winningedge101 wrote:Hey guys I'm an agnostic Christian and basically what I mean by that is I am undecided on Christianity but I admit my bias for wanting it to be true. Are Christians justified in their belief? Why do you guys reject Jesus as God? You guys are like the smart ones so if you guys are the ones studying these manuscripts and you still are not even convinced at all by Christ then why should I or any other Christian be? I want to be a Christian, but I want it to be an intellectual decision and not one derived on nothing but blind faith.
There is no need to make Jesus a 'God' for Christianity to be a functional religion. Even now, the death and resurrection of the man Jesus is as attractive as the death and resurrection of the God Jesus.
If one understands Jesus as "a God" one fails to grasp Christianity.
winningedge101 wrote:Hey guys I'm an agnostic Christian and basically what I mean by that is I am undecided on Christianity but I admit my bias for wanting it to be true. Are Christians justified in their belief? Why do you guys reject Jesus as God? You guys are like the smart ones so if you guys are the ones studying these manuscripts and you still are not even convinced at all by Christ then why should I or any other Christian be? I want to be a Christian, but I want it to be an intellectual decision and not one derived on nothing but blind faith.
There is no need to make Jesus a 'God' for Christianity to be a functional religion. Even now, the death and resurrection of the man Jesus is as attractive as the death and resurrection of the God Jesus.
I just wonder why the people here don't buy Jesus and his resurrection.
there is no0 big disproof. There are cases to be made on both sides. belief is not just a simple matter of getting "the facts." But there are cases to be made for the faith. you need some better sites. you are not going to get the positive Christian case here;
So it could be that Jesus was preaching some lovey dovey stuff too, but I'm hesitant in thinking that's all he was preaching. It is for these reasons that I'm not a Christian - i.e. I do not think Jesus was the kind of guy worthy of my following, and in any case, I don't think we can know one way or the other.
Shakespeare is a lousy writer, he wrote in clashes. Where did he get all that stuff, "much adue about nothing," what does that mean? Shakespeare is not worthy of my reading. I've read tons of critics and they all seems confused and they disagree so this literature thing is just a scam.
You have to have more to go along with faith than just a list of Bible verses.
"At the Last Supper, on the night he was betrayed, our Savior instituted the Eucharistic Sacrifice of his Body and Blood. He did this in order to perpetuate the sacrifice of the cross throughout the centuries until he should come again, and so to entrust to his beloved spouse, the Church, a memorial of his death and resurrection: a sacrament of love, a sign of unity, a bond of charity, a paschal banquet in which Christ is consumed, the mind is filled with grace, and a pledge of future glory is given to us" (Sacrosanctum Concilium 47).
Peter Kirby wrote:Well, if anyone ever said anything along the lines of 'the evidence for Christianity is overwhelming,' they are wrong.
They do not call it 'faith' for nothing.
Depends upon what evidence you mean. I think the process of faith is a transformative process, it could be understood in Khunian terms, Paradigm shift. It is a sea change and trying to epitomizing as a mere examination of a set of facts is rather immature. No one does a rational calculation of facts and decides to believe. There's a lot more to it than that. Historical evidence does play it's part. The evidence for Christianity is a lot stronger than you are willing to give it credit for being.
That's a mealy-mouthed way to confirm the fact that the so-called "evidence" is far from overwhelming, which is what I just said.
"... almost every critical biblical position was earlier advanced by skeptics." - Raymond Brown
Peter Kirby wrote:Well, if anyone ever said anything along the lines of 'the evidence for Christianity is overwhelming,' they are wrong.
They do not call it 'faith' for nothing.
Depends upon what evidence you mean. I think the process of faith is a transformative process, it could be understood in Khunian terms, Paradigm shift. It is a sea change and trying to epitomizing as a mere examination of a set of facts is rather immature. No one does a rational calculation of facts and decides to believe. There's a lot more to it than that. Historical evidence does play it's part. The evidence for Christianity is a lot stronger than you are willing to give it credit for being.
That's a mealy-mouthed way to confirm the fact that the so-called "evidence" is far from overwhelming, which is what I just said.
Mealy-mouth is that a technical term? "your argument is guilty of committing three fallacies: black is white slide, violate the law of excluded middle, and it's "mealy-mouth."
I hate to break it to you Pete, I've know some of the top Bible scholars of late 20th such as Bill Farmer (champion of the Greisebach hypothesis). They don't demand that arguments be overwhelming before they consider them
Pete, Pete, Pete, your learning back habits from the mythers.
"At the Last Supper, on the night he was betrayed, our Savior instituted the Eucharistic Sacrifice of his Body and Blood. He did this in order to perpetuate the sacrifice of the cross throughout the centuries until he should come again, and so to entrust to his beloved spouse, the Church, a memorial of his death and resurrection: a sacrament of love, a sign of unity, a bond of charity, a paschal banquet in which Christ is consumed, the mind is filled with grace, and a pledge of future glory is given to us" (Sacrosanctum Concilium 47).
We have already explained sufficiently and of set purpose on another occasion, that Jesus Christ "when dying on the cross, bestowed upon His Church, as a completely gratuitous gift, the immense treasure of the redemption. But when it is a question of distributing this treasure, He not only commits the work of sanctification to His Immaculate Spouse, but also wishes that, to a certain extent, sanctity should derive from her activity."[75]
Why not Jesus?
UNAM SANCTAM
We believe in her firmly and we confess with simplicity that outside of her there is neither salvation nor the remission of sins,
Furthermore, we declare, we proclaim, we define that it is absolutely necessary for salvation that every human creature be subject to the Roman Pontiff.
In this thread, I am not interested in doing more than defending what I actually said (and barely interested in that at this point, honestly). I am not interested in defending things that I did not say.
It is, further, no fault of mine if someone doesn't disagree with what I said but is still visibly upset by the fact that I said it or by the fact that it is true. That is a personal issue regarding which they can go elsewhere to seek comfort, whether that person is a spouse, a counselor, or a pastor.
I am also not especially interested in embarrassing anyone in a war of words, as easy as that would be. I have nothing that I need to prove. I need not drop any names. I am rightly confident in my own name, and my good reputation is earned. A word to the wise here: there is no association, no piece of paper, nor anything else that will keep hidden who you really are for very long.
"... almost every critical biblical position was earlier advanced by skeptics." - Raymond Brown
Peter Kirby wrote:In this thread, I am not interested in doing more than defending what I actually said (and barely interested in that at this point, honestly). I am not interested in defending things that I did not say.
It is, further, no fault of mine if someone doesn't disagree with what I said but is still visibly upset by the fact that I said it or by the fact that it is true. That is a personal issue regarding which they can go elsewhere to seek comfort, whether that person is a spouse, a counselor, or a pastor.
I am also not especially interested in embarrassing anyone in a war of words, as easy as that would be. I have nothing that I need to prove. I need not drop any names. I am rightly confident in my own name, and my good reputation is earned. A word to the wise here: there is no association, no piece of paper, nor anything else that will keep hidden who you really are for very long.
If that that's the best you can do in dealing with disagreement in a mature way then i'll have to accept it. you still have not told me how I misrepresented your views or exactly what bothered you about it.
