Searching for GOD...

[Walt Zingmatilder]

Or mistaken, or the reports we have are not accurate, or .....

But they could be accurate?

[Gordon]

You cannot explain away the truth.
The truth that our human freedom is a demonstrable reality - not "just the way it seems"
The truth that there is ultimate meaning and purpose to our existence.
The truth that we all comprise more than material reactions.

I do love a dash of reification in the morning, with added flurries of personal incredulity.

[Gordon]

Well in your case, you seem to think that belief in Jesus is in the same category as belief in Leprechauns and I’m pretty sure you don’t put belief in Leprechauns down to anything other than mental aberration.

Whoosh

 

Which to me leaves this so called “Lewis trilemma” looking pretty sound.

I'm not a fan of Lewis' fiction: to me he comes across as an Enid Blyton for slightly older kids, but I have read a couple of his Christian apologists pieces, and again they come across as lightweight.

If you think his trilemma is 'pretty sound' then you perhaps need to consider the obvious option that he side-stepped: I'm sure you'll spot it if you give it some thought (it has already been mentioned).

[Maeght]

But they could be accurate?

Yes, they could. Do you accept they could be inaccurate?

The point though was about Lewis' three alternatives.

[Walt Zingmatilder]

Yes, they could. Do you accept they could be inaccurate?

The point though was about Lewis' three alternatives.

Arguing over whether alternatives to Jesus being mad or bad exist is IMHO trivial and diversionary.

I'm afraid I've passed the "COULD BE" stage experientially, and in terms of conviction and commitment...the "couldn't be" and the "could be" being stages in my journey.

[Maeght]

Arguing over whether alternatives to Jesus being mad or bad exist is IMHO trivial and diversionary.

I'm afraid I've passed the "COULD BE" stage experientially, and in terms of conviction and commitment...the "couldn't be" and the "could be" being stages in my journey.

So why have you been doing it?

No idea what you last sentence actually means.

[Outrider]

Observing "nature" on this tiny speck of the material universe is bound to give a biased view of how creative apparently unguided forces can be.

He asserted, devoid of any justification. Even if that were the case, how do you plan to investigate creativity anywhere else in the universe.

To get a more accurate picture of the destructive power of unguided forces you would need to examine the universe as a whole, but admittedly this would be difficult due to the inaccessibility of other planets.

And that universe has not, yet, been destroyed (i checked my calendar, that's definitely not scheduled yet). I can't check any of those planets to the same level as we can investigate Earth, but those planets are still there - natural forces have created them, but not yet destroyed them.

My honest view is that life will only exist where God wills it to exist.

Ah, so you you're not talking about creative capabilities in general, you're talking about life. The evidence that we have (which, admittedly, is limited) is not that natural forces have destroyed life in other places, but rather that life has not emerged in those places that we've found. As to exhibiting bias as a result of having the geocentric viewpoint, why presume that Earth is special and has a 'god' looking after it?

O.

[ProfessorDavey]

Arguing over whether alternatives to Jesus being mad or bad exist is IMHO trivial and diversionary.

Which would therefore include the third strand of Lewis' trilemma, namely 'god'. Or are you disingenuously adopting the Lewis approach - allowing 'god' as an alternative to 'mad' or 'bad', but dismissing any of the many completely plausible (indeed far more plausible and far more likely) alternatives to 'mad' and 'bad' to explain the claims that exist in extant NT texts from the 3rd/4thC that may or may not be similar to 'original' NT documents, likely written in the late 1stC, which again may or may not relate to actual events purported to have happened in the early 1stC.

[bluehillside Retd.]

AB,

You cannot explain away the truth.

And nor can you just assert it to be the truth, which is where you go wrong…
 

The truth that our human freedom is a demonstrable reality - not "just the way it seems"

…like this

The truth that there is ultimate meaning and purpose to our existence.

…and this

The truth that we all comprise more than material reactions.

