St. Paul told the Bereans to 'test everything'. To me, that doesn't sound like uncritical acceptance of doctrine.

(May 13, 2015 at 11:56 am)ChadWooters Wrote: St. Paul told the Bereans to 'test everything'. To me, that doesn't sound like uncritical acceptance of doctrine.

Just as long as they get the "right" answer eh.

How many times has the church hidden and repressed facts to maintain the illusion of the myth?

(May 13, 2015 at 7:41 am)Randy Carson Wrote:

(March 30, 2010 at 11:01 am)Rwandrall Wrote: Lots of Christians i met say that their belief is based not on blind faith, which is not what God wants. God wants a reasonable faith based on your life experience. They are wrong.
Jesus himself said to the Apostle that wouldn't believe in his resurrection for lack of evidence (see where im going with this ? ) that "Thomas, because you have seen Me, you have believed. Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed."

Blind faith is what Jesus thinks is the good kind of faith. How sad is that ?

This is a misunderstanding of what Jesus was saying to Thomas.

Thomas refused to believe that Jesus had risen until he had put his fingers in the nail holes in Jesus' hands. After doing so, his skepticism was gone.

Believers today do not have that direct evidence; they must rely on the indirect or circumstantial evidence. And they are blessed for accepting that evidence without the benefit of actually seeing and touching Jesus the way the original apostles did. However, this is NOT "blind faith". It is faith based upon EVIDENCE provided by eyewitnesses.

Did you really create an account to reply to a 5 year old thread?  Because, wow....

Quote: Believers today do not have that direct evidence; they must rely on the indirect or circumstantial evidence.

I would like to see some indirect or circumstantial evidence.  All the clowns ever manage to poop out is hearsay written in a bunch of heavily-edited old books of horseshit.

(May 13, 2015 at 8:46 am)robvalue Wrote: There is no evidence of Jesus written by eyewitness. We have hearsay accounts after the fact.

Such "evidence" would be thrown out of any halfway decent court.

Nope. In a court of law, circumstantial evidence is given EQUAL WEIGHT to direct evidence. 


Circumstantial Evidence Definition: 


Evidence which may allow a trial judge or jury to deduce or logically infer a certain fact from other established facts, which have been proven.

Justice Best in the 1820 case, King v Burdett:

"When one or more things are proved, from which our experience enables us to ascertain that another, not proved, must have happened, we presume that it did happen, as well in criminal as in civil cases."

A presumption of fact.

In some cases, there can be some evidence that can not be proven directly, such as with an eye-witness (known as direct evidence). And yet that evidence may be essential to completely prove a case.

In these instances, the lawyer will complete the evidence by providing the judge or juror with evidence of circumstances from which a juror or judge can logically deduct, or reasonably infer, the fact that cannot be proven directly; it is proven by the evidence of the circumstances; hence, "circumstantial" evidence.

Fingerprints are an example of circumstantial evidence: while there may be no witness to a person’s presence in a certain place, or contact with a certain object, the scientific evidence of someone’s fingerprints is persuasive proof of a person’s presence or contact with an object on which the fingerprint was found.

In 1854, Justice Maule gave this example in R v Burton:

"If a man go into the London Docks sober without means of getting drunk, and comes out of one of the wine cellars very drunk ... I think it would be reasonable evidence that he had stolen some of the wine in that cellar...."

In 2004, the Canadian Judicial Council gave this example:

"(A) witness might say that he or she had seen someone enter the courthouse lobby wearing a raincoat and carrying an umbrella, both dripping wet. If you believed that witness, you might conclude that it was raining outside, even though the evidence was indirect. Indirect evidence is sometimes called circumstantial evidence."

In a criminal law context, the Alberta Court of Appeal stated, in R v McEwan, that:

"On the one hand it is said that circumstances cannot lie.

"On the other hand it is said that truth is stranger than fiction.

"For my part I cannot but think that there is ordinarily greater certainty in proof by direct than by circumstantial evidence. In the case of direct evidence error may arise from mistake or untruthfulness. 

“In the case of circumstantial evidence the same chances of error arise and there is the additional chance of error in fallacious inference by the Court. But whether I am right or wrong in the view that I have expressed, no useful purpose is to be served by contrasting two methods of proof which are in no sense opposed the one to the other and each of which is in daily use to complement the other.

"Proof by circumstantial evidence being a matter of logical reasoning from facts admitted or established in evidence there is always the danger of the tribunal of fact, whether it be Judge or jury, jumping to conclusions from certain facts without due regard to other facts which are inconsistent with the hypothesis which the first set of facts seems to point to....

"There being no direct evidence, the case must rest, on the circumstantial evidence alone, and the general rule is that to amount to proof such evidence must be not merely consistent with guilt but inconsistent with innocence.

