/christ/ - Christian Discussion and Fellowship

>>3641

>Does it improve your faith? Does it help you? Does it answer your questions? Do you feel a kinship? Do you feel less alone?

Yes to all of them.

>And I mean no offense by that, I would most definitely love to be able to think Pio was exactly what he claimed he was, but I just can't, not anymore.

Why not?

> It doesn't feel right.

That's unfortunate, this is the most important topic of your life, though how you go about it depend on you and of course on the setting.

Wrestling and struggling with one's faith is natural and can make you grow, I know that first hand. The important thing is to set out to fix it and with the express intention of making it grow and strengthening it; you set it to just hang out to see what happens, you might end up in a bad spot. Might, not must, but you might.

>>3641

>Does it improve your faith? Does it help you? Does it answer your questions? Do you feel a kinship? Do you feel less alone?

3xYes,2xno

>For my part, going back months ago, it virtually destroyed my faith in Catholicism, or at the very least, it forced me to question it so much that I can no longer regard it the way I used to, which subsequently made me far more tolerant of Protestantism.

This is like the stupidest claim one could make, but feelings tend to be stupid anyway and you keep saying it.

I'll just say that if it was true it was more your fault than anyone else's

>As to faith, I don't feel like I'm getting more of it by being here. I've even left for quite some time, not just to protect what was left of my little faith, but also because I virtually lost interest in Christianity to a significant degree, which saddens me beyond all the rest.

So others are at fault for this? Do you really believe that abstaining from here will make a thing better? How often do you face Christians REAL Christians irl? Probably not at all, there's like a hand full in Switzerland.

It is good to be exposed to reality sometimes, not to sink in a dream world.

This board often leaves me sad after posting on it. No idea why I return in fact.

>It doesn't feel right.

Feelings again? Lotta wrong things feel damn right and most worthy things mean enduring hardship and suffering. Feelings are no goo compass.

>>3648

>Why not?

I've read some of the "other side" articles and texts about Pio and I find it difficult to discard these accusations. The fact that the Church also kept him at bay for years, not even allowing him to conduct mass or meet the faithful suggests he was suspicious (either that or the Church authorities have been persecuting him).

> you set it to just hang out to see what happens, you might end up in a bad spot. Might, not must, but you might.

The question is, very practically, what does one do? I've always considered that pragmatism was the better approach, that what you do and the impact you have on the world was what truly mattered, over what one thought they were.

In this context, I'm not sure what to do as a Christian. It is true that aquiring more faith comes second to doing more Christian deeds, since the latter is what I consider more important, and I'm aware that the two are close-knit and one flows from the other (James etc).

I have no idea how to "fix" my faith, though.

>>3659

>This is like the stupidest claim one could make

First, it isn't a "claim", for I do not typically make theories about what I think and feel: I have direct knowledge of those things.

Secondly, it isn't stupid for the reason stated above. That's just how things are for me. Respect that. I'm not telling you it's "correct" and "objective", I'm telling you how things are for me.

>but feelings tend to be stupid anyway

Perhaps, but there is no faith without feelings. All the rational reasons to believe in God do not make up for an absence of faith. I've seen God proven to me using logic, and no faith was added, quite amazingly.

>I'll just say that if it was true it was more your fault than anyone else's

If it was true? Are you still assuming I'm lying about my impressions, for some reason? As to whose fault it is, that's not how I see the problem. Whether I am the culprit or anyone else makes little difference. But I'll get back to that shortly.

>So others are at fault for this?

If I thought others were at fault for this, I wouldn't have said so here. Again, I'm not seeing the problem in terms of whose fault it is. It's not like someone did something they shouldn't have.

For Catholicism, it made me aware of the list of dogmas and mortal sins, for instance, and this has made me see this faith in a new light; as to the Catholics I've talked with on 8chan, they have severely weakened my interest in the faith too, and I don't blame them for it, I'm merely glad to have learned what Catholic faith truly is to the majority of people here, and I don't assume they are a fair representation of Catholics worldwide.

>How often do you face Christians REAL Christians irl?

