Choosing a faith

That's nonsense. Emotion may well be a factor but we can also look at what we do know, and the study what others have to say and research by whatever other means are available to form a conclusion.I've got shelves of books that I've read with a wide variety of views, I've done a lot of internet research including people, and yes I have read people like Hitchens, Dawkins etc to come to the conclusion that I have, regarding my faith. I don't have absolute knowledge but it is my best effort to come to the truth. Absolutely, but they also work to confirm what they believe is correct. When you vote in an election you form a conclusion about who will provide the best government. You don't know but you study the situation and form a conclusion. You don't know if you made the right choice or not but go with what you believe.

KInda close but I don't see it as being about leading a decent life. The thigs that we do or don't do are symptoms of what matters. What matters is our hearts and minds. Do we really do the things we do because we actually care about others or do we do it for show or maybe to relieve a guilty conscience? There are also all those who have grown up in abusive situations and aren't in the position or can't mentally do the loving thing.
I don't have answers to all this but believe and trust in a deity that ultimately will exercise perfect judgement in the life to come.I would add, once again, that we should focus on what we can do to make this world a better place in this life and deal with the next one when it comes along. Sure but you can maybe understand my frustration when people assume what they think I believe as a Christian. In actuality I'm much more in line with the theology coming out of your country than I am with N. American theology. I'm going to let CS Lewis answer that. Here is a quote from his book "The Last Battle'. Aslan. the Glorious One" is a Christ figure and Tash is a figure representing evil, in case you aren't familiar. Aslan is responding to a soldier who had been serving Tash.

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I )Aslan) take to me the services which thou hast done to him. For I and he are of such different kinds that no service which is vile can be done to me, and none which is not vile can be done to him. Therefore if any man swear by Tash and keep his oath for the oath’s sake, it is by me that he has truly sworn, though he know it not, and it is I who reward him. And if any man do a cruelty in my name, then, though he says he says the name Aslan, it is Tash whom he serves and by Tash his deed is accepted.

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I just was finishing up a reply to you on the EVC site and then it disappeared. That is why I like to copy your post to a word document and the responding on world and the copy and paste to EVE. I guess it results in strange symbols in place of apostrophes. I agree except that I would replace fantasy with mythology. Why is “written evidence’ not evidence. Sure, you want to look at as much information as possible to assess the accuracy of what is written but it is still evidence. I would say that everything that is written that is intended to be understood as non-fiction is evidence. That does not exclude the conclusion that it is completely or partially fabricated. It was you that brought that passage up and then you say you’re not going to play Biblical apologetics with me, when I refute your point. The terrain is rugged around Masada but the mountains are on the east side of the Dead Sea, is more likely what Jesus was referring to.
BTW, I really enjoyed the videos. It’s been nearly 25 years since I climbed to the top of the Masada site. It’s interesting, and I’d never heard it before, that Josephus seems to have misrepresented what Happened to some degree by saying that they all committed suicide but apparently there was a battle at the top of the Roman ramp. Wittgenstein was an interesting guy. It is all new to me but his religious views were a little vague but not as dismissive as I understand your views. This is from a wiki site.

