Ordhound04 said:

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one MEEN Ag said:

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What do you think lumping christians, jews, muslims, jehoviahs witnesses into the same category even accomplishes? Do you also lump hindus, romans, greeks, and norse gods into the same equal category? They're all pantheists.

Your categories are so broad they are meaningless, but even the idea of categories is meaningless.

What difference does it make as to how specifically a religion rejects the divinity of christ?

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It accomplishes the reality that they all explicitly worship the same God, have a shared origin, history, and all cite overlapping texts as authoritative in some way. Particularly given Paul's own words.

This is fundamentally different than Roman Paganism, Hinduism, Bushism, etc. we can acknowledge those ontologically different views of divinity.

You seem to be contending that acknowledging this is somehow tantamount to omnism. It's not.

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No they don't worship the same god at all. You're confusing persons with nature, operations with persons, will with persons, creation with creator, etc. If you believe that Jews or Muslims worship God the Father then that logically follows to a Monad which is exactly what the Arian or Eunomian worshiped in that the Father-essence is a Monad wholly enclosed within itself, while along with creation, this essence has emanated a secondary creation, the "Son." It's argued that Catholic Absolute Divine Simplicity ends this way as well.

Here's St Basil-
"1. Many persons, in their study of the sacred dogmas, failing to distinguish between what is common in the essence or substance, and the meaning of the hypostases, arrive at the same notions, and think that it makes no difference whether or hypostasis be spoken of. The result is that some of those who accept statements on these subjects without any enquiry, are pleased to speak of one hypostasis, just as they do of one essence or substance; while on the other hand those who accept three hypostases are under the idea that they are bound in accordance with this confession, to assert also, by numerical analogy, three essences or substances."

Fr. Florovsky:

"God is much more than just "Creator." When we call God "a Father," we mean something higher than His relation to creatures (Contra Arianos 1 33). "Before" God creates at all, polloi proteron He is Father, and He creates through His Son. For the Arians, actually, God was no more than a Creator and Shaper of creatures, argued St. Athanasius. They did not admit in God anything that was "superior to His will," to huperkeimenon tes ouleseos But, obviously, "being" precedes "will," and "generation," accordingly, surpasses the "will" also: [Greek not included]. Of course, it is but a logical order: there is no temporal sequence in Divine Being and Life. Yet, this logical order has an ontological significance. Trinitarian names denote the very character of God, His very Being. They are, as it were, ontological names. There are, in fact, two different sets of names which may be used of God. One set of names refers to God's deeds or acts-that is, to His will and counsel-the other to God's own essence and being. St. Athanasius insisted that these two sets of names had to be formally and consistently distinguished. And, again, it was more than just a logical or mental distinction. There was a distinction in the reality itself. God is what He is: Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit. It is an ultimate reality, declared and manifested in the Scriptures. But Creation is a deed of the Divine will, and this will is common to and identical In all Three Persons of the One God. Thus, God's Fatherhood must necessarily precede His Creatorship. The Son's existence flows eternally from the very essence of the Father [exactly what I explained above], or, rather, belongs to this "essence," ousia The world's existence, on the contrary, is, as it were, "external" to this Divine essence and is grounded only in the Divine will. There is an element of contingency in the exercise and disclosure of the creative will, as much as His will reflects God's own essence and character. On the other hand, there is, as it were, an absolute necessity in the Trinitarian being of God. The word may seem strange and startling. In fact, St. Athanasius did not use it directly. It would have embarassed Origen and many others, as offensive to God's perfection: does it not imply that God is subject to certain "constraint" or fatalistic determinism? But, in fact, "necessity" in this case is but another name for "being" or essence." Indeed, God does not "choose" His own Being. He simply is. No further question can be intelligently asked. Indeed, it is proper for God "to create," that is, to manifest Himself ad extra. But this manifestation is an act of His will, and in no way an extension of His own Being. On the other hand, "will" and "deliberation" should not be invoked in the description of the eternal relationship between Father and Son. At this point St. Athanasius was definite and explicit. Indeed, his whole refutation of Arianism depended ultimately upon this basic distinction between "essence" and "will," which alone could establish clearly the real difference in kind between "Generation" and "Creation." The Trinitarian vision and the concept of Creation, in the thought of St. Athanasius, belonged closely and organically together."

