Choosing a faith

I don't believe that I have ever claimed an equal footing. Philosophical evidence are two very different things - apples and oranges. What is PhilosophyFrom that site

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Quite literally, the term "philosophy" means, "love of wisdom." In a broad sense, philosophy is an activity people undertake when they seek to understand fundamental truths about themselves, the world in which they live, and their relationships to the world and to each other. As an academic discipline philosophy is much the same. Those who study philosophy are perpetually engaged in asking, answering, and arguing for their answers to life's most basic questions. To make such a pursuit more systematic academic philosophy is traditionally divided into major areas of study.

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However after reading thi and other material I think that worrying about either philosophical evidence, which seems kind vague anyway, and the reading on definitions of scientific evidence which seems to go beyond empirical evidence, then I should probably stop worrying about these terms.
In the end I think that the best term is subjective conclusions.It is my subjective conclusion that it is ludicrous to think that things such as consciousness and morality can evolve from collections of mindless particles, therefore requiring an external intelligence.As I understand it, the subjective conclusion of the majority of you is that it is ludicrous to involve an external intelligence when we can observe natural processes having occurred and continuing to occur. This also leaves open how an external intelligence came to exist.

That was never meant to be taken literally. Which isn't to say that a few haven't tried. Another straw man argument.

From John Polkinghorne's "Living With Hope".

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It is the setting of an unremitting refusal to allow ourselves ever to attain to the fulfilment of the true humanity that God intends for us. We can only hope and pray that in the end no one will persist everlastingly in that defiance of God’s mercy. If that is the case, then hell will be empty, and we may be sure that this would be in accord with God’s good will for human destiny.

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Hell is the place where that mistake continues to be made for ever. It is the setting of an unremitting refusal to allow ourselves ever to attain to the fulfilment of the true humanity that God intends for us. We can only hope and pray that in the end no one will persist everlastingly in that defiance of God’s mercy. If that is the case, then hell will be empty, and we may be sure that this would be in accord with God’s good will for human destiny.

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CS Lewis also offers metaphorically in "The Great Divorce" essentially the same concept.I'd also suggest that those who choose a life which is only focused on their personal desires without concern for others are living a kinda hell on earth. Statistics have shown that people who are altruistic and loving of others are happier and more content.Also we have to be careful of the context in which we take what Jesus says in the Bible. Jesus was a revolutionist but believed only in non-violent revolution, which was tough sell to the Israelites. In the Gospels and even in Acts 1 the disciples never understood this and were looking for a violent overthrow of the Romans.
Jesus was a 1st century Jew and, as in other early Jewish literature, used extravagant idioms like stars falling etc to make their points. Much of what sometimes gets taken as being about end times was meant to be part of His message against violent revolution. This of course includes forecasting the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple. It was clear to Him that if there was a violent revolution the Romans would do what they always do and it wouldn't go well.I do however believe that God is a God of judgement albeit loving, merciful and forgiving, but I do believe that in ways that I have no idea about this, life will impact our lives in the next.

I don't actually have a position on whether God intervened supernaturally in the evolutionary process or not. I am quite happy to simply say that God kicked off the processof evolution and all the natural processes were in place at the outset.I read a very good book a couple of years ago by Chris Barrigar, who is Pastor of St. Peter's Anglican Church, Montreal, Canada. He has a Bachelor's degree and two Master's degrees from the University of Toronto, and a PhD in philosophy from McGill University, Montreal. Prior to pastoring Chris taught and/or supervised at the graduate level for a number of Canadian, Indian, and British institutions. He is a member of the Canadian Society of Christian Philosophers, and the Canadian Society for the History and Philosophy of Science. The book is Freedom All the Way Up.I'd suggest that you look at the credentials of the those who wrote reviews on the book. Here is just one of them.

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Barrigar boldly takes the science/faith discussion into new territory. Conversant in cosmology and quantum physics, biology and neuroscience, game theory and sociology, this book not only provides a fresh perspective on integrating our understanding of modern science with Christian theology, it also provides an incisive critique of secularism and its underlying philosophical premises. If you want to be provocatively stimulated on life's ultimate meaning and its relationship to science, philosophy, and theology, this is the book for you." -Robert Mann, PhD; Professor of Physics and Applied Mathematics, University of Waterloo; Affiliate Member, the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics

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Barrigar contends that God caused evolution knowing not the exact outcome, but probabilities of outcome. it being a open world where the future remains to be known. It has been a while since I have read it but I can't recall whether or not consciousness was in place from the outset, but I think that was part of his proposal. I still maintain that materialism is a belief. I believe that Dawkin's "Flying Spaghetti Monster" doesn't exist. As far the rest of it goes , then if God had everything in place at the outset, the what we can observe is exactly as we would expect.

