Religious inconsistency question

[dphantom]

At no point did I say ALL. You can look yourself, you are at your computer it's easy to type in a search for stories that predate bible or something similar.

as cerpin likes to say this is a discussion. you made an assertion, you provide the definitive proof that an earlier story was copied by the writers of the Gospels

 

[sandorski]

He did.

How? Where? When?

 

[dphantom]

Why? It is demonstrably false. If "God" wants me to know its' Will, I need something reliable before I can be certain of it.

What is more reliable than Jesus, the only Son of God dying for our sins so that through Him we may find salvation? God does not need to prove His existence to a man. He is and always will be.

Yet, we find time and again He revealed Himself. All we have to do is open our eyes, our faith and we will see.

 

[Paul98]

as cerpin likes to say this is a discussion. you made an assertion, you provide the definitive proof that an earlier story was copied by the writers of the Gospels

https://www.google.com/#q=stories+that+predate+bible

heck you can just take a quick look at some of those links and you will see part of what I am talking about.

 

[dphantom]

How? Where? When?

Well one example is the crucifixion of His Son and resurrection 3 days later.

 

[sandorski]

What is more reliable than Jesus, the only Son of God dying for our sins so that through Him we may find salvation? God does not need to prove His existence to a man. He is and always will be.

Yet, we find time and again He revealed Himself. All we have to do is open our eyes, our faith and we will see.

You really are unaware of how ridiculous that sounds. My mind is boggled.

You are babbling.

 

[sandorski]

Well one example is the crucifixion of His Son and resurrection 3 days later.

What about it? Is there a reliable source for this?

 

[Pray To Jesus]

Why? It is demonstrably false. If "God" wants me to know its' Will, I need something reliable before I can be certain of it.

You really are unaware of how ridiculous that sounds. My mind is boggled.

You are babbling.

 

[sandorski]

You really are unaware of how ridiculous that sounds. My mind is boggled.

You are babbling.

I'm glad I could provide a Thought for you.

 

[Pray To Jesus]

I'm glad I could provide a Thought for you.

QQ more

 

[dphantom]

You really are unaware of how ridiculous that sounds. My mind is boggled.

You are babbling.

No I am not. I am quite sure of my faith and my reasoning ability. But I can say you are not discussing, but simply throwing veiled insults at those who have a different opinion than you. You do that well in P&N. I would appreciate it if you would abide by the spirit of this forum and provide your reasoned input into the debate.

 

[sandorski]

No I am not. I am quite sure of my faith and my reasoning ability. But I can say you are not discussing, but simply throwing veiled insults at those who have a different opinion than you. You do that well in P&N. I would appreciate it if you would abide by the spirit of this forum and provide your reasoned input into the debate.

Certainty is a meaningless position. Many have certainty in a variety of things, even things you are certain are false.

I said what I said because you said nothing of substance. I understand that you believe such things, hell, I used to believe the same things. However, they are words with no meaning, words that attempt the profound, but fall far short of it. Investigate any Religion in any period of time and though the names change, the same sentiments, with the same certainties, and the same attempts at the profound are made.

Faith accomplishes nothing. Reason, Critical Thought, and Evidence based understanding improves the lives of everyone and reveals the only things that can be honestly perceived as Truth.

You don't believe in a god as much as you believe in a book. A book that is Known to be flawed, that makes claims about things that are neither unique amongst ancient fables and myths. Yet here you are, certain that it is Truth when it is anything but. If there is a god or gods, you are no where nearer knowing about them than I or anyone else, because your Bible is merely an attempt by men of long ago to make sense of their existence.

 

[Retro Rob]

Faith accomplishes nothing. Reason, Critical Thought, and Evidence based understanding improves the lives of everyone and reveals the only things that can be honestly perceived as Truth.

You don't believe in a god as much as you believe in a book. A book that is Known to be flawed, that makes claims about things that are neither unique amongst ancient fables and myths. Yet here you are, certain that it is Truth when it is anything but. If there is a god or gods, you are no where nearer knowing about them than I or anyone else, because your Bible is merely an attempt by men of long ago to make sense of their existence.

It's a common deliberate and faith-based assumption that believers don't employ reasoning skills and investigate claims presented in the Bible, which I've done, and others have done.

Secondly, I wear black pants, which is common among men....so I must have borrowed or stolen someone else's style of dress.

That arguement is so intellectually weak that I am suprised you keep regurgitating it over and over again.

