[W:1303]***To Believe or Not To Believe

[Omega Man]

Re: To Believe or Not To Believe

I did. It is as solid as any theory of science. It is my argument, answering yours. You are quibbling.

You have resorted to fallacy.


OM

 

[Omega Man]

Re: To Believe or Not To Believe

Fallacy fallacy.

You attempted to use it as one. That is an appeal to popularity fallacy.

You found another source testifying of Christ from elsewhere? Where?

Now you're just being obtuse.


OM

 

[devildavid]

Re: To Believe or Not To Believe

How odd. You believe that Jesus Christ lived because of the Bible, yet you reject the Bible. WTF???

Fiction can include real life references.

What does it mean to reject the bible? We all know the bible exists. The questions are about what is the nature and source of the writings the bible contains.

 

[devildavid]

Re: To Believe or Not To Believe

Wups. It was a SIX day cycle. God rested on the seventh. Guess you haven't read it very carefully, eh?

You said:
"If you're a Christian, your bible claims that our planet was created a mere 6,000 or so years ago. Science has disproven that:", in an effort to justify eliminating any god or gods.

But there is. One fact you are using is the concept of a single god.

Go learn what a fact is. A fact is not a proof or a Universal Truth. You have literally built your trust on sand. Any fact can cease to be a fact as soon as someone disagrees with it. It becomes an argument at that point.

You said, "If you're a Christian, your bible claims that our planet was created a mere 6,000 or so years ago. Science has disproven that:". You have locked yourself in another paradox. Which is it, dude?

Science has no proofs. It is an open functional system. It has neither proofs nor the power of prediction. A theory of science must be transcribed into a closed functional system such as mathematics to gain the power of prediction. That process is not a proof, either. Science does not prove what exists.

Yet you are are attempting to do just that.

A fact is not a proof. Learn what a fact is.
As far as supporting evidence, there IS supporting evidence for ghosts, telepathy, vampires, zombies, telekinesis, levitation, and a host of other stuff. This evidence is just as real as the existence of gravity.

Supporting evidence doesn't mean anything. Science doesn't use it. Literally mountains of supporting evidence mean NOTHING in the face of a single piece of conflicting evidence.

I disagree with you. That means all your statements are not factual.

 

[Quaestio]

Re: To Believe or Not To Believe

I have 40+ years of research and experience in Biblical theology. It's not just superficial reading of the Bible, but digging-deep into it that reveals the real truths of the Bible. I have found that the greatest test of the Bible is the historical Jesus Christ. If people can't bust the resurrection - which is solid as a rock IMO - then they have to step back and admit it's hardly the work of fairy tales.



Science is great, but it cannot explain everything. There is massive evidence for God and the historical Jesus. A few books that contain those evidences are:

"The Historical Jesus," by scholar Dr. Gary Habermas;
"New Evidence that Demands a Verdict," by former skeptic Josh McDowell;
"Baker Encyclopedia of Christian Apologetics," by Dr. Norman Geisler;
"The Case for Christ," by Lee Strobel," and
"The Case for the Resurrection of Jesus," by Dr, Gary Habermas.

Have you read any of those?

You read pop-apologist-pap by hacks, not serious academic works.

 

[Into the Night]

Re: To Believe or Not To Believe

Their basic argument is that the supernatural events of the gospels and the trinitarian God are reality.

Define 'supernatural' and 'natural'. Define 'reality'. This statement is full of buzzwords.

Their evidence is the gospels themselves, after you remove the other noise.

There is also the Life itself. The Earth itself.

It's hearsay. That's a massive hole.

Life and the Earth aren't hearsay.

Jesus lived.

How do you know? Is this a belief or do you have some proof?

Was he the Son of God and all the rest that's claimed?

Why not?

Unknown, but the burden of proof is on the claimant,

No proof is needed. A simple belief is all that is necessary. The argument of faith is not a fallacy in and of itself.

and it's a heavier burden when it comes to claims of God.

None. Same burden. Same requirements. No proof is needed.

