Jesus is not returning

I agree with Jesus.

Wow, where can I sign up to bash folks who believe in things I don’t? I got me a killer column about the flying spaghetti monster people…

I find it humorous when people pull out the argument that other’s “lack intellect” yet they fail to construe together anything of any intelligence. If you are so much more intellectual, feel free to write a letter to the editor so we can woe at your superior intelligence.

This guy needs to be beaten over the head with the figurative red white and blue ball peen hammer of truth!

-The Michigan Conservative Dossier
http://bconservatives.blogspot.com

My hypothesis still holds statistically accurate. Conservatives are more prone to failures in basic exercises of intellect: namely, correct English grammar and spelling.

Hey Josh, if Christianity is correct inerrantly, then you realize Bice’s opinion changes nothing, right? Still, you display extreme dissatisfaction and unhappiness over someone writing something you perceive to be false. Why are you so insecure? You’re getting your infinite orgasm after the worms tear you apart, Bice isn’t.

I love vocabulary games, “hermeneutics of prophecy and eschatology.” -ogy and -eutics words sound intellectual enough for insecure theologians. Go fast or something. We members of the species who enjoy planet Earth for all its natural splendor have a vested interest to tend to the garden rather than sit around dreaming about Jesus high fiving the self righteous.

I am going to my second year at MSU and have been reading the State News religiously since my arrival. However, I have never read an article written by John Bice that discusses something besides Catholicism, Jesus, etc. I feel like I am reading the same article over and over. John, it is pretty obvious that you’re an atheist, believe me, we know. Good journalism is relevant to the time, and your articles are not relevant.

And if you are correct Mr. Bice, what good does it do to destroy people’s faith? How are you helping society by undermining the foundations of morality?

Europe has gone down the path you recommend, and the results are too promising, Europe is dying because of the secular, egalitarian values that people like you prescribe.

So what if it is a lie, assuming it is. Read your philosophy a little deeper, start with the Republic and contemplate the idea of the Noble Lie.

Better than your prescription for nihilism.

Shnar is right. The insecurity of the religious crowd is amusing. You’d think that a true believer wouldn’t be shaken and threatened by these editorials, but oh no. Good thing that it is the Christian religious crowd that is being shaken and threatened; if it was the truth of another religion being challenged, that religion’s supporters would seek to overcome its insecurity be killing everyone in sight and blowing things up instead.

See, Christianity ain’t all that bad.

The euro is currently stronger than the American dollar: there’s one way Europe obviously isn’t dying. I don’t expect the readership to know these well publicized facts though.

“Grounding these types of normative statement regarding respecting the earth is quite difficult for the naturalist/materialist.”

Are you kidding me? It’s effortless. I like secular life on Earth, therefore I must ensure that the environment from which my body takes its amino acids, vitamins, oxygen, and glucose, etc, etc, is maintained to continue the process.

“However, i don’t see that value system arising out of scientific naturalism which Bice espouses.” That’s your problem, not a problem. Most scientists love their families too. All you need is love.

History is so reliably redundant, I love it. The smugness of salvation we’re seeing here was par for the Massachusetts Puritans too. Only they believed in predestination, so no amount of effort could change your course and make you a member of the “elect.”

The tomes of scholarship were written by people like you who were deathly afraid of discontinuing to exist. I really don’t know what the problem is. You don’t exist before conception, obviously, in any non-reincarnation worldview. Therefore we are already currently able to imagine a time of nonexistence. Just try to remember a time before birth.

Bice, and very occasionally over the summer Isaac Deville, seemed to be the only ones willing to keep this topic of discussion going full throttle. If there were a plurality I’d say, “I’m sick of it Bice, move on.” Bice speaks for the increasing numbers of the silent secular minority.

I think that televangelists are five times more one-dimensional (five-dimensional?) than Bice. What I find most amusing is the mass of Christians who spend so many waking hours on exactly one book, and their brains still never get it down pat. If I ate, breathed, and digested precisely one book my whole life, I think it shouldn’t be much of an effort to know it line by line. It’s cognitive feebleness, sorry.

