There is no evidence for God, so why do you believe?

[Polymath257]

Wildswanderer said: ↑
Science has to be testable or it's just opinion.


Do you disagree for argument's sake?
If the scientific method is not used to determine an idea, it's still science? Is that what you are saying?

Yes, testable, not necessarily tested yet. And no, if the hypothesis isn't *testable*, then it isn't science. This is where religion usually fails.

 

[Sheldon]

Sure you do, there are 2 sides to the views of who wrote the Gospel of John. The apostles, all of them were eyewitnesses who wrote the books of the Bible. Pail was also an eyewitness, so whether people believe what’s written or not is up to them.

Those are assumptions, and incorrect, I made none. Paul never met Jesus, Mathew Mark Luke and John are fictional names that didn't appear until the 2nd century, and were assigned arbitrarily at the first council of Nicaea over three centuries after the alleged events the gospels narrate.

I received from God and after that He gave me understanding of the Scriptures which I live out and know that He is ultimately the author of the Scriptures through the Holy Spirit. This is shown all through Scripture.

Your unevidenced hearsay anecdotal claim is meaningless, it is certainly not evidence or sound argument. Also it has been pointed out to you innumerable times this method is unreliable, as other theists use the same method and believe in totally different religions and deities. You have yet to candidly address this.

 

[ElishaElijah]

"Like the three other gospels, it is anonymous,"Gospel of John - Wikipedia


Why You Should Not Believe the Apostle John Wrote the Last Gospel


Why You Should Not Believe the Apostle John Wrote the Last Gospel • Richard Carrier

That John is responding to Luke is actually a growing consensus in Johannine studies; likewise that John has been multiply redacted, such that our version is not the one originally written. … External evidence placing the Gospel of John’s appearance in history is also the scarcest [relative to the previous three Gospels]. It could have been written as late as the 140s (some argue even later) or as early as the 100s (provided Luke was written in the 90s [which a growing consensus now considers its earliest likely date]). I will arbitrarily side with the earlier of those dates. John was redacted multiple times and thus had multiple authors. (This is already the consensus of Johannine experts.) Nothing is known of them. John’s authors (plural) claim to have used a written source composed by an anonymous eyewitness (21.20-25), but that witness does not exist in any prior Gospel, yet is conspicuously inserted into John’s rewrites of their narratives (e.g. compare Jn 20.2 with Lk. 24.12 [likewise his insertion into the fishing story and last supper story and crucifixion story and his replacement of the resurrections at Nain and Gerasa]) and so is almost certainly a fabrication (as I show in Chapter 10, §7).

I cover the evidence and scholarship on all this in the most detail in Chapter 10.7 (Ibid., pp. 487-506). But one of the most important points I develop there is that the original authors of John clearly intended their unnamed “beloved disciple,” the one they claim as their source, to be none other than Lazarus. Who is most definitely a made-up person, invented by the authors of John to reify and reverse the teaching of Luke’s Parable of Lazarus (pp. 500-05), which Luke designed as an argument for why people should believe without direct evidence of any resurrection (thus, Luke knew of no Lazarus or Doubting Thomas tale to cite instead; to the contrary, his Parable was in fact an attempt to explain why there wasn’t any). Well, that argument the authors of John despised (pp. 489-90), and thus replaced by fabricating evidence for resurrections, not only through John’s ridiculously trumped up narrative of Jesus’s resurrection—complete with a Doubting Thomas fondling the open wounds in Jesus’s risen body, a story found nowhere in any prior Gospel or the Epistles of Paul, despite it being the most powerful and informative tale one could ever have attested and thus could never have been omitted by four prior authors (it also lies at the end of a long process of gradually exaggerated fabrication, starting with a merely missing body in Mark, then moving to the feet the women touch in Matthew, to the hands and feet grabbed by the Apostles in Luke, to the wounds fondled in John)—but also in John’s completely fabricated resurrection of Lazarus, which John depicts as so incredibly famous it was the reason the Sanhedrin started plotting to kill Jesus (and even Lazarus), another detail no previous author could have overlooked. Thus the authors of John converted a fictional person who wasn’t raised from the dead to prove the faith into a real person actually raised from the dead to prove the faith. This is so obviously fiction that it is astonishing anyone would be so foolish as to believe it.

