Today we are kicking off a brand-new teaching series. For the next few weeks, we are going to be talking about the church. More specifically, we are going to be talking about just what exactly it is that makes an authentic church. How do we know when a church is really the body of Christ instead of something more like a social club that does some religious activities on the side? While there’s not necessarily a hard and fast rule to help us here, there are some things the Scriptures point to that are pretty good indicators in the right direction. The first one that we’ll talk about today is just exactly what the church’s foundation is.
Built on Christ
Have you ever crossed a picket line? That’s an interesting experience. I’ve done it twice. The first time was when I was pretty little. A new grocery store chain came to town that was not unionized and the union-backed employees of the major chain that had pretty much had a monopoly on the town before the new guys moved in picketed out front of their location around the corner from my house for what seemed like weeks. I’m not sure they ever really accomplished anything. The truth was, most people didn’t care. We certainly didn’t. They were closer and cheaper than the other grocery store, so off we went. I did feel a little bad for the picketers when it started getting cold outside as we drove right past them to get our groceries. Otherwise, though, I mostly just ignored it.
The other time I crossed a picket line was when I was in seminary and we were living in Denver. The church Lisa and I went to got a notice—probably in the mail, although I’m not certain about that—that the good folks from Westboro Baptist were going to be in town for a few days. They were going to picket a number of locations including the funeral of a fallen soldier from the area during the week. But before they headed back to their home base in central Kansas, they were going to stop and let the whole city know that they were not happy that our preacher—Jim Walters, who came a preached here a few years ago—preached a message that Jesus loved everyone. Such a blasphemous message had no place being preached from any pulpit, let alone ours, and they wanted us to know it.
When the Sunday for the picket arrived, they got there sometime between 8-8:30 that morning, got their signs proclaiming all of the people God hates on them ready to go, and began marching up and down the sidewalk, smiling, and waving to all the drivers honking at them and assuring them of the number one place they held in their hearts as they drove by. Our wise leaders had long before worked out a plan for us to completely ignore them, announced this to the congregation the previous week, and bussed everybody from the satellite lot to the main entrance so no one had to go anywhere near the hateful members of the infamous church.
Speaking of that, it should not be lost on us that the members of Westboro Baptist and our church at the time, Bear Valley—and for that matter, us at First Baptist Oakboro—all refer to ourselves as members of a church. I don’t know about you, but it just doesn’t sit very well with me to call them a church and us a church at the same time. It’s bad enough that we both call ourselves Baptists. To call both groups churches, though, suggests an understanding of just what a church is that’s so broad as to be totally unhelpful. Saying this, though, prompts us to ask an important question: What exactly is it that makes a church an authentic church? For the next few weeks, I’d like to explore that with you.
This morning finds us at the beginning of a brand-new teaching series called, Authentic Church. We live in a culture with a ton of different options when it comes to selecting a church. There are churches of all sorts of different shapes and sizes. There are churches that profess to believe all manner of different things. There is so much variety, in fact, that more and more people are feeling justified in giving up on the whole thing altogether. In recent months I’ve been in conversation with a couple of different atheist gentlemen, and in both cases, one of the arguments they have independently made against the legitimacy of the truth claims of Christianity boils down to this: with so many different groups claiming to represent the “real thing,” how could you possibly know which option is the real one, let alone the right one?
As a church, one of the goals I consistently lay out is for us to be fully the church God made us to be. What does that look like? What does it even mean? How do we know when we get there? We’ve rejoiced lately as we have had several new member additions to the church. It seems like it would be a pretty good thing for them to know just what exactly it is they’ve signed up for. Generally speaking, we want our visitors and guests to have confidence that they haven’t walked into one of those places where they might break out the snakes at any point (and, by the way, the only time I will handle a snake is just after I’ve chopped its head off with my trusty ice-breaker, so you can put that fear to bed).
In a word, then, how do we know whether we or anyone else is a real church, an authentic church? Now, if you were here last fall, you might remember that we had a conversation about the church then too. We spent a little bit of time then talking about what the church is, but our greater focus was on some of the nuts and bolts of how the church is designed to work. In this series, we are going to zoom out and look at the church from a bit bigger picture a perspective in order to talk about some of the things that make a church a church in the first place. These conversations are going to piggyback off of the current Sunday school series we are working through in our adult classes. By the way, that means this is a great time to join one of our Sunday school groups if you aren’t already active in one.
If we are going to talk about the church, then, before anything else, we need to be clear about what its foundation is, about what the centerpiece of its identity should be. Until we have that foundation down, trying to describe it or build anything with it is a fool’s errand at best. And while some of you have perhaps already jumped straight to the answer to that question, hold that thinking with me for just a second and let’s explore this together. We are going to explore it with the help of someone who had a better grasp on just what the church’s foundation was than anybody else save the One whose body it is proclaimed to be (that is, Jesus). He is so familiar with this idea because it was something he said that prompted Jesus to say, “Yep, and that right there is going to be the foundation on which I build my church.” And, of course, when Jesus said that to Peter, He didn’t actually use the word “church” at all. What He said was that He was going to build His gathering of people called out for the purposes of advancing God’s kingdom on earth. Whenever you hear the word “church” that’s what should come to mind. Don’t think about a building or even a set of activities you do with a group of people. Think about a gathering of Jesus followers called out for the specific purpose of advancing God’s kingdom on earth. Right thinking leads to right doing; wrong thinking leads to a whole host of messes.
Since I’ve said it, the person we are talking about here is the apostle Peter. It was his confession of Jesus as Messiah and Lord that Jesus Himself said would be the foundation point for His called out gathering. Just a couple of years after Jesus said that, Peter found himself as the leader of the very first church in history. He led the church in Jerusalem for several years until God sent him out to lead the church in other places including Rome where he eventually died. Peter made it to Rome about 30 years after the church exploded into existence. During that time, he had several opportunities to reflect carefully on just what the church was and what exactly that meant for Jesus’ followers. The Holy Spirit prompted him to write down some of these thoughts in a letter he sent to a group of churches along the Mediterranean coast of modern Turkey. If you have a copy of the Scriptures handy this morning, find your way with me to the New Testament letter of 1 Peter.
We are going to spend some time this morning in chapter 2 where Peter lays out his vision of the church, but I want to take just a second to set the scene for us. The first word in my Bible in 1 Peter 2 is the word, “therefore,” which means he’s explaining an idea here that he introduced previously. If you go back to the beginning of the previous section in 1 Peter 1:13, though, you find yet another “therefore,” which means we have to go back just a bit further to find out where this chain of explanation starts.
It all starts in 1 Peter 1:3. Check this out with me: “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Because of his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead and into an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you. You are being guarded by God’s power through faith for a salvation that is ready to be revealed in the last time. You rejoice in this, even though now for a short time, if necessary, you suffer grief in various trials so that the proven character of your faith—more valuable than gold which, though perishable, is refined by fire—may result in praise, glory, and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ. Though you have not seen him, you love him; though not seeing him now, you believe in him, and you rejoice with inexpressible and glorious joy, because you are receiving the goal of your faith, the salvation of your souls.”
In other words, the controlling context for Peter’s entire letter is talking his audience through some of the implications of this incredible gift of salvation we have in Jesus and for which we might suffer in this world while we wait for its final delivery when Christ returns to complete His victory over sin and death. The first implication Peter explores with us is that we need to live in light of the gift we have received. More specifically, because this salvation comes from a holy and righteous God, we should pursue lives that reflect His holiness. The rest of the letter then walks us through various places this holiness comes to bear in our lives. The first one Peter addresses is the gathering of the saints, the church. That, at last, brings us back to 1 Peter 2.
Peter writes, “Therefore”—that is, in light of this call we have to holy living if we are indeed recipients of the salvation God has made available in Christ—“rid yourselves of all malice, all deceit, hypocrisy, envy, and all slander.” In other words, stop acting like the world. Don’t hate anybody—and let’s not confuse hate with mere disagreement, however vigorous. Be honest in your dealings. Be consistent with your confession. Don’t want what other people have. And use your words in ways that bring life, not death, to the people around you. “Like newborn infants, desire the pure milk of the word, so that you may grow up into your salvation, if ‘you have tasted that the Lord is good.’” Got that? Peter is not calling his audience spiritual infants here. He’s saying that like an infant longs only for the nourishment her mother can provide, followers of Jesus should look to be fed on a steady and healthy diet of the word of God in the Scriptures. At least, we will desire this if we have actually tasted the real thing. If your faith is built on little more than social media memes and clever bumper sticker theology, you’ll think those snacks are nourishing you properly. They won’t. That’s a little like thinking a piece of wax fruit in a table display is going to give you the same nourishment as a real one. It won’t. Once you’ve actually encountered the real, soul-deep nourishment found in God’s word, you won’t be satisfied with anything less than that.
That all being said, living a holy life and studying the word aren’t enough to constitute a church. Those are necessary, but they do not provide a sufficient foundation. They are merely the structures built on that foundation. And what is this foundation? Verse 4 now: “As you come to him, a living stone—rejected by people but chosen and honored by God—you yourselves, as living stones, a spiritual house, are being built to be a holy priesthood to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.”
Okay, so, what is this? Peter is talking here about what the church—the authentic church—most fundamentally is. It is a building. Wait! I thought the church was a people, not a building. It’s not a physical building. It is a spiritual building. It is a building being built with living stones. That is, it is being built out of the lives of those who follow Jesus, the original living stone. He is the cornerstone of God’s kingdom on earth. The rest of the building finds its strength and support and even its substance when it rests on that original stone. But here’s the thing: this thing God was (and is) building wasn’t necessarily something the world wanted God to build. In fact, we’ll just go ahead and state the matter plainly: The world didn’t want God to build this thing. His kingdom, Christ’s body, was not a welcome addition to the world. It was rejected and despised. Yet God built it anyway, and He is building us to be a part of it. In fact, we are the structure of it.
Listen as Peter spells all of this out for us: “For it stands in Scripture [in other words, this was always what God was doing]: ‘See, I lay a stone in Zion, a chosen and honored cornerstone, and the one who believes in him will never be put to shame.’” That is, when your life is built as a part of what God is building on the foundation of Jesus, you’re never going to regret it. Now, if you build your life on some other foundation but are deceived or even merely mistaken into believing this other foundation is Jesus, you may very well regret it. In fact, there are scores of stories of people who left their faith behind. But when you start really digging into the details of those stories, what they are leaving behind is not a genuine faith in Jesus, but one built on a false foundation they were deceived into thinking was Jesus. That’s a faith worth leaving. When we stake our lives on the right foundation, we will not ever be given reason to be ashamed of it. “So honor will come to you who believe; but for the unbelieving, ‘The stone that the builders rejected—this one has become the cornerstone.’ and ‘A stone to stumble over, and a rock to trip over.’ They stumble because they disobey the word; they were destined for this.”
Now, that last part warrants just a second’s worth of attention here. This is one of those verses that seems to imply that God knows who will and who won’t ultimately accept His offer of salvation in Christ. More than that, it seems like He actively chooses some people who will not be saved in the end. This, of course, raises all kinds of terribly hard questions about God’s character like what kind of a God creates people solely to condemn them? When you take the full scope of the Scriptures into account, though, the picture becomes quite a bit murkier. While God’s knowledge of who will and won’t be saved in the end is unquestionably perfect, we also find apparently competing ideas like the notion that God loved the whole world so much that He gave His Son such that anyone who believes in Him can have eternal life. Much to our philosophical and theological discomfort, the guys who contributed to the Scriptures hold multiple ideas that seem at first glance to contradict each other in tension. There’s obviously a whole sermon series waiting to be unpacked here and that’ll have to be for another day. For now, it’s worth noting that we don’t have even the foggiest idea who is destined for what. That’s God’s prerogative and His alone. Our place is to assume that the message of salvation is for everyone and that Jesus’ command to love our neighbors really does apply to all of our neighbors. The building He is building is one that anyone can be a part of if they are willing to put their faith in Christ.
