I never claimed that the apostles were lying. The entire point of my post which you quoted is that they may have been mistaken.TruthSeeker60;7623882:
The matter is that the followers of Jim Jones “believe” that everything said by Jim was true. They believe it was the truth. How do you think the 12 disciples can matyr for a man who never lived, who never crucified, or someone who was crucified but never did any miracles nor rise up from the death? I know many people die for what they believe is the truth, I’ve never know anyone who die for what they KNOW is a lie.The apostles may have been honest, yet mistaken.
More than 900 followers of Jim Jones died for their religion, but that doesn’t mean that the claims of there religion were true, and that their religion wasn’t a scam. They were honest in their beliefs, but mistaken.
Let’s say, for the sake of argument, that you’re right that those followers of Jim Jones didn’t really choose to commit suicide. My point was that people may sacrifice their lives because of a mistaken belief. I could just give you another example, such as 911.TruthSeeker60;7623882:
You need to do a little homework on this incident. They were not aware of what was in the koolaid and many who discovered it were shot when they tried to escape. You are missing the important distinctions between the Christian martyrs and the Jim Jones murders.The apostles may have been honest, yet mistaken.
More than 900 followers of Jim Jones died for their religion, but that doesn’t mean that the claims of there religion were true, and that their religion wasn’t a scam. They were honest in their beliefs, but mistaken.
The apostles being wrong is a possibility regardless of the differences.You are missing the important distinctions between the Christian martyrs and the Jim Jones murders.
Right, I suppose that as I’m walking with my wife, it is actually just a hallucination. In fact, I think your posts do not ever exists at all, they’re just part of a mysterious delusion. Historically, base on your account, we must also conclude that great men such as Socrates, Plato, or Spinoza never ever existed and those who claim to witnessed them are the same as those who claim to witness alien abduction.I never claimed that the apostles were lying. The entire point of my post which you quoted is that they may have been mistaken.
Groups of people have been mistaken about many things before. I’ve heard that there have been incidences in which a group of people thought they witnessed an alien abduction.
Also, I don’t think our historical information about the apostles are very good anyways, but that’s another issue.
Let’s say, for the sake of argument, that you’re right that those followers of Jim Jones didn’t really choose to commit suicide. My point was that people may sacrifice their lives because of a mistaken belief. I could just give you another example, such as 911.
True, many people die for a mistaken belief they BELIEVE as truth. But don’t you think it become rather illogical when you say that the disciples who claim to follow this man died for an imaginary being? I’ve heard children tallk about unicorns, but I’ve never heard of anyone who know unicorns do not exist and matyr for it.
Then you need to explain why the moral teaching of Jesus is accepted by the vast majority of people in the world and a third of its population are Christians…The apostles being wrong is a possibility regardless of the differences.
The distortion of religion is irrelevant to my point that the prospect of justice after death is hardly comforting!Code:*Not when there is the prospect of justice being meted out after death! Many atheists express satisfaction that they are **liberated ***
It is absurd to believe the loving Father revealed by Jesus inflicts eternal punishment on His imperfect and weak children. The truth is that their punishment is self-inflicted because they reject Him and choose to live for themselves.Fear of an all-powerful wrathful deity who will punish us (eternally) for being as imperfect and weak as he made us is supposed to be uplifting.
Moreover if fear of God/Hell is the only thing keeping someone acting decently (or at least not horribly) then they are bad people.
That interpretation is only your distortion of Christianity…I need no such spiritual crutch in order to be a decent member of my community.
The distortion of religion does not show that it is false and evil.Then how do you explain the murder of Jews, Christians and other religious groups in the Nazi death camps?
The doctrine of racial inferiority is unChristian. The Nazis were murderous because their religion was their belief that they were the Master Race and anyone who opposed them should be eliminated.Why would Nazi religiosity make them any less murderous?
Except for the Jews, the Nazis mainly sent people to their death camps for political reasons, or because they were viewed as being racially inferior. As the Islamic fundamentalists today remind us by their example, the religious are not exempt from that kind of blood lust.