Richard Carrier is an atheist, skeptic and activist, wouldn’t call him a un-biased source of scholarship. Definitely not the consensus of all biblical scholarship and the way he communicates shows this as well.

 

[Sheldon]

Why ask me questions if you think it’s a fantasy? Stop asking me questions.

In a public debate forum? Anyone is entitled to post questions and subject any and all claims to critical scrutiny, that's how debate works. There are countless forums on this site that are echo chambers to various beliefs, if that's what you want.

 

[Polymath257]

Richard Carrier is an atheist, skeptic and activist, wouldn’t call him a un-biased source of scholarship. Definitely not the consensus of all biblical scholarship and the way he communicates shows this as well.

So, if someone was initially a believer, but looked at the evidence and became a skeptic, that would make them biased?

But if someone was initially a skeptic and looked at the evidence and became a believer, that would NOT be biased?

Only those that agree with your interpretation are unbiased?

 

[ElishaElijah]

Those are assumptions, and incorrect, I made none. Paul never met Jesus, Mathew Mark Luke and John are fictional names that didn't appear until the 2nd century, and were assigned arbitrarily at the first council of Nicaea over three centuries later.



Your unevidenced hearsay anecdotal claim is meaningless, it is certainly not evidence or sound argument. Also it has been pointed out to you innumerable times this method is unreliable, as other theists use the same method and believe in totally different religions and deities.

My claims verified the Bible was in fact true.
Also, the council of Nicaea purpose was because of the false teaching and heresies that infiltrated the Church so they wouldn’t have introduced fictional names even if you believe what you’re saying.
Also the council didn’t even include the Jewish believers which was also a mistake of the council.

 

[Sheldon]

Richard Carrier is an atheist, skeptic and activist, wouldn’t call him a un-biased source of scholarship.

He was a Christian, and it was his objective study of the history and origins of the gospels and bible, that caused him to realise how little evidence supported most of it. His reputation as a biblical scholar and historian are beyond repute.

Definitely not the consensus of all biblical scholarship

If you're talking about the anonymous authorship of the gospels it certainly is. It's written into most bibles nowadays as well.

 

[Sheldon]

My claims verified the Bible was in fact true.

No they don't, they are unevidenced subjective anecdotal hearsay, and again you have yet to address how unreliable such claims are, since they are used to arrive at beliefs in different religions and deities.

Also, the council of Nicaea purpose was because of the false teaching and heresies that infiltrated the Church so they wouldn’t have introduced fictional names even if you believe what you’re saying.

It is an accepted fact those names are fictional, and were assigned by the first council of Nicaea to lend credence to the gospels.

Gospels Not Written By Matthew, Mark, Luke or John

 

[ElishaElijah]

So, if someone was initially a believer, but looked at the evidence and became a skeptic, that would make them biased?

But if someone was initially a skeptic and looked at the evidence and became a believer, that would NOT be biased?

Only those that agree with your interpretation are unbiased?

I put a lot more credence in other scholars instead of a 50 year old activist. You don’t just throw out all the previous scholarship for thousands of years and all of the sudden he has some new finding.

 

[ElishaElijah]

No they don't, they are unevidenced subjective anecdotal hearsay, and again you have yet to address how unreliable such claims are, since they are used to arrive at beliefs in different religions and deities.



It is an accepted fact those names are fictional, and were assigned by the first council of Nicaea to lend credence to the gospels.

Gospels Not Written By Matthew, Mark, Luke or John

List of biblical scholars:
List Of Bible Scholars - Believers Portal

 

[Sheldon]

I put a lot more credence in other scholars instead of a 50 year old activist. You don’t just throw out all the previous scholarship for thousands of years and all of the sudden he has some new finding.

It is your position and not Ehrman's that is at odds with the scholarly consensus that the authorship of the gospels is unknown. Some may hold unevidenced beliefs, but as a discipline history doesn't recognise beliefs as corroboration of a claim. You are woefully wrong here, but may take some solace that a staggering number of Christians seem to share your ignorance of this simple fact.