It wouldn't matter to me if all that's attributed to Plato were from others. This is a lot different.

Why?

 

[zyzygy]

Re: To Believe or Not To Believe

You read pop-apologist-pap by hacks, not serious academic works.

If you try to discuss the contents you will discover that he has never read those books. All he does is post the covers now and again.

 

[Into the Night]

Re: To Believe or Not To Believe

I said it is POSSIBLE that some real-world Jesus existed, someone who was the kernel of the myth that wound up in the Bible. You need to learn how to read.

No, you need to learn logic. You have not yet described your source of a knowledge that Jesus existed without using the Bible. You are just using part of the Bible and rejecting the rest, arbitrarily. That's a divisional error fallacy, dude.

 

[Into the Night]

Re: To Believe or Not To Believe

Not in the least. I never even mentioned them, much less their "equivalent". He inserted it out of thin air.


OM

Yes you were. I see you too like to deny your own arguments. Funny how you people backpedal like this.

 

[Into the Night]

Re: To Believe or Not To Believe

You have resorted to fallacy.


OM

Void argument fallacy.

 

[Into the Night]

Re: To Believe or Not To Believe

Now you're just being obtuse.


OM

Dodge. Answer the question put to you. You seem to have found another source testifying of Christ from elsewhere besides the Bible. Where?

 

[Logicman]

Re: To Believe or Not To Believe

^^^This post gets my nomination for Red Herring of the Year Award.


Bravo!

OM

Red Herring my butt. You can't come up with the scientific criteria you want Jesus judged by. That's a big ZERO for you!

And what's that? Strike 32 for you over the last few months? Must be.

 

[Logicman]

Re: To Believe or Not To Believe

The gospels aren't proof of the infallibility of the gospels, which is what they argue. That is circular. It winds up where it began.

I accept that the Jesus in the NT lived. The proof of the supernatural stuff is missing. The gospels are claims, no more.

You're another one like Omega Man - denying the supernatural but having no scientific basis for doing so. Tsk tsk...

 

[Logicman]

Re: To Believe or Not To Believe

Logicman: (To OM) -

If your standard for authenticity is empirical evidence and proof, please provide empirical evidence / proof for these individuals from antiquity:

1. Hippocrates
2. Attila the Hun
3. Archimedes of Syracuse
4. Confucius
5. Hannibal

You can't, can you?!

No one makes a religion out of those people or asks us to get us to dedicate our lives to serving them. Apples and marshmallows.

That's not the point. The point is Omega Man has no objective basis or specific criteria on how to assess Jesus and/or the resurrection. And he knows it.

 

[Logicman]

Re: To Believe or Not To Believe

You read pop-apologist-pap by hacks, not serious academic works.

Horse manure.

Dr. Gary Habermas is a highly accredited scholar. Perhaps he's at too high a level for you, but he's got excellent credentials. You don't. All you have is denial.

Remember the list of people starting with the disciples, the Gospel authors, church fathers, etc., etc., that I listed all the way up to the present. According to you they are all either liars, loon, or charlatans, and they are all wrong, but you are right. Sure, dox...

 

[RAMOSS]

Re: To Believe or Not To Believe

I've read the King James version cover to cover three times, once via a bible study group. I'm well aware of the old and often used trope about the hebrew word for "day" used by many Christians to justify that seven day creation cycle.

I don't eliminate god on a scientific basis, I choose to trust in facts, and about god, there are none. Science has never been in the business of proving something does not exist. Science is in the business of proving what does exist. You cannot prove a negative -- look it up. I also don't believe in ghosts, telepathy, vampires, zombies, telekinesis, levitation, and a host of other stuff for which no proven facts exist.

While yom can mean an indeterminate period,, you can tell the difference from the context. We have the same syntax in English. Back in the day is an indeterminate amount of time, but This day is hot is a 24 hour period. It was evening and it was morning is definitely a defined period of time

 

[Idiometer]

Re: To Believe or Not To Believe

I have 40+ years of research and experience in Biblical theology. It's not just superficial reading of the Bible, but digging-deep into it that reveals the real truths of the Bible. I have found that the greatest test of the Bible is the historical Jesus Christ. If people can't bust the resurrection - which is solid as a rock IMO - then they have to step back and admit it's hardly the work of fairy tales.



