Reason and faith are two proofs that God exists

[AndyHolland]

Well, the only thing that marks it out as a crucifixion rather than any other type of abandonment is the reference to “they have pierced my hands and my feet”.

Actually the references to thirst, the heart melting like wax, and the stripping of clothing was Roman Crucifixion. And the quotes, and the gambling - which again you could assume where added in - but then you have to ask yourself why? Why embrace a religion that demands such sacrafice unless it is the truth?

Given also that crucifixion had been around for at least 600 years before Jesus was born, this is not particularly compelling evidence. Also there is no proof that the Psalm related to the crucifixion of Jesus as opposed to anybody else. Nor is there any proof that it was a prediction at all.

Yes, depending on the level of precision (it would have to be far more than Psalm 22, which states neither victim, place nor date); and also depending on whether that someone also make a further 299 predictions, none of which comes true. You can’t ignore coincidence.

I’ll have to take your word for it that this is a ‘well known fact’ - I can’t find any evidence of it other than on pro-religious websites, so this is a bit self-serving. But even if it were true, it’s hardly compelling.

It is an outside piece of information. It is extraneous to the events as recorded in the Bible. It requires the Romans being located at their headquarters in the headwaters of the Jordan, near the land of Bashan, and their recruitment of the same for such tasks.

Sorry, are you saying that this condition did not exist in biblical times?

No - it wasn’t known until people where healed of blindness in the 20th century!

Or simply that to the outsider, it was indistinguishable from blindness? How is that relevant?

Jesus really healed someone born blind, with his touch, and the Gospels reported it accurately because the Gospels are accurate.

Why would people lie about getting crucified? Why would people make up stories if their lot was to be destroyed in this world for a better one? Why would people insist on telling the truth, then lie, then suffer poverty, starvation, crucifixion?

The existence of people who are both scientists and christians is not scientific evidence of God’s existence!!

Its an example of the fact that scientific people are swayed by evidence directly related to their scientific knowledge, experience and assessment of facts.

None of the examples you’ve quoted here could possibly be labelled as ‘scientific evidence.’

By whom?

Go to Glastonbury on Old Christmas, and hear the blooms pop at midnight with your own ears if you want something repeatable. Study!

One could possible ‘realise’ this in the context of the bible, which has no provenance in respect of factual occurrences.

To whom? Who do I pray to if I don’t believe? Why would I pray to God and not the Tooth Fairy?What do we need to repent about? What have we done wrong?

Pray to the Creator of Heaven and Earth, the Sea and all that is in them - and ask forgiveness for sins known and unknown, and ask for light.

If you aren’t willing to see your own shortcomings with regard to your neighbor, yourself, your ecology, your God, you not ready for Christianity - or science.

 

[theistgal]

Jesus really healed someone born blind, with his touch, and **the Gospels reported it accurately because the Gospels are accurate. **

Do you know what “circular logic” is? This may not be the best argument to use.

 

[tonyrey]

Eucharisted forums.catholic-questions.org/images/buttons_khaki/viewpost.gif If man evolved in a godless world, he would not have reason.
Why not?

It is absurd to suppose that the power of reason has emerged from forces which lack the power of reason. The only adequate explanation is that it is a fundamental aspect of Supreme Reality - which we refer to as God.

 

[wanstronian]

Sorry - this thread has become full of people quoting scripture and religious dogma to support their views, rather than fact and logic. It’s had its day.

 

[harvard1970]

How do you account for the fact that the Psalm describes the crucifixion in detail though it was written 700 years before the crucifixion?

If someone says to me 700 years from now a certain event would happen, and it does with precision, I accept that as a rather powerful scientific proof.

.

1. the simplest explanation is that humans wrote the New Testament long after Jesus had lived and wrote it to show that He fulfilled the prophesies. There are some arguments that the New Testament was never intended to be taken literally but that these “fullfilling the prophesy” stories were intended from the very start to be taken metaphorically – that they would show the ‘truth’ of the story that was being told but that it was like a truth in Shakespeare or Homer, not a ‘truth’ like a historical text or science.

 

[MattLark]

Dear Folks, another call to belief that God exists is greater than Faith or Reason, because these two, real, but lesser proofs depend on it:

Being, the fact that there is existence, is the prime proof.

