Confess!: (became a) Religious Discussion

[CrossEyed7]

And that's the standstill--how do you prove Greg didn't walk on water and give sight to the blind and return from the dead? Easy. You can't do that, so he didn't. There are proofs that humans just can't.

Apply the same proofs to Jesus, the retort is that he was magic.

Argue that he couldn't have been magic, the retort is yes he was

Again, that's kinda the point of supernatural stuff. God does stuff that humans can't do to prove that he's God. How would you propose God prove his existence without doing anything that humans can't do?

Science doesn't know what to do with that because it's science and therefore assumes that God never does stuff like that. But that's science's problem.



I kinda just wanted an excuse to use this gif. (You're welcome, Turtlekid)

It's full of inaccuracies outright impossibilities.

...And there's another sweeping, unsupported assertion.

I'm not accusing you of not being able to back these up in your own mind, as I'm sure you've thought these things over quite extensively, but I am saying that it's irresponsible to throw them out if you're not going to back them up here.

[PaperLuigi]

http://www.coppit.org/god/contradictions.php

I don't know how to be any clearer. I could look all over the internet for you if you'd like.

Again, that's kinda the point of supernatural stuff. God does stuff that humans can't do to prove that he's God. How would you propose God prove his existence without doing anything that humans can't do?

Science doesn't know what to do with that because it's science and therefore assumes that God never does stuff like that. But that's science's problem.

Where's the evidence for these supernatural events? Are they happening now? What do they look like?

What can be asserted without evidence can be denied without it or attributed to something else. A rainbow pegasus creating the universe is a 20% cooler explanation in my opinion. Does it have any weight? Not really, it's absurd.

And that's why I don't like to press what I think on to people (intentionally, at least).

Oh I agree. An individual is autonomous over his or her beliefs. We shouldn't coerce someone into becoming an atheist. Ever. By leaving the theist alone in that regard, he'll achieve a certain level of utility. In turn, my utility won't be compromised because he isn't doing anything to hurt me. 

Of course, we don't have to approve of his religion, and we can certainly show evidence to the contrary.

[BP]

Again, that's kinda the point of supernatural stuff. God does stuff that humans can't do to prove that he's God. How would you propose God prove his existence without doing anything that humans can't do?

But that's what I'm sayin'--to add some more fluff to what I said, no one, no one is going to believe Greg did those things for any reason. It's silly to think so. And the most pious of monks probably hold some skepticism that what David Blaine does is anything more than illusion.

But it's not silly at all to think Jesus did what he did. Because he was God's son.
But what if he wasn't?
Well, he was.
Can you prove he was?
Can you prove he wasn't?

There's the standstill.

[Black Mage]

My reasoning is that the Bible is supposed to be perfect, but it's not. It's full of inaccuracies outright impossibilities. Why should I take it seriously if it says it's inerrant but it's not?

And I guess that's where we disagree. It's my understanding that common belief is that the Bible is the word of God written by man. Being as it's purported to be written by many different people across different times (stories tend to change when passed down verbally) it's expected that there will be contradictions.

Is that a convenient excuse to cover up the inconsistencies of a grand scheme to control people? I don't know and I expect I'll never know.

And the website you posted is extremely knit-picky and lacks anything of particular importance. Most of what I'm seeing in there is extremely minor and accounted for by different authors and translations.

If you believe the Bible is "perfect", I can see where that sort of thing causes issues. If I am missing a glaring contradiction, please inform me.

[CrossEyed7]

But it's not silly at all to think Jesus did what he did. Because he was God's son.
But what if he wasn't?
Well, he was.
Can you prove he was?
Can you prove he wasn't?

There's the standstill.

But it's only a standstill if you keep going at it from that angle. If you instead prove or disprove that he did those things, it'd be settled.

Can that be done? Maybe.

Within a decade of Jesus' crucifixion, people who would have known better believed that he rose from the dead. No reliable contemporary documents indicate that anyone ever even tried to deny that the tomb was empty. The Jewish authorities spread the story that the disciples stole the body, but all but one of the eleven were martyred. (Note: I'm not saying martyrdom = truth. People who die for their faith today do it because they believe what a book says; the disciples died because of what they believed they saw firsthand) There was not enough time for the story of Jesus to become a myth, and if the disciples had stolen the body, how did nobody spill the beans about it (especially while being crucified upside-down)?