"(T)he Court should be satisfied not only that the circumstances proved are consistent with the commission of the suggested act but that the facts are such as to be inconsistent with any other rational conclusion than that the evil act was in fact committed."

REFERENCES:
Duhaime, Lloyd, Legal Definition of Direct Evidence
Duhaime, Lloyd, Legal Definition of Evidence
Duhaime, Lloyd, Legal Definition of the Rule in Hodge's Case
King v Burdett 1 St. Tr. (N.S.) 111 (1820)
R v Burton 1854 Dears. 284
R v McEwan [1933] 1 DLR 398[/font][/size][/color]

---

(May 13, 2015 at 9:06 am)Pyrrho Wrote: In the context of religion, faith is believing things without proper evidence.  If one uses proper evidence, there is no need for the word "faith" at all.  This is somewhat obscured by the fact that, like many words in English, it has multiple definitions:

What is faith? St. Thomas Aquinas defined it this way:

 
    The Act of believing is an act of the intellect assenting to the Divine truth at the command of the will moved by the grace of God. (Summa Theologica II-II.2.9)[/INDENT]
 
In this definition, there are three things at work:
 

1. God’s grace initiating a response from the person;
   
2. The human will responding to God’s grace and, in turn, acting upon the intellect;
   
3. The human intellect, responding to the command of the will, assenting to a divinely revealed truth.
   

 
The grace of God is primary and precedes an act of faith. The will makes a free choice to respond to the grace of God. The intellect responds to the command of the will and assents to a divinely revealed truth.
 
Faith is not based upon emotions or upon a lack of reasoning but a choice to believe something is true because a trustworthy authority has told us it is true. Divine Faith is believing something to be true based upon the fact that God said so.
 
Most of what we know in life is based upon our human faith that someone else who tells us something is a trustworthy authority. For example, we trust our doctors to tell the truth about our health, we trust scientists to tell us about the world around us, and we trust historians to tell us what has happened in the past. In the same way, we exercise divine faith when we trust in something that God has said to be true.
 
The Crucial Question
 
How do we really know that God has spoken? Specifically, how do we know that Christianity is true and other religions are false? Aquinas said that Christianity is reasonable to believe for three reasons:
 

1. Some of the beliefs of Christianity can be known by natural reason alone apart from faith: that God exists, that there is only one God and that He is the creator of all things. Demonstrating that these parts of the Christian faith are true lends credibility to the rest of Christian belief.
   
2. Other aspects of the Christian faith cannot be demonstrated by reason, but it can be shown that they are not in conflict with reason. For example, the doctrine of the Trinity cannot be demonstrated from reason, but the Trinity can be defended by reason which can show that the doctrine of the Trinity is not unreasonable.
   
3. The Christian faith can be shown to have come from a Divine Source due to the miracles and prophecies that accompany it.
   

 
So, are there miracles and prophecies that accompany the teachings of Christianity? Jesus seemed to think so.
 
John 10:37-38
If I am not doing the works of my Father, then do not believe me. But if I do them, even though you do not believe me, believe the works, so that you may know and understand that the Father is in me and I am in the Father.”

(March 31, 2010 at 6:16 am)tackattack Wrote: Do you believe Orodes III was king of Parthia in 6AD? If so please site a source other than josephus, since he's not accepted for context of Jesus either.

There are coins made at the time  Orodes III  existed with his image. There is a direct line from kings that immediately preceded him, and followed him, also with images and coins.

Quote:Plus I have a lot of other documentation that references JC.

Of course you do. Too bad they all come from sources that weren't born or lived contemporaneously with JC. 

And to make things worse, there were plenty of historians that lived at the right time, in the right place and were known to report on religious leaders, that failed to mention JC.

(May 13, 2015 at 12:37 pm)KevinM1 Wrote:

(May 13, 2015 at 7:41 am)Randy Carson Wrote: This is a misunderstanding of what Jesus was saying to Thomas.

Thomas refused to believe that Jesus had risen until he had put his fingers in the nail holes in Jesus' hands. After doing so, his skepticism was gone.

Believers today do not have that direct evidence; they must rely on the indirect or circumstantial evidence. And they are blessed for accepting that evidence without the benefit of actually seeing and touching Jesus the way the original apostles did. However, this is NOT "blind faith". It is faith based upon EVIDENCE provided by eyewitnesses.

Did you really create an account to reply to a 5 year old thread?  Because, wow....

To a new member of the forum, the thread appears as current if you aren't careful to check to OP date.

In my "home" forum, this post would never have appeared to a new user at all. 

My apologies. 

---

(May 13, 2015 at 1:06 pm)Minimalist Wrote:

Quote: Believers today do not have that direct evidence; they must rely on the indirect or circumstantial evidence.

I would like to see some indirect or circumstantial evidence.  All the clowns ever manage to poop out is hearsay written in a bunch of heavily-edited old books of horseshit.

