Gulliver Foyle
Penultimate Amazing
So are you, but you are not welcome to your own facts. And the fact is as I stated, except in cases where the teller is outright lying.
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Why Are the Majority of Those in Hell the Poor and Oppressed Masses?
- Thread starter Emre_1974tr
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Gulliver Foyle
Penultimate Amazing
Nothing you wrote refutes Darat's point.
Rusty Tyler
Graduate Poster
We both have biases here.
This is how I break it down.
Three parts: body, soul and spirit.
The body is the physical you.
The spirit is your body when you leave your physical body.
Your soul is your mind and your identity as a human being.
Our brain is like an organic computer hard drive.
The mind (soul) is the contents of that hard drive. (the brain)
When you leave your body, your soul and your spirit are still there.
Is there evidence for this. No. Other than NDEs.
1 Thessalonians 5:23 NIV
May God himself, the God of peace, sanctify you through and through.
May your whole spirit, soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Rusty Tyler
Graduate Poster
I'm not welcome to my own facts? - LOL
Are you the Fact Police?
There are opinions on all sides.
Sounds like a superiority complex if you ASSUME your facts are better than others.
Rusty Tyler
Graduate Poster
How's this?
Matthew 25:46 Young's Literal Translation
And these shall go away to punishment age-during, but the righteous to life age-during.'
COMPARE
Matthew 25:46 NIV
“Then they will go away to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life.”
Thermal
August Member
Hey, @Rusty Tyler, welcome to the forum!
As you probably noticed, many posters here are not overly concerned with alternative translations of some stories that don't seem to pack a lot of historically accurate wallop. What works Constantine cherry picked for his collection is... not real convincing to many here. The first question to be settled is "why take any of this seriously?" That's a tough one on its own. We know *why* religion took such a strong hold back in the day; it made sense of the universe and kept the plebes under control and all that, but we've gone on to make more sense of a lot of it and have learned to manage ourselves, +/-.
What would you consider a strong argument to convince a bunch of skeptics to put their faith in this collection of stories and letters, and allow it to guide their lives?
As you probably noticed, many posters here are not overly concerned with alternative translations of some stories that don't seem to pack a lot of historically accurate wallop. What works Constantine cherry picked for his collection is... not real convincing to many here. The first question to be settled is "why take any of this seriously?" That's a tough one on its own. We know *why* religion took such a strong hold back in the day; it made sense of the universe and kept the plebes under control and all that, but we've gone on to make more sense of a lot of it and have learned to manage ourselves, +/-.
What would you consider a strong argument to convince a bunch of skeptics to put their faith in this collection of stories and letters, and allow it to guide their lives?
Steve
Penultimate Amazing
Provide us with some facts then, and we assess them without any assumptions.
Start with what your goal is here. Do you, perhaps, intend to convince us of something specific that you view as a fact?
Carrot Flower King
Janitor of Lunacy
Seriously, are we being asked to take any one of the very large number of translations of the bible as evidence of anything?
Really?
This is pretty weak...
Really?
This is pretty weak...
JayUtah
Penultimate Amazing
Not really. Your critics are responding according to what can be known from evidence. What you're proposing as evidence amounts instead to circular reasoning.
That's fine, but you're unprepared to defend these claims with sound logic and reliable evidence. It matters because you're in a skeptics forum. Having come here voluntarily, you must certainly be aware that affirmative claims incur a burden of proof.
We know from evidence that this exists and has certain observable qualities that give rise to predictive theories.
What evidence do you have that these things exist and behave this way? You answer:
But NDEs are not evidence of the existence of a soul or the properties you purport it to have. This is where your reasoning becomes circular. You are attributing the phenomenon of NDE to a soul. And you have defined the soul as having the properties necessary to result in your interpretation of NDEs. Because you are doing this, you can't use one proposition as proof of the other.
It's likely that your belief in a soul arises from your chosen religion. I say this because it's simply rare for a person to start with a well-developed concept of a soul and then stumble upon a religion that just so happens to teach it. Typically one starts with a religion and then adopts its particular formulation of the supernatural. When belief arises a priori of the examination of evidence, it's almost certain that confirmation bias will guide the interpretation of the evidence. You look at NDEs and conclude that they are proof of your pre-existing belief in spirits. But there is no evidentiary reason to posture that as the preferred explanation. As explained previously, parsimony provides a much simpler explanation for NDEs that relies only on what can be independently and objectively observed. That's how bias is avoided.