Jabin said:

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Gaius Rufus said:

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Jabin said:

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Gaius Rufus said:

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Is that a yes or a no?

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#eyeroll

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That's exactly the answer I expected. Thank you for proving that you have not been having your conversions in this thread in good faith.

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You're hilarious. How is my refusing to answer your clumsy attempt at a trap question, in the specific way you demanded, an indication of good faith or not, let alone proof? L O L.

And I did give you an answer. What did you not like about it?

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It's very simple. You are not even willing to consider nor admit that there is a possibility that your worldview is wrong.

You are not seeking truth, you are seeking confirmation.

Here, let me give you an example. I am not a Christian.

Is it possible that Christianity is the correct explanation for the creation of everything?

Yes, it is possible.

Why do you refuse to answer such a straightforward question while demanding that every non-Christian accept the possibility that the Christian view is the correct one?

That is why you are not having this conversation in good faith. You are not seeking the truth.

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That's somewhat ironic since you, as is typical on most message boards, ignore most of the points I've made. Nevertheless, I'll take a stab at replying to your points.

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This doesn't sound like me, but if you can provide examples, I'm happy to apologize.

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Let me throw that one back at you. The overwhelming majority of the world belongs to some religion. Does the fact of that super-majority discredit atheism and agnosticism? How do you explain the "discrepancy between the magnitude of the claims of agnosticism/atheism and perceived lack of evidence or valid arguments by the majority of the planet that is not atheist or agnostic?

Isn't the answer that the opinions of the majority are completely irrelevant on such important topics? Do you really think that the majority of the world has taken an in-depth look at the evidentiary claims of anything, let alone Christianity?

Truth is not determined by majority vote.

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First off, I would say that an agnostic atheist, such as myself, does not make claims about God or lack of God in the same way a religious person does. My position is better described as a non-belief or skepticism in other claims.

You are correct, truth is not determined by majority vote. But, given the proposition that humans have enough evidence to conclude that Christianity is the most reasonable answer to the origins and purpose of life, I think we would be lazy (or dishonest) in not considering the conclusions of others and how people each reach their own conclusions. And I'll explain why. . . I've already tried making this point, but perhaps not clearly enough.

Christianity proposes that God created the universe, created humans, and that humans are called to know him. Your proposition is that humans have enough evidence to know this all to be true. Any human being should be able to examine the historical, archeological, and cosmological evidence and be pointed to the correctness of Christianity. Any human being with a sincere open heart and desire to know God and to love their fellow man should be spiritually directing themselves toward the correctness of Christianity. Any human being who is honest in their study of philosophy and logic and reason should be able to reach similar conclusions about the correctness of Christianity. These are many of the primary evidences in which Christians point to in proving why Christianity is correct and other religions are not. Other religions and philosophies devolve into logical nonsense, or are not scientifically consistent, or are spiritually or morally wrong, or illogical, or lacking in historical back up.

Later in your post, you began to address this, but I don't think you've fully addressed it. Your response was to suggest that some of them may have been insincere or dishonest, some may have been victims of cultural inheritance, and that some may have been unable to abandon the cultural norm, and that some may have been emotional. What your response does not allow for is the possibility that a person who is sincere and honest enough to follow truth past cultural or emotional obstacles could reach a different conclusion. I am suggesting that those people exist. And I'm suggesting that they exist in roughly the same manner that they do in Christianity. I am suggesting that to dismiss the religion of 5 billion people on the planet as a belief in perversion of logic, reason, and spirituality due to insincerity, dishonesty, emotion, and fear of abandoning cultural norms is insulting to them.

What I believe is that different thoughtful, sincere, and honest people can consider the same question with the same evidences and reach different conclusions. And I believe that those that consider their conclusions absolute and correct and that all other conclusions are the result of insincerity, laziness, emotion, etc. are holding a massively arrogant position.

Remember the Christian proposition is that we are called to know God and your proposition is that Christianity is the logical conclusion. And yet, most people on the planet do not know God. And apparently they do not know God because they are unable to overcome the obstacles of environment - which they cannot control. What an advantage it is to be born into a Christian household, right? And what a disadvantage it is to be born into a Hindu household, right? Such a disadvantage, that there is a 97 plus percent chance that this person will not leave Hinduism for Christianity.

