Choosing a faith

Uhh ... we already know why disease, natural disasters and evil happens.Nature. Physics. Chemistry. Biology. Lots more. Along with all the good like love and puppies, these are why all the bad happens, too. Well ain't he the lucky one.

Science has an answer - we know why earthquakes happen, why tsunamis happen, what cancer is, why we get tooth ache and why lions eat lambs. We know!Can't help you with your problem though - why god set it up this way and doesn't seem to care. It's an unanswerable problem if you also think that god loves his creation. But best not to worry about that eh? Just get on your knees and worship his magnificence. Yup. God - an immortal, out of time and space - had himself killed on earth, then resurrected himself in order to redeem the sins that he set his creation up to make in the full knowledge that we'd make them, them tells an obscure dessert tribe 2,000 years ago all about it?What century are you living in? How can that make any kind of sense to any post-reformation human with a brain?Beats me.

Richard Bauckham wrote a a long book with a great deal of detailed evidence as to the authors of the Gospels. Jesus and the Eye Witnesses I am not about to try and reduce it to a post on this forum. You have no idea of what would have happened if Paul had never existed. Christianity was being spread in India while Paul was still alive. Paul's letters were preserved and Luke recorded Paul's ministry. He wasn't alone in what he was doing. Early spread of ChristianityFirstly the most simple one is Acts 9:19. After starting his ministry in Jerusalem and Damascus he travelled into Gentile areas but returned to Jerusalem twice more.Paul's travelsYou keeps saying that and it is dead wrong. If for example science can find that certain chemical reactions could bring about an abiogenesis event it still does not answer the question of whether such an event happened by chance or was caused. To say that science hasn't discovered the answer yet but will in the future is simply a "science of the gaps" argument. Why do you keep asking that? I don't make that claim and I agree that tsunamis and cancer are an argument against a loving God. The furthest I've gone is to human evil with the thought that we can't choose good without the ability to choose evil.
​

He had no evidence, because there is no evidence. He had assertions a suppositions. Those are vastly different things.

I'm going to regret this. The labels that apply best are gullible and confused. Conservatives are also in favor of social security. Liberals and conservatives agree about private property rights. Your belief that liberals are socialists stems from listening to too many right wing conspiracists. You haven't thought this through. There can be no freedom without equality. When one is told, "We don't want your kind around here," they're not free to live wherever they want and therefore are not equal. That's the state of things at present. I'm not sure if this is nonsense or a bundle of intolerance and bigotry.--Percy

You don't know that. We just know what he wrote and he doesn't tell us the source of his information. It's highly unlikely there is any archaeological evidence but there very well could have been contemporary accounts. The NT is evidence. The work of the other 1st and 2nd century is evidence. Your argument is simply that there is not enough evidence to convince you. I agree the evidence can't be proven conclusively and we are simply going to disagree.

There isno evidence. If there is, present it.

Everyone approaches this with a pre-determined bias including you and me. However when I became a Christian in my 30's I found that there was sufficient evidence, (mostly philosophical from CS Lewis), that convinced me to at least start going to church. Over the years I find the Gospel narratives more and more compelling. I'm not satisfied to believe everything I hear when I go to church. I simply find the study of theology fascinating. That is just wrong. Well, I like to joke that the only person who has their theology 100% right is me. Mind you a major problem with that is that I very often find myself disagreeing with my former views.Yes, I believe that there is an objective truth but I that nobody is going to know what it is, at least in this life time. It might be Christian belief, Islamic belief or even a strict materialistic belief. In general every religion has its own narrative. I don't see God only reaching out to the early Jewish nation. In general they all are about getting a greater understanding of of the nature of God, by whatever name they follow Him, and what that should mean to our lives. Many theists, and probably most of them, don't believe in the resurrection but I'm pretty sure that there isn't one atheists who does.Every argument that I've heard from people like Crossan boils down to the point that it didn't happen because we know that it can't. As a theist I can accept the possibility of the truth of the resurrection representing reality or I can reject it.​

