> how to be a Christian
Recognize that you're a sinner who deserves punishment and place all your hope for righteousness before God in what Jesus did on the cross. Now follow him. Read the Bible and do what it says.
>how to make sure that my faith is the right one
Seek out the evidence that Christ really rose from the dead. This is the founding event of Christianity. If it happened, Christianity is true; if it didn't, it's false.
It did happen. He was executed in public, buried in a public place, left an empty tomb in that public place, was seen by many people at many times in many different circumstances -- including by unbelievers -- who all began proclaiming his resurrection in the same city in which all of this happened, even with the threat of death hanging over them because of it.
Skeptics will tell you this didn't happen. History will tell you it did.
The big thick one. It's called The Resurrection of Jesus. The section on historiography is especially helpful. It's something hardly any other book goes into in such detail.
Oh boy, well I had been enjoying this conversation since it was 99% focused on the rigorous details of the arguments, let’s see if you can keep it that way.
Let me try to peel this way back to the original comments, Ade said (to my bringing up the possibility of being able to determine if God were “bad” or doing something bad, doing something not in our interests, e.g. if God were some kind of “malevolent” entity):
>This is where we are complicating definitions. We’d need to establish an objective bad apart from god to call him evil which isn’t possible so that is an incoherent statement
Ade calls something impossible here, based on what? Well ultimately it’s based on Ade’s assumptions / circular definition of God as being the source of objective good. I mean one point I ask where that definition came from, and they said God defined it that way…
I bring up the Sam Harris thought experiment, thinking about “the worst possible misery for every conscious being”, and long story short, Ade digs into the position that we don’t have a basis for calling that “bad” and doing so is just a subjective opinion.
Now here’s the thing, Ade tried dismissing my whole argument as incoherent in light of their own assumptions - they assume God is synonymous with objective good and that’s the only way to it. If we don’t beg the question by starting with those same assumptions, then we can consider something like the Harris view, under which we can rightfully call a God “bad” if they do something like ask/inflict the worst possible misery onto everyone (or, variations on this argument, like even if that God says inflicting such max misery is “objectively good” and we grant all of Ade’s definitions to accept this, then we still can’t say “we ought to do that which is objectively good” - I also point out that the term good has, at that point, for all intents and purposes lost it’s entire definition and just gets plugged in as a definition for God, whatever that includes; could be commanding us to rape and torture or whatever, still has been defined as “objective good” in that case).
So me bringing up the “how would we know if God didn’t have our best interests in mind, or if God were a malevolent entity” was not dishonest at all in the first place, unless you want to outright grant every assumption Ade has made and ignore any problematic implications of the position.
Ade also got into fully admitting that what one considers sufficient evidence is subjective…So they have put up a moral framework under which (1) there is no bound to what could be in God’s nature and still be qualified as “good” (up to and including inflicting maximum misery onto everyone), and (2) belief in God comes down to subjective criteria on how one assesses available evidence. I pointed out the danger of this position, and how it’s exactly the type of thing that has gotten people committing all types of harmful acts against humankind but see them as justified as morally good under God. Ade thinks that’s just my subjective opinion of dangerous.
Do you see anywhere here I’ve gone wrong? Because with that I’ll try to very quickly hit your specifics:
>Nope, u/AdeAlphaTV_'s position is perfectly internally consistent. It's simply a fact that wanting something to be good doesn't make it good, and there isn't a hint or ounce of evidence that Ade contradicts this from his own approach.
Yes and no, Ade certainly admits that what anyone thinks has no bearing on what is good under God. But Ade also seems to want me this definition of the God they believe in as source of objective good to actually be good. I thought we could find common ground at worst possible misery for all = bad, but that didn’t happen.
…now I ignore some of your irrelevant ranting that is literally off topic…
>It is a form of lying to say that someone has evaded a point which wasn't brought up to begin with
We had discussed the cosmic skeptic videos at length, and I did previously bring up how skeptic landed on morality being subjective even under theism even if we grant the existence of God as source of moral good, because we still don’t have an ought. You go on and on ranting about the garbage of this point I bring up, which again is not actually an answer to it. Surely you see that admitting theistic morality to not be objective breaks Ade’s position, so why is it wrong for me to bring up the specific rebuttal of this point from the video series that Ade themselves linked to?
>Of course everyone can make their own decision as to whether they want to be good or a genuinely horrible person.
