An objective analysis of the delusion in other Christians is rare. You could be the one to blog it.

I am willing to coalesce with you around this position …

I don’t think you can prove it. I think that one can gather enough evidence to make it reasonable to believe but not enough to make it unreasonable to disbelieve.

>>> Leaving aside my intellect, arguing God aside would be for me like arguing away my arm

I do understand, I honestly do know what you mean by this. BUT it isn’t the same. I can demonstrably prove that you have an arm. Your ‘relationship’ with god is an internal cognitave concept rather than a physical addendum. How would you react to someone who told you that their relationship with ‘A N Other god’ was as real as their arm?

You mention the positivity your faith as brought to your life. I can’t argue with this, and wouldn’t want to, and I don’t actually doubt it. But you must admit that this is no evidence of its reality. I’m reading Russell Brand’s book and he talks about how important Hari Krishna was to get him off drugs… which is great, but doesn’t mean that Krishna is real.

If you are wondering what pill to take… then my advice is assume gods, ghosts, miracles and magic don’t/didn’t happen until positively convinced otherwise. If the New Testament is correct about Jesus then it wouldn’t be reasonable for good people to in good consience make the ‘wrong’ choice… and you have admitted this is the case. There’s no point looking for answers in the bible as to why the bible is correct, that’s completely circular… and there certainly no point asking god if he exists… if you want to hear the voice, you will. I think if you meditate on that (in my humble opinion) you will come to the difficult truth that I reached. If not, let me in on your logic… because on balance, I still ‘wish’ it was true.

Leaving aside my intellect, arguing God aside would be for me like arguing away my arm. It is simply something I live with and have lived with for a long time. I do not feel the warm hug of the church. I actually find it easier to be in secular community with the single exception of when I very occasionally go to Zoomtard’s church. My relationship with God is hard to describe. I have gone into it a little in my above post but it is as complex as I am myself because it permeates my being. It is where I derive my morality and therefore without convincing arguments as to it’s insanity it would be immoral for me to reject it (yes, morality changes with the zeitgeist but also from person to person). It is worship. It is inspiration in the midst of trouble. Perhaps it is simply something inside myself that looks like something from outside, but it has inspired me with wisdom on many occasions when my thoughts would have otherwise spiralled inwards. It has in fact brought sanity to my mind and though others may be sane without it, I cannot see it as being unreal.

I do not hear voices. ;p

THIS is the point really… it’s a loose/loose if you go on about the evidence. Because if I don’t accept it (with a reasonable and open mind) then we’re left with either I’ve set the bar too high, or the evidence isnt good enough… both of which have implications which lead away from the proposition that the NT is accurate and reliable reportage and a message from a loving god.

You seem to concede that its reasonable and justified to think that the resurrection didn’t happen

It’s no evidence against, but again I’d like to point out the fact that the vast overwhelming majority of believers in the Abrahamic religious have been indoctrinated as children, and haven’t been able to make an objective choice (which is again counter to the salvation narrative of the NT).

You imply that the evidence isn’t everything to you, and whether its convincing (which is quite a jump, given the length of this post ) … but do you not accept that if it isn’t convincing then the implications are that your ‘relationship’ with Jesus is as much a delusion as if you had a relationship with Allah or Socrates or Vishnu.

When you talk about your ‘relationship’ with god, can you give me a bit of description. Is there any possibility at all that actually when you feel god ‘talking’ to you… that actually its wishful thinking?

Here’s the clincher though… do you care? If you want to keep believing, there’s always enough apologetics out there which using just enough circular reasoning to keep you from feeling completely nuts.

If it ‘was all in your head’ would you rather know? Would you take the blue pill or the red one? I was ‘in’ for 25-30 years… I had the ‘relationship’… and the community and warm hug of church. I can’t point to many negative experiences, I’d love it to be true, I think I’ve already loweed my ‘bar’ from where it should really be, but in the end truth/facts matter.

I was taught about Socrates at a less cynical age but I have no reason to doubt it.
I listened to the moon landing conspiracy with an agnostics cynicism, neither believing nor disbelieving it.
Some of what people believe is true and some of it isn’t so I imagine the Koran holds some truth. Of course it may be completely true but I doubt it.

Of the three examples, the Koran is perhaps the most similar to the Bible. I have heard that the evidence for the events of the Koran is much less than the evidence for the events of the Gospel, but the comparison is irrelevant. Either there is convincing evidence for the Gospel itself or there is not. Either there is enough evidence for the Koran itself or there is not.

I don’t think you are setting your bar to high but we do have different approaches. I want to show that it is reasonable to believe the gospel whereas you want to show that it is reasonable to disbelieve it. I have made some bad attempts to build a picture out of the evidence we have, whereas I think you may have made some bad speculations about what else might have happened.

My attempts are bad because I have misrepresented the fact of what people believed at the time the gospel was written as a physical fact, without giving sufficient evidence for why their perception should have been correct. I also left out sufficient evidence to believe who actually wrote the gospel.