We, or those that do, I, anyway, believe in a Being called God who created for us, his creatures. The Bible is a story of that creation, how we ruined it for ourselves until the Creator came among us as one of us to set it right so that we could share the magnificence of the totality of this Creation with Him forever. The old(er) Testament reveals how many times God helped us along the way. He even revealed His nature and ours, too, although only in His image do we have it. See Exodus 3:14, "God said to Moses, “I AM WHO I AM.” He said further, "Thus you shall say to the Israelites, "I AM has sent me to you.’ "

Atheists, apparently, believe that the Universe has existed forever and continually recreates itself. How that can be believed is anyone’s guess?
That God created

In the beginning

is my belief.
This is found in Genesis and the Gospel according to Saint John, especially, the first 18 verses of Chapter One and many other places, too.

 

[taylor2]

Just curious wanstronian, to what point would it be required for you to believe in God? Would you need to understand everything there was about God in order to believe in him?

 

[QuickCat]

Proof that God exists? Easy! The Jew!!!

 

[agangbern]

Proof that God exists? Easy! The Jew!!!

Ha ha ha! In one sense, I agree with that!

For the Lord Jesus Christ is a Jew, and He is the basic proof that God exists.

 

[antunesaa]

Andy,

To be honest, I have no idea what you’re trying to say.

But your final statement, “…the reality that the light of life shines in the darkness of death and death cannot comprehend it.” is abstract in the extreme and has no basis in scientific fact (where’s the empirical, repeatable, objective evidence for this statement?), so you’re standing on thin ice. For a start, ‘death’ is a state of being, not an intelligent entity, so of course it cannot comprehend anything. The same as the state of ‘hanging from a branch’ cannot comprehend anything.

The problem with atheism is in my view that it implies absence of reason and free will. If all there is is matter, energy and physical laws (which are the objects of Science), then that we call humans are just organized constellations of atoms, governed by physical laws and affected by randomness. In sum, all their actions and “thoughts” are just the product of a mix of deterministic and random events. A consequence of this is that any thought must be an illusion: what we call a thought is just a representation of a succession of physical events. We cannot even trust our own conclusions, as they are either deterministic, or random, or both. In any case, they are mechanical. In opposition, the existence of “spiritual” or “metaphysic” dimensions allows room for, among other things, a true reason and free will. While the physical dimension is still necessary to represent a rational being, it is not sufficient. Science is able to explain all physical events, but not all the actions of rational beings, because something is missing. A mathematical comparison. Suppose Science characterizes beings in the xy plane. Then there is a way to fully characterize a being called “circle” (by the position of its center and its radius). However, if the true universe is the xyz space, then the Scientific characterization of the “circle” is incomplete, because the “circle” can be the projection in the xy plane of many different beings of the complete space. Most atheists believe reality is only the xy plane; Science can eventually explain everything, and therefore humans are just mechanical components of it. This excludes free will and reason. To have free will and reason we need some kind of incompleteness of reality. This immediately calls for a theistic or spiritual view of the world.

 

[antunesaa]

Sorry - this thread has become full of people quoting scripture and religious dogma to support their views, rather than fact and logic. It’s had its day.

I have tried to give a proper answer to your concern, with rational, discernible arguments. See the post above.

 

[usemelord]

To those who choose not to believe, a couple quotes come to mind. I’m not sure of the source of the first, but it goes something like this: “For those who have faith no explanation is necessary; for those without faith no explanation will ever be sufficient.” The other is a little more visual and it comes from C.S. Lewis who observed “an atheist searching for God is like a mouse trying to find the cat.” To my way of thinking agnostics and atheists, as Scripture so accurately points out, “have eyes to see, but do not see, and ears to ear, but do not listen.” Objectivity and intellectual openness, shedding all biases, are what is needed for unbelievers.

 

[Charles_Darwin]

To those who choose not to believe, a couple quotes come to mind. I’m not sure of the source of the first, but it goes something like this: “For those who have faith no explanation is necessary; for those without faith no explanation will ever be sufficient.” The other is a little more visual and it comes from C.S. Lewis who observed “an atheist searching for God is like a mouse trying to find the cat.” To my way of thinking agnostics and atheists, as Scripture so accurately points out, “have eyes to see, but do not see, and ears to ear, but do not listen.” Objectivity and intellectual openness, shedding all biases, are what is needed for unbelievers.

