Choosing a faith

I agree that Daniel thought that the Temple would be rebuilt. Jesus agreed but disagreed with it being a physical Temple but a Temple in Himself and in the hearts of those who follow and faith in His command to love. I only referred to Daniel 9 as an indication that passages in the Gospels were about an earthly event, (the destruction of the Temple), and not about an end times event. The connection is the fact that Jesus referred to Himself often as the "Son of Man" which the early Jews would have understood in reference to Daniel 7. Daniel would have writing from his understanding of the Hebrew Scriptures. and I understand it takes a view that combines renewal in his time and then extends it to eternal life. Daniel is saying that the righteous dead will be resuscitated in their earthly bodies, (as opposed to resurrected) and that it has eternal ramifications.Interestingly enough of course there was no one brought back from the dead after the city's deliverance from Antiochus.

I note that you’re replying to a post you have already replied to once.

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I agree that Daniel thought that the Temple would be rebuilt.

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We don’t agree on that. Daniel price that the Temple will be reconsecrated.

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Jesus agreed but disagreed with it being a physical Temple but a Temple in Himself and in the hearts of those who follow

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That’s your opinion, got any textual support for it?

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I only referred to Daniel 9 as an indication that passages in the Gospels were about an earthly event, (the destruction of the Temple), and not about an end times event.

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Daniel 9 is an End Times prophecy.

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The connection is the fact that Jesus referred to Himself often as the "Son of Man" which the early Jews would have understood in reference to Daniel 7.

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Which assumes that that misinterpretation of Daniel was already widespread. Got any evidence for that?

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Daniel would have writing from his understanding of the Hebrew Scriptures. and I understand it takes a view that combines renewal in his time and then extends it to eternal life. Daniel is saying that the righteous dead will be resuscitated in their earthly bodies, (as opposed to resurrected) and that it has eternal ramifications.
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The general resurrection referred to by Daniel is an End Times event, and it is also an earthly event, (And it did not happen on Daniel’s schedule or Jesus’). Daniel 11-12 is largely an elaboration of preceding prophecies in Daniel, and the resurrection immediately follows the Tribulation which you equate with the Jewish revolt.

You don't seem to understand the significance of your own words. You just nonchalantly acknowledged that you reject those parts of the Bible that you deem bad. That's a terrible criteria for anything. There is no context where good and evil equate to true and false. If you reject the genocide and warmongering then even Hitler was a fine guy, a good organizer and motivator, and not a bad artist, either. The Bible tells you about Jesus, then you take what those parts of the Bible tell you about Jesus to decide what parts of the Bible to accept, then you take what those parts of the Bible tell you about Jesus to decide what parts of the Bible to accept, then you take what those parts of the Bible tell you about Jesus to decide what parts of the Bible to accept,...Circular. Until you can present evidence, the stories of Jesus are works of unknown provenance. Believe whatever you like about him. And evidence? But your responses are bifurcated. Sometimes you write like this, other times you're citing Bauckham and others and telling us that they present a great deal of evidence in their books that you regretfully inform us you can't present here. And very negative social changes, too. Right now evangelicals in the states are trying to beat down the division between church and state. They're insisting that this is a Christian nation in a thinly disguised attempt to get Christianity preferential treatment and create a state sponsored religion. Hey, combining religion and government, what could go wrong? The Handmaid's Tale is just fiction and not instructive, right? The Spanish Inquisition was merely curious about things, and the Pope during WWII wasn't really complicit, right? And even if he was, protestant America was wonderfully welcoming to Jews trying to flee Europe, just don't mention the St. Louis. They never moved toward these "very positive social changes" that you think you see. Their true motivations are exposed in the missionary examples of the Americas and Africa. If you convert then welcome home, otherwise you're a heathen deserving of all the damnation visited upon you by God's minions on Earth. I can easily outnumber your examples of sincere Christian charity with examples of Christian cruelty and atrocity in any era you choose. Throughout history religion in general has been a source of division and a cause of war and strife. Just today the New York Times ran a letter from a man trying to restore a relationship with his mother who broke off contact after he married a Jewish woman. Yeah, religion is great.I think it must be your belief that religion is inherently good that is driving your search for religious truth, but why not leave religion out of it and just seek good wherever you can find it? What matters is how great a force for good you are in the world, not what religious beliefs you hold, and given religion's sad history any association with religion at all can be interpreted as a force for evil.Any fans of Young Sheldon will find this season instructive about religion. An out-of-wedlock pregnancy gets the family ostracized from their church by parishioners and a pastor who believe they're displaying great love and compassion. The road to hell and all that... Not that I can see. Religion is where we concentrate our hopes for a better world, but it isn't deserving of that attention. God is not necessary for a message of love. And yet Christianity doesn't make Christians any better at obeying this instruction than anyone else. Either there's not enough context to understand this, or this is nonsense. You are so full of shit. You've been citing Bauckham and whoever else and claiming they provide all this evidence (that you can't tell us about) that makes the existence of Jesus clear as day, and that's just one subtopic. You don't think you see "through a glass darkly." You're not here selling us on how uncertain it all is. You think each new version of your views is better than the one before and that you're steadily progressing closer to the truth.As Feynmann said, the easiest person to fool is yourself, and you're doing a fine job of it.Random addendum: Ran across this article today: Opinion | How Would You Prove That God Performed a Miracle? - The New York Times--Percy