Speaking of this building, that’s where Peter goes next. “But you are ‘a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his possession, so that you may proclaim the praises’ of the one who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. Once you were not a people, but now you are God’s people; you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.” God is building something in this world. He’s been building it for a long time. This something is the church. We can talk another time about Peter’s various descriptions of the building, but the point I want us to not miss right now is the building’s foundation. This thing God is building is founded on Christ and Christ alone. And when we are a part of this building, in fulfillment to the prophecy God made to Hosea, we have an identity. We are a people. We have been redeemed from our broken pasts whatever those pasts happened to involve. And this identity is entirely centered on Jesus.
Right at the end of this section, then, in a couple of verses that are often grouped with the next section, Peter ends where he began and tells us what we should do in light of this. “Dear friends, I urge you as strangers and exiles to abstain from sinful desires that wage war against the soul. Conduct yourselves honorably among the Gentiles, so that when they slander you as evildoers, they will observe your good works and will glorify God on the day he visits.”
We’ll come back to that in just a minute. For now, let’s take stock of where we are. What has Peter laid out for us here? He’s given us two different things, one that follows directly from the other. This whole passage is yet another example of a biblical chiasm. The word there sounds scary, but it’s just a repeating pattern aimed at helping to make a certain part of the text more memorable for readers. A chiasm starts out with one idea, talks about another idea for a little while, and then goes back to the first idea. It’s a way of indicating to the reader that the stuff in the middle of the sandwich is the best part—not many people eat a sandwich just for the bread, after all—but that the outsides give important support and structure and context to the meat of the matter.
In this case, what was at the heart of these verses? In a word: Jesus. Peter’s point here is that Jesus is at the center of the church. He wasn’t just making this up either. Remember what we said a little while ago. Jesus Himself said He was going to be the center of the church. When Jesus asked the disciples who they thought He was, Peter’s response was that Jesus was the Messiah, the Son of the Living God. Jesus replied with high praise and told Peter that His confession was going to be the thing on which the whole structure of His church—the building God is building with the living stones of the lives of His followers—was founded. Peter here is just further unpacking this idea and helping us see how it was always God’s plan to do this.
To put a point on everything we’ve been saying here, let’s put it like this: Everything in the church centers on Jesus. Everything in the church centers on Jesus. If a church is an authentic part of the body of Christ, everything that church is and does centers on who Jesus is and what Jesus said and did. Everything in the church centers on Jesus. He is our foundation. There is no other foundation but for Him. If He is not the foundation, then what you have is not the church. It may look like a church and talk like a church and even walk like a church, but if Jesus isn’t the center, then it isn’t a church. Period.
That brings us to the other part of what Peter was doing here. He wants us to understand what this means for us. If Jesus is our foundation, if everything in the church centers on Jesus, what does that mean for us? It means that if we are going to be the church, then we had better look like Jesus. We had better talk like Jesus. We had better walk like Jesus. And this goes in two different ways. It goes upwards and it goes outwards.
It goes upwards in that if we are going to be an authentic church for whom Jesus is the center of everything we are and do, then we had better be getting right that holy living as a proper response to the salvation we have in Him. We need to get rid of all those things Peter talked about at the beginning of the chapter—malice and deceit and hypocrisy and envy and slander—and nourish ourselves with His help on a steady diet of the word.
It goes outwards in that how we live when we are out in the world really matters. It matters a great deal. Someone who talks the talk of faith but goes out and curses a neighbor, or worse, a brother or sister, is not living a life founded on Jesus. Listen, the world is going to hate us because we are part of God’s building founded on Christ, the living stone the world despised and rejected. Given that, we don’t need to give them any ammunition for their hatred. We need to live in such a way, reflecting the holiness of God like we talked about last week, that the people in our communities who don’t follow Jesus say, “I don’t like what they believe, but I sure hope one of them moves in next door to me.” We want them to think, “Their beliefs seem like so much nonsense, but I’d sure be glad if one of them married my daughter.” We want them telling everyone they meet, “I don’t have any interest in this Jesus guy, but I hire every single one of His followers that I can get my hands on because they make the best employees.”
Everything in the church centers on Jesus. He is the one who pervades every single facet of our existence. He determines what we do, how we think, where we go, what we say, how we carry ourselves, how we face trials and temptations, the way we manage stress, the nature of our worship, who we serve, how we love, why we vote, the nature of our giving, and so on and so forth. He is the heart of our identity. We shouldn’t make any sense apart from knowing who He is. Everything in the church centers on Jesus. Whenever we are getting that right both as individual followers of Jesus and as a whole community, we are being an authentic church.
Of course, if Jesus really is the center of everything, that means His words should play a pretty important role in determining what we do. If you’ll come back next week, we’ll spend some time talking about one of the last commands He gave us and what that means for us.
The Nexus 
Why would you use a forged text to make your point?
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I assume you mean the Bible? Or are you referring more specifically to 1 Peter?
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Yes, 1 Peter.
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What’s your evidence? ;~)
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After all, the first sentence claims Petrine authorship. On what grounds do you dispute that?
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Ard you asserting the *letter* is original/ not a forgery?
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I think you can probably guess my position. Right now you have charged that it is a forgery. I’m asking what the basis for your charge is.
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The scholarly consensus
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Overwhelmingly secular scholarly consensus, yes. Those claims are only maybe a couple of hundred years old (as compared with the centuries-old claim going back to at least the second century of Petrine authorship). The claims are not based on any newly discovered evidence about the text itself, but are rooted in generally secular biases against the reliability of the text and assumptions about what Peter would have known that are not terribly compelling. An analysis of the letter’s claims for itself (keeping in mind that the early church overwhelmingly rejected the authority of pseudonymous documents), what we know about Peter from the Gospels and Acts, and a comparison of the letter with what we know historically of the first century all comes down pretty firmly in favor of Petrine authorship.
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Interesting you use the term “secular bias” rather address the actual points.
Your complains come across as somewhat typical of the indoctrinated apologist who has had his favorite toy confiscated.
As for church acceptance…
Well they also accepted 2 Peter and that too is a forgery.
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You didn’t actually make any points to address. You only said, “scholarly consensus.” I made points and not complaints, although, I can perhaps see how they came across otherwise to you. It is, I hope, that I reject the forgery charges for 2 Peter too and on similar grounds.
On the question of secular bias…that’s exactly what is at play here. We could switch terms to speak of worldview if you’d like. It’s the same thing either way. People who rejected a belief in God on a number of different grounds, some of them understandable and reasonable on their face, some not, then took that worldview position back to the text of Scripture and began looking at the Scriptures through that lens. It is not at all surprising that they came away finding all kinds of confirmation for their position. On the matter of the authorship of 1 Peter, there’s not actually any evidence against his having written it, and the first sentence literally claims that he did write it. You are a big believer in evidence. In this case, there isn’t any evidence for your position nor that of the scholars whose work you collectively cite. There’s only a decision to reject the historical reliability of the Scriptures in general that serves as the lens through which the whole thing is considered. The only actual evidence we have is that Peter wrote both of the letters that bear his name. You can dispute that evidence on all sorts of grounds, but you should be honest enough to acknowledge that the rejection is based on assumptions and not actual evidence.
In other news, I’m glad you’re back. I really did miss our conversations…although I think I got more total work done during our hiatus than I did before. Hope the family is well and business is good.
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Why must I make points when that job has already been done by highly qualified critical scholars?
The same standard of critical scholarship that recognizes why the gospels are anonymous, and include forgery/interpolation, Acts is historical fiction, at least half the Pauline epistles are forgeries, etc etc.
Your foundation is based on faith and indoctrination, therefore you are bound to accept tradition rather than evidence, as once you start down that road you will eventually be forced to face the fact you are dealing with nothing but geopolitical foundation myth and historical fiction; not to mention the forgeries, interpolation etc.
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Which is all a perspective I heartily reject for all the reasons we have talked about before, and on that score, I fear we remain hopelessly divided for now. I find your position to be just as unreasonable and disconnected from reality as you find mine. Oh well. At least there’s always good cake 🙂
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But your position is one of faith not evidence, largely because of emotional reasons coupled with indoctrination, as has been pointed out on numerous occasions.
Furthermore, your entire worldview hinges on the Bible being the inspired word of your god, Yahweh.
To question this, and you really should, would see you very likely realise your entire religious raison d’etre is based entirely upon a lie.
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And I understand that’s what you believe about me and about Christianity in general. You’ve made that abundantly clear over the course of our conversation.
The trouble is that you’re just not correct. Really, on any of it.
You are committed to a particular worldview position that must see all of these matters as you frame them lest the whole artifice come crashing down. In other words, you are at risk of the very thing of which you have routinely assigned to my position, but from the opposite side. I remain convinced the comprehensive case here overwhelmingly supports the position I hold. And if you want to continue to hold the belief the only reason for that is indoctrination, that’s okay. You’ll remain mistaken, but I’m not going to continue trying to correct you on the point.
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The position you hold is wholly reliant on faith, not evidence.
Furthermore, belief is usually rooted in indoctrination, often from the knee. Hence the vehement resistance to critically examine such beliefs.
While I have never been a believer so my view can quite easily be dismissed those people who deconvert, from pastors, priests, nuns and apologists to ordinary pew warmers, are the very best witnesses to the truth of my words.
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Again, you’re simply mistaken in this recurring assertion; both about faith and belief. I’m genuinely sorry you can’t see otherwise. And, while there are certainly many who have deconverted from Christianity for a variety of reasons, those don’t bear witness to the truth of your words in a meaningful sense as far as I’m concerned anymore than you would consider the equally numerous stories of atheists abandoning their unbelief in favor of Christianity because – in their words, not mine – they found the evidence in favor of so Christianity too convincing to ignore or reject any longer compelling evidence in favor of my position. Anecdotes are powerful, no doubt about it. But the sum total of anecdotes is not data. Truth claims need to be evaluated on their own merit. In my view, the truth claims of atheism upon critical examination on philosophical grounds don’t hold up. The truth claims of Christianity do.
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“… as far as I’m concerned”
Do you realize what you have admitted here?
You simply fail to recognise or acknowledge that belief in anything does not equate to truth, fact or evidence of the veracity of that belief.
That so much of the Bible is geopolitical foundation myth and historical fiction should be a giant red flag for even the mildly curious.
This is even before the interpolation and forgery is addressed.
That you refuse to acknowledge this fact attests to the power of indoctrination, overt and the more insidious, subtle aspects, more than you can possibly realise and I’ll bet my house that every deconvert will nod in agreement to this.
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I’m sure they would…otherwise they wouldn’t have deconverted. But that doesn’t mean their testimonies themselves place weight in favor of your position anymore than testimonies of former atheists who have embraced Christianity are something you would consider as a mark in favor of my position. You keep holding out the stories of people who have rejected the truth claims of Christianity after formerly professing to accept them as if this is something that should be convincing to me of the validity of your point. “As far as I’m concerned” that line of argument isn’t in the least bit convincing. That was the context for my saying that. I wasn’t “admitting” anything other than that. You’re using a line of argument that isn’t very good except to you. Or, to put that another way, as far as you are concerned, those testimonies are compelling.
You are still operating comfortably from within the confines of your worldview. Your guiding assumption is that there is literally no good reason why someone would accept belief in the truth claims of Christianity. Therefore, it must only be from indoctrination.
So much of the Bible is not geopolitical foundation myth or historical fiction. That’s the view you have of it, and it’s not a correct view. And citing “scholarly consensus” does no more to strengthen your point here than citing deconversion testimonies does. Scholarly consensus a couple of hundred years ago was that phlogiston was the primary component of the air we breathe. It was wrong then. Scholarly consensus a hundred years ago was that the universe was eternal and cyclical. No less an authority (and not a Christian one) than Einstein himself put a fudge factor in his work so that its solution pointed toward an eternal universe because he didn’t like the theological significance of a universe that began to exist in the finite past. Scholarly consensus (and Einstein) was wrong then. Scholarly consensus just twenty years ago was that embryonic stem cells held the promise of miracle cures and therefore it was not only ethical but imperative that they be able to do research using tissues obtained from aborted babies. They were wrong then too.
You’ve got to make better arguments if you hope to be convincing to someone who actually understands the matters we are discussing.
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Convincing someone who is indoctrinated, as you are, is not really the goal. That particular light bulb you will have to switch on yourself.
