(June 11, 2015 at 3:31 pm)SteveII Wrote: You can stomp your feet all you want demanding proof. If I (and 2.2 billion others) want to believe the 1900+ year old content of the NT, I don't see why we are being unreasonable. I think for the belief to be unreasonable, you would have to prove that it is not what it claims to be. Are you denying that the first century Christians did not believe the way they said they did (and history shows the results)? I think the burden of proof does shift when there is no good reason not to believe the testimony of so many people.
Ah yes, the appeal to popularity. However, we all know that a significant percentage of those 2.2 billion are pretty sure that you have it wrong to some degree or another. The eight million Jehovah's Witnesses are absolutely certain that you other 1.192 billion are wrong enough to incur god's wrath, and they're using the Bible to "prove" it. There are thousands of denominations and splinter groups and individuals who have interpretations of the Bible that contradict your interpretation on many points, with some being a complete opposite.
But please, tell us again about what "it claims to be." Your interpretation is almost certain to be at odds with even a few of the handful of Christians who visit this forum, but you think that the burden of proof is on the non-believers.
"Well, evolution is a theory. It is also a fact. And facts and theories are different things, not rungs in a hierarchy of increasing certainty. Facts are the world's data. Theories are structures of ideas that explain and interpret facts. Facts don't go away when scientists debate rival theories to explain them. Einstein's theory of gravitation replaced Newton's in this century, but apples didn't suspend themselves in midair, pending the outcome. And humans evolved from ape- like ancestors whether they did so by Darwin's proposed mechanism or by some other yet to be discovered."
-Stephen Jay Gould
-Stephen Jay Gould