Choosing a faith

Do you ever wonder why Jesus is echoing Daniel from a book he's declared obsolete instead of making original prophecies? Why did the gospel writers draw from Daniel instead of from original prophecies from Jesus?--Percy

Fun seasonal fact: Even if you believe that a historical Jesus actually existed - which I know you don't - it's highly unlikely that Jesus was born in Bethlehem as it was 80 miles away from where he lived in Nazareth.But the author had to get him to Bethlehem because that was where King David had lived and to do it he had to invent a non-existent census and donkey journey.There's only two Jesus birth stories in the bible - both totally different; one has kings the other shepherds, one has a manger the other doesn't One has a guiding star the other doesn't. One has Herod murdering babies, the other doesn't. One has a flight to Egypt the other doesn't.I mean, come on - it's a totally made up story end to end.

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But the author had to get him to Bethlehem because that was where King David had lived and to do it he had to invent a non-existent census and donkey journey

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Or refer to the actual census of Judaea, held after Archelaus was deposed (and Quirinius was in charge of that one). The only problem is that Matthew has Jesus born before Archelaus even took the throne - and Archelaus reigned for 9 years.Of course, Luke still didn’t give a valid reason for Joseph to go to Bethlehem for the census.

...and all because the author had to get Jesus born in Bethlehem to fulfil the prophecy.

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A prophecy given in Micah 5:2-3 speaks of the Messiah being born in Bethlehem.

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“But you, Bethlehem Ephrathah,
Though you are little among the thousands of Judah,
Yet out of you shall come forth to Me
The One to be Ruler in Israel,
Whose goings forth are from of old,
From everlasting.”

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Not that Mark or John felt the need to do that.

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I agree that there is no shortage of empty platitudes emanating from Christian communities. However, just because churches and their members have their failings says nothing about the truth about Jesus or God. For example I have a great deal of difficulty with the views of Faith, (our banished member),and if I had to believe what she believes in order to be Christian, the I would reject Christianity as well. Maybe it should have been the church you rejected and not God. That's hardly the point. Thank you. As part of that BTW it also then seems to me that if God is the source of life itself then the resurrection of Jeus isn't that much of a stretch. (I'm not claiming that as evidence as it isn't.) Sure it boils down to faith. However we all have a world view with which we interact with others. Everyone on this forum then argues to support that world view and science is one of the realities we can turn to. I know who Lee Strobel is but I haven't bothered to read him, but I don't see why atheists should be able to argue from science and theists not be able to.

Anyone can argue from science, they just have to argue from science ie not from theism, and to do that they have to understand the difference.

This was worth repeating. You have summed up an important argument.I believe that I have evidence. The evidence cannot be objective, however, if one or ten thousand witnessed a given event. The rest of the skeptics are/were not on board.

You know this has been challenged, rebutted, disputed, whatever other adjectives apply. Why are you just flat out reasserting this as if unaware of the counterarguments? What is wrong with you? How does a supposedly Christian person do this to people and live with themselves? You're focused on the wrong aspect. The number of people responsible for a fiction isn't terribly important.What matters is that it's a fiction, a quality shared by both Mormonism and Christianity. Mormonism is built around stories from golden tablets of which there is no evidence, Christianity around a miracle wielding messiah for whom there is no evidence. Multiple people giving false accounts? How could that ever happen? Fox News? Republicans? What are those? Facts are facts, and it isn't possible that millions of people could be convinced an election was stolen when there's no facts supporting it. Right?In the same way, it isn't possible that billions of people could be convinced a religion was true when there are no facts supporting it. Right?Hopefully the sarcasm and irony in the above two paragraphs comes across. How is it possible that you are so lacking in understanding? We don't have "preconceived convictions" of what is true and false. What we have is a process for assessing what is likely true about reality whose foundation is evidence, which you are abundantly lacking. A fact which you are willing, from time to time, to acknowledge, but then to abandon, often in the same post. You just referenced Bauckham's evidence again, whose "evidence" you have yet to present.So, again, I don't know why are you saying this. Are you just engaging in tit-for-tat? He said something not nice about me, so rather than reflecting upon what he said I'll just ignore it, act like it contained no evidence and reasoning, and just make up something not nice about him. Hardly very Christian. I've got a great prayer for you this Sunday:

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"We pray Lord that we will embrace love and understanding of our fellow man by hearing and respecting them so as to bring about true joy, peace and understanding for all. May we be like the Christ in whom we so deeply believe."

