I was going to put this into words, but Wayne Jackson has already done it in a far better fashion than I can. His article is short and sweet.
Referring to the historical records of Jesus’ life and the New Testament accounts of the Gospel in Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John; Wayne Jackson presents the question,
“How do skeptics address these historical records? Generally speaking, they assert that the New Testament writers fabricated the accounts. The writers knew that Jesus did not do these things; they simply invented the stories.
Will this charge stand up in the light of logical inquiry? Let us think about it for a moment.
Logically speaking, either there is existence after death or there is not…”
This is an exert from the middle of this article “A Problem No Skeptic Can Explain”. Click here to read this concise article.
I question creationists, to be honest, because I hold reason to be superior to superstition. Creationists (and now ID’ers) would like creation tought as science, with the assumption that reason is used in creating their narrative. I don’t see any reason used in basing ones creation narrative on faith so I resent the fact that they have decided that creation equals science. I also honestly have a hard time understanding how one can base the meaning of their life on faith, or on pleasing some higher being. Most of the wonder of life to me is discovering my world. If you base your meaning on faith you no longer have a need to question as much about the why or how of your world, it is answered for you. The only questioning you need to do is on the things that you decide not to accept from religious teaching. It seems to me like being spoon fed.
You say that you test all things, but do you test them on an equal scale? How can you say you are testing them if you cannot overturn your faith. Being that it is not anchored in anything other than faith it really can’t be subject to reason. All your arguments for religion come from a basis of religion so it isn’t suprising that they come back supporting it. Corroboration, or controls outside your experiment, are very important to science yet I see very few corroborating evidences for any of the faiths. Would you give up your faith if evidence was presented that proved it to be false? What would that evidence be? As I’ve said, I’m open to that possibility but being a part of a religion kindof precludes that doesn’t it?
I have tried to interpret things from a religious perspective. I honestly don’t understand how one can give up a whole part of your life and put it far away from the reach of logic that way, knowing how powerful logic is in bettering the human condition.
As for data. A fact isn’t a fact until you can epirically test it, so yes all facts are testable. I have not come across any history that I completely believe which has not been corroborated. Can you run a scientific test on history, yes. You can do archeaology, paleontology or other physical science. You can also use corroboration. Obviously history is recorded by people and contains flaws but corroboration and correlation is powerful in its ability to show a preponderance of evidence.
In order to live one must make assumptions. The eye and brain make them constantly as you can see if you check out the post I just put up on magic. However, one can minimize those assumptions in areas that matter to your life by using empirical, rational tools to compensate for the flaws in our senses. How can you be sure that your spiritual feelings are not just abherations of psychology or the culmination of years of selection in a social species which gives them the need to come together socially? Without testing how can you ever know? I think that putting any part of my life outside the realm of rational thought is kindof ridiculous.
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I’m sorry that you feel that way in struggling for a response. I’d like to think that this is a long road of providence. I don’t have a definite answer for you, but you still question Creationists. Why? For this, I think that you have some interest, which might be just annoyance. I think that you keep running into one of the forms of the Christian Faith that just does not add up to you. Why not try thinking within a belief of God and Jesus
and see what you can accept?
I believe that I have knocked and the door was opened to me. I want you to also know that the “blind” faith that many Christians present regarding their Faith is not only the only path for belief in the Bible. Hebrews 11:1, “Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” What evidence? Many Christians believe that their Faith cannot be proved factually, but I believe otherwise. So, you test all things. This is a principle of the Christian Faith that many Christians won’t do (1 Thes. 5:21).
I see differing interpretations between us on the same facts while both beliefs being the most reasonable answers in truth. If I were not a Christian, then I would be a Deist. I am convinced on many points on the existence of God, but the three that confirm my faith are the order and beauty of Creation that I see, the best people that I could ever know are Christians of my fellowship, and the existence of my conscience regarding right and wrong. I have other things evidently from my blog that I think help in convincing. I like to try to interpret things from the perspective of my kind of atheism from the fundamental thought excluding the ideas of atheism that I understand to be wrong. What if you did that from Christianity as much as you could accept it? What about the Creationist who accepts an old age of the Earth like John Clayton (doesGodexist.org)?
I want to challenge you regarding empirical data. Can all facts be proved by empirical testing? Are there any parts of history that you accept as fact but can’t test empirically? Are their any memories or thoughts that you cannot test but you know these are facts?
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Believe me, I have knocked in all the ways I know of that one can knock, asked in all the ways one can ask, and searched every way one can search, and haven’t heard an answer.