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Wittgenstein's relationship with Christianity and with religion in general, for which he always professed a sincere and devoted sympathy, would change over time, much like his philosophical ideas.[81] In 1912, Wittgenstein wrote to Russell saying that Mozart and Beethoven were the actual sons of God.[82] However, Wittgenstein resisted formal religion, saying it was hard for him to "bend the knee",[83] though his grandfather's beliefs continued to influence Wittgenstein – as he said, "I cannot help seeing every problem from a religious point of view."[84] Wittgenstein referred to Augustine of Hippo in his Philosophical Investigations. Philosophically, Wittgenstein's thought shows alignment with religious discourse.[85] For example, he would become one of the century's fiercest critics of scientism.[86] Wittgenstein's religious belief emerged during his service for the Austrian army in World War I,[87] and he was a devoted reader of Dostoevsky's and Tolstoy's religious writings.[88] He viewed his wartime experiences as a trial in which he strove to conform to the will of God, and in a journal entry from 29 April 1915, he writes:
Perhaps the nearness of death will bring me the light of life. May God enlighten me. I am a worm, but through God I become a man. God be with me. Amen.[89]
Around this time, Wittgenstein wrote that "Christianity is indeed the only sure way to happiness", but he rejected the idea that religious belief was merely thinking that a certain doctrine was true.[90] From this time on, Wittgenstein viewed religious faith as a way of living and opposed rational argumentation or proofs for God. With age, a deepening personal spirituality led to several elucidations and clarifications, as he untangled language problems in religion—attacking, for example, the temptation to think of God's existence as a matter of scientific evidence.[91] In 1947, finding it more difficult to work, he wrote:
I have had a letter from an old friend in Austria, a priest. In it he says that he hopes my work will go well, if it should be God's will. Now that is all I want: if it should be God's will.

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I think that your assessment is well off the mark but I have gone over that several times already. I am fully aware that Ehrman rejects the resurrection as an historical event. I only mentioned him for his strong position that Jesus was an actual historical human being. Fine

I can't speak for GDR, but what I get from his statement is that he knows full well that there is a spiritual war going on in our society--likely by design--and that what seems obvious to the few of us who are believers seems just as ludicrous and fantasy-based to the majority of others. I can't give you any evidence (objective or subjective) that God exists, but I have concluded that not only does He exist, so does the presence of evil in the form of delusion. Whether or not evil is or will become personified in the fullness of the times ordained is yet to be seen. I don't know about you (or havent studied your posts well enough) but I have always maintained that God is worth investigating. At worst, in the unlikely reality that God did not exist, my ideas about Him and perception/belief of Him is always worth investigation and personal reflection. Of course, I go so far as to believe that if God actually did not exist, neither would we.(As we were created by Him and through Him) Which leads to quite a conundrum. Because here we are.
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Yes, but what's that got to do with religion? Or Christianity specifically? Doing the right things for the right reasons must include not doing it just to get into an afterlife, so why do we (you) need religions and prayer and worship and churches and bells and all the rest of the pantomime? Just being a decent person must be good enough - by your own admission. That's why I said you believe in your own form of liberal Anglicanism - it's basically the predominant form here - transitioning away into atheism and fuzzy forms of 'spirituality'. The only message of the bible that actually makes any sense is do as you would be done by. No religion necessary.
​ I'm not even going to read that, just tell me what you think.

You know that I will say that I prioritize #1 as well even if you don’t think that is the case. As for #2 it depends on the circumstances. In this case I don’t much care how long it takes. As for #3 I suppose we all have a bias but I try to stay focused on #1. As for #4 we all like a comforting feeling but I felt comfortable as an agnostic, as a cultural Christian and as a Christian. Couldn’t agree more No, hopefully the next life comes along for me later rather than sooner, but in the meantime I have been given this life to live and that is where my focus is. I’ll worry about the next life when I get there. I have done and continue to do all of that. Your problem is pretty much the same for all of you here, and that is that you can’t conceive of anyone looking at things and coming to a different conclusion than yourself. That holds true for you as well. You are not in a position to know that. I have spent a considerable amount of time to get to the truth of the matter well knowing full well that the truth I come to may not be the truth. I have spent thousands of hours reading different views on the subject and have seen those views often changing with additional ideas.I’ll go ahead on the assumption that you are a materialist or something close. You’re comfortable (#4) with that position as you can look at natural processes and can’t see anything that you consider as evidence of anything beyond that material. You are quite happy with the idea that conscious, and even sentient life can arise out of raw material by chance. I assume you mean the scientific method which can only examine the material. OK. Are we the result of mindlessness or are we the result of a pre-existing intelligence? We can scientifically examine and test all the evolutionary, chemical or any other process we want but that does not answer the question. That is an unevidenced conclusion. I look at the fact that life exists as it does and come to the unevidenced conclusion that we are the result of a pre-existing intelligence. I think that it is worthwhile investigating the question of the existence of God even knowing that whatever conclusion we come to we can’t prove it. We all have questions and we all decide what questions are important enough to us to work at coming to a conclusion. It’s a bit like when we have an election. Some people vote for a candidate for trivial reasons, some because of loyalty to a party and some because they make the time and effort to discern the character of a candidate and his/her policies. We all prioritize what it is that is important to us. In my case the existence or the non-existence of God is important to me so that is what I have largely focused on.

