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What makes your faith true?
RE: What makes your faith true?
What makes Christianity true ??

70,000 schisms (and counting) might be one of them thar clue things that might lead one to think the question is FUBAR'd.
 The granting of a pardon is an imputation of guilt, and the acceptance a confession of it. 




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RE: What makes your faith true?
(February 20, 2017 at 9:17 pm)Odoital77 Wrote: somehow survived separately and as a group for thousands of years when virtually all other works of antiquity have either disappeared or are far less well attested to, in terms of authenticity

Not so, especially since mainly Christians were destroying the so called pagan books. Ever heard Library of Alexandria for instance?

(February 20, 2017 at 9:17 pm)Odoital77 Wrote: The Bible isn’t that different from other types of literature that use similar kinds of language, metaphors, poetry, etc…

Yeah similar to that type of literature like fiction and not like Plato's "Republic". Imagine if let's say if United States Constitution was written in poetry and metaphors and stories, then you would have wars waging for what each of the amendments really means. But it is not. It was written in straight forward crystal language that even when translated doesn't lose it's meaning.

(February 20, 2017 at 9:17 pm)Odoital77 Wrote: And typically when people are being violent in the name of Christianity, they are violating the long-standing tenets of the faith, not following them.  The prescriptive teachings of Jesus to Christians do not include violence...

So let's see little bit in history and just the popes: Pope Urban II launched the First Crusade in 1095 to wrest the Holy Land from infidels."Deus Vult" (God wills it). In 1208, Pope Innocent III declared a major crusade to destroy the Albigenses. In 1487, Pope Innocent VIII declared an armed crusade against Waldensians in the Savoy region of France. Pope Innocent IV authorized torture in 1252, and the Inquisition chambers became places of terror and even before papal statute of 1231 decreed burning as the standard penalty. In 1478 the pope authorized King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella to revive the Inquisition to hunt "secret Jews" and their Muslim counterparts.
In 1200s Pope Gregory IX authorized the killing of witches, then in 1484 Pope Innocent VIII issued a bull declaring the absolute reality of witches—thus it became heresy to doubt their existence. Prosecutions soared.

Or what about St. Thomas Aquinas who declared: "If coiners and other malefactors are justly doomed to death, much more may heretics be justly slain."

So are you telling me that popes and theologian giants don't know the prescriptive teachings of Jesus? Or take it this way: if pope does not know it what makes you think you know it?

(February 20, 2017 at 9:17 pm)Odoital77 Wrote: The fact that a tiny minority of slaveholders used the Bible in a way that contradicted its basic tenets in order to attempt to support the institution of slavery is far outweighed by the superior number of people who used the Bible and its teachings in concert with the tenets of the Christian faith to argue against slavery.  And in fact, because the anti-slavery movement was in harmony with what the Bible actually teaches, that movement saw far more success than those who had to selectively misinterpret scripture in order to give the appearance of support.  It was largely the religious Christians in the Christian west that put an end to slavery.  

Abolitionists also drew considerable inspiration from the Bible. Of course they did. People have been cherry-picking the Bible for millennia to justify their every impulse, moral and otherwise but they were on the losing side of a theological argument. As the Reverend Richard Fuller put it in 1845: "What God sanctioned in the Old Testament, and permitted in the New, cannot be a sin."
It is remarkably easy for a person to arrive to conclusion that slaves are human beings like himself, enjoying the same capacity for suffering and happiness and yet, it had to be spread at the point of a bayonet throughout the Confederate South, among the most pious Christians in one of the bloodiest wars in history.

(February 20, 2017 at 9:17 pm)Odoital77 Wrote: There actually is no prescriptive rules or advice for owning slaves, beating servants, or killing people for minor infractions.

Now what do you want me to think of you: That you are a liar or that you have poor knowlidge of the Bible? Let's just tackle some of minor infractions like that you can kill your wife if she can't prove she's a virgin on the wedding night. Or maybe you think this is a big deal and not minor infarction? What about doing any kind of work on the Sabbath, even household chores for no pay, is a capital offense and if you even collect sticks you should get killed. Being gay is still considered to be highly controversial and is disapproved of by many Christians today; thankfully, however, fewer Christians are calling for God’s biblical punishment for it, which is death (Leviticus 20:13). Even blasphemy, the act of merely insulting God, is punishable by death (Leviticus 24:16). Being other religion is also to be punished by death. God also prescribe death penalty for adultery and for cheeking your parents.
Now I could do same with passages on slavery and beating servants but I hope you'll look for them yourself instead.

(February 20, 2017 at 9:17 pm)Odoital77 Wrote: As our level of moral understanding and the wisdom with which we apply that understanding has increased, so has our understanding of the text.

Exactly! Modern morality, wherever else it comes from, does not come from the Bible. You cannot get away with claiming that religion provides you with some sort of inside track to defining what is good and what is bad. What morality of the Bible proves is that it was written by people of those age - no better and if it was written (or inspired) by supreme being would it not have supreme morality?

