4 ms·

This may come as a surprise to you but I have "religious" faith because of evidence, not lack thereof. As to how it operates on a day to day basis in my life, I

by scop 3y ago

This may come as a surprise to you but I have "religious" faith because of evidence, not lack thereof. As to how it operates on a day to day basis in my life, I have faith in God just as I have faith in my wife: it is a relationship founded upon experience and knowledge. Certainly the objection would be that that is entirely subjective, but that is where objective arguments can then be laid out in addition to my "experience" of God in my life: philosophical arguments for God, historical arguments for God's actions in time and space, etc. I am a convert and came from a non-religious background, most often seeking reasons to not convert, FWIW.

moritzwarhier 3y ago
I am from a non-religious background as well, and I would love to be able to have religious faith. I like the comparison with having faith your wife, but it also shows the gap of reasoning between you and the post you are responding to, no? You start by saying > This may come as a surprise to you but I have "religious" faith because of evidence, not lack thereof What is that evidence? Are you sure you are not playing on words here? Because faith has positive effects on you? I like the argument about humility stated in another thread. For me, humility really seems to be the core value of religion that I find helpful. Another point you make I don't quite understand: > Certainly the objection would be that that is entirely subjective, but that is where objective arguments can then be laid out in addition to my "experience" of God in my life: philosophical arguments for God, historical arguments for God's actions in time and space, etc What are these arguments that are not debunked? As far as I know, proofs of God and arguments for His/Its/Her/Their existence are very indicative of the time and author's reasoning system. But there are none that I know of that have stood the test of time - be it Aquin, Kant, Descartes or whoever else?
- scop 3y ago
  > What are these arguments that are not debunked?...there are none that I know of that have stood the test of time To say that the classical arguments for God, e.g. Aquinas' five ways, have simply been "debunked" is completely false. I recall reading Dawkin's The God Delusion in early college and being convinced that these arguments were indeed antiquated. However as I began to read book-length treatments on various arguments (beginning, contingency, etc) I realized Dawkins et al oversimplified the entire enterprise. Are there debates about them? Sure and there always will be. But there are many professional philosophers who consider various classical arguments sound (though they often prefer one over the other, a gradient of "soundness"). > What is that evidence? Are you sure you are not playing on words here? Putting aside the philosophical (see above), the historical arguments for Christianity and especially the mystery resurrection are what specifically convinced me. tldr - The gospels are written within a single generation of the apostles. They were likely written because the apostles and early disciples were beginning to die. - We have documentary evidence of the gospels being faithful to the original documents. We have a vast number of manuscripts, many more than most any other ancient work, and they all are in agreement with one another (ignoring small copyist errors here and there). - There are embarrassing stories in the gospels (Jesus' baptism, Jesus' rebuke of family, his inability to work miracles in certain places, Jesus' uncertainty as to the time of his return, the apostles total abandonment of him at his passion) - There is nothing placed in Jesus' mouth that are reflective of later debates in the early Christian communities (e.g. do we still circumcise?), which one would expect if later Christians were as free to make up stories to fit the "needs" or "meanings" in their community. - The names of people in the gospels correspond exactly to 1st century census data. If you were born in the 90s, you know a lot of Jennifers, yet there are very little baby Jennifers today. Names come and go quickly in cultures (outside of the true constant ones). There have been studies of the many names in the stories of Jesus and they all correspond to the timeframe expected (30ish AD) based on census data. - What explains the presence of the woman at the empty tomb? Woman held low esteem in ancient society, yet they are