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You know that I will say that I prioritize #1 as well even if you don’t think that is the case.

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Well, we know that you prioritise what you want to be true over finding the truth. And in fact this is another example of exactly that.

I'm just a participant in this thread, but to back up what Ringo said, the Forum Guidelines say:

5. Bare links with no supporting discussion should be avoided. Make the argument in your own words and use links as supporting references.

This guideline was put in place when it was gradually realized that it isn't uncommon for people to post links for which one or more of these were factors:

1. They misinterpreted or misunderstood the link.
2. The link was not really germane to the current topic.
3. The link was very long or had many webpages and it wasn't clear which part of the link they were referring to.

The Moderator Guidelines don't suggest a specific period to wait for a participant to transition to a moderator role, but waiting three days since the last post has become traditional here. My last post as part of the discussion was two days ago, so assuming I don't post as a participant again, tomorrow I will transition to the moderator role in this thread where I plan to issue short but increasingly longer temporary suspensions to those who persistently or purposefully flout Forum Guidelines.--Percy

It seems like your first idea is to make sure that people understand "there is a spiritual war going on!"
It seems like science's first idea is "how to we help society be better?"One doesn't really do anything.
The other is always attempting to improve, regardless of whether or not a war is going on.Which do you think will help more? The thing is, God has been investigated.When we investigate "how does the body work?"
-we don't have to find only natural processes
-it's quite possible for us to "find God" or other supernatural processes... we just didn't find theseWhen we investigate "how to be a good person?"
-it's quite possible for the answer to be "follow God."
-but the results of the investigation show that following God does not accelerate one's ability to be a good person over a normal, natural, human desire to be a good personWhen we investigate "how was the earth formed?"
-it's quite possible for the answer to be "God created it."
-but the results didn't show that, the results show that the earth formed due to normal, natural processesWhen we investigate "why are we here?"
-it's quite possible for the answer to be "because God put us here."
-but the results do not show that, the results show only normal, natural processesSo, in many, many ways... science does investigate God quite a lot.
It's just that God doesn't happen to be involved in, well, pretty much anything and everything people said He was "definitely" involved in. If you want to understand the truth of reality - there is a method that humans have developed that is extremely good at identifying the truth of reality.
If you want to "feel better" - then feel free to use any other method.I just don't understand why someone would proclaim to "want to know the truth" but then ignore the results of our best-known-method for "knowing the truth."It just doesn't make a lot of sense.
Unless, of course, they are mistaken that their highest priority is "identification of the truth."