Bauckham doesn't have evidence. He has Biblical apologetics. That's why you can't explain it here as if it were evidence, because it wouldn't make sense to anyone but a believer like yourself. Of course not, and neither do you, but of what relevance is that? We're discussing the evidence for what actually happened back then. The evidence that exists tells us that Paul founded Christian churches, because we have letters Paul wrote about his efforts. We have nothing written by Jesus. The gospels were written well after Paul's letters, which are silent concerning almost everything the gospels tell us about Jesus.But it's even worse than that, because we can't even be certain that Paul wrote his supposed letters. Throughout most of Christian history it was believed that Paul penned thirteen letters, but modern scholarship thinks it possible Paul only wrote as few as seven of them. Terms like "pseudepigraphic" are often applied to those letters Paul didn't write, but let us speak plainly. They're fakes. The Bible contains fake letters. What conclusions should be drawn about the reliability of the other Pauline letters and of the Bible in general?And Peter didn't write 1 Peter or 2 Peter. And of course, as has been pointed numerous times now, the Matthew, Mark, Luke and John gospels are all anonymously authored. No one knows who wrote those, either. Concerning India, that Wikipedia section begins, "According to Indian Christian traditional legends..."? Do you even know what "evidence" means? What's next, will you be telling us your dreams? Yeah, which letters did Paul actually write again? Who wrote Luke? It says disciples, not apostles. In Acts 9:10 Ananias is one of the disciples' leaders in Damascus, and God instructs him to listen to Paul, his "chosen instrument." Paul was not consulting with the apostles in Judea. He was instructing the disciples in Damascus. Damascus wasn't in Judea anyway. You not only have no evidence, you don't even know what you're talking about. It's an accurate description of the continual retreat of religious claims in the face of expanding scientific knowledge. You're coming across as anti-science, almost creationistic.The only one saying about abiogenesis that "science hasn't discovered the answer yet but will in the future" is you. The history of science is one of continually advancing knowledge, but you're the only one misinterpreting this as a claim of inevitability of the expansion of knowledge in abiogenesis. We may never know.About "by chance or was caused," chemistry (which is what life is) is a stochastic process. It's probabilistic. But you *did* make precisely that claim. I can dig out the post where you made the claim if you like. If you've since given up that claim then I never saw it, but what you say next does make it seem like you're giving it up: And if that's the way you're thinking about it now then any qualities of existence favoring a loving God are canceled out by all the qualities favoring an evil God. Your argument for a loving God has evaporated.--Percy

Yes Daniel is talking about the reconstruction of the Temple after God intervenes. The Temple was believed to be the place where Yahweh dwelled. Jesus is saying that the rebellion will lead to the destruction of the Temple but God was rebuilding the Temple in Himself and in the hearts of those who serve His message.. It is about His Temple message, His Kingdom message and His message of non-violent revolution. I agree that isn't the way Daniel would have understood it but Jesus is simply refining the message. I agree that isn't what Daniel had in mind. The reference to Daniel is simply about His prediction of the destruction of the Temple as well as the replacement of the Temple through Him. They simply feed into His Kingdom message. The destruction is referred to in Daniel 9:17-18. Yes Daniel is looking for the rebuilding of the Temple but Jesus is saying Yahweh is rebuilding the Temple, but not as a building, but through Himself. ​ Yes Daniel in this passage is talking about the life to come but he doesn't use the term "end of the age". The term "end of the age" is probably more clearly understood as the "end of an era".
​

quote:

---

Yes Daniel is talking about the reconstruction of the Temple after God intervenes.

---

Reconsecration, not reconstruction.

quote:

---

. The Temple was believed to be the place where Yahweh dwelled. Jesus is saying that the rebellion will lead to the destruction of the Temple but God was rebuilding the Temple in Himself and in the hearts of those who serve His message..

---

This is not present in the text at all. Thee fact that your opinions contradict mine is not a reason to think that mine are incorrect.

quote:

---

I agree that isn't what Daniel had in mind. The reference to Daniel is simply about His prediction of the destruction of the Temple as well as the replacement of the Temple through Him. They simply feed into His Kingdom message.

