Originally posted by Hazel:
When Christians are challenged by non-believers, shouldn’t they just say something along the lines of, “My religion teaches me to accept its truth, and the validity of its holy book, on faith, and I do just that. …”
But…what else could it be? Anyone who beleives in Christian doctrine, dogma, whatever the correct term is, must be taking it on faith. It can’t be based on any hard evidence, as there isn’t any. It has to be faith.
But I have had another thought since I posted the post that JThunder quoted from. I think some people are taking it on faith that there is evidence! As impressionable children, they were not just taught Christian doctrine – they were told, this is all absolutely true, and proof exists! They believe in the literal truth of the Bible and they believe that proof exists. They don’t need proof, they don’t see any need for it, so they don’t much care about the details of said proof, but when faced with doubters or complete non-believers, they automatically claim that proof exists.
I happen to agree with you that there is no hard evidence, but that’s still my opinion. I think JThunder is right - there are many people who truly believe that there is hard evidence, so they are not being deceitful when they say so.
Absolutely. I had a conversation with a Christian friend who desperately wanted to prove to me that the story of the resurrection was true. He started out by saying that the 4 gospels were unimpeachable, independent accounts of the resurrection. I asked him if the writers had access to the other gospels as source material, or if they truly were written independently of each other. The amazing thing is, my friend not only didn’t know, but didn’t seem to care. In other words, he was taking it on faith that the gospels were unimpeachable. I have since found out that many scholars believe that the gospels borrowed heavily from each other, and possibly from a common source that no longer exists.
Having exhausted that argument, my friend went on to explain that hundreds of people witnessed the resurrection. My immediate question, of course, was “do you know they witnessed it from an independent source, or is that what the gospels say?”. That question had never occurred to him before. He honestly didn’t see any problem with proving a story by using evidence that is part of the story ITSELF, as in saying Winnie the Pooh is real because Piglet talked to him.
Now, before anyone gets up in arms about my post, I want to make it clear that I’m not trying to turn this into a debate about the validity of the gospels - let’s save that for another thread. I’m just pointing out that SOME (not all) people take the existence of “proof” of God on faith.
I’m basically agnostic, and have been since I started thinking on my own during confirmation in my paerents’ religion.
When I was younger, I was much more critical of what I considered ‘blind faith’ – I have since come to view religious faith as a neutral quantity – if it improves the way a person conducts him/herself in the world, I consider it a good thing. If it makes them into an asshole or worse, it’s a bad thing.
During my youth, I was always getting into arguments with religious people (invariably Christian) who asserted that the Bible was written by God, not man.
I rarely get into these arguments anymore, because I now have a view more along the lines of, “The Bible came from God; in the same sense, so did the trumpet solos of Louis Armstrong, the scientific discoveries of Albert Einstein, the swing of Babe Ruth, etc.” In other words, if there’s a supreme intelligence out there, they are responsible for all great and good things.
But I’m still encountering plenty of people who are really pissed off at this belief. Who essentially DENY the divinity of everything BUT the Bible.
In the end, it doesn’t seem the least bit like a search for truth, but a silly pecker contest.
I suspect that people who engage in this kind of debate are really trying to convince THEMSELVES?