What evidence do you have for the ‘events in question’ outside of the biblical record? If the biblical record does not stand up to scrutiny, then you have nothing to back up what you claim to ‘have happened’.
For starters, I have 2,000 years of Church teaching and tradition.
Without the Bible, how do you know if what you are being told about what he said is accurate or not? In fact, what do you know about Jesus at all without the Bible to refer back to?
Church teaching and tradition.
And if there are contradictions between the words of the Bible and those traditions?
Then the words of the Bible are most likely being either misunderstood or misapplied.
The same thing is said by other sects.
Naturally.
A possible more rational line of thought:
“Regular people don’t rise from the dead. My conclusion: something unusual (that I have no good explanation for) happened.”
Sure, maybe this Jesus fellow is telling the truth. Or maybe he’s a nutter with a bizarre superpower. Either way, I have no way of evaluating his claims. None whatsoever. So what I’m left with is simply a mysterious event I cannot explain. Claiming that the event was caused by god doesn’t actually make it less mysterious.
An even more rational line of thought:
“Regular people don’t rise from the dead. The amount of evidence it would take for me to believe that someone who died came back to life, then ascended into the skies today is far more than ‘I read it in a book full of stories’. Therefore, the story is probably not true.”
How do you feel about alien abduction, EscAlaMike? There are people you can go to who are alive today who will gladly tell you about the time they were abducted by aliens. I’m sure you could find over a thousand of them, and that most of those stories would share some non-trivial details. Would this be sufficient evidence for you to believe that aliens are abducting random yokels to perform science experiments on them? Or would you (quite rightfully) point out that mere eyewitness testimony isn’t good enough to establish such a bizarre claim? How many eyewitnesses would you need for an Islamic miracle before it convinced you that the bible was false?
Of course, as others have pointed out, someone telling you that there were hundreds of witnesses is a very different thing from actually citing hundreds of witnesses. The story of Jesus Christ is far-removed from anything we can test or experience, and what it asks us to accept on the basis of such flimsy evidence is nothing short of a complete reshaping of how we view the universe, how we treat each other, and our most basic human values. It demands that we place a church above the love of our own family, that we kill brother and sister if they fail to follow certain arbitrary rules or kowtow to a grossly self-contradictory being, that we accept that those who believe differently from us will be tortured forever by a being described as all-loving. What could convince you to do that? What would it take?
I can tell you what it takes for most people - decades of indoctrination, anchoring these beliefs in fertile ground in minds that are not prepared to critically evaluate them, and hanging huge portions of a person’s worldview on those beliefs so that any attempt to challenge them is met with horrifying cognitive dissonance.
A very sensible post until you started being disingenuous about Christianity by saying that it requires killing your family.
I appreciate how much effort you went to in this post, so I apologize that my response will be much more brief.
I would just respond by saying that my beliefs don’t exist in a vacuum. I am just a tiny part of the massive community that we call humanity that goes back thousands of years. I depend on the testimony and witness of others. There are people from the past and present whose insight and research I trust. I see all the ways that the life, death, and resurrection of Christ (and by extension the liturgy and sacraments of the Catholic Church) fulfill and complete the Old Testament religion, and it’s beautiful to me and gives me hope. I see all the amazing ways that the Catholic Church has revolutionized the world, and it gives me hope.
You’re right that the teachings of Christ ask us to reshape our view of the universe, etc., and I would argue that this is a good thing.
Not if you are no longer capable of seeing the universe as it is.
There are a lot of assumptions built into that statement.
Are you saying you don’t believe in your god?
I do use reason and common sense. That’s why I know that every single claim that every single theist makes that suggests that their god will, has, or can do something is false.
You may be (for the purpose of not promptly losing this argument) redefining prayer into something untestable, but you’re not the god of words, and people pray for things to happen ALL THE TIME. You’re a catholic; that bread doesn’t turn to flesh on its own initiative. In fact I believe I can say with absolute confidence that, as a catholic, you must believe in the efficacy of prayer and that divine intervention has tangible effect - or be a heretic.
But the prayers don’t always have effect, and god doesn’t always intervene. That crap is unreliable. As I said.
I don’t appreciate being called a liar.
We are talking about PARTING THE OCEAN. Natural causes my ass!
Now, yes, I would definitely listen to the people who would promptly rush to it and look for natural causes, and if they actually found natural causes I would gleefully look forward to the introduction of physics-breaking-technology to the world. (Seriously, an invisible force that can hold back the ocean all the way to the ocean floor? Particularly if it does it Heston-style without a hard flat wall, allowing you to stick your arm into the water unimpeded? (Which would probably crush your arm instantly - that’s the kind of pressures and forces we’re talking about here!)
Yeah, no. As soon as it was confirmed as not being a complete hoax, I’d be looking for explanations outside of this planet. Maybe not your god - maybe somebody else’s god. Or aliens. Or the aliens’ god. I don’t know what - but it would be so far outside human science I’d know instantly that I’d have to accept the existence of something new.
BULL. SHIT.
People in stupid fairytales like the myths that back your book did that - non-fleshed out straw people that exists only to make a point. But real human people notice world-shaking things, because they’re not part of badly written crap fiction.
Hell, the fact that people in your stories shrug off such massive things should alone be rock-solid proof that the stories are fiction - unless you believe that people in the past didn’t have brain cells.
Your god has done worse, as your bible happily attests.
And to be all pedantic about it, there’d be a distinct possibility that the angels would be just following orders and, off the clock, they’d be great guys to hang out and have a beer with, give or take the shed feathers getting into everything.
You have no idea what you’re talking about.
Maybe not, but you obviously have an ax to grind, and I’m not interested in being the stone.