Thermal
August Member
I like to toss the Nag Hammadi collection in there, too. Just because they didn't work for Constantine shouldn't have any impact on their veracity today.
JayUtah
Penultimate Amazing
I'm willing to consider the Bible as evidence of what Christians believe and teach, and to a certain extent on how Christianity arose. And insofar as Bible translation affects that meaning, I'm willing to entertain and participate in debates about that.
But obviously I'm not going to accept the Bible as evidence of physical reality. We know what the Bible is and where it came from. Accepting it as an ultimate authority on such things as, say, the physical behavior of the world is tantamount to premising one's argument on a religion's untestable truth claims.
Pixel42
Schrödinger's cat
It's a pretty famous quote.
Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but... - Quote
Daniel Patrick Moynihan Quote - Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts. - AllAuthor
Rusty Tyler
Graduate Poster
That's a great question Thanks.
And thanks for the welcome.
I wouldn't ask anyone to put their faith in a book alone.
Faith should be put in the author, not the book.
The book has a lot of problems, since it is man-made.
And faith means accepting something, or someone,
even though you don't have all the answers.
If one puts their trust in God, He will answer.
Ultimately the "guidance" comes from the person, not the book alone.
Granted, the book is usually helpful, but the relationship is key.
Testimonies say that the book became alive once the reader surrendered to the author.
Have you heard the stories coming out of Iran? Jesus is appearing to Muslims in their dreams.
Rusty Tyler
Graduate Poster
Rusty Tyler said:
Is there evidence for this. No. Other than NDEs.
You either believe it, or you don't.
Do you actually believe things for which there is ample evidence?
Is there evidence for this. No. Other than NDEs.
There is no evidence that would satisfy you.
You either believe it, or you don't.
Do you actually believe things for which there is ample evidence?
Rusty Tyler
Graduate Poster
Thanks.
Does that make it true?
It seems that those here prefer to go with the "majority' opinion.
Carrot Flower King
Janitor of Lunacy
I'm not even sure of that, given the vastly different claims made by varying flavours of christianity and even within the ostensibly same flavour - f'rinstance, Margaret Thatcher claimed she was heavily influenced by her Methodist upbringing, while I, also brought up a Methodist, recognised very little of her views as Methodist and reached some very different social and political conclusions inspired by said upbringing.
JayUtah
Penultimate Amazing
I have explained why the evidence you have provided is unsatisfactory. You can either address that explanation or provide better evidence. Imagining how I would respond to evidence you haven't provided is dishonest.
I don't believe that NDEs are evidence of the existence of a soul or an afterlife for that soul. I have explained why that proffer is unconvincing. You seem unable to provide anything beyond circular reasoning and "Just trust us." Hence I reject the claim on appropriately reasoned grounds.
I believe in things for which there is evidence. However, not everything put forward as evidence actually is. As I explained, what you consider evidence is actually more properly seen as circular logic. One of the most common errors in your kind of advocacy is misunderstanding the difference between attribution and evidence. If you attribute an observation to a cause, without independent evidence of the existence of the cause, your reasoning is purely circular. The observation per se is not evidence of a hypothesis floated to explain the observation.
Carrot Flower King
Janitor of Lunacy
Scientific standards of evidence are well known and well defined: most of us here have scientific or engineering training, education and qualifications.
So, if I may make so bold as to speak for the not-so-silent majority here, yes, we accept things for which there is ample evidence as the best current explanation of whatever, until some better evidence comes along to supplant that.
JayUtah
Penultimate Amazing
People are not holding to one explanation merely because it is popular. They are holding to it because it is the one best supported by evidence and sound reasoning. If that explanation is also popular, then it may be accurate to say it's popular because it's the best supported by evidence and reason.
JayUtah
Penultimate Amazing
That is the best explanation of the position of scientific skepticism. It's common to dismiss criticism for supernatural claims according to the belief that the critic is predisposed not to accept anything classified as supernatural. Far from it. If testable, objective evidence arises in favor of some claim once thought to be supernatural, the claim then becomes natural and of new and vigorous interest.
In the unrelated field of psychic phenomena, just think what frontiers of neuroscience would be opened if reliable evidence of those phenomena could be proven to be real. There would be a vast surge of research funding and mainstream scientists would be all over it as a new and promising area of research. Ditto the existence of a soul. If testable, objective evidence of a soul could be found, there would be untold funding in physics attempting to characterize and exploit this new regime of reality. The reason scientists remain skeptical of such phenomena is not that they are institutionally afraid of them but because there is no evident reason to pursue them.