Choosing a faith

Of course there is! It's not even demonstrated that Jesus even existed, the evidence for him being real is very poor. The authors - whoever they were - never met Jesus or witnessed any of the events they wrote about. Three of them copied someone else. Many of the key events in them are make believe and fantastical and some are known not to have happened at all - sermon on the mount is a prime example. It goes on and on. It's a work of fiction.

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There is no evidence that any known authors of any part of the Bible were knowingly or intentionally writing fiction.

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This does not seem to be true. It certainly appears that the stories about Daniel were created by the author in the 2nd Century BC.

You are making things up. No, we do not keep moving the goal posts on what is considered evidence. Here I am in 2010 in Message 50 in the Evolving the Musculoskeletal System thread: And here I am in this very thread: Back to your post: That's good to hear, but there has been no ambiguity and there have been no changes about what evidence is. Certainly confusion can result when everyone attempting to define evidence will do so in different ways, but the definition of evidence has not changed and is not changing. Evidence is what we observe, and we can only observe through our five senses. If you cannot see it, hear it, feel it, taste it or smell it then it isn't observational evidence.Science gets a bit more choosey about evidence by requiring formal data gathering techniques, and in much of science observations must be replicable (strict replication isn't possible is some parts of science).I try to avoid expressing myself in the exact same way every time, hoping that some variant in the way I explain something will make my meaning clear to you. I hope you don't think that when I take a different tack on explaining something that I'm "moving the goalposts." I haven't changed how I think about evidence in decades. The only thing that changes is the way I explain it.
​ You're not specific here, so it's difficult to comment, but when someone tells you you're wrong and you believe you're right then that's a starting point for discussion, not an endpoint. Talk this difference of viewpoint through until you find some common ground. Don't just keep repeating these things while ignoring efforts to engage you in discussion about why they're wrong.
​ You're being disingenuous again because you know I read all your posts. You know this because of the large number of your posts to other people that I've replied to.I don't know what is the matter with you. You seem like a really nice and rational guy who maintains a calm and polite demeanor, but when pressed you keep pulling this really dishonest stuff. Again, you already know that I read all your posts. Why would you let our disagreement on this matter cause you to say that I don't?In your posts I never noticed any resolution to this issue of non-Blblical sources of what you would like to consider evidence, so please explain what you think is in your posts that I don't think is there, and point me to the posts. What I recall is that your answers in this area are always along the lines of "We just disagree" or "We've come to different conclusions." That's just deflection, not rebuttal or discussion, and then you just continue repeating the same wrong things. Hey, but no worries. People love it when you blow them off and ignore what they say.
​ Well what do you know, you said just what I predicted you'd say. I had no idea you were going to say this because I don't read ahead when I reply to long messages. You are so predictable.How about addressing the core issue, namely that the author's declared intent to be accurate and truthful is irrelevant to whether that's was the actual result. Your ideas about intent being a relevant consideration have to be discarded or argued for. You can't just continue ignoring the objections to your use of author intent as a significant criteria. That's not discussion. That's just you using this forum to declare your unsupported opinions over and over again.
​ So tell us how you're influenced by the evidence you think you see in the Quran and the Bhagavad Gita.
​ It's untrue that I didn't address your point. You quoted me addressing your point. You asked, "What is the root cause of the evolutionary process?" and I answered that the evolutionary process follows inevitably from imperfect copying where changes are carried forward to the next generation to a degree dependent upon its impact on differential reproductive success. I've explained it a different way this time hoping it helps promote understanding. What's your response?
​ This has no bearing on the fact that you've been ignoring the explanations of how all evidence, be it ordinary or scientific, is based on observation. The actual problem that you're ignoring is that when I say, "You have no evidence," you respond "I have no *scientific* evidence." I added the emphasis, but that's how you mean it since no other interpretation is possible.But while you never address this key issue, you do go off in a different direction that is both ambiguous and wrong at the same time: There is never any proof, only evidence supporting certain inferences. Confidence can never reach 100%.And what does "It is belief" mean? You mean unevidenced belief, which is what you have? I don't think anyone here has any problem with unevidenced spiritual beliefs. It's when you say, "I have real world evidence that my spiritual beliefs are true," that people start raising objections.
​ I interpret this as meaning that consciousness is something we can observe, and that the existence of consciousness is evidence of God. Can you lead us through the logic on this one?
​ Now you're inserting distractions by making up things to complain about. You're behaving like you don't want this discussion to proceed in any productive direction.You presented an if-then, which breaks down naturally into the "if" and "then" parts. There was no distortion. I even inserted ellipses in the right places. Stop issuing false complaints and stick to the issues.
​ This argument was rebutted hundreds of messages ago. You don't see God when non-salt sodium and non-salt chloride combine to form salt, so what is it about non-conscious subcomponents combining to form something conscious that causes you to see God?
​ Miracle? The birth of a calf? Something that happens millions of times a year and a thousand times every hour? If you include the total number of new life every year it must be at least in the trillions (don't forget insects and bacteria).Lead us through the chain of logic that a sense of wonder, miracle, beauty and joy are observational evidence of God.And if the "miracle of life" is evidence of God, then what is injury, disability, birth defects, disease, old age and death evidence of?
​ That would be fine if it were true in your case, but it's not. You keep trying to claim you have evidence. Have you already forgotten that just above you claimed consciousness was evidence of God?
​ ​ Is there a point in there? Anyone curious about why the pipe is hot will have no problem tracing the pipe back and finding the source of heat. But that's unnecessary, of course, since we all live in the real world already know why the water pipe is hot. And if the pipe shouldn't be hot then people possess the skills to track down why it's hot by seeking evidence and making observations.
​ No. Objectivity demands that you not be influenced by subjective claims. You have to judge a work on the facts. You don't assume something accurate because the author stated accuracy was a primary goal. That would be backwards. You assess the work and judge how successful the author was in attaining his goal of accuracy.Your way of thinking makes you vulnerable, in the same way that Phat has shown he is vulnerable, to the false claims of scam artists and conspiracy theorists.
​ You're lying again. This is your very first sentence in your opening post, Message 1: So contrary to what you just claimed, the actual truth is that you care about the animosity a great deal.Why can't you just play it straight? You can't have things one way in one message and another way in a different message. We can see all your messages. They're all still here.So you do care about the animosity, and you can make it stop by ceasing these attempts to manipulate the discussion through selective deflection and avoidance. I think there's a good chance you're doing it unconsciously, but it's time to wake up. Well of course you do, but if you don't like being called a liar then don't lie. I use the word sparingly and carefully. It's ironic that you express distaste about being called a liar just after lying about not caring about the self-generated animosity toward you. I definitely find discourse with a liar frustrating and distasteful, but I dislike letting lies stand unchallenged even more. Well, how convenient for you. When you find a position difficult to defned you just start lying, get called on it, complain about getting called on it, then disengage with a "higher road" tone and the inconvenient discussion ends. How nice for you. I don't mind returning to your original point, but it's still underpinned by the nature of evidence. We're discussing evidence now, and I think we should finish that discussion. For example, you still believe the Bible, Papias, Polycarp, Tacitus, etc., contain evidence that Jesus was real but can't point to anything that any chronicler actually observed. At one point you said it was reasonable that Jesus is not noted in contemporary accounts because he was just a peaceful preacher who never led an uprising, but look at all the attention John the Baptist received. Yeah, a real war monger there.According to the Bible Jesus was a phenomenon throughout Judea and surrounding precincts. The lack of contemporary notice is telling. And the effort the Bible makes to turn John the Baptist into a subservient figure tells us how much more prominent a figure John the Baptist was, likely because he was real.--Percy

