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The existence of Jesus
The evidence of the actual and very real-life existence of Jesus is so overwhelming as to make it uterally impossibe for any rational person to honestly conclude otherwise! The rest of the story, however, (about His divinity, resurrection, red-underlined words, etc.) should not necessarily be believed just because "it says so right here in the Bible." (What else would one expect a book which claims to be the "infallable Word of God" to proclaim?) This would be, I think, a regretable mistake. "Believe it all, or believe none of it!" would also be an equally unreasonable statement! There are abundant examples in the Bible where we all once believed what the Bible said, (still says) and yet, today, we do not!
Please don't take this in an offensive nature; none of that is intended.
Over all, I thought you did an extremely admiral job in addressing your original and leading topic. Maybe, you should have left it there!?
posted by
GEPRUITT
on
February 13, 2008
at
5:39 PM
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Re: So the question to ask is not "What Do You KNow?"
Cordwainer, both questions are valid. For example, I could ask you, 'What do you know about epistemology?', a perfectly good question. At this moment, I don't know what you know. Once you tell me, if you do, I know more that I do now, and that 'knowing' increases my knowledge. But that is also open to revision at any time, if I discover later that you don't really know what you asserted you did.
And none of this is based on 'faith' in the way we have been using it here, i.e. the belief in a supernatural being. The belief that I can actually know things is an entirely different matter! Anyway, the difference between 'faith' and 'knowledge' is one that has been dealt with extensively in philosophy, and goes back at least to Plato, for example in the Theaetetus...
And finally, to bring this discussion to an end, and as Ariala understands by now, I think, that 'DENYING THE EXISTENCE OF CHRIST IS LIKE DENYING THE CONCENTRATION CAMPS' is just WRONG...
posted by
Nautikos
on
February 13, 2008
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6:25 AM
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very thought provoking
*raven*
posted by
polarcontradict
on
February 13, 2008
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6:06 AM
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RedStatesMan
As others here will tell you, I
never ridicule anyone's faith in in God or the divinity of Jesus. What I
do ridicule is their desire to do the impossible: to muster
rational,
natural evidence for the correctness of their faith in what is essentially
supernatural. There is no such thing as
correct or
incorrect faith. The very notion of 'correctness' belongs to the realm of
knowledge...
posted by
Nautikos
on
February 13, 2008
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6:01 AM
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So the question to ask is not "What Do You KNow?"
But "Why Do You Believe What You Believe?"
posted by
cordwainer
on
February 12, 2008
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10:08 PM
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There can be no knowledge unless
it is first presupposed by faith that knowing is possible. Therefore at the foundation of all knowledge is a faith held bias. Knowledge is never made up as a body of "facts" as opposed to faith made up of a body of "beliefs" There is no knowledge possible without apriori belief.
posted by
cordwainer
on
February 12, 2008
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10:04 PM
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Perfect Post!
My Mom and Dad are 83 years old. My Mom is in a nursing home and my Dad is in the hospital. My Dad is a Marine, World War II. He fought the Japanese in the South Pacific. Iwo Jima, Guadal Canal, Okinawa, etc. I grew up with what I call "Depression Values". My Mom and Dad did not only grow up during the Depression but also WWII. My Dad fought for this nation against the Japanese and the Hitler regime's desired takeover of the world. Your post was excellent because it has displayed the truth of what is going on in this nation. You see it here on Blogit everyday.
I am ridiculed for my beliefs in God and Jesus Christ. So be it. I know what the outcome will be and the devil will not win no matter how hard he tries to rule this world. Your post was excellent! Keep up your good work as you have done on here for many years! Thanks!
posted by
RedStatesMan
on
February 12, 2008
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7:20 PM
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Nautikos, I don't believe it because I'm not Muslim and it wasn't recorded
in the inspired Word of God, the Bible...whew, no warm milk for me tonight LOL
posted by
Ariala
on
February 12, 2008
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6:07 PM
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Ariala
You know of Muhammad's famous Night Journey into Heaven, right? On a white mule, the
buraq, that had wings on its butt? I don't know whether you also know he met Abraham, Moses and Jesus in Heaven. Well, he did! Jesus looked like he had just come out of a bath! He (M.) led everyone in prayers, they drank milk, (they had also been offered wine, apparently, but M. didn't want to ride drunk, I guess, smart guy) and a reasonably good time was had by all. You believe that, don't you? And why? And if not, why not?
posted by
Nautikos
on
February 12, 2008
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4:40 PM
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Nautikos, I reread my statement about Columbus and I meant America.
not the world LOL
I didn't mean to offend concerning the comparison, but the point I was making in this wasn't so much the resurrection as it was the fact that Jesus lived and was a real person. I ran across some stuff online this morning and in the past that deny He even existed. Just as you are sensitive to the concentration camp issue (and I am too, by the way, as I mentioned in this piece...I thought I was taking their defense and if I didn't come out that way, it sure wasn't my intention!) I am sensitive to the continuation of mockery concerning the "myth" that Jesus existed. Historical documents point to a very real person and there were hundreds who witnessed His miracles and the nonsense you refer to as the resurrection. I realize many people aren't happy unless all things are explained "rationally," but God is beyond human logic and there are some things that have occurred that you and others may not believe because they were "supernatural," "nonsense," "fables," "myth", etc. This is where we part systems. I do use faith to believe God exists and that God can create the world in seven literal days and that if Jesus wants to resurrect from the dead, God and Jesus are powerful enough to do it.
