Evidence for Christianity

[Ashendant]

You've demonstrated your inability to think critically. Empirical means information gained by observation or something similar.

The fact is one need only open his eyes and he will see people swearing up in down about there supernatual experiences. Then there is evidence based on arguments for God, that accep certain axioms, that you atheist disagree with. I think my boy Plantinga at Notre Dame is actually in the process of coming out with a new approach to Theism by claiming that belief in God can be treated as an a priori belief.

That's not empirical

[dqualk]

You've demonstrated your inability to think critically. Empirical means information gained by observation or something similar.

The fact is one need only open his eyes and he will see people swearing up in down about there supernatual experiences. Then there is evidence based on arguments for God, that accep certain axioms, that you atheist disagree with. I think my boy Plantinga at Notre Dame is actually in the process of coming out with a new approach to Theism by claiming that belief in God can be treated as an a priori belief.

That's not empirical

One can observe that people have such experiences. One can observe that people claim to have seen an empty tomb. Etc.

[Rev. Rye]

You've demonstrated your inability to think critically. Empirical means information gained by observation or something similar.

The fact is one need only open his eyes and he will see people swearing up in down about there supernatual experiences. Then there is evidence based on arguments for God, that accep certain axioms, that you atheist disagree with. I think my boy Plantinga at Notre Dame is actually in the process of coming out with a new approach to Theism by claiming that belief in God can be treated as an a priori belief.

That's not empirical

One can observe that people have such experiences. One can observe that people claim to have seen an empty tomb. Etc.

And yet it took at least forty years for anybody to claim there was an empty tomb. There are no surviving testimonies of people who have seen the empty tomb (scholars generally take the authenticity of the Testimonium Flavianum with a grain of salt, by the way). Meanwhile, in the third of a century since Elvis Presley died, many people have claimed to have seen him alive since August 16, 1977. The moral of the story is that claims on their own are meaningless.

[Zen Badger]

A lot of people say there is no evidence for Christinaity or theism in general.

True, very true, there is heaps of evidence for christianity, just none for the god it is based on.

[Captain Scarlet]

Well between your opinion and Einstein's (who actually lived through the horror) I'm going to go with Einstein.

Being a lover of freedom, when the revolution came in Germany, I looked to the universities to defend it, knowing that they had always boasted of their devotion to the cause of truth; but, no, the universities immediately were silenced. Then I looked to the great editors of the newspapers whose flaming editorials in days gone by had proclaimed their love of freedom; but they, like the universities, were silenced in a few short weeks….
.
Only the Church stood squarely across the path of Hitler’s campaign for suppressing truth. I never had any special interest in the Church before, but now I feel a great affection and admiration because the Church alone has had the courage and persistence to stand for intellectual truth and moral freedom. I am forced thus to confess that what I once despised I now praise unreservedly.
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- Albert Einstein, Time magazine, 23rd December, 1940 p. 38

The traditional way to engage in debate would be to address the issues and not appeal to authority. As brilliant as Einstein was, he fled Germany in 1933 as Hitler became chancellor; and did not live through the regime. You might be better looking at historical sources, which are matters of fact and public record and not just Einsteins opinion before you admonish others and make yourself look foolish:

1)The Concordat between the Vatican and the Nazis. Cardinal Secretary of State, Eugenio Pacelli (later to become Pope Pius XII) signs the Concordat between Nazi Germany and the Vatican at a formal ceremony in Rome on 20 July 1933. Nazi Vice-Chancellor Franz von Papen, Pacelli, and Rudolf Buttmann attended. The Concordat effectively legitimized Hitler and the Nazi government to the eyes of Catholicism, Christianity, and the world.
2) Although informed of the massive Nazi attacks of synagogues and Jewish business in on Kristallnacht 1938-NOV, Pope Pius XII issued no public criticism.
3) Although informed during 1940 to 1943 of Nazi atrocities in at least Austria, Lithuania, Poland, Spain, and the Ukraine, (including deportations to death camps) he made no public comments. 4
4) Pope Pius XII "...never explicitly spoke out against Hitler." Actually, this is in error. He did condemn Hitler in a speech to the College of Cardinals, one month after the war ended.
5) "He refused to join a resolution of the Allies condemning the Nazi crimes."
6) "He never excommunicated any Nazi," although he did excommunicate Goebbels (becuase of Magda)and some German Catholics who supported cremation as an alternative to burial.
7) "He never declared it a sin for Catholics to participate in the slaughter."
8)In 1941 when asked about proposed anti-Jewish laws in Vichy France, Pius XII answered that the church condemned racism, but did not repudiate every rule against the Jews.

