Though, I guess a meaningless death is scarier than death, and nearly all religions are attempts to form meaning in life when there's no empirically obvious meaning.
Everything else follows from that, at least in Christianity.
I suppose I believe in "other planes of existence" (is this supposed to be Heaven and Hell or something?), but those are contingent upon the truth of Jesus' suffering, death and resurrection. I guess I'd say I think we already exist in another "plane" which is immaterial and inaccessible in this life, but is nonetheless real.
I suppose I also "believe in a deity," but not with the connotations you seem to be suggesting. God is not some component of existence or reality or the universe, independent of other things; He is the only source of what it means to exist. I would say I don't even believe that God exists, but that He is below or outside of existence, as He caused everything else to exist that exists. If someone believes in God as a sort of Santa Claus or Jinn granting wishes, then no, I don't believe in that kind of "deity" either. That's just silly nonsense.
Isn't that a teaching of Jesus?
> 9 “Which of you, if your son asks for bread, will give him a stone? 10 Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a snake? 11 If you, then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him! (Matthew 7:9-11)
> He replied, "Because you have so little faith. Truly I tell you, if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, 'Move from here to there,' and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you." (Matthew 17:20)
So why don't you believe in that?
I'm an atheist and can certainly see why it'd be silly to think that if you just pray hard enough god will grant your desire, but that's what the bible teaches. Otherwise, what's even the point of prayer?
And before you say "Oh, it was metaphorical" I'd point out the Lord's prayer where Jesus specifically prays for food. (Give us this day our daily bread). What is more good than for god to give a starving person food? Yet plenty of Christians starve, is it because they didn't believe enough?
Also, I won't concede that things in the Bible are not often rhetorical or metaphorical when they in fact are. The Gospels themselves are full of the disciples having no friggin clue what Jesus is talking about, and asking him to "speak plainly." I think for maybe a child who can only interpret things literally, the concept of God as wish-granter might make sense.
Also, your own citation conditions the grant on "good" gifts. What are good gifts in God's eyes?
Ultimately, this is a matter of faith whether you believe this or not. But I only ask that you reconsider your juvenile straw-man of what we believe.
Didn't Jesus split the loaves and the fish to feed thousands? Didn't Jesus turn water into wine? Or were those also metaphors? Why was manna in the desert literal while Jesus miracles metaphors?
The only reason you are saying "Oh, those were just metaphors" is because believing them literally is crazy. You have to insert meaning into Jesus's words because otherwise what he's told you is obviously false (and Jesus can't say something false, right?).
And yet the bible is filled with miracles both in the old and new testament. Miracles that directly contradict the notion that "Oh, they were speaking metaphorically when they said god would do miracles!"
Ultimately, this is a matter of reality whether you accept it or not. I only ask that you reconsider your juvenile beliefs.
Jesus didn't describe the miracle of the loaves and fishes, he was described as having performed it. Even if one accepts the traditional authorship of the Gospels (which even modern Christian scholarship doesn't consistently), Christ isn't the traditional author, just the subject (a small percentage of each of the Gospels is words attributed by the author of the gospel to Christ, but that's not the description of any miracles, though it's often the takeaway message associated with a described miracle.)
> And yet the bible is filled with miracles both in the old and new testament. Miracles that directly contradict the notion that "Oh, they were speaking metaphorically when they said god would do miracles!"
This is really only a contradiction if you assume that nothing in Bible can itself be metaphorical.
> This is really only a contradiction if you assume that nothing in Bible can itself be metaphorical.
Christianity has this interesting trick where their sacred texts are metaphorical whenever they say something they don't like or impossible. What good is the bible if it's all metaphors yet nobody agrees on which parts are metaphors?
I said that the simplistic Jinn-granting-wishes interpretation of God is silly and is not what I believe.
There is no actual contradiction.
If you do, that's a "Jinn-granting-wishes interpretation of God". If you don't, why don't you? Given the scripture references I gave you (and there are plenty of others), NT and OT are all about performing magic based on spell casters saying the right magic words the right way.
Of course, in modern times there are plenty of examples of failed Jutsus. (Not enough faith! Not in God's plan!) And I'd contend that all the examples of successful spell incantations are no more convincing than a wiccan's spells. The success rate of Buddhism has curing cancer will exactly mirror the success rate of Christianity or the Roman parathion interfering with humanity.
And yes, Christ told us to ask for the things we need, including material things.
Other reasons for prayer: thanking God; glorifying God; offering things to God, like our happiness or our good works but also our misery and our flaws. Contemplation; meditation; or just being silent and inviting Him to do the talking.
The teachings of Jesus are a collection of stories from ~2000 years ago. That Jesus is/was divine is something which there is very little evidence for. But even if he was, his teaching are a collection of stories from 2000 years ago.