Generally, about 5 days out of 7, since I work with plenty of Christians. More recently, I've had religious conversations with some, including a very educated Catholic man who knows his theology inside out and helps priests for mass. We have talked at length about plenty of things and he is nothing like the Catholics of 8chan. We talked about the "hardening" of Catholicism, the /pol/ sort, and how it was very efficient but didn't last very long, while other Catholics were mostly silenced or unheard.

It was great to speak with actual Christians, but who knows if they don't think the same things that the 8channers post? It's more difficult to speak frankly IRL, so I'll never quite know.

>Lotta wrong things feel damn right

Really? Not to me. Most wrong things feel wrong to me, and good things feel good. I guess it depends on what we start with in terms of personality, values, habits, etc.

>most worthy things mean enduring hardship and suffering.

I don't regard faith as boot camp, so the more something hurts doesn't mean the more right it is. There's more hardship and suffering in sin than there is in faith, but perhaps you think otherwise.

>Feelings are no goo compass.

If it weren't for "feelings", I'd have no faith left and no reason to look for God

I think you still have a hard time grasping my personal situation with regards to faith. When I say I have very little faith, I literally mean that I'm not far away from simply closing the door on my Christian attempt at spirituality. I don't think you understand that and keep talking to me as if my calling myself a Christian was to be taken for granted. It's not. I hold on, but countless things make this more and more difficult.

As to "sinking in a dream world", it's what every other atheist tells me Christianity is. I talk to both sides.

>>3661

I agree that it would be nice to be more, and to have more Christians of your faith with you.

We should do more recruiting. We don't need that many more people to get things going if they're active. You and the Mormon anon are very active here, and when I'm around and posting, it makes 3 of us who post a lot.

>>3668

>First, it isn't a "claim", for I do not typically make theories about what I think and feel: I have direct knowledge of those things.

I'm sure you think that but it is untrue. People scratch on the surface on the matter of their own feelings and have no idea how what makes them feel.

t. psychology pro

>>3668

>Generally, about 5 days out of 7, since I work with plenty of Christians. More recently, I've had religious conversations with some, including a very educated Catholic man who knows his theology inside out and helps priests for mass. We have talked at length about plenty of things and he is nothing like the Catholics of 8chan. We talked about the "hardening" of Catholicism, the /pol/ sort, and how it was very efficient but didn't last very long, while other Catholics were mostly silenced or unheard.

>

>It was great to speak with actual Christians, but who knows if they don't think the same things that the 8channers post? It's more difficult to speak frankly IRL, so I'll never quite know.

"Christians" in Switzerland are problematic. Mostly because the crimes commited against them by you, I'll give them that.

>Really? Not to me. Most wrong things feel wrong to me, and good things feel good. I guess it depends on what we start with in terms of personality, values, habits, etc.

>I don't regard faith as boot camp, so the more something hurts doesn't mean the more right it is. There's more hardship and suffering in sin than there is in faith, but perhaps you think otherwise.

Is it?

It would feel damn good to have multiple wives. I like women and they like me and would rather have a crowd of little brats around.

It would be nice to become a God once. All the power and responsibility, and the honour.

I'd like make up things for myself and do not follow the teaching but interpret in my own way, according to my needs.

All of this is nice. All of this is very bad.

> There's more hardship and suffering in sin than there is in faith, but perhaps you think otherwise.

That's not how it works… if it would people would stop sinning. The truth is:

With sins, you win in this ungodly world

Look at the rulers of the earth and the in.crowd, they're at the top and the most sin adhering you'd imagine.

>. When I say I have very little faith, I literally mean that I'm not far away from simply closing the door on my Christian attempt at spirituality. I don't think you understand that and keep talking to me as if my calling myself a Christian was to be taken for granted.

Do you believe in the everything that's told in the gospel, in the resurrection, the second coming, the trinity etc usual nicene creed stuff?

If so, how can debating here bring you further away from that? What we do here is semantics for the most part.

>>3669

I just look here like twice a day for a couple of minutes and make some posts, that I'm among the most active speaks for itself :^(

>>3667

>I have no idea how to "fix" my faith, though.

