I really need advice

[John21652]

I don’t intend to steer this thread in another direction, but there are numerous problems in this silly post:

Well, it was rather difficult to keep all the “silliness” out of my response, considering the calibre of your ‘advice’.

That’s because you have evidence that doing so will cause undesirable results.

So, you will, then, accept other people’s accounts of things, when it suits you?

You don’t necessarily need to have witnessed it yourself, but you do need evidence.

Evidence comes in a variety of forms. If you don’t witness something yourself, then you must rely mostly on hearsay evidence, or, if you are lucky enough, evidence from those who have witnessed an event and whose statements can be corroborated.

I didn’t say yes, but I wanted to mention that the gospels were not written by eyewitnesses as you assert. They are anonymous texts that have been edited.

If you have any education at all, you would have heard of the Apostles Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. You would also know that jesus appeared to all of his Apostles at the one time after his resurrection. At that meeting, he invited poor doubting Thomas to actually put his fingers into the holes made by the nails. Now you make the claim that the Gospels were edited and not written by eyewitnesses to Christ’s resurrection. If you mean to the actual arising from the tomb, you’d be right, because no Apostle saw that. However, I’d reckon that seeing the poor man nailed to a tree and then seeing him afterwards counts as being an eyewitness. Your assertion that the Gopsels were not written by the Apostles is a typical atheist argument, based on extreme scepticism. The atheist argument goes something along the lines of “how could poor and illiterate fisherman write such stuff”. Firstly, the assumptions about the Apostles’ education are extreme and secondly, the Gospels are held to be devinely inspired. Anyway, if studied from a purely literary angle, they are not literary masterpieces, which actually adds to their authenticity.

Even if we had eyewitness testimony for an alleged resurrection, there are plenty of thing for which we have numerous eyewitness for regarding events few people believe happened. We have numerous eyewitness for alleged alien abductions.

So you discount all eyewitness accounts of events? That means you’d have little or no faith in the legal system, which relies on eye witness accounts of crime when available and corroborated.

Skepticism entails not believing something until it is demonstrated to be true. Thus, I can recommend him to withhold belief it until he has found confirming evidence.

Oh, but even by your own self admitted scepticism, there is plenty of objective evidence. Your scepticism, however, requires you to have been outside the tomb with a movie camera.

I said that people don’t believe things without evidence. People can walk onto an airplane without doing exhaustive research themselves because there is plenty of evidence available to them that the odds of them making it to their destination safely are extremely high. After all, there are thousands of flights per day that get to their destination safely.

Indeed evidence of various types can indeed demonstrate that the odds make flying safe. Just as the evidence of Christ’s resurrection make the odds stack up very much in favour of it actually happening. You only need to consult the various writings, Catholic and non-Catholic, Jewish scripts, and even archeological and anthropological evidence to realise that the odds are so high in favour of Christ actually having risen from the dead that you’d have to be a silly punter not to put money on it.

However, when it comes to flying aeroplanes, you are willing to accept the odds that you will make it to the end of the trip. You board that aeroplane without doing your own physical check of the ailerons, the air intakes, the engine mounts and you don’t even check the fuel levels yourself. I’d say you are leaving a whole lot to chance, which is confirmed by your admitting to accepting the odds. Yet, the verified historicity of the accounts of Jesus you admit scepticism over. To be consistent, you need to give up flying.

Because they could be wrong and dangerous. The OP said that he had been repressing feelings (for religious reasons) and that he is in turmoil. Surely that cannot be for conflicting religious reasons, can it?

Even if the truth claims asserted here aren’t wrong and dangerous, dogmatically accepting them as true without any evidence can be dangerous.

Yet you accept the checking of aeroplanes by others to be objectively Ok!! Here, you are admitting that the objectivity of Natural Law is wrong and dangerous. That means you have firmly made up your mind on the matter and, despite all the available evidence, you are sure it is wrong. That contradicts your assertion that once eveidence is available, something should be believed. See the “silliness” now?

I didn’t see any reason to mention that some non-Catholics agree with the Catholic Church’s teaching on this matter. My point was to demand evidence for such beliefs that are propagated by the Catholic Church.

If you deny what is submitted as evidence, then the onus is on you to provide evidence to the contrary. Your ‘beef’ is with Catholicism, is it not? Judaism and Islam are also Natural Law religions and, as I said, there are many who do not have a religious conviction who accept Natural Law philosophy and Ethics. Yet you choose to demand the Church provide proof. That reeks of you having an agenda.