There is no evidence for the divinity of Jesus. These are simply stories from ~2000 years ago.
Also, Jesus said quite a bit more, and quite a bit more often than "be kind," though admittedly that's sort of the Therapeutic Moral Deism version spewed out popularly and in a lot of churches today.
I'd agree that Jesus' ultimate vision is humanity living in harmony with one another, but that this requires living in harmony with God, too. We're pretty terrible when we try to lean on our own understanding.
Without opening up a broader epistemic discussion: the question of the existence of specific people is quite a reasonable question. Because Socrates rejected writing, there is some question as to whether he really existed or was a rhetorical invention of his student plato. On the other hand, say, Sophocles is described by various contemporaneous sources. Caesar, Augustus and Marc Antony pretty definitely existed -- there is a lot of surviving contemporaneous evidence.
On the other hand the existence of a much more recent figure, Shakespeare, as the author of a body of work is still hotly debated in some circles (there is evidence that someone by his name was alive at the same time, but was that the person in question?)
There are no contemporaneous accounts of the life or death of Jesus; even Josephus whom you mention was born after the events described in the gospels.
> I'd agree that Jesus' ultimate vision is humanity living in harmony with one another, but that this requires living in harmony with God, too. We're pretty terrible when we try to lean on our own understanding.
That's a particular stance that requires judging terrible people who claim to have religious backing to have not been in alignment with a god. Both sides in a war claim divine support, after all. It's quite possible to live in harmony without any gods.
If the evidence of Jesus's divinity isn't empirical evidence, then what sort of evidence is it? I've always thought of faith as meaning "belief despite the lack of evidence".
> I'd agree that Jesus' ultimate vision is humanity living in harmony with one another, but that this requires living in harmony with God, too. We're pretty terrible when we try to lean on our own understanding.
In general people seem to be pretty terrible if they lean on religious understanding too. I don't see much evidence that religious people are more moral than others. Personally I'm a big fan of Jesus's vision of living in harmony with one another, but I don't see why this needs to have anything to do with a god.
Very, very few serious Bible scholars, even the atheist "textual criticism" ones, deny that the man Jesus of Nazareth existed. And almost all of them will acknowledge that, for example, the creed in 1 Corinthians 15:3 dates to within a few years (possibly months) of Jesus death. The denial of the historical Jesus is more a meme in New Atheist Internet forums, rather than a serious examination. It's about as serious as Ancient Aliens.
The most fundamental question is where everything came from. Even the Big Bang theory requires starting materials. The more generic -1 + 1 = 0 is neither useful nor has any mechanism for initialization.
Is little wonder that so many scientists tend toward simulationism. This is just god(s) with different trappings where unprovable metaphysics are studied through modern math and curves instead of ancient math and geometry.
It seems observational true that humans have an innate desire for god that is not seen in other species.
As a final note, the Bible teaches a final end of the wicked along with the final destruction of Satan along with the wicked (this was the proclamation at the beginning of the Bible telling them that if they sinned, they would cease to exist, through the major prophets like Isaiah’s woes against “the king of Tyre” to the New Testament talking of a final destruction of the wicked. The current tales of hell entered into Christian theology in the 3-400s when the mainstream denomination mixed in ideas from the pagan Roman religion. For this reason, you won’t find eternal torment for a few years of sin anywhere in the Bible.
Likewise, Heaven is simply the place where God resides (being called New Jerusalem). It is told that the city will descend to earth after judgment is complete. People don’t go to Heaven after death as some other plane of existence in the Biblical text. Instead, we see the archangel contending with Satan to raise Moses from the dead. Likewise, we see people raised from the dead when Jesus is raised. This would be unnecessary if they were already in Heaven. In fact, the whole Second Coming would be unnecessary if that were what was actually taught. Once again we see this idea entering from the same pagan sources at the same time.
Putting aside whatever people have told you and reading the book yourself, you’ll find something much different than the interpretations and sophistries people layer on top. This remains true whether you read as a believer or a non-believer (myself having experienced both at different times in my life).
TL;DR: Christians wouldn't say that we base our beliefs on a collection of stories. We base our beliefs in the historical fact of the Resurrection. Perhaps we'll find out we're wrong some day, but having considered the best evidence we have (and the book I linked to walks through why that evidence is compelling), Christianity is a reasonable position to hold.
Some of the Catholic miracles sure seem pretty solid to me in terms of conveying God's will to us.
Like the one in Fatima, which was witnessed by thousands of people:
As an example:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/nov/23/india-blasphem...
Just because something is unexplained currently does not give any weight to the idea that it was a miracle.
Millions of people saw David Copperfield vanish the Statue of Liberty as well... But I certainly wouldn't be tempted to pretend he actually made it vanish
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=823GNH4Rczg
We don't have a single example where the opposite has been true.
Yes. I am speaking for all of humanity here.