…and this.

[bluehillside Retd.]

Vlad,

Well in your case, you seem to think that belief in Jesus is in the same category as belief in Leprechauns…

When the category is “conclusions justified by the same arguments” then yes it is.

… and I’m pretty sure you don’t put belief in Leprechauns down to anything other than mental aberration.

No, I put it down to the mistake of relying on the same logically false arguments for my justification of leprechauns that you rely on for your justification of “god”

Which to me leaves this so called “Lewis trilemma” looking pretty sound.

No it doesn’t – see above.

[bluehillside Retd.]

Vlad,

Arguing over whether alternatives to Jesus being mad or bad exist is IMHO trivial and diversionary.

Why? Why does it not matter to you that the early adherents could have been as honestly mistaken as you find the early adherents of other faiths to have been honestly mistaken too?

I'm afraid I've passed the "COULD BE" stage experientially, and in terms of conviction and commitment...the "couldn't be" and the "could be" being stages in my journey.

What reasoning did you do to justify your belief that your “experiences” were attributable to your faith belief and not to something else, and on what basis would you deny the same justification to believers in Thor, Poseidon or for that matter leprechauns? 

[bluehillside Retd.]

Vlad,

But they could be accurate?

Actually no because there are too many contradictions and inconsistencies for that, but if you could resolve that problem that then yes -  even absent justifying sound arguments something could be true just as a matter of dumb luck, the Big Book of Leprechauns included. It’s a trivial, non-point though.
 
You seem to understand that early believers in other faiths could have been mistaken, but give the early Christians a free pass from the same phenomenon. That’s called special pleading, yet another of the fallacies on which you routinely rely.

[Walt Zingmatilder]

Which would therefore include the third strand of Lewis' trilemma, namely 'god'. Or are you disingenuously adopting the Lewis approach - allowing 'god' as an alternative to 'mad' or 'bad', but dismissing any of the many completely plausible (indeed far more plausible and far more likely) alternatives to 'mad' and 'bad' to explain the claims that exist in extant NT texts from the 3rd/4thC that may or may not be similar to 'original' NT documents, likely written in the late 1stC, which again may or may not relate to actual events purported to have happened in the early 1stC.

What I mean professor is that it doesn't matter if its a trilemma or a quadrilemma.

Having accepted, for the purposes of discussion, that Jesus existed, Lewis bids us consider whether he was trying to hoodwink his followers with claims to being peculiarly the son of God, whether he believed he was special or that his words were true. I think he also bids us to do this in private, politely inviting others , both sceptical and believing influences to leave our thoughtspace so we can reach our own conclusions.

[bluehillside Retd.]

Vlad,

Having accepted, for the purposes of discussion, that Jesus existed, Lewis bids us consider whether he was trying to hoodwink his followers with claims to being peculiarly the son of God, whether he believed he was special or that his words were true.

...or that he was honestly delusional, or that he never made these claims at all but later followers deliberately did, or that exaggerations accreted over the decades and centuries with the re-tellings and translations, or that... etc. Why just arbitrarily eliminate these and other possibilities?   

[ProfessorDavey]

What I mean professor is that it doesn't matter if it's a trilemma or a quadrilemma.

It obviously does if you restrict the third strand of the trilemma to be 'god'.

Are you genuinely so blinkered that you cannot see that the claims in the NT may not fall into any of the categories of 'mad', 'bad' or 'god'.

Having accepted, for the purposes of discussion, that Jesus existed, Lewis bids us consider whether he was trying to hoodwink his followers with claims to being peculiarly the son of God, whether he believed he was special or that his words were true. I think he also bids us to do this in private, politely inviting others , both sceptical and believing influences to leave our thoughtspace so we can reach our own conclusions.