Edited by Admin, : Fix mangled attempt at turning Chris Barrigar's name into a link. It hid a description of Barrigar.

I'm afraid that your analysis seems a little lacking. I don't see this as being a parallel at all.

Do I have to say "I believe" every time. Obviously I'm expressing my view of Christianity. Well, that would be wrong too.

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In comments likely to enhance his progressive reputation, Pope Francis has written a long, open letter to the founder of La Repubblica newspaper, Eugenio Scalfari, stating that non-believers would be forgiven by God if they followed their consciences.

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Responding to a list of questions published in the paper by Mr Scalfari, who is not a Roman Catholic, Francis wrote: “You ask me if the God of the Christians forgives those who don’t believe and who don’t seek the faith. I start by saying – and this is the fundamental thing – that God’s mercy has no limits if you go to him with a sincere and contrite heart. The issue for those who do not believe in God is to obey their conscience.

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“Sin, even for those who have no faith, exists when people disobey their conscience.”

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Robert Mickens, the Vatican correspondent for the Catholic journal The Tablet, said the pontiff’s comments were further evidence of his attempts to shake off the Catholic Church’s fusty image, reinforced by his extremely conservative predecessor Benedict XVI. “Francis is a still a conservative,” said Mr Mickens. “But what this is all about is him seeking to have a more meaningful dialogue with the world.”

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In a welcoming response to the letter, Mr Scalfari said the Pope’s comments were “further evidence of his ability and desire to overcome barriers in dialogue with all”.

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In July, Francis signalled a more progressive attitude on sexuality, asking: “If someone is gay and is looking for the Lord, who am I to judge him?”

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Source: Pope Francis assures atheists: You don’t have to believe in God to go to heaven | The Independent | The Independent

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Maybe not, but it is scriptural.

Sure I'm fine with that. Of course. But you are criticizing a belief that I don't hold. I'm not saying that we throw out any empirical or even theoretical science. Yes, I think that God is responsible for life. I also enjoy the little bit of science that I can understand.However, I do think that I am more than just my brain. I realize that you can come up with opinions based on what is observed, but it is my premise that there is more going on than can be observed.

Not true.A couple of quotes from this site that covers it extensively. history for atheists

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It is assumed in much anti-theistic polemic that the Bible has traditionally always been interpreted literally. A lot of criticism of believers is based on how irrational, impossible and anti-scientific such a reading of the Bible has to be and how the current literalism of many fundamentalist Christians simply reflects how the Bible has always been read, with non-literal interpretations simply a modern rear-guard attempt to reconcile the Bible with current understandings of the world. But this is not true. In fact, fundamentalist Biblical literalism is a very recent, mostly Protestant and largely American affair. Historically, things were much more complex.

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Further down in a reply to Dawkins there is this:

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What all these statements seem to imply is that the contradictions and immoral events within religious scriptures have been missed or ignored by all those stupid, irrational religious people throughout the centuries who were enslaved to a literal readings of their scriptures, until the bright, saving light of the Enlightenment and reason brought them to light to reveal how utterly stupid and wrong they really were. That is the normal narrative anyway. Dawkins’ quote in particular implies, in saying that the “irritated theologians” don’t take Genesis literally “anymore”, that until recently that is what just what they did. In fact, surprisingly, the opposite is true. Completely literal interpretation of both the Bible and the Koran, only arose within the last couple of centuries – for the Bible, the nineteenth and twentieth centuries in particular. Up until then, for most of history from late antiquity, right through the Middle Ages to the early modern period and modern era, a “literal” interpretation was only one of the multiple “senses” of scripture: only one of the ways in which a verse or story could be read and interpreted. Even then, the “literal” reading was a far cry away from modern fundamentalist views.

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Just to add to what I already posted when I ran out of time. That is really only true for those who try and read the Bible literally. However, I do agree that we can learn a lot about how God has created through the use of science. Another point is that Biblical literalism first came into vogue as a result of the reformation. Luther rebelled against the church, which was largely corrupt, and which to that time had been essentially the body that interpreted all things Christian including the Bible.In place of the church the Bible was inserted and they wanted something that would be an absolute authoritative voice of God. That then evolved into reading it literally as an absolute essentially as if it had been dictated by God.In recent years it has been primarily, but not solely, an American thing. Fortunately, that is slowly fading.

