Why Christianity?

[Randy Carson]

Man, it's been forever since I had to multi-quote a single post. I feel old.

That might simply be a reflection of the lack of serious posts in this forum. Doesn't take multi-posting to respond to most folks here.

To which post and question are you responding?

The OP. Sorry for the confusion, but typically if I'm not quoting individual posts in a thread you can usually assume I'm responding to the OP.

Noted. Thanks.

Hardly. EVERYONE is biased; the question is whether you are aware of your bias or not. The authors of the gospels WERE biased, but then, so are the authors of textbooks about biology or the origin of the universe. What matters, Tori, is whether you can recognize the bias (yours and theirs) and sort the facts from the fiction, so to speak. Professional historians do this all the time, and yet, they have no problem with accepting the gospels are historical documents which provide important information about the life of Jesus of Nazareth.

When I talk evidence from unbiased sources I mean something that can hold up under scrutiny. The longer it holds up and doesn't contradict itself, the more likely that it's true. I mean, there was a time we thought the Earth was flat and the sun revolved around the Earth. Then it was proposed that the Earth was actually round and that was proven to be true beyond personal bias since we can actually see the Earth and how it's shaped. That doesn't stop people from still claiming the world is flat, but they're not taken the least bit seriously because of all the overwhelming evidence against them.

Fair enough.

Hmmm...if you were sitting on a jury listening to a murder trial, you might determine in your mind that the evidence presented by the prosecutor had proven the guilt of the accused beyond a reasonable doubt. But would this mean that you knew with absolute certitude that the person on trial had committed the crime? Or would it simply mean that the probability that the defendant was guilty had reached the level of being much more probable than his innocence?

Is our understanding of Christianity any different? Aren't we making a decision about what we believe to be more probable than not?

Except, Christianity isn't anymore probable than all the other religions out there. It's on the same exact footing of probability.

Um...no. The EARLIEST writings about Buddha, for example, are dated about 600 years AFTER his death. With Jesus, we have a proto-creed (1 Cor. 15) that can be reasonably dated to AD 35 or so. There is NO parallel to the level of information we have about Jesus in any other ancient religion. As for more recent religions such as Mormonism and Islam, they fail to persuade on other grounds.

In another thread, I have presented the Five Minimal Facts argument championed by Habermas and Licona. If you haven't followed that thread, you need to know that while some folks here will CLAIM to have refuted them, the fact of the matter is that professional scholars (and not just theists, mind you) are in general agreement that these five facts are known with reasonable certainty. What hasn't been offered (hence my initiation of the Conspiracy Theory thread) is a reasonable alternate theory with any explanatory scope, depth, etc.

Tori, it wasn't my theory, so I'm not blowing my own horn here; I simply made the case as argued by Habermas and Licona, and the silence was deafening. Since you and I haven't interacted in this forum before, let me just say that there are a lot of people here who talk a lot of smack about me, but the fact is that the Five Minimal Facts argument put an ass-whoopin' on the forum collectively, and the trash talk is largely a result of that. You'll see more of that in response to this post, but what you WON'T see is anyone actually refuting the Five Facts.

Now, this is not directed at you, Tori, but it needs to be said:

If anyone takes exception to this, you know where my thread can be found. There are five points presented. Deal with them or shut up. You've done neither so far.

Not really. We put our faith in God based upon what we know about God. There's nothing wrong with gathering the data and making an informed decision to believe and trust God.

Do you hold the same view for people who come to the opposite conclusion? Because I know plenty who lose faith based on what they know about God.

My suspicion is that these folks DO know some things about God, but their knowledge is incomplete or skewed. For example, it is common for people here to go on and on ad infinitum about God allegedly commanding genocide or rape or what have you in the OT. Curiously, these same people NEVER want to discuss the NT, and when they have the OT explained to them, it's as if they put their fingers in theirs ears and start saying "Lalalalalalalala..." because they don't WANT to hear any reasonable explanations that would render their favorite arguments against Christianity impotent. It's preferable for them to maintain their immoral lifestyles or to remain sitting on the thrones of their own lives rather than acknowledge the inconvenient truths that could be understood by an objective seeker.

Maybe it's worth taking a second look now that you're older.

I don't know. My dad read the bible seven times and he hasn't been able to make anymore sense out of it and he's been a Christian since the eighties.

Am I correct in guessing that he is involved in a Protestant or Pentecostal church and not the Catholic Church?

See, Jesus didn't write a book; he promised to build a church, and he left Peter in charge. When Peter died, another man took the office of head of the Church. That man today is Francis, the Bishop of Rome, or Pope. The Catholic Church does not go by the Bible alone; that is a novelty developed by Martin Luther in the 16th century. Instead, the Catholic Church continues, as it has always done, to maintain that Sacred Scripture, Sacred Tradition and the Magisterium (or teaching authority of the Church) all work together like a three-legged stool which is stable. Luther ripped off two legs, leaving sola scriptura - the Bible Alone, and your Dad is struggling to understand a book on his own when he ought to have Sacred Tradition and the infallible Church to guide his understanding.