Jim B:
Let me try an alternative heuristic which was first suggested to me by a friend who was trying to convince me and the rest of his former high school buddies that he had converted, he was truly reformed, and he was really scrutinizing The Bible intently:
The particular verbiage of the first commandment is suspect. By insisting Thou Shalt Worship No Other Gods Before Me it acknowledges that there are, in fact, other Gods and Elohim/YWH/JHV/iAM/whatever is establishing right off the bat that He wants your undivided loyalty. It’s not saying There Are No Other Gods; it’s saying Give Me Your Exclusive Devotion.
Allow me to re-post a question from the Religious ReFFugees site, roughly 20 years ago:
Christians had been repeatedly asking on that board if atheists would acknowledge the existence of God (and somehow therefore of Jesus) if Holy relics and key events in scripture could be proven as true. They weren’t asking for conversion, just acknowledgement.
So I submitted a challenge: The people of Japan trace the lineage of their emperors all the way back to Jinnu Tenno, the son of Amaterasu Omikami, the Goddess of the Sun and head of the pantheon. [I’ll spare you the details, but feel free to find and enjoy the myth of *Susanowo* and the eight-headed dragon*.] The Imperial House of Japan retains as national treasures three symbols of their divine heritage: A sword, a jewel, and a mirror which were first given to Jinnu Tenno by his mother. Replicas of the divine relics can be seen in the National Museum in Tokyo [naturally, they would never deign to put the real artifacts where theft could occur] and the originals are locked away somewhere secret.
If Emperor Heisei were to bring the artifacts out of storage and present them for display, would you acknowledge his lineage – would you admit Amaterasu and her pantheon are real? I’m not suggesting you change your loyalty; I’m just asking for acknowledgement of the existence of deities other than the God of Abraham.
I think I and other denizens of this forum see your question and mine in the same light: Neither is asking readers to simply concede the point. Conceding the point is the start of a slippery slope to Converting To The Faith$. But we’ve seen this ruse before and we haven’t fallen for it in the past and we’re not likely to fall for it now or in the future. The Believers believe and the others don’t; a forum of skeptics and fact-seekers is the wrong venue for seeking converts to a system of blind faith.
The Rest of You:
For what it’s worth, I’ve been very impressed by the way everyone, both believers and non-believers, tend to maintain a good level of respect and civility toward each other about 95% of the time in posts and replies. I don’t always see that on other boards# and it’s really one of the appealing facets of the Straight Dope that has kept me coming back for over a decade.
–G!
- Susanowo is Omikami’s younger brother and God of Storms.
$ The next step is “If you acknowledge X, why aren’t you worshipping X?” followed by “Why not become a devotee?” and “Why not become [my flavor]?” It’s worth noting that Satanists fully believe in the God of Abraham as well as the historical veracity of Jesus the Christ and the Prophet Mohammed. There are a lot of ways to acknowledge without subscribing, and a lot of ways to just refrain from acknowledging.
Give yourself a pat on the back!
My only ax to grind is with people who call me a liar in a desperate attempt to avoid admitting that I have a point.
I do not believe that you are being intentionally deceptive, so I do not believe that you are a liar, nor did I accuse you of being a liar. I simply made known my skepticism as to your (I believe) overly self-assured “if this then that” declarations.
Anyway, to reiterate my point - a sufficiently impressive miracle, that by its nature and details left no possibility of it being a scam, a fake, a delusion, or a mistake, would cause me (and virtually all other atheists) to readily concede that something unusual was going on. If the nature of the the miracle was such that it left no possibility of an earthly or human cause, I would become willing to accept the possibility that an unearthly or inhuman cause was responsible for the event.
But this wouldn’t make me immediately convert to a specific religion - not until I learned more about the cause (assuming I ever did). It’s easy for Catholicism or the Westboro Baptist Church or Scientology to claim credit for some spectacular event, but unless there’s some other reason to believe them it’s just talk. There could be things that would increase my likelihood of accepting Catholic responsibility - if the Pope could part oceans at will, for example. Or if a gigantic invulnerable blinding avatar of divinity came down and straight up told everyone Catholicism was true on national television while smiting anybody who backtalked him. Also dying and waking up in heaven with God shaking his head and saying “you weren’t Catholic, son, so it’s to the torture pits you go” - that would also be pretty convincing at a personal level, I’d say. (Though only when it actually happened; mortal yahoos saying I’ll go to hell if I don’t join the shriners doesn’t impress me.)
The detail of importance here is that to be a true materialist, a true scientist, you have to be open to changing your worldview in the face of compelling evidence - the kind of evidence that stands up to scientific scrutiny. When science tells me that it can send sounds and images through the open air, and then sells me a television, I don’t deny the existence of the television because it goes against my materialistic worldview.
So if compelling evidence tells me that there’s a god, I’ll believe there’s a god. The thing that bugs so many theists is that they stuff they call evidence isn’t compelling. (Hell, most of it is less convincing than hearsay.)
But massive crap like parting the oceans or an invading angel army or somesuch? Yeah, that stuff bears a second look.
What if the rational and conscious being that created all matter and is the essense of good (the one we call God) decided to make himself known to humanity.
He decided to make himself known by becoming a human himself and living among us in a particular place and at a particular time. Because he is good, he chose the woman who he wanted to be his mother, and decided to preserve her from sin. He also decided that she would remain a virgin even though she would be pregnant and give birth. This child was born and lived a life of humility and service. He taught good things, and established a perpetual institution called The Church for the purpose of dispensing salvation to all people for all time. He then suffered a criminal’s death. He then unmistakably showed who he was all along by rising from the dead and then ascending into heaven.
That would just be so lame right?
What has “lame” got to do with it? 
It could be the prettiest story in the world, but that fact wouldn’t have any bearing at all as to its veracity.