What are /r/ReasonableFaith's favorite Products & Services?

From 3.5 billion Reddit comments

I think you need faith so long as you don't have 100% evidence/certainty in something. Faith in a non-religious setting simply means, "complete trust or confidence in someone or something" (http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/us/definition/american_english/faith). So in that sense, everyone has faith in something. Some faiths are more founded in, as you said, statistics and personal experience, but most things require some degree of faith. Trusting and having faith are quite similar experiences at times.

Thanks for your response!

So, some presuppositionalists apparently don't act according to what they preach. For example, the atheist Dan Courtney wrote the following:

>Even the Presuppositionalist’s claim of certain knowledge must come to him through his senses; human senses; which the Presuppositionalist will readily admit are fallible. The contradiction of gaining certain knowledge through fallible senses doesn’t seem to faze the Presuppositionalist.

In response to this critique, the presuppositionalist Sye Ten wrote:

>This begs the question that God cannot reveal that logic can be trusted... wholly apart from our senses in such a way that we can be certain of it.

Notice that instead of saying, "Your argument presupposes God's existence", he presented a rational counter-argument/objection to solve the problem. Sye wants his view to be coherent (not self-contradictory).

So, my point is that maybe if we can prove (rationally) that certain knowledge of God cannot be obtained, then that could be a defeater of this kind of presuppositionalism.

ah yes, i forgot about Chalmers. on that note, how successful do you think Dennett's zimbo argument was at refuting Chalmers' zombie argument? Did Chalmers ever respond to those of Dennett's camp?

There's also a recent paper on academia.edu i read, which endorses dennett's position and rejects the hard problem of consciousness. seems like a bare assertion to me but i can't quite tell. the link is here:

https://www.academia.edu/36469172/The_Evolutionary_Function_of_Consciousness_and_Fregean_Representationalism

I definitely recommend reading up on it, because I agree with others in this thread that the common understanding of Hell is incredibly simplistic.

Here is a podcast in which N.T. Wright discusses the Biblical concept of Gehenna in some detail.

>I'm not sure how much further we can analyse this before we just simply disagree.

It's only a matter for disagreement if it's a matter of opinion, if it's a matter of fact, as it appears to be in this case, then one can be unaware, misunderstand or deny, but one cannot disagree.

Believe is a verb of medium subordinate negative implicature and for such verbs 'I don't v. P' is equivalent to 'I v. not-P'.

>"I don't believe (not confident) that's true"

To believe P is just to think that P is true, it is not the same as to be confident that P.

It seems to me that it should be quite clear to any native speaker of English that to say "I don't believe there is a gos" is equivalent to saying "I believe that there is no god". It's not inconceivable that those who appeal to the gumball analogy are using believe in some eccentric way, but if this is so, they cannot expect to be understood.

Luke Timothy Johnson recorded three or four excellent lecture series for The Teaching Company/The Great Courses, see e.g. https://www.thegreatcourses.com/courses/jesus-and-the-gospels.html

If you can't afford them, PM me.

>In light of Jewish monotheism...

“There are certain passages in the Old Testament that sounded to the ear like the God of Israel was two. There was this two-ness but yet one sort of idea going on. Rabbis took note of this and referred to the idea as Two Powers being in heaven.” - Dr. Heiser

There are also hints of the Trinity in the OT, if you are interested watch this video - Warning: it's 3.5 hours long; I watched it over a few days.

If you have any doubt or questions about if Jesus was God read this book; it looks at the issue from a variety of angles

Godspeed on your journey

>I'll be contrarian here and say I think the problem of evil is a hugeproblem, one that I am convinced can only be solved by universalism.

Yeah, I'm definitely a soft universalist. I don't see hell as a place God sends us, but a place of our own making. It's a place the person who doesn't want anything to do with God goes - and in that sense, it's a form of grace because forcing us into heaven (or new earth, or whatever) would be the opposite of love. I really like Tim Mackie (Hebrew scholar) and his understanding of hell. Anyways, there are major problems with the traditional concept of heaven and hell.

>If I did return to Christianity it would probably be a faith that wouldbe unrecognisable to a lot of people as Christian, far from inerrancy orcreedal confessions.

