Why Faith is Important

There is a mismatch between your definition of faith and how religious people use the word. Most religious people have close to no evidence for their religious beliefs and when asked what evidence they have a good number will admit they have none. Others will insist they have evidence but when asked to provide it will present the silliest and easiest to refute arguments and it is quite clear that they are just looking for reasons to believe even if those reasons don't have a lot of sense.

 

Exactly. Faith is earned trust.

 

I am one of those "religious people". The mismatch is not between me and the religious community, it is on your side. You equate religious belief with "blind faith", and you do it because of a personal bias against religion. You believe all religious belief is blind faith, a circular argument.

Examine this evidence. The Apostles ran from Jesus during the crucifiction, Peter denied Jesus in Jesus' presence, and they all cowered in fear after the crucifiction. Then overnight they did a complete about face, they openly proclaimed the Gospel and refused to deny it even upon being put to death. Why? Something astounding happened, and it is explained in the Bible.

You will undoubtedly simply claim the Bible is totally false and silly. But to honestly claim the Bible is false requires investigation into its origins and its story, that takes years of dedicated work, and I doubt you have made that investment. Easier to just dismiss it out of hand. That's not refuting the argument.

Or consider a person who prays and God answers the prayer, the person turns their life around and becomes an example to everyone around her. She believes it was God, but no doubt you - who was not there, was not a witness to the event, and did not even talk to her - will claim she is just looking for an excuse, is weak willed and needed a crutch. That's not refuting the argument.

 

And the atheist regimes tend to have a higher body count.

 

Really? So Stalin, Mao and Polpot never existed?

 

Thats simply because they were in the modern age. Imagine if there were nukes in the middle ages, those religious nations would destroy the planet.

 

This is an example of weak evidence that is so easily refuted. How do you even know the apostles ran during the crucifixion or that there was even a crucifixion? The apostles may have done an about face because the danger to them wasn't as great after Jesus was on trial. Also they had thousands of supporters and were already famous its pretty hard to just disappear and maybe they really believed in Jesus or just wanted fame. You have no evidence any of this is supernatural as you are just trying to prove the gospels with the contents of the gospels which is circular reasoning or just assuming that people's motivations for doing things had to be supernatural.

As for people who turn their lives around, people of all religions have turned their lives around but that doesn't make all religions true and in fact that is impossible. People can turn their lives around by following a good moral code whether or not the mythology involved is actually true.

In reality you have blind faith but you don't want to admit it to yourself. I know because your arguments are so easily refutable and the only way you don't see this is because of extreme bias. There is this type of faith where you decide to believe something and try to find every rationalization to believe in it without fairly and objectively looking at both sides and actually being critical.

 

Thanks for proving my point. Rather than address the evidence directly, you dismiss it out of hand - exactly as I wrote you would do.

But to the specifics -

The apostles actions just before, during, and after the crucifiction are detailed in the New Testament. You did not read those accounts, or you would not have made the above statement. So the first step in evaluating the claim is to understand the claim and the proposed evidence - which you have completely failed to do.

After understanding the claim and its basis, step 2 is to check the validity of the basis for the claim - in this case its the Bible. Is the Biblical account true or false, is it believable, is it consistent with society at that time, who were the authors, etc. Eliminate the Bible, and you eliminate the claim. You did not even attempt this step.

 

Look the basic principal is that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. If I told you that I saw a cat today you would probably just believe me. If I told you that I saw a UFO then you would require proof. We usually trust historical accounts if they are talking about everyday stuff like who was king but if the account claims that Greek God got involved in a conflict or something like that those things are not assumed true simply because someone in the past wrote them down.

So just because people in the past claims the supernatural happened doesn't mean its true. In fact any account whose focus is to try to claim that their leader is God is going to be suspect since there is a good chance of deception. You can't show the supernatural claims of the New Testament is true because you read other accounts in the exact same book about the crucifixion and supernatural claims involved in it. That is circular reasoning and a book can't show itself to be true without contemporary outside evidence. You believe in the New Testament because of other stuff in the New Testament so your so-called evidence is really just blind faith.