I am specifically talking about a person who wants to be good, and seeks to improve the health, happiness, and well-being of humankind, even if some God asks them to do otherwise. You are bastardizing the terms good and horrible here to suit your argument.
>And yet there is mountains evidence (e.g. https://www.amazon.ca/Resurrection-Jesus-New-Historiographical-Approach/dp/0830827196), and whether or not there is evidence is the point of dispute to begin with! Amazing.
Thanks for linking, I read quite a lot about the approach of this book, stacking up the resurrection hypothesis against alternatives. Some quick questions; (1) how were the alternative hypotheses chosen? Was one included in which Jesus was a wizard/sorcerer falsely claiming to be son of God and using some spell to resurrect? (2) did the methods applied involve any subjective assessment in the ranking? (3) does the outcome of such a ranking guarantee the highest ranked hypothesis is true? Can the likelihood of truth be quantified? (4) how, or did the author go about demonstrating a resurrection as a POSSIBLE explanation, or was that question begged?
*And a big ole question to wrap that up, do you think the evidence objectively shows that Jesus was the son of God and resurrected, or do you think that believing that comes down to subjective criteria one applies in what they consider to be sufficient evidence?
>a mind saying something doesn't imply that what is said is subjective
That wasn’t my point. Yeah saying 2+2=4 is obviously not stating an opinion, likewise you can’t say my opinion is 2+2=5 (well you can, but you’d of course be wrong). The real question at the core of this is whether a statement like “the worst possible misery for all conscious beings is a ‘bad’ state, and those beings would be ‘better’ in a situation with less misery” is like saying 2+2=4, or is like saying 2+2=5. What do you think?
>Gosh, you just completely lied about Ade's argument! No one has ever argued that it's true because they died for it. Them being willing to die for it is proof they were not lying or making crap up.
If you read my full paragraph you’d see I was talking about whether such a circumstance should be taken to be good evidence of an underlying claim being true. Just as the book you cited uses such circumstances in how they weight and rank a hypothesis, I will ask whether you would consider the belief of 9-11 hijackers that they were doing the morally right thing to be a form of good evidence to be considered when evaluating the truth of their underlying claim. In my experience most people aren’t internally consistent on that, and throw out those types of examples entirely, but selectively apply that criteria to other beliefs they hold.
>Sorry, more dishonest garbage. The absurd logic here is "all determinations of how good evidence is, is subjective, therefore belief in religion is subjective"
This is easy, I wasn’t talking about “all” - I was talking about the evidence for Christianity. Does it come down to subjective criteria, yes or no?
>The common significance level α as being 0.05 in statistics is subjective, there's no magical major difference between 0.04 and 0.05 and 0.06.
There’s a precisely quantifiable difference, see for example why 0.01 is chosen for some studies.
>The fact that there's an element of subjectivity in coming to conclusions about evidence isn't enough to falsify the relevance of the evidence.
It literally is better evidence if you can get it with a p of .01 instead of .05.
>This is garbage equivalent to "that the evidence we have for evolution is good is subjective, therefore believing in evolution is subjective"
The evidence we have for evolution is hard, physical evidence, and CRITICALLY it is grounded in a mechanism of biology and DNA that we have mountains of evidence exists. That hard physical evidence is absolutely different than testimony from millenia ago, and the grounding in known possible to exist mechanisms is entirely different than begging the question that a resurrection is even a possible hypothesis.
>Umm, this is actually known within a small range. LOL.
This is splitting hairs, fine it’s known to with a “small range” of what, a few years at best? Decades maybe?
Someone asked me to point out the mountains of fallacies in this particular comment as usual shown by u/sunnbeta, someone who of course is just a pain to talk to as nicely shown by this opening "paragraph".
Nope, u/AdeAlphaTV_'s position is perfectly internally consistent. It's simply a fact that wanting something to be good doesn't make it good, and there isn't a hint or ounce of evidence that Ade contradicts this from his own approach. You simply dishonestly barged that into the conversation to make him look bad, without actually adding a hint of evidence. As usual, the opening paragraph is filled with a mountain of fallacious rabbit holes sidelining from the main point of the conversation.
>even if we grant that some God exists that is the arbiter of objective good (which is DEEP down a rabbit hole of fallacious question begging already)
Of course not, and it's blatantly dishonest to make such a giant claim without an ounce of evidence, fundamentally based on nothing more than your opinion rather than something you've managed to intellectually convince anyone up until this point.
>you don’t account for the CosmicSkeptic point that it’s only down to subjective opinion that we ought to do what is objective good.