As for http://www.coppit.org/god/contradictions.php, first off, I should say that you will never hear me claiming that an English translation of the Bible is inerrant, nor that the manuscripts we currently have perfectly preserve the originals.

I'll also note that the Bible never actually calls itself inerrant. The verse often used to support that idea is 2 Timothy 3:16: "There's nothing like the written Word of God for showing you the way to salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. Every part of Scripture is God-breathed and useful one way or another--showing us truth, exposing our rebellion, correcting our mistakes, training us to live God's way. Through the Word we are put together and shaped up for the tasks God has for us."
When I read that, I don't see a guarantee that an English translation 2000 years later isn't going to have any typos on the part about how many soldiers a guy had.

Most of the contradictions presented on that page seem to be relatively minor copying errors, or the use of language that is either poetic, or phrased in a way that ancient readers would understand, or poetic because it is phrased in an ancient way. In fact, that said, this is the only one from that page that seems worth extensive discussion here:

Anyone who strikes a man and kills him shall surely be put to death. (Exodus 21:12)
Do not repay any one evil for evil. (Romans 12:17, likewise Matthew 5:39)

You have to consider the cultural context. When the Mosaic law was given, the standard was "a life for an eye", making "an eye for an eye" quite progressive. They weren't ready for the law of love, but they could at least get to the law of fairness.

Most unsavory things in the Old Testament are just the trappings of the ancient culture. Humanity isn't pretty, and the farther back you go, the worse it looks. God met the Israelites where they were. "You want to keep slaves?" he said. "Then treat them fairly and humanely, and offer them an opportunity to be set free. You want to stone people? Then at least reserve it for heinous crimes, and give them a fair trial (by 2000 BC standards)."

Jesus gives an example of this in Matthew 19:

One day the Pharisees were badgering him: "Is it legal for a man to divorce his wife for any reason?"

He answered, "Haven't you read in your Bible that the Creator originally made man and woman for each other, male and female? And because of this, a man leaves father and mother and is firmly bonded to his wife, becoming one flesh -- no longer two bodies but one. Because God created this organic union of the two sexes, no one should desecrate his art by cutting them apart."

They shot back in rebuttal, "If that's so, why did Moses give instructions for divorce papers and divorce procedures?"

Jesus said, "Moses provided for divorce as a concession to your hardheartedness, but it is not part of God's original plan. I'm holding you to the original plan, and holding you liable for adultery if you divorce your faithful wife and then marry someone else. I make an exception in cases where the spouse has committed adultery."

Moral discrepancies between Old and New Testament are usually the result of progressive revelation.

I know there are much better apparent contradictions, and if you want to bring up more (probably either in another thread or in PMs), I'm game.

[Lizard Dude]

explained why we shiver when we pee

Uh, sounds like a personal problem.

[TEM]

Analyze the following image as far as it allows within the context of this thread.

[BP]

Uh, sounds like a personal problem.

You've never had or heard of **** shivers? Are you sure?

@Crosseyed again: But still, proof. You're a great debater and I really don't want to bother trying to counter you each time, I'm just still not convinced. How do you know all the witnesses weren't made up, that the Bible isn't all urban legends glorifying an ordinary person or something to that effect? Fact of the matter is that two thousand years ago these impossible things supposedly occurred and there are two clashing theories as to where they came from: a magic man used the powers of an omnipotent overseer, of whom we are all playthings on strings, or they're bologna. Jesus existed, it's a fact. Was he the son of a god? There's reasonable doubt.

You can believe whatever you want and I won't bother you. As I said I can't prove what I think, either; it just sounds logical to me. Scientific method and all that. I'm more saying why I won't argue with you than trying to do it

[PaperLuigi]

I stopped replying because I didn't think CrossEyed and I would've been able to convince each other of anything. I'm perfectly fine with him being a Christian because he doesn't want to use coercion to get other people to adhere to his beliefs.

[CrossEyed7]

It's certainly possible that the New Testament and contemporary documents are faked, just as it's possible that any evidence in any field is faked, or that any supposed expert on any subject is lying or mistaken. I'd just challenge you to ask yourself if it's really the evidence that you have a problem with, or the conclusion that it would lead you to (which would be an appeal to consequences).