In fact the evidence is so lacking that many even doubt Jesus even existed because the accounts of his existence are from after his death and could have just come from claims of early Christians. Now it may be that Jesus existed but if the evidence for Jesus's existence is so lacking how do you know any of the specific supernatural and non-supernatural claims in the book is true? If Jesus was such a big deal who didn't some historians at the time write about him, at least negatively? Also it is claimed that when Jesus died that it was night for three days and the dead rose from their graves. Why don't we have any accounts from Israel, Rome, or China?

 

I agree in principle. But our knowledge of history is mainly due to "someone in the past wrote them down". Those writings are augmented with archaeological evidence. But there are still gaps, and room for a lot of interpretation.

People used to think Troy was a myth and the Iliad and Odyssey were pure fable, until Troy was found. Now we know that while the Iliad and Odyssey are stories, they contain a lot of fact.

The Bible is not a single book from a single author, it is the compilation of selected books from multiple authors. Additional documents which were not included in the formal Christian canon exist.

What you are doing is assuming the claims of those documents are false, and then discarding all the writings that contradict your assumption.

The Roman general and historian Josephus documents Jesus in his history Antiquities.

There are eye witness accounts of Jesus, you simply choose to ignore them. You dismiss the accounts in the New Testament because you don't believe in Jesus, then you claim Jesus did not exist because there is no evidence. How convenient - and circular.

 

Yes, but that was after we found evidence for it. Before this evidence it wouldn't have been obvious to believe in this city. Also, even though we believe in Troy the exact details of the battle are questionable and nobody just believes the supernatural claims.

We actually don't know who the real authors were. We have names attached but it was common in the time to put down someone else's names when writing a book. I am not assuming they are false I am just saying that supernatural claims can't be assumed true and it is most reasonable to not believe until this evidence is provided.

That was well after Jesus's death. It could have come from claims of Christians not direct knowledge of Jesus.

Again, you are trying to prove the gospels with claims in the gospels about eye witnesses. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence so simply being written down by ancient people doesn't make their supernatural claims true. I don't assume Jesus doesn't exist I am just making the point that outside sources referring him at the time is lacking which is suspicious and I don't know why you then assume everything in the book is true even the supernatural when even the existence of Jesus can be doubted. There is simply no objective or counter-sources we can see to get the other side of the story, we are only getting a biased version of the story from early Christians.

Heck, the Mormons have a prophet in the 1800s who by many accounts was involved in many miracles and he and many of his followers were greatly persecuted. That doesn't make his claims true. Just because a religious groups writes a bunch of supernatural claims and got persecuted doesn't make it all true.

 

The facts never lie....but liars put forth facts all the time!

 

The Mormons have been refuted by many many contemporaries. As well, they depart from what they call their foundational faith.

 

Wrong. There was reason to believe Troy existed - that's why people spent years of their lives searching for it.

The point is that the Iliad and Odyssey were originally dismissed as fable, including dismissing Troy as fable, when in reality there was a lot of fact in the stories. In other words, lack of evidence does not mean the claims are false.

Wrong again. Many of the New Testament letters have known authors. For example, Pauls letters: Pauls authorship of 7 is undisputed by secular and religious scholars, another 6 are almost certainly authored by Paul but there is some small room for questions, and there is legitimate questions on the remaining 4.

And most of the New Testament are letters from an individual to another individual or a specific group, they identify both the writer and reader.

It was not common to use another persons name.

Josephus was contemporary to Jesus, living from 37 to 100 AD, and writing Antiquities about 75 AD. Many eye witnesses to Jesus were alive in his life.

Do you discard all writing from authors who were not eye witnesses to the events? Better burn 99% of all the history books. Or is it just when it comes to Jesus that you have such a stringent threshold?

I agree that more evidence outside the Bible is required. But I am certain that no matter how many documents from eye witnesses you are provided, you will dismiss them.

I agree. And I never made such a claim.

 

Are you referring to America's civil war?

 

There was a civil war in the last century? Who knew?

 

Ah, splitting hairs to prove Christian morality are we?

 

No, the reason people kept searching is because those stories were a famous part of western literature so searching for Troy was kind of like searching for Atlantis, a city of legend whose existence was uncertain. Before the evidence appeared there was a lot of good reasons to be skeptical because if all you had was a story by a Greek poet involving Gods hundreds of years later how could you be so sure such a city actually existed? Do you believe in Atlantis and El Dorado simply because legend says they exist? The correct approach is to be skeptical of these legends until we see evidence and that was properly done with Troy.