The tales of Adam abnd Eve, Noah and his global flood, and the Exodus narrative have all been refuted with evidence.
Therefore, until you truly decide to understand what evidence actually is and not what you want it to be that light bulb moment will ensure you remain wilfully ignorant and groping in the dark.
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Once again then, we find ourselves standing before the same conclusion, but from opposite directions. Our merry-go-round adventure continues…
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You will have to do better than your usual “tis not!” style respone if you wish to show any of your arguments hold any veracity whatsoever.
As the three foundational tales of the Pentateuch are all fiction/myth and evidence has demonstrated this beyond any doubt you are already dancing on quicksand.
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Okay, I’ll play. Let’s go back to your insistence that the HGP has proven beyond all doubt that there could not have been an historical Adam and Eve. Let me ask some questions just because I haven’t given as much attention to that project as you have. Is the claim of Collins and others that humans evolved in multiple locations around the world at about the same time? Or did it happen multiple times in the same basic location? Correct my understanding here if I need that. The contention is that life arose and began to gradually speciate out from that single starting point as evolutionary changes accumulated in different populations (which themselves were created by the accumulation of evolutionary changes) over time, yes?
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Humans evolved in Africa.
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Okay, then that fits with what I thought the position was. Good.
Let me keep asking questions to make sure I understand what guys like Collins (and you) are saying is the right way to think about this.
At some point along this evolutionary process, would there have been a first human? What I mean is, within the evolutionary framework of changes over time, at some point there would have been the line between human and non-human, and that line got crossed such that you had a human whereas you didn’t in the previous generation. Does that sound even remotely right? Or, was that line crossed several times over roughly the same geological period?
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Define first human?
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You said “human evolved in Africa.” What do you mean by human?
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Human ancestors
As you do not believe in evolution I get the feeling this is going to become pedantic and you are working toward what you think will be a Gotcha!
Perhaps you should do some basic research about human evolution and the HGP so this conversation doesn’t devolve into yet another line that includes something like:
“Well God said….”
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That doesn’t really explain anything. Those ancestors were human, yes or no? At some point there were not humans and then there were humans, correct?
There’s such a lack of clarity in the language you are using here. It kind of allows you to wave an “evolution” wand over the whole thing in much the same way as you would accuse me of waving a “well God said” wand.
The truth is, I’ve studied many of the same evolutionary arguments you have. They may not be from the same sources, but they were making the same points. I’ve been through college biology. I have a degree in chemistry. The problem all of these arguments is that none of them take into account the most cutting edge research we have on things like the complexities of the cell and protein structure. The kinds of evolutionary changes Darwin’s original theory and even later iterations of it assume happened (and they are assumptions because there’s not evidence) don’t make any sense in light of the most recent data we have. Most of what gets taught and schools and circulates online these days is uniformly based on old information. For goodness’ sake, modern biology textbooks still teach the Miller-Urey experiment with seriousness as if that actually proves anything when modern research reveals the whole thing to be a joke in terms of giving us any information on the origin of life.
I don’t need a “well God said” moment here. Modern science puts the lie to the standard Darwinian evolutionary explanation for the development of life (let alone questions of the origin of life which Dr. James Tour has been absolutely thrashing the broader evolutionary biology community about over the past few years) just fine on its own.
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You asked me to explain when you already know the arguments but you have simply rejected them in favour of creation.
This smacks of disingenuity.
You simply refuse to accept the science as it conflicts with your indoctrinated creation belief.
The real question is how much science and other evidence will it take for you to acknowledge the bible is geopolitical foundation myth and historical fiction?
The HGP has consigned the tale of Adam & Eve to the scrap heap but you are still looking for a way to wheedle creation into the narrative.
So let’s look at the Noachian global flood tale.
There is no evidence that even suggests the entire earth was flooded, so why are you still sitting on the fence?
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No, I asked you to explain so that I could better understand what your position on the matter was. You already knew my position as we have talked about it several times. I simply wanted to better understand yours. There was nothing disingenuous about my approach at all.
I’m happy to and do in fact accept “the science” as you so monolithically frame it. I simply accept a bit more current a version of it than you seem to be willing to acknowledge. The tough truth is, even for the HGP, that scientists working with it and making claims about the ancient past are doing a whole lot of guess work. The most honest of the bunch acknowledge that. Well, when you start doing guesswork, even really educated guesswork, worldview and philosophy necessarily comes into play. This is not to say we should reject their findings. We shouldn’t. But we should also take them for what they are.
We’ve already talked about the Flood and my position there too. I’m not sitting on the fence at all. Do you want to go back over my position?
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Nonsense! The genetics behind the HGP is sound and for you, a Creationist, to assert it is guesswork, is not only petty and completely unfounded it undermines the work of hundreds of scientists over years and years of dedicated work. Your unqualified opinion is simply risible.
If you truly believe you have evidence that refutes the science feel free to present it or at least provide a bona fide link that does.
Yes, we have discussed the Noachian global flood and your Creationist position has no evidentiary basis.
Are you wanting to discuss the Exodus narrative as well or are you happy to accept the archeological evidence that has refuted the tale?
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I didn’t say the HGP work itself is guesswork. I said that their efforts to frame out what genes looked like in the ancient past requires guesswork. And it does because they don’t have those genes. They are making very educated guesses about what they might have looked like based on their excellent work detailing out the sequence of modern genes, which is fine. That’s how science working in the ancient past works. But those guesses are going to be at least partly guided by the worldview assumptions of the scientists in question. That’s how science in the ancient past works. I don’t need to refute any of the evidence. They’ve done great and careful work. But it is work that is nonetheless informed by certain very educated guesses. Every time that happens, philosophy and worldview enter the equation. That’s how science happens. It is always guided by philosophy.
I’ll leave the Flood and the Exodus narrative alone for now because there’s no need for us to retread that ground.
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Lol!
Your wheedling reply is devoid of any merit.
Worldview assumptions?
Collins is an evangelical Christian for goodness sake!
What in the name of Gehenna do you think his worldview is?
🤦
Guesswork?
Please, I beg you, from where are you getting this drivel?
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Wait, do you mean they have actual genetic samples from humans from tens of thousands of years ago to give total confirmation to their efforts to reconstruct the sequences of ancient genes?
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Wait, you mean you reject the science that has unraveled the gene sequence to 99.9%?
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Heh. I see what you did there. But you’re talking about modern genes. I’m talking about ancient ones. Those are two different things. The human genome is remarkably stable, and by all accounts has been remarkably stable for a very long time. But to state with confidence conclusions about our genetic past, we have to do some guesswork. Again, it is highly educated guesswork, but it is guesswork all the same.
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Again, you assert guesswork.
Provide evidence or cite the scientific view that supports your assertion.
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Is there direct evidence of the exact sequences of ancient genes? Or the ancient human genome as a whole?
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Once again you are equivocating.
You simply cannot provide any evidence that supports your Creationist pov.
It is like arguing with flat-earther or YEC.
Your replies are bordering on dishonest.
🤦
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With respect, you won’t answer my question. Is there direct evidence of the exact sequence of ancient genomes?
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I have no respect for religion so you don’t have to worry.
If the human genome has been sequenced it has been sequenced.
If you dispute this then provide evidence.
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So then, you’re not going to answer my question. I’m not sure if the reason is a won’t or a can’t, but until then, I suppose we’ll just have to drop the matter. One more time, though, for the sake of clarity, I don’t dispute at all that the human genome has been sequenced. That’s not the question I’m asking. We are talking about the ancient past. Over the span of tens of thousands of years, it seems a reasonable inference to make that in spite of remarkable stability, the sequence has probably changed some. Darwin’s evolutionary theory itself would seem to suggest rather insistently in this direction. If that inference is wrong, then I’ll be wrong. But you haven’t yet made an argument beyond mere assertion yourself that it is, and you haven’t really even asserted that much. Until then, I will continue in my understanding that making statements about the human genome in the ancient past requires guesswork, however educated that guesswork may be. If you don’t like the word guesswork, we can pick another one. The point remains the same. We can’t say for certain what the ancient human genome looked like. So, we have to guess some. Philosophy and worldview impact the nature of those guesses. That’s how science dealing with the ancient past works, and that’s okay to acknowledge.
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The opening gambit was that the HGP has refuted any notion that Adam & Eve are the original couple, the progenators of the human race.
The sequencing of the human genome has established this as fact.
What you are trying to assert over and above this just comes across as rather silly Creationist waffle in the same vein as when Creationists and YEC fools make asinine remarks such as “Were you there?”
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You keep saying that, but you still haven’t responded to my question or meaningfully engaged my point at all except with bluster. I want to assume the reason is that you aren’t willing because you’re a pretty smart guy, but I’m honestly starting to wonder a bit if the reason is that you aren’t able for some reason.
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Explain what relevance your question is to the fact the HGP has established that there was never an original couple as per the Bible tale?
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When working with ancient questions, a certain amount of uncertainty inherently comes into play. That means there’s guesswork involved in the process. That guesswork is going to be guided at least in part by philosophical presuppositions because that’s how science works. It’s how it has always worked. This means that while the HGP is incredible. It is a monument of human scientific achievement. But it’s not an infallible project, nor are the men and women who have taken its treasure troves of information and made educated guesses about the ancient human genome and its originating source. This simply means they don’t know everything. I value and appreciate their work, but they may not know everything. There may yet be work done that shows otherwise. Maybe not. But maybe. I’m comfortable sitting with that inherent unknown and assuming that I’m okay in my position. You assume you’re okay in yours. Either way, at the end of the day, and as much as you don’t want to hear this, we both have positions rooted in faith.
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My position is that of the geneticists etc who have established, among other things, that there never was an original breeding pair of humans as per the Bible tale.
What about this is there to dispute or is reliant on “guesswork” ?
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Their conclusion in that regard is based on reconstructing ancient genomes which relies on a certain amount of guesswork. That’s all.
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Again, please link to a scientific paper or similar that acknowledges there is guesswork involved.
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I haven’t spent that much time in the literature to be able to simply pull one up for you, and I’m not willing to invest the time it’ll take to try to find out. I was reading an article reviewing a book by an evangelical biologist (not a creationist) and a fairly moderate theologian in which the biologist acknowledged this very thing, but I don’t have that link handy. In the technical literature, such a posture of humility isn’t likely to get you published, so I wouldn’t expect to find one there.
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And yet you make an assertion that you no basis for, or a single piece of evidence but simply because you refuse to accept the fact the HGP established that humans could not possibly have derived from a single breeding as per the Bible tale, something even Francis Collins acknowledges.
That is not only the height of arrogance but outright wilfull ignorance.
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Nope. I’m happy to acknowledge the finding. But I’m also willing to acknowledge that knowledge is an ever-growing endeavor, and that there may yet be more to learn about the ancient world that the HGP hasn’t told us yet.
If you believe that’s “willful ignorance” on my part, that’s okay, but as much as you don’t care for the charge (it made you stomp off in a digital huff the last time I suggested it of you, if you’ll recall), I’d perhaps counsel a bit more care in throwing it around.
We’ve already had this same basic conversation before. It still doesn’t have anything to do with the larger question that matters more, and it doesn’t even really threaten the Genesis account very much for folks who take a more symbolic approach to it. I’m curious why this is something you keep coming back to and what you hope to accomplish by doing so.
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If you acknowledge the HGP has confirmed there never was an original breeding pair of humans as per the Bible tale what on earth have you been prattling on about?
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You kept talking about it and I kept responding. Around and around we went.
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If you accept the HGP findings regarding the fact Adam and Eve could not possibly gave existed athen why on earth were you demanding info on ancient DNA?
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To make the point that while the HGP work is profound, it may not yet tell the full story. It may be that they “could not possibly have existed,” but rather that although the likelihood seems small now (perhaps even vanishingly small), there may yet be more to discover on the matter. That full story just may point back in the direction of the Genesis account.
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No, it could not lead back to the Genesis account as no such bottleneck was possible, and this is what the HGP established and what even Collins acknowledged,
So in truth you do not accept the science.
This demonstrates the point that you will seem to throw your lot in with science but in truth you hold the religious caveat behind your back.