The late President Packer once said "A testimony is found in the bearing of it". That is to say, you've got to do everything you can to find this faith, even going so far as going through the machinations as if you had faith. Go to church, pray, read the Scriptures, ask God for things even when you know He won't answer, and tell yourself "I know this to be true".

I feel you on this though, personally, its not easy. I myself struggle with this stuff all the time.

That, and find your niche. Find the thing about Christianity that makes you tick, focus on that but acknowledge the importance of the other stuff. If you feel like you can't "muster up the faith", focus on deeds for others, Scripture reading or anything like that with the explicit purpose of connecting with God and finding this faith.

Essentially, do all that you can do and endure till the end. Your quest doe faith isn't over until you find it or you give up.

>>3641

Also OoLF, Everyone has a crisis in faith every once in awhile even Peter on multiple occasions.

>>3682

>I'm sure you think that but it is untrue.

I am sure you don't actually think you know better about what goes on in my head than I do, right?

>"Christians" in Switzerland are problematic.

Here we go with more of your out-of-nowhere-assumptions. I work with people from many countries, and the Catholic man I was talking with is from Germany, where the Catholic is state-funded and very powerful. So much for "Christians". You're not the only "real Christian" in Europe, believe it.

>Mostly because the crimes commited against them by you, I'll give them that.

What is this even supposed to mean?

>Is it?

Yes, sin hurts more than faith. If following Christ makes you sad and makes you despair, you're either following Him wrong or don't really want to follow Him at all.

>It would feel damn good to have multiple wives.

At this point I question whether you've ever lived with a single woman for very long.

>It would be nice to become a God once. All the power and responsibility, and the honour.

I see. None of those things attract me.

>I'd like make up things for myself and do not follow the teaching but interpret in my own way, according to my needs.

By personally choosing what your beliefs are, it is what you do, what everyone does. Just because you choose from a set of premade beliefs doesn't remove your freedom of choice, and if you chose a certain faith, you chose it because of personal reasons. If you maintain a childhood faith, you also maintain it for personal reasons, because you could have given it up at any given point. Maintaining it is a choice.

I also believe that your faith does correspond to your needs, because if it did not, you would abandon it.

>>3682

>That's not how it works… if it would people would stop sinning. The truth is:

>With sins, you win in this ungodly world

>Look at the rulers of the earth and the in.crowd, they're at the top and the most sin adhering you'd imagine.

Most of them don't look like winners for very long. And most aren't happy or at peace.

There are plenty of things that cause suffering to everyone and people indulge in them all the same. Leading a sinful life is going to be a lot of pain to oneself and others, much more so than if you joined a monastery. People who joined monasteries don't do so out of hating the monastic life, but because they like it, because it works for them.

Elite sportsmen don't see training as painful torture, even if it is hard and demanding. Same for the person who feels the need for strict rituals. Pain with a goal is perceived as positive and useful. Pain from sin is just useless and only hurts. At best you learn from it and learn to avoid it, like petting fire.

>>3682

>Do you believe in the everything that's told in the gospel, in the resurrection, the second coming, the trinity etc usual nicene creed stuff?

I can't even answer this simply. Do I "believe" in the sense that I take this as a package on account of my having faith? Yes.

Do I "believe" in all of it as a likely occurrence? I don't know. I can't tell you I personally believe that the resurrection happened, simply because I have no way to be sure. I only believe as part of my faith, not as "I have good reason to think it really happened".

I'm very sorry about that, but I'd be lying if I told you I "believe" all those things truly happened. I don't hold the Bible to be infallible either, which forces me to consider doubt for every issue.

I'm a Nicene Creed Christian otherwise.

>If so, how can debating here bring you further away from that?

Well, I don't feel like I'm making much progress in my understanding of tricky questions and some issues seem irreducible, or at the very least, I am not satisfied with my understanding and knowledge of these issues.

>What we do here is semantics for the most part.

Yes, and semantics is pretty damn important.

>I just look here like twice a day for a couple of minutes and make some posts, that I'm among the most active speaks for itself :^(

It felt like you spent more time. Maybe I got the impression because I write to you a lot on this board.

