Salvation by Natural Instead of Supernatural Means

[dga471 (Daniel)]

@Witchdoc

I thought The Good Place raised a good point. If you are doing x for salvation / points and you know it, does that totally negate the whole point?

Well, as a Christian I would say yes, it negates it. A good deed done with the wrong motivation is not truly good. Furthermore, Reformed theology, which I am the closest to, empathetically rejects the idea of salvation by doing good works, an idea which is at the core of TGP. Instead, we should do good not because we want to obtain something else, but because it is an outworking of who we truly are - someone who is genuinely good and redeemed by God. Redemption comes before the acquisition of virtue. And that again brings the supernatural into the picture - we can only become truly good only because the true and ultimate Good Himself reaches out and makes us so.

@Witchdoc

It gives a good explanation, if God exists, for Divine Hiddenness.

To me, Divine Hiddenness made much more sense once I stopped imagining God as some sort of super-powered ghost-like being, as is common in many popular conceptions of God. God can’t reveal Himself to us directly like a regular human being can, because He is just a very different level and type of being entirely. (In fact, some theologians would say that God is not even a being, he is “Being itself”.) This goes back into the heart of the “natural” vs. “supernatural” - I feel that when many Christians or atheists talk about God, they really conceive of God in very natural, creaturely terms - someone like Casper but with more powers. But that is not what most theologians have actually thought about God throughout history!

@Witchdoc

The Christian philosopher Kiekegaard raised the question, is it better to be a Christian for all the wrong reasons (eg for selfish preservation) , or is it better to be a non-Christian for all the right reasons (eg a person seeing Christians behave immorally rejects Christianity as they believe it would be immoral to be a Christian) ?

I would tend to agree that it might be better to be an atheist or a follower of a different religion compared to following a twisted strand of “Christianity” which isn’t really Christianity at all.

@Witchdoc

For me, my Christian upbringing and focus on truth has led me to, reject Christianity itself as false.

5000 NDEs at www.nderg.org are quite consistent in that those who experience them (regardless of religion, be they Christian, agnostic, atheist, Muslim) typically find a rather universalist “God-figure”, and become less religious and dogmatic after their NDE.

Even if you now think Christianity is false, what do you believe regarding these NDEs? Do you believe in some sort of “universalist God figure” yourself?

I understand that for many atheists, the existence of NDEs across multiple religions is evidence that all religions are just natural phenomena. But for me it is the opposite: it is evidence that there is something real underlying the religious impulse such that it is such a widespread phenomena among many different cultures. And as someone who deeply feels that religious impulse, I don’t see a good reason why I should actively fight against it because for the sake of “rationality” or “enlightenment”. Of course, there are good reasons to not be something extreme like a YEC. But to go to the other extreme and regard religion as something childish, to be replaced by some secular ideal of “rationality” and “enlightenment” - that is something I just cannot do.

[Witchdoc]

@dga471

Well, as a Christian I would say yes, it negates it. A good deed done with the wrong motivation is not truly good. Furthermore, Reformed theology, which I am the closest to, empathetically rejects the idea of salvation by doing good works, an idea which is at the core of TGP. Instead, we should do good not because we want to obtain something else, but because it is an outworking of who we truly are - someone who is genuinely good and redeemed by God. Redemption comes before the acquisition of virtue. And that again brings the supernatural into the picture - we can only become truly good only because the true and ultimate Good Himself reaches out and makes us so.

So where are you on the exclusivist-inclusivist-pluralist spectrum?

EO and some Catholic Christians tend to be somewhere on the inclusivist area, where they believe salvation is still by Jesus alone, but people from other religions will be saved.

Even if you now think Christianity is false, what do you believe regarding these NDEs? Do you believe in some sort of “universalist God figure” yourself?

I’m kind of agnostic at the moment. Having seen patients claim they are the Queen of Sheba, or that their best friend or parents are Satan, or their fellow inpatient is Jesus incarnate tends to make one think common things happen commonly - people in the past probably also had a similar rate of delusions and psychosis.

If I was to be a Christian, I’d be somewhere between Eastern Orthodox and Universalist.