Many scholars indeed believe that Socrates never existed.Historically, base on your account, we must also conclude that great men such as Socrates, Plato, or Spinoza never ever existed and those who claim to witnessed them are the same as those who claim to witness alien abduction.
Then why were you responding to my post, which was all about the possibility of mistaken belief?My point is not about mistaken belief.
Those are some important claims you laid down before that question.They walked with Jesus, eat with Jesus, and work with Jesus for about 3 years. Even after Christ’s death, they tried their best to spread His word to the end of the world, most of them died as matyrs. So how can you say that the 12 disciples could died for an imaginary man?
I didn’t claim that there were apostles who died for an imaginary being, I said that it is possible that if the apostles existed, they may have been mistaken.But don’t you think it become rather illogical when you say that the disciples who claim to follow this man died for an imaginary being?
I don’t know whether or not Christianity was invented as a scam (which requires intent). Thus, I would say I’m uncertain whether I agree or disagree.Do you or do you not agree that Christianity was not founded by either the apostles or Jesus as a scam?
Why would I need to explain that? My point, that the apostles could have been wrong, is a possibility regardless of how many people currently believe it.TruthSeeker60;7627971:
Then you need to explain why the moral teaching of Jesus is accepted by the vast majority of people in the world and a third of its population are Christians…The apostles being wrong is a possibility regardless of the differences.
“By their fruits you shall know them!”
It seems that you never really answer the question outside of asserting your belief that there must be a plausible possibility that runs contrary to Christianity; you have given no reasonable explanation of this belief, and any explanation that you have given merely portrays the fact you fail to appreciate and take seriously the gravity of the situation and the context in which it arises. If the apostles were indeed honest, if they really did have collective “experiences” of a risen Jesus and of a historical living Jesus doing miracles, then what is it exactly that can plausibly explain those experiences while preserving their honesty and their willingness to sacrifice their lives? What can explain their collective experiences of Jesus that isn’t just begging atheism and ignoring the fundamental implications that arise in wake of their honesty. You see, if we can write them off as lies, then there is no problem. But if we take it seriously that they were in fact being collectively honest about their experiences, then it is dishonest to deny that we are presented with a profound mystery which strongly implies supernatural events in our history, and cannot be easily written off as a scam; and it does us no good to insult peoples intelligence by replacing it with an explanation that is itself implausible or impossible given the context of those events.Now this is getting too off-topic. I only posted on this thread to say that the apostles being honest doesn’t necessarily mean that they were right.
What question are you talking about?It seems that you never really answer the question . . .]
Some problems here with burden of proof…outside of asserting your belief that there must be a plausible possibility that runs contrary to Christianity; you have given no reasonable explanation of this belief, and any explanation that you have given merely portrays the fact you fail to appreciate and take seriously the gravity of the situation and the context in which it arises.
Those are huge ifs. I don’t think you appreciate that. I’m not willing to assume those ifs on little or no evidence. Perhaps you are.If the apostles were indeed honest, if they really did have collective “experiences” of a risen Jesus and of a historical living Jesus doing miracles, then what is it exactly that can plausibly explain those experiences while preserving their honesty and their willingness to sacrifice their lives?
It does little good to assert that the apostles claimed to have experienced miracles, including rising from the dead, without decent evidence about the apostles or their experiences. I mean, can you actually prove, on historical grounds, without using the Bible (since it has no contemporary writings of Jesus anyways), that apostles really existed and claimed, in all honesty, to have witnessed such events? Even the Bible can’t even get all their names straight.it does us no good to insult peoples intelligence by replacing it with an explanation that is itself implausible or impossible given the context of those events.
