... malevolent bully.

[Xamonas Chegwé]

Sorry I flagged up speaking in tongues. The practice of talking absolute, incomprehensible crap doesn't have any place whatsoever in rational discourse. I can make weird noises but I don't claim it means anything.

Sorry? LOLWUT????

[Azathoth]

Sorry I flagged up speaking in tongues. The practice of talking absolute, incomprehensible crap doesn't have any place whatsoever in rational discourse. I can make weird noises but I don't claim it means anything.

I haz thread idea Everyone is sleeping now so can't babble and flail at the webcam tonight. Watch the pub tomorrow though

[charlou]

Speaking in tongues seems easily enough explained to me. It can be purposeful deceit (people doing it for manipulative reasons, knowing full well it's bullshit), it can be a willful abandonment of reason (people going along with it, even though they kinda know at some level that it's bullshit), or it can be simply allowing oneself to be overcome with emotion and getting caught up in the spirit of things (spirit, as opposed to Spirit), and fooling oneself into believing something more is going on than is actually going on.

Yep. I don't go along with the brain malfunction explanation Tig describes, either.

I've seen the tongues thing among some members of both large congregations and small gatherings (ugg ... very weird and confusing as a child, but still fascinating to consider in hindsight) and it's always appeared to me that people are either letting themselves get into a state of some sort of genuine psychotic release in many cases, or in other cases pretending to do so to appear to be 'touched by god'. Analogous to the difference between having an orgasm and faking it, I think.

People are very good at believing their own bullshit too, so the line between contrived and genuine/sincere often blurs.

[Twiglet]

The capacity to believe, or be convinced by our own internal sense of rightness may well be common to all humans. I know I have found it profoundly upsetting on a personal level to let go of dearly held beliefs when faced with things which contradict them, and it would have been easier to overlook them than re-arrange my opinions.

Playing devils advocate, what about climate science? I imagine that most of us here subscribe to the idea that the pace of global warming is being significantly speeded up by human activity, and base that on "scientific evidence". If I'm being truly honest with myself, I understand only some very basic parts of that puzzle (like how CO2 retains more incident heat). When it comes down to the serious nitty-gritty of modelling, I have faith in the body of scientific evidence that has been produced, and the general level of integrity of those who produced it.

I have heard Christians argue that this is analagous to their Biblically based beliefs (substitute any religion you like). and whilst I don't agree, or wish to derail this topic into the obvious pantomime, the core of the matter is that we can easily be attached to our beliefs, as humans, and dismiss the most rational seeming of arguments because it's intellectually (or morally or spirtually) painful to shift from an entrenched position.

Arguing against faith with reason is something I personally find unproductive, most of the time, but I do take exception with those who try to argue with me that their faith is reasonable.

It is a measure of the success of science in explaining how the world works that religion has needed to adopt reason and science as the yardstick against which its validity is measured, where once dogma sufficed, intellectual deception in the guise of pseudoscience like intelligent design is propagated. Were the religious more confident, they would, I think, feel no such need to try and emulate scientific modes of argument in their attempts to justify their fundamentally unreasonable faiths.

None the less, I sympathise to an extent with someone sticking to their beliefs with faith as a justification. I do the same myself when asked about Global warming. I have faith in the scientific community to accurately represent and report data, most of the time. I also think my faith in this matter is quite well justified.

[Tigger]

The capacity to believe, or be convinced by our own internal sense of rightness may well be common to all humans. I know I have found it profoundly upsetting on a personal level to let go of dearly held beliefs when faced with things which contradict them, and it would have been easier to overlook them than re-arrange my opinions.

Playing devils advocate, what about climate science? I imagine that most of us here subscribe to the idea that the pace of global warming is being significantly speeded up by human activity, and base that on "scientific evidence". If I'm being truly honest with myself, I understand only some very basic parts of that puzzle (like how CO2 retains more incident heat). When it comes down to the serious nitty-gritty of modelling, I have faith in the body of scientific evidence that has been produced, and the general level of integrity of those who produced it.

I have heard Christians argue that this is analagous to their Biblically based beliefs (substitute any religion you like). and whilst I don't agree, or wish to derail this topic into the obvious pantomime, the core of the matter is that we can easily be attached to our beliefs, as humans, and dismiss the most rational seeming of arguments because it's intellectually (or morally or spirtually) painful to shift from an entrenched position.

Arguing against faith with reason is something I personally find unproductive, most of the time, but I do take exception with those who try to argue with me that their faith is reasonable.

It is a measure of the success of science in explaining how the world works that religion has needed to adopt reason and science as the yardstick against which its validity is measured, where once dogma sufficed, intellectual deception in the guise of pseudoscience like intelligent design is propagated. Were the religious more confident, they would, I think, feel no such need to try and emulate scientific modes of argument in their attempts to justify their fundamentally unreasonable faiths.