It is a form of lying to say that someone has evaded a point which wasn't brought up to begin with, which means that this point is complete and utter garbage. The point is, in and of itself, utterly fallacious because it acts as if it's some sort of contribution. Of course everyone can make their own decision as to whether they want to be good or a genuinely horrible person. That actually contributes nothing and amounts to a red herring. So far, I haven't even gotten into your responses to Ade's points but had to write these three paragraphs just to address the mountain of rabbit holes, sidetracking, and dishonest injunctions that you brainlessly tossed into the first para.
>Which we also don’t have evidence to support.
And yet there is mountains evidence (e.g. https://www.amazon.ca/Resurrection-Jesus-New-Historiographical-Approach/dp/0830827196), and whether or not there is evidence is the point of dispute to begin with! Amazing.
>You also are now using the term “God’s mind” so we’re back to it being his subjective opinion.
It's ridiculous just how incoherent this is. A mind saying something doesn't imply that what is said is subjective, LOL. I mean seriously, just consider how ridiculous and unthinking this claim is. "Minds" are capable of mathematics, which is fully objective. "Minds" engage in objective evaluations all the time, such as determining which house to buy is the most affordable. "Mind, therefore subjective" is lousy logic. The next paragraph is repitition of a previous point, so irrelevant.
>Just as all the other examples. So does this mean the Branch Dividians has true beliefs?
Gosh, you just completely lied about Ade's argument! No one has ever argued that it's true because they died for it. Them being willing to die for it is proof they were not lying or making crap up. Sorry, but this was a trainwreck of a counterargument.
>First yes this being pretty good evidence is your opinion, showing again that your moral foundation comes down to subjective opinion.
Sorry, more dishonest garbage. The absurd logic here is "all determinations of how good evidence is, is subjective, therefore belief in religion is subjective". And yet, that's true for literally anything which is easily accepted, and therefore a red herring. The common significance level α as being 0.05 in statistics is subjective, there's no magical major difference between 0.04 and 0.05 and 0.06. And yet, there is evidence that it's useful and so it's accepted. The fact that there's an element of subjectivity in coming to conclusions about evidence isn't enough to falsify the relevance of the evidence. This is garbage equivalent to "that the evidence we have for evolution is good is subjective, therefore believing in evolution is subjective". The first postulate is true, the second is ridiculous.
>you don’t even know really how long after the claimed events occurred that this stuff was written
Umm, this is actually known within a small range. LOL.
Anyways, there's nothing here of relevance. This is a pretty sufficient demonstrate of the persistent nonsense from this individuals comments.
As others have mentioned, Gary Habermas, William Lane Craig, I'd also check out NT scholar Mike Lacona. Specifically his book The Resurrection of Jesus: A New Historiographical Approach.
For something a bit less purely apologetics based, you might also be interested in NT Wright's tome, The Resurrection of the Son of God. This delves more into why the early church believed in Jesus' resurrection.
For something a bit different, you might want to check out Jewish scholar Pinchas Lapide's The Resurrection of Jesus: A Jewish Perspective. Lapide, who never became a Christian, and never accepted Jesus as the Messiah, never-the-less felt compelled to accept the historicity of resurrection on historical grounds, stating: "I accept the resurrection of Jesus not as an invention of the community of disciples, but as an historical event."
Sure. If you want scholarly resources on the resurrection, then I would suggest The Resurrection of Jesus: A New Historiographical Approach by Licona. You can get it on Amazon for about $35 and it's a long read at 700+ pages.
Another good scholarly resource is The Case For the Resurrection of Jesus by Habermas and Licona. You can get it for about $13 dollars on Amazon.
I would also suggest getting a general overview of the New Testament. Bart Ehrman is probably the world's leading skeptical scholar of the New Testament. His book on the New Testament, The New Testament: A Historical Introduction to the New Testament Writings, is a great resource and can be bought on Amazon for around $6.
Other books that I would strongly recommend would be:
Early Christian Writings. A short read at 200 pages. A catalog of some of the earliest Christian writings outside the New Testament. You can get it for $3 on Amazon.
The New Testament: Its Background, Growth and Content Bruce Metzger was one of the leading New Testament scholars of the 20th century. You can get it for $20.
The Fate of the Apostles, by McDowell. An in-depth study of how reliable the martyrdom accounts of the apostles are. A little bit pricey at $35-40.
Ecclesiastical History, by Eusebius, a 3rd century historian. Eusebius documents the history of Christianity from Jesus to about the 3rd century. You can get it for $10.