To go off topic, but this is fascinating for anyone, Leonhard Euler effortlessly recited Virgil’s Aeneid by rote. In fact, according to E.T. Bell in his “Men of Mathematics,” a British mathematician (it may have been Cayley) was able to reconstuct his fire damaged library by memory alone.

And one last thing: The genuine thinkers always know the fakers.

He keeps writing this crap because idiotic Christians give it relevance by loathing it and idiotic atheists give it relevance by worshiping it.

Meanwhile, the rest of us sane people (the majority) who lie somewhere in the middle have to take aspirin for the headaches we get from the flaky garbage wasting space in the newspaper at a time when there are much more important issues to discuss. Mr. Bice does at times raise good points, but he never addresses them in a well-informed or constructive manner.

Aren’t you people angry about the continued reduction of federal student aid for college?

Oops. That should be:

“But when he writes something like this, which as far as I can tell serves no purpose but to tell folks who believe in something fairly innocuous – Jesus will one day return – THAT THEY ARE WRONG, then I think he’s wasting the State News’ time, and ours.”

I guess bad writing is bipartisan ;)

While I agree with many of your points, Bice, I feel you could have addressed them with more tact. You have to offer people new ideas and suggestions, not force feed them. In a sense, you’re preaching to the converted. No one who disagrees with you is going to come away from this with anything but more distaste for you and your cause. Next time try to write as if you’re sitting down for dinner with the party you wish to address, rather than as if standing over them with a baseball bat.

I don’t think christians are insecure, but rather annoyed with Bice’s constant bigotry. If he chooses to not believe fine, but get your facts straight and find a new hobby. It must be exhausting being a nihlist

Please, religious people, offer up some kind of scientific evidence for you ctruth claims or stop making them. Jesus was wrong, if he ever existed at all. He did, in fact, say that he would return within that generations lifetime. And he did not. He’s not coming back. Nobody does.
Get used to it. Take some responsibility for making life better here on earth amd frow up.
Believing that the end of the world is a good thing is not a good thing.

“assuming someone resembling Jesus ever lived” is such a weak starting argument. How do we know that Ceasar or Washington ever lived? There is no video of them…perhaps oral history does work. Why can he not even accept that Christ ever walked the earth?

Scientiffically nothing can be proven 100% true, the existence of a higher power is a matter of faith, you just know that something or someone is there and thats good enough. Without some form of faith can we have internal peace considering emotions are abstract and we can’t prove whether or not we are loved, we just know.

Just as one who has sloppy methodology in performing scientific experiments will likely arrive at wrong conclusions about the question he is asking, so one who has sloppy exegesis in addressing a particular Biblical question will likely arrive at incorrect conclusions.
Bice does not have a clear understanding of what exactly this “kingdom of God/heaven” means in the context of Jesus’ teaching. In fact, many Christians probably lack a good grasp of what the Bible teaches regarding this very issue. If you do a study of Jesus’ teaching on the “kingdom of God/heaven”, you will begin to see there are aspects of the kingdom that are spiritual in nature and take place in the world now and other aspects that take place at the end of the world and “afterlife”. Jesus’ own disciples were confused even near the end of His ministry regarding what this kingdom was about. But we do know that there is a “here and now” element and “not yet” element.
Bice’s reference of some of those who will “not taste death” until they “see the kingdom of God coming in power” is agreed upon by all four gospels, so it must have been an important point. He doesn’t clarify which element of the kingdom of God Jesus is speaking of in those passages. It has classically been read as the coming of the Holy Spirit in a special way at Pentecost, giving the apostles power and unction to preach and heal the sick in ways that clearly demonstrated a supernatural source of their ministry. This ministry was founded upon this idea of a risen Christ who died for sins, and thus the “coming of the Son of Man in power” to save people from their sins. This aspect of the kingdom of God is clear. The disciples and early church obviously overlooked such a glaring contradiction? Quite unlikely.
I know this is probably not persuasive to the skeptic, but it does show the consistency of thought that has upheld Christianity since the time of Jesus. These things don’t come automatically but are learned just like any other knowledge-based tradition.

