RE: What are the Characteristics of a NT Christian?
April 11, 2017 at 9:51 am
(This post was last modified: April 11, 2017 at 9:56 am by Mister Agenda.)
SteveII Wrote:Mister Agenda Wrote:No, it isn't. Not if the same kind of evidence doesn't work for the supernatural claims for Krishna, Mohammed, and Buddha. Evidence has to point to a specific conclusions. The only thing people believing in supernatural events has ever successfully pointed to is that people are prone to believe supernatural events occur. When there's no strong direct evidence of such events, ever, there's no good reason to suppose that for some particular story, this time the supernatural stuff is real.
Why do you keep bringing up other religions? The far east religions didn't write anything down for centuries (if not longer). No one every claimed to be an eyewitness or know an eyewitness. There are no pieces of evidence to accumulate to even pass judgement on. Mohammed wrote his own stuff mostly about revelations directly to him, so that is only a claim and not evidence of actual events happening.
You are only offering one possible explanation to the evidence we have. There are other possible explanations--including the one that the people themselves claim--that the hundreds of separate events and teachings sessions really did happen.
What is the exact number of years after the claimed events are supposed to have occurred that something is written about it should be accepted as factual? Would you switch to a different religion if its miracle worker's feats were recorded three years after they were supposed to have happened? If not, you're not talking about evidence, you're just shoring up the beliefs you already hold.
Yes, that events happened as reported is one possible explanation: just one, requiring the upending of everything we've learned about nature in order to be true, but I don't rule that explanation out completely. Just because it seems impossible doesn't mean it is impossible. But a ruling of 'unlikely' is entirely reasonable.
It's the same standard I apply to ESP, ghosts, Nessie, and alien abductions. People believe all kinds of crap. Some of the crap is mutually exclusive in that both pieces of crap can't possibly be true. They can however, both be crap. People believing things is evidence of people believing things. 'Lot's of people believe something' simply isn't evidence that what they believe is true. This is extremely basic stuff.
I'm not anti-Christian. I'm anti-stupid.