Have you received an update on Sammy’s condition? I hope that he is fully recovered, please let us know how he’s doing.

Report comment to moderator

Indeed. If I were going to invent a religion, I would be inclined to tell adherents that everyone in the world is being held hostage because of a crime committed long ago. Everyone is guilty, but a sacrificial lamb died to free everyone from their guilt, and the price is not that high: just believe and ceaselessy worship the sacrificial lamb. Of course, every hostage who doesn’t pay the price burns in Hell forever and forever. So every believer has to become a salesman and saleswoman and desperately save as many hostages as they can.

As you can see here, there are no more dedicated sales people than the ones who believe this sales pitch.

Unlike Night Train, I wasn’t raised from an early age being basted constantly in this basting sauce, so I don’t spout it very well. Perhaps he can state it better than I do. But that’s the way it comes across to me.

I think Steve has done a pretty good job on desconstructing the “Bible proves the Bible is true” sales pitch, so I don’t have much to add to what he said.

I will say that the idea that existence continues after our death strikes me as completely incoherent and nonsenical. It’s another terrific sales pitch because no one ever returns to say, “I want my money back” or “I want my life I spent Bible thumping” back.

Report comment to moderator

This column is just more evidence that Christianity is a religion for women, children, and weak minded men.

#34 RN

Assorted babble about mass killing, some done on Irish, Indians, and Australian aborigines by Christians, evidently demonstrating they were not “women, children, and weak-minded men,” or at least no more so than other groups who do mass killings. I just didn’t think you were being fair to Christians. Sometimes they whine; sometimes they kill; sometimes they do good.

Though I am not sure (#35) what God’s name has to do with it.

Report comment to moderator

Completely fair. But clearly something completely extraordinary did happen two thousand years ago, and clearly it changed all of history. And many, many people have been converted as they’ve attempted to disprove the resurrection. As I’ve stated, I’m not a historian and cannot begin to prove it. But if you study it yourself, you will find that the evidence is generally seen as overwhelming. That’s enough for me. More than that is between you and God, not you and me. The stakes are high indeed.

Report comment to moderator

You state your belief as if it were proven fact, then argue that someone with another belief is proveably wrong based on your belief.

There are two reasons why the standard of proof is important:

1. Adherents of Christianity insist that the fate of everyone’s soul rests on their believing in Christ’s resurrection, while adherents of other, conflicting, religions make the opposite argument. (It’s not true that you necessarily lose nothing if you believe and are wrong, as Pascal erroneously argued. If you believe and are wrong and the Muslims are right, your soul is in serious peril.. precisely the same claim you’d make regarding them.)

Because the stakes are so high, at least according to believers in exclusion, the standard of proof must be as high as possible.

Secondly, Christ’s resurrection is a miraculous event. Pleas that it is as well attested to as Ceaser’s crossing the Rubicon or other more mundane events fail because there’s nothing extraordinary about those claims. People cross rivers every day. They don’t come back from the dead very often. So if you claim it, it’s perfectly reasonable for those who are skeptical to want more proof than they’d demand for a more ordinary claim.

Report comment to moderator

Report comment to moderator

You simply don’t know what you’re talking about.

Report comment to moderator

I find it difficult to fathom how anyone can seriously read and study the Bible and not conclude that it is the inspired Word of God. However, I Cor 2:14 helps me to understand why that might be:

But the natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; nor can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned.

When I think of what you guys share concerning spiritual issues on this blog, I often think of the words of Jesus at the end of the story of the rich man and Lazarus (Lk 16:31):

“If they do not hear Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded though one rise from the dead.”

In other words, if they won’t listen to the Word of God, even a miracle as dramatic as a resurrection will not stir their hearts.

Report comment to moderator

Interesting that (apparently) you believe I have more “stubborn belief” than you do. Unfounded, but interesting. I copied the article to read after I finish my deadline–it’s 12:30 and my workday isn’t done yet, so I have no time tonight. I subscribed to Harper’s for many years–very good magazine (or at least it was, haven’t read it in years other than an issue or two), but hardly unbiased.

“Oh, so the Muslim is proved wrong because he doesn’t agree with what you believe about Jesus.” Nope, didn’t say that. But the Muslim is proved wrong by his assertion that Jesus didn’t die and come back to life, because that is vindicated by history, and by his assertion that Muhammad is greater than Jesus, because that is denied by history. If I were an expert, and had any desire at all to discuss another religion, I could name multiple additional points, but those two are enough to rest my case without relying on the Bible.

No, I’ve never actually taken a course in logic–have you?

Report comment to moderator

An excerpt:

As Israel Finkelstein, an archaeologist at Tel Aviv University, and Neil Asher Silberman, a journalist who specializes in biblical and religious subjects, point out in their recent book, The Bible Unearthed, the patriarchal tales make frequent mention of camel caravans. When, for example, Abraham sent one of his servants to look for a wife for Abraham’s son, Isaac, Genesis 24 says that the emissary “took ten of his master’s camels and left, taking with him all kinds of good things from his master.” Yet analysis of ancient animal bones confirms that camels were not widely used for transport in the region until well after 1000 B.C. Genesis 26 tells of Isaac seeking help from a certain “Abimelech, king of the Philistines.” Yet archaeological research has confirmed that the Philistines were not a presence in the area until after 1200 B.C. The wealth of detail concerning people, goods, and cities that makes the patriarchal tales so vivid and lifelike, archaeologists discovered, were reflective of a period long after the one that Albright had pinpointed. They were reflective of the mid-first millennium, not the early second.

Report comment to moderator