(February 20, 2017 at 9:17 pm)Odoital77 Wrote: Why, if there is evidence of the Christian God, which would be superior to Ganesha, by nature, and makes the claim to be the ONLY God, would you think there would be no evidence to disprove Ganesha?

What makes you think that your god is better then Ganesha? Not to mention there is no evidence.

(February 20, 2017 at 9:17 pm)Odoital77 Wrote: With regard to your last comment regarding picking and choosing, I really don’t know what you mean?
Well to pick and choose is to degrade the Bible because those are supposed to be moral stories and to pick and choose we must have some independent criterion for deciding which are the moral bits: a criterion which, wherever it comes from, cannot come from scripture itself and is presumably available to all of us whether we are religious or not. Then why not use some other works of fiction like Shakespeare and do the same technique?
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RE: What makes your faith true?
(February 20, 2017 at 7:02 pm)MysticKnight Wrote:
(January 26, 2017 at 9:28 am)Fake Messiah Wrote: Obviously question for religious people.

What makes your faith true?

It is verified by reason and manifest with clear evidence.

But how can it be verified with reason when so many religious leaders say reason is the enemy of the faith in God? Like Martin Luther, founder of Protestant Christianity, in the following excerpts from his Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians: "What makes matters worse is that one-half of ourselves, our own reason, stands against us... To turn one's eyes away from Jesus means to turn them to the Law... When the conscience is disturbed, do not seek advice from reason or from the Law, but rest your conscience in the grace of God and in His Word, and proceed as if you had never heard of the Law..."

And when it comes to evidence if one had sufficient evidence to warrant belief in a particular claim, then one wouldn't believe the claim on the basis of faith. In other words you don't need faith if you have evidence.
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RE: What makes your faith true?
(February 20, 2017 at 7:02 pm)MysticKnight Wrote:
(January 26, 2017 at 9:28 am)Fake Messiah Wrote: Obviously question for religious people.

What makes your faith true?

It is verified by reason and manifest with clear evidence.

But only to believers, right?
"The last superstition of the human mind is the superstition that religion in itself is a good thing."  - Samuel Porter Putnam
 
           

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RE: What makes your faith true?
(February 20, 2017 at 7:02 pm)MysticKnight Wrote:
(January 26, 2017 at 9:28 am)Fake Messiah Wrote: Obviously question for religious people.

What makes your faith true?

It is verified by reason and manifest with clear evidence.

Mystic, you've spent a long time on these fora trying to show this and it hasn't come remotely close to happening. You should give up the pretence.
Urbs Antiqua Fuit Studiisque Asperrima Belli

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RE: What makes your faith true?
"Because my pastor said that his interpretation of our version of our holy book is the correct one."
Dying to live, living to die.
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RE: What makes your faith true?
(February 20, 2017 at 9:17 pm)Odoital77 Wrote:
(February 20, 2017 at 4:20 am)Fake Messiah Wrote: Main reason the Bible hasn't been able to convince everyone everywhere that Jesus is the only path to heaven is that it is poorly written and structured. I could do better than the Bible. The main problem of the Bible is flowery language, metaphors, poetry and that confuse people and are therefore are misinterpreted to sometimes mean to kill people to commit genocide, to be peaceful. I mean we are talking about the book that was the first line of defense for slaveholders looking to provide moral justification for owning human beings and yet other people see it as a "most moral thing ever", because is muddled.

If it were written by sane supreme being would it not be crystal-clear sentences because she is omniscient and would know that her words would be translated into different languages over thousands of years. She would never be so careless as to pass on lengthy passages that could be easily misunderstood and misapplied. There would not be any outdated rules and advice for owning slaves, beating servants, or killing people for minor infractions.


Sure but you don't believe in god Ganesha although there is no evidence to disprove the existence of the god Ganesha.

The way I see it the burden of proof rests on the shoulders of the person making the claim and no one else. If, for example, someone says to me, "Pink flying unicorns are real and you should believe in them," it's not my responsibility to prove that PFU don't exist.
I cannot claim there are positively no gods because universe is a big place. A few gods might be hiding somewhere over in the next galaxy. I don't think gods are real. My best guess is that they are the creations of imaginative people who were coping with deep fears, hopes, and curiosity about life and the universe, but I certainly don't claim to know this for certain.


But the Bible says it covered every mountain top because, I guess, humans and animals could just go up above the water and not get drowned. Taking stuff from the Bible that only make sense to you is picking and choosing so why not leave it altogether?


Interesting.  You’d think that if that were the main reason, it would come up as a primary objection, but it actually doesn’t come up that often.  I’ll let your objection stand on its own I think.  Given that we’re talking about stories written down about a backwater preacher from 2,000 years ago that have somehow survived separately and as a group for thousands of years when virtually all other works of antiquity have either disappeared or are far less well attested to, in terms of authenticity; I think your objection is far too bold for me to even need to deal with it extensively.
 
