MERGED: The Case for the Resurrection of Jesus Christ (Part 1) & (Part 2)

[Thumpalumpacus]

What they pour out into this forum is, at best, dislike or hatred of christianity. When you accuse them of bias you speak not to the content of their position but the motive that underlies it, intimating that they didn't come to their beliefs through rational observations, or with any justification, but because they had decided to hate on christianity no matter what. An accusation of bias carries with it the idea that the position reached is an unfair and unjustified one, but since you have- as I pointed out- no way of determining what the given motivation is, you have no justification for accusing any of us of bias.

To be fair, I think his point about bias is apt, just as apt as when I signed up on a Christian forum and received similar treatment.

I don't think it's a mark against the forum or its members, for the simple reason that bias can be grounded solidly or it can be irrational. I am biased against companies which disseminate cancer-causing agents, not out of emotional spite, but out of rational views. In a similar vein, I am biased against Christianity, because I have examined its premises, and found the god hypothesis entirely unsatisfactory in explanatory power; it raises more questions than it answers.

If someone comes to me and says, "I have the true answer, and I found it in Genesis", my skeptic's radar zeroes in on the claims and I go over them with a fine-toothed comb, because from almost all of my experiences with Christians in discussing matters of spirituality, I find their premises to be unfounded, unsupported, and unstable. Is that bias? I think so; I have a predisposition to dissect the proffered opinion to a fineness I wouldn't give to, say, his opinion of Camembert cheese.

Is it justified? Again, I think so. The first time I ordered the Atomic Joy Buzzer from a comic book back in the day, I was terribly disappointed. When I later ordered the seamonkeys and found them to be little floating spicules, I was still disappointed, though less so -- I had already been burnt once.

So when I saw the ad for the X-ray specs, after dousing the woody brought on by thinking of Courtney naked in my eyes but not asking why I was suddenly sporting glasses, I thought back to the two previous times I'd been stripped of my dough and decided that the X-ray specs were most likely bullshit.

The same process has occurred with me as a youthful believer who found his illusions taken away. The first time the prayer was unanswered, perhaps I hadn't prayed hard enough. The second time, sure, perhaps I was too insouciant. and so on. But at this stage in my life, I've seen so many claims of Christianity fail that I am indeed biased when someone says, "Christianity will do X for you!", because I've been through it, and it was bullshit then. Without further reason to expect a different result, I'm inclined to believe that claim X is bullshit now, too.

And put fairly, that is indeed bias. And I will own my bias against Christianity lock, stock, and barrel. I will listen to any believer who comes my way, but when what they report goes against my personal experience, well, there's the rub, and we'll move forward from there based on their attitude towards my empirical skepticism.