Fair enough arguement, I have been lurking here for a long time, and am getting ready to spend my dosh to join. In that time I have seen you attacked a lot for your beliefs, and you have always maintained an unwillingness to talk about it. My burning question would have to be why? You have taken the time to learn about your chosen religion, you obviously do believe in it, why not spread your knowledge and fight ignorance? OK - so you’re not really gonna change anyone’s mind, but at least you can make us more informed.
Most instances where I see people unwilling to debate is when they are somehow ashamed of their position, or otherwise find it difficult to defend. I am by no means a scholar, or even knowledgable, but what I know of the mainstream religions, all of them are very difficult to defend from anything other than a metaphorical perspective
Hmm, so you both failed to demonstrate that I was trying to incite a “fight” and you don’t have a cite that doing so is in violation of any rules. Pickings must be thin for mods on the SDMB.
It’s the Straight Dope–a forum for identifying accurate facts. Beliefs are not facts and discussing them is not why I joined. As you note, my basic beliefs are pretty obvious, anyway. You will also note that I pretty much never ask (and never challenge) other posters regarding their beliefs, so it is hardly a matter of hiding my insecurities.
It is simply not something I enjoy discussing in this sort of Forum. (Drop by my church during RCIA and you will get a different view, completely.)
In other words, tom is a very smart man and he knows when he is going to get his ass handed to him. So he won’t go there, even if it means those on the edge of faith won’t get to see the light that tom hides under his bushel. It seems to be a pride thing, which tom puts above witnessing to others. I bet Jesus wouldn’t be impressed.
That is a fair enough comment, and I won’t ask the question of you again. Although I would like to pick apart your reply a little. You say, that this is a forum for facts, by implication this means (to me) that beliefs, religion included can not be justified or substantiated by facts.
Would it then be fair to say that any religion is simply a matter of belief and doesn’t need justifying? That religion is a matter of (a combination of) individual taste and preferences? I choose to belive it because I like what the church espouses? After all, nobody has ever asked me to defend why I don’t like Brussel Sprouts, and I would never try to rationally defend it other than saying “just because”. If religion is made purely a matter of belief, then the answer “because I do” is more than enough to defend it.
If, on the other hand, you believe that your beliefs have some basis in rationality and history or are otherwise somehow correct, isn’t it incumbent upon you to defend them?
Believing a 3 day dead, exsanguinated, and room temperature carcass rose from the dead simply because you read it in a book wrought with errors, or because your mommy, daddy, and preacher taught you to do so, is highly irrational and completely indefensible. That’s a fact.
Depends whether you read it as literal or metaphoric - I am certainly not the right person to debate this, as my knowledge is not good enough. But what if the “resurrection” is read as a continuation of His beliefs, or the resurgence of His teachings? Would belief in this not make sense in that instance? Rather than Jesus being resurrected, his teachings were resurrected?
Literal. I do believe that tom has admitted that he did believe in the physical resurrection of Jesus. As I recall he doubted a good number of other miracles but the resurrection he held fast to, but never gave any reason as to why.
Scripturally, it’s a hard sell to take that the resurrection was metaphorical. The Gospel writers seemingly went out of their way to indicate that it was literal and physical with Thomas putting his hand in Jesus’ side (John 20:27) and Jesus making a big deal about his flesh and bones in Luke 24:39. If one were to take it all as metaphorical they would have little reason (as if it wasn’t little enough already) to believe anything divine took place, or that god and heaven were not just metaphors.
After having read your last post to tom I think you have an interesting line of questioning going. I’m kind of curious where it will lead. Part of me thinks I should bow out to let the flames die, the other part thinks, what’s it matter, tom’s going to have the same excuses for not answering you as he does me, he’ll just be more polite about it.
Oh my! The scales have fallen from my eyes. Yes, at last I see. All this time I’ve been believing in the resurrection of Jesus on the basis that dead bodies get up and walk around of their own accord all the time, and now badchad has vouchsafed to me some secret knowledge that the benighted first-century Middle Easterners were no more aware of than I was.
So now I know the truth. Ah, the wonders of 21st-century science!
From what I understand, wasn’t it a realtively small group of people that are vouching for the resurrection of Jesus. Taking out the eyewitness accounts (I will address soon), what evidence is there that Jesus was actually resurrected?
Looking at the eyewitness accounts, assuming my understanding is correct and the number is small, why do you believe them? As an example, if a group of ostensibly trustworthy people told you they saw a flying pig, would you believe them and wait for the price of pork to go up, or would you look for further evidence?
The reason I ask is that in my job I regularly have to create and explain motivations, reasons and events post fact, and this has no more relevance to actual events than it is what I create. What is to say the bible wasn’t written in a similar style, building on verifiable events with pure fiction?
Why should the eyewitnesses be belived - could they not have been collaborating to achieve their own ends?
I believe I don’t know how the universe came into being. The big bang theory seems to have the most evidence in favor for it but not being an expert in cosmology I don’t think I could do the subject justice nor state what brought about the big bang so for now I withhold judgment. However, that does not change the fact that the universe seems very unlikely to have been created in 7 days less than 10,000 years ago with contradictory orders of events as described in Genesis, and it’s logically impossible to have been created by a being that is both all loving and all powerful. Nice try though. I would ask that you take other cosmology questions to another thread, else you risk being admonished for hijacking this thread. Assuming rules on hijacking threads apply to others besides me. Tom?
And since you are replying to my dig on Mormons, how about you start a thread talking about the Israelites coming to America by submarine, or their use of steel implements before steel was invented, and leaving no trace of their civilization, etc, etc. Cause I don’t think Monty is up to it.
I’ll refrain from answering that here and now, lest badchad rebuke me for hijacking the thread and demand that I be warned for it or cite the lack thereof as further evidence that tomndebb is picking on him. GD’s a better forum for the debate, and if you front up the fifteen bucks you’ll likely be able to search for a few prior discussions on the subject.
For now I’m content merely to roll my eyes at the OP’s apparent belief that the faithful are unaware of the fact that in general dead bodies do not get up and walk around all of their own accord. Either Jesus did not rise from the dead, or he rose through the agency of God. That he merely rose from the dead for no reason - that dead bodies might well do so at any time - is not a viewpoint seriously advanced by anyone AFAIK.
Erm, I really couldn’t help at all on the Mormon questions, I’m afraid I don’t know much at all about their beliefs.
You seem a bit angry about my question, so I’ll try to frame it better or at least give some background. You obviously feel that Christianity is just a load of superstitious nonsense. Fair enough, it’s hard to argue otherwise when dealing with a book as contradictory as the bible is (or so I believe, I’m not much of a biblical scholar I’m afraid). However, I wondered just what theory you subscribed to as to how the universe was created. It just seems fair that if you’re going to demand Tom’s beliefs be scrutinised from a logical point of view, yours should be looked at too.
So, a key question would be just why was the universe created? You’re probably right in saying that I should have started another thread to ask it, but I thought maybe this had already been done in which case someone could direct me to an existing thread.
If Badchad wants to be a literalist and ignore the possibility of a higher power, why not simply ignore him? FTR, I don’t believe that Jesus was resurrected, but a lot of intelligent and rational people do, so I would like to know, based on what evidence - if your reply is simply “becasue I believe” fine, I have nothing to say, if the belief is fact based - I also wanna know