There are a lot of scary pictures from the third reich with Muller and other cardinals given the open handed Nazi salute to ranks of German soldiers. They only suggest or hint at the level of collaboration however and do not indict anyone. The truth was that most in the church were probably fighting for the survival of catholicism and didn't want to speak out, and that where there was collaboration (which there was eg in Saxony) it was more regional than centrally organised. There would of course been heroic catholics who helped saved many thousands of lives (as there were protestants and the non-religious). We will of course never know the true extent of the collaboration/resistance given Catholic secrecy on such matters. The latest pope isn't exactly independent in this regard. Recent studies of the Vatican's role during World War II:

In late 1999, the Vatican Commission for Religious Relations with the Jews established an international panel, composed of three Jewish and three Christian scholars from the U.S., Canada and Israel. They were given the task of trying to evaluate role of Pope Pius XII and the rest of the Vatican during the Holocaust. The panel was able to search 11 published volumes of wartime Vatican documents. They found that the Vatican had received reports of Nazi atrocities as early as 1941-JAN. However, "the pope's responses to reports of atrocities were missing from the sources they examined."

In 2000-OCT, the panel issued a preliminary report, "The Vatican and the Holocaust," asking 47 questions which can only be answered by consulting the unpublished Vatican files from the World War II era. They unanimously asked for access to the records. In 2001-JUN, the Vatican refused. Cardinal Walter Kasper wrote "in a letter to the group that they would be welcome to speak with the scholar who is heading the campaign for the beatification of Pius, but that post-1923 Vatican archives were not available for 'technical reasons.' " It seems that the Vatican archives are only catalogued up to 1923. Only two staff members are actively involved in the activity. The panel has decided to temporarily abandon their work, without issuing a final report.

Dr. Efraim Zuroff, director of the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Jerusalem, said: "We're very disappointed ... but I can't say I'm surprised...There is no transparency in the Vatican and as a result we don't know the answers to a lot of serious questions. [Vatican knowledge about the Holocaust] was one of the most important outstanding questions that has not been clarified by historians."

Rev. Peter Gumpel, is a German Jesuit who is assembling documentation to support the expected beatification of Pope Pius XII. On 2001-AUG-7, he issued a statement accusing some of the Jewish historians on the Holocaust Commission of "clearly incorrect behavior," having helped mount a "slanderous campaign" against the Roman Catholic Church. 7 He said that he had met with the group and had answered some of their questions, and offered to answer the rest at a later time. He wrote that "some Jewish members in the group had systematically affirmed that they never received answers to their questions." He accused them of having "publicly spread the suspicion" that the Vatican was trying to hide documents "that in their judgment could be compromising." There may be a misunderstanding between Gumpel and the Commission. Expert historians require documentary support, not just the opinion of one individual. So, answers by Rev. Gumpel would be insufficient without hard evidence to back them up.

References:
"Pope Pius XII and the Holocaust," at: http://users.binary.net/polycarp/piusxii.html
Haroon Siddiqui, "Vatican's role in the Holocaust," Toronto Star, Toronto, ON. 2001-JUL-26.
Pinchas E. Lapide, "Three Popes and the Jews," Hawthorn Books (1967). Cited in Ref. 9 below.
Shira Schoenberg, "Pope Pius XII and the Holocaust," at:
http://www.us-israel.org/jsource/
"Pope Pius XII and the Nazis," at: http://members.nbci.com/ottaw0/popepiusstart.html
Julie Stahl, "Scholars Suspend Research Into Vatican's Holocaust Role," CNSNews.com, at: http://news.crosswalk.com/partner/
R.L. Simpson, "Vatican charges it is target of a 'slanderous campaign' in connection with Pope Pius XII." Associated Press, 2001-AUG-7, at: http://www.charlotte.com/topnews/pub/vatican.htm (This is probably a temporary posting).

