The Fate Of Jesus Followers

Soul Fuel writes:Martyrs are people who die for their faith, and the disciples not only died, but check out these details:Stephen was killed with stones.James was beheaded.Philip was crucified.Matthew was slain with a sword.James the brother of Jesus, had his brains dashed out with a club.Matthias was killed with stones and then beheaded.Andrew was crucified.Mark was dragged to pieces by the people of Alexandria.Peter was crucified upside down.Paul was beheaded with a sword.Jude was crucified.Bartholomew was beaten then crucified.Thomas was killed with a spear.Luke was hanged.Simon was crucified.John was literally boiled in oil, but lived and was exiled and died on the island of Patmos.For some reason, the men who were afraid to go out in public for Christ ended up facing cruel and painful fates with the boldness and courage of a lion. What reason? Well, according to them, they gave their lives for the fact that Jesus really came back from the dead. Let's face it folks, most people don't sacrifice their lives at all, and no one lets himself/herself be killed for something he/she knows to be a lie. But the disciples knew that life without the resurrection is no life at all, so they all gave their lives to the fact that the Savior came back from the dead.And that doesn't sound very mixed up to me!

...but their deaths were caused by cultural misunderstandings, not by what they stood for.

Schraff: writes:Why?

NIV writes:1 John 1:1-4-- That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked at and our hands have touched-this we proclaim concerning the Word of life. The life appeared; we have seen it and testify to it, and we proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and has appeared to us. We proclaim to you what we have seen and heard, so that you also may have fellowship with us. And our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son, Jesus Christ. We write this to make our joy complete.

RZIM writes:Methodism Vs. Particularism
In order to weed out false beliefs and gain genuine knowledge, Descartes required that all candidates for genuine knowledge must arise from a method. Correct method (for Descartes, the geometric method) is the key to finding true knowledge. This approach is called methodism. Methodism, in this discussion, isn’t the religious denomination. Rather, it’s an epistemic theory that stipulates this: we know any particular true belief if and only if we arrive at or produce that knowledge by following a correct method.Here’s a specific example. Suppose someone asks me whether I know the statement, “My coffee cup is blue.” (Let’s call this statement p.) Methodism requires that before I can truly know p, I must follow a proper method by which I know p. So to know any particular truth, methodism says I must follow a proper epistemic method.
Although Descartes’ methodism may seem like a promising way to ground knowledge, it’s fundamentally flawed. Methodism requires that before I can know anything, I must have prior knowledge of the method by which to know that thing. But then how do I know that method itself? My coming to know what method to use would itself require following a prior method.This quickly leads to what’s called an infinite regress. Every time I try to answer the problem, the problem keeps appearing. I start moving back a chain of questions. But every time I move back to a prior link in the chain, the problem repeatedly emerges. It’s like asking, “What explains Michael’s existence?” If I say, “His parents,” I just raise again the very question I hoped to answer: “What explains his parents’ existence?” “Their parents?” Ultimately, given the methodist approach, there’s no way to end this infinite series of questions. In the end, if methodism were true, I’d have to know something (the right method) before I could know anything. There’s no way out of this double bind.But there’s another approach to finding the legitimating fact that separates true belief from knowledge. It’s called particularism. Particularism starts by assuming that it’s right to know particular things directly (that is, without following a method) since we find that we already know many particular things. In certain conditions, we directly and properly form true beliefs. And we form these beliefs through a variety of means. We see a tree or hear a train. We compute things. We infer conclusions from things we see or hear. We learn from experts. Each of these processes generally leads to true beliefs. We shouldn’t be required to step back and first prove that, say, our vision is perfect, before we rightly know something we see. That would lead us back to the methodist trap (since we’d have to prove the method that we use to prove our vision is perfect).So it’s better just to assume that our properly formed beliefs are innocent until proven guilty. With these particular beliefs in hand as examples, we can begin to understand what knowledge is”and gradually to increase the number of things we know.

Phat writes:What I can't and won't accept and what many of
critics assert is that an unproven story with no source is as good as a myth.

Schraff writes:Well, then, how are we to decide what is true among the thousands of stories out there which are not supported by any evidence? We can't make any conclusion at all.

Schraff writes:So, the truth of these stories is something you can't demonstrate to anybody else. You think they are probably true because you believe in God, but not because any evidence leads you to the conclusion that they are probably true.

RZID writes:If I were completely skeptical, I’d disbelieve everything. That would safeguard me against every falsehood. But the problem is that I’d miss out on all truth whatsoever”and some truth might be very important. So that wouldn’t help me much either.
No one urges us to believe absolutely everything. But some very important and influential thinkers do advise us to believe nothing (or very little)”or at least they recommend that we believe only when an idea is incredibly well supported.

Schraff writes:Well, there are lots of things that lots of people believe solely due to religious belief.

Schraff writes:If the only place your experiences take place is in that "inner" place, and you cannot demonstrate them to anybody else, then they are, by definition, non-testable.Just because you are satisfied with your "inner experiences" doesn't mean anybody else needs to accept or even respect them, phat. .....Do you respect and consider "real" all the other religions of the world in addition to your own?

Schraff writes:You can believe what you want, but there's very little reason to think that the Apostles were all martyred. We just don't know.

Schraff writes:Well, then, how are we to decide what is true among the thousands of stories out there which are not supported by any evidence?

Schraff writes:So, the truth of these stories is something you can't demonstrate to anybody else. You think they are probably true because you believe in God, but not because any evidence leads you to the conclusion that they are probably true.

Schraff writes:If the only place your experiences take place is in that "inner" place, and you cannot demonstrate them to anybody else, then they are, by definition, non-testable.
Just because you are satisfied with your "inner experiences" doesn't mean anybody else needs to accept or even respect them, phat.

Schraff writes:We just don't know.

PaulK writes:What you are saying is that your opinion should be given special weight because of something you have "felt and experienced". You're wrong. The only area where that gives you any special credibility is in the content of your "feelings and experiences" and NOTHING more.Your demand for a completely undeserved respect - a respect that NO human deserves - is worthy only of contempt.