Activity has gone way up since 2 months ago, though.

>>3695

> Fake it until you think you believe it. Although if omniscient God can see your heart, he'll know your faking it and that still may not be enough for a ticket to heaven.

Which is why you gotta try really hard.

In all seriousness though, this is a reasonable thing from the perspective of an outsider. Essentially, you get a "spiritual witness" by reading the BoM. You'll know it to be true on such a basic level than you simply cannot deny it to be the truth, try as you might (and I have tried, multiple times); so the only options remaining are: forfeit sanity or try to make sense of this how this tangible fact makes sense with these other things that appear to clash with it.

The same could be done for any Christian system of faith, though maybe other lads here could offer a different way for OolF to reach the same conclusion.

>>3686

I've chosen to work for the Catholic Church and the subject does come up in class (I work in a school, teachers and students alike aren't Catholic for the most part, or rather, we're open to everyone). I bear witness by having a little crucifix on my keys, which are borrowed fairly often by students and workmates alike. I'm very appreciated by both, so discovering that I might be Christian may do something. I also educate on the subject whenever possible, though that is fairly rarely.

Helping people is how I live my faith on a daily basis.

>>3695

I like your posts, mind presenting yourself to me? You weren't around before I left temporarily, so I don't know who you are at all. I'm curious!

I'm OoLF, the generally confused Christian of Catholic origins but having much sympathy for Protestants and Orthodox and with a focus on questing for God with humility and intellect, without disregarding one's heart.

>>3717

>Helping people is how I live my faith on a daily basis.

This is good. So long as you never allow it to stray far from your mind, and you keep yourself squarely grounded in your Catholic identity, you're on a good path. The trick is; and its happened to me often; not to become complacent with this. If its not working, it means you have to do more. This can be hard, because you might already be feeling like you're doing all that you can do.

Coming here is always a good idea because it exposes you to new ideas and things you may not have considered otherwise, and experimenting with the things that other anons do to enhance their spirituality or achieve a certain degree of faith is key.

>>3699

Thanks for being here. You should use the little flag so that Discipulus doesn't feel so alone. Or even get a name!

>>3702

Oh I know, I don't think I'm special for it. I'm just the only person I am, so it's important to me.

>>3713

>I believe I was one of the first people to engage in that discussion with you over on /christian/. I'm sorry that this is the result, it deeply saddens me.

You probably were, but don't be sad. I still don't think I completely understand Catholics - you guys vary a lot and I don't know who the "true Catholics" are, though I assume you all are and Catholicism simply has many hues - and I haven't given up on Catholicism. I just realised I was vastly ill-adapted for it, more than I thought, and that there was a ton I'll have to work out for myself.

>It seemed/seems to me that your assertion is that dogma necessarily sets up barriers between man and God, a position that I still cannot comprehend, since that fact of God is *itself* a dogma, and the launching pad for all spirituality.

I'll handle that in a separate post.

>Still, as I said, I'm less apt to bash people over the head with systematic theology now, thanks in part to the wildly negative result that that had with you.

I did not expect that. That's cool though. If you present thing in a more "up for grabs" way, it'll make people feel more inclined to take it for themselves out of their own will; if you present things as truth to be accepted as such just because you say so, it will automatically antagonise people even before they even understand the ideas presented to them. I know it's how I react, partly, probably, because I assume that a man who is sure of the ideas he presents is confident that the ideas themselves will work on the audience (I'm not implying you're unsure, however, just that it may make that impression on people, as it might have on me).

Try presenting things as though you weren't a Catholic yourself and had to explain it to aliens, I'm sure lots of people will be interested. I'm interested, but I admit that knowing how personal things get with you and how friction happens often between us, I'm less likely to do so, because I don't want to hear about what is the true religion but simply how Catholicism works, so I can choose for myself, even if Catholicism really is the one true faith, I still need to find that out for myself; I can't just trust you on the path to take, I have to walk it myself, like most people.

But yeah, don't be sad because of me. You're among the Catholics I appreciate the most on 8chan, simply because you always took the time to respond to me and you haven't labelled me a Sex Calvinist once and for all eternity.