Science is great, but it cannot explain everything. There is massive evidence for God and the historical Jesus. A few books that contain those evidences are:

"The Historical Jesus," by scholar Dr. Gary Habermas;
"New Evidence that Demands a Verdict," by former skeptic Josh McDowell;
"Baker Encyclopedia of Christian Apologetics," by Dr. Norman Geisler;
"The Case for Christ," by Lee Strobel," and
"The Case for the Resurrection of Jesus," by Dr, Gary Habermas.

Have you read any of those?

Bust the resurrection? Were you there? Was any currently living person there? What would be your proof that any such thing happened?

Habermas: Christian apologist and professor at Liberty University, a so-called college that actually teaches creationism as if it were provable science.

McDowell: got his Master of Divinity degree at Biola, another very questionable institution, scolastically.

Geisler: great academic credentials, at least, but a solid evangelical, very biased. (What would I want with an encyclopedia of Christian apologists?)

Strobel: another evangelical with a need to not only defend his blind faith, but to tell others why they should, too. He even wrote an apologist book for children. Get 'em while they're young, right?

(BTW, out of curiosity, if Habermas wrote that last one, did he steal the "The Case For ..." meme from Strobel, or was it the other way around?

Apologists got their start back in their martyr heyday, when Romans were feeding them to lions. It was an all-out effort to get learned and respected thinkers of the era geared up to stop the carnage and discrimination against them. Sounds vaguely familiar ... aren't there Muslim apologists these days, trying to convince us that they are really a religion of peace?

All of your guys are listed here:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apologetics#Christianity

Dinesh D'Souza, for pity's sake. Yeah, they're in good company. I read one of his books. He's a hack.

With all due respect, your beliefs are not credible to me. None of those writers have any more proof than you do of the resurrection or any other aspect of god. Your bible was written by fallible human beings, and it wasn't until a few centuries after the fact that a bunch of them put their heads together and decided which ancient writings to include and which to leave out. I often wonder what they left out and why, but we'll never know.

 

[Logicman]

Re: To Believe or Not To Believe

While yom can mean an indeterminate period,, you can tell the difference from the context. We have the same syntax in English. Back in the day is an indeterminate amount of time, but This day is hot is a 24 hour period. It was evening and it was morning is definitely a defined period of time

Or so you would think if you hadn't studied that more.

"Evening and morning" is an idiomatic expression in Semitic languages. Like all idioms, its meaning is nonliteral but clearly understood by native speakers. The phrase "evening and morning" can, like yom, denote a long and indefinite period. The Old Testament itself unambiguously uses the "evening and morning" phrase in just such a way. In Daniel 8 we read the account of Daniel's ram and goat vision and the interpretation given by Gabriel. The vision covers many years; some commentators believe the time has not yet been completed. Daniel 8:26 says, "The vision of the evenings and the mornings that have been given to you is true, but seal up the vision for it concerns the distant future" (RSV). In Hebrew manuscripts, "the evenings and mornings," is not in the plural but in the singular, identical to the expression we find in Genesis 1. Translated literally, the verse reads, "And the vision of the evening and the morning that has been given you" Here we have a clear indication from scriptural usage that this phrase does not demand a 24-hour-day interpretation and can refer to an indefinite epoch."

"One might raise the objection that during the many years between the writing of Genesis and the writing of Daniel, the Hebrew usage could have changed, making the extrapolation from Daniel back to Genesis questionable. My response to such a challenge would be to underscore the stability of the ancient languages (perhaps due to the lack of general literacy and the rigorous professional training of those who served as scribes.) I see no way to escape this example of flexibility usage." How Long an Evening & Morning

 

[RAMOSS]

Re: To Believe or Not To Believe

Or so you would think if you hadn't studied that more.

