Mod writes:
Next Day Edit:
It occurred to me that there might be an yet another explanation for your quote above (and related comments), you might be suggesting that I won't believe in the miraculous conception unless I first believe in God. To this, I believe I have already agreed - it was a point I think you raised some time ago. This thread is not about you trying to convince me to believe, it is about you explaining why you think you have good grounds to believe as confidently as you do.
I hope you can see the significant difference between the two.
"Next day edit", thats funny, your always so official Mod. Do you still have the hangar in your shirt while your wearing it, ha ha, anywho. You are incorrect Mod it is very much a thread about me getting you to believe. Also, to believe in what belief is or is not. If you agree that belief in God is necessary to belief in the miraculous, then certainly you can see how these two constitute not olny evidence in such, but why we are so confident. Further, as we have seen there is very little comparison to the scriptures and any other source that equates God and the miraculous. Remember our Koran and Bible scenario? If you dont like that one give me another.
I am assuming you are aware of the problems with this thinking, so I'd like to hear how you have resolved them in a fashion that enables you to maintain the high degree of confidence you do have. For instance, the Holy Bible is just a collection of writings that various people have agreed at various times are harmonious. Those writings that are not harmonious are discarded.
There you go again Mod letting your humanism shine through.Certainly they are a collection of writings provided by insipration and intervention of an omnipotent God. Anyone certainly can manipulate, exclude or include things that are not inspired at various times and places in history. This no indication that the truth is not present in the fashion and method that God has chosen for it. Error always exists along side the truth. The ones that are discarded usually show themselves to be inconsistent with the history of the others that were believed to be the truth from the beginning.
Take the NT for example. It is no conincidence that you can reproduce nearly 98% of the Now existing books of the NT in the earliest church fathers. They knew early on what writings should be attributed to what authors and what the events actually were, much in the same way if we were to presently collect the writings of poets from 1800 to the present. In other words there would be no real disagreement. Try the same thing 2000 years from now, with the people of that day.
Now add to this its history, historical accuracy, textual purity to the earliest known scrolls, like that of Isaiah, the care taken by scribes, of people that believed they were handling and transcribing Gods Word and other evidences, coupled with the guidance of the Holy Spirit.
"Do not worry what you will say when you come before kings and rulers, it will be given to you in that hour".
"howbeit, when he the Spirit of Truth is come, he will guide you into all truth and show you things to come"
Mod, this is what the scriptures mean when it says, "the NATURAL man recieves not the things of the Spirit, they are spiritually undecernable". Not that you cant understand mentally, but that you reject even the obvious evidence of his existence, thereby disallowing the miraculous or trust that God can accomplish such small tasks as keeping his truth in tact over a few centuries. It may very well be true that some portion of evidence is missing or lacking due to misunderstanding of history, purposely discarded by God or the intervention of the miraclulous in those instances.
Finally, the harmony claim is surely undermined by evidence of collusion. When the police are gathering data they seperate the witnesses as early as possible so that they don't purposefully or accidentally harmonise their stories with one another. False memories can be created or holes in stories can be deliberately patched otherwise.
If you ask a witness to produce such an open ended report as 'give me as complete a biography of person x as you remember it' you would be suspicious if those witnesses include something like this
Forgive me for laughing while I read the above two paragraphs,but I can just see that hangar sticking you in the back while your writing, not that you shouldnt be critical, but surely you understand that there has to be a reason to suspect collusion, before can be suspected or attributed. What would be the reason you make this assertion in the first place. Can you provide a reason that motivate them to create a story that is going to bring only miery and death. To go along with your analogy, if they were arrested, why maintain the lie, if beatings and death were the end of thier collusion? This seems to make no logical sense.
Secondly, if as you indicated earlier that only the people after them believed in a lie, then I would point out that you would need to again demonstrate that they did not exist as the people they saythey were, they did not wittness those events and that there is some specific reason for collusion other than you dont like thier story.
I am not looking to argue each of these points, but I am wondering how you have come to have such a high degree of confidence in the claims made by these witnesses given these issues which would give pause to just about any teacher or police officer or parent?
The problem with your example here Modulous is that, it is the teacher, police officer, parent and nearly every other professional or lay person that believe these things, that is, the vast majority. Now why would the vast majority of people believe in God if there were no good reason Modulous? Or when they are challenged by opposing views of atheism, they go away seeing no reason still to reject such an obvious conclusion? Please, no speeches about fear of death, fear of the unknown, I am speaking about people in thier everyday walks of life, with no present threats. Obviously these people are aware of the collective evidence at hand.
The only PAUSE is by those that apply standards that are so ludicrous, that they dont even use them in thier own affairs, practices or beliefs. Or when they use them they do so to avoid CONCLUSIONS, which would require them to give an explanation for the scientifically derived evidences, of say biological evolution. "Science doesnt worry about those conclusions".
You didn't, unfortunately, give me any comparisons. Are there any claims that you believe with a confidence of more than 99.9% are true? What is your confidence in the claim that the planet earth exists? What is your confidence in the claim that Abraham Lincoln was president of the USA. What is your confidence in the claim that Henry VIII fell of his horse?
My confidence in the miraculous in the scriptures is excally the same and more in the exmples you provide. If not please provide the distinction that would cause me to discard it verses the examples you provided. Example I know the earth exists because I can see and experience it. In this same way I can know that finite contingent materials, with beginings and ends cannot be product of themselves no matter how much our experiental abilities take us.
Unless inspiration is involved, 2000 thousand years from now it may be highly questionable or believed that Lincoln was shot by JWB, in Fords theater, even if he is believed to have been president. The wittnesses to these events may be called into question and doubted.
You must first demonstrate a CLEAR reason for collusion to use it as an example of disbelief, this you have not done. You simply dont like thier accuracy in many areas and say it must be collusion. Got anything better?
If I was going to believe a claim which relies heavily on eyewitness testimony, I would have to be able to give good reason as to why I believed they were a) eyewitnesses and b) reliable
I agree, and the same would go for lies and collusion, correct? What makes you think they were not eyew/ or reliable, assuming you think they were real characters in the first place, or is that a problem too?
And even with those assurances I can't understand how you have the degree of confidence that you have. It seems wildly disproportionate to the quality of the evidence even if I accept that the YHWH of the Old Testament is a real entity and even if I accept that Jesus was really a miracle worker, it seems unreasonable to me to take Matthew and Luke's word about Jesus' birth with the level of confidence that you have proclaimed. I was hoping you would be able to explain, step by step, why you have the degree of confidence you do have.
The first three words in this paragraph are indicative of your biases before you start your thinking process. I think you are starting to see the difference in the expression, "even if I accepted that YHWH of the OT is a real entity and if I accepted that Jesus is a miracle worker" and actually believing it, make all the difference in the world and will provide you with the conduit that you need for a proper understanding.
Ill let any reader decide for themselves whether I have provided a step by step understanding of a confident belief in these matters.
D Bertot
Edited by Bertot, : No reason given.
Edited by Bertot, : No reason given.
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