Right and Wrong

Quote: boymimbo

By your analogy, to that end, I suppose in 1,900 years we will never know if Hitler was a tyrant either, or that Einstein contributed to science, or Galilio, or anyone else's acts, because there is only historical acts to show what he did. Like the Bible. We won't know which generals fought in the War of 1812 either, because it was written in a book. There will be no scientific proof of who did what in the War of 1812, because all that will be left are historical accounts, written by people.

I'm with EB on this one, and for specific reasons.

I don't know Einstein, never met the guy. I heard he was good at maths and stuff. I saw a picture, but I know a shop when I see one. You can tell by the pixels (=p). And all this writing about him was done by man, and man is fallible. The thing is, if I were to delve into it, I'd likely find evidence to truth. E=MC2? Yup, that works today, I can prove it. Theory of relativity? Yup, checks out. If one were to carry on, chances are the evidence would support that this guy existed and did everything that was reported.

War of 1812? Hmm. Well, we get the details. Could the factions reported to have been present actually be present? Well, sure. We had boats and ships, we had people striving for certain goals, it is plausible they could be there and it's plausible they would fight. Were we to go to the purported scene of the battle, we can find evidence supporting it. Mayhap it's the foundation of a fort, maybe it's a shipwreck on the floor of Lake Erie, maybe it's a cannonball in a field. There's ways for the skeptic to find the evidence he needs.

With God stuff, that's not as possible. Some of it I would claim is impossible. It's unlikely we'll find evidence of Noah's actual ark. Wood just doesn't keep that long. So what other stuff can we test. Well, he was like 400yrs old. Can we test and study this claim today? Sure. I'm pretty sure life expectancy has been highly studied, and I'm pretty sure we're at our peak right now. Reckon there's at least one 120yr old out there right now, and I'm pretty sure the all time record is less than 130. Pretty sure life expectancy has only continued to rise since our days in the cave, and the farther you go back, the lower it is. Kinda throws a wrench into the tale of Noah. That can carry on with what we know about quantity of species, which can help us arrive to a number needed to pile on the ark, which can be used to determine the size of ark needed, and we can make an educated decision on whether some 400yr old drunk would be able to build a boat larger than any ship ever created.

Einstein's claims can be tested today and will be as true as when he formulated them in his day. Jesus' claims of water into wine cannot be reproduced by any of the sciences ever discovered. That is a huge difference.

Jesus walked on water. He turned one bread into many breads. Can we, like Einstein's feats, reproduce this today? Well, kind of. Pretty sure David Blaine can walk on water. Pretty sure Penn and Teller can make many where there was just one. We might call it "magic", but we know it is just a ruse, a trick of the mind. Today, Blaine is a millionaire. Back then, he'd have been burned as a warlock.

That right there is the difference between the wild written claims of the holocaust vs the wild written claims of the Bible. There is evidence of the true wild claims. You can disbelieve the War of 1812 all you want, but the sunken schooner Hamilton is at the bottom of Lake Ontario proving you wrong. You can believe the holocaust was a hoax, but I bet there's evidence in the soil around Auschwitz. There is not as much concerning the Bible, so you must engage the faith. And with more and more claims being revealed as mostly impossible (unless you were, I dunno, the son of God or something ;)), it's harder to accept the written account at face value.

Quote: FrGamble

"proven fact" could be: something that is demonstrably shown so that it leaves one no other choice than to believe it. What do you think, are you okay with that as a working definition?

Let's go with the dictionary def:

Fact: 'Something that is indisputably true.'

In other words, dispute it all day if you like,
and I can prove it's true with facts you can't
argue with. Not opinions, facts.

Forget the Bible, you first have to prove that
sin exists, which you cannot do. Go into every
part of the world that never knew Judaism or
Christianity and the concept of sin is foreign
to them. They know about spirituality, but the
concept of sin has to be explained to them,
it's not a fact they were born knowing, like
having to eat and drink and breathe.

That's because sin doesn't exist, it's just an
abstract idea, and a weird one at that. So if there
is no sin (if there were it would be a fact and
easily proved), there is no need for a savior from
it. Jesus was just a reformed rabbi, nothing more.

Yes, I keep going back to sin again and again. It's
the basis of the religion, the core of it. If a person
doesn't think sin exists, why would he bother learning
about something that would save him from it. What
a waste of time.

Face thanks for the contribution. I think you would have a very good point if believing in Jesus Christ was based on His turning water into wine. You rightfully picked out of Einstein's life one of his greatest contributions, Theory of relativity, E=mc2 and cool stuff like that. Jesus' life was not a series of parlor tricks, in fact in front of worldly Herod who only wanted Jesus to entertain him - Jesus was perfectly silent. He constantly was telling those he healed not to tell anyone. Jesus never wanted to be known as some type of magic man, in fact the only time in Mark's Gospel when Jesus allows someone to say unchallenged that He was the Son of God was when He hung upon the cross. It was for that which He wanted to be remembered - as a man of loving sacrifice. So if we use E=mc2 to judge the reality of Einstein, let's use the teachings of Jesus not His miracles and the passion, death, and Resurrection of Jesus which is really the entirety of His mission.

So are the teachings of Jesus Christ some 2,000 years later still true? Certainly. His radical ideas of humility, treating others as you would like to be treated, forgiving others (even your enemies), and living a life of loving sacrifice are as true today as they were in His time. Proof of this is that every good movie you've watched or story you've heard in which you cried or cheered had these themes running through them. They are the greatest virtues we all strive for and still today billions of people try to follow His teachings as best they can.