the first ones to learn of Jesus' resurrection. If this story was simply made up, why do we not see Peter, James, and John finding the empty tomb and immediately becoming full of faith? - After the collapse of faith of the apostles and their abandonment of Jesus at his passion, they all come "on board" with his resurrection and all go to their deaths attesting to this. - What explains the completely novel concept of a pre-resurrection resurrection? Jesus rose Lazarus from the dead, but this was simply a resuscitation. Jesus' resurrection on the other hand is an eschatological resurrection, which means "end of time" resurrection. He is given a glorified, eternal body that is capable of things unknown to us (passing through walls, suddenly appearing, etc). There were some Jews at the time of Christ who believed in an end-of-time resurrection, but nobody believed that a single person would experience this sort of thing before everybody else. This is a completely novel idea in Jewish thought and for it to so suddenly appear and fully formed within a Jewish "sect" is truly remarkable. Greek and Roman sources fail to explain this as well. The concept of an eschatological resurrection of so foreign that even the resurrection stories have an odd tone to them unlike the rest of the gospels, notably containing zero explicit biblical proofs ("here's where the Old Testament said I would rise") and containing remarks about various people doubting, being scared, etc. NT Wright's The Resurrection of the Son of God is considered one of the best treatments on this.
  - adamsb6 3y ago
    People claming to be witnesses to the resurrected Christ spent the rest of their lives executing on the Great Commission, going as far as India, Russia, Spain, and Carthage. Many did so under the threat of torture and death, and many were tortured and killed, never recanting. There's no comparable event in history, and especially not in antiquity. Much of what we take for granted as ancient history comes with far fewer sources. This is what kind of cracked my atheism and lead me to more fairly evaluate the claims of Christianity. Until that point I'd been a bit of a scoffer, taking for granted the premise that no organized religion could possibly be true. Discovering eucharistic miracles led me further toward accepting Christianity as true. I still feel like kind of a crackpot mentioning the evidence. But there's strikingingly consistent features of eucharistic miracles, going back to a time where it wouldn't have been possible to fake. They all have a somewhat rare blood type, including ones that were preserved centuries before we knew about blood type. They're all human cardiac muscle. The more recent ones, which haven't decayed and lost evidence, have features that are consistent with someone undergoing extreme physical stress. They also have features that are consistent only with living tissue, even for samples that have been sitting in tap water for months or years. See this book: https://www.amazon.com/Cardiologist-Examines-Jesus-Stunning-Eucharistic/dp/1644134772 https://www.amazon.com/Cardiologist-Examines-Jesus-Stunning-...
  - moritzwarhier 3y ago
    Thanks for your reply. I'll spend some more time reading it in detail at a later point. To clarify one thing: I haven't even read Dawkins' books. My stance on "proof of god's existance" arguments stems from, among others, a very goos philosophy PhD which I had the fortune to have as a high school teacher for a while (until he quit and went back to scholarship). His favorite subjects were Thomas von Aquin and Immanuel Kant, both believers in Christian theological "proofs" of various kinds. I couldn't think of a less flamboyant word than "debunked". To put in other words: all of the proofs of god's existance that I have seeen have turned out to be logical fallacies. My best friend, who was strongly catholic most of his life, but went on to study phiolosphy, I think concluded the same. That doesn't mean he's lost his faith completely though. AFAIK he doesn't like to call himself a Catholic anymore though. Which brings me to another issue, if not the main one, with these proofs: which god's existance do they aim to prove? Belief in most religions seems mutually exclusive (in a single mind, and without redefining and muddying historical terms), as much as we'd like otherwise. "Proving" something like "there is an entity or cause of effect that is more powerful than any entities or causes of effect that we know" is not a proof of the existance of any particular human-defined "God".