The Bible isn’t that different from other types of literature that use similar kinds of language, metaphors, poetry, etc…  And typically when people are being violent in the name of Christianity, they are violating the long-standing tenets of the faith, not following them.  The prescriptive teachings of Jesus to Christians do not include violence, nor was Jesus life characterized by the same.  And yes, many books and views of individuals have been prostituted by others to support something that the books and people wouldn’t have supported themselves.  The fact that a tiny minority of slaveholders used the Bible in a way that contradicted its basic tenets in order to attempt to support the institution of slavery is far outweighed by the superior number of people who used the Bible and its teachings in concert with the tenets of the Christian faith to argue against slavery.  And in fact, because the anti-slavery movement was in harmony with what the Bible actually teaches, that movement saw far more success than those who had to selectively misinterpret scripture in order to give the appearance of support.  It was largely the religious Christians in the Christian west that put an end to slavery.  The west was not unique in having slavery, as the entire earth had been covered with slaves for thousands upon thousands of years.  The most unique thing about the west and slavery is that slavery met its end in the west and spread the moral shame of slavery across the rest of the world.  Even today, where you still have slavery, most of it exists in places where Christianity has had the most minimal presence.  Usually, you find animism, Islam, eastern religion, or atheism where slavery still exists today.
 
We’re not in any position to know or be able to judge exactly how a Supreme Being’s revelation “should” or “ought” to appear to those to whom it is left.  Nor do we know all of the reasons that it would have been left in the way that it was.  I suspect that it’s at least possible that if the Supreme Being had done what you suggest, there would be a whole new series of objections as to how that method of leaving a revelation to mankind didn’t somehow meet our largely ignorance based and finite expectations.  And just so I’m clear.  There actually is no prescriptive rules or advice for owning slaves, beating servants, or killing people for minor infractions.  There may have been for people of their day, but then God was dealing with people as they were, not has He would like them to be.  As our level of moral understanding and the wisdom with which we apply that understanding has increased, so has our understanding of the text.  The vast majority of humanity will have lived during times where slavery simply wasn’t a relevant factor.  Most of the people who’ve ever been alive on the face of the planet are alive today or soon will be.  Most of Earth’s history has been one where far fewer than 1 billion people covered the planet.  Today, we had another billion every 10 years or so.
 
Why, if there is evidence of the Christian God, which would be superior to Ganesha, by nature, and makes the claim to be the ONLY God, would you think there would be no evidence to disprove Ganesha?

I agree with you regarding the burden of proof.  If you say that there is no God or some other such claim, the burden of proof would lay with you.  The same is true, if I say that there is evidence for God.  The burden of proof would rest with me.
 
But you say, “I don’t think Gods are real.”  How is that different from saying that God(s) do/does not exist?
 
I suspicion that the existence of God is a properly basic apprehension of the human mind, similar to the idea that other minds exists, that the past is a reality I’m rational to believe in even though I wasn’t there, or belief in the external world.  These are all properly basic beliefs that we are rational to assume.  The difference between these beliefs and God is that human beings are in rebellion against God and they suppress the truth that they know because they do not want to acknowledge the one from whom they are rebelling.

With regard to your last comment regarding picking and choosing, I really don’t know what you mean?

I'll note here that you've no rebuttal to the fact that early christianity (as evinced in the gospels) and Nicene christianity (supposedly traceable to Saul of Tarsus, c.40 CE but not actually invented until 325CE) have two contradictory teachings regarding the law of Moses. Yeshua taught, per the bible, that christians must adhere strictly to the religious rules in the old testament, yet all modern sects of the christian cult ignore them (except where convenient to explain oppression of minorities). Why is that, Unknown Sample77?
Urbs Antiqua Fuit Studiisque Asperrima Belli

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RE: What makes your faith true?
Not a religious person here, but anyone can answer a simple minded question, and the answer is........

NOTHING Smile
"the only problem with Islamic fundamentalism are the fundamentals of Islam" - Sam Harris
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RE: What makes your faith true?
(February 22, 2017 at 10:10 pm)Atheist Rambo Wrote: Not a religious person here, but anyone can answer a simple minded question, and the answer is........

NOTHING Smile

What are you replying to.

GC
God loves those who believe and those who do not and the same goes for me, you have no choice in this matter. That puts the matter of total free will to rest.
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RE: What makes your faith true?
(February 23, 2017 at 12:47 am)Godschild Wrote:
(February 22, 2017 at 10:10 pm)Atheist Rambo Wrote: Not a religious person here, but anyone can answer a simple minded question, and the answer is........

NOTHING Smile

What are you replying to.

GC

The forum question itself....
"the only problem with Islamic fundamentalism are the fundamentals of Islam" - Sam Harris
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