You're this involved in your church? No wonder you're so persistently irrational much of the time. You're too personally invested in this. He's not real. Substitute any fictional entity's name for God and it would make as much sense. How do we learn about historical figures? We do it by conducting our studies according to the well established principles of historical study. Check out the Wikipedia article on the history of religion. Words like miracle and supernatural and God don't even appear.You are so steeped in Christianity that you'll never escape its embrace, so soused in it that your thinking has become irrational.But you're happy with your thinking, and that's fine. We are not trying to convince you your religious beliefs are wrong.But what's crazy is that you've come here trying to convince others that there's evidence you're right. You're like the drunk trying to convince others that his befuddled thinking makes sense. I can't tell if you're being purposefully obtuse or are just stupid. Nobody denigrated books as a source. Who would do that?What I said, what I think we all said, what I think is nearly impossible for you not to be perfectly aware that it's what we said, is that you need multi-sourced cross-correlative information approached, studied, analyzed and interpreted as objectively and academically as possible. For sources that means written material, oral information, archeological evidence, art, ecological impacts, and anything else I can't think of right now.You are definitely not objective. You're a Christian believer through and through, and no amount of objective evidence could ever convince you away from the absolute truth and message of the Lord our savior Jesus Christ. And nobody here is taking issue with your religious beliefs. We all think everyone should be free to hold whatever religious beliefs they choose.But you can't seem to let go of the conviction that evidence exists for what you believe, yet instead of evidence you point to extremely traditional Christian apologetics (C. S. Lewis, Bauckham., etc.) and call them evidence. As an objective student of history you are hopeless.And all the counterarguments made to you just seem to go in one ear and out the other, because you keep revisiting old parts of the discussion as if you hadn't already raised these points before multiple times.What you're trying to do is get non-Christians to view your religions books through the filter of Christianity. That's not going to happen. We're going to look at your books objectively and unfiltered and with knowledge of the rather obvious traits of religion as exhibited by just about all religious sects around the world and throughout history. Religion isn't about what's true in the real world. It's about what's spiritually true in our hearts. Oh, sure, it makes perfect sense that you're presenting non-evidence when we're asking, begging, pleading for evidence. How could you not even understand what this discussion is about? We're not trying to convince you that you're wrong, not about your religious beliefs. We're trying to make you see that you have no real evidence. Why do you even care whether you have evidence? You have beliefs that work for you, that make your life better. Isn't that enough? Not in this thread. No, it's not as simple as that. You have consciously chosen to leave out a key aspect of discussion on this topic, that if conscious life could only be created by another conscious life, then who created that first conscious life. And so on ad infinitum.And you do the same type of thing continually in this thread. You just raise the same issues over and over while leaving out what you know were the key objections and rebuttals already raised, often multiple times. This thread hasn't become as long as it has because of how incredibly wide ranging the discussion has become. The range of discussion is actually fairly narrow. This thread is this long because you keep coming back to the same issues over and over again.--Percy

