Christians base their belief system on a collection of stories from 2000+ years ago and the idea of a deity and other planes of existence (edit: “Heaven” and “Hell”) of which no proof exists. Please correct me if any of the above is inaccurate.
Everything else follows from that, at least in Christianity.
I suppose I believe in "other planes of existence" (is this supposed to be Heaven and Hell or something?), but those are contingent upon the truth of Jesus' suffering, death and resurrection. I guess I'd say I think we already exist in another "plane" which is immaterial and inaccessible in this life, but is nonetheless real.
I suppose I also "believe in a deity," but not with the connotations you seem to be suggesting. God is not some component of existence or reality or the universe, independent of other things; He is the only source of what it means to exist. I would say I don't even believe that God exists, but that He is below or outside of existence, as He caused everything else to exist that exists. If someone believes in God as a sort of Santa Claus or Jinn granting wishes, then no, I don't believe in that kind of "deity" either. That's just silly nonsense.
The teachings of Jesus are a collection of stories from ~2000 years ago. That Jesus is/was divine is something which there is very little evidence for. But even if he was, his teaching are a collection of stories from 2000 years ago.
There is no evidence for the divinity of Jesus. These are simply stories from ~2000 years ago.
Also, Jesus said quite a bit more, and quite a bit more often than "be kind," though admittedly that's sort of the Therapeutic Moral Deism version spewed out popularly and in a lot of churches today.
I'd agree that Jesus' ultimate vision is humanity living in harmony with one another, but that this requires living in harmony with God, too. We're pretty terrible when we try to lean on our own understanding.
Without opening up a broader epistemic discussion: the question of the existence of specific people is quite a reasonable question. Because Socrates rejected writing, there is some question as to whether he really existed or was a rhetorical invention of his student plato. On the other hand, say, Sophocles is described by various contemporaneous sources. Caesar, Augustus and Marc Antony pretty definitely existed -- there is a lot of surviving contemporaneous evidence.
On the other hand the existence of a much more recent figure, Shakespeare, as the author of a body of work is still hotly debated in some circles (there is evidence that someone by his name was alive at the same time, but was that the person in question?)
There are no contemporaneous accounts of the life or death of Jesus; even Josephus whom you mention was born after the events described in the gospels.
> I'd agree that Jesus' ultimate vision is humanity living in harmony with one another, but that this requires living in harmony with God, too. We're pretty terrible when we try to lean on our own understanding.
That's a particular stance that requires judging terrible people who claim to have religious backing to have not been in alignment with a god. Both sides in a war claim divine support, after all. It's quite possible to live in harmony without any gods.
If the evidence of Jesus's divinity isn't empirical evidence, then what sort of evidence is it? I've always thought of faith as meaning "belief despite the lack of evidence".
> I'd agree that Jesus' ultimate vision is humanity living in harmony with one another, but that this requires living in harmony with God, too. We're pretty terrible when we try to lean on our own understanding.
In general people seem to be pretty terrible if they lean on religious understanding too. I don't see much evidence that religious people are more moral than others. Personally I'm a big fan of Jesus's vision of living in harmony with one another, but I don't see why this needs to have anything to do with a god.
Very, very few serious Bible scholars, even the atheist "textual criticism" ones, deny that the man Jesus of Nazareth existed. And almost all of them will acknowledge that, for example, the creed in 1 Corinthians 15:3 dates to within a few years (possibly months) of Jesus death. The denial of the historical Jesus is more a meme in New Atheist Internet forums, rather than a serious examination. It's about as serious as Ancient Aliens.
Isn't that a teaching of Jesus?
> 9 “Which of you, if your son asks for bread, will give him a stone? 10 Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a snake? 11 If you, then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him! (Matthew 7:9-11)
> He replied, "Because you have so little faith. Truly I tell you, if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, 'Move from here to there,' and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you." (Matthew 17:20)
So why don't you believe in that?
I'm an atheist and can certainly see why it'd be silly to think that if you just pray hard enough god will grant your desire, but that's what the bible teaches. Otherwise, what's even the point of prayer?
And before you say "Oh, it was metaphorical" I'd point out the Lord's prayer where Jesus specifically prays for food. (Give us this day our daily bread). What is more good than for god to give a starving person food? Yet plenty of Christians starve, is it because they didn't believe enough?
Also, I won't concede that things in the Bible are not often rhetorical or metaphorical when they in fact are. The Gospels themselves are full of the disciples having no friggin clue what Jesus is talking about, and asking him to "speak plainly." I think for maybe a child who can only interpret things literally, the concept of God as wish-granter might make sense.
Also, your own citation conditions the grant on "good" gifts. What are good gifts in God's eyes?
Ultimately, this is a matter of faith whether you believe this or not. But I only ask that you reconsider your juvenile straw-man of what we believe.
Didn't Jesus split the loaves and the fish to feed thousands? Didn't Jesus turn water into wine? Or were those also metaphors? Why was manna in the desert literal while Jesus miracles metaphors?
The only reason you are saying "Oh, those were just metaphors" is because believing them literally is crazy. You have to insert meaning into Jesus's words because otherwise what he's told you is obviously false (and Jesus can't say something false, right?).
And yet the bible is filled with miracles both in the old and new testament. Miracles that directly contradict the notion that "Oh, they were speaking metaphorically when they said god would do miracles!"
Ultimately, this is a matter of reality whether you accept it or not. I only ask that you reconsider your juvenile beliefs.