I've put in this quote a dozen times over the years, but I just love it so much:

"The easy confidence with which I know another man's religion is folly teaches me to suspect that my own is also."
Mark Twain

You point out that brilliant people are often wrong. Maybe that applies to the brilliant Christians as well. Is this a possibility or do you reject any possibility of being wrong?

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Others may have been victims of what you call their "cultural inheritance". It is terribly difficult to abandon one's culture. To do so often results in complete rejection by one's friends and family. Also, some are influenced by emotional factors more so than evidence or logic.

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Is this part of your response any less applicable to Christianity? It is terribly difficult for Christian raised persons to abandon their culture and face rejection from friends and family and overcome emotional attachments to their faith.

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Rather, I'm disagreeing with your contention that people cannot be converted to Christianity from other religions, or be converted on intellectual or evidentiary grounds.

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Of course this is correct. But, it is still the exception rather than the rule.

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The pastor was simply an anecdote. But millions of people are right now being converted to Christianity in Africa, China and South America. Christianity is exploding in those countries right now, and typically in the face of persecution, torture and subjugation of Christians. I have friends and family who are missionaries in Africa and China, and I can assure you that they are not using force, persecution or torture to win converts, nor are their converts doing so because of evil that occurred 100+ years ago. In fact, that old evil is a major obstacle to modern mission work.

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And millions of people are being converted to Islam as well. It is still the fastest growing religion and projected to surpass Christianity in 40 years or so. Not surprisingly, fertility rates among Muslims are the highest of the major religions . . . further reinforcing the idea that cultural inheritance as a prime tool for religion spread.

And then you have an increasing growth of non religious persons in Western Europe and America.

That said, I don't discount the millions of people converting to Christianity. But if we are to not discount those people, we also need to not discount the millions flocking to Islam or to secularism.


i'll address archeology in the next post.

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First and foremost is the historical evidence for Jesus Christ. Sagan made the famous statement that "Extraordinary claims demand extraordinary evidence." Although that is not true, nevertheless the historical reality of Jesus Christ and his resurrection is documented with historical evidence based on the standards of history from that long ago. Even the strongest skeptical scholars agree that the Church universally believed, within no more than 3 years of Christ's death, that he had been resurrected and that there were numerous eyewitnesses (300-500) of his resurrection within that same church. We also have multiple written accounts of his life and resurrection, with the evidence being that they were written within a decade or two of his death and resurrection, and copies within 100 years or so of their writing. No other historical event or account has anything close to that level of evidence.

Second is the accuracy of the Old Testament accounts. I am particularly knowledgeable about the accounts of the Exodus and Conquest (I was prompted to take a very deep dive into those topics based on a poster here who said that those accounts had been disproved archaeologically). Although many scholars do no believe those accounts, many others do. And anyone taking an honest look at the evidence has to conclude that the accounts are accurate. A few tidbits to buttress my point:

Those are just two examples. There is an abundance of additional evidence supporting the historicity of the Biblical historical accounts.

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I appreciate the work that you put into the response. I've cut out parts of it for the purpose of saving some screen space. I have two things that I'd like to say about your points.

First, I will not argue with what professional archeologists have concluded about about the consistency of the OT and historical events. Nor will I argue with how much of Jesus life is archeologically verifiable. I'm simply not qualified to make those arguments. What I am interested in is what types of questions can be verified historically or archeologically.

My understanding of Christianity is that it is not the believe that a man existed 2000 years ago. Nor is it the believe that this man was killed with witnesses. Christianity is not the belief that a church formed following these events. And it is not the belief that there was an exodus from Egypt or that such and such person, place, or event happened. Rather, Christianity is the belief that this man that existed was the literal son of God. And that the man rose miraculously from the dead and vanished into Heaven. It is the belief that God created the universe, that mankind has purpose, that we are called to worship God, and on and on. These beliefs are not subject to historical and archeological verification. What would archeological evidence that God has purpose for mankind even look like? These are all questions clearly outside of the realm of what history and archeology can tell us.

