Homestar Runner Wiki Forum

Are you asking where Christianity say God exists?

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1. You claim there is lack of evidence. I say there is historical evidence.

2. Simple logic dictates that a lack of evidence for something cannot be submitted as evidence against that something. Just because there's no evidence of gorillas in my office does not prove that gorillas do not exist.

3. I'd be interested to know what you consider "evidence against."

4. Historical evidence is not as fickle as you claim. Even in the ancient world, men who endeavored to record history as such tended to present evidence to support their claims, and those claims can be examined and cross-referenced with other available histories for verification. When you have accounts of seven different men who claim to be witnesses of an event, and those accounts corroborate each other, and are not not contradicted by opposing evidence, then one can only surmise that the events recorded are accurate. The only excuse for dismissing the historical accounts is the presupposition that miraculous events cannot happen - but to do that is extremely close-minded and contrary to sound reasoning.

Oh, I have no doubt that some poets, like Homer and Virgil, were more interested in telling stories than in recording facts, but they wrote poetry, not historical narratives. Poems and histories tend not to read the same, at least not in the ancient world.


The best answer I have for that is: "Behold, heaven and the highest heaven cannot contain you" (2 Chronicles 6:18).

Now some Christian theologians from Medieval times, including Boetheus, Anselm, and Aquinas, have suggested that God exists beyond space and time as we know it, in something like a 5th dimension, or what they called "An eternal moment," a perspective that allows him to observe not only all space at once, but also all time at once (sort of blows the mind, huh?). But we Christians also believe that this transcendent God also took human form and became the historical person known as Jesus of Nazareth.

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Historical evidence there is a god? How so? I haven't heard of any gods coming down to hang out in the last few millennia.



Well, there's no conclusive evidence either way...if you asked me if there was a gorilla in your office, I would probably say "no." But if you never gave me any conclusive evidence, and kept feeding me stories, I would be doubtful. If 2,000 years past and your stories have been added onto by other people (in our situation: The Catholic Church and the Protestant Reformation in general) and no conclusive evidence had ever been given, I wouldn't believe it.



Um...when did I say there was evidence against? I was talking about the "evidence" for a god....which is basically a bunch of guys claiming they met his "son."



Oh, I'm sure some of it is accurate...but a lot of I think is probably fabricated (i.e. Jesus walks on water).



Very interesting. Cool, thanks.

I generally try to avoid discussion in Religious topics sheerly so I don't make a fool of myself, but people against Christianity used to say that Pontius Pilate didn't exist, and found no evidence of him ever until they discovered his name in an ancient wall of some sort that said something to the effect of: Dedicated to Pontius Pilate.

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Oh, I'm not saying that Jesus didn't exist, I'm just saying the stories he told and the stories told about him are (in my opinion) not accurate.

It's quite possible. I mean, how were the Gospel writers supposed to know about his early childhood, such as the Magi appearing? Or about the one time where a young Jesus stayed behind at a temple to preach?

I see no real evidence outside of the Bible to support those claims.

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Jesus of Nazareth.


What about available manuscript evidence that supports a MUCH earlier view of these writings? The available copies we have go as far back as the early second century, and the proliferation of copies actually suggests a much earlier date. Not only that, but citations from the early Church Fathers such as Irenaeus and Polycarp further attest a date no later than late first century or early second for the originals (and that's a liberal assessment at best; conservative scholars argue for even earlier). To simply dismiss this available manuscript data in favor of this vague notion of "added onto by other people" is contrary to reason. Can you offer manuscript support for these additions?

For more information, might I suggest the following resources:
http://home.earthlink.net/~ronrhodes/Manuscript.html
http://alpha.reltech.org/BibleMSS.html
http://debate.org.uk/topics/history/bib-qur/bibmanu.htm
http://www.islamic-awareness.org/Bible/ ... plist.html (oddly enough, an Islam web site).
http://www.carm.org/bible/textualexample.htm (I find this one useful to show how we can adequately reconstruct the original texts using available copies - with about 99.5% accuracy at that!).

So allegations of inaccuracy in the texts: debunked.


It seems to me that your only reason for rejecting these portions is an a priori presumption that miracles cannot happen. That's circular argument. You don't believe in miracles because there are no reliable accounts of the miraculous, but you dismiss accounts of the miraculous for no other reason than that they contain miracles. As I said before, such a priori circular argumentation is contrary to sound reason.

By the standards of ordinary historical documentation, the Gospels are much more well attested than even some other events of that time period, for example Julius Caesar's military campaigns. Unless you already close your mind to the possibility of God, there is no rational reason to give more credence to non-miraculous historical accounts than miraculous ones.


