Re: The Most Frequently Asked Questions About Islam

Robert Latest wrote:
Phil Hobbs wrote:

People in the first century knew perfectly well how every other woman in history has gotten pregnant. That's why that one was news.

People always liked good stories, and stories tend to get better when they get re-told and passed on many times over.

Is that just a remark, or an assertion like Paine's that all the witnesses were liars? The historical evidence is very good, far better than for any other event until the 17th century or thereabouts. Tossing it out unexamined rather implies a prior commitment to atheism, or perhaps a prior commitment to keeping the waters muddy enough so as not to interfere with our freedom of action.

The New Testament books were in wide circulation within the lifetime of the Apostles. Even the Gospel of John, one of the later books, is known to have been in wide use before AD 80. This was a very amusing result of biblical archeology--for 100 years, the modernists had been laying down the law that John was an imaginative mid-second century retelling. Then part of a manuscript of John was discovered in the wrappings of a mummified Egyptian sacred crocodile, dated very accurately to AD 80. So within living memory of the events recounted, John's gospel had been around long enough to have travelled from the Aegean islands to Egypt, and for the Egyptian manuscript to have completely worn out. The response of the modernists? ... (crickets chirping) ....

Remember that all but one of those same Apostles, as well as a great many of their close associates, were tortured and murdered one by one for proclaiming the Gospel. That's widely attested in pagan sources and (iirc) in the writings of the Jewish historian Josephus too. Odd thing, letting yourself get murdered over a bedtime story, no?

The New Testament is full of people who didn't believe in the Resurrection until they had actually encountered the Risen Christ. Checking before buying is a good thing.

The New Testament (or actually, the whole Bible) is full of good stories. And good stories are all the more enjoyable if you actually believe them.

But the content of revelation (at least in the Bible) is precisely things that science does not concern itself with--things like what life is for; whether there is justice in the world and if so, how does it work; how people can be free of what binds them; and how to have a real relationship with the God who is really there. None of that affects science even slightly. Does it?

No.

It seems to me that the usual atheist's objection to religion is not so much rational or scientific, although it's often coloured that way, but rather moral.

No. The atheist's (or at least, mine) objection to religion is the claim of truth that many religions (or believers) have.

Well, once again, it would be pointless to just go through the motions. We're all going to die an alarmingly real death one of these days, and a faith that can't stand up to that isn't worth much. If it won't stand up to rational examination, it sure won't stand up to leukemia, or paralysis, or the death of a child.

When you say that you object to the truth claims of believers, do you merely mean that you disagree, or that it bothers you that some people believe in God, or that some people who believe in God disapprove of some of the things you do? There are perfectly respectable arguments against the existence of God, and against Christianity specifically, but we haven't heard any of them in this discussion.

BTW we disapprove of lots of the things we do, too--it's called 'being a sinner'. We're all in the same club there. In fact, the further on we go, the more conscious of our own sin we become, so it becomes easier not to judge others. If that's not happening in a believer's life, there's something holding him back. The moral claim is not that all Christians are good people, nor even that all Christians are better people than all non-Christians. It's merely that a Christian is a better person than he would be if he weren't a Christian.

The sense we have that we know what's right, but don't always do it, is part of the basic data that goes into the religious view, but it's not a specifically religious observation. It's common to anyone who really examines his life--philosophers, sages, and ordinary people. The difference is that unbelievers don't have the hope that we have, nor the forgiveness. It isn't necessary to 'live a life of quiet despair', because our hope is in Someone who is really there, and who has conquered sin and death on our behalf.

In fact, it's often the seemingly worst people who come to Christ, because they come up against their failures in a way that's harder to rationalize away. Waking up in the gutter is harder to ignore than cheating on your income tax.

I never believed in God, virgin birth or any other such hocus-pocus, but that was all right with the Lutherans among whom I grew up. What turned me actively anti-religion was a year-long stay in the Bible belt and some sobering services in Catholic churches.

Well, if you're sitting in church and you get disturbed by people who actually believe in God, you're certainly in danger of being disturbed in most churches--though as you've found, there are unfortunate exceptions. I've never understood why those folks don't just sleep in on Sunday AM the way I used to. A friend of mine calls that "worshipping at the Church of the Inner Spring." :)

I didn't mean to offend you. But atheism, at least as practiced by people like Dawkins and Carl Sagan, does involve the irrational assertion that God certainly does not exist

At least Dawkins doesn't make that assertion. About Sagan I don't know.

So you don't think calling a book "The God Delusion" sort of suggests Dawkins thinks believing in God is _A_Bad_Thing_? What's he going on about, then?

Sagan famously said, "The cosmos is all there is, and all there ever can be." It would be hard to be much clearer on that point.

Both of those guys have misused their scientific prestige to pontificate on religious topics that have nothing to do with their specialties, and in which they have no special expertise. That damages science, which upsets me, because the alternative to science and reason is quackery, folk remedies, and irrational fashions. We have *way* too much influence on the planet and on each other for that to be a safe trade.

Cheers,

Phil Hobbs
.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: What did our founding father say about religion and America?
    ... Our Founding Fathers were deeply religious Christians who wanted to ... tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just; ... "Suppose a nation in some distant region should take the Bible for ... religion and morality are the indispensable supporters. ...
    (alt.politics)
  • THE RELIGION MAKERS
    ... Limited understanding had centered them on God. ... chosen people the Law before leading them into the Promised Land. ... Many Christians treat the Bible with the reverence they would apply to ... Religion without law is a clawless, ...
    (alt.politics.bush)
  • Re: A beautiful quote to share with you ......
    ... It's really religion Will. ... guess they were Christians. ... Has God on its side. ... And the Civil War too ...
    (alt.support.diabetes)
  • Re: What did our founding father say about religion and America?
    ... Our Founding Fathers were deeply religious Christians who wanted to ... "God who gave us life gave us liberty. ... "Suppose a nation in some distant region should take the Bible for ... religion and morality are the indispensable supporters. ...
    (alt.politics)
  • Re: Web content filter for religious material
    ... Do you have something that will block religion and let God through? ... My comment is that kids often have religion thrown at them before they ... one, and that the christians are infidels, while the christians think the ...
    (misc.health.alternative)