I'm going to try to clear up the evidence thing. No one said, "'Written evidence' is not evidence." I'm not sure what I said that made you think I was saying that. Why would anyone say that?That's not to say that writings can't be evidence. Of course they can be. But writings are not automatically evidence. They must be validated as evidence first. I was hoping to avoid using a definition of evidence where both the genuine and the fabricated are called evidence. This would be a very difficult way to talk about evidence, and it doesn't get you any closer to validating your claims that some accounts in the Bible are true, like that Jesus was real and was resurrected.It is much better to reserve the word evidence for something that's been validated, and to not use the word evidence for things that haven't been validated. They should be referred to more neutrally by calling them data or information or writings or documents or notes or artifacts or art. Only when validated and placed in a cross-correlative framework would they become evidence. If we use the word evidence in this way then we can see that the Bible is not evidence of miracles or prophecies or resurrections or messiahs buzzing around Jerusalem and witnessed by 500.I wrote about use of the board software once before, but it evidently bears repeating that when replying if you click on "Peek Mode" then you'll be able to copy-n-paste the original markup into your post. If you use this feature you'll be less likely to become misinterpret what you read, as is perhaps what happened here when the quotation lost it's formatting: Fixing this: No, it wasn't me who brought that passage up. The words that you quote as mine are actually yours from your Message 1352. It was you who brought that passage up, and then your terrible quoting in subsequent posts that led you to become so confused you thought I said them.I think we'd both like to continue the discussion, but we can't get anywhere while you're doing things like responding to your own words as if I'd said them. If you're real busy and are rushing through your replies then please just take your time. I'm in no rush. I'd like to see you take another stab at a reply where you patiently interpret each passage you read, and where you take advantage of the board software to make your responses easy to follow.Oh, about your suggestion that the mountains are the ones to the east of the Dead Sea, look at the region around the Dead Sea, including Jerusalem, using Google Satellite View. This will give you a good idea of where the bigger mountains really are, which is all around Jerusalem, and also west of the Dead Sea well south of Jerusalem (where the mountains are harder to discern because of the light coloring). The Masada region is very rugged. And the places where scrolls from that period have been found are all on the west side of the Dead Sea (mostly near Quamran at the northwestern tip of the Dead Sea), not the east.There are mountainous areas to the east of the Dead Sea, but looking at a map, in the time of Jesus it was the western side of the Dead Sea that was in Judea. The eastern side was in other countries, Perea and Nabatea: The evidence (i.e., facts) tells us that Jerusalem is already in the mountains, and this suggests that by mountains Jesus was most likely saying to take refuge in the mountainous regions outside Jerusalem, and perhaps in mountainous strongholds like Masada, although of course in 30 AD it was not in Jewish hands. That didn't happen until much later.--Percy

What difference does it make? The road to Hell is paved with good intentions - i.e. bad intentions with good results are better than good intentions with bad results.

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Matthew 7:13-14 Enter ye in at the strait gate: for wide is the gate, and broad is the way, that leadeth to destruction, and many there be which go in thereat: Because strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it.

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The things that we do are symptoms of what is in our hearts and minds.What believers claim about what is in their hearts and minds is all too often false.

Which of course is based on the fact that I don't agree with you.

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Which of course is based on the fact that I don't agree with you.

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Which is based on the fact that you tell obvious falsehoods. Band defend them past all reason.Want to explain why the third person is evidence of authorship? No, the fact that some authors use the third person when referring to themselves is not nearly enough - for reasons that should be obvious.

It isn't about being a decent person. It is about being a loving person and specifically one who is prepared to love sacrificially. The thing about Christianity is for one thing it should cause one to realize that the ability to love is a gift from God and it isn't just because you're a great guy. It helps keep you humble. Also it makes one grateful for the gift of life itself. Also through that knowledge and prayer it provides a path to being a more loving, humble, kinder and forgiving person than you would have been otherwise. C'mon, it's not long or hard. I've gone through several long documents from you guys on this forum. I even printed it all out for you and gave you background.

