radorth said:
It is the other guy (and not me who is wrong) if the other guy can't produce miracles and other manifestations which any reasonable and extant God would work through his emissaries. As soon as you can PROVE the apostles are liars or lunatics, you will have an argument.
Lewis' trilemma must be answered by an intellectually honest person. If in fact they experienced all those things and wrote truthfully, and we have experienced the same things and write truthfully, then we have found God and we know that we have. You are the prosecutor here, and the burden is on you to provide something besides innuendo.
You have again relied on a false dichotemy. C.S. Lewis' argument that Jesus (or the disciples) are either a liar, lunatic, or lord, simply fails to address all the reall possibilities. Sure, if these were the only choices, then you might have a stronger point. But this premise assumes the inerrancy of the bible, which most people do not accept. I don't give the NT nearly as much crediblity as you for being perfect accounts of the events they describe. The trying intellectually honest individual cannot accept inerrancy of the bible if relying on intellect alone. Inerrancy is a purely a product of faith, not reason. To believe the Gospels are 100% accurate and without contradiction would give those documents an infinitely higher degree of accuracy and reliabilty than accounts made today of events in Iraq, for example, with real live witnesses, physical evidence, video, etc. Such a position is utterly unwarranted without a huge leap of faith.
And this position is not based on my "rejection" of Jesus anymore than you're not being a Muslim is a "rejection" of the true god, Allah of the Koran.
Muslims for example have absolutely nothing to prove they have heard from God and know God. The hadith writers realize that, so they made up stories of Muhammed's "miracles" from thin air. The Koran has no miracles at all unless you interpret one single passage using a special dictionary. It is ridiculous to compare the powers attributed to Christ with those of Muhammed. But you know that, so you are forced to make unproven and unprovable assertions about the powers of Christ, while calling the apostles deluded. Yeah I know. "maybe they just thought they a few loaves of bread multipied into thoudands. Maybe they just thought that grapejuice was alcoholic.
Fine, prove Jesus fed 10,000 people with a few loaves and a couple of fish, or walked on water, or raised Lazarus, or healed a leper. Go ahead, prove it. Tell me exactly who wrote any of the four canonized Gospels. You already believe in the inerrancy of the NT, so of course this all makes sense to you. Sure, it's a pure coincidence how similar the Jesus birth story is to numerous other mythologies of the time. Or the idea of a god/man with special powers, or ritual eating of the sacraficed, or a resurrection. Gee, non of this had ever been even dreamed of before....not. I do recognize the truely unique aspects of Jesus' teachings, but I also recognize the incredible similarities to other traditions the found in the Gospels - who, if he really wrote in Greek, would have known them well. I'm not saying you're necessarily wrong in your beliefs, just that reasonable, informed individuals have have sound reasons for disagreeing with you.
It's amazing how people that stupid could write metaphors "as brilliant as any in literature" as Durant noted. And if they were just telling stories about miracles, why would they say something like "he could not work many miacles there."? Obviously they knew the difference and their honesty is demonstrated. That's why Durant's theory that Jesus did not actually die on the cross, leaky as it is, stands up to something resembling intellectually honest investigation.
The motivation of the disciples AFTER the crucifixion does point to a belief in a resurrection. But if you review the gospels stories, you will see that such virtually proves the nonexistence of an miraculous acts prior to that time. For if Jesus really did perform all the miracles listed in the Gospels prior to his crucifixion, then the disciples' actions just following the crucifixion make absolutely no sense. They had already seen many resurrections (at least 3), walking on water, mortally ill people healed, blind given sight, 10,000 miraculously fed, etc. etc. etc. These are feats never witnessed in the history of the world, before or since. But somehow that wasn't enough for a single following to hang in there immediately following the crucifixion? Even after Jesus detailed he would die and come back 3 days later - and every one of his predictions had come true so far? It took just one more resurrection for them to be willing to die for their beliefs? I've heard countless excuses for this inexplicable behavior, and all have fallen far short. Furthermore, Paul does not specifiy a single one of these pre-cricifixion miracles in any of his letters. You'd think he refer at least one. (Doesn't even mention the empty tomb.)
So I recognize something profound may very well have happened in connection with the crucifixion. The belief in resurrections were not uncommon at the time, and it is quite possible something big happened. Perhaps it was a resurrection from the dead, or maybe Jesus swooned, or manybe Joseph of Aramithea removed Jesus body on Saturday night and placed him in a common grave - as would have been, arguably, more consistent with the traditions of the time. Heck, I don't know, but I'm keeping an open mind and not assuming one of these explanations to necessarily be true to back up what I already believe anyway.
