Merged (edited) General thoughts about Christianity and the bible

[JayUtah]

That's a terrible thing to say about @JayUtah

Ant jokes and cheap shots. The last resort of the desperate. Did that give you a warm-fuzzy?

 

[The Great Zaganza]

That's a terrible thing to say about @JayUtah

case in point

 

[Pixel42]

Rusty Tyler said:
Why would you conclude that a supernatural event would not be shared in writing?

Because someone shared their experience with the world.
And they weren't alone.

It's an epidemic. - LOL

People failing to recognise and allow for cognitive biases and similar sources of error, and consequently reaching false conclusions based on unreliable anecdotal evidence, is certainly an epidemic, yes. Those who understand how easily such sources of error can fool people are very much in the minority. Unfortunately for your erroneous arguments, you are posting on a forum which is chock full of 'em.

 

[Puppycow]

As you can probably tell, I'm a little annoyed and dispirited at the state of the world. And especially I'm depressed that people who are capable of posting things like "evidentiary evidence" have to be taken seriously.

Who said they have to be taken seriously?

 

[malbui]

My uncle’s church used to do so many healings like that that the Tories seized the opportunity to close the local hospital.

 

[Puppycow]

The next Sunday morning the healed man testified that he had been healed by God, and he pointed to me as the one who had prayed for him.

A cynic or a skeptic might wonder whether this man secretly worked in concert with the "healer".

 

[Helen]

I quite like the "evidentiary evidence", tautologies are often called "tårta på tårta" in Swedish, so cake on cake, and I like cake. In threads like this, you have to take your amusement where you can.

 

[P.J. Denyer]

One of the oldest healing tricks.

Derren Brown demonstrated such a 'healing' on one occasion I seem to recall.

 

[arthwollipot]

It would be dishonest to claim that all healing stories are false.
I witnessed a healing myself.

So did I. Since you love stories, here's mine.

It was at one of those revivals. You know the ones. A visiting pastor was rousing the rabble, as they do, and he called for people to come forward for healing. This was one of those churches where the guy up front prays for people and they fall over, you know the ones?

Anyway, one person came up to the front, being pushed in a wheelchair. The pastor did his thing, and they got up out of their wheelchair and walked! A miracle?

Not so fast.

I didn't know this person in the wheelchair. They were a complete stranger to me. I didn't know what their ailment was for which they required a wheelchair. I didn't know anything about them. Furthermore, most wheelchair users, if they have legs at all, can stand and walk a certain amount regardless. I have since learned that some travelling pastors (and their crew) actually bring wheelchairs with them and offer them to the elderly or people who exhibit difficulty walking or who use a mobility aid like a cane. Such people of course could walk - the wheelchair is a courtesy. After the "healing" I never saw them again. I never found out whether they went back to the wheelchair or they danced away like Fred Astaire.

So this person - whom I repeat, I did not know - stood up out of a wheelchair and took a few steps. Is that really all that miraculous?

 

[arthwollipot]

One of the oldest healing tricks.

Have you seen it demonstrated? It can be pretty convincing, unless you know the trick. Like the Balducci Levitation.

 

[Darat]

There are few things funnier than people trying to interpret a series of manuscripts cherry-picked by various groups to try to give legitimacy to their religion.

Rusty, my apologies, I haven't been reading the thread. What's your opinion on the Apocrypha? And please specify which apocrypha and your individual take on them.

Thanks

Cost too much to print so they could be dropped.

 

[Darat]

That would be your reaction.
Probably the minority position.

The Bible is a collection of religious texts that is central to Christianity o
r Judaism,and esteemed in other Abrahamic religions such as Islam. Bibles are anthologies
with varying canonical texts across traditions.

No - the Jews and Christians share some of the pre-Jesus-times texts, the Jews knew that Jesus couldn't be the messiah and knew that he was simply a very naughty boy so didn't need to lie about that and create new "teachings".

 

[Darat]

Derren Brown demonstrated such a 'healing' on one occasion I seem to recall.

There's a good short (8 mins) video that demonstrates the trick and the con. He references DB a few times.

 

[The Atheist]

Cost too much to print so they could be dropped.

Yeah, but some of the stuff they left out is pure gold!

 

[Gulliver Foyle]

Precisely. Whoever wrote the gospels, even the older sections were not eyewitnesses, never mind the copying of each others' homework, and additions that were being added into the 5th century, for example the "whoever is without sin throw the first stone.... splat....Mother how many times do I have to tell you?!" story is a 5th century addition. It's only by the 5th century that the canon was set, we could have ended up with a lot of other books that the early Christians accepted as gospel as the official gospels. And Revelation only just made it into the canon, which we should be grateful for as so many good horror books and movies have come from that book. Plus then you have the dropping of some of the books by the protestant sects - for very sound theological reasons: dropping the books made the bible cheaper to print. As with all crime syndicates - follow the money.

Plus a lot of the books dropped disagreed with protestantism's sola fide philosophy.

 

[Mojo]

Doesn't that assume that there is nothing outside of nature?
Where's the proof?

You have it backwards. Where's the proof that things "outside of nature" exist?

 

[Mojo]

There are genealogies provided. Scoff if you care to.

JRR Tolkien's Middle-earth gets a complete genealogy

Alison Flood: Tolkien's densely populated fictional world is now the subject of a minutely-detailed 'family tree project'

www.theguardian.com

 

[Mojo]

I'm torn.
Part of me is sympathetic to the evolutionary view and another part rejects it.

If Adam was not the first man, then what original sin did Jesus pay the penalty for?

And why are we paying for the sin of Eve? - LOL

And why are we begging the question?

 

[Pixel42]

I don't think there's any reason to impugn the honesty of either the OP or the person who was healed in this particular story. Someone who goes to the kind of church where healings are a regular thing, i.e. who was predisposed to believe such things are possible, had a minor injury which was causing him pain. He was prayed for at the next service and got the normal rush of endorphins which produced the perceived improvement it usually does. A week later his injury had fully healed, as would be expected.

Many believers, when their stories are doubted, become irate because their honesty appears to be being impugned. As far as they're concerned there are only two possible explanations for what happened:

1. It was a miracle
2. It was deliberate fraud

So if you don't unquestioningly accept (1) you must be claiming (2) i.e. accusing them of deliberate fraud.

By far the most likely explanation, however, is almost always

3. Those involved are honestly mistaken.

It is extremely easy to fool yourself into believing something you want to be true. Far easier than most people know or understand. There's no more reason for sceptics to jump to conclusion (2) than there is for believers to jump to conclusion (1).

 

[Carrot Flower King]

Derren Brown demonstrated such a 'healing' on one occasion I seem to recall.

I've seen one a bit like that...

When I was a nursing assistant on a CAMHS in-patient unit we had a lad admitted (I'll call him "R"), who was on crutches and couldn't fully walk, with no obvious physical cause (he'd been assessed by local orthopods and neuro).

We took the bairns away camping for a weekend. My staff nurse colleague, P, said to R on arrival, "And you can leave those crutches in the mini-bus for the rest of the weekend!" and locked the crutches in the bus. R spent the rest of the weekend walking, running and generally messing around with everyone else and never went back to the crutches.

Was P a miracle worker?

Naaaaah, he just successfully challenged someone who turned out to have a conversion state. We soon got to the bottom of some interesting family dynamics which lay behind this, resolving such prevented any relapse.

Simple stories rarely stack up and further medical/psychological knowledge is necessary.