Well, as a Christian I would say yes, it negates it. A good deed done with the wrong motivation is not truly good. Furthermore, Reformed theology, which I am the closest to, empathetically rejects the idea of salvation by doing good works, an idea which is at the core of TGP. Instead, we should do good not because we want to obtain something else, but because it is an outworking of who we truly are - someone who is genuinely good and redeemed by God. Redemption comes before the acquisition of virtue. And that again brings the supernatural into the picture - we can only become truly good only because the true and ultimate Good Himself reaches out and makes us so.

Firstly, some philosophers have argued that Christians who believe salvation is by faith alone have actually turned, ironically, faith into a work.

Secondly, aeon.co has a very good article arguing why “faith”, or belief without evidence, is a vice and morally wrong

Believing without evidence is always morally wrong | Aeon Ideas

[dga471 (Daniel)]

@Witchdoc

So where are you on the exclusivist-inclusivist-pluralist spectrum?

EO and some Catholic Christians tend to be somewhere on the inclusivist area, where they believe salvation is still by Jesus alone, but people from other religions will be saved.

I’m not fully decided myself. Currently, I do believe that the Christian view of reality is basically the most correct compared to other religious or philosophical systems out there. At the same time, I also think there is authentic, profound spirituality at the core of many other religions. For example, unlike many Christians in the US, I think that Jews, Muslims, and Christians do worship the same God, and the same with many other religions which believe in a Supreme Being. However, I am skeptical of whether that worship is sufficient for God to save them. I don’t think I am in an epistemic position to know for sure. What I can affirm is that we are all stained by sin and corruption, only God himself can save us from that, and he has already provided the means to that salvation, which is through the incarnated Christ. Now, whether Jesus can save people who do not consciously believe in Him, I don’t know for sure. But the surest bet is to consciously believe in Jesus! That is all I can say. And I am aware that I affirm many of these things more through faith and tradition rather than as independent philosophical conclusions. I think we tend to overrate our epistemic ability to accurately judge the truth of things like this.

@Witchdoc

Secondly, aeon.co has a very good article arguing why “faith”, or belief without evidence, is a vice and morally wrong

First, I don’t think the Christian faith is not supported by any evidence. I think there’s real evidence for it that even a skeptic should appreciate, and I’ve argued that in other venues. At the same time, I do believe that this evidence is not airtight nor definitive, which is why I talk of faith. (Note that I’m not interested in discussing the details of all these supporting arguments in this thread - you can search past forum threads for my take on some of them if you like.)

Second, I think Clifford’s essay should be read side-by-side with William James’s reply, The Will to Believe. He makes a lot of good points.

Third, I think some of Clifford’s arguments are just not convincing or inapplicable to religion or most real-life situations, where few people actually believe on the basis of literally no “evidence” at all. (Even YECs and all sorts of people with fringe views claim that their position is supported by the evidence.) Sometimes we may not have definitive rational reasons to believe why something is true, yet we have warrant to continue believing so for other reasons, such as pragmatic ones.

Fourth, talking about “polluting the pool the well of collective knowledge”, I think religion itself in a broad sense is a part of the “collective pool of knowledge” for thousands of years. Societies have only started widely eschewing religion for the last 100 or so years at most. How do we know that society can survive long-term without religion, given that from an evolutionary point of view, religion was probably very beneficial for the stability and flourishing of human societies?

[Witchdoc]

@dga471

First, I don’t think the Christian faith is not supported by any evidence. I think there’s real evidence for it that even a skeptic should appreciate, and I’ve argued that in other venues. At the same time, I do believe that this evidence is not airtight nor definitive, which is why I talk of faith. (Note that I’m not interested in discussing the details of all these supporting arguments in this thread - you can search past forum threads for my take on some of them if you like.)

I had look at your other venue thread.

I think the evidence for a resurrection is much poorer than Christians make it out to be.

[I know you said you didn’t want to discuss this in this thread, so you can skip this first part if you like and move on toward the latter half of this post].

The synoptic gospels are called synoptic for a reason - Matthew and Luke are known to have copied Mark, based on evidence such as editorial fatigue

How Editorial Fatigue Shows That Matthew and Luke Copied Mark

Now, Mark itself does not record the Risen Jesus and the Resurrection. If Luke and Matthew copied Mark, and made errors due to editorial fatigue, how trustworthy are they?

Secondly - when were the gospels written?

Numismatic evidence is strong evidence that the gospels were written after 70AD, and the “give to Caesar what is Caesar’s” is anachronistic - the coin of Jesus’ day was the Tyrian shekel, and taxes were paid in goods, not coin. Taxation in coinage was implemented after 70AD. (Fabian Udoh, Tribute and Taxes in Early Roman Palestine, p235).