Either we Christians have the goods, or the apostles were full of &%$@#*. Please be honest and pick one.
Again, you've created a false dilemma, which assumes the inerrancy accounts of the apostles as depicted in the NT. Rather that seeing the issue in purely "I'm either 100% right, or 100% wrong," why not see the infinitely more probable event that you're somewhere in between.
Well if you want to call me decieved, maybe we can get somewhere. But my testimony of these sudden and spontaneous manifestations of God speak for themselves, as do those of a thousand others. Again all you have is opinion and conjecture about what they are. Yeah I know the little old black lady who recovered tongues on Asusa Street in 1906 was possessed by the devil.
I'm not calling you decieved, I'm saying other saved, born-again Christians are calling you decieved by satan. Your beef on this issue is with your fellow christians, not me. I respect any personal revelation you may have experienced. I would never attempt to argue with that.
What's amazing here is that skeptics are constantly saying "Show me the money" and they won't even check it out for themselves.
This is where you're mistaken. We have checked it out, the evidence, so far, appears inadequate to support your position. Just because someone disagrees with you doesn't mean they are stupid, uninformed, prejudiced, lazy, or think skulled. For every brilliant person you can point to that supports your claims, I can point to an equally brilliant person to refute those claims. Can't you see that different people can view the same thing differently?
But if you want to talk about personal bias clouding one's objective analysis of an issue, ask yourself this....who has the most to lose if they were proven wrong?
Tcampen, when you can say you've been where I have, you'll have an effective argument. Not one single former Christian has ever said they experienced what I have, and still decided God was not real, or it was all a mistake and they were just deluded. If you can find one, your arguments might carry some weight.
I would never deny your personal revelation. Never, never, never. But please don't deny mine, or anyone else's. Just think how silly it would be to say "My vision is real, but your vision is false." That's just a crazy position to take, in my opinion.
Not one of Christ's witnesses, not even an apostate Christian, ever said the stories were made up or that anyone was deluded or lied.
And why do you think they would? I'm not aware of any such thing with Islam, either. You should read some of the Muslim's apologetics - I find them as sophisticated as there Christian counterparts.
Therefore you have nothng but personal opinions about what is happening, and you are forced to simply make up stories to explain it.
Nice try though.
Rad
We'll just have to agree to disagree on who is making up stories.
Let this be known TC. There is coming, and some will dare say has already begun, a day of divisivness that is as no other day. For Christ is seperating His Church to Himself to declare His name to an unbelieving world that has rejected Him. The people that have gone after religions of men have made their choise and it is wrong. The Christian faith requires us to tell everyone that their method of worship is wrong if it is outside of the Christian Faith. To not tell them of their ultimate doom will be akin to letting a house burn down on a family when you have the extinguisher that could put out the fire.
I fault no one that will tell others of the right and only way to God and that is by Jesus Christ. He is the great extinguisher of death, Hell and the grave. Woe to the one that will not tell others of our Savior!
There has never been a time since the crucifixion of Jesus when his followers didn't believe they were living at the time of the Second coming of Christ. In fact, Jesus's disciples believed He would return in "this generation", meaning in their lifetimes. Yet, 2,000 years later, and centuries of tortured interpretation of why Jesus did not return in that first generation - it still hasn't happened. And you can interpret the bible to show the end times have begun, just as others have done for two milennia before you, but that doesn't make it right. History and precedent, unfortunately, are not on your side.
If you want to believe you are right and everyone else must, necessarily be wrong, fine. It is part of the human condition to need to be right in matters of spirituality. I understand how your religious paradigm makes perfect sense to you. To do that requires intellectual honesty and empathy. For me to not condemn you for it requires respect. Therefore, I do not condemn you (or claim condemnation of you by a supreme being) for your beliefs. They are yours, and you are entitled to them. But not all christians agree with you. You can call them bad or ininformed or not even christian at all, but that is not your call to make.
For me, I cannot accept your positions and still stive to maintain the vituous traits of respect, honesty and empathy. I would personally have to abandon all that to believe what your believe, and I find it exceedingly difficult to understand why God would want be to do that. I know you don't agree with this point, but perhaps you can find it in your heart to at least respect it.