 

[Retro Rob]

I want to press you a bit harder on this point because I think it is important. It's a bit like the "chicken and egg" question. It's which came first: belief in the bible or belief in god.

You're not pressing me. The belief that a God exists came first, and with that ALONE, I didn't have any faith, and was easily lured out of reading the Bible.

This negates the point you're trying to make that blind faith is why I believe -- I've just shown you that blind faith isn't at all why I am a believer....without study, evidence, research, you have no foundation, no reason to believe.....and no faith.

I don't know why that is so hard for you to accept.

I made note of one of your previous posts that suggested it was much easier to believe miraculous accounts in the bible if a person already believed in a god that existed to perform them. This suggested to me that you thought that belief in god had to come before belief in the bible.

What I was saying was that if you believe in a Supernatural being, its not hard to believe he can do supernatural things.

While you didn't take issue with my conclusion, your last sentence in this post seems to imply that for you belief in the bible was followed by belief in god.

Which was it for you?

Accepting that God exists motivated my Bible study, is what I mean. You cannot believe in the Christian God anyway, apart from reading the Bible.

 

[Cerpin Taxt]

Unfortunate that you can't understand the reading material.

Ad hominem.

The problem of evil:

God exists

God is all good

God is all-powerful

Evil exists

It seems as if there is a logical contradiction built in. Affirm three and deny the fourth.

However, Christianity denies that they are logically contradictory. This can be done if and only if there some ambiguous terms in the common usage.

Are you sure that's how you wanted to phrase the last part?

Therefore let begin with definition, real definitions.

Evil:

Evil is not a thing, being, entity, or substance. Where is evil? It is in the will, the choice, which put a wrong order into the physical world of things and acts.

I don't accept this definition.

Evil is the nonconformity between our will and God's will. God did not make evil, we did. The origin of evil is human free will.

Question begging. Also, only things have origins. You've said that evil is not a thing. Contradiction.

Why didn't God create a world without evil? Because that would have been a world without humans, a world without hate but also without love. Love, the true love that God wants from us, can proceed only from free will.

Unsupported assertion.

Is a world with free human being but no sin possible? Yes, it is.

That is the culmination of my argument.

God created such a world in the beginning. But a world in which no sin is freely possible must necessarily be a world in which sin is possible.

Non-sequitur.

This is because genuine human freedom must include the possibility of sin within its own meaning. Real free choice must include the possibility of freely choosing between good or evil.

You're arguing by definition, but definitions are not necessarily true. The culmination of my argument is that evil is not necessary for free will. Re-defining free will does not render my conclusions false.

Even an omnipotent God cannot forcibly prevent sin without removing our freedom.

Why not? It only conflicts with your arbitrary definition.

Thus we see that God allows evil to preserve human free will, which is inherent to our nature as human.

Not even close.

 

[Cerpin Taxt]

Yes.

Ok, then what is it?

But I think this is because you are taking the argument in an absurdly strong form.

I also see problems in the weak form; but there is no defense of free will as defined in terms of absolute autonomy over nature.

I don't understand. Where was it so defined?

Now this is a question:

If you know everything across space, then don't you know everything across time? And if you know both then don't you know how interacting with space will change space over time? And if that's the case, then is there any way that a being with this entire set of knowledge does not predestine all of existence either by not doing anything, or by the various manipulations it brings about?

Free will is incommensurable with an omniscient creature of any kind; unless that creature 1) comes on the seen AFTER all of time plays out, or 2) that creature does not have the power to change salient parts of the system.

IMHO, God balances the universe in a way that best suits what I'm going to call 'ontic good' that is, a reality to good that is beyond the feelings and fiction of man. Further, I have no idea what all God balances or why. I also have no reason to believe that my concept of 'good' is the 'ultimate good' in the universe; though it does seem likely that our feeling of good is oriented toward (though not likely at all to be pointed entirely at) what is universally 'good'.

Interestingly, just because reality, good, evil and the like is a function of human storytelling doesn't change that there may-well be a greater ontic-good; and just because we don't know what that ontic good is doesn't mean that we can't tell stories that are aligned with that good: particularly given the predestination that omniscience on the part of god requires.

That's fine, but then a person has no basis upon which to assert reliably that good or evil exists at all. It would be like free will in a universe with a so-defined omniscient being -- just an illusion.

 

[sandorski]

It's a common deliberate and faith-based assumption that believers don't employ reasoning skills and investigate claims presented in the Bible, which I've done, and others have done.

Secondly, I wear black pants, which is common among men....so I must have borrowed or stolen someone else's style of dress.