But the claims in the NT don't come for people who actually interacted with Jesus, but people who are second, third, fourth etc etc steps detached from any actual interaction with Jesus. So the issue isn't whether Jesus 'hoodwinked' his followers, but whether over generations of translations of the stories and claims that they became distorted, misunderstood, misrepresented or exaggerated as is almost always the case when information is passed on over many interactions.

So Jesus may well have described himself as a teacher or prophet, but over time the myth of 'god', resurrection etc became embedded. We have no credible evidence that Jesus ever claimed to be god - that comes entirely from those from decades or centuries later. Now it may be that those 'myth' generators might have been mad or bad, but they aren't Jesus - they lived decades or centuries later, non-where near where the purported events happened and, critically, will never have met Jesus, or perhaps never even met a person who had met Jesus. But they may simply have genuinely believed, and therefore neither mad nor bad but misguided etc.

Send reinforcements we are going to advance!!!

[Walt Zingmatilder]

It obviously does if you restrict the third strand of the trilemma to be 'god'.

Are you genuinely so blinkered that you cannot see that the claims in the NT may not fall into any of the categories of 'mad', 'bad' or 'god'.
But the claims in the NT don't come for people who actually interacted with Jesus, but people who are second, third, fourth etc etc steps detached from any actual interaction with Jesus. So the issue isn't whether Jesus 'hoodwinked' his followers, but whether over generations of translations of the stories and claims that they became distorted, misunderstood, misrepresented or exaggerated as is almost always the case when information is passed on over many interactions.

So Jesus may well have described himself as a teacher or prophet, but over time the myth of 'god', resurrection etc became embedded. We have no credible evidence that Jesus ever claimed to be god - that comes entirely from those from decades or centuries later. Now it may be that those 'myth' generators might have been mad or bad, but they aren't Jesus - they lived decades or centuries later, non-where near where the purported events happened and, critically, will never have met Jesus, or perhaps never even met a person who had met Jesus. But they may simply have genuinely believed, and therefore neither mad nor bad but misguided etc.

Send reinforcements we are going to advance!!!

As I believe I have stated before Professor I have found your ideas on the veracity of ancient historical documents unconvincing and as I recall inconsistent. I would even hazard that your approach to history is dominated by scientism.

 Much accepted history is written by people who never encountered their subjects and I believe you accept histories which the earliest extant copies date from decades or even centuries after authorship.

[bluehillside Retd.]

Vlad,

As I believe I have stated before Professor I have found your ideas on the veracity of ancient historical documents unconvincing and as I recall inconsistent. I would even hazard that your approach to history is dominated by scientism.

No, by historicism. They’re very different things.

Much accepted history is written by people who never encountered their subjects and I believe you accept histories which the earliest extant copies date from decades or even centuries after authorship.

Yes, but such claims are also subject to multiple verifications rather than just accepted as fact, especially so when claims of miracles are made. These tests include for example:

1. Relevance: is the evidence presented really relevant to the claim being made?

2. Validity: is the source what it appears to be or is it a fraud or forgery?

3. Identification: is the author identified? Historians do not rely on "anonymous".

4. Expertise: is the source qualified to provide this evidence?

5. Bias: does the source have an interest in the topic of the evidence that might distort the evidence?

6. Internal consistency: does the evidence contradict itself?

7. External Consistency: is the evidence consistent with outside qualified sources? For historians, the more sources the better.

8. Recency: has the situation described by the evidence or our understanding of the world changed? Just being old isn't enough to disqualify evidence but the epistemological context may have changed since the evidence was created.

How would the accounts in which you place your faith fare if these tests were applied would you say?

Now can you see why they're not taught as academic history?

[Outrider]

As I believe I have stated before Professor I have found your ideas on the veracity of ancient historical documents unconvincing and as I recall inconsistent. I would even hazard that your approach to history is dominated by scientism.

Quick, characterise someone's stance as an '-ism', that sort of ad hominem, then it sounds like a legitimate criticism. It isn't one, obviously but it sounds like it is.