Back to the point. I simply wish so-called "rational" people wouldn't be so quick to dismiss Jesus as a literal person. You may believe He was, and that's great, but many people don't. They throw out the baby and the bathwater. One can't help but wonder why? I think because it calls them to accountability and the possibility that maybe, just maybe, there IS a God and Jesus was who He said He was...there were hundreds of accounts, but people deny that as well.
In the end, we agree to disagree and move on.
posted by
Ariala
on
February 12, 2008
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2:29 PM
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Sorry, Ariala, no gold star yet!
Just in passing,
Columbus
didn’t discover the ‘world’, but merely the
New
World
, and even that not really, but I’ll get back to that.
In the most general sense, our understanding of history is based on knowledge, however incomplete, not faith. Our understanding of events is always and necessarily partial; nobody ever has a complete understanding of any event! In fact ‘complete’ here has no meaning, because nobody knows what it could possibly look like. (The very ‘same’ event looks different to you than it does to me!)
Further, our understanding of history is always open to revision, at least in principle, a characteristic of knowledge. To use your own example of Columbus, we now know that the New World was discovered much earlier, by the Norsemen, and prior to that by those who migrated there from Asia. None of us were there, (at least I wasn’t, I don’t know about you, of course, lol), but we have the kind of evidence that is commonly accepted as such by reasonable and knowledgeable people.
But there is no rational proof for the resurrection. (That some claim to have witnessed it is no proof at all. It’s a well-known phenomenon that people often claim to have witnessed all kinds of nonsense.) ‘Supernatural’ events are either explained rationally, and thereby cease to be supernatural, or they’re not, in which case you can believe them if you so choose, but you risk ridicule if you treat them as items of knowledge.
On the other hand, the evidence for the concentration camps is so overwhelming that I refuse to even begin to offer any here. In fact, while I am extremely broad-minded and tolerant of people’s views, no matter how abstruse, I find questioning of those events offensive; and of course I am not saying that you did. (And, btw, I am not Jewish.)
Again, as I have said before, the evidence that Jesus lived and preached is strong, and that is not the issue here. What is the issue is your (implied) statement that the evidence for Jesus’ resurrection is as compelling as the evidence for the concentration camps! Logically, that’s almost like saying ‘if you ‘believe’ in the concentration camps, you need to ‘believe’ in the resurrection’.
I don’t care what people believe. As far as I am concerned, people can believe in the tooth fairy. It’s when they claim that their faith in the tooth fairy is based on the same kind of rational evidence as my necessarily incomplete understanding of historical events that I say ‘whoa’. I still wouldn’t have said anything, if you hadn’t brought in the concentration camps, a somewhat touchy subject with me...
posted by
Nautikos
on
February 12, 2008
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1:50 PM
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I'm sorry, the course was called Bible as Literature, but it showed all
the historical accounts, too.
posted by
Ariala
on
February 12, 2008
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1:22 PM
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thoughtfulness, exactly...it is a historical document. In college I took a
course taught by a Jewish lady (secular Jew) called the Bible in History...to deny the history and call it all a fable is the sign of someone in major denial of the facts...
posted by
Ariala
on
February 12, 2008
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1:21 PM
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Excellent post
I have read about Jewish records of Jesus also. I believe they just don't share the belief that he was the son of God, just a prophet. Many don't realize the bible is also an account or history of the different people claiming to be prophets at that time. To believe it or not is a different matter. The records were handed down and preserved. Thanks for laying it out boldly.
posted by
thoughtfulness
on
February 12, 2008
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12:41 PM
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Nautikos, much of our history is based on faith and not knowledge because
none of us were there when Columbus discovered the world, or when certain events of history occurred. When it comes to items related to Jesus and the Bible, people are quick to say it didn't happen or it requires faith (the latter I agree with), but the same is true with SO MUCH of history...we have records and accounts, same with secular history and religious history. People who want to discount certain subjects do, no matter the evidence or "proof" that exists based on bias.
posted by
Ariala
on
February 12, 2008
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11:41 AM
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Ariala
Sorry, I totally disagree! There is very little disagreement on the
existence of Jesus (or Joshua). As for the
resurrection, it's strictly a matter of
faith, there
is no knowledge of it! On the other hand, the concentration camps are a matter of
knowledge...there is
proof - and to equate the 'evidence' for these two 'events' is to fundamentally misunderstand the difference between
faith and
knowledge...
posted by
Nautikos
on
February 12, 2008
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10:53 AM
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Things like this sadden me.
The human tendency to try to make the world fit their mold is just sad.
posted by
Yeshuan
on
February 12, 2008
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6:18 AM
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There will always be those who believe only what they see with their own
eyes; there will always be those who love to disillusion and disappoint just for the fun of it; there will always be those that say Jesus existed but was just a normal man; but for all of those people there will always be those that believe no matter what and these people's lives will always be blessed; thank you for this excellent and well written post
posted by
mariaki
on
February 12, 2008
at
5:07 AM
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