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brotherlylove

(10th February 2012 21:06)Mister Agenda Wrote: The null hypothesis must be defeated by evidence. More extraordinary claims require commensurate evidence. My desire for something to be true doesn't make it more likely to be true, if anything, the opposite.

Well, it's been my experience that God is more than willing to provide that evidence. It doesn't seem like you ever got to know God personally in your Christian upbringing, that you weren't born again. Would say that is accurate?

(10th February 2012 21:06)Mister Agenda Wrote: I think an imaginary friend can satisfy the emotional criteria and selection bias can cover the rest. I'm willing to entertain any demonstrations of supernatural power you can arrange via the creator of the universe being inside you.

Many people have imaginary friends and it doesn't lead to any positive changes in their lives. You can arrange it for yourself by asking God to come into your life, to forgive you for sins and repent of them, and accepting Him as Lord and Savior.

(10th February 2012 21:06)Mister Agenda Wrote: Fair enough, if he exists he is more than welcome to draw me.

So, if knew Jesus was God you would be a Christian?

(10th February 2012 21:06)Mister Agenda Wrote: I'm sorry, I can't resist: 'Isn't THAT special!'

I think you underestimate the mischief we mere humans can get up to on our own account, but I accept your view is consistent with your beliefs. So original sin isn't a sufficient curse, God also chooses to let Satan have free reign over billions of people whose primary crime is being raised in the wrong religion?

Satan doesn't cause anyone to sin; he isn't responsible for what human beings do. He just offers them a road, but it is the person who decides to take it.

(10th February 2012 21:06)Mister Agenda Wrote: I don't think the consensus is as one-sided as you do.

People will die for what they believe in. That doesn't make what they believe in true. And are you counting Judas among the martyrs, or are you counting Matthias as his 'replacement'? John is the one who died of natural causes.

People are willing to die for what they believe in, if they believe it. If they don't actually believe it, as in your conspiracy theory, they are not going to be willing to die for it. I'm counting Matthias, yes.

(10th February 2012 21:06)Mister Agenda Wrote: I've never contended a conspiracy. Only a meme combined with a game of Chinese whispers where the early Christians didn't write down the Gospels for decades because they thought the Kindgom of Heaven was due any minute, and finally caught on that their movement was in trouble if they didn't write things down. Of course, lots of people had that idea and dozens of Gospels were flying around 50-100 years after the reported events. Some mistakes and exaggerations are to be expected even with the best of intentions and pious sincerity. But I don't have to prove anything. It was two thousand years ago, the books that wound up in the Bible were picked by a committee, and no one can be sure what actually happened...although it is reasonable to rule out resurrection as a likely event when pretty much any natural alternative is more plausible (like not really being dead in the first place) and nobody besides Christians writing down that the dead were walking the streets of Jerusalem, and they didn't bother to record it until 50+ years later. It's all a bit much to take seriously. It's like being a Mormon, you have to be on the inside for it to make sense. Under the circumstances, the null hypothesis stands.

You are contending a conspiracy when you say that the apostles didn't believe Jesus was raised from the dead. You are saying basically that they pretended He did and wrote down a bunch of lies to keep the religion going. Some dates place the gospels and epistles within 20 years of the resurrection, and who says there weren't any other writings. It's not as if our documentation from that period is complete. Historians have lost track of entire civilizations. We wouldn't have even known about the Hittite empire if it wasn't for its mention in scripture.

The church at that time was composed mostly of direct witnesses of Jesus Christ, both when He was alive and when He was resurrected. It doesn't make any sense that these people would martyr themselves for what they knew wasn't true, or that this truth couldn't easily be verified by direct witnesses. The apostles, who were in the position to know everything, died for their belief in Jesus. Either what they wrote was lies which makes no sense or they wrote what they believed is true and died for those beliefs.

(10th February 2012 21:06)Mister Agenda Wrote: I wouldn't call belief in God (or ancestor spirits, or whatever) a delusion. It's only natural to believe what you were raised to believe and that people you trust treat as real. It's actually a problem that God isn't mutually exclusive with science. There are claims made about God that science could confirm if true. At every turn, science could have found evidence clearly supports the claims of the Bible: global flood, life forms not related to each other by heredity, young earth, universe appeared as is out of nothing, prayers to God have a higher success rate than prayers to teddy bears...this particular God doesn't seem to have evidence where evidence would be expected if it really existed per the Biblical description.

Well, you have a much different perspective on the evidence than I do. I could give you 10 young earth dating methods to every one you have showing an old earth. Life having common genetics indicates a common designer, especially since the genetics show a mosaic and not a branching pattern. There is evidence for a global flood, again this is an interpretation of the evidence. Uniformitarianism vs Catastrophism.