"Evening and morning" is an idiomatic expression in Semitic languages. Like all idioms, its meaning is nonliteral but clearly understood by native speakers. The phrase "evening and morning" can, like yom, denote a long and indefinite period. The Old Testament itself unambiguously uses the "evening and morning" phrase in just such a way. In Daniel 8 we read the account of Daniel's ram and goat vision and the interpretation given by Gabriel. The vision covers many years; some commentators believe the time has not yet been completed. Daniel 8:26 says, "The vision of the evenings and the mornings that have been given to you is true, but seal up the vision for it concerns the distant future" (RSV). In Hebrew manuscripts, "the evenings and mornings," is not in the plural but in the singular, identical to the expression we find in Genesis 1. Translated literally, the verse reads, "And the vision of the evening and the morning that has been given you" Here we have a clear indication from scriptural usage that this phrase does not demand a 24-hour-day interpretation and can refer to an indefinite epoch."

"One might raise the objection that during the many years between the writing of Genesis and the writing of Daniel, the Hebrew usage could have changed, making the extrapolation from Daniel back to Genesis questionable. My response to such a challenge would be to underscore the stability of the ancient languages (perhaps due to the lack of general literacy and the rigorous professional training of those who served as scribes.) I see no way to escape this example of flexibility usage." How Long an Evening & Morning

Do I accept the word of a fake university, or do I accept the Rabbis. I'll accept the rabbi'. You can't even quote a place that is from a real university, but rather a pretend one that has no accreditation , nor does it teach classes, but calls itself a 'university' anyway.


On edit: Source that answers the same question , what does 'yom' actually mean

from https://hermeneutics.stackexchange....yom-in-genesis-1-be-translated-as-an-aeon-age

an "Yom" in Gen 1 be translated "aeon" meaning "an age".

The short answer is "not quite". יוֹם (yôm) can refer to some unspecified period of time, as in "the day of the LORD" (as e.g. in Amos 5:18), but that is usually regarded as quite a specialized meaning.

Typically, the "unspecified period" is used with the plural, "days", however: e.g. Deuteronomy 32:7: "Remember the days of old...".

Its "basic" meaning is "day (as opposed to night)", i.e., "daytime" (e.g., Numbers 9:21), but it is also used of the 24-hour period (e.g., Leviticus 22:30). It also has a range of uses much like the English "day", e.g., "...the day when you came out the land of Egypt..." as a reference to the time of the exodus (Deut 16:3 -- see all the uses of "day" in verses Deut 16:3-4!).

The yôm entry in Brown, Driver, and Briggs, A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament (OUP, 1906), pp. 398-401 gives a good sense for the range of meaning lexicographers attach to this biblical Hebrew word.

For idiomatic uses of yôm, see S.J. De Vries, Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow: Time and History in the Old Testament (Eerdmans, 1975), and pp. 39-53 in particular.

For yet more reference material, see the "יוֹם (yôm)" article by Magne Sæbø in G. Botterweck & H. Ringgren (eds), Theological Dictionary of the Old Testament (Eerdmans, 1990), vol. 6, pp. 7-32.

 

[Logicman]

Re: To Believe or Not To Believe

Bust the resurrection? Were you there? Was any currently living person there? What would be your proof that any such thing happened?

Habermas: Christian apologist and professor at Liberty University, a so-called college that actually teaches creationism as if it were provable science.

McDowell: got his Master of Divinity degree at Biola, another very questionable institution, scolastically.

Geisler: great academic credentials, at least, but a solid evangelical, very biased. (What would I want with an encyclopedia of Christian apologists?)

Strobel: another evangelical with a need to not only defend his blind faith, but to tell others why they should, too. He even wrote an apologist book for children. Get 'em while they're young, right?

(BTW, out of curiosity, if Habermas wrote that last one, did he steal the "The Case For ..." meme from Strobel, or was it the other way around?

Apologists got their start back in their martyr heyday, when Romans were feeding them to lions. It was an all-out effort to get learned and respected thinkers of the era geared up to stop the carnage and discrimination against them. Sounds vaguely familiar ... aren't there Muslim apologists these days, trying to convince us that they are really a religion of peace?