At best, it tells us that these parts of the Bible were likely written at a certain time with certain knowledge of things that could have happened or likely did happen at those times. They don't serve as evidence to the 'real' claims of Christianity.

Now, I know that you have not presented archeological evidence as definitive and I don't want it to seem that I am inflating how you value these evidences. I am simply pointing out why archeological evidence carries so little weight for me.

Next, the historical evidence of Jesus Christ. . . . You point to multiple written accounts of his life and resurrection written within 10 to 20 years of the events. The number of eyewitnesses is easily dismissible. You could say there were a million eye witnesses if you want - its just not verifiable. If you had 300 to 500 eye witness accounts all saying the same thing, that would carry more weight.

The first of the gospels, as I understand, was written by Mark. The dates for Mark that I've seen are more like 60 years AD, but lets not get in the weeds. Either way, the gospel of Mark was available as a source for Matthew, Luke, and John. We should not be shocked that they validate each other's stories, should we?

So, we have an eye witness account of decades old events written by someone we don't know which makes enormous claims about very truth of reality and none of it can be verified. I understand the arguments for the character of the Mark and the others. It takes very very very little skepticism in order to consider the possibility that maybe the accounts of Jesus are not totally accurate. Yet Christianity suggests that I should dedicated my entire life and wager my very eternal soul on those words.

When Jesus says "Those who believe without seeing are blessed.", this is massively telling. We are called to believe without seeing and to call that a virtue. These are the words of a religion with some deep introspective understanding. I don't understand a God that would ask us to believe on shaky evidence. I would be more inclined to believe in a God that offers shaky evidence without expectation or requirement that we believe. . . but that isn't the Christian God.

Jabin said:

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Let me throw that one back at you. The overwhelming majority of the world belongs to some religion. Does the fact of that super-majority discredit atheism and agnosticism? How do you explain the "discrepancy between the magnitude of the claims of agnosticism/atheism and perceived lack of evidence or valid arguments by the majority of the planet that is not atheist or agnostic?

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One thing that occurred to me that I wanted to say and forgot to. . . .

The fact that most of the world believes in something like God does not discredit atheism or agnosticism. But it does serve as a source of doubt. I think I've become comfortable with doubt and not knowing.

Again, though. You seem to be avoiding the question of if the sacraments of Arius are invalid.

It would seem that a man praying/invoking a false God would
not carry sacramental authority. Yet, we see no indication that the baptisms, Eucharists, or confessions were invalid. Further, depending on your scrupulocity on the issue, this would could theoretically invalidate sacraments the coptics as well. I mean, if their christology is off…

Moreover, you really just gonna say those things and pretend that Patriarch Bartholomew is not in direct opposition to what you are saying? Is he another heretic too? Does this mean his sacraments are invalid? What about Kiril's ecumenical work with the Jewish and Muslim communities. I believe he has made similar comments too and spoken in synagogues. Both seem to have a cozy relationship with rabbinical Judaism and a shared view of who they worship.

You're moving down to third and fourth order kind of effects but you haven't finished the first order view.

If you say that the God you worship is not Jesus Christ, is that in any way compatible with the God that Christians worship? How do you align that?

kurt vonnegut said:

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Jabin said:

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Let me throw that one back at you. The overwhelming majority of the world belongs to some religion. Does the fact of that super-majority discredit atheism and agnosticism? How do you explain the "discrepancy between the magnitude of the claims of agnosticism/atheism and perceived lack of evidence or valid arguments by the majority of the planet that is not atheist or agnostic?

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One thing that occurred to me that I wanted to say and forgot to. . . .

The fact that most of the world believes in something like God does not discredit atheism or agnosticism. But it does serve as a source of doubt. I think I've become comfortable with doubt and not knowing.

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I understand your point here, but I think maybe you're being a little generous. If a god who wanted mankind to worship him existed then you'd assume he'd be taking some action to influence mankind in that direction. But if no gods exist there's no outside force pushing beliefs in any direction. I'd argue that a mix of different beliefs is what we would expect to find if there was no outside force influencing belief.

kurt vonnegut said:

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Your proposition is that humans have enough evidence to know this all to be true. Any human being should be able to examine the historical, archeological, and cosmological evidence and be pointed to the correctness of Christianity. Any human being with a sincere open heart and desire to know God and to love their fellow man should be spiritually directing themselves toward the correctness of Christianity. Any human being who is honest in their study of philosophy and logic and reason should be able to reach similar conclusions about the correctness of Christianity. These are many of the primary evidences in which Christians point to in proving why Christianity is correct and other religions are not. Other religions and philosophies devolve into logical nonsense, or are not scientifically consistent, or are spiritually or morally wrong, or illogical, or lacking in historical back up.