 

[BobObob]

So, you will, then, accept other people’s accounts of things, when it suits you?

I didn’t say anything about accepting other people’s accounts of things, I mentioned having evidence. Do you really need it spelled out for you what the evidence is that sticking your head in an oven will cause undesirable results?

That being said, there are times when truth claims can be accepted based on hearsay. If a friend told me that he went to Disneyland, I may accept it, or at least grant it for the sake of discussion. If he told me that he was abducted by aliens and taken to Mars in a flying saucer which some people have claimed will all apparent sincerity, I won’t accept it as evidence because such a fantastical claim is so out of the ordinary that it call for evidence that is so much out of the ordinary.

Evidence comes in a variety of forms. If you don’t witness something yourself, then you must rely mostly on hearsay evidence, or, if you are lucky enough, evidence from those who have witnessed an event and whose statements can be corroborated.

There are many other forms of evidence. However if the so called ‘evidence’ for such a fantastical claim is so weak, and thus insufficient for accepting the claim, one should, at very most, withhold belief until there is decent evidence.

If you have any education at all, you would have heard of the Apostles Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.

If you have studied the matter at all, Biblical Scholars are not convinced that the gospels were written by those people. The scholarly consensus is that the gospels are anonymous. Even an article I found on this site consistently referred to the author of a particular gospel as “the author.”

The Gospel According to Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John are just their names.

You would also know that jesus appeared to all of his Apostles at the one time after his resurrection.

According to the fantastical stories that is…

The atheist argument goes something along the lines of “how could poor and illiterate fisherman write such stuff”.

First, there is no particular atheist argument. Atheism is simply a lack of belief in a god or gods. People can be atheists for a variety of reasons. Reasonable atheists are atheists due to insufficient evidence that there is a god.

Second, that is not the argument I make, and I have heard few atheists make that argument.

I say the gospels are anonymous because there is no good evidence that a particular person in history that we know about wrote any of them.

Oh, but even by your own self admitted scepticism, there is plenty of objective evidence.

Such as what? Anonymous fantastical stories written two millennium ago?

You only need to consult the various writings, Catholic and non-Catholic, Jewish scripts, and even archeological and anthropological evidence to realise that the odds are so high in favour of Christ actually having risen from the dead that you’d have to be a silly punter not to put money on it.Ethics. Yet you choose to demand the Church provide proof. That reeks of you having an agenda.

So you baldly assert that there is archeological and athropological evidence that Jesus rose from the dead. Enough with bald assertion, you must actually have evidence. BTW, having the locations in the Bible does not count as evidence any more than the existence of New York City proves that the Spider Man comics were historical.

However, when it comes to flying aeroplanes, you are willing to accept the odds that you will make it to the end of the trip. You board that aeroplane without doing your own physical check of the ailerons, the air intakes, the engine mounts and you don’t even check the fuel levels yourself.

I don’t have to. I have access to the safety statistics for the airline and a whole lot of other evidence that indicates that I’m likely to make it safely. Plus, the claim that one is likely to fly safely is a lot more of an ordinary claim than, “a man rose from the dead and created the entire universe.”

Yet you accept the checking of aeroplanes by others to be objectively Ok!!

One has tons of evidence that one will fly to a destination safely without having to check the plane for one’s self. I mean, do I really need to spell it out for you?

Here, you are admitting that the objectivity of Natural Law is wrong and dangerous.

If you are talking about developing a system of morals without any evidence, then I would say that is dangerous. Wouldn’t you want a moral system that uses evidence to recognize that it is safer to give children water instead of battery acid to drink? Perhaps you would prefer a moral system that doesn’t use evidence, which may or may deduce whether drinking water or battery acid is better for health…

If you deny what is submitted as evidence, then the onus is on you to provide evidence to the contrary.

Just because someone asserts that some information is evidence for their claim does not mean that one has to find evidence to the contrary. The onus is on them to demonstrate that what they claim to be evidence is actually evidence. If someone claims that the writing, Lives of the Twelve Caesars is evidence that Julius Caesar had a magical apparition that made him decide to cross the Rubicon, the onus is on them to demonstrate that it is evidence. Likewise, you seem to claim that the gospel accounts are evidence that Jesus rose from the dead and was a god, so the onus is on you to demonstrate that it is evidence.

Again, if you want to discuss this further, I urge you to start a new thread.