For example, a coin hoard discovered at Isfiya, which contained coins dating from 40 BCE-53 CE, contained 4,400 Tyrian coins compared to only 160 denarii, of which about 30 were of Tiberius.

This makes Matthew, a supposed tax collector, as author of Matthew unlikely.

Geography also makes one doubt the gospel writers knew what they were talking about.

For example, geography made Porphyry doubt the gospels back in the 3rd century; Porphyry knew that the “sea” of Galilee was a tiny lake, not a sea - nobody else called it a sea, and did not take that long to get across - a lake somehow Jesus and the disciples were on for hours and hours.

Did Mark Invent the Sea of Galilee?

In addition, the current gospels do not match what Christian elders wrote about them in the past;

Papias, a church elder, described the gospel of Mark as a sayings gospel, in no particular order

The Elder also said this, “Mark, being the interpreter of Peter, whatsoever he remembered he wrote accurately, but not however in the order that these things were spoken or done by our Lord. For he neither heard the Lord, nor followed him, but afterwards, as I said, he was with Peter, who did not make a complete [or ordered] account of the Lord’s logia, but constructed his teachings according to chreiai [concise self-contained teachings]. So Mark did nothing wrong in writing down single matters as he remembered them, for he gave special attention to one thing, of not passing by anything he heard, and not falsifying anything in these matters.”[iii]

This is NOT describing our current gospel of Mark, which is not a set of teachings/sayings, and IS in chronological order.

Papias on Mark and Matthew

TL;DR - Matthew and Luke copied Mark (thus they are called the Synoptic gospels). Mark is not the original Mark described by Papias. The current gospel of Mark and therefore the other synoptic gospels Luke and Matthew was likely written after 70AD based on numismatic, geographical, and other evidence.

Third, I think some of Clifford’s arguments are just not convincing or inapplicable to religion or most real-life situations, where few people actually believe on the basis of literally no “evidence” at all. (Even YECs and all sorts of people with fringe views claim that their position is supported by the evidence.) Sometimes we may not have definitive rational reasons to believe why something is true, yet we have warrant to continue believing so for other reasons, such as pragmatic ones.

I think it actually IS very applicable.

I have known quite a few Mormons - (and Christians) - when I was Christian and I tried to persuade them why Christianity was correct and Mormonism wrong, yet those people were simply the kind of people to believe. They were not the sort of people who needed to intellectually have evidence for and use reason to believe; they were simply the sort to believe what they were taught/told.

Can a God who knew us before we were born, knit us in our mothers womb, and knew those people were simply the sort to just believe, blame them for simply believing? I think a just God would not hold their simplistic approach to belief against them.

Fourth, talking about “polluting the pool the well of collective knowledge”, I think religion itself in a broad sense is a part of the “collective pool of knowledge” for thousands of years. Societies have only started widely eschewing religion for the last 100 or so years at most. How do we know that society can survive long-term without religion, given that from an evolutionary point of view, religion was probably very beneficial for the stability and flourishing of human societies?

Firstly, as you may appreciate, Christianity is not about what is popular, or about societal benefit; it makes certain claims about truth.

Perhaps religions have “fitness benefit”. But is it somewhat like a “tragedy of the commons” where individually and perhaps even tribally there is benefit, but globally for humanity as a whole religion is detrimental?

Perhaps, to really make “heaven on earth”, we must put off the old religions, and put on the new - a new world free, as so much as possible, of incorrect dogmatic beliefs.

[dga471 (Daniel)]

Well, thanks for sharing your knowledge (among other things) about the literary interdependence of the Synoptic gospels. To be clear, I have been pretty well aware of that. And I am also pretty familiar with a lot of arguments that you put forth. There are pretty good replies to all of them such that the historical argument for the Resurrection still works - the debate just never ends. And this is why I think we can’t really definitively determine the truth based on these types of arguments about the Gospels. Unlike in the empirical sciences, consensus positions in NT studies seem to steadily shift and evolve according to trends. Still, I think there are interesting conversations about these arguments worth having at some point. But I also question the wider utility of them.