The proposition that one or more deities and some kind of afterlife exists is one that well over 90% of the world has believed in for thousands of years up to this day, including some of the brightest minds ever to exist (many of whom have put together proofs from logic and science that have proven difficult to dismantle), and one that, if true, is extremely important to you. If your worldview categorically and preemptively eliminates anything regarding that idea from consideration because it doesn't know what to do with it, that's rather dangerous, not to mention intellectually dishonest.

I won't force anyone into anything, and I won't keep the debate up if you don't want to. Like I said, I just want to get you thinking about it and examining your own beliefs. And it's been a real good discussion, by the way, guys.

[Luigison]

The proposition that one or more deities and some kind of afterlife exists is one that well over 90% of the world has believed in for thousands of years up to this day, including some of the brightest minds ever to exist (many of whom have put together proofs from logic and science that have proven difficult to dismantle), and one that, if true, is extremely important to you.

The fact that 90% of the population believe something does not make it true.  (Is the 90% from some data or did you guess at the percent.)  Regardless, that's an Argumentum ad Populum (Appeal to Numbers).  Such a high percentage of people believing something may say more to how we think than what is true, but I realise this may also be a poor argument.   

[Lizard Dude]

Actual science is based on repeatable experiments. You can fake some test but when others try to verify your results, the jig is up.

And sanity is not statistical.

[PaperLuigi]

I'd just challenge you to ask yourself if it's really the evidence that you have a problem with, or the conclusion that it would lead you to (which would be an appeal to consequences).

Nah, it's not the conclusion at all. An afterlife sounds pretty sweet but there just ain't enough evidence.

The proposition that one or more deities and some kind of afterlife exists is one that well over 90% of the world has believed in for thousands of years up to this day, including some of the brightest minds ever to exist

Well, a great many minds supported things like eugenics, fascism, and even genocide. It's a little more than dangerous to appeal to authority. Let's also not forget that majority rule doesn't work in mental institutions.

If your worldview categorically and preemptively eliminates anything regarding that idea from consideration because it doesn't know what to do with it, that's rather dangerous, not to mention intellectually dishonest.

I mean if you can prove it, hell yeah I'll accept it.

[CrossEyed7]

The fact that 90% of the population believe something does not make it true.  (Is the 90% from some data or did you guess at the percent.)  Regardless, that's an Argumentum ad Populum (Appeal to Numbers).  Such a high percentage of people believing something may say more to how we think than what is true, but I realise this may also be a poor argument.   

Granted, but I wasn't using it as proof, just a thought-provoker -- if one's rationale for not believing in Christianity is that science disproves it or some such (which, as I showed, is circular reasoning), then they are dismissing a belief that, historically, was almost universally held, and they ultimately have no real reason for doing so. Still, the 90% and the smart people thing were, if not actually fallacious, close enough that I should have worded it differently.

Actual science is based on repeatable experiments. You can fake some test but when others try to verify your results, the jig is up.

In most branches of science, yes. Archaeology and history are science too.

By the methods employed in archaeology and history and related fields, it is established fact that Jesus existed, and that people who would have known better and had nothing to gain believed that his tomb was empty (a claim that would have been easily and undeniably disproved if untrue). From the reliable historical evidence we have, the only theory that fits all the facts is a resurrection.

I put a line here because this part isn't really specifically responding to LD.

You can't respond to the argument "People don't come back from the dead, this evidence shows that Jesus came back from the dead, therefore, Jesus is God" with "People don't come back from the dead, therefore Jesus couldn't have come back from the dead, therefore there must be something wrong with the evidence even though I haven't found it yet but there's gotta be."

If you don't want to believe in anything supernatural, more power to you, but don't pretend that your choice not to believe in something is itself an argument against that thing.

I mean if you can prove it, hell yeah I'll accept it.

I can't prove it with lab experiments, but I'd definitely recommend looking into historical evidence, treating the resurrection of Jesus as any other supposed historical event, and the books of the New Testament as any other ancient texts (along with other contemporary documents, submitting them all to the same standard historical scrutiny).

[CoconutMikeNIke]

The thing with history is it's written by the winners. And historically speaking, Christians have been some of the pushiest of religious practicioners. Not always Inquisition levels, but fairly successful in making others follow it. So it's really easy to claim that it has to be the truest because a great number practice it.