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kurt vonnegut said:

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When Jesus says "Those who believe without seeing are blessed.", this is massively telling. We are called to believe without seeing and to call that a virtue. These are the words of a religion with some deep introspective understanding. I don't understand a God that would ask us to believe on shaky evidence. I would be more inclined to believe in a God that offers shaky evidence without expectation or requirement that we believe. . . but that isn't the Christian God.

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(Let me know if my bad attempt at using quotations is off)

I think here you both hit the nail on the head and miss something fundamental. I think we can reason our way to the existence of "God". Citing Aristotle, Plato, etc we can show non-Christians coming to similar conclusions about the nature of this uncreated/uncontingent being.

However you also touched upon it in your comments about Mark, what is missing here is that element of faith. Faith in this context I will contend is operationally the same as "trust". When Jesus speaks of this, as you cited, he is talking about trust as opposed to a sub-rational faith. I think their is a strawman argument here that, sadly some Christians have accepted. Namely that the faith of Christianity is sub-rational, rather than Supra-rational, beyond even reason. I would contend this is because at some point even if I am talking to you about myself. If, for example, I tell you my job, my age, my height, etc these are things that you can verify fairly objectively. But what then when I tell you about my hopes, what if we move from knowing some facts about me to knowing "Me". You can't verify that in an objective way. It involves a level of trust.

In this same way the message of the gospel is not just a rational thought experiment. Think of how many times you chose the less rational option because of trust/mistrust/anger/etc. This is why the "church" is so important. Even Thomas Aquinas, maybe the most celebrated systematic and logical theologians in the last 1,000 years acknowledges what can be claimed logically and what is from divine revelation, meaning it requires a level of trust.

Ordhound04 said:

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Again, though. You seem to be avoiding the question of if the sacraments of Arius are invalid.

It would seem that a man praying/invoking a false God would
not carry sacramental authority. Yet, we see no indication that the baptisms, Eucharists, or confessions were invalid. Further, depending on your scrupulocity on the issue, this would could theoretically invalidate sacraments the coptics as well. I mean, if their christology is off…

Moreover, you really just gonna say those things and pretend that Patriarch Bartholomew is not in direct opposition to what you are saying? Is he another heretic too? Does this mean his sacraments are invalid? What about Kiril's ecumenical work with the Jewish and Muslim communities. I believe he has made similar comments too and spoken in synagogues. Both seem to have a cozy relationship with rabbinical Judaism and a shared view of who they worship.

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To contemplate if someone did or didn't receive a valid sacrament within the Church during heretical teaching is a worthless topic for us. If Bartholomew is deemed by the Church as a heretic then he like Arius will be removed from power and that process is of the Holy Spirit. Also it's not our right to judge where grace goes outside the Church. The Church has and will use Economia.

The issue that you seem to have is the recognition of the Church that holds the fullness of Truth which is absurd given that it just breaks down to relativism if someone does not hold the Truth. You hold a view of a relativism but also contradict even that by stating non Trinitarians aren't Christian's but at the same time all of these Abrahamic groups worship God the Father. Identity of God cannot be relative.

So, this has been an amusing thread. I've enjoyed reading it.

To my OP, regarding the big bang and the use of science as a proof source for God, I personally side in this case with JP2; no.

I do however think science in general is lending more credence to the "God hypothesis" (or more properly hypotheses) as we advance into greater knowledge of quarks, theoretical physics, fine tuning, higgs boson, astro physics etc.

The burden of proof for discussion purposes here (meaning in this discussion) seems to always be on the 'God team' though I'd think the wave particle duality problem alone would put the real burden on the 'it's just nature' side.

Anyway, thx all.