@Witchdoc

I have known quite a few Mormons - (and Christians) - when I was Christian and I tried to persuade them why Christianity was correct and Mormonism wrong, yet those people were simply the kind of people to believe . They were not the sort of people who needed to intellectually have evidence for and use reason to believe; they were simply the sort to believe what they were taught/told.

So? I think it’s unwise to try to win people over to Christianity using rational arguments. Actually, it’s probably unwise to try to win people over to any political, philosophical, or religious viewpoint using arguments. There is empirical evidence it just doesn’t work. Whether we’re evolved, created, or both, humans are just not completely rational creatures. People will violate ideals of perfect rationality and faithfulness to the evidence, no matter how many essays are written to criticize and denounce that as immoral. Even among people who do believe strongly in mainstream science, how many of them actually come to that conclusion based on truly the rational consideration of the evidence, as opposed to a combination of social, economic, and personal circumstances?

I guess what I’m saying isn’t that Clifford is completely wrong - he has a point, that irrational beliefs can be dangerous, but what’s naive is to think that it’s possible for anyone to completely become rational, or that writing essays against irrationality is going to result in significantly more people becoming rational. Most Mormons are going to be faithful Mormons, even if you show them Clifford’s essay. It is probably in their personal interest to continue being faithful Mormons, for them to continue functioning in their family and community. That also makes sense from an evolutionary fitness point of view. (Mormons, after all, tend to have more children than many other demographics.)

Anyway, instead of trying to argue Mormons out of their religion through rational arguments (which was never the basis of their beliefs in the first place), the rational thing for you to do at the time was probably to try to convince them through other means, such as befriending them.

@Witchdoc

Perhaps religions have “fitness benefit”. But is it somewhat like a “tragedy of the commons” where individually and perhaps even tribally there is benefit, but globally for humanity as a whole religion is detrimental?

Perhaps, to really make “heaven on earth”, we must put off the old religions, and put on the new - a new world free, as so much as possible, of incorrect dogmatic beliefs.

Well, those are both pretty big “perhaps”. For me, I think nobody is currently in an epistemic position to definitively judge whether religion is ultimately better or worse for society in the long run.

[thoughtful (Valerie (non-scientist))]

@Witchdoc

Good judgment is better than rigid inflexible rules.

The bible actually has a good example of advising people to use good judgment - in one proverb, it advises you to rebuke a fool - because reasons. In the next, it advises you to not rebuke a fool. Also because reasons .

You keep editing your posts.

I was going to respond that the Bible doesn’t really give rigid, inflexible rules - and commandments are even summarized into 2. It’s interesting to me that Jesus came into this world during a time when the Pharisees were instituting such rigid rules - trying to ensure Israel would finally be right with God. And then Jesus made such rules look quite stupid.

@Witchdoc

For me, my Christian upbringing and focus on truth has led me to, reject Christianity itself as false - I have outlined my story previously here in this thread.

Glad you mentioned this because I missed it because you had edited your thread. Thanks for sharing your story. It helps me to know people’s stories and not to make incorrect assumptions about motivation or background.

@Witchdoc

I learned about people’s gay conversion therapy stories here on reddit.

These were sad and painful.

@Witchdoc

Christianity teaches us to follow the truth wherever it leads - no matter the cost.

@Witchdoc

For me, my Christian upbringing and focus on truth has led me to, reject Christianity itself as false - I have outlined my story previously here in this thread. I currently believe that to continue to br a Christian, despite me “knowing” it is wrong, would be sinning and against how I was brought up as Christian. The bible says to take up one’s cross; for me, that is to leave Christianity despite the large cost to my friendships and family relationships. Doing the right thing is hard; it would have been much easier to just pretend to be a Christian still.

I appreciate anyone following truth no matter the cost - yet sometimes I find these stories from former Christians odd. For example, I was watching an ex-Christian atheist YouTuber who shared a Bible verse as an example of how to act. Huh?

What I think about related to your story is - if Christianity isn’t actually true, why is following truth worth the cost? What does it matter if you follow a lie? If it makes you uncomfortable, doesn’t that just require deconstruction from Christianity?