Of course. No Christian would argue that Jesus wasn't an historical figure, however it seems that few non-Christians argue that position. We don't know that. Bauckham the historian in his book Jesus and the Eyewitnesses writes that John and Matthew were eye witnesses and that Luke and Mark had considerable contact with eye witnesses. The gnostic Gospels were written much later that the 4 we have and primarily they were trying to separate Jesus from His Judaic roots. In addition many of them presented a docetic and Platonic view of Jesus, denying His humanity and with the Platonic vision of leaving this evil world behind for some form of spiritual world. They present a very separate religion. Of course they are. Well as a joke I often say that the only person who has their theology 100% right is me. The trouble is my understanding of things continue to evolve. I don't want to get going down this road again but it is a belief for me and in spite of what you all say I find that there is sufficient historical evidence, (knowing that you guys don't even consider it evidence), to support my beliefs,I know I have used this before but I very much relate to this statement by CS Lewis,

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I believe in Christianity as I believe that the Sun has risen, not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.

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What evidence would that be. How in a strictly material world can there be any evidence for something other that the material world which we perceive. I would also suggest that science does go beyond the material world with theories of other dimensions etc. We can't examine anything beyond the material other than things like dark matter which has a physical impact on our material world. I don't agree except I do agree with the assumption part in that my views on issues continue to evolve so my assumptions change.Evidence can't necessarily be shown to be valid. To do that you need proof. For example in this I see the fact that Christianity arose as a belief in the 1st century. I can't prove that evidence to be valid but at the same time you can't prove it to be invalid. So we are back to assumptions and we come to our own conclusions. We both believe that we are views represent the truth of the issues but we have come to very different conclusions. Partly life experience, partly by what I have read and partly that I simply don't believe that all of those characteristics of this world can mindlessly come out of mindless material. Unless you have proof it then becomes a matter of individual belief about how valid the evidence is. There will be those who consider something to be bordering on proof and others who see a position as being invalid.For example is the Big Bang theory valid? It seems that there is growing uncertainty for that theory. My minimal understanding is that the primary evidence is that the universe continues to expand. (That's all a long ways above my pay grade. ) Whose views are valid? There are things that can't be resolved that simply. For example the difference between right and wrong. Was Robin Hood right or wrong by robbing the rich to give to the poor. Jesus argued against a military revolt where as it appears that the majority of His fellow Jews are in favour. Who was right and who was wrong. How about giving an example of that evidence. What evidence do you have other than blind theories of the first cells. I frankly haven't come to a conclusion of whether God simply set the evolutionary process in motion or whether there was any intervention along the way. (I probably favour the former.) I certainly don't suggest that my beliefs are scientific. As far as a plan is concerned I believe that God's plan is to ultimately wind up in a world where the world universally displays the heart law of the Golden Rule as personalized by Jesus. All we can do is look at what we know. You might read about a horrific situation in some other part of the world, or even about abused animals in our own society. You then decide that you are going to personally do something about it by sacrificing time or resources. Why did you come to that conclusion? It might be that you have evolved into a good guy or it might be that you have been directly or indirectly influenced by an external intelligence or as I would term it the still small voice of God. All you know is that you came to your conclusion. You don't know what influenced you to make that decision. Even if you can say that it was youe dad's influence you don't know what influenced him and so on. How do you show that when all we have to work with is the material. I would still maintain that the existence of life and even sentient life is evidence upon which we can draw our own conclusions but by your definition neither of our conclusions are valid. I've been saying that we should use all of the above, but you and others seem to be only allowing #4.
If we look at #2 I think that you are not regarding it in the proper manner. I see philosophy as not a statement of fact in the way that science does, but as a pointer towards some aspect of life. For example Plato believed that the world we live in is essentially an evil place and that after death we would live a spiritual existence somewhere else. I think that although he seemed to be primarily arguing for a post-lie spiritual existence we can also the look at the concept of the duality of conscious life within a physical body. I'm not arguing for the validity of his argument but I simply want to point out that you can't compare philosophy and science in the way that you have. T Believe me, I am only interested in the truth but also knowing that what I consider to be truth may not be truth at all.

Evidence has nothing to do with proof. Evidence is evidence. Facts don't lie or have an agenda. Facts are just facts.