I appreciate here that you state it is your opinion. I can respect that, even if I would prefer support for such an opinion. It is likewise my opinion (based on data available to me) that they are accurate.


The answer to that is pretty easy, Ramrod. They talked to his relatives. In case you have forgotten, Jesus' mother lived to be quite old, and Jesus' brothers James and Jude continued to live in Jerusalem to well into the apostolic period. St. Luke even tells us in his Gospel that he investigated Jesus' life before setting down to write. It wouldn't have been that hard for the apostles to gather this information.


One key point you are forgetting, Ramrod, is that the Bible is not a single document in and of itself, but rather a collection of documents that were written independently by various authors in different locations. My suspicion is that any independent document that would have attested the same facts very likely would have been collected with the canonical books as support. As it stands, other than the apostles and the church fathers (oh, and let's not forget their contributions either), no one had all these facts or the intent to communicate them.

It's like witnesses in a trial. You have to cross examine them and relate their stories to each other to see if they hold up. But since we don't seem to have any contrary witnesses, I can only presume that those who knew what really happened have already spoken.

But what you say isn't entirely true, anyway. Josephus attests in two places at least that at the very least, the people were convinced these events did happen.

P. S. I find it interesting that when I post manuscript evidence, very few people seem to want to comment on it.

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Ya know, to be fair, the Bible requires circular reasoning, too. "The Bible is true and says that God exists and that He is infallible"; "God's divinity and infallibility inspired the writing and compilation of the Bible, therefore everything in the Bible is true and is the divine word of God." Statement two can only be true if statement one is true, and statement one can only be true if statement two is true. Hence, circular reasoning.

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The meaning of life is 'bucket.'

FOR PONY!!!

That is assuming you're not bringing in outside data, Pianoman. True, if you were a fundamentalist whose only reason were trusting the Bible because it told you to, that would be circular argumentation. But if you look at the available data and conclude that the historical data in it is accurate, that's not the same thing.

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I have to admit I'm just too lazy to really research such things. Partly because I know whatever I find won't change my position; I just debate for fun, and research is more like work.

- Kef

I'm one of those atheists on this site.

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The dragon never works...

Talking about Atheism, what are your opinions on these two sites:
http://www.whywontgodhealamputees.com/
http://www.godisimaginary.com/

I think that the ideas are sound and logical, but they present them more like propaganda. They say "God is imaginary!" whenever they get the chance, wich makes it sound like they don't really have that much else to say.

But I like the example where 10 people have cancer and pray to god for healing. 9 of them dies, and the 1 that didn't die goes like "Praying works! praying works!".

I am reminded of the character C. S. Lewis from Shadowlands (who of course is based on the real Lewis) who says, regarding praying for his own wife's cancer, "Prayer does not change God; prayer changes me." I too have had to consider this whole healing issue, especially since there was a charismatic element at Faith (and, interestingly enough, the same element that was working to have me removed). So here's my own thoughts:

Evil was brought into this world by men. So any time you're trying to address the problem of evil, the very first thing that must be done is to address mankind's own fault (and our own individual fault in contributing to the problem) rather than placing the blame on God. It's like a potter who carefully crafts a great work of art, only to have some small child break it.

The world is fallen, broken, messed up now. And in such a world, life is not fair. One moment, mankind is saying we have no need of a God, but the next, criticizing him for not acting to heal us as we expect. And that's especially true when addressing the issue of death and infirmity.

So why is one cancer victim healed and the others are not? The only thing I can say is that's a question better addressed to God himself, not to me. The world is broken and needs to be fixed; nevertheless, I do have hope that it will be one day, the same day that he returns and all the dead are raised.

But rather than addressing the question of where God's activity is not present, it might be better to address where it certainly is. Yes, the world is not fair, but at the center of time there stands a hill where three men were executed as criminals. One of them God himself. Yes, right there on that hill, our God took upon himself all the unfairness, all the injustice, all the suffering of the world and endured it himself. And not terribly far from that hill is an empty cave where they had put his body, showing that all the injustice, all the heartbreak and suffering, all the unfairness of this age, could not keep him down.

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That's basically how faith healing works. The classic example is this:

If you leave a disease untreated, one of three things will happen:
1. It gets worse.
2. It stays the same.
3. It gets better.

If you attempt to heal a sick person with prayer or crystals or other faith devices, you then respond to each result accordingly:
1. We need more (prayer / crystals / whatever).
2. We arrested it.
3. See? It worked!

And thus you have a basic device employed by con men everywhere. Here's an interesting link to follow:

http://randi.org/encyclopedia/

This is James Randi's Encyclopedia of Claims, Frauds, and Hoaxes of the Occult and Supernatural, an exposé of cons that should be required reading for all humanity.

Mike