When I come across information like you did that makes me doubt, I have to be able to reconcile it into a framework where there are no Christian ethics and there is no justice in the end, in order for it to be convincing. I don’t know how one makes sense of such a world. In the past if I came across such information, I might research it a bit, but more likely I’d probably ignore it. But the experience with science this year is that I learn much more if people just give me all the “bad news” - I don’t mind the questions now. But I only have so much time in the day to consider them. The conflicts between people around the questions bother me, but the questions don’t as much as they used to, if at all. So I’ll pay more attention to your posts as I have time and see if I can sort out how I think about what you’re sharing confronts Christians and what is true. I’ve glossed over them because there is SO much information in any one of your posts. But I’ll try to engage when I can.

[Witchdoc]

@dga471

So? I think it’s unwise to try to win people over to Christianity using rational arguments. Actually, it’s probably unwise to try to win people over to any political, philosophical, or religious viewpoint using arguments.

In medicine, there has been a shift to what we call evidence based medicine (EBM).

Prior to EBM there was quite alot of things done in medicine which werw thought to help but actually didn’t have evidence to support their use.

The shift to EBM has brought about change - we don’t use leeches anymore, no more bleedings, and has led to modern medicine as is where we strive to use what we know is helpful and not use what is unsupported.

Why should evidence base be any different for religion?

Why shouldn’t religion be evidence based?

If the bible says that God answers the prayer as yes, no, or later, how is that any different to me praying to the flying sphaghetti monster, who would equally answer yes, no, maybe later to my prayers?

Why cannot the bible be held to the same standards of evidence based medicine - especially when thr bible makes particular claims that are testable in medicine?

For example, when the bible claims that wr should stone a woman who doesn’t bleed on her first time, yet medicine has demonstrated that 2/3rds of women don’t actually bleed at their first time?

[dga471 (Daniel)]

@Witchdoc

Why should evidence base be any different for religion?

Why shouldn’t religion be evidence based?

The goals, nature, and substance of Christian theology and philosophy are much more fundamental and all-encompassing than those of the discipline of medicine ever was, is, or will be. Christianity (and other religions as well) seeks to answer or at least ponder fundamental questions such as: Why does anything exist? What is the ultimate purpose of human life? How should we live? Many people agree that these questions are important, but few agree precisely on the answer or how to get an answer at all. Most of these questions cannot be answered by a simple appeal to the scientific method and evidence. In fact, the scientific method already assumes a host of philosophical assumptions (e.g. that regularities exist in nature, induction is a valid way of studying them, and that the human mind is capable of using the scientific method). Philosophy and religion seeks to question or explain these fundamental assumptions.

In contrast, medicine has a more limited and clearly-defined set of goals: to promote our health and well-being. With this in mind, we found that EBM is more effective to reach this goal. However, even medicine sometimes has to ask ethical questions, such as whether euthanasia, abortion, genetic manipulation, and so on are morally permissible. I hope you would agree that “Evidence-based” methods cannot fully answer ethical questions. They can be used for good or evil. The Nazis, for example, had plenty of perfectly competent medical doctors. Thus, we must turn to something else to help us answer ethical questions in medicine. If this is true even in medicine, how much more true is it in many other areas of life, which also contain many questions of ethics and purpose!

@Witchdoc

If the bible says that God answers the prayer as yes, no, or later, how is that any different to me praying to the flying sphaghetti monster, who would equally answer yes, no, maybe later to my prayers?

Perhaps praying to the FSM will not give you more immediate material benefits than praying to the God of the Bible. However, that seems to assume that the primary goal of prayer should be to get God to accede to our requests and provide us material benefits. But why so? That assumption seems to be far from obviously correct. To answer this question, we can’t use “evidence-based” methods. Such methods can be used once the goal is clearly identified and delimited. But here we’re questioning what the goal actually is. We have to turn to something deeper, and that is what religion and philosophy seek to tackle.

[Witchdoc]

@dga471

The goals, nature, and substance of Christian theology and philosophy are much more fundamental and all-encompassing than those of the discipline of medicine ever was, is, or will be. Christianity (and other religions as well) seeks to answer or at least ponder fundamental questions such as: Why does anything exist? What is the ultimate purpose of human life? How should we live? Many people agree that these questions are important, but few agree precisely on the answer or how to get an answer at all. Most of these questions cannot be answered by a simple appeal to the scientific method and evidence. In fact, the scientific method already assumes a host of philosophical assumptions (e.g. that regularities exist in nature, induction is a valid way of studying them, and that the human mind is capable of using the scientific method). Philosophy and religion seeks to question or explain these fundamental assumptions.

