Fair enough. My questionis simple, then. WHY should we believe in God? What is the rationale, the reason?
Ah, there’s that elephant in the room again. It’s odd that 10 pages of a thread have not produced a sufficient answer to this question, isn’t it?
Inocente, who has been disappointing me lately with these appeals to emotion, now comes out with this little gem:
But it’s like my wife asking why I love her. She knows that I will have to invent poetic reasons, because the real reasons are all buried deep in my head.
Well, setting aside for a moment the fact that emotions can be irrational and don’t need to be justified in the way that claims about the objective world do (so there goes your silly comparison right off the bat) – I don’t find it at all difficult to give cogent reasons for loving the people who are important to me.
I’m capable of launching into poetic flights of fancy like everyone else – better than everyone else, actually – but if pressed for clear reasons for loving the people close to me, I would not hesitate to give them. If you cannot do this, I would suggest that some self-examination is in order.
Luke K:
Jesus was a real, historical figure and we have good reason to believe that the Biblical records we have of him are not made up (see the link I posted earlier).
Oh, good. At least you’re talking about evidence and reasons now, instead of finding ways of arguing around it. I consider this a sign of progress.
Unfortunately, there is no evidence that the Jesus legends depicted in the four gospels – that is, the stories that involve the supernatural – actually happened. Now, I grant that they may have indeed been based on a real person, but there is insufficient evidence to say that the supernatural parts of the story happened.
It’s similar to the King Arthur legends: those legends were probably based on a real king, but that’s not evidence that the magical parts of the story actually happened.
We also have the living testament of the Catholic community which predates the earliest written records and still exists today, doctrinally unchanged, with a traceable Papal line back to Peter, the close friend of Jesus.
Certainly Christian communities existed before there were Christian writings – these communities are where the writings came from (and these writings came, of course, at the earliest, decades after these supposed events).
But how does that demonstrate that the supernatural parts of the stories are true?
Throughout the past 2000 years we have the testimonies and examples of countless people who have followed the teachings of Christ and have experienced the same peace, passion, joy, and have had their faith in Him given them the power to rid themselves of vices and do great works.
So what? People of other faiths have experienced great feelings of peace, passion, and joy as well. This is exactly what I was talking about: people who live good lives tend to feel really good, and people who truly believe in gods – any gods, whether Christian or Hindu or Moslem – tend to get warm and fuzzies.
These feelings are insufficient to support the claim that supernatural things happened 2,000 years ago.
See if you don’t discover faults about yourself by following the words of a man who claimed to be God, and see if trusting and praying in him doesn’t help you rid yourself of those faults.
You don’t really understand what a test is, do you? Let’s say I discover plenty of faults about myself by comparing myself to this literary character and then I set about on a course of practical self-improvement, motivated by my desire to be like this literary character…how would my success or failure in this endeavor, or any warm and fuzzies I get from doing it, demonstrate that the supernatural parts of the literary character’s story are true?
Let’s switch contexts: say I read a story about a hero like King Arthur and discover faults about myself by comparing myself to him. I then set about on a course of practical self-improvement, motivated by my desire to be like him…would my success or failure in this endeavor, or any warm and fuzzies I get from doing it, demonstrate that the magical parts of his story are true?
We also know that DNA possesses the same qualities of what we consider to be intelligent behavior
But DNA isn’t intelligent. It works by a mechanical process of self-replication and by copying errors in self-replication.
What you’re doing here is something like argument from metaphor: when you say “DNA builds” and “DNA organizes,” you’re using metaphorical language to describe it.
It’s like saying “matter obeys the laws of nature” and then getting confused into taking the language literally: “What’s that? Matter obeys something? But only intelligent beings can obey things! Matter must be intelligent!!”
It’s an elementary mistake.
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Christians have given lots of reasons, although it seems we are not always convinced by each others. The large number of potential reasons may in itself explain the continued success of Christianity. But the sample is biased due to the high testosterone content on philosophy threads. Few if any have been willing to admit emotion. I’ve known people who say their life was turned around simply by trusting in Jesus. Their trust possibly originated in a level of stress combined with mirror neurons, but does that stop it from being a reason?