I can conceive of that.
I meant - people disagree on almost everything.But, when looking for the truth of reality - there's "the method that provides our best-known-way to identify the truth of reality" and their are "other methods."And, the thing is, everyone who uses an evidence-based-method-that's-shown-to-be-connected-to-reality all come to the same answer.
And everyone who has "a different conclusion" uses a different method and ignores certain aspects of our best-known-method.I don't see how you can profess that you "want to know the truth above anything" and then ignore our best-known-method for identifying the truth and come to conclusions based on different methods that are known to cause a high degree of being wrong. This is correct.
There is no way for me to tell the difference between God influencing my decision or if Satan is tricking me.
Which is why, according to an evidence-based process, I include neither in my conclusions on how our decisions are made.When you discuss "how our decisions are made" you include "God" when we're both well aware that God has never been shown to have any connection to reality. Just stories and imagination.Here, I'm following #1, while you're following #3 or #4 as higher than #1. Actually, I wish dearly that we had a God or something taking care of us and caring for us and making sure things turned out "right."
It would be nicer. I am now, yes - but I certainly didn't start that way.
Before, it was extremely uncomfortable for me to "not have an answer" and I was devoted to God because God was "an answer."
Now, after prioritizing #1 for so long that it's become my #3 and my #4... I think it's more amazing for something to develop from natural processes then it is for something with the power to create it to... exercise that power and create it.
One seems mysterious and amazing, the other... well... it doesn't seem very special as I do it every day (for the things I have the power to create, anyway.)But I already agreed that I was #1, #2, #3 and #4.
The idea is not to avoid #3 and #4 at all costs.
The idea is to not let #3 or #4 become a higher priority than #1, when looking for the truth of reality.And my acceptance of natural processes does not overcome my willingness to accept another explanation, if that explanation can be shown to be "closer to the truth of reality." The scientific method is one evidence-connected-to-reality based method.
But, so it checking my pocket to see if my car keys are in my pocket (and that's not the scientific method.)As well, the scientific method has no problems whatsoever examining the non-material.
It just so happens that we have yet to find any non-material anything in order to examine it.
But that's not science's fault. The current evidenced conclusion is that no pre-existing intelligence is required in order to have humans be the way humans are today.
We understand many, many natural processes that explain why humans are the way humans are today (including explanations for having large brains, and consciousness and laws/society and morality.)
There is much to learn, and much to grow in this area of study, and it is ongoing.Maybe tomorrow we will learn that God is necessary and included.
Maybe next week we will learn that Satan is necessary and included.
...but there is no indication from any evidence that is currently pointing in either of these directions.So, if anyone is following #1, the current conclusion must be "mindless."
If anyone happens to "come to a different conclusion" then they are obviously not holding #1 as a priority and are holding #2, #3 or #4 as a priority to come to conclusions that are, really, likely wrong - as they are not based on evidence-that-is-connected-to-reality.This is to not say that "mindless" is the "known-to-be-correct" answer... as the area of study is ongoing, and things therefore have a higher chance to identify new directions and head down other paths. But, if that's going to happen, then it needs to happen because it-can-be-shown-to-be-a-part-of-reality, and not because it makes anyone feel better. Why wouldn't it answer the question?If we examine and test all the evolutionary, chemical or any other processes... and we are able to evidentially show that humans are the way we are due to those evolutionary, chemical or any other processes... and those evolutionary, chemical or any other processes are all also shown to be "mindless" - why wouldn't this answer the question?
...because we're about 80% of the way down this path, and this is exactly what it's showing so far.If you follow #1, you have to accept that this is an answer to the question. There's no reason for it not to be an answer.The only reason it "can't answer the question" would be if you didn't want it to answer the question (for whatever reason.) And this would be #3 or #4 taking priority over #1. How do you investigate something, in an attempt to see if it is "connected to reality," without being able to show that your investigation is connected to reality?It seems like you're stringing "science-y" words together in order to say something like "I think that it is worthwhile to focus time on the existence of God regardless of whether or not God is known to be a part of reality."And, if one wants to know how reality actually is, the next question is - WHY? To this... I completely 100% agree. We all do prioritize what is important to us.#1 - Knowing the truth of reality is important
#2 - Doing things quickly is important
#3 - Confirming traditions is important
#4 - Feeling comfortable is important Fair enough.If your priority is #1 - then there's only 1 conclusion to come to: God does not exist.
-you will have to sacrifice traditions and comfortIf your priority is #2, or #3 or #4 - then you may very well come to another conclusion on whether or not God exists.
-you will have to sacrifice knowing that your conclusion is connected to realityThe choice is yours.