So I have made Muslim friends, who say the bible, Quran, their experiences, the world itself are all evidence that Allah is God and Muhammad is His prophet.

One cited the contradictions in the bible as evidence it was corrupted, another cited how beautiful and perfect the Quran was as evidence it was divinely inspired, and miracles in the Quran as evidence of Mohammed as His prophet, and the fact that Arab countries are so blessed by natural resources of Allah’s Favor.

Why does anything exist? What is the ultimate purpose of human life? How should we live? Many people agree that these questions are important, but few agree precisely on the answer or how to get an answer at all. Most of these questions cannot be answered by a simple appeal to the scientific method and evidence. In fact, the scientific method already assumes a host of philosophical assumptions (e.g. that regularities exist in nature, induction is a valid way of studying them, and that the human mind is capable of using the scientific method). Philosophy and religion seeks to question or explain these fundamental assumptions.

How do you distinguish your answers to fundamental questions from those of my Muslim friends’? They claim Islam answers those very questions you wrote!

Perhaps praying to the FSM will not give you more immediate material benefits than praying to the God of the Bible. However, that seems to assume that the primary goal of prayer should be to get God to accede to our requests and provide us material benefits. But why so? That assumption seems to be far from obviously correct. To answer this question, we can’t use “evidence-based” methods. Such methods can be used once the goal is clearly identified and delimited. But here we’re questioning what the goal actually is. We have to turn to something deeper, and that is what religion and philosophy seek to tackle.

So once again, why do we trust your God over Allah or any other?

[Michael_Okoko]

@Witchdoc

For me, my Christian upbringing and focus on truth has led me to, reject Christianity itself as false

Declaring Christianity as false is a strong claim, how do you know?

@dga471

But for me it is the opposite: it is evidence that there is something real underlying the religious impulse such that it is such a widespread phenomena among many different cultures.

NDE can be induced with drugs too which influence brain neurochemistry, is there “something real” underlying drug-induced NDEs?

@dga471

Currently, I do believe that the Christian view of reality is basically the most correct compared to other religious or philosophical systems out there.

Its your Christian bias that is mostly speaking. If I picked devout Jews and Muslims, they would tell me same about their respective religions.

@dga471

For example, unlike many Christians in the US, I think that Jews, Muslims, and Christians do worship the same God, and the same with many other religions which believe in a Supreme Being.

Christians, Jews and Muslims are monotheistic, but they do not worship the same God. AFAIK Jews and Muslims don’t worship a Trinity of Persons.

@dga471

However, I am skeptical of whether that worship is sufficient for God to save them.

Many non-Christians feel the same about you.

@Witchdoc

In medicine, there has been a shift to what we call evidence based medicine (EBM).

Medicine should adopt SBM, so that it stops leaving a loophole for clearly ridiculous pseudoscientific practices like homeopathy.

[Roels_Major]

@Witchdoc

In medicine, there has been a shift to what we call evidence based medicine (EBM).

Prior to EBM there was quite alot of things done in medicine which werw thought to help but actually didn’t have evidence to support their use.

The shift to EBM has brought about change - we don’t use leeches anymore, no more bleedings, and has led to modern medicine as is where we strive to use what we know is helpful and not use what is unsupported.

Why should evidence base be any different for religion?

Why shouldn’t religion be evidence based?

It should be noted that evidence-based methods also have many weaknesses, even Nassim Taleb shows it with mathematics that evidence-based science is not actually science.

I think I still need a lot to learn to understand it further.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb

[mod edit: removed copy-paste of paper]

I think this is a correct criticism, and we as doctors (although perhaps on the grounds that the quality of general practitioners around the world is not the same, even though the basic curriculum is the same) must understand that we have limits here.

The Corruption of Evidence Based Medicine — Killing for Profit

Nassim & Yaneer discuss making decisions with uncertainty and how acting early would have cost less

Covid Risk Conversation: Yaneer Bar-Yam and Nassim Nicholas Taleb

[Mercer (John Mercer)]

@thoughtful

I think evolution has that philosophical problem in general. If a process of death and selection somehow brought us to this point - then how is it good to care for the less fit?

Because what is shouldn’t dictate what we ought to do morally.

@thoughtful

Aren’t we undermining natural means to save our race?

No.

@thoughtful

…it’s never, ever hard for me to say, after clearing my thoughts of the noise, that evolution didn’t lead to man.