---

Daniel does NOT predict the destruction of the Temple. You can’t interpret allusions to scripture by deciding what you want them to mean, without regard to what the scripture actually says,

quote:

---

The destruction is referred to in Daniel 9:17-18. Yes Daniel is looking for the rebuilding of the Temple but Jesus is saying Yahweh is rebuilding the Temple, but not as a building, but through Himself.

---

That is part of the situation in the supposed time of Daniel. It is not the part alluded to by Jesus. Don’t make the mistake Buzsaw did of assuming that I will not check your references. I am not so easily deceived.

quote:

---

Yes Daniel in this passage is talking about the life to come but he doesn't use the term "end of the age". The term "end of the age" is probably more clearly understood as the "end of an era".

---

Nevertheless it is a part of the “end of an age” - as you put it - that Daniel predicted. Your attempt to write it off as just the end of a historical era is obviously incorrect.

I'm not an atheist, but my spiritual beliefs are as far from Christianity and all other organized religions as can be, so from a traditional religious perspective I'm an atheist. I find never thinking about religion to be rather freeing.But you're right, theists can't even imagine non-believing. They think atheists know they're wrong and that they live in constant fear of God and religion. The reality is that they fear being trampled by a wild herd of stampeding zebras much more than being struck down by God.That doesn't mean I don't have a gripe with religion, though much less these days than before about fifteen years ago when Duane Gish and ICR and the Discovery Institute and William Dembski and Kent Hovind and Michael Behe were all active. The only guy really active out there now is Ken Ham, and even though his Ark Park and Answers in Genesis are still alive and kicking, they don't seem to have attracted much of a creationist following. Make a YouTube video where you sound like a combination carnival barker/used car salesman and he'll listen to you.--Percy

Why are you providing this reference as if it were rebuttal. Instead of rebutting Tangle it pretty much reinforces what he just said:

quote:

---

On the other hand, mythologists and a minority of biblical scholars argue that Jesus never existed as a historical figure, but was a purely symbolic or mythical figure syncretized from various non-Abrahamic deities and heroes.
  —New World Encyclopaedia

---

The authors of the article are not provided, but who do you think writes articles on the historicity of Jesus for encyclopaedias? Believing Christians who happen to be Biblical scholars, right? They are people who already believe Jesus was historically real because otherwise they wouldn't be Christians.The bias of the article toward Biblical scholars as opposed to historians becomes even more pronounced at the end:

quote:

---

Nevertheless, non-historicity is still regarded as effectively refuted by almost all Biblical scholars and historians.[67][68][69][70]
  —New World Encyclopaedia

---

Those four references are to F.F. Bruce, William R. Herzog, II, J.E. Komoszewski, M.J. Sawyer and Walter P. Weaver, all Bible believing Christian scholars and not a historian in the bunch.--Percy

There was strong support for a militant revolution with that culture. Who else would they be referring to? There is no need to specify the Romans. And again, it was a prediction. Certainly there would be many who would have been alive in 33AD who would also have been alive in 70AD. But so what. If His prediction was out by a few years what does it matter.? Again it's a prediction, and actually it is amazing how quickly it did get spread to a huge part of the known world. I'm not a fundamentalist that insists on an inerrant reading of the Bible. It is a series of books written by different individuals and in different times. Of course I am working at explaining my beliefs but that doesn't make it apologetics. I respond to what I'm asked, and in many cases there is no historical record and when there is you reject it anyway as not having sufficient secondary support. You mean like everybody else here.

There was strong support for a militant revolution with that culture. Who else would they be referring to? There is no need to specify the Romans. And again, it was a prediction. Certainly there would be many who would have been alive in 33AD who would also have been alive in 70AD. But so what. If His prediction was out by a few years what does it matter.? Again it's a prediction, and actually it is amazing how quickly it did get spread to a huge part of the known world. I'm not a fundamentalist that insists on an inerrant reading of the Bible. It is a series of books written by different individuals and in different times. Of course I am working at explaining my beliefs but that doesn't make it apologetics. I respond to what I'm asked, and in many cases there is no historical record and when there is you reject it anyway as not having sufficient secondary support. You mean like everybody else here.