Why religion isn't under the same amount of scrutiny?

[Afrobean]

Originally Posted by somethingillremember

The Daniel prophesy has A LOT of backup. If there were a prophesy that said "One day there will be a battle" then yeah, that wouldn't exactly be the greatest prophesy. But if someone prophesied "There will be a great beast that floats on the sea. None will have seen any like it before, and none thought it was destructible, yet it is made by man. But this great beast will have a defect, and when it hits a great piece of ice, it will fall under the freezing sea, and countless people riding on him will freeze and die. Stories will be told of this fall throughout the ages. People will watch it over and over again for decades and centuries afterward." If this were written in 1000 A.D., the people of that time would have a hard time figuring out what it was about, and there would surely be many different strange interpretations. But in our modern eyes, after seeing the film "Titanic" it makes a lot more sense.

You really don't understand why this train of thought is a logical fallacy?

I will link you to a wikipedia article. You will read that article. If you don't understand where the fallacy lies, then there is nothing more I can do. If you fail to understand it after reading in depth about the issue, then you are beyond help.

Read this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postdiction
Also worthy of notice because it details the logical fallacy specifically: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hindsight_bias

It would also probably be wise of you to chain off into the related articles such as the articles for "Confirmation bias" or "Shoehorning".

Er, yeah. I'm restarted sometimes. I was thinking about the gospels being written about the time before Jesus' death, not actually being written before them :P.

Eh?

"Restarted"?

Do you mean the Old Testament? What the Jews know as Tanakh? You know, that stuff was old even when Jesus got it. He had nothing to do with that stuff, and the stuff he did affect was only written long after he was already dead.

Erm, again, I was being kind of stupid. I meant that from my perspective, it seems like there have been many times where God has helped me in my life. When I prayed to him it seemed like he helped me understand the gospel (from my point of view, I mean). And I linked two things that are not linked. Sorry about that, you're right, my life does not show Jesus' death as literal. However I do have other backup for this.

And there's no way that your prayer could have been self fulfilling prophecy? You wanted something to happen, so you worked harder at achieving it? It is absurd to say that you needed, asked for, and received divine assistance in understanding a piece of literature. Do you truly believe that it is impossible for you to have simply used your brain to understand the material?

Jesus' death was a historical event. Jesus was written of by a number of witnesses, and although you may say it was only four, Luke was not an eyewitness, but put together a history from eyewitnesses, who also proclaimed that they had seen Jesus live again. Jesus' death and resurrection has to have been literal, as it truly shows that he is the son of God, to have risen on his own. Like I said before, Christianity would fall apart if Jesus never died and rose again.

You're still clinging to that circular reasoning. You're saying that it has to be true, because if it's not true, then Christianity is based on a lie. Why is it impossible to think that the stories of Jesus's life and death might have been exaggerated or partially (or entirely) fabricated in the time between his death and the time people began writing about him?

In addition, while I am willing to accept eyewitness accounts of the man living when the source is the bible, I am not willing to accept eyewitness accounts of unbelievable feats. You're using the same argument that the Bible is true because it says it is.

1 John 1 says (not John 1)
"That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked at and our hands have touched—this we proclaim concerning the Word of life. The life appeared; we have seen it and testify to it, and we proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and has appeared to us. We proclaim to you what we have seen and heard, so that you also may have fellowship with us. And our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son, Jesus Christ."

John was an eyewitness. He had seen these things himself, and was very strongly opinionated about it. In fact, Christian Nostics did arise in around 200 A.D. that said that Jesus never really died out of the belief that a God could not die, and churches had to combat that view.

This is all irrelevant. If someone claims eyewitness of something fantastic having occurred, that alone cannot be used as evidence to its proof. There needs to be corroborating evidence suggesting that the eyewitness testimony is accurate.

I never said that this life doesn't matter (I also might be reading what you said wrong, so sorry if I am). In fact, I believe that this life matters a whole lot, and I have never heard Christians say that this life doesn't matter, and doing good things is very important. The point is that good things don't need to be done to achieve salvation. Is that what you mean? Or did you mean something else? Unless you mean being successful in this life is not important, in which case I don't think that it is.

I never said that you did think this way, but that is why it is a dangerous stance. There are those who DO believe that this life is meaningless. You may have chosen to see a worthwhile purpose in it, but not everyone who shares your ideas of sin and morality do.

What do you mean by "they"?