As mentioned numerous times already, this is because of your indoctrination.
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No again. I accept what they found, but also maintain that they may yet find more to show differently than they’ve found.
And you come back again to indoctrination. It’s like that’s all you have. It’s like you literally can’t accept that anyone could critically evaluate the claims of Christianity and come away with a different conclusion than you have. That’s some serious worldview commitment there. With such strong philosophical blinders, you’re likely to miss quite a bit of what can be known about the world and how it works.
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Differently how?
Be specific.
Indoctrination, passive and/ or aggressive coupled with some form of emotional issue/ trauma underpins all genuine religious belief.
Consider me for example. Raised in a liberal Christian environment where the extent of any form of belief could be attributed to culture.
Christmas, easter, carols at Christmas, Our father who art… etc at morning assembly and a trip to church once a month during band parade while a member of the scouts. That is it.
No emotional attachment whatsoever, and if pushed for any sort of answer ( never was) about your god, Yahweh, and Jesus coming back to life, had I not been raised to be very polite to grown up I would have replied : “Load of bollocks!”
Now an adult and based upon the complete lack of evidence to demonstrate otherwise that perspective has been shown to be correct.
Now, I don’t know the circumstances surrounding your cinversion( if we have discussed it forgive my shoddy memory) but you were either raised in a more conservative Christian environment, prayers at bedtime, grace at meals, church every Sunday, Bible class etc etc.
Something went “click” and here you are!
Then you have someone like Francis Collins. Classic tale of youthful. Insecurity, developed a form of death anxiety while dealing with terminally patients, talked to a pastor, read CS Lewis Yada Yada and we all know the rest of course.
Did I ever mention Johnny Scaramanga?
Raised YEC, went to an ACE school, managed to escape and wrote his PhD on them. Eventually had to throw in the towel as the emotional blowback nearly sent him doolally.
When you research why people deconvert it invariably turns out that everything they were conned into believeing was truth/ fact turns out to be completely devoid of substance.
This is the general view of every deconvert I have ever read or listened to.
Evidence plays absolutely no part in the beliefs that are held
That only comes later, usually when doubt creeps in and this is when apologetics comes into its own.
Oh, and for the record, if you could show that Jesus was actually Yahweh and the Bible was literally historical fact why on earth do think anyone should worship him?
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Differently in that subsequent new findings show the Genesis account to in fact be historical in some measure.
On the rest, I’m honestly a little surprised at the profoundly limited understanding you have of genuine religious belief and the utter arrogance of your perspective toward it. You think you understand conversion better than the converted who tell their own stories. If ever there has been a display of arrogance over the course of our conversation, I can’t think of a better example than what you just put on display.
Let’s do think about your story. You never experienced the real church operating as the body of Christ or even, from what you have described, genuine Christianity. You experienced Christian culture through the context of a church environment where the Gospel had long since been abandoned in favor of mere cultural formalities and the broadly politically liberal (in an American sense) social beliefs that historically come as part and parcel with such Gospel abandonment. From what you have described, you never encountered anything like genuine belief in Christ. How could you possibly hope to understand such a thing having no meaningful experience with it at all?
As for my experience, yes, I was raised in a much more conservative environment. Both parents were active in the church, and we were there as often as the doors were opened. But honestly, I started reading the Bible regularly on my own pretty early on. My environment unquestionably played a role in my journey to a personal faith, but I soaked in the Scriptures and started investigating the evidences for faith on my own pretty early on. When I finally genuinely made a profession of faith, I didn’t tell anyone about it for years because they assumed I had done so long before. I made that profession after I had encountered several logical presentations of the evidence for things like the resurrection and the reasonableness of a belief in God. And for what it’s worth, my sister did not follow a similar path as I did. She’s come back some to the faith now that she has a family of her own, but she didn’t live anything like that kind of a lifestyle through her high school and college years. And do you know how my parents responded? They loved her and let her make her own choices without pushing her in one particular direction or another. She came back to it on her own.
You have indeed mentioned Johnny before. I’ll say now as I said then that his experience is indeed a tragic one. But think a bit further about his story. He didn’t become an atheist (agnostic?) on the basis of any kind of evidence, but because of the emotional trauma he experienced in that awful church environment.
Yes, I’m sure there are countless stories of people who have deconverted in which they declare their former beliefs to be devoid of substance. If they had experienced real substance, they probably wouldn’t have left. If they hadn’t experienced any manner of emotional trauma that was directly or indirectly in their minds associated with their religious upbringing, they probably wouldn’t have left either. So many of these folks are not atheists now because of reason or logic or evidence, but because of emotion and even because of indoctrination (counter-indoctrination?). The embrace of evidence comes later. From my experience, a rejection of the faith nearly always comes as a result of pain in some form or fashion, not because of evidence. You are an exception to the norm in this regard.
Let me offer an example. A family in my previous church raised both of their kids in the church. Neither parent was particularly pushy when it came to church matters, and never actually had a conversation with them about the real substance of the faith. Also, it was a pretty healthy church environment, all things considered. The oldest went off to college and came home declaring himself an atheist. At his parents’ anxious request and as a credit to his own willingness, he and I met several times and exchanged many long emails over a period of a few months and talked about his objections to the faith much as you and I have done. As we talked, the real truth came out. He had never experienced any kind of indoctrination. He just hadn’t ever bought into the faith in the first place. This wasn’t for reasons of evidence, as he didn’t ever really explore those questions until after he got to college. It had never really clicked when he was growing up and he had a bit of a rebellious streak when he hit his teenage years and started tuning out his parents’ beliefs mostly out of teenage spite. In college, he started partying and participating in the hookup culture on his campus. He ultimately wound up getting drunk enough to do something really stupid and landed himself in jail for a couple of weeks. His “rejection” of the faith had nothing to do with reason or logic. It was entirely emotional and relational. He found those later as an easy means of justifying his rejection. He was essentially indoctrinated into atheism when he started looking for an unbelieving community online.
As far as atheists I’ve encountered go, his story is pretty much par for the course.
Now, do relationships and emotion play a role in a person’s journey to faith? Of course they do. It would be silly for me to claim otherwise. And for some, they do indeed play the only role with evidence and apologetics coming into question later if at all. Personally, I don’t think that’s a very good thing. Faith that does come from indoctrination or which is largely an emotional response to trauma is rarely a very robust faith and it is one that is often abandoned when it’s hard or inconvenient later on down the road. Jesus Himself talked about this in the parable of the sower in Matthew 13. That’s actually what we’ve spent the last few weeks talking about at our Wednesday night Bible study. This is also why Jesus said we are to make disciples (that is, committed followers) and not merely converts. But relationships and emotion play an equally significant role in a person’s abandonment of the faith in favor of atheism. The arguments often come later then too.
In other words, from my experience, all the things you are saying about Christianity are true but in exactly the opposite direction about atheism.
As for why Jesus is worthy of worship, Paul’s description in the opening verses of Colossians offers a pretty good place to start.
And as for your question of how many children would come to faith apart from experiencing a Christian environment as a part of their upbringing, we have no idea. People come to faith in spite of having not had a Christian or even a religious upbringing all the time. Around the world, including in Africa, the church is growing at incredibly rapid rates, and a great deal of this growth is conversion growth. Apparently, the answer is that many children will grow up and become Christians without an initial indoctrination (to use your word) into it.
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Faith, personal experience, emotion.
You did not use evidence once.
That is telling.
Yes, people do come to faith! But once again, belief but with no evidence .
Kids left alone and not subjected to religious indictrination, especially the more overt type, will naturally move away, rather than toward.
I presume you don’t still believe in Father Christmas?
And for good reason.
Johnny’s experience was traumatic but the reason he left (escaped) was because it is all bullshit. Dinosaurs and humans co existing?
I don’t see the point of your rebellious teen example. You cannot be indoctrinated into atheism.
Atheism is the lack of belief in gods. As there is no evidence for gods then there is nothing to be indoctrinated into.
He got sucked into the college culture like so many teens. If gecwas anything he was agnostic. His communication with you either cemented the indoctrination he had already been exposed to or increased his feelings of fear and or guilt.
I’m hoping he managdd to resist the emotional guilt trip and walked away from Christisnity for good?
Your Africa example is also telling.
We are dealing with a largely unsophisticated, captive audience whose culture is still steeped in muti, ( traditional medicine) witch doctors and more religious charletons than you can throw a stick at, and remember, I live here! Easy meat.
Conversely, much of Europe is becoming ever more secular by the year.
The happiest nations are generally the least religious.
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You know, it did occur to me this whole debate is yet another example of our coming at the issue from two totally different sides. You don’t think God exists in the first place and so therefore any belief in Him can only be the result of indoctrination. That makes sense to me. I think you’re wrong, of course, but it makes sense.
Johnny had a horrible experience with the faith. That propelled his departure. The reasons were subsequent to that.
Your repeated insistence that you cannot be indoctrinated into atheism comes across to me like my insistence that genuine belief in Christ is not the result of indoctrination comes across to you.
I mentioned evidence several times in that response. Did you miss them?
I don’t have any idea where that young man stands with respect to the faith now. I haven’t been in contact with him for a long time. I do know that his brother went off to college with about the same level of faith, but as he studied Christianity more and examined the evidence, he came out of college with a much stronger, more robust faith than he had went he entered.
Wait, which Africa example? We’re going back and forth so much again (I knew you couldn’t stay away, by the way ;~), that I can’t keep up.
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You cannot be indoctrinated into atheism.
Atheism is simply the lack of belief in gods.
How can one be indoctrinated into something for which is simply a lack of belief?
The real issue is you are upset because you know there is no evidence for your god and thus belief in it HAS to be indoctrinated, passively or aggressively.
When a small child asks why they must pray, it is natural you will respond along the lines of God hears your prayers. Or Jesus looks after you, there is an angel. In the bedroom or some such
I don’t know exactly what you said to your kids when they were small and asked the typical questions kids ask, but you would have been forced to include words such as faith, and angels and evil and maybe even sin,none of which you could furnish one iota of evidence.
But mum and dad pray, and dad tells us all about God, heaven and Hell for naughty people and so it must be truth.
They likely went to church, were surrounded by Christians, Gran and Grandad were Christians etc etc.
So they were immersed in your religion.
How could they NOT become indoctrinated?
Yes, I must have missed your mention of evidence. I shall go back and read it again.
Is it evidence for your god, I wonder?
Re Africa:
You mentioned conversions are on the rise.
I replied along the lines of not being surprised.
Africa is a continent steeped in superstition, and many of the indigenous people are quite credulous when it comes to such things.
Easy meat for the evangelical.
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I do remember saying that now :~) Here once again, because you start from the place that God doesn’t exist, the rapid conversion rate on the African continent could only be from superstition. It can’t be legitimate. If it were, that would undermine the entire foundation from which you are starting.
Personally, my kids have never asked why they must pray. I’ve prayed for them. I’ve prayed with them (in fact, I do that every night). But never have I sat them down and told them they must pray. And when I pray for them, I very regularly pray that they will come to see the world through the lens of what’s true and no other lens. I mean that too when I say it.
They could only become indoctrinated, though, if none of it is true in the first place which is your starting assumption. That’s all you have as a response. We’ve talked about reasons and evidence, but you’ve categorically rejected all of that because the worldview parameters by which you are operate won’t let you accept anything that’s non-empirical. Philosophically speaking, that’s scientism, and it’s a self-defeating proposition. Speaking of philosophy, we could talk more about the philosophical arguments in favor of God, but you tend to want to stay away from that realm and so we have. If God exists, and if this stuff is true, then it’s not indoctrination at all. I reject your starting premise for reasons we’ve discussed at length and so naturally I reject your conclusion (i.e., indoctrination). Continuing to repeat the point doesn’t make it any stronger.
I mentioned this earlier, but it probably got lost. Changing topics entirely here, how much do you know about the fine-tuning argument in favor of God’s existence? I’m curious for your reaction to it since we haven’t talked about that before that I can recall. In any event, have a good evening…or night for you. My afternoon craziness is about to kick off. Happy elephant making when the time comes :~)
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I do NOT start from a place that your god, Yahweh does not exist.
