Choosing a faith

Have you passed this discarding of a basic Christian principle by any other Christians? Isn't one of the big promises made to Christians throughout history, especially those worst off, that they will get their reward in the next life? How much of a thousand or two years of Christian belief are you willing to toss aside?I'm saying this not because we care which parts of Christianity you accept, reject or modify, but just to call it to your attention when your ideas stray miles and miles away from long accepted Christian doctrine. If you can't even provide evidence for mainstream Christian ideas, how are you going to provide evidence for those ideas that are uniquely your own? It all comes down to faith, not just about this "lion laying with the lamb" issue, but all the other issues, too. Why isn't faith enough for you? Why do you feel it essential that your faith be bolstered with evidence? Why should we only avoid eating life that has a nervous system? Why isn't it bad to eat any life? Science might one day discover the pain and horror vegetables experience as they are plucked from the vine before being sliced, diced, boiled and eaten. Imagine the torture grain experiences as threshers rip it asunder seeking its seeds. Why should people be the only life in God's creation exempt from being consumed?Of course there are practical considerations... Other than that we have different conceptions of God, same for me. Why can't that be enough?--Percy

Just how many turnip twaddlers do you own? --Percy

Phat, the evidence has been overwhelming. For all of humanity’s history an individual’s religious beliefs were geographically acculturated. We learned them at home. This is a documented historical fact. You can’t ignore it away.“He chose us” is an article of your faith meant to lend superiority to your “us” versus “them” archaic fantasies. At the time, the younger you had no choice in your inculcation. You weren’t even aware that anything other were possible. Yes, indeed. This is overwhelming evidence of emotion’s power to rule over reality in a susceptible mind. And its aftermath is evidence of flawed perceptions and critical thinking errors based on your willingness to accept past fantasies as real.The sensations, the thoughts, the experiences were real. They were felt … in your mind. That initial salvation experience was your mind experiencing a temporary chemical imbalance in the perception and logic circuits maybe brought on by something as usual and non-divine as a thought of some existential dread but this time coupled with a much too spicy burrito.

Interestingly, in the Olivet Discourse Jesus appears to confess that his miracles are fake:

quote:

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For false messiahs and false prophets will appear and perform great signs and wonders to deceive, if possible, even the elect.
  —Matthew 24:24

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He's saying others will come after him performing the same miracles and that these miracles will appear as miraculous as his own but that they should not accept them as actual miracles. But if these miracles aren't real but are indistinguishable from Jesus's own miracles then how can they be sure that Jesus's miracles were real.The obvious answer is that they cannot.The whole religious thing with miracles is hokum anyway. The RCC actually has a process for deciding which inexplicable events are miraculous, as if anything could be more absurd.--Percy

Your think that Christian apologists are increasingly concluding that the Sermon on the Mount was real? What makes you think this?Even it were true, you're drawing upon a diminishing population. I don't know about Canada, but in the US the percent of the population that identifies as Christian has declined by around 15% over the past 15 years, from around 78% in 2007 to around 63% today. Meanwhile the religiously unaffiliated has grown from around 16% to 28%.Also worth noting is that among the diminishing Protestant population the percentage of evangelicals is increasing. If you're correct about apologist opinion about the Sermon on the Mount, that might explain it. It's not because Methodist and Lutheran theologians are increasingly thinking this, but just that Protestantism is becoming increasingly fundamentalist.--Percy

Lemme fix your link. hmmmm... 700?

He is addressing His people(the Chosen...the Jews.) He is reminding them that if they don't stand for something(God) they will fall for anything.(gods) Thats my take, anyway.

No.Note my post to Percy above. If you refuse to stand for God, you will fall for every majik mushroom, Sedona Vortex, and creation of your ego that comes along. Wanna be chosen? Then you must choose. My advice is to choose wisely. Mother Nature, though impressive, is limited. The universe is full of cool stuff.

So in your mind, being skeptical is better than being assured. Got it. And I can see your point. There is one legend, and we ain't Him.AddByEdit:Neither is the spaghetti Monster, Bigfeet, Allah, or Stephen Hawking. This is a multiple choice test. Choose Wisely.