None the less, I sympathise to an extent with someone sticking to their beliefs with faith as a justification. I do the same myself when asked about Global warming. I have faith in the scientific community to accurately represent and report data, most of the time. I also think my faith in this matter is quite well justified.

Re your last line: it's not faith you have, but trust. You trust them to do the right thing. Faith would involve believing made up fairy stories of some sort with no evidence whatsoever. If need be, you could investigate the science yourself and gain independent data. With religion there is no such recourse.

[Feck]

The capacity to believe, or be convinced by our own internal sense of rightness may well be common to all humans. I know I have found it profoundly upsetting on a personal level to let go of dearly held beliefs when faced with things which contradict them, and it would have been easier to overlook them than re-arrange my opinions.

Playing devils advocate, what about climate science? I imagine that most of us here subscribe to the idea that the pace of global warming is being significantly speeded up by human activity, and base that on "scientific evidence". If I'm being truly honest with myself, I understand only some very basic parts of that puzzle (like how CO2 retains more incident heat). When it comes down to the serious nitty-gritty of modelling, I have faith in the body of scientific evidence that has been produced, and the general level of integrity of those who produced it.

I have heard Christians argue that this is analagous to their Biblically based beliefs (substitute any religion you like). and whilst I don't agree, or wish to derail this topic into the obvious pantomime, the core of the matter is that we can easily be attached to our beliefs, as humans, and dismiss the most rational seeming of arguments because it's intellectually (or morally or spirtually) painful to shift from an entrenched position.

Arguing against faith with reason is something I personally find unproductive, most of the time, but I do take exception with those who try to argue with me that their faith is reasonable.

It is a measure of the success of science in explaining how the world works that religion has needed to adopt reason and science as the yardstick against which its validity is measured, where once dogma sufficed, intellectual deception in the guise of pseudoscience like intelligent design is propagated. Were the religious more confident, they would, I think, feel no such need to try and emulate scientific modes of argument in their attempts to justify their fundamentally unreasonable faiths.

None the less, I sympathise to an extent with someone sticking to their beliefs with faith as a justification. I do the same myself when asked about Global warming. I have faith in the scientific community to accurately represent and report data, most of the time. I also think my faith in this matter is quite well justified.

It is true there is no argument against Faith ... And by the same standards no argument for it ....Yet we Still get people who try and explain why their particular brand of God -buggery is valid and true. Look at the lengths of the arguments we have to go through EVERYTIME some LALA turns up here !
And we all KNOW eventually they will loose every point they make and fall back to Default position (insert Priest joke here) that they have an absolute unalterable knowledge of THE TRUTH !
What I want to know is Why do they bother ? Does their faith really need the desperate attempts they make to ,in some way , reinforce it ?

Seems to me it is like the drunk in the alley way sitting in his own piss and shit desperately offering a puke smeared bottle of super- strength cider
to passers-by Shouting because he is too pissed to understand NOBODY wants any of what got him in the state he is in .

[Coito ergo sum]

I don't have mountains of evidence that Jesus rose from the dead. I have a little evidence that he did and you have none that he didn't. I win!

Can you show us this evidence?

Sure - eyewitness testimony recorded in the writings of Paul and John, It's some evidence, as all historical manuscripts are.

Can you distinguish the quality of the evidence, however, from the evidence of Homer's Iliad and its stories involving Achilles, Helen, Agamemnon, Zeus and Neptune...?

I mean, we certainly believe, because there is corroborating archaelogical evidence, that there was a Troy, and that there likely was a Trojan war. However, we do not accept the miraculous and supernatural claims involving the activities of Zeus and Neptune recounted in those stories. We also don't assume that the specific events and details in the story are true.

For example, in Book Two, there is a passage, "But Juno said to Minerva, "Alas, daughter of aegis-bearing Jove, unweariable, shall the Argives fly home to their own land over the broad sea, and leave Priam and the Trojans the glory of still keeping Helen, for whose sake so many of the Achaeans have died at Troy, far from their homes? Go about at once among the host, and speak fairly to them, man by man, that they draw not their ships into the sea.""

Are we to assume that Juno really said that to Minerva? Was there even really a Helen, and is the tale of the war starting over a dispute involving Helen, and then drawing in the gods who sided with the Greeks or the Trojans?

So, I agree with you, the Bible is "some evidence." Sure. But not all evidence is equal, and "evidence of what?" is always a key question. The Iliad is "some evidence" that the players in the story existed, and that there was a Troy, and an Achilles and a Hector and King Priam...and even a Zeus, Apollo, Minerva, and Neptune...but, how strong is the Iliad as evidence of gods and of miracles described therein? I would suggest to you that you and I both agree that the answer is "pretty damn weak" evidence.