The doors I mentioned hinge on faith. I simply can’t, in good conscience, accept simple faith. I could easily give it up to faith, but I would never know if I was self deluded in accepting that faith. The only way I can know I am alive is to question my world. To leave questioning out of one area of my life would seem a bit incongruous to me. To not question things that by any objective standard are fantastical and could easily be a communal fantasy born of a fear of death seems like a travesty. If a God is unable to deal with the many ways of questioning his existence, including mine, I’m not sure he is worth the trouble and is certainly not worth subjugation. I’m not afraid enough of an afterlife to think that subjugation is necessary for me.
That isn’t to say that the various religions don’t have a good basis upon which to build a moral life. Being human I draw on the cultural and written basis of this morality every day. I just don’t think that there is any basis to believe that any of them, the gospels included, were written by divine inspiration when thousands of years of smart people thinking about morality would arrive at similar conclusions without the exclusivity and hatred that religion has created. I’m OK with being wrong if something comes up to prove it otherwise, but I’m not going to go opening the door everytime I get a feeling something might be there. Call it self centered if you want to but all I know is what I can sense and I haven’t sensed anything to lead me toward God, nor have I seen empirical evidence so I’m left waiting for this elusive being to reveal itself.
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“Ask and it shall be given to you; seek and you shall find; knock and it shall be opened to you.”
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Ah…yes mabye he has. Do you answer the door to someone who doesn’t knock?
From my perspective I have multiple doors that I could open. They are labeled with Hinduism, Islam, Buddhism, Jainism, Mormonism, Christianity, etc… Only one has a God behind, so I’m told. I’m trying to figure out which one it is I should open. So far I haven’t heard any noise behind any of the doors, there are no shadows projected under the crack of the door, no movement or light through the keyhole. When I call I get no response, the same with slipping notes under the door. I’ve tried wording the notes and calls in the ways that people who proport to have seen these Gods say they like to recieve them and still no reesponse. There could be Gods behind all of them, but if they don’t make themselves known they are essentially non-existant.
A blind man can open his door everytime he thinks someone might be there, but it might be more productive to wait until he hears a knock.
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Jens,
Has God not presented Himself more than sufficiently to you according to His standards?
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“What person lied or made up by mental disorder in inventing this belief? Why did the Gospel writers believe the miracles that Jesus did? Did Jesus believe them or did He deceive the disciples? Were all their minds deluded in religion? Someone had to have invented the idea of Jesus being resurrected to explain the empty tomb.”
Does it matter who might have thought these things? Who thought them up in the Salem witch trials, noone knows really who sowed the seeds of the witch story? Noone needs to have purposefully lied for Groupthink and communal reinforcement to take place, that’s the whole point. You are correct that it could explain any belief system in the world which is based on faith. Faith in empirical evidence is harder to shake by group thought processes since the numbers don’t change. There are as many reasons to explain the tomb being empty as there are that the tomb didn’t exist, the point is it takes faith to believe the writings, which are not corroborated outside the faith.
“Hell just suits his argument in this case especially for those ignorant of Christian motivations.”
So the ends justify the means? Picking and choosing arguments like that points to the fallacy of the argument. Hell being a deterrant is central to his point. All the other reasons of love and all that don’t satify his central conclusion so they must be peripheral to the belief system in his mind. Unless he’s cherrypicking his arguments to try to bend the reality to fit his liking. “The Apostles wouldn’t have lied because they feel love toward their fellow man’ doesn’t really fit the bill does it? Love is not a deterrant and his argument hinges on the deterrant factor.
“By title, atheist is dogmatic as a person who believes there is no God”
You are talking about the philisophical distinction between hard and soft atheism. Take a look at the Wiki page I cited before, I would doubt that you have even looked at it or you wouldn’t persist in your dogged argument to put atheists in such a narrow bucket.
“In what field of study might one look to prove God’s existence to you?”
Maybe incontrovertible is too strong a word. I would settle for statistically probable and peer reviewed. I might start with Creationism or ID doing some actual research rather than spending all thier time trying to debunk others work. If they can find solid, statistical, and peer reviewed evidence that God alone could have created the universe I would jump on the bandwagon in a minute. Unfortunately, as you might know, there is a sum total of zero bench tested ID or Creationist theories. Micheal Behe has never presented any of his own basic cell research to back up his claims, he’s a writer not a scientist in that regard.
Of course, God being omnipotent and omnipresent he/she could present himself to me. I’d probably listen to a voice in my head if it could tell me things which were true which I had no way of knowing before they happened and I could subject this voice to a blind trial enough times to be sure its ability to predict was above a P value of 0.05. Or he could appear to everyone in the world as a firey phantasm in the sky and let us all know that he is king. I don’t see that happening, but if any of that happened I’d be willing to believe. Worship in the other hand would be an open question. I don’t easily bend to accomodate dictators who’s intentions are not completely clear so I would need some amount of dialogue before I started subjugating myself.
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