Very interesting video. I thought it quite interesting when he said that "Propaganda" would be forgotten in 10 to 20 years - but the message has continued for millenniums. That we have to approach it with deep respect.
Thanks for the video
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Christians- How do you know Jesus and the Bible are true?
- Thread starter loverofhumanity
- Start date
Very interesting video. I thought it quite interesting when he said that "Propaganda" would be forgotten in 10 to 20 years - but the message has continued for millenniums. That we have to approach it with deep respect.
Thanks for the video
Can you make a case for some other kind of epistemic evidence?
So it's all a conspiracy. We're working for the opposing team.
"Evidence for faith" sounds a bit oxymoronic; evidence for the unevidenced. "People of faith" = "people of unwarranted belief."
No. That is not what's meant by faith. It's poetic gibberish.
How is belief 'assurance'?
How about when they're shown to be unwarranted?
I've noticed that.
How does God supply you with answers; by what mechanism? And why does He supply different people of different faiths with with conflicting answers?
This is an interesting perspective I haven't really put into thought quite like this. I might state it a little differently, in that this inappropriate expectation of evidence in regard to what is inherently ineffable and transcendent is in effect nothing more than a glorified strawman argument. It stuffs a soldier full of straw of their own design, and then knocks it down with the greatest of ease and calls that a victory; "If God were real, he would show up on deepfield scans of outer space, and since he doesn't, God isn't real".
The problem with this of course is that isn't evidence either for or against God. It is rather evidence for or against people's ideas about God. "There isn't evidence that supports the idea that God lives in a cave in the mountains", is a correct statement. "I don't believe that God exists, because there isn't evidence God lives in cave in the mountains. Therefore, I'm an atheist and don't believe any God exists," is a fallacy of logic.
Is it an excuse to avoid "God"? That's a challenging question, and I think the answers are more complex than that. Ultimately however, anything we do in life that avoids a confrontation with the Infinite, including being religious, can be that for us. But that's not just atheism. That's any of our human projects of Self-avoidance, or I prefer the term our "Atman Projects". We could start a whole thread on that.
Yes. Again, I think it's too convenient when people conflate faith and belief as the same things. Faith is not a get out of jail free card for logic fallacies and errors of facts. Those who treat it that way, are themselves guilty of not understanding and abusing what faith is.
Faith is our rooting and grounding that comes from one's sense, or intuition, or balance, of connection. It's our feet planted into the earth. Beliefs are what we hold in our hands to look at and consider and eat from for daily energy needs. Sometimes our beliefs have become overly ripe and are starting to rot. And which time, we are allowed to discard those 'edibles', and find fresher, more nutrient rich fruits to eat.
This is the problem with fundamentalist thought. It must be this apple and this apple alone, regardless of how decimated and full of worms it has become. Other apples must not be picked. This too, is a form of avoiding God, focusing on the beliefs, rather than sensing the earth beneath their feet. It's all "upper body", and no lower body awareness. They are disconnected from their legs, to expand on my metaphors.
Well, yes. I consider that when you meet a "True Believer", those that refuse to let go of their beliefs in the face of hard evidence to the contrary, such as denying the science of evolution in favor of a literal reading of the book of Genesis as a scientific account, that indicates a weakness of their rooting, or ground, or faith.
The weaker the faith, the more important the beliefs are, because that is all they have. But the stronger and more rooted that faith, or sense of self in the divine is, the less importance in "being right" becomes. Beliefs are held with much less of a tight grip.
It's like not having balance on your legs, and hanging on for dear life to that handrail. But if you have a sense of connection to your source, or ground, then you can just lightly touch that handrail instead, or even let go of it altogether if you are surefooted, bounding up and down those stairs with ease under your own sense of connection to the earth, or "God" in this metaphor. That is how I understand the "written on your heart" expression to mean in practical experience.
Handrail fundamentalism however, is the "chiseled in stone" expression. There is no inner balance and natural confidence. It's all external handrails, and only these handrails they are familiar with. Only handrails that are made of this type of pine from this part of the country. That is the epitome of spiritual insecurity, or lack of faith.
While I'm not a fan of Peterson, he does have valid insights into certain things. From what I have seen of this video so far, I very much find myself appreciated his thoughts. They echo my own quite well (up to the 4 minute mark I have watched so far). Something he said here I wish to repeat, as it very much echos things I have said in different ways.
However, the people who wrote these stories thought more like dramatists think, more like Shakespeare thought. But that doesn't mean that there isn't truth in it. It just means that you have to be a little bit more sophisticated about your ideas of truth. And that's okay. There are truths to live by.
This is definitely a more sophisticated understanding of religious faith and biblical materials than what you find in literalist views of scripture, which are then directly echoed in atheistic notions of God. What are your thoughts to what he said above?
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I also find most of Christ's teachings admirable, but they could be summed up in a couple of pages, with none of the rest needed, plus, most of the Bible predates them.