by scop 3y ago

moritzwarhier 3y ago

I am from a non-religious background as well, and I would love to be able to have religious faith. I like the comparison with having faith your wife, but it also shows the gap of reasoning between you and the post you are responding to, no? You start by saying > This may come as a surprise to you but I have "religious" faith because of evidence, not lack thereof What is that evidence? Are you sure you are not playing on words here? Because faith has positive effects on you? I like the argument about humility stated in another thread. For me, humility really seems to be the core value of religion that I find helpful. Another point you make I don't quite understand: > Certainly the objection would be that that is entirely subjective, but that is where objective arguments can then be laid out in addition to my "experience" of God in my life: philosophical arguments for God, historical arguments for God's actions in time and space, etc What are these arguments that are not debunked? As far as I know, proofs of God and arguments for His/Its/Her/Their existence are very indicative of the time and author's reasoning system. But there are none that I know of that have stood the test of time - be it Aquin, Kant, Descartes or whoever else?

scop 3y ago
> What are these arguments that are not debunked?...there are none that I know of that have stood the test of time To say that the classical arguments for God, e.g. Aquinas' five ways, have simply been "debunked" is completely false. I recall reading Dawkin's The God Delusion in early college and being convinced that these arguments were indeed antiquated. However as I began to read book-length treatments on various arguments (beginning, contingency, etc) I realized Dawkins et al oversimplified the entire enterprise. Are there debates about them? Sure and there always will be. But there are many professional philosophers who consider various classical arguments sound (though they often prefer one over the other, a gradient of "soundness"). > What is that evidence? Are you sure you are not playing on words here? Putting aside the philosophical (see above), the historical arguments for Christianity and especially the mystery resurrection are what specifically convinced me. tldr - The gospels are written within a single generation of the apostles. They were likely written because the apostles and early disciples were beginning to die. - We have documentary evidence of the gospels being faithful to the original documents. We have a vast number of manuscripts, many more than most any other ancient work, and they all are in agreement with one another (ignoring small copyist errors here and there). - There are embarrassing stories in the gospels (Jesus' baptism, Jesus' rebuke of family, his inability to work miracles in certain places, Jesus' uncertainty as to the time of his return, the apostles total abandonment of him at his passion) - There is nothing placed in Jesus' mouth that are reflective of later debates in the early Christian communities (e.g. do we still circumcise?), which one would expect if later Christians were as free to make up stories to fit the "needs" or "meanings" in their community. - The names of people in the gospels correspond exactly to 1st century census data. If you were born in the 90s, you know a lot of Jennifers, yet there are very little baby Jennifers today. Names come and go quickly in cultures (outside of the true constant ones). There have been studies of the many names in the stories of Jesus and they all correspond to the timeframe expected (30ish AD) based on census data. - What explains the presence of the woman at the empty tomb? Woman held low esteem in ancient society, yet they are the first ones to learn of Jesus' resurrection. If this story was simply made up, why do we not see Peter, James, and John finding the empty tomb and immediately becoming full of faith? - After the collapse of faith of the apostles and their abandonment of Jesus at his passion, they all come "on board" with his resurrection and all go to their deaths attesting to this. - What explains the completely novel concept of a pre-resurrection resurrection? Jesus rose Lazarus from the dead, but this was simply a resuscitation. Jesus' resurrection on the other hand is an eschatological resurrection, which means "end of time" resurrection. He is given a glorified, eternal body that is capable of things unknown to us (passing through walls, suddenly appearing, etc). There were some Jews at the time of Christ who believed in an end-of-time resurrection, but nobody believed that a single person would experience this sort of thing before everybody else. This is a completely novel idea in Jewish thought and for it to so suddenly appear and fully formed within a Jewish "sect" is truly remarkable. Greek and Roman sources fail to explain this as well. The concept of an eschatological resurrection of so foreign that even the resurrection stories have an odd tone to them unlike the rest of the gospels, notably containing zero explicit biblical proofs ("here's where the Old Testament said I would rise") and containing remarks about various people doubting, being scared, etc. NT Wright's The Resurrection of the Son of God is considered one of the best treatments on this.
- adamsb6 3y ago
  People claming to be witnesses to the resurrected Christ spent the rest of their lives executing on the Great Commission, going as far as India, Russia, Spain, and Carthage. Many did so under the threat of torture and death, and many were tortured and killed, never recanting. There's no comparable event in history, and especially not in antiquity. Much of what we take for granted as ancient history comes with far fewer sources. This is what kind of cracked my atheism and lead me to more fairly evaluate the claims of Christianity. Until that point I'd been a bit of a scoffer, taking for granted the premise that no organized religion could possibly be true. Discovering eucharistic miracles led me further toward accepting Christianity as true. I still feel like kind of a crackpot mentioning the evidence. But there's strikingingly consistent features of eucharistic miracles, going back to a time where it wouldn't have been possible to fake. They all have a somewhat rare blood type, including ones that were preserved centuries before we knew about blood type. They're all human cardiac muscle. The more recent ones, which haven't decayed and lost evidence, have features that are consistent with someone undergoing extreme physical stress. They also have features that are consistent only with living tissue, even for samples that have been sitting in tap water for months or years. See this book: https://www.amazon.com/Cardiologist-Examines-Jesus-Stunning-Eucharistic/dp/1644134772 https://www.amazon.com/Cardiologist-Examines-Jesus-Stunning-...
- moritzwarhier 3y ago
  Thanks for your reply. I'll spend some more time reading it in detail at a later point. To clarify one thing: I haven't even read Dawkins' books. My stance on "proof of god's existance" arguments stems from, among others, a very goos philosophy PhD which I had the fortune to have as a high school teacher for a while (until he quit and went back to scholarship). His favorite subjects were Thomas von Aquin and Immanuel Kant, both believers in Christian theological "proofs" of various kinds. I couldn't think of a less flamboyant word than "debunked". To put in other words: all of the proofs of god's existance that I have seeen have turned out to be logical fallacies. My best friend, who was strongly catholic most of his life, but went on to study phiolosphy, I think concluded the same. That doesn't mean he's lost his faith completely though. AFAIK he doesn't like to call himself a Catholic anymore though. Which brings me to another issue, if not the main one, with these proofs: which god's existance do they aim to prove? Belief in most religions seems mutually exclusive (in a single mind, and without redefining and muddying historical terms), as much as we'd like otherwise. "Proving" something like "there is an entity or cause of effect that is more powerful than any entities or causes of effect that we know" is not a proof of the existance of any particular human-defined "God".