Then you are misinformed about the historical reliability of the New Testament. For example, when do you think that the gospels were written? Late first century? Early Second? Or were the gospels written much earlier than skeptics like to admit?

(May 13, 2015 at 6:44 pm)Randy Carson Wrote: Nope. In a court of law, circumstantial evidence is given EQUAL WEIGHT to direct evidence.

Do you appreciate the difference between circumstantial evidence and hearsay? Because what you have is the latter, not the former. The "eyewitnesses" of Jesus are never named, nor are they the ones writing the accounts; what you have are accounts written by anonymous authors, decades after the fact, claiming that there were eyewitnesses, with no contemporary first hand sources to validate this. Circumstantial evidence is evidence that requires an inference to reach a conclusion, but this? This is a claim, by people in no position to know, that such evidence exists, maybe; it's the equivalent of you appearing in court and saying "a friend of a friend of mine told me that he totally saw the evidence!" They aren't remotely the same thing.

Quote:Faith is not based upon emotions or upon a lack of reasoning but a choice to believe something is true because a trustworthy authority has told us it is true. Divine Faith is believing something to be true based upon the fact that God said so.

How did you determine that god was a trustworthy source, outside of his own claims to be trustworthy?
 

Quote:Most of what we know in life is based upon our human faith that someone else who tells us something is a trustworthy authority. For example, we trust our doctors to tell the truth about our health, we trust scientists to tell us about the world around us, and we trust historians to tell us what has happened in the past. In the same way, we exercise divine faith when we trust in something that God has said to be true.

... Except that doctors, scientists, and historians all provide evidence in support of their claims that justifies that trust. I'm so sick of this lazy equivocation from you believers.
 

Quote:The Crucial Question
 
How do we really know that God has spoken? Specifically, how do we know that Christianity is true and other religions are false? Aquinas said that Christianity is reasonable to believe for three reasons:
 

1. Some of the beliefs of Christianity can be known by natural reason alone apart from faith: that God exists, that there is only one God and that He is the creator of all things. Demonstrating that these parts of the Christian faith are true lends credibility to the rest of Christian belief.

Quote:Other aspects of the Christian faith cannot be demonstrated by reason, but it can be shown that they are not in conflict with reason. For example, the doctrine of the Trinity cannot be demonstrated from reason, but the Trinity can be defended by reason which can show that the doctrine of the Trinity is not unreasonable.

• Nothing about christianity can be successfully defended by reason.
  
  

  Quote:The Christian faith can be shown to have come from a Divine Source due to the miracles and prophecies that accompany it.

[*]

Oh boy! So you're making a claim that miracles and prophecies are real, and then justifying that with a part of the book that makes that claim? I love circular arguments! Whee! So round!

(May 13, 2015 at 7:27 pm)Esquilax Wrote:

(May 13, 2015 at 6:44 pm)Randy Carson Wrote: Nope. In a court of law, circumstantial evidence is given EQUAL WEIGHT to direct evidence.

Quote:Do you appreciate the difference between circumstantial evidence and hearsay? Because what you have is the latter, not the former. The "eyewitnesses" of Jesus are never named, nor are they the ones writing the accounts; what you have are accounts written by anonymous authors, decades after the fact, claiming that there were eyewitnesses, with no contemporary first hand sources to validate this. Circumstantial evidence is evidence that requires an inference to reach a conclusion, but this? This is a claim, by people in no position to know, that such evidence exists, maybe; it's the equivalent of you appearing in court and saying "a friend of a friend of mine told me that he totally saw the evidence!" They aren't remotely the same thing.

Incorrect.

There is every reason to believe that the authors of the gospels really WERE Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. Further, two of them were apostles of Jesus while the other two had access to the apostles.

Second, they were not written "decades" after the fact...unless 2-3 "decades" is sufficient to be a problem for you. However, the oral tradition quoted by Paul in 1 Corinthians 15 probably dates to within 5-10 years of the resurrection, and Paul got that early creed from the apostles personally as he points out in Galatians.

Now, about the circumstantial evidence. If I look out the window, and see rain falling, that is direct evidence. If, instead, I see people coming into the courtroom closing their wet umbrellas, that is circumstantial evidence that it is raining outside. Matthew and John were eyewitnesses to the risen Jesus; if you want to dismiss Luke and Mark because they are simply recording (accurately) what they were told by other eyewitnesses, fine. But the evidence is stronger than you suggest.

Quote:

Quote:Faith is not based upon emotions or upon a lack of reasoning but a choice to believe something is true because a trustworthy authority has told us it is true. Divine Faith is believing something to be true based upon the fact that God said so.

How did you determine that god was a trustworthy source, outside of his own claims to be trustworthy?

Logic. 