I also find much of Kalil Gibran, Gandhi, Martin Luther King, and Baha'u'llah admirable.
Moral exemplars aren't that rare, nor is morality evidence of divinity.
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Self fulfilling prophecy? Apophenia? People find their horoscopes reflect their experience, as well, even when they're given another sign's horoscope.
Moreover, people of many conflicting faiths make the same claim, don't they?
But they can't all be true. How does one decide, of not by objective, impersonal evidence?
The question was: "How do you know Christ and the Bible are true?
What makes you so sure?."
RestlessSoul
Well-Known Member
It’s arguable that all of Christ’s teachings could be summed up in a single verse, never mind a few pages;
John 13:34
Ghandi, incidentally, once said that all of Hinduism could be condensed into a single verse of the Upanishads. I don’t know which one, without looking it up. Actually what I think he said was, if all of Hindu scripture were lost, it could be reconstructed from that verse.
Hermit Philosopher
Selflessly here for you
If the central message in a horoscope was that if you live attentively, humbly and in service to others, you’ll be filled with great inner peace and contribute to much harmony in the lives of those you come across, the central message in that horoscope would be true, yes. It would be true for every single month too!
Put the method to the test for some time, if you don’t believe it works.
Humbly,
Hermit
Not following.
Miracle stories are common in all sorts of different religions, and ecstatic experiences are a well known phenomenon, with many different causes, not just Christian epiphany.
stvdv
Veteran Member
And Jezus called only Lazarus His friend
But we have all sorts of ancient books and writings. By this criterion you'd have to consider The Vedas, The Tibetan Book of the Dead and The Epic of Gilgamesh correct, as well. No?
?????????
But you could say that about almost any religion's scripture, couldn't you? Many religions have experienced persecution, yet persisted.
Have you read the Bible? It's full of factual errors and contradictions.
So do many books, both religious and secular. This is not evidence of biblical truth.
??????
How so? Hasn't it been used to justify all manner of evil and strife for centuries? Isn't God always on everyone's side?
Are you just preaching, here?
But people of many conflicting faiths cite this same gut feeling, and similar confirmatory experiences, so this doesn't seem like reliable epistemology.
As did the writings of many different religions and ancient legends. How does this evidence Christianity, in particular?
Psalm23
Well-Known Member
The disciples willingness to die and claiming they have seen Jesus risen is unique to Christianity. There is a video concerning the book of Daniel that I found rather impressive as well that involves prophecy and history.
The point was that people believe what they want to believe, and find personal relevance in almost anything.If the central message in a horoscope was that if you live attentively, humbly and in service to others, you’ll be filled with great inner peace and contribute to much harmony in the lives of those you come across, the central message in that horoscope would be true, yes. It would be true for every single month too!
High school exercise: teachers pass horoscopes out to students, corresponding with their Sun signs. Most of the students agree that the horoscopes seem largely accurate. Then the teacher reveals she has mixed up the horoscopes randomly.
See my first sentence. Subjective evidence is not reliable.
What method, and what do you mean by "working?"
PureX
Veteran Member
I have no need to be "sure" as I am not afraid to be unsure. In fact, being unsure seems to be the natural state for a human being to experience.But I can know via personal experience whether an idea works or not. And "Christ" is an idea. In fact, it's an ideology. And when I apply that ideology to my actions in life, I find that the ideology works for me in a positive way. And I can see it doing so for others, too. So I choose to keep trying to apply this ideology to my circumstances in life.
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Could you sum up the video's argument in a nutshell, please?
There are True Believers and martyrs in many different religions. Moreover, "The disciples willingness to die and claiming they have seen Jesus" is part of the narrative. A story claiming its own truth isn't evidence of veracity.
In this video, he very much echos my own thoughts about the Bible and its stories. There is truth to them, but not in the sense of historical and scientific truths. It's on a different order than that. Here's a few quotes that I grabbed out of it so far as I've been watching it.
"However, the people who wrote these stories thought more like dramatists think, more like Shakespeare thought. But that doesn't mean that there isn't truth in it. It just means that you have to be a little bit more sophisticated about your ideas of truth. And that's okay. There are truths to live by.
---
It isn't easy to read the Bible literally, because it is full of literal contradictions. And whatever it is, especially the really archaic stories in Genesis, it's not history the way we think of history.
And so that's hard for people to see how that might still be true. If it's not literal, how can it be true? And this is a discussion that I tried to have with Sam Harris a lot, because the atheist types, the rationalist types, there's something they miss.
What they miss is that fiction isn't false. It's not a lie, right? It's not literal, but it's not a lie. And great fiction is true, but it never happened, so how can it be true? And the answer to that is something like well, there are patterns in things, deep patterns, deep recurring patterns.
Human nature, the fact that we're human, that humanity itself is a recurring pattern. It has characteristic shape. And great fiction describes the shape of that pattern. And the greater the fiction becomes, the more it is religious in nature. And that's not even a claim about the nature of truth. It's more a claim about the nature of experience.
