others having little of worth whatsoever. (Of course I don't think they'll burn in hell because of it or anything like that: I'm just pointing out that the common idea "all religions are equally true" is silly (and that I don't agree with it) because if God exists them some peoples ideas are obviously going to be closer to the truth than others)

The concept of God I arrive at from philosophical considerations seems to fit best with the omni (or close enough to avoid the logical contradictions of the OMNI-God) monotheist Gods. That seems to suggest that Judaism, Christianity and Islam are most worthy candidates for the "most true religion". Of the three I find Christianity to have the most merit. In no particular order, and off the top of my head (so I might well miss some):

I find it's moral teachings admirable.

I find it's basic theme of fall-salvation-redemption provides good explanatory power.

I find the concepts of heaven hell as articulated by such christian CS Lewis and the Eastern Orthodox tradition, intrinsically worthy ideas.

I find it's teachings on the loving nature of God (as opposed to the other two) nice, and despite the argument from evil/suffering feel that such a God is probably more probable than the unknowable distant God or the capricious God typically described by the other religions.

I have come across numerous modern-day Christian miracle claims I consider reasonably believable (don't worry I'm not exceptionally gullible: I'm damn skeptical of 99.9% of the ones I hear), whereas I have not come across any convincing ones in other religions (though I admit that the fact that I've grown up in a culture where Christianity is the dominent religion influences the statistics here greatly. I also have no problem with miracles occuring outside of the most true religion, I simply haven't found any I thought were convincing to date).

I tend to see my own "spiritual experiences" as well as gifts of the spirit (I confess to Pentecostal leanings - at least on occasions I'm not attacking them for gross stupidy, ignorance, or imbecilic doctrine) as evidence of Christianity over other religions.


Christianity, out of all religions, is (on the whole when not abused, or should I say: Has the potential to be) simply the nicest, best, most coherent, logical, scientific, believable; and has great explanatory power, has the most power to change the world for the better etc.
I'm burbling, and it's 11pm on friday here and I'm frigging tired from a hard week's work - so to the point:

I would say I believe Jesus is divine because Christianity teaches that Jesus is divine and I don't see any great reason to doubt it.

Vinnie

This all depends.

Vebral plenary inspiration -- Everything is literal history. The 6 day creation, talking snakes, the sun being created after the earth, the garden story , the God of love butchering children, etc

Partial Inerrancy -- Faith and Doctrinal issues are inspired. Anything else can be true or false. For instance the garden story could be false (aside from its theological truths). But we could still use this story as a mythological and poastoral metaphor. God loves, he took special care in creating us and world etc.

Both those views are very hard to defend and the former more so than the latter:

Qualitative inspiration -- all scripture is inerrant to the extent of which God intends it. Ypu may disagree with these but here are some Probable Intentions : 1) A Basic record of events ansd 2) Bestowing grace. The Bible does both of those things.

That is much more defensible than the previous two positions. The latter of the previous two is more defensible then the former but they both fail.

The final position is Natural inspiration. Just as a mountain inspires an artist to paint it, so did God inspire people to write about him. He had no influence over the writings whatsoever except his presences which moved the authors. Thus, the creation story is not God's story of how the world exactly formed, its Israel's cretion story. The church deemd this literature important and authentic to their pastoral and theological concerns and that is why its canonized. This naturally means that other works could "bestow grace" as well. They might not give that basic record of salvation history though

The Bible should be taken under qualititative inspiration or under natural inspiration. I find the other two positions to be untenable and have articulated as much on my website.

The Naked Mage

<gag>

Vinnie

Chicken bone in your throat?

Chrestomathy

It's really inescapable: the Bible is literal or metaphorical--except when it's not..