Nor is there any evidence that they were knowingly or intentionally writing news stories to wrap fish in. There is no (direct) evidence of their intentions.But we do know that some writers write fiction. You should learn to read. It's a useful skill.I didn't say it "was" fiction. I questioned GDR's claim that it is "clearly" non-fiction. I keep asking you and you never answer: Why do you keep talking about skepticism as if it was a bad thing? Answer me, please. Do you ever think for yourself? Well, the truth does tend to resemble the truth, whereas fiction and lies are more far-reaching. What relevance does that have?

I suppose, but when the fermulator crosses the ptolmin reflux inhibitor it causes a reaction in the reglokin centre of the brain.Sorry, but you seem to have considerable knowledge in that area which kind of beats my zero knowledge.

Understood. My point is that there is no evidence, as there should be, if energy were added from or leaked to anything, let alone a cosmic emotion generator.

I hold the view that our consciousness is non-physical uses the physical to function, and that all emotions stem from that.
I realize that I am in a small minority on this forum that holds this view however, I recently read a book by this woman. Sharon Dirckx is a Senior Tutor at the Oxford Centre for Christian Apologetics (OCCA). Originally from a scientific background, she has a PhD in brain imaging from the University of Cambridge and has held research positions at the University of Oxford, UK, and the Medical College of Wisconsin, USA.The book was called Am I Just My BrainThis of course only proves that I am not on my own with this view, and does not prove it to be correct.

And what evidence does she present for this non-physical consciousness?