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Our "preconceived convictions" are about how to ferret out what is true, not about what is true. We are prepared to change our views in light of new evidence or improved understanding. Others have told you the exact same thing in their own words. Multiple times.You seem to be retreating into a propaganda echo chamber of your own construction where you hear only your own voice.--Percy

Then it is not evidence.

Two features of the forum software can help you with this:

1. The bottom of each post lists the message you replied to, and the messages that replied to you, and it includes annotations telling you whether you've replied to them or not.
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2. If you click on your name anywhere it appears you'll be presented a list of all the threads you've ever participated in. The column labeled "New Replies" will have a "Yes" in the box if there are messages in that thread you haven't replied to. If you click on the down arrow it will bring you to the oldest message you haven't replied to. If you click on the up arrow it will bring you to the newest message you haven't replied to. You don't have to remember this - if you hover over the arrows there are tooltips telling you what they do.
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   Let's say you clicked on the down arrow and are viewing the oldest message you haven't replied to. At the bottom of the message will be an annotation that says, "You have not replied." If you click on it it will change to "You have seen this message but not replied" and that message will be removed from the list of messages you haven't replied to. Or you could reply to it. In either case, if you now go back to the thread list and click on the down arrow again you'll be taken to the next oldest message you haven't replied to, and so forth. In this way you can visit all the messages in a thread that you haven't replied to.
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   Of course if there are a lot of messages you haven't replied to then this could take a while. Looking at the thread details, you've replied to 414 of 629 message posted to you. That leaves 215 messages that you haven't replied to.

But God loves all. Perhaps it's for the way you're treating the company you keep. Oh, yeah, sure, indubitably, what possible motive could there be? Why would anyone be motivated to influence the direction of a new religion in the face of forces tugging it in worrying directions?John Smith obviously lied about golden tablets and what they said while intending to be believed. Wasn't his motivation the same as the NT authors? Why are you ascribing to Joseph Smith the same motivations you deny are possible for the NT authors?The obvious answer is that you're influenced by internal beliefs rather than external evidence. You're almost right. All of religion is embarrassing. Maybe God could consider performing more of his miracles in science labs instead of toasters? We live in a world where if God makes any difference at all, has any effect at all, no one can tell. And we've given you reasons why we don't see life as a miracle. Is the questionable propriety of repeatedly raising issues with whose objections you will not engage not apparent to you? Surely your purpose in coming here was not to provide yet another example of a Christian behaving badly. Christians deal with the problem by writing rationalizations called "Christian apologetics." Apologetic written, problem solved. Much more bad than good is done in the name of religion. You could list the big ones like The Crusades, Islamic Jihads, the Inquisition, etc. Or you could list little ones like the parents who disown a child because they marry outside their religion, or the Christians who fight the application to the planning board to build a mosque in their town. You call this a problem for Christianity, but it's a problem for all religion, and you all have the same answer: find refuge in your respective apologetics. That's not really an answer. It's like what politicians do when they don't intend to do anything about a problem: start an investigative committee. There is no "science of the gaps" argument except in your own mind. Such an argument doesn't make sense and no one arguing from evidence would ever advance such an argument. If you think someone is using a "science of the gaps" argument here then try to provide an example. You won't be able to.I don't know why you're not getting this, but I'll try again anyway. Religion fills in the blanks of what we don't know with "God did it." Throughout its history science has been gradually replacing those supernatural explanations with natural ones. Lightning is one example. The neutrino example I provided above is another. By the way, that was resolved when it was discovered that neutrinos change type on their journey from the sun to the Earth. Problem solved and the Earth is not 6000 years old.You're doing the same thing with life. You just can't conceive how life could spring from inert matter, and you're using this as your argument for the divine because science doesn't know how life began, and may never know. But you can't deny your participation in a long religious tradition of citing what science doesn't currently know as evidence for the divine, beginning with lightning (or seasons or weather or misfortune or who knows what and probably differing with every culture, but you get the idea).But if science did happen to know how life began it would not cause you to say, "Oh, I guess there's no evidence for the divine." No, you'd instead just move on to some other thing that science doesn't know as your example for the divine, and the long-lived religious tradition of citing the unknown as evidence of the divine would continue.And this is why it's called "God of the gaps," because religion fills in the gaps of scientific knowledge with God. There's no such thing as "science of the gaps" where science fills in what we don't know about God with science, or argues that gaps in scientific knowledge are evidence against God. Whichever way you meant this, I can't imagine either one making sense to anyone and don't understand why you've said this a couple times now. God isn't even a "thing" in science - there's no evidence. This is you being disingenuous again. If the memorial service for one of these innocent deaths was at your church and you were asked to speak, tell us the truth about what you'd say about why they were taken. If you're honest with yourself you know you wouldn't blame nuts and bolts.--Percy