No such thing as a dumb question! And that question specifically is an excellent question! IMO, always ask for the facts and arguments that another person has, rather than asking for their conclusions. That way you can calculate the conclusions yourself from the facts/arguments. IMO, half the stuff you'll google or find on reddit talks about conclusions and not data/arguments (e.g. "Jesus never existed". Okay, well reddituser, could you explain more why you think that?)
There's a lot to study. I recommend using Feynman's method for learning (https://mattyford.com/blog/2014/1/23/the-feynman-technique-model). Can speed up your learning by 4x.
>Find me a non Christian historian who'll state, with evidence, that Jesus was actually resurrected, as a historical fact, not a question of faith
Find me a YEC Creationist "Scientist" who'll state that evolution is true and the Eartth is 4.6 Billion years old.
If that scientist believed that, he would automatically cease to become a YEC, just as a non-Christian who acknowledged the Resurrection would become a Christian because of that belief.
Non-Christian Historian: A historian who doesn't believe in the resurrection
Christian historian: A historian who does believe in the Resurrection.
You are asking for an example of somebody who is both, which can't happen without severe cognitive dissonance (in which case he would most likely not be a reliable source).
>Theres no good historical evidence of any resurrection.
Look here, here, here, and here are some books and articles that might interest you.
You are commiting the fallacy of assuming non-Christian historians (defined as those who do not acknowledge the resurrection) are somehow superior to Christian historians (those who do acknowledge the resurrection). This is because you are already assuming the resurrection is false. Examine the arguments themselves without presupposing who is right.
>Yeah that and your parents believed it, just like Hindus tend to be honest just like they're parents and taoists, Muslims and Buddhists too. At least in the vast majority of cases, the rest would be cultural pressures leaving only a small, small number that change religions due to being convinced by evidence rather than being convinced that something is "evidence" after they've already got the faith.
Boy I love the genetic fallacy. Personally, I was not raised Christian so this doesn't apply to me, but from a purely logical stance the reason why one believes something that is true to be true does not matter. I could believe the earth is round because I can "feel the curve when I am walking." It's a bullshit reason to believe the Earth is round, but that doesn't change the fact that it is, in fact, round.
Depends on what your gonna take as evidence. If you want unanimous, written records that Jesus the son of Joseph was resurrected, there is none(well, Gospels, but you're not Christian, so yeah). That being said here's a debate from my favorite agnostic-atheist scholar, Bart Erhman, about the historicity of Jesus' ressurection and here's a book. Here's another video too, but I'm really not too fond of it.
Disclaimer, I haven't read the book, the Priest at my local Catholic church recommended it however.
https://www.amazon.com/Resurrection-Jesus-New-Historiographical-Approach/dp/0830827196
Others on the www.biologos.org reading list are great as well.
> As for invention of scripture, in Luke 4:17-19
See Isaiah 61:1,2 (see Septuagint for the "and recovery of sight to the blind"); Isaiah 58:6
"Luke 4:17:“The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to set the oppressed free, 19to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”
Isaiah 61: The Spirit of the Sovereign Lord is on me, because the Lord has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives and release from darkness for the prisoners,(2) to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor and the day of vengeance of our God, to comfort all who mourn,
I hold that there is no invention here.
>The Pastoral Epistles were not written by Paul - they were forged
You say that with highly unjustified certainty. The strongest position you could take is "There is evidence to suggest they were forged". edit: Going back to the authorship of the epistles, the reasons provided by scholars are not as strong as strong as I would have thought. The biggest claims seem to be (1) the church structures and doctrines mentioned seem way to organized for 64 ad writing date and (2) there is a different tone and word choice. Well, to refute the first point, Paul was writing these letters to literally tell them how the church ought to be run. It does not act as if the church already operates like that, or that an organized church even exists yet! Paul is literally laying down the foundation here, through the words of God. For (2), it is expected that Paul would write differently in these personal letters to timothy and Titus than he would with communities and congregations, like the Galatians and Corinthians.
> foremost English speaking textual critic is Bart Ehrman. I was being generous by throwing out 400k
Generous? Again, are you accounting for punctuation differences? You must be! This is absurd, there are about 700,000 words in the bible; You claim there is 50% discrepancy amongst common texts? If that were the case, it would be impossible to even identify a biblical manuscript, let alone recreate the original. Also, Earhman does not do well against competitors in his own field, and many times holds a minority opinion, that many people rally around.