So, can you explain to me why the Pauline writings you cite are to be considered better evidence than the Iliad?

[Coito ergo sum]

Faith - belief without proof or reason. Yes, that is it, isn't it?

That is not my definition of faith. Faith is trust that comes from personal encounter with someone.

I've asked a number of times, already, so I don't now expect an answer.

Can you please describe what this "personal encounter" was? Did you shake someone or something's hand? Did you have a dream? A vision? A feeling? What? Did you talk to someone or something?

In the case of religious faith, it comes from personal encounter with God.

Or gods? Once again, though....while we may not be able to experience the encounter you experienced, you should be able to articulate what it was like to you, can't you? Do you resist telling me/us? If so, why? If not, can you please do so?

Everyone who has had such an encounter has his or her own reasons for believing. In the case of the Christian faith, there is the objective component of the historical record about Jesus, which I judge to be generally accurate.

From our discussion here, it seems to me that your judgment is not based on anything concrete. The only real "historical record" of Jesus comes from the New Testament, and you haven't explained your basis for judging those as "generally accurate." I am curious how your basis for judging the NT as "generally accurate" differs from the basis you would have for judging the Iliad "generally accurate."

Then there is the subjective component of personal experience

...still waiting on your articulation of a description of this personal experience....

in which the life of Jesus becomes real to the believer through an encounter with the Holy Spirit.

How? What kind of "encounter?" What's it like?

The experience is unique to each person who has it. I explained some of my own experience, a small part of it, in another thread.

Link?

For me, one consequence of the encounter was that the story of Jesus came alive to me. It became real, whereas before it had simply been words on a page. I do not experience this with any other religious text.

How do you distinguish that from something purely inside your head? Lots of stories are very moving.

And, doesn't it seem in the least odd that eternal salvation or damnation hangs in the balance of a very nebulous and interpretive mental exercise or experience? Obviously, billions of people who had different "experiences" and were moved by other books that "came alive" for them kinda screwed up, albeit quite in good faith...?

And it also appears to me on a purely objective historical basis that the account of Jesus in the gospels is more accurate than pagan myths. So, it is convincing to me.

You see, that I don't get at all. What "objective" historical evidence are you relying on to conclude that the story of Jesus in the Bible is convincing?

What experience, exactly?

Did you see something? Did you hear something? Did you feel something? Did you think something? Did you get a message? How so? Did you receive a revelation? How did it come to you? In a dream? While meditating?

What experience, exactly?

I recounted my first experience in the "My Take On Jesus" thread. Generally, the daily experience is of the presence of God, a sense that he is real and connected to my life.

O.k. - fair enough.

How do you distinguish that from make believe? How do you distinguish that from simply a human, emotional reaction based on your psychological need to believe in something supernatural?

Reading the words of Jesus is like hearing a real person speak. His presence is like an elation, a sense of glory, peace, joy. Sometimes it bubbles up and I begin speaking in tongues. Other times it is just a quiet sense that he is there. The experience is varied, like that of the experience of any other person It also seems to match what I read in the NT about the early Christian experience. I understand what they were talking about

And, you don't see any likelihood of your ability to "understand what they are talking about" to be at all "cultural" and distinct from the ability of, say, a born and raised Japanese Shintoist?

Also, do you not see that other folks - billions of them - have had similar senses of elation, glory, peace and joy, over the millenia, based on other gods and religions? And, that these "pagans" were not acting out of malice or "hate for god" or anything like that - but, rather they "understood what they [their sources] were talking about" because of the cultural milieu in which they grew up?

I mean - this is what I really don't get about believers. You are so sure about what you believe - and what you believe says that if others don't believe as you, then they will not be saved. Yet, what others believe - Shintoists and ancient Greeks, by way of example - are and were held with the same sincerity and conviction you hold your beliefs. Their beliefs, for them, were based on the same evidence you have - some documents, some statements by others, and their personal experiences and feelings....

How is the Shintoists belief characteristically different than yours? How is his evidence worse than yours? On what basis do you reject Shintoism? And, do you at least see the point that from an objective perspective, it is impossible to distinguish that you are right and he is wrong, or vice versa?

[Coito ergo sum]

You don't have any "evidence" that he rose from the dead. You, at best, have the New Testament writings. We have no forensic evidence. We have no archeological evidence. Nothing except the New Testament. Yes, you can call that evidence.

However, what kind of evidence is that?

Is it not the same kind of evidence we have for the existence of Zeus, Perseus, Danae, Achilles, Medusa the Gorgon, etc.?

So, I have a little evidence that Danae was impregnated by Zeus and fathered Perseus who went on to kill Medusa and marry Andromeda, and you have none that those events didn't happen. I win! Right?