 

[Sheldon]

List of biblical scholars:
List Of Bible Scholars - Believers Portal

The gospel authorships are unknown, the names Mathew Mark Luke and John were made up by early Christians, first appearing in the second century, and were assigned arbitrarily in 325 by the first council of Nicaea. Your subjective believers list has zero relevance? Paul never knew nor met Jesus either. There are o eyewitness accounts, only claims for such, none of it can be substantiated independently, which is why there is a broad scholarly consensus among historians only for the existence of an historical figure named Jesus and his crucifixion.

 

[ElishaElijah]

The gospel authorships are unknown, the names Mathew Mark Luke and John were made up by early Christians, first appearing in the second century, and were assigned arbitrarily in 325 by the first council of Nicaea. Your subjective believers list has zero relevance? Paul never knew nor met Jesus either. There are o eyewitness accounts, only claims for such, none of it can be substantiated independently, which is why there is a broad scholarly consensus among historians only for the existence of an historical figure named Jesus and his crucifixion.

All of the Apostles plus many more were eye witnesses, the 3000 that believed at Pentecost were eye witnesses to the Holy Spirit being given with visible signs.
Paul was one abnormally born as he said, met Jesus Christ on the road to Damascus and was changed at that moment. All the Apostles welcomed him and recognized that Jesus had in fact met Paul and from there became a mighty Apostle himself. I gave you a list of biblical scholars so you could do some checking on their scholarships. Paul has written many in the Bible right there.

 

[KWED]

Millions and millions throughout history have asked and received answers and guidance. Do you discount them?

Those are intangible, personal things. I get "answers and guidance" from considering a problem, by rationally thinking about options and outcomes. No need for any god.

Who are you to say or understand how an infinite God answers human prayers? Are you saying that God must answer according to human expectations or demands? If God doesn’t answer the way we want, does that somehow prove He didn’t answer?

There is no evidence that god has ever caused anything to happen. People just look at ordinary events and tell themselves it was god.
People pass exams everyday without prayer, so claiming that saying a few words in prayer was the cause of sone people passing is nonsensical.
And if god does answer prayers, why does he so often not answer the ones that deserve to be answered (like the child dying in agony?)

I suspect you will continue to dodge these important issues.

 

[KWED]

I brought it up because you said God does not answer. Yet, there are plenty of people who claim He does and whose lives have been changed for the better because God hears, responds, and cares. The point is that God desires each person to come directly to Him.

How do disbelievers manage to improve their lives, pass exams, recover from illness, beat addiction, overcome trauma, etc, etc?
If god is not helping them, then what is the basis for claiming that god is required for the same events in believers' lives?
If god is helping them, then what is the point in belief and prayer?

 

[KWED]

So? Debate isn’t about anyone telling me what I believe.

Did you just tell them what they can and can't believe about what debate involves?

 

[KWED]

Ok, demonstrate life coming from something that's not alive... and no nonsense about food or compost...we know that in every case the seed of life is required prior to nourishment.

1. Abiogenesis. The origin of life on earth. At one point there was no life, then there was life.
or
2. God creating life from no life. At one point there was no life, then there was life.

Whether you favour natural processes or divine creation, life came from no life at some point.

 

[KWED]

Hogwash.. every one of your cells is alive.

Exactly. And previously, none of those cells existed.

 

[KWED]

Only it's never happened that we know of. And the odds against it make it impossible.

If something is extremely unlikely, it is therefore possible.
Did you know that a person won the lottery twice, with the same numbers, at odds of something like 4 trillion to one?

“When you have eliminated all which is impossible, then whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.” Sherlock Holmes

 

[KWED]

No, we don’t ignore them, but we may consider asking further questions. Such as; did God actually “not answer “? Or was His answer different or not the answer expected or desired? What if God in His position of being All-knowing, All-wise, and a God of Love ( as the scriptures state ) has a different plan, direction, or better answer than the limited perspective of the one praying who thought they didn’t get an answer? What if the person praying is so focused on the specific answer they desire that they miss the answer God does give?

God always answers our prayers. Usually the answer is "No".