(May 12, 2025 at 4:24 am)The Valkyrie Wrote: Too broad a question.

It depends on the individual Christian why they believe, and why they accept some parts of the bible and reject others.

Well it took 84 pages, but we finally got the most sensible possible answer.

(May 12, 2025 at 4:34 am)Belacqua Wrote:

(May 12, 2025 at 4:24 am)The Valkyrie Wrote: Too broad a question.

It depends on the individual Christian why they believe, and why they accept some parts of the bible and reject others.

Well it took 84 pages, but we finally got the most sensible possible answer.

Well I am dubious that anyone imagined, we'd get a universal response from all 45k Christian sects /denominations, but individual Christians in this thread could at least take a stab at explaining why they believe. Now I haven't had the benefit of a university education of course, and you can call me insane, but personally I'd start with the most compelling reason I thought I had for any belief. 

I have encountered Christians who boiled their belief down to a single false equivalence, like god is love, or god is everything, not very compelling obviously, and of course all John has managed is  the very circular claim that "a deity created everything, so it's all evidence for a deity". If someone finds that compelling then they can try replacing this generic deity with just about anything, and explain what that fallacious argument loses? If one believed a mermaid created everything, then everything would be evidence for that mermaid, nope it has lost nothing, but then it had nothing to lose of course.

(May 12, 2025 at 4:24 am)The Valkyrie Wrote: Too broad a question.

It depends on the individual Christian why they believe, and why they accept some parts of the bible and reject others.

It is obvious that with so many Christian sects, there are a large number of variations of Christian beliefs. This is in part because of individual differences, in part because of contradictions within the Bible itself, in part because the Bible can be interpreted differently, and in part because the Bible conflicts with realities. However, that doesn't mean that we can't say at least certain things about the majority of Christian believers, since they are still quite distinct from Buddhists, Muslims, Hindus, and others.

I think that the majority of Christians believe:
1) in the Bible, or certain parts of the Bible,
2) in a theistic rather than a deistic God,
3) that Jesus was the Son of God, whatever that means to them personally,
4) and that belief in God and Jesus is essential for salvation, whatever that means to them personally.

In turn, a theistic God:
5) listens to prayers and interacts with the world,
6) is concerned about us personally,
7) will reward or punish people, whatever that means to Christians personally,
8) and is worthy of worship, which is where the divine characteristics come in, however defined.

Some self-professed Christians may not support all of these ideas, but that is what makes Christianity a family resemblance. People do, indeed, hold different and often conflicting ideas in any case. Christians can be hypocrites too.

I don't understand why anyone needs to play coy about any of these characteristics, unless they are denying the facts for some reason.

The very fact there are so many different deities and version of deities, that all change over time, in and of itself implies something about the efficacy of using faith, to validate a belief.

The very fact that scientific facts are the same regardless of time and place, changing only if new objective evidence warrants it, also implies something about the efficacy of those methods. There is no Christian science, or Islamic science, or Jewish science, or Hindu etc etc., because those methods of science if adhered to properly, reliably return the same results and facts, whereas religious faith quite obviously does not.

Clearly the idea that subjective religious beliefs, have any sort of parity with objective scientific facts, is simply not supported by the evidence, and it has at least one theist making claims as ridiculous as "there is no such things as evidence, only interpretation" and "the word evidence ought to be extirpated from language and dictionaries".

The more subjectively we interpret evidence, the less reliable it becomes, and of course the converse is true, the more subjective bias we remove, the more reliable the results become, it's not an accident.

(May 11, 2025 at 1:29 pm)John 6IX Breezy Wrote:

(May 11, 2025 at 8:45 am)Belacqua Wrote: I don't care what the majority taste in novels is, and I don't care what the majority views of religion are. Quality is a completely separate issue.

Right; and the majority of Christians don't hold any strong beliefs about what God is beyond his role as creator. In much the same way that the majority of people don't have any beliefs about the workings of human perception, they just know they have eyes and that they see. And any belief they did have is guaranteed to be wrong. You have to go to experts who have at least attempted to come up with reasonable answers to the question.

You keep rehashing the same false equivalences, comparing things that we know exist as an objective fact, and must therefore be possible, with a deity that you can demonstrate neither existence or possibility for, in any remotely objective way.

(May 11, 2025 at 4:33 pm)John 6IX Breezy Wrote:

(May 11, 2025 at 3:38 pm)Belacqua Wrote: I asked them about their theological beliefs and they said they had never thought about it.

So, in the case of this couple their good enough threshold was met, 

Just like flat earthers then, their "good enough" threshold has been met as well. One could literally say this about any belief anyone holds.

According to Belaqua, they never thought about it as well, so doubly ironic. Though the true comedy gold, was the hasty generalisation fallacy, that leaped unabashed from a sample size of two people in a relationship, to countless billions. 

It really is a privilege for an uneducated dullard like me, to watch educated minds at work.

(May 12, 2025 at 9:13 am)Sheldon Wrote:

(May 11, 2025 at 4:33 pm)John 6IX Breezy Wrote: So, in the case of this couple their good enough threshold was met, 

Just like flat earthers then, their "good enough" threshold has been met as well. One could literally say this about any belief anyone holds.

According to Belaqua, they never thought about it as well, so doubly ironic. Though the true comedy gold, was the hasty generalisation fallacy, that leaped unabashed from a sample size of two people in a relationship, to countless billions. 

It really is a privilege for an uneducated dullard like me, to watch educated minds at work.

Well I guess eugenics and racism are valid now.....lol

The Christian becomes oddly nebulous and vague  when the Christian is challenged then becomes awful detailed in church when there is no one around to.

(May 12, 2025 at 4:34 am)Belacqua Wrote:

(May 12, 2025 at 4:24 am)The Valkyrie Wrote: Too broad a question.

It depends on the individual Christian why they believe, and why they accept some parts of the bible and reject others.

Well it took 84 pages, but we finally got the most sensible possible answer.

Yeah, just like believers in a Nessie have individual reasons for believing in Nessie: some go to the Loch Ness and see something on the water and start to believe, some see photographs of Nessie and start to believe, some hear testimonies and think "why would this person lie?" and start to believe in Nessie, some believe in Nessie because it makes them feel good, some believe in Nessie because they read some pseudoscientific paper on it which seems believable, some believe in Nessie because they were brought up in a household where people believed in Nessie, and some see documentary on Nessie and start to believe in it.

The same is with believers in Jesus: some people believe in Jesus because they went to the holy land and think they have seen evidence for him, some see pictures of Jesus appearing on the wall or toast and believe in him, some hear testimonies of people who claim to have seen Jesus and think "why would this person lie?" and start to believe in Jesus, some people read some theological book on Jesus and start to believe, some believe in Jesus because they were brought up in a household where people believed in Jesus, and some see documentary on Jesus and start to believe in him.

The fact that religious belief so strongly correlates with the belief of the person's parents and their community and culture suggest that the relationships and environment in the family and the community play an outsized role in determining what people believe, far beyond any attribution to personal choice unfettered by coercive factors.