I start from the place that no evidence has ever been produced to demonstrate the veracity of the claim that he does.
And that is the single most difficult point for you to accept.
I suspect the reason for this is because for you it seems obvious Yahweh exists. After all, you regard yourself as reasonably intelligent and if he weren’t real you would surely realise, right? Otherwise you’d be a bit of a jerk for believing such nonsense, right?
The same is probably true of others which is why there are billions of believers. Therefore what’s my problem, right?
Why don’t I believe?
Heardened heart?
I love to sin? ( my favorite! )
I know Yahweh is real but I just don’t want to admit it?
But if any of these were true then what excuse have over a billion Muslims got?
Or Hindus, Jews, and those who follow myriad other religions?
Do they also reject your god because they too prefer to sin?
Or maybe…. Just maybe, there really isn’t any evidence for all this god belief after all?
And the reason you are Christisn and Fazel is Muslim and Raj is Hindu and Schlomo is Jewish is simply because of a quirk of geography, indoctrination and culture?
Fine tuning? What’s your position?
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There’s been lots of evidence offered over the centuries since the church came into existence. You simply choose to either reject or otherwise categorically deny that it is evidence in the first place. Contrary to your point, that’s the thing that is most difficult for you to accept. You are entirely locked into a worldview position from which no set of beliefs but yours are reasonable. Therefore, you must explain away every other position as irrational in some way. It’s why you keep coming back to indoctrination over and over and over and over and over and…
As for why you don’t believe, sure, I could offer up guesses, but that’s ultimately between you and…well, I’d say God, but you don’t believe He exists, so I guess just you and you. If I were forced to make a guess, I think I’d just settle on the observation that you don’t really want to believe. From what I can tell, you’ve never been given reason to think that’s a worthwhile thing to do, so you don’t have any interest in it. For somebody else, there may be a totally different set of reasons behind their atheism, but I don’t get the sense it’s much more complicated than that for you. Is that fair?
On the question of children and atheism, it’s a pretty far stretch to say that all kids are born atheists. Kids are born not knowing anything. They don’t have any beliefs at all. That doesn’t make them atheists so much as blanks slates. That particular line of argument as some kind of a justification for atheism is just silly.
As for fine tuning, you can probably guess at my position. I think it’s a positive pointer toward the existence of some kind of an intelligent designer. I’m more curious for your thoughts on the matter. Astrophysicists have identified something like 50 different physical constants that are all set at extraordinarily precise values. If any one of them, but especially a handful of the most significant ones, were even slightly different from what they are, the universe could not have existed in the first place, and there definitely wouldn’t be any life on earth. How would you explain how those values came to be what they are? The only alternatives to an intelligent designer I’ve ever managed to come up with are luck or chance. Do you settle for one of those options, or is there a third I haven’t thought about?
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You confuse arguments and claims for evidence.
You have from the beginning and will probably continue to do so.
This is called faith. Not evidence.
It seems to be built-in to Christisn apologetics.
Example: Nothing in the Bible is evidence for your god, Yahweh and foundational tales in the OT have been refuted by scientific evidence.
So, in fact it is you who refuses to accept the evidence and you have written as much in every comment where such tales are discussed: Adam & Eve, Noah and the flood, The Exodus and Conquest etc.
Much of the NT contains forgery, and interpolation, plagiarism, contradictions, etc. Hardly the handiwork of a god who would inspire!
Everything mentioned above has been shown to be correct by critical Bible scholars far more erudite and skilled than I could ever possibly be.
To make matters worse for Christians there are tens of thousands of denominations and few can agree among themselves about what it is to be a proper Christian, the nature of your god, Yahweh or the character Jesus of Nazareth.
I do not believe because the claims are unfounded and, quite frankly, simply nonsense and no evidence has ever been presented to make me or millions of others consider differently.
Kids:
Fair point. Children are born lacking any notion/ belief of gods.
However they do asign agency. You are probably aware of this I presume?
Religious beliefs have to be instilled, in a similar fashion as Father Chritmstmas etc
Studies have shown that, left to their own devices kids will not become religious. That happens via culture and indoctrination.
This is why in every culture the god who is worshiped and the religious practices involved will reflect that culture.
It isn’t rocket science.
And this is the primary reason you are Christian and not Muslim.
Fine tuning:
Whatever your position I will almost certainly take the opposite view.
You should listen to Sean Caroll.
Very clever bloke.
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There are arguments and there is evidence. Two different things. I agree with you there. There are good arguments in favor of God’s existence. And there is positive evidence pointing toward that as a reasonable conclusion. You reject both. That’s what I meant.
I am glad to acknowledge that there is some evidence that seems to point away from the historical reliability of the Scriptures. I’m also willing to hold making a final judgment on those matters on the basis of those findings. As we have talked about, there have been several other occasions when the scholarly consensus was that there was no evidence for one historical claim in the Scriptures or another only to be proven wrong but subsequently discovered evidence. There’s a pattern here. The secular consensus is that something in the Scriptures is definitively wrong, subsequent findings prove them wrong, they get quiet about those parts and make a lot of noise about other parts. The trouble is, the number of parts about which they can make noise keeps getting smaller.
None of the New Testament contains any of those things in spite of your repeated insistence to the contrary. The various places where those claims are made have been answered over and over again.
Disagreement over various Christian claims doesn’t mean the whole thing is false. It means their understanding of what exactly to do with the truth differs. That’s not a good argument. Try another one.
Yes, of course culture plays a profound role in someone’s religious or non-religious expression. One could argue using the same logic (though I expect you would reject the argument) that you are a secular person because you were raised in a functionally secular environment. Yes, your nation was still very much enmeshed in a Christian-ish culture at that time, but from your own description, your environment and your experience of it, while filled with various church-related rituals, was nonetheless functionally secular. Lo and behold, you are secular. You’re right, it’s not rocket science. But to argue that’s the primary reason why a person is one thing or another assumes on a great deal more knowledge than you have. That goes for me. That goes for you. That goes for everybody else too.
On fine tuning, I’ve heard some of Sean Caroll’s arguments. I don’t remember exactly which ones they were now, but I remember thinking at the time that they weren’t very good or compelling. It sounds like you aren’t really very familiar with the fine tuning parameters of the universe in the first place. It would be worth your time looking into that. It’s all science. Given those, do you think they are what they are by chance or by necessity (that’s the other explanation I couldn’t remember yesterday)? Or, if you reject one of those options (which is, of course, a fine thing to do), how else would you account for their extraordinary specificity?
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What do you consider to be positive evidence of the existence of any god, let alone your God, Yahweh?
What examples of evidence about the bible are you referring to? Please be very specific.
Disagreement among the myriad Christian sects regarding the bible, your god, Yahweh, Jesus and doctrine simply illustrates the entire shebang is man made, and like anything of this nature that is man made a large proportion of it is simply made up.
The New Testament contains every single example I have listed.
Examples.
Forgery: long ending of GMark.
Interpolation:Woman caught in adultery
Plagiarism: GMatthew which contains over 80% of the material found in Mark, some of it verbatim.
Contradictions:The visits to the tomb, for which there is absolutely no archeological evidence.
Forgery: At least six, maybe seven of the Pauline epistles are forgeries.
Of course I am secular because of my upbringing. This is the whole point isn’t it?
So what ever it is you are trying to say now you are simply making my point.
You are a Christian because of the environment you were raised and exposed to.
The exact reason why your are not Muslim or Hindu!
It is everything to do with belief and culture ( geographical location, family, etc) and absolutely nothing whatsoever to with evidence of some god or another.
Fine Tuning: As I referenced Caroll why would you assume I was not familiar with the fine tuning argument?
Yeah, well,…. Goddidit, etc etc right? 🥱
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We’ve talked through all of those issues before. I’m really not interested in going back again over ground we’ve already plowed and on which we already know we aren’t going to agree. I’d rather invest our time in exploring (i.e., debating) new questions together.
You keep citing the same list of complaints about the New Testament. I’ve responded in the past to, I think, every one of those. None of those are new arguments. At all. They’re very old arguments that have all been addressed by Christian scholars. Once again, I’m just not interested in taking the time to go back over things we’ve already discussed.
So then you don’t believe in God simply because of your upbringing? Why, Ark, that sounds like indoctrination to me! Unless of course you made a conscious choice somewhere along the way to commit to the beliefs that you hold. I’ll just go ahead and assume that you did. So did I. You’re once again playing a tune that you don’t have the knowledge to play well nor any evidence of. In fact, since we’re talking about why I’m a Christian, the only actual evidence you have is my testimony which is exactly the opposite of what you continue to claim. You’re holding a belief based on what amounts to a kind of faith. Surely you don’t mean to do that, right?
In the end, you have to continue to insist there’s no evidence that could possibly play a role because if there was, then your entire framework here would be wrong and your disbelief in God just may not be as rational a position as you believe it to be.
Back to fine tuning, referencing Carroll didn’t strike me as an acknowledgment of familiarity with the matter. I’m still curious for what you conclude about those physical constants. I don’t really care what Carroll thinks. I’m talking with you, not him. Since you’ve ruled out a designer, are they there because of chance or necessity? Or, like with the origin of life, do you simply retreat to ignorance of the matter? (Which, I guess, would make you more of an agnostic than an atheist, wouldn’t it?)
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It is telling you mention that the issues gave all been addressed by Christian scholars.
I chuckled at this
It like asking you to provide evidence the Exodus didn’t happen.
Something you would NEVER do!
That is the whole raison d’etre of Christian apologetics for goodness’, sake.
And for what it’s worth every bit of my initial info regarding the plagiarism of gMatthew and the forgeries etc was from the encyclopedia. At that stage I was not even aware of someone such as Bart Ehrman.
I was not a Christian/ believer in Yahweh because, unlike you, I was not indoctrinated into the religion, but merely exposed to it on a cultural level, as I esmcoksuned in several occasions.
Please stop trying to be a smart Alec Jonathan, it isn’t clever.
It is not my fault you feel tetchy because the reality of why you believe has been brought home to you.
I imagine Muslims and Hindus would feel similarly.
I lack belief in gods because no evidence has ever been presented to demonstrate the veracity of the claims.
If you don’t care what Caroll thinks then what are the odds you will afford me any respect over the matter?
As you believe Yahweh is the culprit I will adopt the contrary position.
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Did you expect secular scholars to actively seek to make Christian arguments? Of course Christian scholars would be the ones to make Christian arguments. That strikes me as a silly point.
What is not a silly point and one that is worth keeping in mind is that atheism (like Christianity) is ultimately not a position of science or any amount of evidence, but of philosophy. This is why I keep coming back to the foundational importance of worldview. Nobody adopts a worldview on the basis of evidence alone, not even atheists.
You got your information from an encyclopedia put together by secular scholars. It was all part of your indoctrination process, to use your word. You are making arguments that apply both ways. If indoctrination is what you want to call it, then fine, we both were. I don’t agree, of course, but if you’re going to insist on a set of rules, play by them consistently.
I don’t feel particularly tetchy. I’m just using a bit of humor to point out that you are making bad arguments. You’ve yet to manage to bring anything home in terms of why I believe. I know why I believe. You’re the one who keeps insisting you know better than me why I believe. I don’t feel especially challenged by that. Just amused. It’s no different, though, from attempts by believers you’ve interacted with in the past to explain your atheism to you. That’s why I ultimately concluded that point by saying that’s between you and…you. You’re just coming at the matter from the opposite side of the issue.
And the odds are apparently about the same that you will afford my position any respect. What I meant was that I’m not interested in Carroll’s view. I’m interested in yours. Is yours just a mimic of his? Fine, but what is that. I’m not that familiar with Carroll’s work. All I asked was a fairly simple question. Do you explain the incredible specificity of these numerous life-allowing astrophysical constants in terms of chance or necessity?
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I have never said atheism is anything to do with science.
That seems like a silly and redundant point to make ?
It is solely the lack of belief in gods. Period.
No worldview. No doctrine.
The info I first read in the encyclopedia merely pointed out the facts.
That gMatthew contains over 80% of the material found in GMark, for example, some of which is verbatim, is common knowledge to anyone who takes the time to study the gospels. How is that “indoctrination”!