Just to let you know I'm not ignoring you but I was tied up over Christmas and now I'm off to the US for a wedding.
Happy New Year to all

Percy has already dealt with Bauckham over and over again: Yet GDR keeps returning to Bauckham as if for the first time. He's never able to pick up discussion about Bauckham from any of the numerous places where it left off. GDR told us all we need to know about the insincerity of his efforts concerning Bauckham and other Christian apologists here with this from Message 1614: This forum could easily be retitled "Christians Behaving Badly." Over and over again we get behavior like this, in this case saying in effect, "There's plenty of evidence but it would take too much effort to describe."GDR, if you're reading this post, evidence is the foundation of all we know. There's nothing we know that didn't enter our brains through the filter of our senses. Creating a record is how we create permanence in what we know. It was the ability to communicate and pass information from one generation to the next that enabled mankind to develop its most unique quality: civilization.Just as children have to be told to use their words, you apparently have to be told to use your evidence. But like the recalcitrant child who insistently keeps hitting other children up side of the head, you keep spreading myths, fallacies and speculations while insisting they're evidence.If there are other ways of "knowing" than by observation of the world around us then we haven't found it yet, religion's determined and completely unsupported claims otherwise notwithstanding.--Percy

I'm not employing fringe ideas of the nature of evidence. My views are emphatically and overwhelmingly mainstream. They aren't obscure but are the same way science views evidence. In science observation is the foundation of all evidence. There isn't any other type of evidence.Your true problem is that you're trying to contort the definition of evidence just enough to where it allows the gospel myths to be considered evidence but doesn't raise howls from those who know what evidence really is. That's not possible. Except that the Bible is not the conclusion of our understanding. Our evolving interpretation continues to this day. You're changing understanding is why you started this thread. You would do well to keep in mind that the progressive understanding of the Greek, Roman and Norse gods ended in the firm conclusion that they are all myths.In the same way our current understanding of Christianity is not fixed. Christianity has not been promised eternal status as the world's dominant religion. One day the dominant understanding will be that it, too, like all other religions, is just a collection of myths. We've been over this. Why are you yet again beginning discussion of this question from square one? Might it be because you didn't like the direction it was taking before and so abandoned it until such time as it faded into the background of your memory and you could raise it yet again as if for the first time? How many times have I and others said (in a variety of ways) that the Bible is a collection of fact, fiction and the unverifiable? Do you recall any of those times at all? Even one? You either abandoned them or circled back to the beginning on every occasion. If it is true to the slightest degree then what you're doing is invalid. Even worse, you seem to be doing it in a vacuum all by yourself, which is how you've gone so far off the rails. If you're developing your ideas with other like-minded people then I missed your mention of it, sorry. We don't care what beliefs you choose, and we don't care how much or who you read about Jesus to form your beliefs. Just don't call your beliefs evidence-based with no justification whatsoever. Your lens is very credulous. Jesus's amazing miracles and resurrection were far more remarkable and noteworthy than any army but made no impression at all upon ancient Judaea. What we know actually did happen was that decades later amazing stories about the preacher Jesus gradually spread though the ancient world creating a new religion. Unlike my mother I wasn't raised in Canada and know little British history. I don't know anything about any dispute about how King Harold died. But maybe this from the article on history from Wikipedia will be helpful:

Wikipedia:

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Historians seek knowledge of the past using historical sources such as written documents, oral accounts, art and material artifacts, and ecological markers. History is not complete and still has debatable mysteries.

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So whatever the evidence for how King Harold died, historians will no doubt endlessly assess and discuss it. This is in contrast to Christian theologians who long ago concluded that Jesus's resurrection is a fact.--Percy

I've been reading your recent exchanges with GDR and feel compelled to jump into this argument for a moment, if I may. Why on earth (and perhaps in Heaven, far far away) would a person not be credulous? Could it be because they see, observe, and feel a presence that compels them to investigate further? What do you guys think that believers are, anyway? A bunch of right wing zombies braying in unison? I've heard it said that way before, and I am compelled to agree with your assessment. In my mind, the fact is a core constituent of my belief. The fiction is poetic license and can spur philosophical musings and meditations on lifes daily problems. And the unverifiable? It too is a necessary ingredient. Its not so much a preference, though Tangle would argue that religion is entirely shaped by cultural upbringing. We didn't choose our beliefs. He chose us. (I know that makes little sense to you) The initial salvation experience is in and of itself overwhelming evidence.

For the same reason they would not be illiterate?