Maybe he does not know what the word means?

I looked it up. I was born at night but not last night!

Think about what you're saying, that people feel that armies, wars and politics are much more worth recording than miracles and resurrections. They only believe miracles and resurrections from 40-150 years in the past are worth writing about. You don't have a record. You have religious stories. Now you're just making it up. There's nothing in the historical record about Romans using temple destruction to quell rebellions. If you think there is then tell us what temples were destroyed to quell the rebellious armies that opposed Roman rule during the roughly first century period. You're putting thoughts into Jesus's head that there's no reason to believe were there. Again, tell us please about this Roman record of temple destruction. Here's a list of 1st century revolts against Rome. Please tell us which temples were destroyed. On the contrary, anyone writing an account of Jesus's life with an eye toward persuasion would very much have wanted to credit Jesus with having the gift of prophesy. Largely gone but certainly not forgotten. The Jesus stories in circulation had his opposition to the Sudducees of the Temple as a driving force behind his death. Why would the gospel writers leave out this part of the story just because the Sadducees were no longer a force after the destruction of the Temple? The stories that came down to the gospel writers contained large elements of the Temple era. They wouldn't leave out the Sadducees in a story about 30 AD just because they were writing in the post-Temple period. Again, the gospel writers wouldn't leave out elements of the stories that were very relevant to what happened to Jesus. You're agreeing with my point but phrasing it like rebuttal. I said the gospels were not cross-correlative independent accounts. In case it isn't obvious, that means they had a single source or possibly were developed by independent communities that shared information. We're in agreement that the stories were spread orally and sprang from a single source. I also believe there were written sources earlier than the gospels that haven't survived, like the purported Q. You contend lots of things for which you have no evidence. Why would what I believe spiritually have any relevance in this thread? My beliefs are strictly mine, they are shared by no one else except by coincidence, and they have absolutely no evidence whatsoever that I am aware of.--Percy
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What was the appearance or symptom that makes the link look broken to you?--Percy

The link is fixed now. I saw that no image came up. The screen said image not found. I peeked to see how the link was entered. it had what I thought was a broken (or mistaken) link by you (of all people! ) my curious George brain tried to fix it and I learned through trial and error (and hitting preview again and again) what not to do. Today, the image popped up correctly on both your broken link page and my "fix broken link" response.One unknown clue came when I saw that you had inserted "700" in your broken link and so I assumed you wanted to highlight the term "700" with the numerous books (turnip twaddlers) that I read on an ongoing basis.

Quite possibly in contradiction to popular belief, I did attempt to trim this post down and remove duplicate-ish stuffs. I also moved some quotes around to make my own flow for this post, so it's not all in chronological order of your post. Just let me know if I trimmed something you really wanted me to focus on. The ones supported by the evidence.
The ones that are shown to be valid.
The ones that match ALL the things we experience, not just a personally-chosen subset.Please note the word "experience."
Seeing can be an experience, but it is not the only one.
Touching can be an experience, but it is not the only one.
Feeling can be an experience, but it is not the only one.
Material things can be an experience, but they are not the only ones.
Non-material things can be an experience, but they are not the only ones. Let's assume this is true.Why jump to a conclusion that God influenced you to make your decision?
Why not Satan, playing the long-con, pretending to be God in order to gain your trust your entire life so that your children will follow Satan, and he will have you and all your children be wonderful, nice people (following the good influence of Satan-that-you-think-is-God) so that he can actually do something evil with your great-great-great-grandchildren? After all, what's a few hundred years to the devil?
Why not something that's not God at all but has this God-like ability to help you reach such a conclusion?
Why not a Goddess you've never heard of?
Why not the God from another planet or universe?
Why not magic?
Why not Santa?
Why not leprechauns?
Why not nothing at all?
Why not "this is just how humans work"?We don't seem to have any evidence at all for most of those options.
We do seem to have some evidence for "this is just how humans work" - after all, for every other aspect of humanity we thought "came from God" - after some studies, we find that it was just "how humans work."If you want to identify the truth about reality - why not follow our best method for identifying the truth about reality?
If you want to follow one of the other options that's actually likely to be wrong (as we know is the case for other non-evidenced ideas) - perhaps you don't actually want to identify the truth about reality, and you actually want... something else? I would rather look at what we can find. Which would include looking at what we don't know.
If all we did was look at what we know - growth would be incredibly slow, and quite likely incorrect.
Correctness is measured by testing against reality (ie - evidence.)
Correctness is not measured by sitting around doing logical thinking and making logical conclusions. Science actually does use philosophical thought. There's even a subset focused on The Philosophy of Science
A few points of note:

• There was a time where philosophy was thought to be the best method of identifying truth (before our current understanding of science evolved)
  -the issues that arose are exactly why the current understanding of science evolved the way it did
  -the issues are, mainly, that it is quite possible for one to "logic" themselves into thinking certain things are true, when they are not
• The Philosophy of Science was actually used in order to stop relying on philosophy alone, and only incorporate it
  -use philosophy (and other logical thinking) to guide/lead scientific study into likely avenues of knowledge growth
  -ensure that philosophical (or other logical thinking) is not used to "identify conclusion"
  -ensure that all conclusions are tested against reality (ie - shown to be valid) in order to be a confident conclusion

It seems like you do not approve of this and that you think "the proper manner" should include more reliance on philosophical (or other logical thinking) in coming to actual conclusions about reality.
However, if you look into the history on this, this has been tried in history, and many times since then... and leads to simply being wrong way, way too often.-philosophical/logical thinking is known to often lead to being wrong about reality
-philosophical/logical thinking cannot confirm anything
-evidence is never wrong about reality, because evidence IS observations of reality... and is only known to lead to more knowledge about reality
-evidence can tell us when we're wrong about previous assumptions about reality, and evidence can confirm when previous assumptions are right about reality
-the only time we know when philosophical/logical thinking is correct, is when it is confirmed with evidenceScience has learned this, and this is exactly why science is the way it is.
Science does not ignore philosophical/logical thinking... this is a big part of science. It's used immensely in identifying areas of study (hypothesis) and methods of study (observations.) Just not the part used to confirm conclusions. Because it's known that it can't confirm or deny... only evidence can do that (as far we know right now.)This doesn't mean evidence is the only way to confirm/deny conclusions... it's just the only way we currently know of.
If you're able to identify another way, science is always looking to grow. You just have to show it to be valid.Example:Let's say we had a book.
A book from thousands of years ago.
This book contains many things - history, predictions, how to be a good person, why the world is the way it is.
Let's call this book The Vible.
If we were to study this book, and it was always verified... every historical account was accurate. Every prediction fulfilled perfectly. No one argued over its methods on how to be a good person (except for bad people) and the world actually was the way it said it was.
...The Vible would then become an extremely important part of Science.
Science would look to the Vible for answers... because it's always correct... the Vible has been shown to be valid.
Then, one day, Science realized that if they asked questions around the Vible in a certain way... the Vible would grow a new page with answers to those questions.
And those answers were always correct.
This would be even more evidence in the non-material aspects of the Vible and how it's always right.
And Science would depend more and more on the knowledge gained from reading the Vible.The point is:
Science doesn't care about material vs. non-material.
Science only wants to know about the truth about reality, by any means at all - any way that's shown to be valid.
This could be through evidence, or the Vible, or aliens, or GDR's opinion, or mob mentality, or non-material sources, or thoughts-being-injected-into-our-brains.
Science doesn't care - it just needs to be shown to be valid.The second it's shown to be invalid... then science dumps it and picks up the next best thing.
If you were to show that GDR's opinions are better than evidence for identifying the truth about reality - Science would scrap evidence in favour of talking to you. Science would only use evidence if GDR was too busy on other matters.
If you were to show The Vible actually existed - science would dump evidence completely and only use The Vible to make advancements and learn more about reality.Science doesn't care about the method. Only learning more about the truth of reality.
Science has merely developed "our best currently known method" for learning about the truth of reality.
And a big part of that method is philosophy! Just not the "measuring-correctness" part.