Much accepted history is written by people who never encountered their subjects and I believe you accept histories which the earliest extant copies date from decades or even centuries after authorship.

Much of accepted history, however, makes relatively uncontentious claims like 'there were bakers' or 'people drank beer'. That's a different state of affairs from 'there was an avatar of the one true god who appeared to have a schizophrenic episode in which it radically redefined pretty much its entire body of work, pretended to die for a few days, then disappeared having brought people back to life and sacrificed some demon-infested pigs (not at the wedding, that was the fish)'.

The more significant historical claims typically are justified by more robust evidence and reporting, and the third- or fourth-hand accounts are viewed in light of the potential biases of the authors. On all of these grounds the claims of the New Testament to be any sort of 'history' are at best doubtful.

O.

[ProfessorDavey]

As I believe I have stated before Professor I have found your ideas on the veracity of ancient historical documents unconvincing and as I recall inconsistent. I would even hazard that your approach to history is dominated by scientism.

 Much accepted history is written by people who never encountered their subjects and I believe you accept histories which the earliest extant copies date from decades or even centuries after authorship.

Non-sense - the paucity of credible evidence for the claims in the NT would be applied to any other area of historical scholarship in a similar manner. Actually NT study gets a 'get out of jail free' card on the basis of historicity - specifically because the study of historicity of the bible is offloaded into 'Theology' or 'Religious studies' or 'Bible studies' academic departments for the simple reason that it would be laughed out of court in a genuine academic history department.

Jeremy P has outlined the issues with the (lack of) evidence in historical terms in the NT. But there are a couple of further issues.

First whether it matters - it seems irrelevant to me whether Homer actually wrote to words claimed of him, or even if he existed. The interesting issue is the words themselves. By contrast Christians require the claimed words in the NT to be from Jesus or the whole crumbling edifice comes falling down.

Secondly - the implausibility of the claims. Did Nero play a fiddle while Rome burned - who knows, who cares. But the claim is perfectly plausible and the world nor the nature of history doesn't turn on this irrelevant, albeit perfectly plausible, claim. So we might accept the claim, we might reject it - either way the basic historical narrative is unaltered. But the claims in the NT aren't of that nature - they are implausible and extraordinary claims and whether they are true or not does matter (unlike Nero's fiddle), because were they to be demonstrated to be genuinely true (they haven't been demonstrated to be true, hence the need for 'faith') then of course this alters the historical narrative in a massive manner. So while we might shrug at the need for extraordinary evidence to support the Nero claim (because it doesn't matter) we must require extraordinary evidence to support the extraordinary claims of the NT.

And, of course, Vlad it is you who is inconsistent - accepting the extraordinary claims of the NT without a blink, while rejecting any number of other extraordinary claims within historical writings from antiquity, often involving individuals with far, far greater credible evidence associated with their lives than for Jesus, where there is, as far as I'm aware exactly zero archeological or independent contemporary textual evidence that he even existed.

[Walt Zingmatilder]

Quick, characterise someone's stance as an '-ism', that sort of ad hominem, then it sounds like a legitimate criticism. It isn't one, obviously but it sounds like it is.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientism

Much of accepted history, however, makes relatively uncontentious claims like 'there were bakers' or 'people drank beer'.

Of course there is frequent contention in history. The contention over Christianity though is chiefly outside history coming from a combination of science, the problem of induction, incredulity etc

That's a different state of affairs from 'there was an avatar of the one true god who appeared to have a schizophrenic episode in which it radically redefined pretty much its entire body of work, pretended to die for a few days, then disappeared having brought people back to life and sacrificed some demon-infested pigs (not at the wedding, that was the fish)'.

That’ll be a “mad” then.

The more significant historical claims typically are justified by more robust evidence and reporting, and the third- or fourth-hand accounts are viewed in light of the potential biases of the authors. On all of these grounds the claims of the New Testament to be any sort of 'history' are at best doubtful.

