Most People Insist That Two Separate Being Can Never Be One

[Vicki Q]

Personal experiences may or may not qualify as evidence. I have no doubt that you've had religious experiences, but they don't necessarily point to your attendant religious beliefs being true. By way of example, if I were to take a dose of hallucinogens and saw winged mermaids flying out of my bathtub, that's an actual experience that doesn't prove the existence of mermaids, winged or otherwise. The same applies to 'contemporary' experiences.

Your historical evidence isn't actually evidence, either. As Anom pointed out earlier, saying, 'That so-and-so did such-and-such proves that x is true', isn't evidence but speculation and supposition. I can think of plenty of reasons why the early Christians behaved as they did - politics, economics, fanaticism - that don't require the claims of Christianity to be true.

Boru

Yes, but I know I've taken hallucinogens beforehand, and therefore don't trust the results. The thing about personal experience is that I know I'm not lying and I know the circumstances, so when it comes to belief I have nowhere to hide.

With contemporary experiences, people I have known for a long time and/or trust implicitly are going to make powerful witnesses. With public evidence, external scrutiny can be applied (e.g. Lourdes is pretty strict).

That the disciples as a group signed up for a sharply reduced lifetime of pain isn't explainable by politics or economics. Fanaticism for sure, but given that we know from history that when a wannabe Messiah died it was game over, why was Jesus' death so utterly different?

Which leads to the wider question, why would His death lead the disciples to conclude that this long awaited earth shattering event had happened- the start of the Kingdom of God/forgiveness of sins/end of death/etc/etc? Why had resurrection moved from a fringe idea to a core belief and be split in two events? Why did they conclude that God had made his long awaited return to Jerusalem?




My posting over the next few weeks will be infrequent, but I'm keen to continue...