I welcome evidence to the contrary.
But that is kind of the point...
The miracle was also seen by sailors on a British ship off the coast of Portugal. Foley recounts an experience in England. He gave a presentation on Fatima at a college in England and was told by one of the teachers that her grandfather saw the miracle from his ship and wrote about it to his wife — “without obviously understanding what it meant or its significance.”
And finally, what most convincingly shows that the miracle was not only in the minds and perception of the witnesses is the fact that the crowd at Fatima felt the heat of the sun as it approached them, and their clothes and the ground — which had been soaked by torrential rain — were dry at the end of the miracle.
How does one claim this is just some optical mirage?
In addition, the default shouldn't be "therefore miracle".
The default assumption should be "humans are easy to trick".
My claim here, is that if we put our brightest minds on this, they will come back with a terrifically mundane explanation for it. In the same way that weeping statues are always just water from a pipe somewhere.
Get a bunch of people convinced they'll see a miracle and make them stare at the sun, and sure, you'll be able to get a lot of people saying they've seen a lot of things.
One might also look into the testimonies of various exorcists in modern times for evidence that the supernatural exists: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nhhi7Fk3ueI
We also have stigmata, such as those received by Padre Pio: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Padre_Pio
Just trying to offer a few more things that count as evidence from modern times.
I know why you are asking this, but honestly it's a silly question.
Most humans have empathy. Most humans know "things and people that hurt others are bad. Humans helping others are good". For the few that don't, we've got legal codes built on the same principles.
The bible has very little morality in it that's "good" and a lot of really questionable moral statements. For example, beating slaves is OK so long as they recover in a day or 2 (Exodus 21:20-21). These questionable moral passages have been used to make a lot of good people, bad people. From justifying slavery, anti-"race mixing", anti LGBT+ rights, etc. So why hold it up as a good moral code? Because Jesus said "love one another"? He also said "No, I have come to divide people against each other! 52 From now on families will be split apart, three in favor of me, and two against—or two in favor and three against." (Luke 12:49-56)
> And do you really think people who believe in God are just listening to "fairy tails (sic)" so they can be face the reality of death?
That's a large part of it. Most believe in god because their parents taught them to believe in god. They continue to believe in god usually because of the fear of what happens if that world view is challenged or changed. A lot take "Pascal's Wager" very seriously, the believe because "If I'm wrong, I'll go to hell". Many believe because they are constantly reinforcing that belief, they surround themselves with others that believe.
Unless you are a fundamentalist, you'll look at the bible and see it's mostly a bunch of impossible tales. Most people don't seriously believe that god decided to kill the population of the world in a great flood because they broke his rules, they try and make it an allegory (or fairy tale).
So, stripe out all the tales that are allegories and what are you left with?
> Is that really the best portrayal of Christians you can come up with?
It's a pretty charitable portrayal. A less than charitable one is one that sees them as trying to force everyone into christian law. It's watching as they constantly push hate filled rhetoric into the public space because "The bibles says this is a sin". A less than charitable view of Christianity is one that sees all the megachurch pastors preaching a prosperity gospel to bilk old women out of their retirement savings. Those of us outside of religion see the most popular religions as cons draining capital while providing little in return other than "feel good"s. For all the good you can point that a religion might do, the most successful religions have multimillion dollar buildings, large salaries for their preachers, and starving parishioners.
You opened asking what is a "good person". I'd say a good person is one that doesn't take money from the poor and give nothing in return. Most christian churches can't be called "good".
This is somewhat oblique to the point you're making, but I find a lot of bible passages totally incomprehensible. What is Jesus saying here? That families will likely be for or against him, and that families will consist of 5 members, and each family will have an uneven split? (2-3 vs 3-2) It seems like a very pedantic and odd way to make the point I believe the author is trying to make. Does this rely on an old colloquialism? Is there some reason it's phrased so strangely? Would it not have sounded strange to contemporary ears?
I actually had a bit of a shock when I finally read old Greek writing: Herodotus, Plato, etc. Everything they write is meant to be clearly an precisely understood. Depending on the translation, the writing feels simple and modern. I had naively expected all old writing to be like the bible: incomprehensible, metaphorical, nonsensical.
To me it feels like this is encouraging cult like behaviours. Support Jesus even if it pits you against your family. Losing your family is bad, but not following Jesus sends you to hell.
If you want a fascinating case study, look at what happened with the "book of mormon". It's a hot mess of gobbledygook and plagiarized stories yet to mormons it's the best book ever written.
Meanwhile, you had literary giants like Charles Dickens and Victor Hugo writing time honored classics in the same time period which are still very readable and accessible today.
The only lawful way to enter slavery was debt. Jews were freed in seven years and non-Jews in at most 40 years. This would actually be indentured servitude. Barbaric by today’s standards, but eminently humane by all other standards until the last 100 years or so.