That arguement is so intellectually weak that I am suprised you keep regurgitating it over and over again.

1)Their reasoning is one with huge concessions and boundaries. They refuse to employ their thoughts in a Honest and Critical fashion.

2) You reject the same things, just not where your Religion is concerned.

 

[Paul98]

as cerpin likes to say this is a discussion. you made an assertion, you provide the definitive proof that an earlier story was copied by the writers of the Gospels

Did you take a look? If I will ask again how can you say it's the word of god if so much is taken from previous writings?

Edit: Obviously since they are on the internet some of them will be bad or incorrect, but there are a lot of great examples out there.

 

[Retro Rob]

Good. Then I don't have to repeat any of them.

Perhaps I should compare the specificity of the biblical prophecies to those made by Nostradamus. His believers also scoff at critics who suggest that his are too vague.

It's also a bit amusing to listen to biblical scholars/preachers over the years as they have expounded on how events in their times were aligned with prophecies for the book of revelations and exactly who the antichrist was going to be.

Most of the criticism of prophecies center around trying to prove, not that they didn't happen, but that the were written during/after the event.

This implies one very important thing people overlook that they'd have to prove:

(1) The Bible is indeed an elaborate conspiracy. Do you know how much of an impossiblity that is over that apparently long period of time? According to some of my research, some Bible writers weren't even born when certain prophecies were uttered, and to claim that they deliberately carried on that conspiracy (sometimes centuries after the inital writing was completed) is naive and silly.

You'd end up having to prove, while begging the question: Why would they do something like that? What were their motives? Did they actually believe this would carry on centuries down the line to control people?

If Jesus did exist and did die, then why would a man literally give his life to carry on a falsehood?

The questions you'd have to address would be overwhelmingly tough, if not impossible, to answer.

 

[Retro Rob]

1)Their reasoning is one with huge concessions and boundaries. They refuse to employ their thoughts in a Honest and Critical fashion.

Like what, for example?

You reject the same things, just not where your Religion is concerned.

Me rejecting something doesn't mean they weren't true. You keep using the argument that since something sounds similar to something that predates it, it must be borrowed from the intial story.

If that's the case, laws against murder and theft here in the US have been stolen from the 10 commandments. ....and that we're a nation built on Judaic principles.

 

[Cerpin Taxt]

If Jesus did exist and did die, then why would a man literally give his life to carry on a falsehood?

Have you shown that the man knew it to be a falsehood?

 

[Retro Rob]

Have you shown that the man knew it to be a falsehood?

*If* the Bible is indeed an amaglam of forged prophecies, then Jesus was a co-conspirator.

 

[Cerpin Taxt]

*If* the Bible is indeed an amaglam of forged prophecies, then Jesus was a co-conspirator.

This is evident.... how?

Also, is "almalgam of forged prophecies" the one and only alternative to "god-breathed"?

 

[smackababy]

This is evident.... how?

Also, is "almalgam of forged prophecies" the one and only alternative to "god-breathed"?

Of course! The Bible wasn't even written while Jesus was alive, and as far as I can tell, none of the writers were even eye witnesses to anything in the Bible that Jesus did.

 

[PowerEngineer]

You're not pressing me. The belief that a God exists came first, and with that ALONE, I didn't have any faith, and was easily lured out of reading the Bible.

This negates the point you're trying to make that blind faith is why I believe -- I've just shown you that blind faith isn't at all why I am a believer....without study, evidence, research, you have no foundation, no reason to believe.....and no faith.

I don't know why that is so hard for you to accept.



What I was saying was that if you believe in a Supernatural being, its not hard to believe he can do supernatural things.



Accepting that God exists motivated my Bible study, is what I mean. You cannot believe in the Christian God anyway, apart from reading the Bible.

It's certainly easier to understand how you can accept the accounts in the bible as factual now that it's clear that you (and perhaps dphantom) had already previously accepted that some sort of god exists.

If I'm understanding you right, this initial acceptance of god's existence doesn't directly translate to any particular faith. It was your study of the bible that convinced you that its description of a Christian god is correct. And at that point your belief in a god as described in the bible became your faith.

One of the difficulties we always run into when discussing the accuracy of the bible is that you and other believers leave us with the impression that reading/studying the bible ought to give us reason to believe in the Christian god without mentioning the need for a prerequisite belief that some sort of god exists.

In other words, it's hard to envision us taking your second "leap of faith" before we have taken your first (blind) one.