The /christian/ /pol/ Catholics were those I was thinking of, even though I don't regard them as faithful representation of Catholicism.

>>3722

Sometimes I feel like I do have irreducible faith underneath and that things are going better than I imagine and that God is vastly more loving than I imagine and that my shortcomings aren't sufficient barriers between Him and myself.

I also donate money to various charities, like Vietnamese children who still suffer from Agent Orange or landmines and whatnot. Not this year though because I'll be officially poor as of September (job is not faring so well).

>>3726

>You're among the Catholics I appreciate the most on 8chan, simply because you always took the time to respond to me and you haven't labelled me a Sex Calvinist once and for all eternity.

Thanks, I appreciate it.

You were too persistent and sincere to be a troll, I could tell from the start.

>>3734

>Part of it was your claim to have read the Catechism from cover to cover, so I figured I could take out the big guns right away.

I did, and theological concepts don't scare me. I meant more the part where you make it explicit that you think it's the absolute truth and that whoever you talk to should also accept this (which most of us can't just then).

>Of course part of my reason for belonging to the Catholic Church is that *I don't know* and I will probably *never* know, everything there is to know about Christ, about Scripture, about the apostles, about the saints, about theology, etc etc., and I'm totally comfortable with not being able to know all those things in completeness, and with placing my trust in the Church,

Understandably, but this never came across in all our conversations. I never once had the impression that you had doubts on anything (although placing your trust in the Church compensates for just that).

I just cannot trust other humans, be they from the Church, or any Church. I have to check everything for myself as far as I can (I'll still trust historians, linguists, astrophysicists and the likes, I'll just check with many for a consensus).

The CCC did make a great impression on me and it is the very reason why I thought of myself as a Catholic for years and held the Church in great esteem. I stand by that, it's a great work and I don't know of anything else in a mainstream religion that compares to it.

>>3736

>You were too persistent and sincere to be a troll, I could tell from the start.

I'm glad!

>>3718

Ah that argument has various flaws in it. For instance, if God were the first cause of this universe, then why wouldn't God need to be created by his own God? It's like saying the world is supported by an infinite pillar of turtles. And since God doesn't believe he was created by any Gods that makes him an Atheist. While in physics particles can seem to non-intuitively seem to pop in and out of existance without a cause. We've actually had about 4 threads on Aquinas and variations of his arguments on /atheism/

>>3745

>Ah that argument has various flaws in it

Here we go…

>For instance, if God were the first cause of this universe, then why wouldn't God need to be created by his own God?

This isn't actually an argument against it, it's just evidence that you didn't understand the whole argument. Atheists have tons of comparable "counter arguments" but they, most of the time, only show that the argument was not fully understood. Even Hitchens doesn't have a problem with this argument and accepts it.

I can try to explain it to you if you want me to, though, and you can question along the way.

>>3699

Welcome, very much appreciated.

>>3713

You too, I think I rerecognize you.

>>3745

> then why wouldn't God need to be created by his own God? It's like saying the world is supported by an infinite pillar of turtles

Because scientific axioms apply only to physic beings not to metaphysic ones.

>>3734

>This was never my intention, but I'll admit I probably came on a little too strong. Part of it was your claim to have read the Catechism from cover to cover, so I figured I could take out the big guns right away.

I can feel you here.

I have no problems with non catholics saying non catholic stuff, I can deal with atheists spouting blasphemy.

But I hold Catholics to another standard, because their wrongdoings are so much more severe.

>>3748

Wait…

>>3713

You aren't Discipulus? Damn… both of you are the same person in my mind… When I talked to one, I assumed you were the other also.

That feels weird. My bad. I must not have made sense every time, considering. Sorry!

>>3747

>I can try to explain it to you if you want me to, though, and you can question along the way.

Sure, but it might be a waste of your time to put much time into it. Because I'm more comfortable with admitting we can't know about how things were "before the universe" rather than accepting the existance of something on word games, and with little solid evidence. There are also a few pages of refutations to Aquinas's argument that there had to be a first cause in Richard Dawkin's "God Delusion."