Someone else may have already said this but here is my thought. It’s hard for me to believe that the original disciples (minus Judas) followed Jesus around and witnessed His miracles, operated in the authority given to them performing miracles, then watched Jesus die on the cross, Peter then denied Him, then they saw Him resurrected. Afterwhich and Pentecost, Peter was changed to the point that he himself died for this “scam”. All of the disciples and apostles were tortured and or killed for their faith except John and none of them recanted their “scam”. It’s one thing to die for a belief. Muslims do that every day. It’s another to die for something you know is just a scam which is what that athiest must think the first disciples did. If I was part of such a scam and someone said they were going to torture and kill me if I didn’t recant, I would quickly recant. For the Apostles to accept death says what they were a part of was much more than some elaborate scam.Last night on The Factor a noted atheist argued that religion is a scam, and many Christians know it in their hearts. They just haven’t got the courage to admit it. He invited Christians to join the atheist cause since atheism is a fact, whereas religion is governed by people who specialize in hawking wishful thinking.
Your thoughts?
**. Unfortunately for the doubters, the record of those who died for Jesus’ sake is fairly reliable. You don’t die for a scam.no one can prove these things did not happen
It seems that in the end your denial rests on the idea of collective hallucinations. Some time tomorrow I will make a rebuttal of your comparison of what people thought was an alien abduction and the gospel accounts. Although I can understand why you would see a similarity between your ufo account and the gospel accounts, I can see that there are evidently crucial differences that has been left unsaid in terms of their experiential context, and as such it is evident to me that it would be a fallacy to compare them.For comparison of standards of evidence, I’d like to ask you something. For the honest claims of Jack, Jill, and the witness Bob, which I’ve been told has happened in real life (the claim I mean), what would you say you think happened, or what you think may have happened? If you did not come to the conclusion that what they thought happened happened, why do you think they may have honestly been mistaken, but the apostles weren’t? It seems like a double standard.
Many scholars indeed believe that Socrates never existed.
Uhm, interesting, what about Plato?
Then why were you responding to my post, which was all about the possibility of mistaken belief?
Possibly to show you how logically unconsistent it is
Those are some important claims you laid down before that question.
If the apostles did think they spent three years with the man who the gospels were at least loosely based on (important if), then I wouldn’t say that that man didn’t exist. However, I’m not aware of decent historical evidence that backs up the claims that the miracle worker in the gospels existed as he was depicted in the gospels (rather than a normal man who embellished stories about him were later written), and that 12 apostles personally knew him. In other words, I’m unaware of decent historical evidence that backs up the claims of the gospels.
My question is left unanswered. Are you telling me that these people died for something they KNOW is a lie?(KNOW, not believe).
That is a little off-topic, but considering that, the apostles may have just spent a few years with someone who they thought was a god without personally experiencing much extraordinary, with stories about that person being embellished by word of mouth before “Mark”, the first gospel which is believed to be the source of the other gospels, was written. Or perhaps the apostles themselves were legends when they were mentioned in “Mark” (I’m not making that claim, only suggesting that that may be possible
How did this Jesus be able to stand up for the faith of his disciples? Furthermore, how did this Jesus be able to inspire these ordinary men to spread His faith?Even more important, how and why did this Jesus inspired these disciples to die for their faith? If the whole story is fictious, we shouldn’t expect that the 12 disciples would matyr, right?
I didn’t claim that there were apostles who died for an imaginary being, I said that it is possible that if the apostles existed, they may have been mistaken.
3 years walking around with a guy, experienced much persecution to finally die for something they KNOW is a lie? Your logic is going downhill deeper and deeper.
There are many other possible explanations. I don’t buy any particular one. I offered one above. You must keep in mind that that was the age and a similar culture in which the myth of Apollonius of Tyana, who allegedly did many things that Jesus did, including rising from the dead, existed.
I usually would ask for a text to prove things. In regard of Apollonius’ disciples, sure they tried to spread what they BELIEVE is true. What if they KNOW it is not true? Do you think they will still spread it and suffer for it?
Now this is getting too off-topic. I only posted on this thread to say that the apostles being honest doesn’t necessarily mean that they were right
No, unless they actually lived with some guy, KNOW what he said are lies, and matyred for it…