Yeah I'm not convinced by the traditional understanding of inerrancy, either. At least, my definition aligns with Craig Keener who wrote an incredible new book called Christobiography: Memory, History, and the Reliability of the Gospels. Not sure if it would convince you, but it's definitely the greatest book ever written on the subject, imho.

Anyways, thanks for the conversation! I wish you all the best in your truth journey, and I sincerely thank you for sharing your story!

Have you ever read Brant Pitre's book?: https://www.amazon.com/Case-Jesus-Biblical-Historical-Evidence/dp/0770435483

Because the idea that somehow the gospel writers aren't who they are actually attributed to is false. And that is where biblical scholarship is going and Brant shows you why that is the case. As for how these works bear out across differing writers, I think you are leading with your assumption--an assumption that necessarily thins the number of verifiable writers who were also witnesses, or were informed first hand by those witnesses. From what I can tell that seems like motivated reasoning. Regardless, that won't change that the people recorded did exist, did claim to see what was recorded, and did die for their claims. That verifies Josephus's account, regardless of how you want to attempt to unsettle other aspects of the accounts.

Its not used much in public debates, but there is a book in which a variety of philosophers present objections to it and Plantinga responds at the end. Highly recommend checking it out. https://www.amazon.com/Naturalism-Defeated-Plantingas-Evolutionary-Argument/dp/0801487633

The classical arguments fail for the same reason that this argument fails: They consider God to be natural (e.g., causal), while God is supernatural. If you want actual proof that God exists, please see: https://www.amazon.com/NATURAL-PROOF-EXISTENCE-GOD-SUPERNATURAL/dp/1790213959/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=

This may be beyond him, perhaps, but I would recommend going through something like "Evidence that Demands a Verdict", and using that to spark discussion and questions.

I agree that at eight, this particular book may be too advanced for him, but questions like "How did we get the Bible", and "How can we trust what the Bible says", etc. may be helpful starters.

My view corresponds with most of what's in here: https://www.amazon.com/Did-God-Know-study-nature/dp/B0006YKG2W

PDF:

https://christopherfisher.files.wordpress.com/2014/02/did-god-know-howard-elseth.pdf

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.

https://www.amazon.com/Resurrection-Jesus-New-Historiographical-Approach/dp/0830827196/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1518996512&sr=8-1

I will ask around to some of my apologist friends and see if they have any further suggestions. One book that may help is https://www.amazon.com/Charts-Apologetics-Christian-Evidences-ZondervanCharts/dp/031021937X which gives visual charts. They have one for philosophy, theology, and several other topics. Definitely not thorough and it may poorly summarize some ideas, but it was useful for me as an aid with reading other books.

> In early ancient Greek, the adjective átheos (ἄθεος, from the privative ἀ- + θεός "god") meant "godless". It was first used as a term of censure roughly meaning "ungodly" or "impious". In the 5th century BCE, the word began to indicate more deliberate and active godlessness in the sense of "severing relations with the gods" or "denying the gods".

It's interesting isn't it? That the Greek word began as meaning a lack of belief in gods, but picked up the denial aspect later. I am looking for early modern examples of the lack of belief definition. I turned up this one from 1979. I expect there are earlier ones:

http://www.amazon.com/Atheism-Case-Against-Skeptics-Bookshelf/dp/087975124X/ref=la_B000APQXRY_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1460748534&sr=1-1

A recent review of the book, complaining about the usage, in the same way that you have.

Its a tome of depth and breadth, but check out Licona's <em>The Resurrection of Jesus: A New Historiographical Approach</em>.

Very often, I find the popular criticisms fail to stand up to scrutiny because the conclusion they cannot be applied consistently to other fields of historical study. Popularizers tend to not be privy to the theory or method of historical inquiry pertaining to ancient texts. Understanding the theory and method at any level will help, as if we are able to establish the NT documents as an average ancient document for historical inquiry, the question then becomes "What are we to make of the historical facts we can discern from the texts?"

I highly recommend "He is there and He is not silent" by Francis Schaeffer.

http://www.amazon.com/He-There-Not-Silent-ebook/dp/B007V69CS2/ref=mt_kindle?_encoding=UTF8&amp;me=

It is very short (only 128 pages) and not only argues for why a theistic worldview makes sense but also compares a theistic and a naturalistic worldview.