Would you assert that I am indoctrinated because I read in the same encyclopedia the speed of light is around 300,000km/s?
How about all the info I read about the Nile crocodile, the island of Cyprus, the Roman occupation of Britain and my old home town of Deva?
Am I now thoroughly indoctrinated or merely somewhat better informed?
The arguments for the religious beliefs you hold and those of your Saudi Arabian and New Delhi counterparts, are all based on geography, ( where you happened to have been born abd raised) culture and indoctrination. These are inescapable facts.
Evidence supporting the veracity of the various religious claims is non-existent.
It is all based on faith.
Anyone with an ounce of common sense let alone integrity would recognise and acknowledge this.
Fine tuning:
Go read Caroll.
In a nutshell. Yahweh is not needed.
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And around and around we go, each puzzled that the other can’t see what we respectively find to be patently true…
So, you won’t answer my fine-tuning question. Got it.
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Your answer for the supposed FT is Yahweh.
Caroll will answer your question. He’s on my team. You have Jesus.
So you won’t respond to the fact your beliefs derive from Geography, Culture and indoctrination and have nothing whatsoever to do with evidence.
Got it.
Is that lack of common sense or simple bloody mindedness?
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En garde! 😉
My answer for the fine tuning is that chance and necessity are both pathetically inadequate explanations of the available scientific data. Data requires interpretation. Interpretation is guided by philosophy and worldview. Carroll and you with him interpret through a secular worldview lens which leaves you guys only able to conclude chance or necessity. I’m not so limited. I’m able to explore all the options. And, an intelligent designer makes more sense of the data. The philosophy there is better.
I’ve already responded those charges. Several times. You just keep rejecting my responses. That’s on you, not me.
And if it’s going to be a matchup between Sean Carroll and Jesus, I’ll go with Jesus. He’s a better philosopher anyway 🙂
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Responsed yes, but simply not good enough to refute the evidence.
Not on me at all. Remember you are the indoctrinated Christian. See if can offer a proper reason why you aren’t Muslim.
As Dylan once sang: “It ain’t me babe..”
Of course you will side with Jesus.
When it comes to Cosmology for the Credulous why would you not align with the person who sends naughty people to Hell to be tortured forever.
Makes perfect sense.
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Almost there. You say I’m the indoctrinated Christian, because, once again, that’s the only explanation you have. It’s a worldview-rooted position, not an evidentiary one. For what it’s worth, you don’t actually have any evidence that geography, culture, and indoctrination are the only reasons I follow Jesus. You have worldview-based assumptions. That’s different. To perhaps put it another way just for the fun of needling you a bit (but if I needle too hard, just let me know and I’ll dial it back down), you have faith in the idea that those are the only reasons I follow Jesus, and apparently a very strong faith indeed. As for why I’m not a Muslim, that reason is simple. I’ve examined the truth claims of Islam and found them wanting. The same goes with all the other major world religions and a number of the minor (by volume) ones as well.
On the second part, and we’ve talked about this before a little bit, that is a very good caricaturization of the historically orthodox Christian view of Hell. It’s not the actual position, mind you, but in terms of being a straw man that has been successfully thrashed in order to scare people both away from and out of the faith many, many times over the years. Sometimes that’s been because Christians have not well-understood the doctrine and presented it poorly. Sometimes that’s been because people who don’t follow Jesus and don’t really understand the Scriptures very well have interacted with them, found the parts they don’t like, and caricatured those in order to justify their rejection of it. Either way, it’s only a straw man. You’re welcome to just keep beating away at that one. I may even join in and take a few good whacks myself.
It’s also a nice red herring when the real issue was whether or not it makes good philosophical sense to interpret the scientific data that takes the form of the various finely-tuned physical constants that allow the universe and life within it to exist as all being purely the product of chance; that we owe our existence to winning the cosmic lottery not once, but about a trillion times (and that’s actually putting it rather mildly). You haven’t actually answered that question. You just said “Carroll.” While I’m not as familiar with the specifics as I think you are, from the debates I’ve listened to of his in the past, I’m broadly aware of it. On this matter, it’s not rooted in any amount of evidence. It’s rooted in his worldview (that is, his philosophical presuppositions), and doesn’t make good philosophical sense of the data. That there exists an intelligent designer who consciously set those values when He brought creation into existence is a better interpretation of the data…unless your worldview says that can’t be an explanation in which case you’re left with chance (or necessity, but necessity’s a really, really pathetic explanation so I’m ignoring that one for the moment). We’re just really, really, really lucky. Perhaps. But with these kinds of odds stacked against us, it does make the thinking person say, “Really?”
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You disagree on the reasons you are Christian and not Muslim but Ishmael in Saudi will inevitably put forward the same/ similar reasons for his belief.
As both claims are faith based and NOT evidence based then geography, culture and indoctrination are all that ‘s left on the table. Or do it seems from an outsider’s point of view.
Remember, you only have two avenues to pursue for your claim. The bible and revelation, neither of which will even get you past the starting gate.
But let’s try to get a little more serious for a few moments and look at it from the Muslim perspective.
As you will likely assert you know more about Islam than I, and have investigated it’s specific truth claims, what, in your learned opinion, is the reason Ishmael from Saudi is a devout and sincere Muslim?
PS. Anything along the lines of, “I don’t know” will not cut it.
Ft.
Again, whatever your position is, I will adopt the opposite.
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Is that just to be contrarian, or because you actually believe it? It seems like you are just trying to avoid the philosophical conversation now. Do you really think pure chance is the better explanation here?
I would not assert that I know more about Islam than you do. I don’t have any idea how much you have studied it. You seem pretty confident in your knowledge base about Christianity. If I was going to make an assumption, it would be that you feel about the same about Islam. You’re a pretty bright fellow.
As far as the actual evidences Muslims will offer in defense of their beliefs, I’m not aware of any. Islam is not an evidence-concerned religion. It is about authority and command. Ishmael from Saudi has probably studied the Quran fairly closely and might even point to a spiritual experience or two he’s had. He’s accepted on the authority of his Imam that Allah is Lord and there is no other. He’s likely been taught all his life that non-Muslims are dogs and doesn’t want to be that. He might have also heard stories of people who have deconverted and the shame they brought to their families (not to mention the horrible punishments they faced for doing so) and certainly doesn’t want that. And, the promises of paradise aren’t a bad part of the deal as well. But, he might have other reasons. I don’t know Ishmael, and it’s not for me to say why he’s maintained an Islamic faith beyond the point that he was capable of consciously choosing it for himself or not.
As far as the claims of the Muslim versus the claims of Christianity, the former isn’t typically (at least that I’ve ever encountered) concerned with evidence. The latter, while faith absolutely plays a crucial role, points consistently to all kinds of evidence which not only leads to faith as a reasonable conclusion, but justifies it once you have it. We’ve talked about these over and over and you’ve rejected them either on their face or as non-evidence in the first place. There’s a clear distinction between the two positions.
Islam, for instance, never claims evidence for itself (again, at least that I’ve ever heard of). On the other hand, the apostle Paul said that we can know about God’s existence and some of His divine attributes through a careful examination of the world around us. In other words, Paul’s argument was that we can evaluate the evidence of the natural world and come away with the conclusion that God obviously exists. That is, He’s the most reasonable interpretation of the available data.
That kind of theological position is what led to things like the scientific revolution in the first place—a bunch of really smart scientists did careful examinations of various parts of the natural world and came away more convinced of God’s existence than they were when they started. Modern atheism as we know it today didn’t arise because of any amount of evidence or lack thereof. It was a philosophical position. Once the philosophy was in place, providing a different lens through which to examine the available evidence, the people using that lens came to different conclusions about it.
But once again, you don’t have any evidence regarding the reasons I’m a Christian beyond what I’ve furnished for you. That you interpret it the way you do is because of the worldview lens you bring to it. Or again, your faith in atheism leads you to the conclusion you keep adopting in spite of a consistent stream of actual evidence (i.e., my personal testimony, which is, again, the only evidence you have on the question) pointing in the opposite direction. That’s a really strong faith commitment to be able to hold it in the face of so much actual evidence to the contrary. It’s just like what you keep accusing Christians of doing, but from the opposite direction.
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And you have no evidence why Ishmael is Muslim other than what he may choose to furnish.
And you do not regard his claims to be evidence, any more than Ishmael would regard your claims to be evidence.
But let’s he clear. Evidence is evidence irrespective of creed or culture and has absolutely nothing to do with worldview.
Atheism is not a worldview, whereas Christianity is.
But whatever you believe to be fact or truth will only pass muster in the real world if you can provide evidence to demonstrate its veracity. Otherwise it remains an unsubstantiated claim.
Gabriel communicated the Qu’ran to Mohammed is a claim.
Jesus rose from the dead is a claim.
Neither claim is supported by evidence to demonstrate its veracity.
That you dismiss the former and accept the latter is only evidence of your worldview and your own personal credulity / willingness to accept.
You reject YEC. Why? Because of evidence.
Worldview does not determine the veracity of whether Armstrong walked on the moon.
Neither does it determine if the Titanic really sank.
Nor does it determine the speed of light, the atomic number of gold, the geological evidence of the Grand Canyon or the Time Temperature Index.
You need to deal with these facts with a much higher degree of honesty than you have shown so far.
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That was exactly my point. I don’t know why Ishmael chooses to be a faithful Muslim beyond his personal testimony. You told me, though, that, “I don’t know,” couldn’t be my answered, so I played ball with the caveat that indeed, I don’t know. Islam doesn’t deal in evidence, though, the same way Christianity does. The two are different in that regard. Those are worldview distinctions. Evaluating the claims of Islam on the basis of evidence isn’t something that’s going to make any sense to a Muslim. On the other hand, evaluating the claims of Christianity on the basis of evidence is something that will make perfect sense to a Christian (at least a reasonably informed one) because of the nature of the truth claims Christianity makes. Your repeated failure to make that distinctions is a gigantic pointer to the fact that you don’t really understand either as well as I get the sense you would like to believe. You understand each one in a limited sense and only through a secular lens.
Evidence is evidence. Yes, I agree with you there. But evidence has to be interpreted. It can be interpreted wrongly or rightly (that is in line with reality or out of line). Either way, it is a person’s worldview and the philosophical presuppositions he brings to the table that guide his interpretation of that evidence.
And I know that you keep insisting otherwise, and don’t want this to be true, but philosophically speaking, atheism is a worldview position. Yes, atheism is the belief that there are no gods. But that belief has implications. Those implications form the basis of a worldview. Atheism is a worldview.
Yes, that Gabriel communicated the Quran to Mohammed is a claim Muslims make. So, let’s evaluate it on its historical merits and ask the question: is there evidence that can be interpreted in a way that the conclusion of the historicity of that claim is a reasonable one to make. Honestly, I don’t know if Muslims even try to do that. I don’t know that they care. That Jesus rose from the dead is a claim as well. There are a variety of historical facts (i.e., evidence) that are associated with that claim. Those facts must be interpreted. The question is: Can those historical facts be interpreted in such a way that the claim that Jesus rose from the dead is a reasonable one to make. I, for one, think that they can be. Yes, I’ve baked in a Christian environment my whole life, so perhaps that left me more easily inclined to draw that conclusion. But there are folks who were raised in entirely secular environments, were avowed atheists, who examined the same historical facts without any of the worldview background that I brought to the table with me, and came away with the same conclusion that I have. That doesn’t make their conclusion any more reasonably than mine, but it does take away the potential for indoctrination that you keep harping on.
You are correct that worldview doesn’t determine something like if Armstrong walked on the moon. But whether or not someone is willing to accept that claim is a function of worldview. If they reject it, that’s because their worldview is flawed, as it is pointing them toward a conclusion that is not in line with reality, but that’s the point. Worldview matters. A lot. A worldview that is flawed in some way will not allow us to come to correct conclusions regarding the proper interpretation of the available data. Personally, I am of the opinion that the atheistic worldview is flawed because its conclusion regarding the proper interpretation of the available data is not in line with reality.