>>3773

It wouldn't be a waste of time.

Also, Dawkins may have stopped at Aquinas, but the Argument has had many others since then add to it. Dawkins is a great biologist but philosophy and theology were never his specialties; his opinion on either is about as worthy as the man on the street's. I wouldn't read a plumber's book on biology, nor would I read a biologist's book on theology.

The Cosmological Arguments includes a few premises that I don't think you'd reject. I'll try to make it simple (from memory).

1. things exist (even if it's a matrix sort of illusion, that still exists)

2. things don't make themselves happen, coffee cups don't fill themselves, there's always a trigger behind things happening, namely "agents", or doers.

3. all things come from other things, humans from other humans, all the way to the beginning

4. all things that exist must have a beginning

We assume that the universe didn't always exist, because it's a physical entity and exists within our 3 dimensions and time, so it goes by these rules.

For a universe to exist, you need a "first mover", a thing that triggers everything else, an agent that doesn't itself need to be caused, the "unmoved mover" and so on.

The classic rebuttal is "Who created God?", and I don't understand how anyone can miss the whole point of the argument by asking this. The argument basically demonstrates (better than I did here), that a first mover is necessary, that without one, the universe can't exist, because if everything needs to be caused by something else, then we have an infinite regression, but since the universe is not infinite, an infinite regression is not possible: there must be a beginning (science tends to confirm this), and that beginning must be triggered by a "thing" that is not contingent, a singularity. This "thing" that triggers it all has to exist because it if doesn't, nothing else can.

The argument hinges on this notion: without a first cause, there can be nothing, so there must be one.

Hitchens agrees with it (he has studied and understood better than Dawkins) and he correctly explains that it doesn't prove the Christian God specifically, just God, according to the very specific definition of God as creator of the universe.

I don't think I gave you a good explanation of the CA, but I'll make it up for it answering your incoming questions or disagreements.

>>3779

> One assumption is that everything in the universe needs a cause.

Yes, but what you call assumption, the philosopher calls premise. Everything we know has an origin, a cause. It also fits with current scientific paradigm.

>Even within our universe developments from evolution pretty much spontaneously arises from the chaos of chance. Patterns also appear in the marketplace due to independent actors. If evolution doesn't have a guiding hand, it becomes reasonable to believe the universe itself could arise from chance.

Equating biological evolution with the existence of the universe isn't something I would do lightly. It's either infinite regression or creation; if the latter, then we need a creator who corresponds to God (hyperdimensional to this universe).

>Stepping outside of the universe and analyzing how it was created is a bit like going onto a higher dimension/reality where our laws might not apply. It raises too many questions and nothing we know to be true here may be true in this "hyperreality." Causality might not even apply.

That's exactly the point. This is how a God is plausible. The CA is more about how such an entity is necessary for the universe to exist.

>Can there be causality without time?

The more I learn about the Big Bang, the less surprised I become of the idea of a world beyond everything we know, with rules different from ours (physical rules). If time is relative, and did not always exist, then timelessness must exist, and from that, a hyperdimensional world, and even entity, may also exist.

>Even if there is a first cause of the universe, and we can call this God, it doesn't prove it is the God that Christians believe in.

As Hitchens suggests. I agree with that. The Christian God ensured that it would be believed on faith or not at all.

Lots of things are possible.

>>3794

I'm not impressed with William Lane Craig. I've seen him debate on youtube, and read a transcript from another of his debates. It felt like he was dodging questions and rambling about the most unprovable pie in the sky parts of theology.

Christians badly want to believe and will champion anyone who is willing to dress up in a suit and speak with the air of acadamia. The whole point of his speeches are to convince people there's depth in theology if you study it enough, which is another call to faith. Whether anyone in the audience fully understands what he says is beside the point.

The last minute of the attached satire video sums up my impressions when he speaks = utter gibberish. Complex lawyer rhetoric doesn't make something true. And this tends to happen whenever a theologician tries to debate with a scientist or skeptic.