Ordhound04 said:

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(Let me know if my bad attempt at using quotations is off)

I think here you both hit the nail on the head and miss something fundamental. I think we can reason our way to the existence of "God". Citing Aristotle, Plato, etc we can show non-Christians coming to similar conclusions about the nature of this uncreated/uncontingent being.

However you also touched upon it in your comments about Mark, what is missing here is that element of faith. Faith in this context I will contend is operationally the same as "trust". When Jesus speaks of this, as you cited, he is talking about trust as opposed to a sub-rational faith. I think their is a strawman argument here that, sadly some Christians have accepted. Namely that the faith of Christianity is sub-rational, rather than Supra-rational, beyond even reason. I would contend this is because at some point even if I am talking to you about myself. If, for example, I tell you my job, my age, my height, etc these are things that you can verify fairly objectively. But what then when I tell you about my hopes, what if we move from knowing some facts about me to knowing "Me". You can't verify that in an objective way. It involves a level of trust.

In this same way the message of the gospel is not just a rational thought experiment. Think of how many times you chose the less rational option because of trust/mistrust/anger/etc. This is why the "church" is so important. Even Thomas Aquinas, maybe the most celebrated systematic and logical theologians in the last 1,000 years acknowledges what can be claimed logically and what is from divine revelation, meaning it requires a level of trust.

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The temptation to follow reasoning to the conclusion of the existence of God is very tempting. But, the problem I have is that once we introduce something that is uncreated/uncaused, then we have abandoned reason. Or at least we have abandoned reasoning that we can understand. It feels like we are using the rules of causation to prove that the rules of causation are false. Or maybe like we are using science to prove that something occurred through magic.

I cannot objectively verify your hopes. However, as a fellow human being, I am likely to understand your hopes, maybe share some of them, and maybe sympathize with some of them. I can observe your actions and see if they reasonably correspond to what you say your hopes are. And I can speak with other people, compile a database of what people hope for, and judge the reasonableness of your hopes with what others claim are their hopes. But, in the end, yes, a level of trust is needed and it is informed by different factors.

If I follow your post correctly, I think you would agree that our trust and level of trust in God follows a similar rule. What we trust in is informed by evidence, emotion, reason, and maybe even revelation. Some of those factors are very subjective. Some of the other factors informing trust may be up for interpretation. For example, evidence of God. Is 'fining tuning' evidence of God? To answer this question definitively would be to presume to know an awful lot about how existence works. Does it require more knowledge than we can reasonably presume to know? I don't know the answer to that. I think yes. Others think no.

You and I will clearly have some divergence in our personal experiences and emotions. And it is entirely plausible we will view 'evidence' of God differently. It is not unreasonable that you and I have reached different conclusions about what to trust.

Now, take something like flying in an airplane. Most of us have a level of trust that the plane will safely deliver us to our destination. That trust is based on the experience of past flights and the evidence of all of the flights and their associated results. Some people have an aversion to flying and its usually an emotional reaction / fear of flying. We don't need divine revelation in order to trust the plane is safe. We don't need to understand the mechanics or physics in order to trust the plane is safe. An overwhelming amount of evidence that the plane is safe makes up for the lack of revelation and understanding and in some cases can overcome the emotional aversion to flying.

What I find interesting is the lack of a similar overwhelming factor when it comes to which God to trust. If there were different evidence for God or if every person experienced the exact same divine revelation on their 16th birthday from God . . . . well, we could have something nearly undeniable. Trust in the realness of God would be nearly unavoidable. And with the stakes as high as they are, why would God settle for anything less?

And yes, one of the factors that informs what we trust is the consequences associated with that trust. The consequences of trusting you when you tell me your hopes are minimal. I am inclined to trust you when you tell me your hopes based on little evidence. The consequences of trusting my wife will be faithful are greater. Many of us wish to know a person for years and to build trust before marriage. The consequences of following a religion that proposes eternal consequences are infinite. And I don't see anywhere near an equivalent level of evidence to convince me to trust that religious propositions are trustworthy. For me, that is a problem. Its not that I'm right and you are wrong. We are just different. And Jabin's suggestion that we all have sufficient evidence to leap forward with trust in Christianity, I think, fails to take into the variety of ways we see the world and the variety of experiences we have.

kurt vonnegut said:

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First and foremost is the historical evidence for Jesus Christ. Sagan made the famous statement that "Extraordinary claims demand extraordinary evidence." Although that is not true, nevertheless the historical reality of Jesus Christ and his resurrection is documented with historical evidence based on the standards of history from that long ago. Even the strongest skeptical scholars agree that the Church universally believed, within no more than 3 years of Christ's death, that he had been resurrected and that there were numerous eyewitnesses (300-500) of his resurrection within that same church. We also have multiple written accounts of his life and resurrection, with the evidence being that they were written within a decade or two of his death and resurrection, and copies within 100 years or so of their writing. No other historical event or account has anything close to that level of evidence.

