Did you ever describe the sources by which you have decided “there’s certainly not enough evidence”? I remember you speaking of some sort of consensus among reputable scholars, but I don’t remember the names of the scholars being mentioned.
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.
And as long as we’re psychoanalyzing, let’s turn it around: “You want to believe what makes you happy.” Let’s say I don’t believe in God (or Christianity specifically). Wouldn’t that lack of belief make me happy, since I don’t believe I’m accountable to any ultimate Judge?
The difference is that I base my beliefs (and my rejection of certain claims) on evidence. It doesn’t matter whether a belief makes me happy or not because I’m not “choosing to believe” based on how I feel.
I don’t think you get to choose your beliefs. You are either convinced of something (by evidence or reason) or you are not. “Belief” is our word for “in the state of having been convinced.”
For example, one day the universe will likely run out of energy and be a dark and cold place with no life in it (billions of years from now, but still…) That doesn’t particularly make me happy, but I believe it – because there is evidence to support it. It doesn’t matter whether I want it to be true or not…it simply is true.
MindOverMatter:
The whole of Christian faith rises or falls on the resurrection.
Well, there’s not a shred of evidence that a man ever rose from the dead. If you want to believe something without evidence because you find it inspiring, well, that’s alright, I suppose – but I would prefer as many people as possible embraced reality.
[And, on a side note, I never claimed that Jesus was lying. I think it more likely that he was a legend than a liar – though it is very possible that the legend was based on a real person, who may or may not have been a lunatic]
PRMerger:
Except if it’s true. Truth trumps everything.
But there’s no way to confirm that it’s true. How do you know? How can you be sure that you’re not mistaken?
You keep claiming that reason and faith can tell us things about the world, but they can’t.
Faith is just belief without evidence. It’s “choosing” to believe – and without evidence, there’s no good reason to believe.
Reason is capable of telling us things about the world
if the reasoning process operates on evidence, observed data. You have to reason from observed phenomena in order to make sure that you’re dealing with reality.
All throughout history we can find people who had “faith” in things that seemed rational to them (that the world is flat, that the earth is the center of the universe, that the world will end on such-and-such a date, that a race of giants built stonehenge, that the greek gods live on Mt. Olympus, etc.) – all claims that some people had
faith in and that were wrong.
Faith is often wrong. Your claim that faith is a method of knowing about the world does not hold up at all.
Well, I can certainly concede that Buddhism contains many moral truths.
I just have never seen any evidence that the Buddha said that all humans were of the same worth and should therefore be treated equally.
I am absolutely open to looking at those documents that he wrote himself, or that his eye-witnesses wrote, or any contemporary accounts of this teaching. Seriously, Mega-- I would be open to ackowledging that the Buddha actually said these things if you can provide me with those sources.
I’ve quoted this in its entirety because I find it quite amusing that you think you’re being clever or turning my arguments against me. You are very mistaken, and you’ve actually given me a great example of how to evaluate historical claims.
In the first place, dameedna’s reference to Buddhism was in answer to your request for an “coeval atheistic (or pagan) cultures” that promoted revolutionary ideas. Cultures, not a man. Dameedna’s claim (which used the word “buddhists”) was that the idea is part of Buddhism, not that it was said by a specific man in history. As usual, you are moving the goalposts and comparing unlike things.
And second (and here’s the important point), I don’t think that there’s enough evidence to claim that the Buddha depicted in the Pali Cannon is real, either. Our only real source of information about him is from the Pali Cannon, written down by his followers
hundreds of years after he supposedly lived. The details of his life as they’ve been recorded contain a number of myths, including the assertion that he was aided by Brahma Sahampati, an Indian god.
Now, as in the case of Christ, I do think it is likely that a real person served as a basis for the Buddha myths. But – here’s the kicker – it doesn’t matter for Buddhism whether or not the legendary Buddha really lived. What matters are the words attributed to the character of Buddha by tradition.
To draw a comparison, it’s been claimed that Socrates wasn’t real either – and he might indeed have been an invention of Plato (virtually everything we know about Socrates comes from Plato). I wouldn’t claim that there’s enough historical evidence for Socrates, though he certainly may have been a real person. But again, what matters for philosophy was not that Socrates lived, but rather the words attributed to the character Socrates.
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.