“Please propose and defend a fully integrated worldview that addresses the pertinent questions of Origins, Identity, Meaning, Morality and Destiny in a robust manner that is logically coherent, empirically adaquate and existentially relevant the way Christianity does.”

Hi. It’s called Science.

A basic law of nature: In order for a person or thing to “return” to somewhere, it has to have once been in that somewhere before it can “return.”
Jesus exists ONLY in the gospels of the NT and in the minds of people who need a God(s). He did not/does not exist in history. Over 30 historians/writers living and writing during the 1st century, the alleged time of JC, never mention him. There is no record of his alleged trial in the extant records of Pilate`s court of that time.
The “greatest story ever told is a fairy tale.. deal with it !
And Mr. Tremlett, I challange you to produce a single “Roman record of Christ stirring things up.” There are none. Roman records of Christians stirring things up yes, but not Christ.. it`s not the same thing.
And you asking Bice why “he`s trying to undermine the foundations of morality” (by attacking relgion) shows that you buy the believer`s lie that one most believe in the dude in the sky to be moral. Inane !

“Please propose and defend a fully integrated worldview that addresses the pertinent questions of Origins, Identity, Meaning, Morality and Destiny in a robust manner that is logically coherent, empirically adaquate and existentially relevant the way Christianity does.”

They’re called Judaism and Islam. I’ll let their followers defend them.

Islam is similar to Christianity epistemologically in that it is a religion which is grounded upon revelation; our belief and behavior as members of our religion are derivative from and limited by the teachings of the Bible and Qur’an, respectively. They are also similar in the provision of archetypes which exemplify these teachings and solicit our emulation, namely, Jesus and Mohammad. When one compares the two revelations and archetypes there is no reason to condone Islamic ideology. Both the revelation (according to the interpretation of self-acclaiming law of abrogation) and archetype (historical and Hadith testimony of Mohammad’s life) support a less than kind characterization of Islam as violent and intolerant (tolerance as defined by Voltaire)of other faiths, especially those believing in the Trinity: God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit (NOT Father, Jesus and Mary as the Qur’an erroneously teaches). Sharia law, the testimony of Mark Gabriel and many others affirms this intolerance and legitimizes lawful and intellectual censure of Islamic ideology.

Early writings that reference Jesus are hardly definitive evidence, and are a subject of debate over authenticity or relevance … many were written years after the fact.

For example on the authenticity question, see “Josephus on Jesus”:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josephus_on_Jesus

(Of course, whether Jesus existed or not has nothing to do with the factual claims of Christianity, which must be taken on faith since there’s no actual proof. Islamists have great evidence that Muhammad existed, but that doesn’t mean he was a prophet of god).

The writers of the New Testament gospels are not reliable witnesses either because we don’t even know who they were. Who ever they were, they may have simply been documenting oral myth (also, they should have compared notes, there are certainly plenty of contradictions:
http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/paul_carlson/nt_contradictions.html)

New Testament scholar Elaine H. Pagels (Professor of Religion Princeton University) wrote, “we don’t know who wrote the gospels we call Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, any more than we know who wrote the Gospel of Thomas. They’re all attributed to disciples of Jesus, but we don’t really know who wrote them. And we don’t know whether they came as the earliest sources or not. In fact, chances are they didn’t.”
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/religion/story/emergence.html

Paula Fredriksen, Professor of Scripture at Boston University, described the Gospels as a “religious advertisement,” using “Jesus of Nazareth as a spokesperson for the evangelists’ position.”
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/religion/story/mmfour.html

Believe if you like, but don’t pretend it’s based on anything but faith

Faith, as often described by the reformers, is the culmination of notitia, assensus and feducia, latin for knowledge, assent and trust. This is not the definition you hear from Richard Dawkins who says its belief in spite of the evidence.
The object of faith always has an epistemic source, some knowledge about that thing, the truth of that knowledge is assented to and the practical implications of that knowledge as it bears upon personal decision making and the future is active trust. So you see, people who mischaracterize what faith really is have some explaining to do. The uncertainty of faith is in our trust in the future implications, not in the historical facts that ground that faith; going from the known to the unknown.