Can you see that this might be a problem when these 'scholars' tell us about biblical history? Not just whether Jesus existed but, say, the resurrection? How can we rely on ANYTHING they say when they're so totally committed to finding stuff to confirm their beliefs and will find apologetics for anything that hints in an opposite direction? There are very few non-Christians researching the bible - why would they? How could they? - you need funding and who funds biblical studies?I only know three atheists historians - not non-Christians; people of other religions spend their time researching their own religions, not other people's - Ehrman, Price and Carrier, there may be more but I'm not that deep into this stuff. Ehrman gets annoyed when people even mention the idea that Christ didn't exist, he thinks it's totally settled; never even discussed anymore. The other two are pure mythicists. I think they all make good cases but the thing that stands out is their near total lack of evidence. It astonishes me that they feel that they can say anything at all about what they have, I think they just get so used to having nothing but textual criticism to go on that they begin to think it's real evidence. Bauckham - the theologian - has absolutely no evidence for that. It makes me laugh, they all have exactly the same data but form totally different conclusions from it. Did you watch that discussion between him Ehrman? "It's all about dates." I actually laughed. There were dozens of gospels, the four we have were the ones that won the argument, that's all. It could just as easily be a different selection; then you'd believe that. You could read that and learn something from it. It's not evidence Chuck, but why on earth do you need evidence? You believe what you believe, billions believe different things equally fervently.. It's a belief, that's what beliefs are.
​ Yeh, I know. It's sad and annoying.
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Suggest you rethink this. You are confusing evidence and conclusion, fact versus analysis."Christianity arose as a belief in the 1st century" is a conclusion from the preponderance of the evidence (what you erroneously call proof) from the independent writings and physical archeology of the time. This conclusion has such evidentiary support that it can be considered as accurate with high confidence on its own in discussion. For the popular vernacular it can be said to be fact though it is actually conclusion.You can cite with abundant confidence that Christianity arose as a belief in the 1st century. But you can only do so because you already know there is the preponderance of actual real facts (evidence) that can be cited in its support. No. Bad semantics. Bad logic.Evidence = fact = item of demonstrable reality. Proof doesn't enter into the picture. Proof is a specific term in math and is misused like this, often purposely, only by ignorant people. The only things we have are evidence, more evidence and a preponderance of evidence. We have found the preponderance of the evidence is a great indicator for reality and is treated as such.There can be no "individual belief" about the facts, the evidence. If a statement's veracity (validity) is in doubt by the scientific community then it is not fact, it is not evidence and cannot be put forward as such.Your "individual belief" is your personal incredulity and means nothing to the world's reality. Yes, evidence, by definition, is known to be valid or it is not said to be evidence.

Given the way God set this system up that can never happen. The lion can never lie down with the lamb because if it did, it would starve. Lions are required by god to eat lambs (or their non-metaphorical equivalent.)God, according to you, made humans both good and evil so unsurprisingly we have both Putins and Mother Teresas (who by-the-way, I regard as also evil, but off-hand I can't think of any thoroughly good celebrity.)Unless he's going to change the basis of how life on earth actually works, we're never going to achieve your nirvana. And if he could do that, why didn't he set it up that way in the first place? Why torture billions of people unnecessarily?I know you can't answer this, but for as long as you keep posting this stuff, I'm going to insist you address it.

Instead of using the vile and evil Mother Teresa as an example of goodness(which she was not), let's find someone else.
Rosa Parks?
Jimmy Carter?
Nelson Mandela?

It's pretty hard to find someone that's universally kind that's also a celebrity isn't it? Yet the list of universally evil is endless.It's going to be a woman though

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No matter where they live in the world, no matter what their cultural or family influences: In general, women are better at empathizing with other people than men, according to a study published Monday in the journal PNAS.

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Empathy: Women are better at it than men, study finds | CNNI think that study also demonstrates the base unfairness of his system - it's far easier for a woman to get into heaven than a man, he biologically conditioned them for it.

Agreed. That person is and needs to be a woman. Someone perceived as apolitical because the haters and trolls will bitch about anyone they perceive as political. But I guess "fuck 'em"Nominations for a woman representative of goodness. From last 1/2 century preferred.

They were ignorant and credulous at a time when science wasn't even a thing. They had Jesus say Hebrew scriptures because there was no actual record of what Jesus actually did say.--Percy