> Exodus 21:20-21 KJVS [20] And if a man smite his servant, or his maid, with a rod, and he die under his hand; he shall be surely punished. [21] Notwithstanding, if he continue a day or two, he shall not be punished: for he is his money.
The punishment implied here is death (an eye for an eye).
Someone owes you a ton of money. How do you get it from them? Today, large scale professional lenders spread out risk, but that wasn’t always the case. Instead, historically, not paying meant selling them into slavery to recoup what loss you could. Now, how do you ensure you get your money through their labor?
The logic follows. Likewise, if killing your slave risks your own death, it’s not something you’ll take lightly. If you did give out such a beating, you’ll be praying they pull through and are likely to never do it again. This falls into a similar category:
> Exodus 21:18-19 KJVS [18] And if men strive together, and one smite another with a stone, or with his fist, and he die not, but keepeth his bed: [19] If he rise again, and walk abroad upon his staff, then shall he that smote him be quit: only he shall pay for the loss of his time, and shall cause him to be thoroughly healed.
In fact, I don’t think there was a penalty if the slave fought back against such a beating.
Even so much as knocking out a tooth was reason to be forced to free your slave.
> Exodus 21:26-27 KJVS [26] And if a man smite the eye of his servant, or the eye of his maid, that it perish; he shall let him go free for his eye's sake. [27] And if he smite out his manservant's tooth, or his maidservant's tooth; he shall let him go free for his tooth's sake.
Once again, such severe restrictions did not exist anywhere else in all known history. Jesus said that some restrictions (he directly referenced divorce) were less that God really desired because of humanity’s stubbornness. Divinely inspired or not, they were still revolutionary in their morality.
Why are we judging the laws of an omnipotent being by the standards of humans thousands of years ago? Why can't we judge his laws by the standards of today? Why can't he have made the societies he ruled better for the poor, women, slaves, etc... He could have told the Israelites that women should be equal to men, why didn't he?
“The borrower is slave to the lender.”
While modern societies hold this to be untrue in name, it is very true in principle. Countries that owe large debts do what they’re told. Companies do the same. Even on an individual level something like student loans follow you forever. Even sin is referred to as an unrepayable debt to God. To take debt without repaying would be theft.
Even today, direct theft or deprivation of property or life is grounds for enslaving people for decades in something called prisons. You’re only complaint here is about what debts to people and society are punishable by slavery.
It’s also worth noting that debtors prison and indentured servitude existed over a half century after slavery was ended and slavery as punishment is still explicitly allowed under the US constitution.
To reiterate, the slavery presented in the Bible as a means of repaying debt is actually what we’d call indentured servitude. In contrast, slavery as practiced in the US was absolutely indefensible according to the Bible. The Bible proclaimed the slave traders as worthy of death. All the massive abuses would have immediately led to slaves being released and more than a few slave owners being executed. Finally, with all slaves being freed every 40 years making multigenerational slavery impossible (don’t forget that freed slaves were also to be provided with a means to sustain themselves —- the oldest source of “40 acres and a mule“).
Has society actually improved on this point? At most we’ve replaced it by stealing from every individual and giving that to pay the debt of others, but a group buying a slave’s freedom also existed with the difference that the money was to be volunteered rather than taken by threat of force.
The Bible clearly says enslavement without cause is injustice worthy of death. Once debt is accrued, someone must pay. The old law gives justice at all costs (forgot to mention, but slavery was a court matter). Jesus differed in teaching that while justice was fair, mercy and the self sacrifice of forgiving debt was better. By the way, this argument is rather similar to the one given by the original abolitionists who were almost universally fundamentalist Christian sects.
Now, the burden of proof is on you. Prove without religion that slavery is immoral and indentured servitude is unjust.
That's not a game you can play with an all knowing all powerful arbitrator of absolute truth.
It would have been so easy for god to say "Hey, slavery is absolutely wrong and immoral and I don't condone it". So why didn't god? Why didn't god speak out against rape (instead putting a price tag on it and selling the woman to the rapist)? Why did god command genocide? Why did god kill millions? Why didn't god give basic health and hygiene advice? "boil water before drinking it to avoid death"? Why did god mark animals as "unclean" rather than just saying "Hey, you need to cook pork more so you don't get sick".
See, that's the problem with an all knowing being. God can't be fallible or else it's not God. The fact that you and I can come up with what we'd both agree are moral rules not found in the bible is very problematic. Things like "Woman deserve to be treated equally", "Hitting your child is wrong", "It's ok for people of different races and nationalities to marry each other", "Inflicting pain on heretics is wrong". All problems of history easily addressed. Yet instead, god felt the need to talk about not eating shellfish and the right way to trim your beard.
"How we ought to live,"
-Socrates
"How we ought to live."
I think that's a bit circular, Socrates.