That's tautological, you can't assert that your book has the only definition that is accurate, you'd have to prove and/or demonstrate through rational standards
Not really. My faith is just as unprovable as yours. You attempt to defend the so-called rational based on hand-wavy standards of truth. Unless you're Socrates or Aristotle, I doubt you are going to properly defend your own philosophy to any standard that hasn't already been done first and generally better.
And this is begging the question that the universe' existence necessitates a creator when we have no evidence that the universe has to have a beginning, demanding some absolute answer to paradoxes that we may never get certainty on
So you already admit then that your belief is just as unsupportable as mine and because yours is without proof just as mine is. However, I think my "truth" has evidence. Mine is backed by eyewitness testimony of a risen Christ. There's more evidence that Christ lived and was crucified and resurrected than your (probable) belief that Pythagoras lived. You accept his existence (I do too) on far less evidence than the evidence that Jesus lived and was resurrected.
Alleged witnesses and their interpretation as such is insufficient to conclude that 1) Jesus resurrected and 2) even if we grant that, to suggest that the soteriological aspects are actually justified or demonstrable
I'm not arguing any doctrine. He was crucified and over 500 witnesses saw him alive after having witnessed him die on a cross. For the purpose of this discussion, fling out all religious doctrines. Doesn't matter to me. He lived, he was prophesied to arrive in the time of the Roman Empire over 500 years before there was a Roman empire and those texts are verified to have been written long before Jesus was born. Those texts also tell us what he would say when he got here. That cannot be explained by any earthly, rational standard other than somebody was able to see the future and write it down. Compared to modern so-called climate experts, I'd say we can assert that the bible is far more reliable than any scientific text.
Again, tautology and circular logic abound: you don't get to just assert it's right outside of your assessment and just chalk up misunderstandings to human fallibility
It's my argument and its my opinion. I get to present it however I'd like. It was my infallibility that I laid out there, not yours.
Subjective /=/ relative, the former is how we necessarily approach the world, relative is an ontological status of things that would render any cogent discussion impossible because we wouldn't have any remotely stable basis in the first place (which is not the same as absolute basis, which is irrational and idealistic)
You don't have a stable basis anyway. Your texts, your philosophies, your beliefs have so far been unable to provide any empirical evidence which is why you object to my reliance on the Bible. But I think I have the evidence on my side of the argument. When you can show me any "rational" evidence that your side of the argument has presented, showing that adherence to it gives me assurance of my "righteousness," I will consider it. Your "side," and forgive me for the convenient use of that word merely for the sake of this argument, cannot present any consistent list of what is good.
Just take a look at foreign policy for instance. In many cases, the general proscription against murder is completely disregarded for the sake of "safety and security." Where a reasonable person would demand due process before people are murdered, governments (groups of so-called rational men) relax these standards because due process is determined to be inconvenient. If your side's philosophy were even remotely consistent, this would not be allowed.
Yeah, funny thing with prophecies, people can interpret them to be fulfilled based on the fact that they interpret them a certain way, to say nothing of their being known beforehand making their fulfillment redundant given potential groups with a vested interest in making it come to pass can do so and it wouldn't be known otherwise except as someone thinks they interpreted the prophecy wrong, which is easy when they're generally vague in nature or subject to metaphor for cogency
You're right. People can wrongly interpret the bible. But biblical prophecy is not vague. For instance, the Daniel prophecies which describe 500 years before there was a Roman empire, the Roman empire and its exact succession - ie; what empires would come before it and where their power centers would be.
Show me anywhere in the so-called rational world that we can find so accurate a prediction of geo-political changes. The rational world predicted that Hillary would be president in 2016.
You do know people can be predictable in terms of sociological behavior, right? People might have been scientifically illiterate back then, but it's not like they couldn't discern over generations that people tend to be conformist and appeal to authority, so it stands to reason they'd concoct some persecuted messiah to play into the notions of the resentful masses that would want to overthrow the minority in power
People can be predictable, maybe. But this is putting the cart before the horse. You haven't read the bible and thus you assert that it was the later generations who made up the idea of the Messiah somehow conforming to the prior writings in a vague sense.
That is not what the bible describes at all. And it was so predictive that it even was able to remark on the soldiers who cast lots for Jesus' garments ~300 years or so before this happened. If it was only a year prior to the events, this would be astounding. It predicted that Jesus would be crucified before there was even such a thing as crucifixion.
You can decide that, it has no bearing on the truth of the claims you attribute to a book that, while popular, does not lend itself to much in regards to scientific or even moral truths that cannot be found in various other cultures before and after it. If you want to just be a follower, fine, but that's hardly much more than fallacious thinking that eschews any self correction to beliefs that could be false, seemingly out of insecurity
That is your opinion, based on ignorance. I don't mean that to be insulting, but you haven't read the bible as is obvious by your characterization of it. I'm not saying this negates your arguments in general, just the ones which assert things about the bible.
Yeah, except that's a false dichotomy that assumes there is one absolute way to your god or everything's a failure somehow, to say nothing of applying the painfully lazy Pascal's Wager, as if a god that supposedly cares about sincere belief would be tricked by someone being motivated by self satisfying notions of what they stand to gain or lose rather that, you know, actually being genuine in believing in God because of their "faith"
Actually, Jesus was happy to have people believe out of mere self-interest as long as they obeyed the commands he gave them. So it would seem he's more rational than most modern philosophers.
John 10
"If I do not do the works of My Father, do not believe Me; 38 but if I do, though you do not believe Me, believe the works, that you may know and believe that the Father is in Me, and I in Him."