I think your speculations over what else might have happened lose their weight because you have no evidence for them and in some cases contradict the evidence we have. This does not make them unreasonable. The evidence we have might possibly be weak enough to allow us to dismiss it altogether, or even if I had be shown to be strong evidence it still doesn’t constitute a proof. And at the end of the day you are entitled to place the burden of proof on the “evangelist”.

My belief is that the evidence allows both of us a reasonable position and that therefore our stances are determined by the overall significance of the gospel to us. If I am unable to provide a reasonable case for the evidence then I will have to question this belief, so this is still a good exercise for me. However, if I get to work on this it will only be in snatches. I simply find it very difficult to control my time. Hah. Sounds like I’m in a cult. THEY KEEP ME TOO BUSY TO THINK!!!

Anyway, this is a little off the point but if you plan on discussing any of this further with me I feel I should be honest. I am beginning to wonder whether I really care enough about the evidence. Introspectively, I don’t seem to care deeply about whether I turn out to be right or wrong so in light of how important my relationship with God is to me, I begin to doubt whether I can really claim that the evidence has anything to do with my faith. It is possible that I am just another one of the unreasonable masses you have referred to after all but I would still like to know if my belief itself is reasonable.

Let me give you a few examples of where I stand on a few things and we can gauge were we agree and disagree and then sort out our problem of why we disagree on the other thing set out in this post

I happen to think that Socrates physically existed, I’m happy with the evidence for it. I accept the fact that the only accounts of his life where by ‘fans’ but I’m not sure they had much to gain. BUT I do accept that it’s at least reasonable to come to a conclusion that Socrates didn’t actually exist as a person -- this would in no way invalidate ‘his’ influence and ‘his’ writings.

I think the moon landing happened. Even though I have a good friend who semi-buys the ’sham’ conspiracy, I don’t respect this view, I think it’s an unreasonable position.

Even though I respect eminent scholars and Islamic thinkers like Ahemd Deedat, the historicy of the Koran doesn’t convince me. I certainly think that it’s at very least reasonable to conclude that Mohammad didn’t physically and historically meet with an angel. I know that scholars will ask me to read this book and that but I reject it until further really good evidence is presented to me, lest I fall for any old wife’s tale and hoax.

Where do you stand on these three things? It would be interesting if we agreed on all of them, or for that matter if we didn’t.

i think a discussion on what we consider evidnece, and our consistency when evaluating it would help to build some foundations.

What is your view of my approach your your presentation of evidence? do you think i’m setting my bar too high?

A lot of the information about Herod seems to have been lost though. I’m told his existence was even doubted for some time by some historians because it only seemed to be referenced within the New Testament. They did eventually find evidence though, so I’m told. If this is true, and we are to assume that people did write things down at that time, how come it got lost? These things happen. Maybe others did comment on the mass infanticide and it just so happens that there comments have been lost along with other information from that time?

I don’t know. It seems difficult to make an argument based on the non-existence of something that deteriorates over time like historical evidence does. My view is that we have to rely on positive evidence rather than speculation when building a historical picture because we can’t build an account out of nothing but our imagination. However, your comments on this post have made me realise that I do exaggerate this concept out of proportion. I wouldn’t believe everything I’m told in real life.

There is so much more to talk about but I have to go see a man about a dog now.

Let me give you an example. The authorship of the gospel of Matthew is in some quarters seen as controversial, but even if we by pass that and say that it was written by a contemporary of Jesus, say Matthew… if we are to believe the thrust of the events then Matthew first met and heard of Jesus thirty years after the virgin birth.

So, Matthew sits down, decades after Jesus had died and writes an account of Jesus’ life. In this account he discuses the circumstances surrounding Jesus’ birth, the birth of a man which he only met 30 years afterwards and had no first hand knowledge. In this account (and no other gospel) he says that King Herod ordered the murder of all first born Jews. This would have been a massive event which every single person in the region would surely have heard off. Yet there are no independently verifiable texts that refer to it. By any normal measure surely we wouldn’t even give it a second thought, it’s a myth.

Is your feeling, yeah I’m pretty sure this happened? Or no, of course this didn’t happen? Or somewhere in between?

Moral authority, to me i think, is an abstract thing. What is considered moral and ethical changes with the zietgusit. Christians will explain this change as … more fully understanding the will of god (or something)… i would maybe say its more a mater of a more enlightened idea of what is and what is harmful to the common good, and more full realising of the freedom of the individual to make personal life choices.

as for why its bad to believe an untrue myth as actual historical fact. Is that not self evident? Truth matters, facts mater. Although, in saying that.. let me contradict myself and say that it DOESN’T actualy mater if Socretes actualy existed.. the works and words atributed to him are still valid… and i would say simalary of Jesus. (thinking out loud)

The challenge as I see it is for me to give concrete references for my arguments on the likelihood of the event. Don’t expect anything from me in that regard. I would love to promise you more but I suffer from a lack of focus – and lots of time and effort would be required to analyse the historical facts we have (and find out which ones we really have).

I have a silly sort of question for you too though: If there is no evidence for a moral authority, then why decide that it is bad to believe in a myth? I hope you won’t say that it is harmful. In general this might be true, but I’ve read that the belief in God is a survival trait so how could it be harmful in itself? The question is silly I know, but still I wouldn’t mind seeing what you have to say.