“Please show how morality emerges from scientific naturalism.”

Josh, you didn’t understand my contemplation of the possibility of there being no morality. Literally, the only thing preventing me in the physical sense from buying a gun and going on a shooting rampage are the facts that I dislike death and suffering intensely, and I stand nothing to gain anyway. To explain the source of morality, one must assume it exists in the first place. No morality, no explanation needed. Acts of random violence continue at this moment.

The only logically consistent god would be one that limits its knowledge of the future, because the all seeing force would foresee every rape, every murder, every dismemberment and decapitation by virtue of its own limitless power. Obviously, the all powerful cognizant force would have placed every particle of the universe just so to watch it unwind. Thus by simple deduction every rape is instigated by the first mover, namely, the all powerful force.

That’s sick and twisted if you ask me. I’m curious, does scripture ever tell us if the deity had the power to choose its own existence? Can a deity will itself into existence from chaos? The answer is always “always has been, always will be.” Which seems to only mean that a force had no choice in being, a limitation of power.

The question of power limitation brings with it a valid question for Intelligent Design Miseducation. The argument goes, “You see a mechanical pocket watch of such intricacy you must conclude it was designed by someone of superior intelligence. This implies an intricate universe had a designer.” I abhor inappropriate analogies falsely extrapolated, a common logical fallacy, but this one is incorrect in a very important aspect. SomeONE did not design the watch. It was an abstract collaboration. The watchmaker probably doesn’t have a foundry to produce his own bronze and iron. That represents MANY laborers of limited powers. As such, any intricacy is more coherent if you assume a pantheon.

The Lewis argument is one of a false dilemma (or trilemma in this case). There’s a good brief discussion of it here:
http://atheism.about.com/od/cslewisnarnia/a/jesustrilemma.htm

In the liar, lunatic, Lord trilemma there are other much more plausible alternatives than “Lord,” [a virgin born man/god], one being that Jesus could have been a mistaken and his followers were too emotionally involved in his death, and refused to accept that they had followed a false god.

Consider the history of the Branch Davidians. Many were willing to die because they believed that David Koresh was the real deal. Their willingness to die doesn’t mean that Koresh was a real prophet, it just means he was able to fool people, and some people are willing to die for an irrational belief. UFO cults also have a history of dying for their beliefs.

Another problem with your assertion/argument is that we don’t really know how the apostles actually died we have to rely on the New Testament for that information too (convenient). Trying to demonstrate the truth of the New Testament by calling upon information in the New Testament is simply circular reasoning.

How Did the Apostles Die?
http://www.infidels.org/library/magazines/tsr/1997/4/4front97.html

“Please show how morality emerges from scientific naturalism.”

I’m sure there have been journal articles written on the topic. Sadly, I don’t know of any off the top of my head. One needs only to look at Nature, however, to discover that many of our “moralities” are shared by many different species. Moralities help us, as a species, function. They are not created by anything other than an animal.

This is possible the best column the Terminator has ever written. It also might be the only column the Terminator has ever written, but that’s okay because he’s FROM THE FUTURE.

Morality does not emerge from scientific naturalism, just as it does not emerge from religion. The religious among us would like to think that naturalists are simply using the morality that emerged from religion when in reality morality emerged absent of religion, and has been advanced by religionists and secularists alike.

If we take as our primary purpose reproduction and propagation of our species, we can see how morality could evolve, and how it HAS evolved in many animals, humans included. If you impregnate a woman and don’t bother to take care of her, your child is more likely to never be born; if you do not provide for the child, teach it, and rear it, it is not likely to survive. If you do not ensure the survival of your clan, your genes die out. Once we get into other tribes, it becomes tricky—our morality is put up against our territoriality. Still, one can see how it could be in our interest to act morally towards other, more distant human beings—ensuring their survival means more candidates for interbreeding (and thus less inbreeding within a tribe or clan), developing good relationships with them can be beneficial in a war, famine, or other problem.

I am not saying that people behave well because they think it will help the propagation of their species, but rather that people who behaved morally were more likely to survive, and to pass on those moral genes.

