An Amazing Life

[Hopey]

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How or why would someone, Paul in this case, who was a staunch "hater" of Christ all of a sudden be one of his biggest supporters? Something extordinary (i.e. a miracle) would have had to happen in order for him to do an about face, no?


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A friend of mine became mentally ill a few years ago and became convinced that he was the second coming of Jesus Christ. He believed that he could see angels and could heal people with his touch.

Before these episodes, he had never set foot in a church and was completely non-religious.

I guess that rather than helping his family to get him hospitalized, I should have instead taken everything he said at face value and followed his teachings.

[Brad1970]

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Because I believe in what's written in the Bible. Simple as that.

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So "belief" in this case requires that you take this story as a literal occurrence?


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How or why would someone, Paul in this case, who was a staunch "hater" of Christ all of a sudden be one of his biggest supporters? Something extordinary (i.e. a miracle) would have had to happen in order for him to do an about face, no?

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That is certainly one possibility. There are lots of others though. Maybe something extraordinary happened to him that has a natural explanation. Why does the extraordinary event have to be miraculous by default? Maybe the story is exaggerated or allegoric. Maybe the story didn't happen at all.

How did you come to choose so certainly from all of these possibilities when you have the same information that I do?

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I take that as a literal occurance & accept it on faith.

How do you come to choose to believe all of those 'critical thinker' authors that you & alot of others love to quote when trying to convince me & other Christians that we are wrong & that the 'critical thinker' crowd is right? What makes them so special?

In a nutshell, that's my position. That's your position. We're on 2 different sides of the coin & it will most likely remain that way unless something changes.

[Splendour]

There's no-one forcing you to stay in this thread Hopey...there are many people who are schizophrenics or delusional...Maybe your friend had a religious experience coincide with an emotional trauma that caused his delusion...I'm sorry if that happened...

[tpir]

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How do you come to choose to believe all of those 'critical thinker' authors that you & alot of others love to quote when trying to convince me & other Christians that we are wrong & that the 'critical thinker' crowd is right? What makes them so special?

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You didn't answer my question. How did you choose so certainly from the list of possibilities?

I am not trying to convince anyone they are wrong about their beliefs. I listen to what scientists and other critical people have to say because their work is based on real life evidence that can be examined, reliably tested and used to make predictions about the world we live in. If science stopped working tomorrow or supernatural entities showed up, I would have to reconsider and find some new books.


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In a nutshell, that's my position. That's your position. We're on 2 different sides of the coin & it will most likely remain that way unless something changes.

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Wrong. My position is very much open to being changed. I just require a good reason to change it. I am trying to ask you about your reasons but all you do is dodge and throw questions back at me. If you want to concede you have no good reasons and just decided to have faith in one thing over another than you win by default, I guess.

[foal]

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I guess there's a .001% chance that he was selected completely randomly to be followed and worshiped as a mesiah. The much more plausible explanation is that he was a spiritual leader who drew a large following, was seen as dangerous for this and executed and then in martyrdom gained an exaggerated and mythological status.

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If you don't know what he said or what his message was, then how can you know that HE was the influential person?

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I never said I "know", I said it's the most plausible assumption.

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In other words, how do you know that it is the real, living person Jesus who is influential, and not the completely separate, mythological, son of God Jesus?

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They are not "completely seperate". If there was a rumor floating around that I pooped gold would it make me a "completely seperate, mythological" person?
I believe that the "real, living person Jesus" was influential, that myths were formed around him and that those myths were even more influential. Btw, I don't mean to say that I equate Christianity being influential with Jesus being influential. I just mean that I think Jesus was influential in his time.

[madnak]

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It is pretty well established that the Historical Person Jesus existed, and that the texts which we get our current Bible from are Historically accurate - that is, they were written when they were supposed to have been written, and the events they relate happened in the Author's lifetime, or at least when the texts were written.

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This is all false. Most of the books of the New Testament were written by authors who hadn't even been born yet when Jesus died. All of them were written years after the events in question. The historicity of Jesus is disputed.

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the skeptic approaches with Scientific analysis, and says that these things couldn't possible have occurred, they are Scientifically impossible!

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This is not the position of any skeptic. A skeptic evaluates the evidence and determines whether it is sufficient. There is more evidence that Uri Geller performs miracles than that Jesus Christ did. This is not compelling for a rational thinker.

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the eyewitnesses who wrote about the miraculous things they saw because they were so spectacular?

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Almost none of the people who wrote about the events even claimed to be eyewitnesses. The events that may have been witnessed were all similar to stage magic, and were not corroborated.