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Concerning condoms. The Pope recently stated, what the Church has always recognized, and that is that although ultimately condom use is evil, outside of extraordinary curcumstances, it can be a first step of morality. For example, St. Thomas Aquinas argued that willful prostituion should not be forced to end by the State because it would create more evil than good, becuase bad people would do it anyway, and more violently, against women who had not chosen that kind of life. Likewise, one can use condoms if they plan to disobey teh Church anyway. The Church recognizes that it is less evil to use a condom than to not use a condom in the case of AIDs being transmitted through intercourse or something similar

Your argument is as twisted as the logic and the morality. Using a condom is evil, but allowing mothers to die of aids isn't? The churuch hum and haw, hedge and spin. They should clearly say that: "Condoms save lives, use them!"; whats wrong with that and a lot more moral than the wringing of hands from the catholic priesthood. The other points about raping of children and the cover up, hatred of homosexuals I guess you accept becuase they are facts as you haven't addressed them.

Also unadressed are the "evidences" for christianity which I tagged as terrible and no better than any other religion. If you wish to debate it would be good if you engaged.

[Rev. Rye]

Your argument is as twisted as the logic and the morality. Using a condom is evil, but allowing mothers to die of aids isn't? The churuch hum and haw, hedge and spin. They should clearly say that: "Condoms save lives, use them!"; whats wrong with that and a lot more moral than the wringing of hands from the catholic priesthood. The other points about raping of children and the cover up, hatred of homosexuals I guess you accept becuase they are facts as you haven't addressed them.

Also unadressed are the "evidences" for christianity which I tagged as terrible and no better than any other religion. If you wish to debate it would be good if you engaged.

He seems to be saying that condom use is a lesser evil than letting people die of AIDS. At least that's what I'm seeing. That said, the "evidences" he's using seem to be making him out to be the dumbest theists on this forum. He's making Gilligan seem like G.K. Chesterton.

[dqualk]

Saying that the Vatican is not ready to release files from archives does not make them guilty. The U.S. is not going to release top secret files just because Iraqis ask them to to see if Americans killed Iraqis for the sake of killing them or something. The Vatican has released many documents demonstrating the Catholic Church's stalwart defense of Jews and its opposition to Nazism. If you do actual research you will find that the Church did more than any other institution to resist Nazism.

[Rev. Rye]

Saying that the Vatican is not ready to release files from archives does not make them guilty. The U.S. is not going to release top secret files just because Iraqis ask them to to see if Americans killed Iraqis for the sake of killing them or something. The Vatican has released many documents demonstrating the Catholic Church's stalwart defense of Jews and its opposition to Nazism. If you do actual research you will find that the Church did more than any other institution to resist Nazism.

What about the Soviet Army? When the war came, they were responsible for 60-70% of all Nazi casualties, and even liberated several of the concentration camps (including Auschwitz). I mean, sure, they proved themselves to be little better than the Nazis, but at least they ended up doing a lot to resist Nazism. Of course, this all depends on one's definition of "institution."

[dqualk]

lol they only resisted Nazism when Hitler threatened to destroy him. Then they only conquered it for selfish reasons. America instead chose to enact the Marshall Plan, wehre the soviet union virtually enslaved the Germans, threatening them with prison or death if they tried to leave.

[Rev. Rye]

lol they only resisted Nazism when Hitler threatened to destroy him. Then they only conquered it for selfish reasons. America instead chose to enact the Marshall Plan, wehre the soviet union virtually enslaved the Germans, threatening them with prison or death if they tried to leave.

Whether or not their motives were pure (which any fool would know isn't the case) is not the issue at hand. The point is the Soviet Army resisted Nazism, and their resistance (as morally unsympathetic as it was) played a huge role in ending it, far more open than that of the Catholic Church's. It's not like the Church, which was so ambiguous that it could be argued either that the Vatican collaborated, resisted, or just did too little too late (this is what I believe at this point). And yes, I am fully aware that the American Marshall Plan ended up being better for the German people. Come to think of it, your claims that the Church did the most of any institution to resist Nazism seems to disregard the Second World War altogether, because, for better or for worse, it was the war which stopped Hitler, and not the church.