Quote:

Quote:Most of what we know in life is based upon our human faith that someone else who tells us something is a trustworthy authority. For example, we trust our doctors to tell the truth about our health, we trust scientists to tell us about the world around us, and we trust historians to tell us what has happened in the past. In the same way, we exercise divine faith when we trust in something that God has said to be true.

... Except that doctors, scientists, and historians all provide evidence in support of their claims that justifies that trust. I'm so sick of this lazy equivocation from you believers.

Some would say that God has provided evidence of His existence.
 

Quote:

Quote:The Crucial Question
 
How do we really know that God has spoken? Specifically, how do we know that Christianity is true and other religions are false? Aquinas said that Christianity is reasonable to believe for three reasons:
 

1. Some of the beliefs of Christianity can be known by natural reason alone apart from faith: that God exists, that there is only one God and that He is the creator of all things. Demonstrating that these parts of the Christian faith are true lends credibility to the rest of Christian belief.
   

Other aspects of the Christian faith cannot be demonstrated by reason, but it can be shown that they are not in conflict with reason. For example, the doctrine of the Trinity cannot be demonstrated from reason, but the Trinity can be defended by reason which can show that the doctrine of the Trinity is not unreasonable.
• Nothing about christianity can be successfully defended by reason.
  
  
  

• The Christian faith can be shown to have come from a Divine Source due to the miracles and prophecies that accompany it.

[*]

Oh boy! So you're making a claim that miracles and prophecies are real, and then justifying that with a part of the book that makes that claim? I love circular arguments! Whee! So round!

[*]

Not exactly. I'm making the claim that a historically reliable book records the testimony of individuals who saw the miracles.

So, the question will hinge on whether the authors of the NT were telling the truth.

(May 13, 2015 at 7:46 pm)Randy Carson Wrote: Incorrect.

There is every reason to believe that the authors of the gospels really WERE Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. Further, two of them were apostles of Jesus while the other two had access to the apostles.

That's not what the scholarly consensus is, on this matter, even among christian historians. Actually, we know for a fact that the names associated with the gospels weren't present in the initial works- none of them ever identify themselves within the text, or claimed to be who you're claiming they are- and that those autographs were, in fact, added in the second century by the early church. We also know that the idea that those autographs correspond to the actual biblical figures was added later still, by bishops like Papias.

You don't have any evidence or reason to think that the biblical authors were their textual namesakes, beyond the say-so of people that similarly didn't have any evidence, but since you didn't bother presenting any evidence for your claim anyway, beyond asserting that you have it, I guess I don't have to seriously interact with it, now do I? Come back when you've got that evidence that the entire body of biblical scholars and historians don't have, though!

Quote:Second, they were not written "decades" after the fact...unless 2-3 "decades" is sufficient to be a problem for you.

First of all, 2-3 decades is multiple decades, hence my usage of the plural was entirely justified, and not worthy of the scare quotes you put around it. Secondly, when the average age during the time period topped out at like 35, you betcha two or three decades is a problem for the texts in question.

Quote:However, the oral tradition quoted by Paul in 1 Corinthians 15 probably dates to within 5-10 years of the resurrection, and Paul got that early creed from the apostles personally as he points out in Galatians.

So people made a claim, and then claimed it to other people that believed it... big ol' game of chinese whispers... well, good thing those never mutate.

Quote:Now, about the circumstantial evidence. If I look out the window, and see rain falling, that is direct evidence. If, instead, I see people coming into the courtroom closing their wet umbrellas, that is circumstantial evidence that it is raining outside. Matthew and John were eyewitnesses to the risen Jesus; if you want to dismiss Luke and Mark because they are simply recording (accurately) what they were told by other eyewitnesses, fine. But the evidence is stronger than you suggest.

Again, you don't have any evidence that the authors- which the consensus of your scholars say are anonymous- are who you're claiming they are, so unless you can provide anything more solid than the bare assertion, I'm going to stick with the conclusions of people who are actually trained to know. But there's also this: what you're saying isn't at all like your hypothetical here. What's actually happening is that somebody has slipped a note under your door, claiming that it's raining outside, and some other rando tells you that the note writer is an eye witness to the rain. Meanwhile, you cannot hear the rain, or see the rain through the windows; all the direct evidence does not support the conclusion that it's raining, yet you'll accept that it is raining because a note said it is, and someone else said the note was written by an eyewitness.

Quote:Some would say that God has provided evidence of His existence.

Some would be wrong.
 

Quote:Not exactly. I'm making the claim that a historically reliable book records the testimony of individuals who saw the miracles.

So, the question will hinge on whether the authors of the NT were telling the truth.

Well, since you can't establish who the authors of the NT even were, despite your baseless protestations to the contrary, you have rather a hard job on your hands just to begin with. Not to mention all the areas where the new testament's account of events is directly contradicted by what we know about history to begin with...