Not long ago, I went to two debates with a similar phenomenon. (A professor trained in theology and turned Skeptic, and a born-again Universalist grad student from Oxford were to debate on the veracity of Jesus's Resurrection.) Both said they preferred to avoid using Hume arguments, because neither found them "satisfying." The arguments had too many assumptions. They said they wanted to keep the focus on the probability of the resurrection.

The professor brought out contradictions in the New Testament such as Jesus's last words, arguing that certain contradictions were due to different authors writing different narratives to string events together. His point was to say we can't take the gospels for minute details. The graduate felt stuck, and had to keep citing those gospels as truth for pretty much everything we know about Jesus. He started reiterating things every Christian knows: how Jesus was necessary to forgive us our sins, and his resurrection was a miracle and God's way of confirming you should believe everything he and his disciples said in the bible. It felt like he had fallen back to preaching to the faithful, while the professor could still make his argument relatable to the other side.

The second debate took place at a Christian private school for rich kids. After the debate a lot more Christian students asked them questions about Hume's arguments during the Q & A and both repeated again that they didn't personally find them satisfying. The second debate was especially forgettable, but I can still describe it.

Between debates the professor had tried to convince the graduate to create a bayesian argument, but he didn't. The professor said not having one was not acceptable and presented his own which required many estimations for the variables. Meanwhile the graduate just repeated the points from his first debate almost word for word, citing the bible, relying on the willingness of men to make martyrs for themself as strong evidence. The professor apparently was too bored to repeat his first debate ad verbatim, and instead dove further into the boring mathematics behind his forthcoming paper for Infidels.org on the probability of the resurrection. By the end the two were hardly responding to each other. Something similiar tends to happen if you watch a William Lane Craig debate, which is one of the given reasons Richard Dawkins said he wasn't interested.

>>3808

>The whole point of his speeches are to convince people there's depth in theology if you study it enough, which is another call to faith.

I must disagree with this, having read my fair share of theology. I grant that theology itself will not give anyone faith, but it's not as flimsy as one might think.

I have his book, and I will read it at some point. I'm skeptic about attacks on theologians because I've seen the same done to CS Lewis, and the arguments weren't foolproof at all; arguments against theology by nontheologians tend to be about not understanding the concepts at play, which is easy to do because most concepts of philosophy sound like things with simple names, which often hide the actual concept. Someone who's never heard of the Cosmological Argument would take the words literally, cosmological argument, and imagine an argument involving the cosmos, which means nothing at this stage.

>The professor brought out contradictions in the New Testament such as Jesus's last words, arguing that certain contradictions were due to different authors writing different narratives to string events together. His point was to say we can't take the gospels for minute details.

I often cite the 4 different sets of "last words" in the gospel to defend my take on the Bible. I agree with this statement.

>The graduate felt stuck, and had to keep citing those gospels as truth for pretty much everything we know about Jesus.

Indeed. Most of what we know is from those.

What's Hume argument again?

>. Something similiar tends to happen if you watch a William Lane Craig debate, which is one of the given reasons Richard Dawkins said he wasn't interested.

All right, it makes sense. I appreciate getting to hear from the other side of things, especially when it's as articulate and knowledgeable as you are.

>>3808

I watched the video and yeah, no.

Maybe Craig is a worse speaker than he's a thinker, I'll tell you for myself once I've read his works and seen some debates.

But the points raised, somewhat, in the video don't check out. Presenting the opposition's position in a ridiculous manner can be done to anybody.

Sheer oddity is never a reason for anything to be unlikely to be true. The sexlife of ducks is unbelievable and to anyone who doesn't actually know it, if they were told on the street, they'd not believe it at first. Truth doesn't care to sound true. Historians agree that the complications in the Bible, NT specifically, are testament to its authenticity, as a fake document would do away with complications.

I very rarely hear a good atheist argument coming from either Dawkins or Hitchens; they generally miss the point entirely or forget a premise which makes their question/comment meaningless. But I'm not afraid to go against any of that, considering my inner position still feels like that of an atheist. I'm like a fish in water, groping for air (faith). I do that by going through the facts, points, and arguing to death.