All of your guys are listed here:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apologetics#Christianity

Dinesh D'Souza, for pity's sake. Yeah, they're in good company. I read one of his books. He's a hack.

With all due respect, your beliefs are not credible to me. None of those writers have any more proof than you do of the resurrection or any other aspect of god. Your bible was written by fallible human beings, and it wasn't until a few centuries after the fact that a bunch of them put their heads together and decided which ancient writings to include and which to leave out. I often wonder what they left out and why, but we'll never know.

So, you didn't read the books. Got it. Shoot the messenger instead.

If you want to hop in here with the big dogs you should have a better understanding of Biblical Theology than I see you currently having.

Habermas has probably forgotten more than you ever knew about Biblical Theology. He presents logical arguments and evidences for the resurrection of Christ. Do try to falsify any of the below items from Habermas which logically support the resurrection, when paired with the other items:

"12 Historical Facts that Most Scholars Agree With

1. Jesus died by crucifixion.

2. He was buried.

3. His death caused the disciples to despair and lose hope.

4. The tomb was empty (the most contested).

5. The disciples had experiences which they believed were literal appearances of the risen Jesus (the most important proof).

6. The disciples were transformed from doubters to bold proclaimers.

7. The resurrection was the central message.

8. They preached the message of Jesus’ resurrection in Jerusalem.

9. The Church was born and grew.

10. Orthodox Jews who believed in Christ made Sunday their primary day of worship.

11. James was converted to the faith when he saw the resurrected Jesus (James was a family skeptic).

12. Paul was converted to the faith (Paul was an outsider skeptic)."

12 Historical Facts - Gary Habermas

Occam's Razor says the Resurrection is the most like answer.

One last thing: Can you identify even ONE person, place, or event in the Gospels that has been shown to be undeniably false? If so, cite it. Provide the scripture # and your argument.

 

[bongsaway]

Re: To Believe or Not To Believe

An almost infinite number? I've already pointed out that it's the religious fanatics that make virtually every thread in this forum because they're looking for attention, then they complain when we respond, like our responding proves them right. I wish people would stop taking the bait.

Same thing day after day. I asked what's the problem you have with atheists? I got some cockamamee circular doubletalk about old school atheists and internet atheists and how the old school atheists were ok but not the internet atheists? WTF? Obviously this person is trying to prove their superiority over someone?

 

[Logicman]

Re: To Believe or Not To Believe

Do I accept the word of a fake university, or do I accept the Rabbis. I'll accept the rabbi'. You can't even quote a place that is from a real university, but rather a pretend one that has no accreditation , nor does it teach classes, but calls itself a 'university' anyway.


On edit: Source that answers the same question , what does 'yom' actually mean

from https://hermeneutics.stackexchange....yom-in-genesis-1-be-translated-as-an-aeon-age

Should I accept the word of a dedicated Christ-denier with no formal theological education, or educated theologians who have done their homework? I'll accept the theologians.

 

[RAMOSS]

Re: To Believe or Not To Believe

Should I accept the word of a dedicated Christ-denier with no formal theological education, or educated theologians who have done their homework? I'll accept the theologians.

Because the source I give is a christian source with Christian scholars?? But, never mind that.. you have to have your fake university.

 

[Logicman]

Re: To Believe or Not To Believe

Do I accept the word of a fake university, or do I accept the Rabbis. I'll accept the rabbi'.

Ok, then here's a Rabbi you have to believe.

https://jewsforjesus.org/publications/issues/issues-v02-n05/the-rabbis-dilemma-a-look-at-isaiah-53/

 

[Logicman]

Re: To Believe or Not To Believe

Because the source I give is a christian source with Christian scholars?? But, never mind that.. you have to have your fake university.

So, all Christian scholars are liars. But Ramoss KNOWS! ROTFLOL.

You know, Ramoss - you're tacky little misinformed insults aren't working for you.