When the response to the question, "how can a person be resurrected from the dead after 3 days," is "its a miracle," ISTM we've entered the realm of blind faith. If it were not blind faith there'd be some attempt to explain how it could happen. Declaring "it's a miracle" isn't really a reasoned explanation. It's more like throwing up your hands and admitting it can't be explained. Which, I agree, it can't be.

Jun 25, 2012 -- 5:56PM, Adelphe wrote:

Jun 25, 2012 -- 2:06PM, MMarcoe wrote:

Jun 23, 2012 -- 2:45PM, Adelphe wrote:

whatson2nd

Posts: 2,892

appeal to faith: (e.g., if you have no faith, you cannot learn) if the arguer relies on faith as the bases of his argument, then you can gain little from further discussion. Faith, by definition, relies on a belief that does not rest on logic or evidence. Faith depends on irrational thought and produces intransigence.

Real faith does NOT rest on belief of any kind! It does not rest on thought of any kind! It is a mood of openness, pure and simple.

Zoiks, people!

 

Is that a "belief" or "thought" "of any kind"?

No. The thought is just a neurological representation.

Jun 25, 2012 -- 7:56PM, F1fan wrote:

Jun 25, 2012 -- 6:35PM, davelaw40 wrote:

hence, miracle

due to outside forces the impossible happened

Only in fantastic stories, not in reality.

Can you provide your definition of "reality" (and support your argument), please?

Jun 25, 2012 -- 10:20PM, GodtheFather wrote:

Some people moved the rock and took the body...

 

The stories tell the rest and so it goes...

 

Maybe that wine vinegar soaked sponge had more than wine vinegar in it?

(((((GTF!!!!!)))))

How are you???

Jun 24, 2012 -- 10:08AM, newsjunkie wrote:

ctss,

Note that examples I gave in my post weren't doubts about the existence of God, necessarily. They were expressions of doubt regarding claims made about God. The examples of beliefs in virgin birth and resurrection regarding to things that are alleged to have happened in the past, for which we have no evidence or experience of similar things happening today. I really do think that beelief in such things requires blind faith. I know that many Christians view these claims as myth, not literal historical facts. That is a rational way of explaining them.

That may be one rational way of explaining them, but rationality (reasoning) depends on premises and logic. Reasoning can take a person in different directions based on the starting premises. You are correct that many Christians view some scriptural claims as myth. However, to assume that the only choices are a blind-faith acceptance of such theological beliefs, or to accept them as only made-up myths, seems to make the assumption that theological beliefs are merely a mixture of random, not-very-useful claims that don't help shed any kind of light on the nature of God's relationship to man. Since different theologies have different takes on such things, it may be useful to consider that there are also theological positions pointing out that a deeper understanding of what was recorded in scripture can help one reason about one's ability to rely on God in the here-and-now (whenever here-and-now is, whether in olden times or in modern times.) For instance, the narrative regarding Jesus' resurrection makes the very bold assertion that man's life is not dependent on matter or material circumstance, but is actually dependent entirely on God. (If matter governed God's man rather than God governing him, then the resurrection of Jesus would have been impossible. Matter simply doesn't offer infinite, eternal life or salvation; God does.) Similarly, the narrative regarding his virgin birth makes a similarly bold assertion that man's actual and true heritage is not derived from matter or laws of chance, but rather is derived wholly from an all-harmonious God. (It hardly seems likely that mindless and discordant matter can bring forth or produce the image and likeness of God, so matter can't really have a role in that either. Only God is capable of expressing His pure and harmonious likeness throughout His kingdom.)

So, what's the whole point of understanding such concepts as these? (And yes, I actually believe that the virgin birth and the resurrection were real occurrences in human experience, and all the more important and helpful to humanity because they were real occurrences.) Basically, a lot of what everyday life hands out to people seems to put forth the claim that material law, rather than God's law, has sovereignty over man's existence. But the whole point of Jesus' birth and ministry apparently seemed to be to refute such claims and actually pointed to the sovereignty of God over His entire creation. (Jesus' son-ship with God is supposed to help us understand our own son-ship with God, thus the dominion expressed by Jesus is also supposed to reveal to us that we, as God's children, can also learn to express that same dominion, just as his disciples learned to express it by wholly giving themselves over to following God.)