Second is the accuracy of the Old Testament accounts. I am particularly knowledgeable about the accounts of the Exodus and Conquest (I was prompted to take a very deep dive into those topics based on a poster here who said that those accounts had been disproved archaeologically). Although many scholars do no believe those accounts, many others do. And anyone taking an honest look at the evidence has to conclude that the accounts are accurate. A few tidbits to buttress my point:

Those are just two examples. There is an abundance of additional evidence supporting the historicity of the Biblical historical accounts.

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I appreciate the work that you put into the response. I've cut out parts of it for the purpose of saving some screen space. I have two things that I'd like to say about your points.

First, I will not argue with what professional archeologists have concluded about about the consistency of the OT and historical events. Nor will I argue with how much of Jesus life is archeologically verifiable. I'm simply not qualified to make those arguments. What I am interested in is what types of questions can be verified historically or archeologically.

My understanding of Christianity is that it is not the believe that a man existed 2000 years ago. Nor is it the believe that this man was killed with witnesses. Christianity is not the belief that a church formed following these events. And it is not the belief that there was an exodus from Egypt or that such and such person, place, or event happened. Rather, Christianity is the belief that this man that existed was the literal son of God. And that the man rose miraculously from the dead and vanished into Heaven. It is the belief that God created the universe, that mankind has purpose, that we are called to worship God, and on and on. These beliefs are not subject to historical and archeological verification. What would archeological evidence that God has purpose for mankind even look like? These are all questions clearly outside of the realm of what history and archeology can tell us.

At best, it tells us that these parts of the Bible were likely written at a certain time with certain knowledge of things that could have happened or likely did happen at those times. They don't serve as evidence to the 'real' claims of Christianity.

Now, I know that you have not presented archeological evidence as definitive and I don't want it to seem that I am inflating how you value these evidences. I am simply pointing out why archeological evidence carries so little weight for me.

Next, the historical evidence of Jesus Christ. . . . You point to multiple written accounts of his life and resurrection written within 10 to 20 years of the events. The number of eyewitnesses is easily dismissible. You could say there were a million eye witnesses if you want - its just not verifiable. If you had 300 to 500 eye witness accounts all saying the same thing, that would carry more weight.

The first of the gospels, as I understand, was written by Mark. The dates for Mark that I've seen are more like 60 years AD, but lets not get in the weeds. Either way, the gospel of Mark was available as a source for Matthew, Luke, and John. We should not be shocked that they validate each other's stories, should we?

So, we have an eye witness account of decades old events written by someone we don't know which makes enormous claims about very truth of reality and none of it can be verified. I understand the arguments for the character of the Mark and the others. It takes very very very little skepticism in order to consider the possibility that maybe the accounts of Jesus are not totally accurate. Yet Christianity suggests that I should dedicated my entire life and wager my very eternal soul on those words.

When Jesus says "Those who believe without seeing are blessed.", this is massively telling. We are called to believe without seeing and to call that a virtue. These are the words of a religion with some deep introspective understanding. I don't understand a God that would ask us to believe on shaky evidence. I would be more inclined to believe in a God that offers shaky evidence without expectation or requirement that we believe. . . but that isn't the Christian God.

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Thank you for your courteous and well-articulated post. I don't agree with your conclusions or arguments, obviously, but respect you for your ability to lay them out so well in a non-argumentative, non-confrontational manner and also for not falling back on ad hominem attacks.

I think that we've sort of exhausted this topic and discussion, so I don't currently plan on responding further.

Thanks again.

There is no science without theology because we would have definition of truth.

The Bible is not an engineering white paper but a revelation of God.

Science and Theology exists together