I'm not going tgo take the time to respond individually to your critiques of the teachings and actions of the church over the years as frankly, I don't disagree.There is though this one comment that I'll comment on. I would agree that there is nothing new but our understandings continually evolve, which I is a positive thing even though in many cases IMHO, it evolved negatively.I read a book by Alan Kreider called The Patient FermentThe early church was evangelized by actually living the life espoused by the Jesus of the Gospels. People became followers because they were attracted to the life style of how the early Christians loved their neighbour and even loved their enemies. With was attractive as it was so counter-cultural in a society that was held together by military might and was largely consumed by individual status in the society.It went off the rails when the Roman church essentially declared Christianity to be a state religion. This evolved into seeing position in the church giving individual status and power. This combined with the Bible only being available in Latin, did two things. It corrupted the church and it gave the church the power to dictate doctrine. This held right up to the reformation with the low point being the indulgences.The reformation and the various translations of the Bible helped but the various denominations muddled along for centuries but was seeing some improvement. The last 50 years though have changed things considerably again, IMHO.A few things happened. Firstly there was an increase in ancient literature discovered resulting in a better understanding of the ancient Greek material leading to better translations of the Bible and other ancient writings.For years Christian scholars interpreted the Bible in the context of the culture at the time. About 50 years ago scholars began to look at the culture, the political situation and the beliefs at the time the various books of the Bible were written.Eventually the internet came along and now individual scholars had access to far more material, have a clearer understanding of what had been written and at the same time were able to collaborate with with other scholars.As a result the church now is still evolving in its understanding of the faith but it is a very different church in most cases than we grew up with. It is a work in progress, and interestingly enough, slowly returning to the ideals of the early Christians that Kreider wrote about. The focus is becoming more and more on Jesus saying that all the laws are based on loving others, and being far less concerned with doctrine.

Richard Bauckham's book Jesus and the Eyewitnesses details, after considerable research, how all the NT was written either by eye witnesses or by writers with a first person connected to the eye witnesses.Also, as I have said before, there were a number of messianic movements within a hundred years either way of the life of Jesus, with many of them having some degree of success of raising an army and winning some degree of victory over the Romans. Eventually all of the messianic leaders were put to death and their followers, if not executed, understood that they had followed a failed messiah and went looking for another one.
In the war between of 66 -71ad Simon ben Giora led a messianic movement, with an army that had some success originally but he was taken to Rome and executed. He became simply a failed messiah.In the Bar Kokhba revolt in 135 ad, they actually maintained power for about 3 years and even went so far as to print coins dating year 1,2 and 3. Simon bar Kokhba was eventually executed along with Rabbi Akiva, and bar Koknaba was then simply considered another failed messiah.Jesus whose followers were largely working class, without an army, and suffering a humiliating execution, and deserted by His followers suddenly started a movement which still exists today.If you weren't a follower of Jesus in the years after His life, then He was less than a footnote in history, and if you considered Him at all He would just be another failed messiah. You would automatically reject His miracles and resurrection. However there were numerous people with access to the eye witnesses who did write about Jesus. including those in the NT. Papias who lived from 60 to 130 AD insisted on writing only from eyewitness or from those with direct contact to the eye witnesses. Polycarp born 69 AD wrote extensively and had contact with the disciples.WE also know of many early documents written that haven't survived and so we have no real knowledge of how much was written about Jesus that didn't survive. We know that Papias wrote a considerable amount but what we have of that is what others transcribed into their writings.

Well, if God exists then we might want to ask the question of why he bothered to bring us into existence. It seems reasonable and even logical that there would be a purpose to it, and if that is the case you would think we might be interested in that purpose, and what it should mean to our life. I don't see it a case being strong enough at all, unless it's a pride thing. I'm concerned with truth, knowing that it is belief and faith.

Also the actually message has to be evaluated.

I am trying to use what time I have to work my way through all of these posts. Some things that are written I just accept and try and prioritize what to reply to. So what, it could have also proven that it didn't exist. Up to then it was belief, although I agree there was evidence for it, but not conclusive. Religions are of a totally different nature than is science. I do think that the order of science does suggest a designer but that of course is simply my belief, that I know you don't agree with. I recently answered a post by Stile where he talked about rolling a dice. This is not the point he was making, but if I roll a dice and it comes up 3, how would I know whether or not God interfered and caused it to come up as a 3. Now, I'm not saying that I think God works that way, but I can't know one way or the another. I'm in the car and suddenly I decide to go a different route to the store. Did God influence that decision or not. I, or you, have no way of knowing. There is no evidence. I decide to donate to the food bank. Maybe God influenced that decision and maybe not. We can't know as again, there is no evidence. It is belief. Does an external intelligence exist or not. It is belief as there is no scientific evidence that will give you an absolute answer.

I don't have the credibility or the credentials that these guys have. I don't have their ability to express ideas. This has been their life's work. While they were at university and learning and teaching others I was raising kids and gaining the skills to make a living and then applying them. I do believe that our lives in the present will have impact on the life to come.

Edited by Admin, : Fix quote that left out portion with special characters.