I was referring to the group of people who share a similar view of sin and morality as you identified. If a person has done terrible things and believes they will go to Hell when they die, and their only reason for behaving morally was to avoid Hell, why would they attempt to behave in a moral manner for the rest of their life?

First of all, although Jesus did say many things along the lines of "Do to others as you would have them do to you" (Luke 6:31) he also said many things like "I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father (God) except through me." (John 14:6) and earlier in that same passage " In my Father's house are many rooms; if it were not so, I would have told you. I am going there to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am. You know the way to the place where I am going." (John 14:2-4) and " Whoever acknowledges me before men, I will also acknowledge him before my Father in heaven. But whoever disowns me before men, I will disown him before my Father in heaven." (Matthew 10:32-33). I mean, if Jesus isn't really God and didn't really die on the cross, then he is one of the most arrogant people who ever lived.

Yeah, or maybe the quotations you are making are translations from Latin to English of "eyewitness accounts" written decades or more after he was already dead. Do you truthfully believe that every word the Bible says that Jesus said came out of Jesus's mouth?

Or totally crazy

This is also possible. Where do you think Jesus would be if he were born today?

He'd be in a mental hospital, at least as long as he proclaimed some of the fantastic things the writings written long after he was dead claimed.

and I don't think someone that crazy could come up with teachings that last thousands of years.

This is not a legitimate logical argument. The principles he taught were, as I already said, the very same principles that basis morality is built on. He could have been completely insane, but he's teaching a TIMELESS MESSAGE of morality, that story is going to live on. After all, look at other stories, some of which are older than Jesus's. The stories of Heracles, Odysseus, Perseus, Morpheus, Jason and the Argonauts. They tell timeless stories, their stories live on. It doesn't mean that the protagonist in the story is sane, intelligent, or shares the "right" theological belief. It just means that it's a good story worth being recalled for the ages.

He made references to his own death and resurrection, like in Matthew 20:17 where it says "Now as Jesus was going up to Jerusalem, he took the twelve disciples aside and said to them, 'We are going up to Jerusalem, and the Son of Man will be betrayed to the chief priests and the teachers of the law. They will condemn him to death and will turn him over to the Gentiles to be mocked and flogged and crucified. On the third day he will be raised to life!' " Jesus said a bunch of crazy stuff like that.

This easily could have been added to the story when it was finally written down. Embellishment.

Alternatively, he could have been "foretelling" of a resurrection his whole life, then when the first writings were made of the story of his death, the writer might have added the bit about resurrection to really sell the divinity angle.

Remember, this was a book written by men a long time after he was dead. They could have and most likely did change and add or remove anything they felt like to make the story more interesting or more epic or more divine.

In my view, I am a sinner, I am beyond help, and I do need God to change me. Again, I'm not trying to force you to believe this, but it is my view that God [i]will[\I] help me throughout my life, and that I can pray to him and ask for his help. Jesus said to his disciples "Pray that you will not fall into temptation."

Praying means nothing when the ball is in your court. "Pray that you will not fall into temptation." That's on you. If you give in to immoral temptation, that's because you failed, not because you didn't get enough help from your divine creator who, despite being claimed as allpowerful, refuses to overtly help anyone.

And what about free will? If you pray to overcome temptation and you believe God helped you in this, isn't that just admitting that you believe yourself to be God's puppet and have to bend to his will rather than being free?

Ephesians 6:18 says "And pray in the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests. Also, Jesus said "Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light." This seems to imply that Jesus will, in fact, help us in our lives.

Uh... yeah. When he was alive and of this world, I'm sure he'd do a bunch for everyone he could. If this God exists and if Jesus truly is God, he has made it plainly clear that he's not doing humanity any favors at this point.

I gotta go, so I can't say much more, but it says in the bible that Christians will undergo suffering, and that it is part of the Christian life. And how do you know that God doesn't help people all the time, and that it would be much, much worse without his help?

What could be worse? Everyone dying? Wouldn't Christians see that as a good thing? Isn't that one of the primary good things about the End of Days?

Yeah, man, let's just blow up the world then so we can all just be with God and everything can be amazing.

Really, I don't understand it. If you truly believe in the afterlife as is defined by Christian dogma, why would you want to live? Why would you want anyone to live? We should all just kill each other right now and end the world. **** it, drop a couple nuclear bombs and kill everyone. If Heaven exists and it's so ****ing great, what the **** are we doing standing around here with our fingers up our butts? Let's get dead so we can have immortal life at God's side.

ps hi dev there's probably some things id like to comment on in your post but i honestly dont feel like assing myself into putting anything together