Right, you hold a completely off-the-wall view on the basis of something you want to believe. That's the basic operating premise. This forum is irrelevant, what matters is the science. Why are you consistently seeking out the extremes? Don't answer, I know.But I asked why you're impressed by some emotions like love and kindness and ascribe them as godly but don't like to talk of their equal and opposites like hate and meanness. Who or what are they down to.​

One of the more idiotic fundamentalist proselytizing catch phrases was from C.S. Lewis (as I understand it, but have not verified since it's not important):

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Given everything that Jesus said about himself, he had to have been either a lunatic, a liar, or Lord.

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Besides the obvious problem that that was somebody else putting those words into the character's mouth (ie, it's a story!), that list left out the fourth and most important "L": Legend.Legends are built over time. You have a character who did or was something. Part of his fame involves people talking about him and repeating stories about him. One of the characteristics of those stories is that they change as they are retold, most often through embellishment based on the characteristics of the character (or at least of what the earlier stor(ies) say those characteristics are -- consider the worship stories around Trump giving him characteristics that he very clearly does not possess in real life). And new stories will arise constantly either by adapting existing stories of other legends or by creating new stories, but in both cases the new story will be created based on the characteristics of the legend and on what the teller thinks that the legend would do in this new situation.As these legends develop, the real person and his real history start to fade and be replaced, similar to how a buried organism gets replaced by minerals to become a fossil. In the end, the actual person is gone and completely replaced by The Legend. And as we can see with the admittedly bogus Trump legends, they can arise and spread and grow in a very short time.We have many examples of such stories. Most of what we know about US Presidents, especially from the Founding Fathers, is from legends about them.As for the question of whether the writers are knowingly or intentionally writing fiction, that actually should be split between the writer and the readers. For example, there's the genre of fan fiction in which the writers take an existing story (eg, Star Trek) and write their own stories around it. In those cases, the writer and the readers both know that it is fiction, even though heated debates can go on for years over what is and is not canon (as well as whether what's not canon should become canon because it's better).Then there's what we would call the conspiracy theory fringe. Do the writers of the original stories know that they are just stories? I can often trace those stories origins (or "oranges") back to pre-existing stories -- eg, V (1980's TV sci-fi series about reptilian aliens posing as humans), the blood libel (medieval rumors of the Jews kidnapping Christian children to drink their blood in their rituals, which is why you open the door during the Seder so that anyone passing by could come in and see for themselves that what you're drinking is indeed wine), power satellites become "Secret Jewish Space Lasers" (an idea by physicist Gerard K. O'Neill who advocated space colonies). Though while the writers know (or should know) that those stories are fiction, the readers take them seriously and believe them to be true.In the case of existing stories getting embellished, the teller who embellishes the story based on what the character would have undoubtedly done or said. Or else mis-remembered and erroneously confused a point in the story with another story. So in such a case, the teller would feel justified and the listener who wrote it down (perhaps after several retellings) would have believed it to be true. Such is the stuff of urban legends.The thing is that it started out as an oral tradition which eventually got written down, after which it got rewritten with further changes. We know very well how oral traditions work and what they can result in (consider the game of telephone ("Chinese whispers" in part of the Commonwealth) in which a message is repeated from person to person after which the final version of the message is compared to the original). That is obviously what happened to the Bible as it transitioned from oral tradition to written form (which also involved editors and committees dealing with many variant manuscripts, etc).I don't know who started the "Tales Told Around Campfires" subtitle, but that's about right. PS
 
BTW, the second phase of my college career was in computer languages. Interestingly, the skills I had learned working with human languages helped me with computer languages. 

It is a detailed discussion and not one I can summarize easily. Here is talk she gave on the book. It's 28 mins and you can disregard the 4 mins at either end of the talk. Am I Just My Brain

You then quote me as saying;I make it clear that I am saying one thing and then you attack something that I wasn't saying at all, trying to change the discussion.I made the first statement in my claim that the Gospel accounts were evidence, to be accepted or rejected. Many did and still do reject them, but they are and were then evidence. It was not a statement commenting on their reliability.

I asked a question and you simply come back with another question which is not a parallel at all. The answer to your question is neither. The cause is heavy rainfall or a myriad of other possibilities.

That's a good question, but as I said to Percy, that wasn't my point. I was simply trying to point out that the Gospel stories are evidence, (good or bad), which is confirmed by your question. The Book of Mormon is evidence that we can accept or reject. Again, that is an entirely different subject than what my point was.
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Hi nwr. We pretty much covered the view that there was insufficient reporting earlier in the thread and I am having trouble keeping up as it is.