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

[SteveII]

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. 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". 

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? 

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? 

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). 

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.

That's called logical positivism/verificationism. That philosophy was rejected by most philosophers almost 50 years ago as untenable. Don't believe me?...

By the late 1960s, logical positivism had clearly run its course.[43] Interviewed in the late 1970s, A J Ayer supposed that "the most important" defect "was that nearly all of it was false".[44][45] Although logical positivism tends to be recalled as a pillar of scientism,[46] Carl Hempel was key in establishing the philosophy subdiscipline philosophy of science[14] where Thomas Kuhn and Karl Popper brought in the era of postpositivism.[41] John Passmore found logical positivism to be "dead, or as dead as a philosophical movement ever becomes".[44] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logical_po...Retrospect

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.

I'm going to leave the Iliad comparison along. It's too stupid to argue 

You realize that you are asserting a whole bunch of things that you couldn't possible know about the NT. How do you now that the authors were not eyewitnesses? Certainly John, Peter and James were. Paul never claimed to be and his information is meant for instructions--not a history lessons. However his beliefs and how he came by them is instructive. Luke claimed to have investigate the whole matter and interviewed witnesses to write his two works--within 30 years of Jesus' life. The book of Acts chronicles over 30 years of things that happened because the disciples and early church leaders believed what they saw. What you DON'T HAVE is proof that the content is wrong. You have theories and assertions. Theories and assertions with no evidence just leaves the evidence we have standing all by itself. 

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.

Sure. That's why I don't take stranger's experiences as proof of anything. It is entirely rational to take one's own experiences and of those he trusts as evidence. You have no logical grounds to deny this. When you go from the position of "I don't know" to "you are delusional" and "brain-fart" you have assumed the burden of proof by making a positive claim of knowledge. You have no evidence to help shoulder that burden. Instead, your argument seems to amount to "some people are obviously wrong, therefore everyone must be wrong". Your conclusion does not follow from your premise. 

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.

In general or only in this case?  We rely on testimony millions of time every day to learn truth. Are you going to say that the #metoo victims are "delusional" because they cannot "validate" their claims? 

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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.[/quote]

Why would anyone allow for an infinite regress of causes? It is illogical--it could not have happened. We would never get to the causes of today because there would be an infinite number of causes that still have to happen to get to today. In quantum mechanics, sub-atomic particles don't come into being out of nothing. They are the result of the fluctuating energy in the quantum field. You are comparing apples and well, universes. 

Judging by just your answer to #5 here, I am 100% sure you know very little about the natural theology arguments. Go ahead--which one do you think you are the most up on? 

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.

I can't wait to here this.

7. How is my metaphysics faulty?