Morality can also pass on as a meme, which can also be beneficial to the host.

Morality: you’re genetically and memetically equipped to love your children, your spouse, your family, your neighbors (to some extent). You’re equipped to feel good when you help others. That morality was not implanted within us by a higher power does not mean that it is any less worthwhile; I’ve been born with (mostly) moral genes and implanted with (somewhat) moral memes, and I will continue to help other people and experience love, joy, and sorrow, and religion doesn’t have to have a damn thing to do with it.

Thank you exasperated for getting us back on topic. It’s deplorable how the Establishment Clause was defecated upon when not so curious George signed Executive Order Number One for faith based welfare organizations’ financial support. Here is the reality:

I slaved away installing and removing dirty, nasty cables which resulted in a federal income tax deduction. My sweat was partially poured into financial support for religious organizations, repugnant to the First Amendment. The further reality is that the Supreme Court is comprised of a woman and men with deep personal religious feelings. Their specious majority opinions cannot be seriously disputed because these people have such a position of power to skew the spirit of the framers of the Constitution. A document is only as strong as the extant individuals willing to uphold it.

The reality is: how dare you rob my body’s labor for your narrow minded objectives! This is larceny of the most despicable kind. It wasn’t the kind of money to buy a case of beer, but the principle remains. If you are disgusted by your blood, sweat, and tears being channeled into supporting organizations you Constitutionally have a right NOT to support, I urge you to write and call our U.S. and Michigan representatives and senators.

The utter lack of checks and balances on the Executive’s and Judicial’s profligate disregard for liberty infuriates me. This is the reality to be addressed, not some dim notion of a second coming of some man-god thing.

Josh, the fact that you cite Josephus discredits anything else you claim. The mention is Josephus have been discredited by all but the most conservetive apoligists… and doesn`t appear in the earlier copies of his writings ( “Josephus does not mention Jesus” -Origen, church father (ca. 185-ca. 154 CE). Moreover, the disputed passage in Josephus was NEVER cited by early Christian apoligists. It`s not until 324 CE that church father Eusebius suddenly found (read forged) this passage in Josephus. A scholar named Vossius in the 16th century had an early manuscript of Josephus and the disputed passage is not there. I repeat, it`s inane that any Christian still hangs their hat on the Josephus “reference”.
BTW Pliney`s only reference is to “Chistians”, not Christ. He was asking a peer in another area how to handle those annoying Christians. Nobody disputes there were “Christians” by this time. The Tacitus story is also doubtful…the “passage” mentioning a “Christus” as a founder of the Christian beliefs and also mentions “Pontius Pilatus” was not known before the 15th century and is thought, by some, to be a forgery by a publisher in Venice, one Johannes de Spire.
Myself, I leave the lies to “believers”... a real seeker of truth would never look to religious belief for it.

Atheism is myth-understood.

Oh no! He cut and ran…

Josh has become overwhelmed with his cognitive dissonance. There is no rebuttal. “And i believe i’ve raised legitmate challenges to skeptics and scientific naturalists to think about. [sic]” Well, the Deistic founding fathers gave you the liberty to believe anything irrational, even that.

Hi Josh, I’ll respond for Shnar.

I’ll just make reference to your post on the definition of faith. The rhetorical method you seem to employ is one of obscuring what you are actually saying beneath intentionally opaque language. In my experience I’ve seen this done quite a bit to hide the fact that what a person is asserting is nonsensical, and would be quite obviously nonsensical if spelled out plainly. This is commonly seen in post modernist literature.

For example you say, “The object of faith always has an epistemic source, some knowledge about that thing, the truth of that knowledge is assented to and the practical implications of that knowledge as it bears upon personal decision making and the future is active trust.” Then you add, “The uncertainty of faith is in our trust in the future implications, not in the historical facts that ground that faith; going from the known to the unknown.”