The willingness to accept chance as a good explanation for the fine-tuning of the cosmos is an example of this. The data there is what it is. That’s the evidence. It has to be interpreted. From the standpoint of the secular/atheistic worldview, chance is typically the accepted and endorsed interpretation. Some folks lean in the necessity direction, but there’s just so precious little to support such an interpretation that is not hopelessly circular that this tends to be the minority position. We need to then ask the question: is chance a good explanation for the existence of this data? While really smart guys like Sean Carroll and you (I think because you still haven’t actually answered that question) might argue that it is, the odds just don’t support the conclusion very well. It would be like covering the planet in silver coins to the depth of 6 feet, marking one, and having you jump out of a plane flying at supersonic speeds and landing on the marked coin on your very first try. If you managed to do that, you will be able to convince exactly no one that someone didn’t rig the landing to make sure you got it. Chance as an explanation for the fine-tuning of the universe is not a sufficient one. But it’s basically the only option the atheistic worldview has. Thus my conclusion that the worldview is flawed.
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You assert there is evidence for the truth claims of Christianity.
Let’s look at some shall we?
“I am the way etc..” John 14:16
No evidence.
The Trinity… The character Jesus of Nazareth is Yahweh.
No evidence. ( In fact the Trinity is a church construct)
Jesus rose from the dead
No evidence.
Remember, the Bible cannot be used
as evidence for the claims it makes.
So we have three prime truth claims for which no evidence can be provided.
No different than the Muslim claim Gabriel visited Mohammed.
Atheism is not a worldview.
Secular humanism, which I also subscribe to, is a worldview.
And to be honest I am getting more than a little pissed off by your continual asinine assertion it is.
Consult a bloody dictionary.
Or read this…
https://understandinghumanism.org.uk/teaching-about-humanism/what-is-and-isnt-a-worldview/
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On the first, that’s a saying of Jesus. If the Gospels are historically reliable, and as we have talked about, I am of the opinion that the evidence for such a claim is best interpreted in the direction of reliability, then Jesus really said that. Whether or not you are willing to believe Jesus was telling the truth has a great deal to do with whether or not you are willing to accept that historical claim that Jesus rose from the dead. We’ve talked at length about the relevant evidence for that, all of which you reject. The middle one is dealing with a theological truth claim, the evidence for which is all over the Scriptures. As a doctrine, it was formulated from the teachings of Jesus very early on in the history of the church, with some of the earliest formations of it appearing within just a few years of the resurrection itself.
If the Bible is historically accurate, it can indeed be a source of evidence for various truth claims made by Christians. Saying the Bible can’t be used as a source for the claims it makes is a little like saying you can’t use ancient documents referring to Alexander the Great as a source for any truth claims historians make about his life. That’s a silly argument.
There is an evidentiary case to be made for all three points. You simply reject them.
I found the link interesting, but not particularly persuasive on the point. While there are a variety of ways atheism can manifest itself in a given person’s life, the foundational beliefs are fairly consistent across them. This is no different from how the Christian worldview can manifest itself in a variety of different particulars, but the basic foundation points are fairly consistent across the sampling. When it comes to something like secular humanism, the disbelief in God or gods comes first, then the humanism spills out from there. Atheism is the controlling worldview.
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On the first.
Nothing in this section counts as evidence for the veracity of Christian claims. Not a darn thing.
You cannot even provide a shred of physical or archeological evidence the character even existed let alone assert the words attributed to him in the anonymous gospel are factual.
The Bible is not historically accurate. We have been over this til the cows come home.
Adam and Eve and the HGP.
Noah and his ark.
The Exodus and Conquest narrative.
Not only are these tales myth/ fiction we have scientific evidence that confirms they are nothing but myth/ fiction.
You might not agree, but that is an emotional issue you have to deal with.
Genuine scholars and the relevant scientists don’t really have time to care about your feelings as they deal with evidence, not wishful thinking.
Your disingenuity regarding atheism is noted.
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Are we really going back to the idea that Jesus didn’t exist as an historical figure? Surely not…
And we can keep going over it until they go back out again the next day. The Bible is historically accurate. You cite the same three things over and over again like a mantra.
This isn’t an emotional issue for me as much as you would like to think that it is. Those are indeed three big and challenging examples of places where more faith is required than others. I haven’t ever denied that much. But there are many places where scholars have found the archaeological proof of historical reliability including many that were once pronounced to be obvious errors with the same vigor you cite your big three.
And there’s nothing disingenuous at all about position on atheism. I mean what I say very sincerely. I just don’t agree with your position on the matter. Philosophically speaking, I’m pretty confident in the ground where I’m standing.
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Whether you agree is immaterial and does not change the definition of atheism.
There is no law against making up your own definition for particular words any more than there is law against one making a fool of oneself.
If faith is required for belief then there is no evidence to support the claim.
As mentioned above, there is no jaw preventing you making a fool of yourself over such issues and I’m sure you would find a willing ally in Ken Ham.
There is most assuredly no evidence whatsoever to suggest the character Jesus of Nazareth as portrayed in the bible is anything but a narrative construct.
The Bible is no more historically reliable than an Ian Fleming novel and you could not provide any evidence to demonstrate otherwise.
The term you are looking for is historical fiction.
Which brings us back to the reasons for belief : why you are Christian and Ishmael is Muslim.
Faith. Plain and simple. Belief in the veracity of your holy books. Geography, Culture and indoctrination, either passive or aggressive.
When you can produce evidence to demonstrate this is not the case you may have the foundation for a very interesting book or thesis.
I for one would definitely buy a copy.
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Well, that’s a relief at least. I thought you were drifting back in the Jesus never existed direction.
As for the rest there, it would sound really compelling if any of it were true.
And if you would like to continue sticking with your faith in your reasons for why I believe (or anybody else for that matter), I won’t try to dissuade you from it. But let’s at least agree it is a position of faith held in spite of the only evidence you have available to you pointing toward the opposite conclusion.
I’ll tell you what. If I ever write that book, I won’t even charge you for it. I may even include you in the acknowledgments.
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That the character Jesus of Nazareth as depicted in the gospels is nothing but a narrative construct does raise the question of the historicity of the individual the character was based upon, don’t you think?
Surely even one as steeped in faith as you must wonder why there is no evidence whatsoever for the Instant Vituculturist ( a real wow at parties, I’ll bet?) and Lake Tiberius Pedestrian?
Oh, here’s a thought you may not have previously considered.
Remember all the things the character Jesus is supposed to have uttered on the cross in the final death throes? A real chatterbox, including those various somewhat eloquent and rather poetic final hurrahs before he gave up the ghost?
Suffocation is the primary cause of death so what do you honestly think the liklihood of the character rabbitting on as he supposedly did after being almost flayed alive, serious blood loss, dehydration, and the spear wound?
Very … dramatic, though.
It is fascinating that you wouldn’t thoroughly examine the very basic and obvious reasons why Ishmael in Saudi Arabia and millions like him are Muslim and because of a quirk of geography you and millions like you are Christian.
You both have deep-seated faith, are adamant your god is the right one, and your faith is the right one ( putting aside all the in-fighting, blood letting and slaughter( past and present ( between sects over doctrine – yes, you are all a bunch of sects maniacs).
If evidence for these claims were simply clear cut open and honest we’d all be on our knee five times a day or munching bits of bread and slurping wine like little cannibals.
All so very, very silly.
As you have not provided any reason ( evidence) to refute the assertion regarding the evidence of geography. culture and indoctrination then we will have to go with that, and unfortunately ( for you and those like you) your position will continue to be an unsubstantiated faith claim.
As the Catholics say…
Dominos, Spirits, and Sanctions.
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Can I just say that the more we dialogue, the more I appreciate your wit? Let’s see…point by point I suppose.
Other than a collection of historically accurate records dating from within 30-60 years of the events they describe and written by people who either witnessed them or relied on those witnesses for their primary sources, what kind of empirical evidence exactly do you think there even could be for Jesus’ special reserve vintage or wave riding adventure (not to mention Peter’s)?
I actually have considered Jesus’ final sayings from the cross. All seven of them. A former preacher of mine did a whole series on them. I’ve studied the whole thing fairly closely and heard several detailed presentations from medical doctors on the physical agony Jesus endured. The fact that Jesus mustered up the strength to say those things, each one requiring an enormous act of endurance as well as causing mind boggling amounts of pain, is indeed a staggering one. He must have considered all of those pretty important to convey. For the record, He didn’t die from the spear wound, and all of His sayings were before that one. Pilate ordered that one in order to prove He was dead when Joe and Nic asked for the body.
Because of your worldview commitments, you simply cannot accept that someone could have evaluated carefully the truth claims of a particular religion and come to the rational conclusion that they are correct. This doesn’t necessarily mean they’re right, and the claims need to be evaluated in light of reality. The reason Ishmael believes what he does just may because of what you outline, but it may also be because he has thought through the matter careful and decided he accepts it as true. That, again, doesn’t necessarily make him right, but it does mean the reason may not merely be geography.
Ah, the old cannibal canard. That’s an ancient one indeed. But you’re mistaken in your assumption that everyone would be on their knees believing if the evidence were as clear as I think it is. People come up with all kinds of reasons not to believe. If the Gospel is true, the implications of that are pretty profound. Not everybody wants to sign up for that even in spite of the promised rewards for doing so and even the consequences for rejecting it. Jesus Himself was clear on that point.
And we’re back to this. The only actual evidence you have regarding why I believe is my testimony. That’s it. Everything else is a worldview-guided assumption that you have remarkable faith in. You can continue holding to that unsubstantiated faith claim to use your own phrase, but that’s all it will continue to be.
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For an ignorant, itinnerent tekton?
Probably zero. After all, such scruffy eschatological types were a dime a dozen, apparently.
Not eyewitnesses that’s a given.
Relaying eyewitness tales?
As the character front and center is a narrative construct then the only things could have been relaying would have been fictionalised tales.
As the the only gospel worth bothering about is the anonymous GMark then we are dealing with someone who wasn’t even a local, so it is highly likely his tale was a work of fiction destined for a gentile audience who would have also been ignorant of the area and customs.
In summation. The smelly `End is Nigh!’ nobody the wandering rabbi of no fixed ability, no evidence whatsoever would be expected.
However…. Drum roll…
The death defying, mobile metaphorical soup kitchen for the multitude, universe creator and pig slaughterer ( a charge for which he never brought to book by the way and surrupticious boy-toy for Pontius’ wife.
Well, one would expect he would have been hailed far and wide by all and sundry.
Famous scribes would be furiously taking shorthand, chiseling his words or daubing his catchy phrases up and down the wailing wall.
Pilate would have sent spies to keep a jolly close eye on him and probably invited him to tend bar at the next Palace feast or orgy. I mean, free wine? What a bonus!
And anyone who can raise people from the dead would be in high demand at the local Gladiator School.
Imagine the fortunes that could have been made by local bookmakers?
Our lad had already shown his prowess as a fisherman with exceptional skill.
No tackle required, just wave your hands around a bit and the bloody fish will just leap into the boat or into the shore.
And of course who would bother becoming a baker when Jesus was doing a fine job with just a few crumbs?
And to celebrate his most wonderfullness when he rides into town to play dead for the weekend he is mobbed with more hysteria than if Michael Jackson was spotted going to Walmart.
And yet, with all this fame and hysterical fan base as he conquered the region and then, after popping his clogs, came back for a month long encore before floating off into outer space with not so much as By your leave? not a single solitary contemporary soul made a mention of all these exploits.
Not an allusion, not a peep.
Then Abracadabra!! Decades later…
Hmm.. I smell a rat. Or more likely a dead fish.
Oh, I think Ishmael did a fine job evaluating the truth claims of Islam. That’s why he is a Muslim and not a Christian.
On reflection it cannot possibly be about where he was born, or his mum and dad, or where he went to school or the Mosques on every corner.
Allah forbid! No it simply must be true.
As for being on our knees. I mean we should all be Muslim. I thought the praying five times a day was the giveaway line there?
Sigh… Oh well. Anyway, Islam must be correct and the truth claims sound as it tells us so in the Qu’ran. Ishmael’s god created everything including man.
That’s proper evidence that is. It’s right there in black and white. Can’t argue with that, now can you? Course not, that’d be blasphemy.