Thus we see Jesus' God-given dominion allowing him to boldly reject the claim of sin or heredity governing the circumstances regarding the man born blind and allowing him to overturn that unjust verdict by healing the man. Similarly, Jesus boldly rejected the circumstances surrounding the death of Jairus' daughter (disease or accident seemed to have pronounced a sentence of death on her, and help couldn't arrive in time), and overturned that unjust verdict by restoring life to her. The point is, reasoning from such premises is actually a form of prayer, thus, rather than holding onto blind faith about such things (which doesn't seem to offer the possibility of understanding anything deeper about man's likeness to God), a reasoned faith about such matters offers a much more helpful take on who and what man is as God's child and shows us the kind of dominion we need to be gaining in our own lives. (Nobody said that what Jesus asked of his followers was going to be trivial to attain. The parable of the merchant seeking goodly pearls is still applicable to us today.)

I think a lot of "experience-based faith" probably rests on things like "I prayed for my sister to make it through her surgery, and she did." Then when prayers aren't answered with the result that was petitioned, the response is "I need to see what God wants me to learn from this," writing it off in one way or another that is favorable to one's view of God. To me, that's not really taking an evidence-based approach. It's picking and choosing one's evidence, and interpreting it in a way that makes it fits one's a priori assumption.

Once again, different theological approaches have differing takes on such things. A more thoughtful (i.e. reasoned) take on the idea of success in praying is that spiritual growth is rather important. Jesus' disciples failed to heal the epileptic boy even though they sincerely wanted to be able to help him. When they asked Jesus why they had failed, he pointed out to them that (1), they were still struggling with unbelief themselves and (2) spiritual growth was necessary in order to be able to successfully overcome what might seem to be a more difficult problem. (An example of spiritual growth that anyone who has read the NT can readily see is the huge difference in spiritual outlook and grounding between the fisherman named Simon (Peter) we see asking Jesus to depart from him because he was a sinful man, and the far more spiritually confident Peter raising Tabitha from death. He simply was no longer the same person.)

So the point is not so much that one's seeming failure in praying was caused by God ordaining that specific failure so as to impel us to learn some mysteriously obscure, future lesson. Rather, it is that we need to further deepen our understand about God and His kingdom in order to express more dominion in our practice of Christianity. (Would we assume that the rules of mathematics ordained us to fail a quiz so that we could learn some mysteriously obscure, future lesson about math? Or is the far more likely lesson that we simply need to apply ourselves more to our efforts to learn the rules of math and how to apply them?)

Once again, a reasoned faith (rather than a blind faith) is a much better basis from which to go forward.

I don't see a requirement that a person's faith be evidence-based. For example, a person can believe in God for the simple reason that it helps them in their lives. I really have no problem with other people believing without evidence, and instead believing because their belief brings them comfort, as long as they don't try to force their beliefs on others. And if such people try to present their beliefs as evidence-based, well, I remain skeptical.

I don't see a requirement that a person's faith be evidence-based either. However, I don't see why anyone should not pursue such a course if one presents itself. Evidence is much more helpful than lack of evidence and obviously evidence would help one to further solidify one's faith. Again, as James notes "shew me thy faith without thy works, and I will shew thee my faith by my works." Jesus' ministry certainly sparked faith in his followers (and amazement from his opponents) because his works were so arresting in nature.

So, once again, evidence-based faith is not at all an oxymoron. It's actually a rather helpful way to grow in one's understanding of God.



(Also, have you noticed that I have actually been trying to help you understand more about these kinds of things rather than just saying you have to have faith or that you lack faith?  )