You do see that, don't you?

No, there are a couple of eyewitness statements in the NT about seeing the resurrected Jesus Paul in I Cor 15 and John in John 20-21.. I don't believe you have any eyewitness statements of Zeus impregnating Danae.

Danae was an eyewitness.

Eyewitness testimony, while not perfect, is some evidence,

Well, you need to think a little bit about that. How good is the testimony you have. In reality, you have no "testimony" of any "eyewitnesses" here.

What you have here, technically, is hearsay. It's a REPORTED statement by someone who is not around for us to hear it for ourselves. So, we have several layers of weakness here - one, it's some guy writing in, say, 90 AD or thereabouts, 60 years after the purported crucifixion, and that person was not there on the scene. That person is recounting what was said by someone else, at least second hand, and probably more hands than that. We have very serious issues with this kind of evidence: (1) there are problems of "narration" - did the person writing John and Corinthians tell the story accurately and accurately quote the "witnesses?" (2) memory - did the "witnesses" remember correctly when they told the story? Did the people who told John and Paul have perfect memories? Did John and Paul's memories faulter or fade? These are factors which weaken all "witness" testimony, especially when the witnesses were dead at that time of writing and the writers heard the story second and third hand.

and is admitted in court proceedings every day.

Actually, the writings of John and Paul in John and Corinthians would NOT be admitted into court proceedings to prove the truth of what the "eyewitnesses" were asserting (at least not in the United States). The witnesses are dead, and John and Corinthians are statements made outside the trial, so that would be excluded as hearsay.

If you can give me an eyewitness account of an ancient pagan miracle that is given by a contemporary of the person/event at issue (Paul and John were contemporaries of Jesus - I'm not sure about George and Ringo, however), then I will acknowledge that you have evidence of that event.

I'll give you an easy one that fits your criteria exactly. Joseph Smith and his "eyewitnesses." We have "eyewitness" testimony supporting the Mormon faith.

[MrFungus420]

Abraham thought that is what God told him.

The bible says otherwise. So, as soon as you admitted this your logic fell apart.

Why did my logic fall apart? I am not relying here on the authority of the bible.

Then why are you claiming that there was ANY attempted sacrifice by Abraham?

The entire story rests on the authority of the bible.

Your "logic" falls apart because you are claiming the Biblical event occurred (your reliance on Biblical authority), but it didn't occur as the Bible outlines (your made-up shit).

[MrFungus420]

So generally, I accept the account of Abraham, but question Abraham's interpretation of his own experience, and his interpretation of God.

You do NOT accept the account of Abraham. You made up your own story about it.

Why did you make up your own story? Because the Bible doesn't match your preconceptions. You recognize that the story as written in the Bible is abhorrent, vile and evil. You realize that if the story is true, God acts immorally.

If you want to try to claim that I am wrong, then it just takes one thing. All that you need to do is to provide a method by which we can judge which parts of the Bible are to be taken literally and which are the parts that we are supposed to accept YOUR version of what happened.

Oh, and a reason to accept your re-write of the stories of the Bible as valid in any way.

[MrFungus420]

Ah, so you're making up your own version, which has no support in anything but your brain's synapses. We can classify your version of the story as about as likely as a version that says that Abraham really disobeyed God when he refrained from killing Isaac and killed the sheep instead because his human frailty would not let him kill his own son in order to obey his God's commands. Right? Or, is there some way for us to distinguish which is the true version, if any?

My version is no more authoritative than anyone else's. I'm simply presenting a different interpretation of some recorded events, an interpretation that is not based on authority of scripture.

It's not an interpretation.

It is a complete fabrication.

[MrFungus420]

How can an omniscient, omnipotent, and omnipresent being "need" anything at all?

He doesn't. But, technically he is not omnipotent, because even the Bible indicates that there are certain things that he cannot do, such as deny himself (act in a way that is contrary to his nature).

FFS, you're talking as though you actually believe this thing exists. Incredible.

No, it's quite credible. Most people believe that God exists in some form. Most people always have.

Are you really saying that you believe that magic is credible?

Besides, an argument from popularity is NOT evidence, it is NOT a reason to accept something. To say that a lot of people believe something does NOT make it credible.

Most people used to believe that the Earth was flat. Most people have believed in astrology. Lots have believed in homeopathy.

[MrFungus420]

Most people believed the Sun was God.

I know. Where did you all go so wrong?

Don't look at me.

I'll accept the Sun over the Son any day of the week. And twice on Sundays!

[MrFungus420]

Yes, I am quite aware of what the OT says, having studied it all my life.

Not very well, apparently.

My argument is that the people of the OT misinterpreted God,

And what is that opinion based on?

What EVIDENCE do you have?