What you call noise, we call evidence.

[Witchdoc]

@Michael_Okoko

Declaring Christianity as false is a strong claim, how do you know?

Biblical studies has resolved to my satisfaction a much better understanding of both the Old Testament and New Testament than evangelical Christianity.

If you haven’t read it, Richard Elliott Friedman’s “Who Wrote the Bible” is my favorite book on the bible and ought to be read by anyone interested in understanding the Old Testament better.

Who Wrote the Bible?: Friedman, Richard: 9781501192401: Amazon.com: Books

[Dan_Eastwood]

@Witchdoc

Nope, never heard of it before, but it looks like it makes some sense in explaining why religion is popular. That said, does it have any evidence base or is it simply a rationalisation?

It’s strength is that it leads to testable hypotheses, so yes, there is some good evidence behind it. I have not followed the subject closely, but I see there are recent publications.

[Dan_Eastwood]

@Witchdoc

There are stages of morality observed during development, just like stages of cognitive develipment.
…

That was kind of epic. Thanks for sharing!

[dga471 (Daniel)]

@Witchdoc

How do you distinguish your answers to fundamental questions from those of my Muslim friends’? They claim Islam answers those very questions you wrote!

The short answer is that the arguments cited by your Muslims friends are wrong, and one does not need to have faith as a Christian to demonstrate how they are wrong. I don’t want to get into the details here, because I’m not an expert on this, but there are good answers to virtually all of these objections.

@Witchdoc

So once again, why do we trust your God over Allah or any other?

I think there are actual arguments for why Christianity is more persuasive than Islam. The historical evidence for the Resurrection is one of them. Many Muslims defend a version of the swoon theory or the Jesus replacement theory to explain that away, but these theories are ad hoc, without any textual or other historical basis.

In short, while I respect the large degree of commonality between Islamic and Christian versions of natural theology, I think we can use rational arguments to decide between them regarding revealed theology.

[Witchdoc]

@dga471

The short answer is that the arguments cited by your Muslims friends are wrong, and one does not need to have faith as a Christian to demonstrate how they are wrong. I don’t want to get into the details here, because I’m not an expert on this, but there are good answers to virtually all of these objections.

So how do you know they are wrong and you are right, particularly if you don’t subscribe to “evidence based religion”?

You said previously

However, that seems to assume that the primary goal of prayer should be to get God to accede to our requests and provide us material benefits. But why so? That assumption seems to be far from obviously correct. To answer this question, we can’t use “evidence-based” methods. Such methods can be used once the goal is clearly identified and delimited. But here we’re questioning what the goal actually is. We have to turn to something deeper, and that is what religion and philosophy seek to tackle.

America has alot of Christians. I imagine alot of them pray about covid-19. Jesus says in Matthew 17:20 if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, presumably indicating even a very small amount of faith, it can move mountains.

So how come America with so many Christians have so much more covid than Australia, New Zealand, Taiwan, Vietnam, Singapore, Japan?

The short answer is that the arguments cited by your Muslims friends are wrong, and one does not need to have faith as a Christian to demonstrate how they are wrong. I don’t want to get into the details here, because I’m not an expert on this, but there are good answers to virtually all of these objections.

Similarly, the evidence is there to demonstrate Christianity is wrong. You are happy to investigate evidence Islam is wrong, but have you dared step outside and see the evidence for yourself?

Have you read any of mainstream bible scholar’s books?

My favorite bible-related book of all time is Friedman’s “Who Wrote the Bible”.

Who Wrote the Bible?: Friedman, Richard: 9781501192401: Amazon.com: Books

Other favorites -

Israel Finkelstein’s The Bible Unearthed (how archaelogy relates to the bible)

Avigdor Shinan’s From gods to God (how Israel transitioned from polytheism to monotheism)

Mark S Smith’s The Early History of God (early history of Israel, Canaanites, and YHWH)

James D Tabor’s Paul and Jesus: How the Apostle Transformed Christianity (as per title)

Tom Dykstra’s Mark Canonizer of Paul (engrossing - will make you view the gospel of Mark with new eyes)

Jacob L Wright’s King David and His Reign Revisited (enhanced ibook - most readable book ever on King David)

Jacob Dunn’s thesis on the Midianite/Kenite hypothesis (free pdf download - warning - highly technical but also extremely well referenced)

As the goal of the forum here is to be heard and understood, I challenge you to understand mainstream biblical scholarship.

