Jesus as Lord - why is this appealing to so many?

[polymath257]

There is evidence when one looks for it, it's just that you do not look for it. God has also given me personal evidence about who He is. You can deny God through your blindness all you want it changes nothing.

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There is confirmation bias when one looks for it. But objective evidence is lacking. Your 'personal evidence' is also known as an anecdote. And we know that anecdotal evidence is unreliable in many ways.

And yes, I am sure you are now so convinced that no amount of actual evidence will sway you. That is what we call delusion: One of the characteristics of delusional thinking is impermeability to contrary evidence.

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1. Experiences alone are not sufficient for truth. After testing for biases, delusions, and hallucinations, they have some applicability for truth detection. Religious experiences are inevitably under the categories of delusions or hallucinations because they  are inherently untestable.

1. 'Untestable' in no way even remotely implies "inevitably under the categories of delusions or hallucinations". That is really bad philosophy! There are tons of categories of things that are not testable. All human experiences/thoughts/emotions, logic, mathematical axioms, moral truths, aesthetics, philosophy. For crying out loud, science itself is governed by a philosophy of science--which itself is not 'testable'. Your claim that things have to to be testable to be true is itself not 'testable'. 

2. Would you claim there is evidence for the existence of Athena and Apollo? The Iliad gives testimony for both.

2. Do you think you have a parallel between ancient Greek Gods and the events surrounding Jesus in the first century? That is something a teenager might think is a good point. It is obvious from your responses that you don't even know much of anything about the thing you are sure is "not evidence". 

No, I do not consider the NT to be good evidence. It is no better than the Iliad, for example.

3. And so we continue... Did Homer see any of the events or talk to any of the characters? I'll answer for you. Homer was writing about something that oral tradition said happened 400 years earlier. Another question. Did Homer believe the events to have happened the way he related them? Yet another question. Were there any other people who wrote about the events of the Iliad at the time or shortly after the actual events to support Homer's version? 

No, I don't consider personal change to be evidence. We know full well that personal change can happen from a wide variety of opinions.

4. Not my point. It is the testimony of people as to the change and why. You would have to call them all liars or delusional. You don't have any philosophical or logical basis to do so. Your argument seems to be basically that God does not exists, he can't change people, therefore God does not exist. Good circular reasoning (also called question begging). You totally skipped over the mention of miracles. Are you sure you don't want to set up another question begging argument for that? 

No, those claims that God are the 'best explanation' are simply false. God cannot explain why anything exists at all, because the existence of God is assumed--i.e, not explained. The rest of the claims are equally BS.

5. Nope. Not even close. You logically need an uncaused cause for anything to exist. When you look around for available candidates that meet that description...hmm. See, God was not assumed, it is an inductive argument where the conclusion is a probabilistic one. Based on your response, I find it highly doubtful that you understand the other natural theology arguments (look at that, another example of inductive reasoning). 

Yes, if you are deluded into believing in a deity, that delusion spreads to the point you are willing to degrade yourself by slavery. That doens't make either delusion or slavery desirable.

And the robot analogy is spot on. Even if the creator is 'good' and 'awesome', that is nowhere close to being reason to 'worship' such a being.

6.Yeah--those were not responses to my points--you just restated yours. 

This post is more critical than usual because you think you know way more than you do about anything Christian. You really don't--you mischaracterize almost everything. You compound that error by criticizing the beliefs using really really bad logic. You are simply not good at this and your arguments are simple to pick apart. Just because the other atheists don't point it out, don't think you are making good points. Half of them reason as poorly as you do and the other half won't police their own ranks when it comes to religion. 

An intelligent person has two choices. 1) They can decide they do not need to know what the other side believes and why--and not ever engage them in a condescending, fallacy-ridden, critiques about things you know nothing about, or 2) they can be more respectful, ask more questions and have less opinions until they learn more. OR, you can keep doing what you are doing.

1. On the contrary, anything deling with the real world (as opposed to abstract structures like math) needs to be testable. The scientific method itself is testable and has been tested and passed the tests over the past 400 years. Most philosophy, in particular metaphysics, is quite poor.

2. and 3. Yes, people believed that what Homer wrote was the truth. he was claimed to be divinely inspired and thereby reliable. Sound familiar? Those who wrote the NT were mostly NOT eye-witnesses (Paul, for example). We know that most of the claimed authors were not the actual authors. Even those who were wrote well after the events and after the legend had grown way out of proportion to the facts.

So, yes, I consider the analogy to be valid and the NT to be unreliable. It is a book of stories from a legend, like seeing Elvis after he died.

4. People change from all sorts of belief changes. Not just Christian. Not just monotheist. Testimony comes from many different sources and supports many different views, not just yours.

So what does that say? Even false beliefs can change a person for the better. Which means that the testimony alone cannot validate the ideas.

5. First, if you allow for an infinite regress of causes, an uncaused cause is NOT required. Second, from quantum mechanics we know there are *many* uncaused causes all the time at the micro level. This is not a valid proof of the existence of a God. I understand the natural theology arguments and find them all severely lacking and misleading.

6. That I disagree with your claims is not the same as not understanding them. Your sources of evidence are inherently unreliable. The claims made are unreasonable and based on a faulty metaphysics (mostly Aristotelian). And the reliance on eye-witness testimony is, in and of itself, problematic.