>>3808

>y impressions when he speaks = utter gibberish. Complex lawyer rhetoric doesn't make something true.

whats your view of philosophy?

The only people that ive found that doesnt like how he approaches his debates are hose that dont like philosophy.

>>3827

That's probably the whole point. I've talked with lots of "scientifically minded" people who just don't get philosophy and refuse to learn a thing about it, even if philosophy is the mother of science.

They just won't listen or learn and they use this to shield themselves from theology, and that's just a shame and a major frustration.

Most of the philosophical arguments for God look simpler than they are.

Here's a good YouTube channel for interesting concepts. It's generally well-explained.

https://www.youtube.com/user/InspiringPhilosophy/videos

>>3818

>What's Hume argument again?

He was an early critic of the cosmological argument. He had several criticisms. He claimed there were things beyond our understanding, and God could not be understood by reason. He also claimed that understanding parts is enough to understand a whole (this position was later shown to be a fallacy.) Apart from the CA, he also made arguments against the probable existence of miracles.

It's easy to make large leaps of logic and assume the God is proven by the argument. But the cause remains undefined, in the way a random pine cone falling on snowpacked hill could cause an avalanche. A quantum fluctuation and random surge in the vacuum energy of the cosmos could also count. Is this God?

>But the points raised, somewhat, in the video don't check out.

How is William Lane Craig's argument different?

>>3827

>whats your view of philosophy?

Mixed feelings. They've done a lot of good, but they can also waste a lot of time arguing about things without any evidence. The cosmological argument is a good example of a trap that has been argued about to death for millennia. There must be hundreds of philosophers who have discussed it by now:

http://www.manyworldsoflogic.com/cosmologicalargument.html

Gathering empirical data is in a superior method of more accurately unraveling the world. It's much safer than gazing at your navel and relying only on inductive reasoning. Without real experiments to backup thought experiments, it is easy to fall prey to believing in many false premises, as the Ancients often did.

Or, as Bronowski would put it, "Work can only be grasped by action not by contemplation. We are not one of those contemplative civilizations of the far east or middle ages that believe the world only has to be seen and thought about, and who practiced no science."

>>3871

> A quantum fluctuation and random surge in the vacuum energy of the cosmos could also count. Is this God?

Hawking, if I am not mistaken, seems to confuse the very different concepts of "nothing" and "vacuum". Most scientists seem to do, more or less on purpose. Their theories never start with nothing, but a vacuum of sorts. How did that vacuum even get there? Who made space? How did it begin? If it didn't begin, how do we explain infinite regression?

>How is William Lane Craig's argument different?

I don't have personal knowledge of it just yet, but he makes improvements on Aquinas' CA, which is centuries old. The points in the video are used for comedic purpose, but could be discussed seriously, such as why does God appear to Hebrews in the desert at that specific time and not to others some other time, etc.

>Mixed feelings. They've done a lot of good, but they can also waste a lot of time arguing about things without any evidence.

Philosophy branched out into many other things eventually. Speaking of evidence about philosophy is sometimes like speaking of evidence with mathematics. Proof that 1 + 1 = 2? It's logical, so logical that it can be difficult to prove, and doing so remains arguable (you can take two objects and add them and count them, but doing that you just project those number categories on the stones already, deciding that one is 1 and the other is 1 as well, so it doesn't prove much eventually).

>Gathering empirical data is in a superior method of more accurately unraveling the world.

Of course. I'd never dispute the scientific method when it comes to the natural world. As long as you recognise that it's pretty much clueless about the supernatural world (which it prefers to think doesn't exist), I'm all right.

>Or, as Bronowski would put it, "Work can only be grasped by action not by contemplation. We are not one of those contemplative civilizations of the far east or middle ages that believe the world only has to be seen and thought about, and who practiced no science."

Yes, a fact that contemporary people forget ever so easily. There isn't one single way of approaching the world, and our ancestors did so with far less doubt than we currently do.

>>3641

>I feel like we're just fools arguing over nonsense for no good reason.

If this was only the case!

Every couple of weeks we are dead for a few days. Without any reasoning or warning, everyone leaves in a synchronised manner.