O.

Again, As long as the conditions you describe here about possible bias are consistently applied to all of history...and as I said imho they aren’t.

[Walt Zingmatilder]

Non-sense - the paucity of credible evidence for the claims in the NT would be applied to any other area of historical scholarship in a similar manner. Actually NT study gets a 'get out of jail free' card on the basis of historicity - specifically because the study of historicity of the bible is offloaded into 'Theology' or 'Religious studies' or 'Bible studies' academic departments for the simple reason that it would be laughed out of court in a genuine academic history department.

So theologians cannot incorporate historical study into religious study but social scientists can integrate science in their studies. Sounds wrong and, in fact, is wrong.

Jeremy P has outlined the issues with the (lack of) evidence in historical terms in the NT. But there are a couple of further issues.

First whether it matters - it seems irrelevant to me whether Homer actually wrote to words claimed of him, or even if he existed. The interesting issue is the words themselves. By contrast Christians require the claimed words in the NT to be from Jesus or the whole crumbling edifice comes falling down.

The edifice should have already crumbled I would have thought. As it is it has merely been ignored. Your inadequate historical analysis (Jesus myth?)(Jesus never led his contemporary followers to believe he was the son of God?) isn’t a sufficient explanation of the very subsequent history. Of course all that is needed for a Christianity to exist is the notion that a person on their own effort cannot possibly relate to God in order please God therefore a saviour on the individual, spiritual and moral level is needed.

[bluehillside Retd.]

Vlad,

So theologians cannot incorporate historical study into religious study but social scientists can integrate science in their studies. Sounds wrong and, in fact, is wrong.

And a straw man. Of course theologians can incorporate historical study into religious study if they want to. When the tools and methods of history run out what they can’t do though is just make shit up and call it “historical” nonetheless.

The edifice should have already crumbled I would have thought.

Among reasoning people, it has.

As it is it has merely been ignored. Your inadequate historical analysis (Jesus myth?)(Jesus never led his contemporary followers to believe he was the son of God?) isn’t a sufficient explanation of the very subsequent history.

The historical analysis of the Jesus stories isn’t inadequate – it just concludes correctly that the associated claims of historical accuracy fail the basic tests of historicity.

Of course all that is needed for a Christianity to exist is the notion that a person on their own effort cannot possibly relate to God in order please God therefore a saviour on the individual, spiritual and moral level is needed.

Gibberish. What are you trying to say here?

[Outrider]

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientism

I didn't see anyone denying that scientism was a valid word, just that it didn't constitute an argument.

Of course there is frequent contention in history. The contention over Christianity though is chiefly outside history coming from a combination of science, the problem of induction, incredulity etc

No, the contention over Christianity comes from the conflation of an acceptance of an 'historical' Jesus and the idea that this somehow validates all the magic claims.

That’ll be a “mad” then.

I've no basis for presuming the motivation for the claims, just a basis for thinking that they don't reflect reality - like others, whether the author was mad, lied to, or deliberately lying is not something that i have sufficient information to pass judgement on, and which isn't directly that relevant anyway.

Again, As long as the conditions you describe here about possible bias are consistently applied to all of history...and as I said imho they aren’t.

Well, you're at liberty to go pull up the bias you see in all the various historical papers that have been published, and see how far you get, but until you get somewhere the accepted historicity is what it is.

O.

[Alan Burns]

Two recent talks from John Lennox on topics discussed on this thread
Did the universe come from nothing?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tQ5P0eOdruQ

Christian faith cannot be classed as blind faith - it is evidence based
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M51s63YBJLg

[Maeght]

Two recent talks from John Lennox on topics discussed on this thread
Did the universe come from nothing?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tQ5P0eOdruQ

Christian faith cannot be classed as blind faith - it is evidence based
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M51s63YBJLg

He claims it is evidence based but doesn't present any. I've yet to see any convincing evidence for the existence of God.