I would like to say the reason for my quick responses is due to finals week at college. I would like to fully address some of your concerns, but have been constrained by time. I would like to recommend to you this book. It is were much of my information comes from, but I do not have time currently to go and cite it as I claim it here. Heres a link to Ehrman debating Licona.
Additionally, I wanted to know where you stand because I want to find some common ground we can work from. I believe we have gone through several issues where, given the 2,000 time gap, several cases could be made. If you are agnostic, lets say, then you may be more open to accepting a miracle claim. If atheist, you approach the texts with the bias that miracles are impossible and then you know these works are lies. I am Christian, so I have to work to remove that bias in my personal research. This discussion has really been us throwing information at each and giving the majority opinions of either Christians or non-Christians. I am a science major and not a religious studies major, so, although I study these texts in my free time, my answers are not academically polished, though I will do best to provide you with the best answers that I have that are very convincing to me. I am here to provide you with resources that explain the case for Jesus as the Son of God the best because, if true (Which I am many other people smarter than I believe), eternity is on the line. I admit, though, that when I had not yet believed, I knew 1 Corinthians 1:18 to be true: "For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God."
edit: I wanted to add one more thing. We do not have to be experts of theology to believe in God.
1.) Something super natural had to create what is natural. Nature, again, does not create nature. Without anything "super"natural, that is, "beyond nature", then nature could not have existed, because we observe in nature that nature does not create, but just exists and operates according to certain "laws". Lets call this super natural being "God", if you will.
2.) We also have this idea that, well, this human world that "God" created seems to be a mess, does it not? Take the Nepal earthquake and Baltimore riots this week alone.. Humans have an objective idea that this is not the way things "ought" to be, in a "just" world. So, there is (1) a God that exists, (2) Humanity lives in a broken state, though we know there is this idea of "good" state, where there is no "evil". Given these conditions of reality (again, I don't know if you are atheist or agnostic) the ultimate storyline of the bible seems sorta kinda plausible: The God created nature and humanity, that humanity rebelled against God, that the world we chose then became broken, that God is not only just but also merciful, and that the prophesized messiah of the old testament seems to be Jesus, who was God and man, paid the penalty for ours sins, so that we may become righteous again. Our response need be repentance of our sins, and a true, lasting faith in Jesus, whose blood is what covers ours transgressions.
I know this explanation is not academically sound, It may not be helpful to you, maybe not, but I felt I needed to add it.
You want me to list every source I used for seven years? I don't think I can do that. I'll hit a few high points, though. First, note I am a Christian, but I don't believe in a lot of the OT (Adam & Eve, Noah's Ark, etc.) and some of the NT (Revelation, immunity to snake venom, etc.). My research ultimately led me to believe that Jesus existed, character as depicted, and that the resurrection happened. I believe in evolution, a ~14 billion year old universe, entropy, and pretty much everything else science finds.
/r/Christianity is an excellent source of information. Somebody will always have a reference to link you to. The first thing I did on this journey was to read the Bible and look up every single thing that sounded off to me. That alone took over a year or so.
Mike Licona's book on the resurrection is my favorite by far.
Several books and other info from www.biologos.org are very helpful. Belief in an Age of Reason, The Language of God, and The Reason for God are at the top for me.
These are just the Christian ones. As I said, I also looked into atheist publications and some stuff on the other top religions (mostly online sources like Wiki). It took years, though. I started out as an atheist and ultimately converted.
There are non-biblical sources that verify certain biblical events. The Bible itself is a large collection historical sources. The NT hasn't been changed much from the original. I think it says 99.5% internal consistency.
On the Jesus actually being who He said stuff, there were many witnesses, multiple authors, the OT has several prophecies about Him, a conversion out of nowhere (Paul), the women who saw Him first when resurrected. Also, His character fits with a God of love. There's more I'm forgetting, but there's been plenty of whole threads about this stuff. My favorite reference is Mike Licona's book.
I believe the obscurity is for free will. I mean, technically we'd still have free will if God showed himself, but it'd just be a technicality. To not believe then would be like disbelieving in gravity now.
I highly recommend this book about the Resurrection. It's pretty dry, though. I believe it's for a college class he teaches. Anyway, it hits very good on the resurrection (duh) and, therefor, Jesus's divinity.
> the only difference that realy matters.
To you.
> I am refferign to the "difference" regarding the validity of the claims they make
https://www.amazon.ca/Resurrection-Jesus-New-Historiographical-Approach/dp/0830827196