I said that the simplistic Jinn-granting-wishes interpretation of God is silly and is not what I believe.
There is no actual contradiction.
If you do, that's a "Jinn-granting-wishes interpretation of God". If you don't, why don't you? Given the scripture references I gave you (and there are plenty of others), NT and OT are all about performing magic based on spell casters saying the right magic words the right way.
Of course, in modern times there are plenty of examples of failed Jutsus. (Not enough faith! Not in God's plan!) And I'd contend that all the examples of successful spell incantations are no more convincing than a wiccan's spells. The success rate of Buddhism has curing cancer will exactly mirror the success rate of Christianity or the Roman parathion interfering with humanity.
Jesus didn't describe the miracle of the loaves and fishes, he was described as having performed it. Even if one accepts the traditional authorship of the Gospels (which even modern Christian scholarship doesn't consistently), Christ isn't the traditional author, just the subject (a small percentage of each of the Gospels is words attributed by the author of the gospel to Christ, but that's not the description of any miracles, though it's often the takeaway message associated with a described miracle.)
> And yet the bible is filled with miracles both in the old and new testament. Miracles that directly contradict the notion that "Oh, they were speaking metaphorically when they said god would do miracles!"
This is really only a contradiction if you assume that nothing in Bible can itself be metaphorical.
> This is really only a contradiction if you assume that nothing in Bible can itself be metaphorical.
Christianity has this interesting trick where their sacred texts are metaphorical whenever they say something they don't like or impossible. What good is the bible if it's all metaphors yet nobody agrees on which parts are metaphors?
And yes, Christ told us to ask for the things we need, including material things.
Other reasons for prayer: thanking God; glorifying God; offering things to God, like our happiness or our good works but also our misery and our flaws. Contemplation; meditation; or just being silent and inviting Him to do the talking.
The most fundamental question is where everything came from. Even the Big Bang theory requires starting materials. The more generic -1 + 1 = 0 is neither useful nor has any mechanism for initialization.
Is little wonder that so many scientists tend toward simulationism. This is just god(s) with different trappings where unprovable metaphysics are studied through modern math and curves instead of ancient math and geometry.
It seems observational true that humans have an innate desire for god that is not seen in other species.
As a final note, the Bible teaches a final end of the wicked along with the final destruction of Satan along with the wicked (this was the proclamation at the beginning of the Bible telling them that if they sinned, they would cease to exist, through the major prophets like Isaiah’s woes against “the king of Tyre” to the New Testament talking of a final destruction of the wicked. The current tales of hell entered into Christian theology in the 3-400s when the mainstream denomination mixed in ideas from the pagan Roman religion. For this reason, you won’t find eternal torment for a few years of sin anywhere in the Bible.
Likewise, Heaven is simply the place where God resides (being called New Jerusalem). It is told that the city will descend to earth after judgment is complete. People don’t go to Heaven after death as some other plane of existence in the Biblical text. Instead, we see the archangel contending with Satan to raise Moses from the dead. Likewise, we see people raised from the dead when Jesus is raised. This would be unnecessary if they were already in Heaven. In fact, the whole Second Coming would be unnecessary if that were what was actually taught. Once again we see this idea entering from the same pagan sources at the same time.
Putting aside whatever people have told you and reading the book yourself, you’ll find something much different than the interpretations and sophistries people layer on top. This remains true whether you read as a believer or a non-believer (myself having experienced both at different times in my life).
TL;DR: Christians wouldn't say that we base our beliefs on a collection of stories. We base our beliefs in the historical fact of the Resurrection. Perhaps we'll find out we're wrong some day, but having considered the best evidence we have (and the book I linked to walks through why that evidence is compelling), Christianity is a reasonable position to hold.
Some of the Catholic miracles sure seem pretty solid to me in terms of conveying God's will to us.
Like the one in Fatima, which was witnessed by thousands of people:
As an example:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/nov/23/india-blasphem...
Just because something is unexplained currently does not give any weight to the idea that it was a miracle.
Millions of people saw David Copperfield vanish the Statue of Liberty as well... But I certainly wouldn't be tempted to pretend he actually made it vanish
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=823GNH4Rczg
We don't have a single example where the opposite has been true.
The miracle was also seen by sailors on a British ship off the coast of Portugal. Foley recounts an experience in England. He gave a presentation on Fatima at a college in England and was told by one of the teachers that her grandfather saw the miracle from his ship and wrote about it to his wife — “without obviously understanding what it meant or its significance.”
And finally, what most convincingly shows that the miracle was not only in the minds and perception of the witnesses is the fact that the crowd at Fatima felt the heat of the sun as it approached them, and their clothes and the ground — which had been soaked by torrential rain — were dry at the end of the miracle.
How does one claim this is just some optical mirage?
In addition, the default shouldn't be "therefore miracle".
The default assumption should be "humans are easy to trick".
My claim here, is that if we put our brightest minds on this, they will come back with a terrifically mundane explanation for it. In the same way that weeping statues are always just water from a pipe somewhere.
Yes. I am speaking for all of humanity here.
I welcome evidence to the contrary.
But that is kind of the point...
Get a bunch of people convinced they'll see a miracle and make them stare at the sun, and sure, you'll be able to get a lot of people saying they've seen a lot of things.
One might also look into the testimonies of various exorcists in modern times for evidence that the supernatural exists: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nhhi7Fk3ueI
We also have stigmata, such as those received by Padre Pio: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Padre_Pio
Just trying to offer a few more things that count as evidence from modern times.