Also, while the existence of Troy has been confirmed, the supernatural details of the story are certainly not and there is certainly a lot of embellishment, myth-making, and legends surrounding the true story. The same can be true for the new testament. Even if Jesus is a real guy maybe legend has also embellished him too and like with Troy we should only accept the verified non-supernatural parts.

Uhhh, Paul was well after the death of Jesus and not contemporary. Look the gospels may really have been written by Jesus' disciples, but then maybe not, we don't know for sure. If we don't even know basic facts like the authorship and the existence of Jesus how can you be sure of the supernatural claims?

Exactly, decades after Jesus died and with shorter life-span, a time or superstition, illiteracy, and poor communications its like 200 years ago in modern terms. They probably mentioned Jesus because they heard stories about him from Christians several decades after he supposedly died. There are no contemporary sources, no record anywhere of a time when it was night for three days and the dead people in the whole word rose from their graves.

Well, the Mormon church claims eye witnesses to their miracles and there are numerous eye witnesses to so-called psychic, UFO, and Bigfoot encounters. Look, 99.9% of all religious claims have to be absolutely false because there are thousands of religions now and in the past that contradict each other and they all can't be true. Given this level of error and no physical evidence whatsoever of anything supernatural why would I assume that because a document claimed eyewittnesses to an event that it is true. If I used this argument for any other religion or myth besides Christianity you would laugh at my, but for Christianity you totally accept it. This is because you have blind faith in Christianity and are just trying to find "reasons" which really assume Christianity is true to prove itself from itself. If I found a website with user stories and we knew that 99.9% of them were false and I picked out a few ones written by several friends that claimed eye witnesses would that be proof enough for you? Of course not!

 

Exactly, they were persecuted, there are many claimed eye witnesses to these supernatural events, yet we know from independent evidence that it was all a fraud. This shows that being persecuted and claiming eye witnesses to the supernatural isn't necessarily true. Thankfully we have good records of the time that refuted the Mormons but in the case of Jesus we have basically no opposition records even though we know there was though opposition so you can't fact check the Jesus cult as well as the Mormon cult.

 

Liars don't put out facts, they put out lies.

 

Yeah the Roman opposition was feeding them to lions...but they overcame by the word of their testimony.

 

But human nature often believes the lies as facts to itch their tickling ears. Case in point...man made global warming.

 

Don't mix issues. You claimed the authors of the various New Testament documents were unknown, that is false. I used Paul as an example.

Wrong, very wrong.

1) The reason the average life span was shorter than today is because of high infant mortality. The average life span of all people who lived to age 12 was 70-80, just like today. When the entire population is averaged, there are essentially a lot of zeroes added due to deaths of babies and a lot of small numbers due to deaths of infants.

2) people were not illiterate. In fact, Jews were known as a very literate people and were recruited widely to serve in royal courts as translators, scribes, and bureaucrats. Every Jew both male and female was expected to be able to read and discuss the entire Torah by age 13, this was demonstrated at the bar-mitzvah (or bat-mitzvah for girls).

3) people had good memories, much better than today. Scrolls (books) were expensive and not found in every home. While there was typically a written Torah in the town synagogue, most people memorized entire books of the Torah, even the entire Torah. And its not true that that type of oral tradition is unreliable - when every person in town has Genesis memorized, and when there is a disagreement they can check the written Torah in the synagogue (which was in turn checked with other written Torah), accuracy is very high.

4) communications took time, messages moved at the speed of walking (about 30 miles a day), or the speed of a ship. That does not mean communications were unreliable or inaccurate.

5) Jesus died around 33 AD. The Apostles died at various times, Paul died around 68 AD, John was apparently the last and died around 100 AD. The 12 Apostles were not the only disciples who followed Jesus during his life, there were others but the number is unknown. There were 10's of 1,000's of eye witnesses to Jesus. Many of them lived through the 1st century AD.

You should spend some time studying ancient history and society. People today think before the iphone everyone was a moron and lived in caves.

 

No, those are not real facts they are fake facts. The challenge is to distinguish real facts from fake ones.

 

No, they took over when Constantine became emperor. Christianity used to be decentralized but he became emperor he made a state-run Christian church that drove out all disagreeing Christians and people of other faiths like Roman polytheists.