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obviously the answer to this question lies with Faith. where do you put your faith? this isn't a black-and-white question either. it's not God vs. Science or anything like that (false dichotomies get us into a lot of trouble, it seems...). Do you believe in God? does that mean you can't believe in Science? (hopefully not)

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I put my faith in reason. If a God (and only one of many that people worship) requires me to believe something unreasonable, I'm not interested. Especially if there's no evidence this God even exists. (Sadly, there never is.)

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i don't like discussion threads like these, they tend to go nowhere, and very rarely do people actually engage each other's intellect. usually just a lot of smug arguing at each other. i just felt i had to say my piece.

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I agree. I even told myself I was going to stop posting in religious threads, but it looks like I can't resist.

[madnak]

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Because I believe in what's written in the Bible. Simple as that. How or why would someone, Paul in this case, who was a staunch "hater" of Christ all of a sudden be one of his biggest supporters? Something extordinary (i.e. a miracle) would have had to happen in order for him to do an about face, no?

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Not at all. Con-men can do incredible things to ordinary, gullible people. Have you ever seen the work of Derren Brown? Religious con-men are the very best at this. History is littered with cults, and there are verifiable stories in many religions of people doing about faces. This is particularly true in the LDS faith, where proselytization has become a science, and in Scientology, where marketing geniuses apply their talents.

A person changing their beliefs overnight is common in most religions, so even if the story of Paul is true it doesn't constitute special evidence for Christianity.

[Brad1970]

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How do you come to choose to believe all of those 'critical thinker' authors that you & alot of others love to quote when trying to convince me & other Christians that we are wrong & that the 'critical thinker' crowd is right? What makes them so special?

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You didn't answer my question. How did you choose so certainly from the list of possibilities?

I am not trying to convince anyone they are wrong about their beliefs. I listen to what scientists and other critical people have to say because their work is based on real life evidence that can be examined, reliably tested and used to make predictions about the world we live in. If science stopped working tomorrow or supernatural entities showed up, I would have to reconsider and find some new books.


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In a nutshell, that's my position. That's your position. We're on 2 different sides of the coin & it will most likely remain that way unless something changes.

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Wrong. My position is very much open to being changed. I just require a good reason to change it. I am trying to ask you about your reasons but all you do is dodge and throw questions back at me. If you want to concede you have no good reasons and just decided to have faith in one thing over another than you win by default, I guess.

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For somebody so open to Christianity, you sure do run awfully hard from it.

[tpir]

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In a nutshell, that's my position. That's your position. We're on 2 different sides of the coin & it will most likely remain that way unless something changes.

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Wrong. My position is very much open to being changed. I just require a good reason to change it. I am trying to ask you about your reasons but all you do is dodge and throw questions back at me. If you want to concede you have no good reasons and just decided to have faith in one thing over another than you win by default, I guess.

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For somebody so open to Christianity, you sure do run awfully hard from it.

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Not sure what you mean. Your continued dodging of my serious questions is only driving me away further. I will restate the main one:

How did you choose with such certainly from the list of possibilities regarding the Biblical accounts? Maybe if you can explain this process to me I can try to duplicate it and arrive at the same conclusion that you did. I don't think asking for a good reason to believe what you are saying is true is too much to ask. If we didn't require reasons to change our beliefs we would all be constantly flip-flopping as people told us things and we accepted them without question.

[Brad1970]

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[ QUOTE ]
Because I believe in what's written in the Bible. Simple as that. How or why would someone, Paul in this case, who was a staunch "hater" of Christ all of a sudden be one of his biggest supporters? Something extordinary (i.e. a miracle) would have had to happen in order for him to do an about face, no?

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Not at all. Con-men can do incredible things to ordinary, gullible people. Have you ever seen the work of Derren Brown? Religious con-men are the very best at this. History is littered with cults, and there are verifiable stories in many religions of people doing about faces. This is particularly true in the LDS faith, where proselytization has become a science, and in Scientology, where marketing geniuses apply their talents.

A person changing their beliefs overnight is common in most religions, so even if the story of Paul is true it doesn't constitute special evidence for Christianity.

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You know what, you're right...partially anyway. There are more con men, liars, & vagabonds in the religious circles than I care to count. More money grabbers, false prophets, child molesters, wolves in sheep clothing than probably any other "industry" in the world.

That's why I have said repeatedly in previous threads....It's all about a personal relationship with Jesus Christ.

Forget all of the "religious" stuff of the world that you see. You do not need rip off artists like Benny Hinn to show you the light. You don't need books written by biblical scholars. You don't need to cruise the religious websites searching for the truth of God's Word. Forget all of that. All you really need is Jesus & the Bible.