“For those who have faith no explanation is necessary”

You should stop there, that pretty much sums it up. Some of us care that our beliefs are true, others are happy with non explanations. God explains precisely ZERO.

 

[wanstronian]

“For those who have faith no explanation is necessary”

You should stop there, that pretty much sums it up. Some of us care that our beliefs are true, others are happy with non explanations. God explains precisely ZERO.

Bravo :clapping:

p.s Thought you were dead. You been living in Scotland all this time??

 

[Prodigal_Son]

“For those who have faith no explanation is necessary”

Couldn’t the same be said about atheists? The average person asks: Why is the universe? What is its cause? What came before it?

The atheist answer? No explanation is necessary.

Nice to see ya, Charlie. I guess the Beagle travels through time, too.

 

[wanstronian]

Couldn’t the same be said about atheists? The average person asks: Why is the universe? What is its cause? What came before it?

The atheist answer? No explanation is necessary.

Nice to see ya, Charlie. I guess the Beagle travels through time, too.

The atheist / agnostic answer would be, I guess: “Nobody knows, we’re trying to find out more. Stay tuned”

 

[wanstronian]

This immediately calls for a theistic or spiritual view of the world.

Or an as-yet undiscovered scientific explanation. The absence of scientific explanation does not necessitate “God” to fill the gaps.

 

[redhen]

To those who choose not to believe…

Stop right there. My convictions (on any subject) are not solely a matter of **deciding **to believe something. They are based on experiential and learned knowledge.

I have been searching for evidence of a supreme deity for many years now, but I have not found one reason to believe. From my investigations, I see the world, and everything in it, behaving just as it would if there was no God. I suppose this is why faith is so crucial to Christian salvation.

As for the Psalm 22 that others have mentioned in this thread; here’s an interesting article that explains why Jews don’t believe it was a prophecy depicting the crucifixion of Jesus of Nazareth.

messianicart.com/chazak/yeshua/psalm22.htm

 

[AndyHolland]

1. the simplest explanation is that humans wrote the New Testament long after Jesus had lived and wrote it to show that He fulfilled the prophesies. There are some arguments that the New Testament was never intended to be taken literally but that these “fullfilling the prophesy” stories were intended from the very start to be taken metaphorically – that they would show the ‘truth’ of the story that was being told but that it was like a truth in Shakespeare or Homer, not a ‘truth’ like a historical text or science.

But it is not the true explanation. In fact, it is not the simple one either for the following reasons:

1. History shows there were many disciples who suffered terribly for the faith. Why would they carry on a lie that leads to their own demise?
2. Bulls of Bashan - again, the Romans got their mercenaries from Bashan which is an interesting detail in the Psalm.
3. You have the problem of Josephus, Africanus, and other ancient historians who back up the stories. Josephus was a Jew and a Roman.
4. You have the problem of certain Roman historians that were actually detractors of Christianity that acknowledged the reality of Jesus crucifixion.

There is first hand reporting on Jesus Christ than any contemporary Ceasar!

Why would a people insist on truth, tell lies, and suffer for the truth if it were a lie? A man might suffer for a lie that brought him power or profit - but the Christian suffers for the truth when it brings neither honor nor profit in this world - and hence the Christian’s suffering is proof of the truth he or she is suffering for.

 

[Prodigal_Son]

Stop right there. My convictions (on any subject) are not solely a matter of **deciding **to believe something. They are based on experiential and learned knowledge.

I have been searching for evidence of a supreme deity for many years now, but I have not found one reason to believe. From my investigations, I see the world, and everything in it, behaving just as it would if there was no God. I suppose this is why faith is so crucial to Christian salvation.

If there were incontrovertible evidence of God, then believing in him would be of no account. The only people who wouldn’t believe would be insane.

God presents us an incomplete, fallen picture, and then asks us to affirm the goodness of the universe. He provides us the ability to do this – he will provide you the ability, if you ask him. (Just on the off-chance that he exists).

It is a matter of deciding to believe, but it is not a matter of being unreasonable. The philosopher William James has some interesting things to say about this, by the way.