This is the same sort of ephemeral and meaningless twaddle that we see from the “Postmodern Essay Generator,” which parodies postmodern academic writing. Check it out, it’s hilarious, and an example of the intentionally meaningless drivel that your writing seems to be dripping in. http://www.elsewhere.org/pomo

What you are hiding behind, in the quoted writing, is the fact that faith is an irrational belief. Your defense of faith as somehow rational becomes itself irrational. Let me give you a clear distinction between a rationally held belief and an irrational religious belief.

In science, and in everyday life, we form beliefs of varying levels of confidence. We gather evidence for and against a belief or set of beliefs, and the stronger the evidence becomes in favor of a belief, the greater our confidence becomes, the weaker the evidence, the lower our confidence … a sliding scale of certainty.

Rational people form tentative beliefs in this way, based on the strength and type of evidence available.

Germ theory of disease: Mountains of supporting evidence. High Confidence.
Healing power of distance prayer: Very poor evidence in controlled trials. Low Confidence.

In religion it’s just the opposite. A belief is usually predetermined to be true based on scant or non-existent evidence. In some cases, as Dawkins mentions, it can be held in the presence of strong contrary evidence. Also, the certainty with which a religious belief is held is often completely unrelated to the strength of evidence, in striking contrast to rationally held beliefs.

For example, most Americans believe in survival of the soul after death, miracles, the virgin birth, hell, heaven, the devil, and so on.

A rational person wouldn’t believe in these things at all, or, if they were willing to entertain the possibility of such things, any tentative belief would be held with a very low level of confidence because of the poor quality or non-existent evidence. Many religious people, on the contrary, believe these things with abundant certainty. That’s irrational. An even more extreme example are those who are believers in Transubstantiation or consubstantiation, who assert that something actually happens to wine and wafers in spite of all evidence to the contrary. That’s irrational.

If you offer some specific examples of your religious beliefs, I’m sure others can explain how those are irrational too.

Hope that helps, I’m outta here.

When you stand before him…You can tell HIM that!

skepticguy,
You can continue to persist in that ungrounded dichotomy, skeptics usually like to say that they are different, in fact they have to. Because, of course, adding the adjective “religious” to anything by definition totally invalidates it in your view.
You say “many confuse faith with trust or confidence” but i see them as the same thing per the orthodox definition. Exactly what you said above is how i feel about “religious” faith.
We have faith every day in things that we have not empirically verified, ever taken a pharmaceutical for anything? A lot of trust goes into the scientists and FDA that have tested and regulated that pill; sometimes people still die (Vioxx) because maybe the evidence wasn’t quite as strong as it should have been. The question is not distinguishing “religious” from other types of faith, but asking what do you put your faith in on a daily basis?
The evidence is stronger than you think. That is precisely why i include the criteria i do: logically coherent (internal consistancy) and empirical adaquacy (maps accurately with outside evidence). However those are the more cold hard facts, the third criteria sometimes is the more persuasive depending on your personality. That is the existential relevance. The “touchy-feelie” quality of the philosophy, does it provide the adherent with the essential existential qualities to surive in this world, namely: peace amidst conflict, joy amidst suffering, security rather than vulnerability, wholeness rather than brokeness, belonging instead of isolation. You can’t deny these aren’t just as persuasive as the “cold hard facts”, it takes both. You can call it a religious crutch if you want, you i’m sure you derive these same qualities from your atheism or whichever philosophy you espouse, maybe not.
cheers.

J.E.T.
“I don’t want to get into how Christianity in practice was far less than tolerant towards other faiths, because that’s a no-brainer.”

I hope by that you mean Christianity has classically established societies which allow freedom of conscience as opposed to Muslim societies where if you turn away from your faith, your family members are morally justified in performing “honor killings” and you are targeted for assassination. This is by definition intolerance, no freedom of conscience. Christianity has never adopted such tactics. This current culture has this wacky notion that it is intolerant (and therefore “wrong”) to disagree with someone and say they are logically or morally wrong, that is simply self-refuting because the claimant is now making a moral judgement on the “intolerant” person. Tolerance (as proclaimed most famously by Voltaire) is “I disagree with what you say, but i will defend to the death your right to say it”. Please demonstrate how Christianity has countered this position?

