Merged (edited) General thoughts about Christianity and the bible

[Steve]

Doesn't that prove my point?

Hardly.

 

[JayUtah]

A miracle isn't a miracle unless it's a miracle.

But to connect this to a religion presumes that religions need miracles. Does a religion need miracles in order to be a proper religion?

 

[Skeptical Greg]

I person's word is worthless around here.

Only when it's worthless.

 

[Helen]

He appears to use the words facts and claims with the opposite meanings. For example he used the word claims in the title of this thread, when facts would have been the correct word, and has used the word facts to describe the unevidenced claims made in (and about) the bible throughout the thread.

I suspect that's a feature, not a bug...

That's funny.
Why do the Apostles make themselves look like bungling idiots?
You would think that a fabrication would put a LOT more shine on the apple.

(now I suppose I'll get lectures about apples. - sigh)

That is how fiction works; humans have. faults, which make them interesting. Perfection is dull. Flawed characters in a story does not mean that it is true.

 

[Olmstead]

It's also worth mentioning that there's a giant Yahweh-shaped bungling idiot in the story.

 

[Gawdzilla Sama]

I was amused to hear that Buddha had been sainted.

 

[Gulliver Foyle]

All early European translations of the bible are problematic; they have become part of our cultures, which is more or less the only reason people think the language sounds so poetic, and striking. They're not very good translations, though, the people translating them simply didn't know enough about the languages they were translating from, and, sometimes, weren't all that great at their own language either. If you find KJV compelling, it's not because it's so good, but because it's what you are accostumed to think of as  the translation. The same is true of, for instance, Karl XII's bible here in Sweden. And people in Sweden didn't understand it back then either, which of course made it seem even more impressive...

I'm continually amazed by how much traction the KJV gets in the US, especially given it was propoganda for James VI &I's view that he had a divine right to rule as an autocrat.

 

[Gulliver Foyle]

I hear you're a communist now, Rusty. How'd you get interested in that type of thing?

I hear the very worst traits of Ted were Linehan being autobiographical.

 

[JayUtah]

Miracles are miraculous. No one doubts that tautology. But I see an important difference between a miracle and something we observe but can't explain. A miracle is not simply unexplained. A miracle is declared specifically to have no possible natural explanation.

How @Rusty Tyler wants this to connect to religion seems nebulous. A skeptic sees something curious and tries to explain it. In a few exciting cases this means changing our understanding of natural principles to accommodate it. The double-slit experiment is a good example. The change we had to make in our understanding was to accept light as having the properties of both waves and particles—both matter and energy. We understand now why that has to be the case, but it was a surprise.

But a religionist might see something curious, note that it defies expectation, and just right away attribute it to some supernatural cause like a god. So in that sense you could say religion arises in order to explain miracles. A guy seemingly rising from the dead after being crucified is a pretty doggone curious thing, so why not build a religion around it by claiming God did it?

Conversely if you just start a religion that proposes a deity or other divine influence, assembles a canon of belief, and builds a worship practice around it, why not invent some miracles to give the religion an air of the divine authority it seeks? Does a religion strictly need miracles? No, not to my way of thinking. But it might improve the chances of the religion taking off. There are a bunch of ways to interpret, say, the loaves-and-fishes miracle. They all take different positions on whether the events actually happened as reported. Maybe it was just a marginally interesting case of available food going father than initially expected, and human embellishment took over and made it supernaturally effective. Or maybe it didn't happen at all and someone long after Jesus just made it up.

The question of what value a religion would be without its miracles is kind of giving the plot away.

 

[Reformed Offlian]

The butler in the drawing room with the candlestick.

I thought for sure it would be Professor Plum.

 

[Ryan O'Dine]

These are more than just book-read stories to me. I have been living it.
I shared some of my testimonies earlier. Divine encounters, healings, visions, etc.
No one believed a word of it, of course. I don't have the required peer-reviewed scientific paper s to prove anything.
I person's word is worthless around here.

Just to reiterate what Pixel42 said, it's not that we don't believe you've had these experiences, it's that you haven't given us reason to believe your interpretations over ours. In our interpretations, these experiences follow all the same rules the rest of nature follows. In fact, profound religious experiences can and have been artificially evoked by stimulating the brain in certain ways. Drugs can do the same.

If we denied the brain itself could evoke these experiences, we'd be denying the wonderful complexity we already know the brain has.

 

[Skeptical Greg]

My major cringe is when people give God credit for when someone miraculously escapes some disaster, but never mind the other however many who died.

 

[catsmate]

That seems like a GROSS misstatement.

It's not. Do some research.

 

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Only when it's worthless.

Or just godbothering.

 

[SpuriusMaximus]

My major cringe is when people give God credit for when someone miraculously escapes some disaster, but never mind the other however many who died.

Nor, indeed, to the ones who actually hauled you to a hospital and performed the emergency surgery.

 

[Tristan Chi]

I’m bored

 

[Reformed Offlian]

I’m bored

By this thread, or is that your general thought about Christianity and the Bible?

 

[arthwollipot]

Of what value is a religion that correlates with an observed reality?

Now you're getting it.

 

[Rusty Tyler]

Do you understand that it's not your word we are doubting?

It's not your reports of your experiences that we question, it's your interpretation of them. There are mundane explanations for all of them.

Who spoke to me when I was eight years old? What's your explanation?
It certainly wasn't my own train of thought. It was a total paradigm shift for me.
Rocked my world. Would I do that to myself?

In my testimony about vision like an eagle, who orchestrated the automobile
accident that brought me together with the cancer patient in need of prayer?
The vision had come weeks earlier. I almost missed the opportunity.

The man with the cane left the meeting pain-free. God healed him on the spot.
I didn't anticipate nor manufacture this. I just did what I was supposed to.
He reported the same heat I was feeling on my hands.

 

[Rusty Tyler]

But to connect this to a religion presumes that religions need miracles. Does a religion need miracles in order to be a proper religion?

What is the value of a religion if not to tap the regions unreached by human efforts alone?