Relativism is Irrelevant (So is Absolutism)...Let's Talk about Justification

[MegaTherion]

PR, in the first place, the point about Buddhism is not directly relevant, but a quick search turned up the following quote from Hindu esotericism (The Maha Nirvana Tantra) in which Shiva says, “the human body is the receptacle of piety, wealth, desires, and final liberation. It should therefore never be the subject of purchase”. In Buddhism, the eightfold path specifically forbids “business in living beings,” although admittedly this is less about condemning slavery than about giving up material attachments. The Buddhist Sigalovada Sutra also says that employers should supply workers and servants with “food and wages.”

And that was just a very quick online search – I’m sure actual research into the topic could yield quite a bit of gold, but we’re straying from our subject here.

Our faith is the only faith that can be definitively disproven if any evidence of Christ’s body were to be found.

Of course, just because something hasn’t been disproven doesn’t make it any more likely to be true.

You still need good evidence to believe in something. This leads us back to your “faith,” your “decision to believe” without evidence.

You never did answer my point about how you can be sure that your faith is accurate. We have several examples in history of people believing things on faith or because they “make sense”: that the earth is flat, that the sun goes around the earth, that the earth will end on such-and-such a date, that a race of giants built stonehenge, that the gods live on Mt. Olympus.

These beliefs, taken on faith and on the basis of their “making sense,” are all wrong.

We have examples of faith being wrong. How do you know that your faith is not (since it is faith and not evidence that you base your beliefs upon)?

 

[MegaTherion]

double post

 

[cpayne]

No, I never meant to give the impression that I was referring to the work of specific scholars. I meant by “certainly not enough evidence” the fact that there are no eyewitness accounts, contemporary accounts, anything written by this figure, etc.

Christians are in an entirely different position. For you, it matters a great deal whether the Jesus Christ as depicted in the gospels really existed. And there is insufficient evidence to claim that.

MT, look at your first and second sentences (and the final sentence). In order for you to make the claim in the second sentence, you would have to be relying on some sort of scholarly work. What I am arguing is that the claim is inaccurate, as modern scholarship has pretty much established. The Gospels were contemporary, and some parts were eyewitness. If you actually have no scholarly evidence to back up your claims, I will assume that you acknowledge the italicized fact.

 

[MegaTherion]

as modern scholarship has pretty much established. The Gospels were contemporary, and some parts were eyewitness. If you actually have no scholarly evidence to back up your claims, I will assume that you acknowledge the italicized fact.

As far as I know, modern scholarship has dated the Gospels to (at the earliest) a generation or two after the events supposedly took place.

We don’t have enough information to say that they were eyewitness accounts. I’m sure there are some scholars who try to argue that they are, but I’ve never seen any arguments for that that are anything much more than speculation.

Seriously, though, as off-topic as my posts are becoming, this particular point has nothing to do with morality, relativism, or absolutism.

EDIT: I think I’ve left too implicit the important point: “scholarly opinion” only carries weight with me insofar as it is based on incontrivertible evidence. Just present the evidence if it exists (and do so on another thread, if you would).

 

[cpayne]

Fair enough.

 

[PRmerger]

You never did answer my point about how you can be sure that your faith is accurate. We have several examples in history of people believing things on faith or because they “make sense”: that the earth is flat, that the sun goes around the earth, that the earth will end on such-and-such a date, that a race of giants built stonehenge, that the gods live on Mt. Olympus.

Hey! Give me a break! You asked that question less than 48 hours ago. I see it took you 2 days also to respond to provide a source for buddhism condemnation of slavery. (And, I thought I did indeed address it by saying that my signature seemed to concisely express my “methodology”–start with faith and then reason confirms it. More on that below)

As for that source, thank you. I stand corrected. Although I’ll have to take your word for it that this doctrine occurred 500 years prior to Christianity.

Which provides a beautiful segue into responding further to your question: how do I know that what I have faith in is true?

The answer is because I believe in the person who provides me that truth. Just as I, based on my “relationship” with you and undestanding that you are a person of character and intellectual honesty (as far as you’ve revealed this to me,) believe what you tell me about buddhism, I also believe based on my relationships with Others.

As do you. For the truths you believe are the result of your trust in a person, rather than the result of personal critical enquiry.

“On the one hand, the knowledge acquired through belief can seem an imperfect form of knowledge, to be perfected gradually through personal accumulation of evidence; on the other hand, belief is often humanly richer than mere evidence, because it involves an interpersonal relationship and brings into play not only a person’s capacity to know but also the deeper capacity to entrust oneself to others, to enter into a relationship with them which is intimate and enduring.” (Fides et Ratio)

 

[PRmerger]

As far as I know, modern scholarship has dated the Gospels to (at the earliest) a generation or two after the events supposedly took place.

We don’t have enough information to say that they were eyewitness accounts

Let’s just say the Gospels weren’t eyewitness accounts…can you explain how a myth of this proportion could have spread within 1 or 2 generations of the eyewitnesses? Surely, when any of the Gospel writers proclaimed the “myth” of the Resurrection there were people around who would have said, “Wait a minute! That most certainly did NOT happen!”

Aquinas argued that if the Incarnation did not really occur, then the bigger miracle was this: the conversion of the world by the biggest lie in history. The complete transformation of lives into self-forgetful love and radically new heights of holiness, martyrs going to their bloody deaths singing the Psalms–all of this for a myth? That’s pretty miraculous to be sure!

There was a challenge in the nineteenth century by a Christian, Julius Muller, to produce a single example anywhere in history of a myth or great legend arising around a historical figure that was generally believed within 30 years of the figure’s death. To my knowledge, no one has been able to answer him.