Indeed, Islam has a moral system, however i hope everyone can see how incompatible Islamic ideology is with freedom of conscience by the arument i just presented. I don’t think this is the only strike against Islam, however it is the most easily verified.
So its not just the case that a worldview should contain the elements but in fact pass the criteria as set forth. On the grounds above Islamic ideology fails.
Judaism as i said aligns very closely with Christianity with a shared OT history and somewhat moral system. However it fails in its explanation of our meaning or purpose in life as i see that necessarily including man’s reconciliation with a God who punishes for sin (including myself), so via existential relevance in its provision of a philosophical solution to the sin problem, which i see that both systems acknowledge, by rejecting the person and work of Jesus Christ. Judaism is a works based religion with no saviour, this is untennable in my theological and soteriological understandings. (Shnar, sorry for the big words, but were in university, time to use appropriate terms).
Please show how my standards have shifted.

skepticguy,
“In religious faith the normal relationship between confidence in a belief and strength of evidence is broken.”
I would whole heartedly disagree, i see no disconnect between level of evidence and level of faith. Remember, your still probably lumping me in with all the “crazy” religious people you’ve ever scoffed at, You don’t really know where i’ve staked my claims, all you know is that i call myself a orthodox Christian (not catholic, mind you) and i have specific and careful reasons for believing what i do, please do me the courtesy of not lumping me into that group.

“you apparently see no difference in having a level of confidence that the drug supply is safe and tested …and religious faith”

Again i disagree, the scope of the faith is definitely different, any idiot can see that. However, the elements of how faith works is the same for the two. Were not talking about scope, were talking about how faith works, it is based upon evidence.

You love to throw this “irrational” and “beyond rational help” stuff around don’t you, you LOOOOOVE it :) its quite humorous, every time you don’t get something because you haven’t thought about it carefully or seen it from a different perspective, you are forced to claim the other person lacks reason. Lets start to be more responsible with throwing around that accusation so much. We are both reasonable individuals, if you can’t see that then we should stop the discussion, cuz its no fun talking to a crazy person.

Josh.

I’m a skeptic and a Christian. Religious Faith is irrational. I don’t see evidence to support it in any empirical way (although if you do, tell me what it is). But, regardless of that, I think that it is valuable. The problem is when the irrational belief I have impacts the way I make decisions which affect others.

Is it important for religious faith to be a rational thing? Is it feasible that supernatural entities exist within a rational framework? I don’t actually think so. But that doesn’t lessen the value of faith, and it doesn’t lessen the value of belief.

“However it fails in its explanation of our meaning or purpose in life as i see that necessarily including man’s reconciliation with a God who punishes for sin (including myself)”

Basically you’re saying that because of your Christian Starting point, the only tenable religion is Christianity. Because of the way you currently understand the world, the world must be as you understand it. That would be circular reasoning, right there.

As for Judaism being an untenable religion, it is indeed a works-based faith, it has rules set out clearly as to how to atone for any given sin. It’s completely workable, because the Jews do not in fact have the concept of Original Sin, which is the only one they do not have atonement laws for. They also claim that our main purpose in life is to worship the Lord.

Finally:“peace amidst conflict, joy amidst suffering, security rather than vulnerability, wholeness rather than brokeness, belonging instead of isolation.” Provided these “Touchy-feelie” things occur in other faiths, surely they are similarly tenable to Christianity? For the record, I find these things in my social network far more often that I find them in my faith in Christ.

can you not be a reasonable person and hold an irrational belief at the same time? I have a friend whom I would consider a reasonable person (she will take on board the things I have to say, and consider them) but she has an irrational belief (That Crystal Healing works). I don’t consider her less reasonable for that belief, I consider her more human.

Dylan,
Well, you’ve shot yourself in the foot in your first paragraph. Once you claim to hold to something you admit is irrational, that ends the discussion, because discourse is not possible, it is not valuble, it is not anything, because you’ve already claimed its irrational. Nice work!

And i would argue that whatever you mean by saying you are a Christian, is not supported by the teachings of Jesus and His apostles. As i’ve said before (third time, i think) Paul cites a historical fact (literal resurrection of Jesus) as the basis of Christianity, this grounds the faith in reason.