Here's a book that may help:

http://www.amazon.com/True-Reason-Confronting-Irrationality-Atheism/dp/0825443385

Also, a radio "debate" between Christian philosopher Tim McGrew and atheist philosopher Peter Boghossian about whether faith is inherently irrational. Boghossian recently wrote a book about "street epistemology." It's kind of a how-to guide for arguing with Christians, and it promotes the argument your brother is making. It may be that he has even read it.

https://www.premierchristianradio.com/Shows/Saturday/Unbelievable/Episodes/Peter-Boghossian-vs-Tim-McGrew-A-manual-for-creating-atheists

I don't know much about his book "BROKEN", but Jonathan Fisk has a youtube channel you should definitely check out.

I think its title is "Worldview Everlasting". He just mostly goes over Bible passages and explores their significance, but in his explanations, he covers a lot of theology and sound doctrine.

I'm pretty sure "BROKEN" is about how more evangelical-ish churches are falling away from good practices and good doctrines.

EDIT:

Ooh ooh and check out "The Case for Christ" by Lee Strobel! That one's pretty great. He was a journalist who, once his wife told him she had converted to Christianity, decided to disprove it as surely as he could, but realized he was wrong in his research. He basically interviews a bunch of people about the resurrection and Genesis and whatnot. You might check out "The Case for Faith" and "The Case for a Creator" too.

EDIT:

Link to BROKEN

> If you've analyzed the cultural meaning of time for this instance, or have a link to someone who has, I'd love to have a peek, especially if they explain the points I've made.

Here's a good place to start: http://www.amazon.com/Misreading-Scripture-Western-Eyes-Understand/dp/0830837825

> By this reasoning though, can we trust any amount of time given in the Bible without analyzing it?

I'm not quite sure what you're asking... surely you're not saying we should ever read the Bible without analyzing it?

> Did Christ really rise in 3 days, or was it more like 3 months? Why do we take other statements of time with less scrutiny?

Should we? The answer of course, is that understanding the difference requires the establishment of context. That takes work!

For another modern scholarly input on this issue, from a more biblical studies perspective, I recommend Craig Keener's Miracles: The Credibility of the New Testament Accounts.

>Well obviously psychopaths and sociopaths miss the mark here :). But concerning the claim to weakness, you've got my curiosity. Why do you consider it a weakness?

Actually I disagree, physcopaths and sociopaths seem to have quite the edge here if they can learn to use it. Empathy is an emotion that can be exploited, it's rather one of the easy ones.

>should they have any interest in communal well-being guaranteeing their own safety in return

But, power games would be a way to amass great things, people and safety, especially if you know what you are doing.

If you're interested, one of my favorite reads is The 48 laws of Power I'm starting to recommend it to people as a way to detect when others are attempting to gain power over you, honestly, I see people do it all the time, completely unaware of what they are doing to manipulate others.

I, too, want to begin reading on theology, so I'll be interested to see what others have to recommend on this area.

As for philosophy of religion, I'm really interested in this area and have one specific recommendation - namely anything Alvin Plantinga has written. I think the most accessible book of his is probably God, Freedom, and Evil.

I believe what you fail to associate in your explanation to condense the terms into one is the paradigm that is, fairly or unfairly, attached to both of these as they have evolved.

Science, the discipline, takes itself into the realm of the unknown much more often than naturalism. Theories, as theories, are allowed properties not inherently possible according to our understanding of the natural world.

By definition, Naturalism shares in the view of objective data, but what it doesn't represent as well are very real things that don't exist.

Mathematics is a good example. To some extent Euclid was able to bring math to naturalism. Golden ratios found in nature are another example of the cross over.

But so much of it is well outside the bounds of nature. What use is a 150+dimensional construct called the Monster in nature? What is the purpose of finding out how many "friendly" numbers exist with respect to primes? Why have imaginary numbers?

(Edit 150+ dimensions = 196882 dimensions)

This is still science, and a number of these can be attributed in nearly every field known.

Such that we can put naturalism as group wholly within the group science. They are not equivalents. They are not equals. And oddly, by your definition of naturalism, the study of theology would need represented within naturalism, within science but outside naturalism, and outside science, naturalism entirely simultaneously.