Well, this is what’s written in my copy.
Is it not there in your copy?
I don’t reckon your testimony cuts it to be honest.
Ismael and his religion seem much more trustworthy and in a few decades Islam will be challenging Christianity as the numero uno god bothering worldview.
Might be worth swatting up on the details? Just put your pride in your back pocket and think of all those virgins waiting to wait on you hand and foot?
Maybe Jesus will still be doing his Cocktail Tricks and bring you a cold one?
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Superb wit, as I said. It’s all nonsense, of course, but that can often make for the funniest humor.
If my own testimony doesn’t cut it in terms of why I believe, I’m not sure what else to tell you. As I’ve said, your faith in your conclusions rivals any display of faith from a follower of Jesus over the centuries. Or you’re an arrogant jerk. But I don’t actually believe that to be the case, so I guess I’m left with the first.
By the way, on the demographic question, I wouldn’t be so sure. Christianity grows mostly by conversion, Islam by birthrate. Muslims have a lot of babies, but Christianity is making a lot of converts these days…especially in Muslim nations. Their birthrate growth winds up serving to fuel our conversion growth.
I never really developed much of a taste for cocktails. I’ve tried, but I just can’t get there. I supposed Jesus will just have to bring me a cold Sprite. But if He can do water into wine, what’s adding a little syrup and carbon dioxide to it?
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Sadly, your personal testimony is devoid of evidence of the underlying claims.
Therefore it counts for zip on the truthometer scale.
But it does rank alongside such goodies as the Loch Ness monster, Flat Earth, and Roswell.
So you are in exalted company.
I really cannot fathom why you lot are so afraid to simply acknowledge you believe because of some sort of death anxiety?
Why is this so difficult for you to admit?
My ‘faith’ (sic) is based on evidence, or in your case, the lack of.
Of course Christianity grows by conversion…. When it is exported.
It is the theological equivalent of an STD. Spread it around!
But there’s nothing like home-based ‘cooking’.
Imagine being the only one in a close knit community who had the temerity to question such obvious truths as:
Yahweh made you.
You are a sinner and will go to Hell if you don’t behave.
Jesus died for you, you ungrateful wretch.
But remember God loves you, but not your gay friend.
And lots of other wonderful uplifting things to tell the kids when the refuse to eat their greens.
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That would be because I don’t believe any of it because of a death anxiety. I don’t really worry about that much at all, to be honest.
And, when the Gospel gets presented in such a grossly caricatured way, it’s no wonder so many people reject it. I’d reject that too. If that’s all the better your understanding of the Gospel is, no wonder you think it’s such a joke. That kind of a message is a joke, and a bad one at that. It’s easy to beat up on straw men.
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Straw man? Really?
According to your beliefs as an evangelical Christian, which I presume you preach to children in some fashion or another, will those who reject or simply lack belief in your god, Yahweh, be separated for eternity, and or spend eternity in Hell? A choice you consider they make for themselves.
Please do not equivocate on this point
Yes or no?
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Yes, that’s a fairly simplified version of my understanding of the doctrine of Hell. And, yes, what you presented as a summary of the Gospel message there was a badly caricaturized straw man of it.
Are you interested in reading a full sermon I preached on the question of Hell? I’ve preached on it more than once, actually. The most recent was last fall. The sermon title is simply, “Is Hell Real?”
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https://www.facebook.com/share/r/fDfYPVjSHdy3T4ny/?mibextid=oFDknk
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That’s really funny. It’s even funnier because he’s basically retelling one of Jesus’ parables and doesn’t seem to realize it. Check out Mark 12:1-12. Funny stuff.
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Thought you might like him. Swears a bit for some people but he is what one would call typical Glaswegian.
I love him to bits.
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Glad you shared him. I don’t tend to let bad language bother me. What comes out of a person’s mouth is between them and God…or them and them. If I went around getting offended every time somebody said something I didn’t like, that’s all I would have time for. It’s really too bad that so many pastors get on their high horses about stuff like that. Gives the rest of us a bad rap. Better to just listen through the words to hear what they’re saying and take that for what it is.
And funny is funny. That kind of humor where you point out things that are absurd or wrestle with hard questions (like the problem of evil) in a humorous way is some of the best humor there is. Funny stuff.
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You asked why I came to South Africa?
Sorry I forgot to reply.
I initially came out on a 12 month contract. After 10 months I met someone and stayed.
Cheesy, I know, but life is so often cheesy… and I am partial to cheese.
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Especially that particular vintage. I moved out of the Midwest and settled in the Southeast because I met a pretty girl. 18 years and three kids later, it worked out pretty well. It was even a church camp romance. Lots of cheese there.
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By the way, I was scoping out some more of your cake designs on your website earlier. Those really are spectacular. I think the toy box one is my favorite on that banner reel. You just almost can’t tell its cake and fondant. Excellent, excellent work.
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Thank you.
Yes, the toy box cake is a favorite of mine also.
But in truth after so many, many hundreds of cakes the senses tend to become a little dampened on occasion to the imagination and then the skill required to realise these ideas.
On this score it becomes even more head shaking in wonder when I remind myself my daughter is completely self-taught.
I will pass on your compliments to the baker and decorator. They will be happy.
As we do a fair number of Christening / baptism cakes, it would be fun if it were possible to create a cake for you one day.
Maybe one completely blank with the message: from the Atheist in South Africa?
😉
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Please do. They deserve it. Yes, if I ever happen to visit South Africa, I will make sure to come by the shop for my cake. Blank is fine as long as it tastes good 🙂
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I should, that nothing you’ve said on the matter of indoctrination so far has upset me at all. I hope I haven’t indicated otherwise by my digital tone. And as far as being indoctrinated into atheism goes, that has to be your position by virtue of the very definition of indoctrination. If a lack of belief in any god or the Christian God is irrational, though (which is just the thing you charge about all religious belief but in reverse), then one can absolutely be indoctrinated into atheism. While all theistic belief is indoctrination and emotional nonsense from your starting point, the reverse is true for mine. Keep in mind that we are standing on opposite sides of a chasm hollering back and forth about how green our respective side is.
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I will add an extra thought on indoctrination.
We are all born technically atheist.
Children left without any religious instruction will mostly remain atheist, and skeptical.
Religion has to be taught, and adherence to a specific religion is invariably indoctrinated.
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Excuse the typos. Bad manners, I know. I have to see a client and I’m watching the clock.
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Don’t worry about it. What’s the cake going to look like?
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Was a two tier in vanilla with a fondant elephant model for a baby shower.
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That’s fun! Out of curiosity, because I genuinely don’t have any idea…how westernized is South Africa? How does it compare with England in that regard?
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Well, lions and elephants don’t roam the streets of Johannesburg if this is what you are wondering.
We are incredibly diverse. Our infrastructure is all modern, trains, planes and what have you. Although the ANC government is somewhat corrupt and this has had a large effect on many aspects of society.
Our elections are in May and there is hope of some change.
Our constitution is considered one of the best in the world, but the crime rate is not something anyone celebrates.
So urban life is European influenced in many aspects. However, we generally have better weather than the UK.
😊
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What? No giraffes randomly sticking their heads in your window to wake you up in the mornings? My happy delusions are all shattered now.
The second part was indeed more of what I had in mind. What will change look like? Less corruption? What kind of corruption are you talking about? It’s one of the best in the world after ours ;~) Of course…we don’t hold to ours very well anymore. But it is the second oldest in the world that is still in operation today. (San Mario has us beat by almost 200 years.)
Yes, I always get the sense the UK is dreary most of the time. I’ll bet your weather is better. Why’d you move there in the first place?
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The ANC were the party of liberation and heralded the end of Apartheid.
Whoopee do… But the salad days are long gone, along with Mandela and his colorful shirts.
Corruption through nepotism, BEE, Tenderpreneurs, and outright theft of public funds. It is too depressing to go on about it.
The last President, Jacob Zuma spent time in Jail for corruption.
But he is out now and has formed a new party and is running for office again. The gods help us!
A new party in power, the DA
( Democratic Alliance) would simply be a breath of fresh air. They currently run several municipalities and where they hold office things run a lot smoother. Cape Town for one
However, the leader of the DA (who are the official opposition) is white and.. well, the spectre of Apartheid still looms in the minds of some and therefore the race card will inevitably be played by anyone not wanting to see a white face as President.
We will see what happens after 27 May.
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Interesting stuff. Sounds like challenging times for sure. We’re facing our own election chaos here. What a mess the next few months will be…and the next few after that regardless of how November goes. I don’t mean this to antagonize, but in all sincerity coming from out of my worldview and with goodwill in my heart: I’ll make May 27 a point of prayer.
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There will be plenty here who will throw the bones, slaughter goats, attend various churches, read cards, inspect the entrails of chickens and pray. So you will. Be in good company. Well, maybe not good company but quite likely delusional.
As forest Gump once remarked. Stupid is as stupid does.
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I was thinking about this too. I should thank you. Ever since we started dialoguing back and forth, my traffic has been up a pretty good bit from what it was before. Even when we took that little hiatus, it stayed pretty steady. I’m not sure if more action in the comments section triggers something about WordPress’s algorithm to make it appear in more places where people will click on it, but the traffic is up all the same. And while most of the views come from here, I’m always intrigued by just how many other places around the world it gets read. I wish I knew how that happened. I guess you found it, though, so there’s that. Anyway, thanks.
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Also, consider this and dwell on it for a few moments.
How many children would become Christian ( or any other religion) if they were not initially indoctrinated?
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While I have you and am thinking about it, I’ve been meaning to ask: what do you know about the universal fine-tuning argument for Christianity, and what do you make of it?
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You wave “science” around like a trump card. I value a more humble approach on the matter. I still take it very seriously, but where mostly secular scientists (especially archeologists have said, “See! We proved the Bible to be obviously false,” they have wound up with egg on their faces before. I’d rather say, “That’s some amazing work! Let’s not draw conclusions that are absolute just yet as there may be more to learn.” This goes double when working in the ancient past.
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It isn’t humility but arrogance.
You refuse to accept the science as it conflicts and undermines your religious belief.
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Well, as we have talked about before, from the standpoint of the worldview you hold, it would come across like that, yes.
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And, of course, hanging over this whole thing is the fact that none of this has any bearing at all on whether Jesus rose from the dead and so is an almost entirely meaningless debate on the larger question of the truthfulness of Christianity as a whole.
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If you are only interested in whether the character Jesus of Nazareth rose from the dead why are you so intent on defending such nonsense as Adam and Eve, the Noachian global flood and the Exodus?
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You ask questions about my position and I answer them. You challenge back, and I respond. It’s a fun game.
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Looks like something might have posted twice there. I’m working from the app right now. If it did, I’ll take one of my duplicate responses down, but that’s it.
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Or are you talking about Matthew’s Gospel?
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Welcome back again, by the way :~) I’m always glad to continue our conversation.
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Welcome back Ark. Hope you are doing well. We may not agree about Jesus but I appreciate your persistence. But I’m not giving up on you. Sorry. 😉
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Whar do you actually know about the character Jesus of Nazareth?
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Hey Ark
sorry this is late. My grandmother read me Bible stories as a child. I’ve never known a time in my life when I didn’t believe in God. I stopped going to church when I was 12 but started back when I met my wife. I was saved in 1991.
I don’t have much to add to your conversations as I’ve never doubted Jesus’ existence so I had no reason to question anything. I will say my daughter took a religion class in college and her teacher raised that question. I researched it and found that archaeologists say they cannot prove Christ’s existence archaeologically. They also state they cannot verify 99.9% of anyone living in this time frame. There are instances of Christ recorded by important Roman and Jewish historians shortly after his death. I guess my question is if Christ did not exist and had not been resurrected, how did Christianity survive? He would have been no different than other heretics of that time proclaiming themselves the Messiah and I don’t recall other religions being founded after their deaths.
send me a link to your bakery.
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So, ostensibly you were indoctrinated into the Christian religion.
Christianity survived the same way any religion survives, through the credulity of its beljievers/followers and indoctrination.
The link to the bakery is on my blog.
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Just curious, if your parents taught you there was no God would that also be indoctrination? If not, what’s the difference?
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