When we say something is profound, what we mean is that it's moving and that is has a broad influence. It's capable of having a broad influence on the way we think and see and act."
This all sounds identical to things I myself have been saying here in RF, both to atheists and to Christians. How do you feel about what he says above? Do you understand how someone can see great truth in the Bible, without believing it literally?---
It isn't easy to read the Bible literally, because it is full of literal contradictions. And whatever it is, especially the really archaic stories in Genesis, it's not history the way we think of history.
And so that's hard for people to see how that might still be true. If it's not literal, how can it be true? And this is a discussion that I tried to have with Sam Harris a lot, because the atheist types, the rationalist types, there's something they miss.
What they miss is that fiction isn't false. It's not a lie, right? It's not literal, but it's not a lie. And great fiction is true, but it never happened, so how can it be true? And the answer to that is something like well, there are patterns in things, deep patterns, deep recurring patterns.
Human nature, the fact that we're human, that humanity itself is a recurring pattern. It has characteristic shape. And great fiction describes the shape of that pattern. And the greater the fiction becomes, the more it is religious in nature. And that's not even a claim about the nature of truth. It's more a claim about the nature of experience.
When we say something is profound, what we mean is that it's moving and that is has a broad influence. It's capable of having a broad influence on the way we think and see and act."
The OP asks:
"How do you know Christ and the Bible are true?
What makes you so sure?"
So far, most of the answers have been subjective, irrelevant, or have not followed, logically. I am not seeing anything epistemically convincing, here. People seem to be proposing bad, post hoc rationalizations.
"How do you know Christ and the Bible are true?
What makes you so sure?"
So far, most of the answers have been subjective, irrelevant, or have not followed, logically. I am not seeing anything epistemically convincing, here. People seem to be proposing bad, post hoc rationalizations.
The Bible is replete with internal contradictions and errors of history and science. That disqualifies it as a reliable source.
What you are being told by experienced critical thinkers is that they will not believe in gods (or anything else) without sufficient supporting evidence according to the academic rules for interpreting evidence. Personally, I don't ask believer for that supporting evidence. I know they don't have it. I might disagree with somebody who claims he does by pointing out how he has misinterpreted his evidence. I might disagree with what he calls evidence, often something not evident. I might disagree that his evidence makes gods more likely to exist, and note that nothing can be called evidence for or against an idea that doesn't make it more or less likely to be the case. And I like identifying and naming logical fallacies in these arguments. But as far as asking a believer to support his beliefs, I don't. I know that they are faith-based, not evidence-based.
The agenda of the critical thinker is to avoid holding false beliefs and to accumulate only demonstrably correct ones. Faith is not a path to truth. That's self-evidently true, since whatever can be believed by faith, so can its polar opposite. This is a method that can't tell a correct idea from an incorrect one, and which is orders of magnitude more likely to be faith in a wrong idea that a correct one, since the former far outnumbers the latter.
I disagree that it is inappropriate to withhold belief absent sufficient supporting evidence for that belief. The claim that gods are inherently transcendent or ineffable doesn't make it so or make gods real. What you are describing is something that is undetectable not just contingently while awaiting for the right detector to be placed in the right place, but necessarily undetectable, which is also the description of every nonexistent thing. Why give this one unevidenced idea any more credence than any of the others like succubi, ghosts, Santa, werewolves, and leprechauns? Would it matter to you if I called them transcendent? I understand that believers are frequently offended by such comparisons. If so, I apologize. Feel free to substitute your own example of something you also cannot detect.
Critical thinking is a defense against indoctrination and false belief.
And what do you say to someone who finds those teachings less than impeccable? The wife and I were discussing this just last night with the neighbors over wine. One said that surely I must find much of the moral advice in the Bible sound, and I agreed, but noted that there were several points of departure between what I consider moral and what scripture teaches, much of which I consider harmful. It's the rational ethics of humanism that has advanced the religions morally. To the extent that it has learned, which is incomplete, humanism taught Christianity that democracy freedom of and from religions is preferable to theocracy, that homosexuals and atheists are not abominations, that people aren't property, and that women are the equal of men.
That's an interesting comment. So, if you see an error, you use your common sense and discrimination to call it that and reject it? Then what? Go on trusting the source anyway? If that's correct, how is that not the definition of blind faith belief in the absence of sufficient supporting evidence or in the presence of falsifying evidence? I do the opposite when I see an error. It's why I'm not a Christian any longer.
So has the propaganda. Look at the word and its root. People have been propagating this religion and its scriptures all of that time, sometimes at the point of a crusader's or conquistadore's sword, sometimes with missionaries, sometimes in Sunday schools, sometimes by putting Bibles in hotel rooms, and even sometimes advertising during the Super Bowl. Super Bowl ads will tout Jesus 'gets us' to the masses - ABC News (go.com)