What about His passion, death, and Resurrection? There is an element of faith involved in the Resurrection, but there really is no other explanation for the reality that we live in right now in 2014. It's like the rusted cannonball in the field. It is there and we can doubt how it got there, was it really the war of 1812 or not? But there it is staring at us. The fact of the matter is the world has been changed since this man Jesus walked the face of the Earth. He died as a crucified criminal at the hands of the Romans and a rag tag bunch of fisherman and other disciples scattered and huddled together in fear that they were next. Then something happened. I believe it was the Resurrection of Jesus Christ, but whatever you believe this small group of men and women were transformed by something into a fearless band of witnesses convicted to their core that not only had Jesus conquered death and sin, but that we all can share in His victory. They suffered horrible martyrdoms and the worst persecutions but they would not stop and could not be stopped. Here we are today trying to still make sense of the impact He has had and continues to have on the world. Einstein is a great guy and has contributed a lot, but I just don't see how anyone can make an argument that Jesus Christ was not only a real person but has also done something that no one has or ever could do. He is a mystery, but not a trickster. He is something more than we have ever experienced and while not everyone believes He was the Son of God His teachings, example, and the Church He established have passed the test of time and have been shown to be true.

Quote: Evenbob

Quote: FrGamble

"proven fact" could be: something that is demonstrably shown so that it leaves one no other choice than to believe it. What do you think, are you okay with that as a working definition?

Let's go with the dictionary def:

Fact: 'Something that is indisputably true.'

In other words, dispute it all day if you like,
and I can prove it's true with facts you can't
argue with. Not opinions, facts.

Good. By the way, thanks for going along with me on these questions, I feel like we have entered into a Socratic dialogue.

So using our definition, "something that is indisputably true based on facts, not opinions" I can see how simple things like math, even advanced math and geometry can be shown by facts to be true. You can have two apples add two more and there you can see the fact that there is now four. You can give me the formula for the area of a square and after we put in the numbers we can physically measure it, indisputable.

However, how would we go about proving indisputably to someone something that it is not demonstrable and even seems to go against common sense? For example we know that solid matter is made up of molecules and atoms. At the fundamental level of all material things there is space - the small nucleus of atoms and the whizzing cloud of electrons. How could we prove this is indisputably true?

Quote: FrGamble

How could we prove this is indisputably true?

Is all this leading to you trying to prove
sin exists? It can't be done because it's
just a concept, not a fact. If sin were
a fact of life, everyone on earth would
know it, like they know how to take their
next breath and know when it's time to
look for food to eat.

You can't prove the unprovable. Without
sin, Christianity has no basis to exist. If
you can't prove sin, any talk about Jesus
is a waste of time. Surely you see that.

Quote: kenarman

I have a question for you Father. There were many more first hand accounts that were written at the same time as those that made it into the bible. At one time they were held in the same regard as the ones we know today. The accounts did not follow the direction that those at the time wanted to take the church and were destroyed. This is like a scientist today ignoring the evidence that doesn't fit with his hypotheses.

How are we to believe that the stories in the bible today are true when contradictory evidence of the day was purposely destroyed.

I think a scientist does ignore some things people claim such as the moon is made of cheese. Or a better analogy may be that you would ignore me if I told you that your loved one was a racist. It's not that you are trying to hide something or change the direction of people's thoughts, you are deleting untrue statements about someone. The "gospels" and other writings you are referring to have lots of very strange and inconsistent teachings in them. Some are down right mean such as Thomas' gospel having a young Jesus kill some childhood friends because they broke some clay figures he was bringing to life. Or there is the teaching in one of these writings that the female person is an incomplete male. The other thing to keep in mind is that the sacred writings that made it into the Bible were acclaimed by the people as authentic, the Church eventually codified the canon of Sacred Scripture, but it was the texts that people read over and over again because it spoke the truth about who Jesus was that were kept. These strange other writings were naturally relegated to the scrap heap because they weren't true and everyone, even back then, knew it.

Quote: FrGamble

These strange other writings were naturally relegated to the scrap heap because they weren't true and everyone, even back then, knew it.

The Thomas gospel wasn't true? It's
just as 'true' as the others. Which is to say,
kinda sorta, good enough for the times it
was written in.

Quote: Evenbob

Is all this leading to you trying to prove
sin exists? It can't be done because it's
just a concept, not a fact. If sin were
a fact of life, everyone on earth would
know it, like they know how to take their
next breath and know when it's time to
look for food to eat.

You can't prove the unprovable. Without
sin, Christianity has no basis to exist. If
you can't prove sin, any talk about Jesus
is a waste of time. Surely you see that.

Let me call you on this one too. We just established that things like geometry are fact, but not everyone on earth knows the Pythagorean theorem like how to breathe (oh how easy middle school would have been if this was the case). So surely you see that something can be a fact of life without everyone on earth recognizing it.

You, surprisingly to me, think sin is illogical or not common sense. You say it is a concept and not a fact and that somehow makes it unprovable or not real. That is interesting to me, what is the difference between a concept and a fact?

Quote: Evenbob

The Thomas gospel wasn't true? It's
just as 'true' as the others. Which is to say,
kinda sorta, good enough for the times it
was written in.

This seems awful like your own opinion and not a fact.

Quote: FrGamble

We just established that things like geometry are fact, but not everyone on earth knows the Pythagorean theorem like how to breathe

I'm cutting to the chase here. Prove sin is
a fact and I'll become a Christian immediately.

You can't and you know it. You want to argue
around it, I've seen this strategy a hundred
times. You think sin is a fact of the universe?

Prove it.