I’ll leave you to the other intellectual pirahnas in this forum to fend for yourself.

Again, its getting to be unmanageble again, i might have to pull out of the discussion. I do enjoy the exchange, but its tiring.
BTW, does blue and red make purple or violet? ;)

Josh tries to pretend that his faith is reasoned (an oxymoron) by claiming that the literal resurrection of Jesus is a historical fact, which then makes everything else follow. The problem with that is that there is not a rational reason to accept the resurrection story in the first place. The “empty tomb” argument assumes a number of things, not the least of which is the accuracy of the New Testament. In the end it comes down to religious faith.

As to why the apostles would die for a false belief, as believers habitually ask, that again assumes that the New Testament account is factual and true, which is a huge assumption considering other problems with the scriptures. As I mentioned in a previous post on this issue, there are many other much more plausible alternatives for an empty tomb than Jesus being was physically resurrected as a man/god. Even if you accept the basics of the story, believing that the only explanation for the tomb being empty is because Jesus was resurrected is an irrational act of faith itself. Perhaps, as I mentioned before, his followers were too emotionally involved in his death, and refused to accept that they had followed a false god. We see that sort of cognitive dissonance happen throughout history.

Also, as I mentioned previously, consider the history of the Branch Davidians. Many were willing to die because they believed that David Koresh was the real deal. Their willingness to die doesn’t mean that Koresh was a real prophet, it just means he was able to fool people, and that some people are willing to die for an irrational belief. UFO cults also have a history of dying for their beliefs. The beliefs people have, even those they may be willing to die for, have absolutely no impact on reality.

Also, from a previous post, we don’t really know how the apostles actually died, we have to rely on the New Testament for that information too (convenient). Trying to demonstrate the truth of the New Testament by calling upon information in the New Testament is simply circular reasoning.

How Did the Apostles Die?
http://www.infidels.org/library/magazines/tsr/1997/4/4front97.html

As Carl Sagan used to say, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. We have no evidence to compel the conclusion that Jesus was god, or that he was physically resurrected. We don’t even know who wrote the new testament, or what happened to the apostles. We do know, however, that people can be amazingly gullible, and are prone to believe just about anything if it’s offered at the right time and by a charismatic spokesperson. Just look at the Mormon faith, it’s laughably absurd, and was promoted by a known con-artist during relatively modern times, and yet people believe it with conviction. Most people believe whatever rubbish they were raised with. Statistically speaking, if Josh had been raised by a Mormon family, he’d likely being arguing for the rational faith of that religion, instead of traditional Christianity.

Of course, when you’d finished your lack of response to mine, and accused me of not being really Christian, you ignored the actual point of my argument. As follows:

“However it fails in its explanation of our meaning or purpose in life as i see that necessarily including man’s reconciliation with a God who punishes for sin (including myself)”

Basically you’re saying that because of your Christian Starting point, the only tenable religion is Christianity. Because of the way you currently understand the world, the world must be as you understand it. That would be circular reasoning, right there.

Also, in response to your last statement to me: Are you certain that Paul cited historical fact, and not one of the other authors who wrote the “Pauline” Letters?

Somebody call the Vatican…alert Opus Dei!!!

There’s a independent thinker among us!!!

Well said. It is truly disturbing that in the 21st century so many people still believe in these ridiculous mythologies. When you really analyze it, the Christian worldview is a horrible one. The end of the world will be the greatest thing that ever happened and the casting of the majority of all humanity into a lake of fire to burn eternally is looked at as a wonderful thing, since Jesus is love and it’s his divine judgement to do so. It’s because of worldviews like this one and that of Islam that there will never be peace on Earth.

Religions come and go, beer and wine remain. It could well be that the end of the American empire is close. And, probably Americans will be gunning each other down in the streets like dogs. But the world will keep spinning.

The core evil of most religions: if you focus your life on what happens after DEATH? You don’t worry about helping make THIS WORLD a happy and healthy paradise. This pie in the sky stuff is what gets folks to fly airplanes into