3 ms·

I guess my point is that faith necessarily involves a step that cannot be made by observation, deduction, or probabilistic reasoning. You can call this step "tr

by n4r9 3y ago

I guess my point is that faith necessarily involves a step that cannot be made by observation, deduction, or probabilistic reasoning. You can call this step "trust" if you like, but it seems disingenuous to compare it with mundane trust, such as trusting that your taxi driver has a driver's license, or trusting that the sun is a certain distance from the earth (as per your second link). These mundane trusts can in principle be verified, or at least are falsifiable. I know that I can ring up the taxi company and ask them to send me a copy of the license, and cross-check it with government records. I know that I can perform my own observations and reasoning to convince myself of the distance of the sun from the earth. I do not know that I can do this for claims such as "Jesus is the son of God".

n4r9 3y ago
I got around to looking at your final link re "Divinity of Christ". Is this author (or indeed CS Lewis) what you would refer to as one of the stronger professors of Christianity? Lewis's trilemma argument is one of the starkest examples of Christian apologists' failure to perform disinterested reasoning. Firstly, "liar, lord or lunatic" are not the only options. William Lane Craig suggests several plausible alternatives such as "Jesus was deluded with respect to the specific issue of his own divinity while his faculties of moral reasoning remained intact". Secondly, Jesus never claimed to be divine in the first place. The earlier gospels and the writings of Paul do not mention it. It's not until decades later that the Gospel of John talks about it. Thirdly, even if those were the options and Jesus did claim to be divine, the evidence for "lord" is lacking. Especially considering the rule that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Human culture is rife with examples of narcissists, psychopaths and tricksters who convinced large numbers of people of their wisdom, compassion and intelligence. Some of them get "found out", some do not. Jesus may be one of the latter. Reading the gospels hasn't convinced me otherwise. Ironically, Peter Kreefts argues exactly by appealing to feelings: "The savviness, the canniness, the human wisdom, the attractiveness of Jesus emerge from the Gospels with unavoidable force to any but the most hardened and prejudiced reader."

by n4r9 3y ago

n4r9 3y ago

I got around to looking at your final link re "Divinity of Christ". Is this author (or indeed CS Lewis) what you would refer to as one of the stronger professors of Christianity? Lewis's trilemma argument is one of the starkest examples of Christian apologists' failure to perform disinterested reasoning. Firstly, "liar, lord or lunatic" are not the only options. William Lane Craig suggests several plausible alternatives such as "Jesus was deluded with respect to the specific issue of his own divinity while his faculties of moral reasoning remained intact". Secondly, Jesus never claimed to be divine in the first place. The earlier gospels and the writings of Paul do not mention it. It's not until decades later that the Gospel of John talks about it. Thirdly, even if those were the options and Jesus did claim to be divine, the evidence for "lord" is lacking. Especially considering the rule that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Human culture is rife with examples of narcissists, psychopaths and tricksters who convinced large numbers of people of their wisdom, compassion and intelligence. Some of them get "found out", some do not. Jesus may be one of the latter. Reading the gospels hasn't convinced me otherwise. Ironically, Peter Kreefts argues exactly by appealing to feelings: "The savviness, the canniness, the human wisdom, the attractiveness of Jesus emerge from the Gospels with unavoidable force to any but the most hardened and prejudiced reader."