[dga471 (Daniel)]

@Witchdoc

So how do you know they are wrong and you are right, particularly if you don’t subscribe to “evidence based religion”?

I do think that rational argumentation can be applied to religious and philosophical matters, so in that sense it’s “evidence-based”, and it is through these sorts of arguments that one can personally go with one over the other. However, it’s not the same type of reasoning as in experimental empirical science, for example. There just isn’t a way for us to credibly “run experiments” testing whether Islam or Christianity is true.

(Of course, there are also non-rational factors - social, personal, aesthetic, communal, ethnic, etc. - that undoubtedly influence my ultimate decision on whether to be a Christian, Muslim, atheist, or something else. For example, perhaps one day I will appreciate the sublime beauty of the Koran such that it will subtly influence my mind to judge arguments for Islam more favorably. I cannot predict that, and I won’t pretend that my mind is 100% rational.)

@Witchdoc

America has alot of Christians. I imagine alot of them pray about covid-19. Jesus says in Matthew 17:20 if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, presumably indicating even a very small amount of faith, it can move mountains.

So how come America with so many Christians have so much more covid than Australia, New Zealand, Taiwan, Vietnam, Singapore, Japan?

You’re assuming there a linear relationship that more prayer by self-identified Christians = less cases of COVID. But that’s an incredibly simplistic reading of Jesus’ words and the Bible - even many secular mainstream scholars would agree with me on that. No serious Christian reader of the Bible has ever claimed such a thing, or thought that the Bible teaches that. Perhaps you would prefer that the Bible teaches something like that, so that you can easily test it. But that’s just not how it works. The Bible isn’t a collection of scientific hypotheses to be tested one by one. It’s a sprawling narrative that unfolds over 1500 years, synthesizing both Jewish and Greek thought. This is what I mean that religion can’t be simply reduced to “evidence-based methods”. I could easily write thousands more words on why you’re not interpreting Jesus’ words correctly, but I just don’t have the time for that. I hope you get my point though.

@Witchdoc

Have you read any of mainstream bible scholar’s books?

My favorite bible-related book of all time is Friedman’s “Who Wrote the Bible”.

I’ve read some work by more mainstream critical scholars, such as Bart Ehrman, Peter Enns, and several critical commentaries on books of the Bible. Even the books I’ve read by Christian authors don’t shy away from admitting that their position is in the minority among critical scholars and explain why, so I’m aware of many arguments by critical scholars on various things. (I’m not an expert on them, given that I’m not an expert on the Bible in general - I’m a physicist, not a professional Bible scholar!) You are right that one should not just read material from a perspective that one already agrees with, so thank you for the additional reading suggestions.

That being said, from my impressions so far, I think one’s positions on a lot of these matters is heavily influenced by certain philosophical presuppositions. Because of this, I question whether mainstream scholars are in a more “neutral” position to make judgments compared to conservative scholars. For example, some Christian scholars have use the historical fact of the empty tomb to argue for the resurrection of Jesus. On the contrary, some critical scholars have rejected the historicity of the empty tomb because it heavily supports the resurrection hypothesis, which is an impermissible supernatural hypothesis. Thus, one’s presuppositions on the matter will influence one’s judgment. Thus, other considerations from systematic theology or philosophy need to be brought onto the table. (I also have to admit that personally I’m more interested in philosophy and systematic theology rather than being in the “weeds” of textual criticism of the Bible, so a lot of my opinions tend to be more influenced by the former rather than the latter.)

[Michael_Okoko]

@Witchdoc

Similarly, the evidence is there to demonstrate Christianity is wrong

I don’t think there is evidence that Christianity is wrong, but there is serious lack of evidence for its claim to truth or divine backing. Evidence for the resurrection which is foundational to the Christian faith, is downright unconvincing. Its akin to the sort of evidence one gets from poorly done medical studies.

[Michael_Okoko]

@dga471

I think there are actual arguments for why Christianity is more persuasive than Islam.

In other words you don’t know if Islam is false, you just think it is (no matter how well-reasoned). Why can’t you admit this?

If you were Roel, he would have said the same thing about arguments for Islam being more convincing than Christianity.

@dga471

I think we can use rational arguments to decide between them regarding revealed theology

Many Christians did this and became Muslims and vice versa.