Zumby your so deep :}
It is really difficult to analyze God on this level. It is like splitting his DNA. I don't want to give up and say "I don't know" but is this knowledge knowable? I am not sure. In one sense I do think God is bound by morality. I do believe Jesus was bound by morality and could have sinned and therefore somehow forfeited his "Godness". Yeah I dont have much to add on this but agree its worth looking into.

Can you clarify for me, as this is what the thread is about, just how the number of original manuscripts demonstrate to you that Jesus actually rose from the dead or that he was born of a virgin?

If there are objective moral values and if that means there must be absolute moral values then you can ask the same question about ANY foundation for those values. In moral realism, is the nature of the ultimate standard good because it has good-making properties or are good-making properties good because they reflect the standard's nature?

Whatever stopping point you pick will have the same issue. Theism says the stopping point is an absolute, personal being. For theists, that makes more sense than saying the stopping point is an abstract, impersonal standard.

I agree one could cause many hardships by entering into a relationship where two people dont really know each other. I am not suggesting people get married and not know each other, that would be foolish. Getting to know someone usually doesn't happen between the sheets though.

Being sexually active with someone does not help one make a good objective decision about them as a potential spouse, if anything it clouds the decision making process.

Why too simple an approach? It worked well for me. I feel I avoided a lot of heartache, a lot of STDs, and I am glad I didn't cause any broken families by getting someone pregnant. Do some research on STDs its really crazy the amount of people that are infected.

To clarify what I meant by empirical fact:

There are New Testament manuscripts the can be observed (empirical) today. You could go find a copy of New Testament scripts in the British Museum. That is part of the basis of Christianity in fact and history.
I am not offering proof to all the claims in the bible. My point is that there is a basis for Christianity apart from blind faith and emotion.

Ace that is why it is difficult to respond to your posts. I cannot provide proof for any miracles in the bible. I do not attempt to do this. I think we just fundamentally disagree. There are some historical facts around the resurrection but the virgin birth is a pure faith claim. In William Lane Craig's debate with Hitchens at Biola Craig brings up the fact that the tomb was empty. He claims this is a verifiable fact confirmed by other sources. If this is true then that would be interesting as well and shed some light on this miracle.

Hi Shuffle,

Your point is valid. I add the following disclaimer

Disclaimer: I will attempt to communicate the beliefs and values held by mainstream Evangelical Christianity as I understand them. Christians views and biblical interpretation may vary from the ones I purport in this thread.

Feel free to chime in to this thread where you see my statements are incorrect.

Thanks zumby for doing "my" work.
I totally agree with WLC's above quote.
He just says it better than me....

God exists outside of time. When Jesus died on the cross he paid the price for the sins of the whole world. Jesus' death paid for the past, present, and future sins not yet committed by humans.

Watch the passion of the Christ movie. The movie does a good job of portraying fairly accurately was is written in the Bible.

Any person who asks God for forgiveness of their sin can effectively have their slate wiped clean. The person doesn't have to already be a Christian. That is why Christianity is called "good news"

Hi mSed,

Did I disparage Catholics? Was it when I mentioned confessing to a priest being lame? I apologize for saying that is lame. I have difficulty with many catholic doctrines because I dont find they are rooted in biblical teaching. But I do apologize for disrespecting your beliefs (i just assume you are catholic).

When I was a kid no one had to teach me to take a toy from the toddler next to me. No one had to teach me to lie. I just did these things instinctively. I was great at stealing things and lying without any practice. I don't think I was that different from the next kid. On the other hand being generous and honest are things that need to be learned.

I was at a Moslem mosque once and they guy was teaching about this subject. His point was when you see a baby you don't say "little devil" most people say " oh what a little angel". That was the end of his argument as to why humans are born innocent and not born into sin. Even if I tossed Christianity I would still think people are more bent to commit evil than good.

We both live in the same world. I don't need to cite a bunch of examples. What do you see more of greed or generosity? Is there more war-makers or peacemakers?

Without disrespect seems like a no brainer to me. That is just one example of how biblical concepts line up with my own reasoning.

Hi NewGuy, I am not taking your posts seriously because I don't feel they are sincere. If you are sincere let me know and we can discuss.

As you are aware the Bible is full of stories, some of which contain miracles.
I believe the Bible and Christianity because I think it is true, not because I think it is a really easy thing to believe/defend.

Supposing I discard Christianity what would I replace it with? Christianity provides context morally and historically. I have not found any other world view that provides a better context for living in the world.

Most world views have a basis in fact, but also require faith. I have not come across any world view yet that does not require a massive amount of faith.

Methodological naturalism.

I have a to make a correction to the above. DCT is actually under the heading of moral ontology, not epistemology. Craig's use of the phrase DCT has always been somewhat confusing to me. I'm clear on his distinction between ontology and epistemology, but the DCT idea is different from what I've learned in the past.

What he says is that God's commands to us are moral duties and they flow from God's nature, so our duties are grounded in God's nature (moral ontology), and therefore not arbitrary, thus defeating the Euthyphro objection.

Stated another way, moral values and moral duties are both dealing with moral ontology, the values being what God is in His nature, duties being what God commands to us.

Moral epistemology deals with how we come to know moral values and duties and isn't relevant to the moral theistic argument.

I think my confusion about DCT has to do with the fact that God's commands are not only the ontological basis for our duties but can also, in Scripture, be the way we come to know those duties (epistemology). So when I put DCT under epistemology I was thinking about how we know his commands, which is the epistemology part of WLC's moral theory, but DCT deals with the substance of the commands, not how we know them.

It's a good thing. But not when they are obviously Christian and pretty much scream that they are Christian. Its like giving some money to a homeless person only because you're with a girl and want her to respect you.

What are you considering career wise?
If it were up to you, what would be the better aim; everyone being Christian, or everyone being happy/able to live a happy life?

You should probably calm down. How is their anything wrong with offering people information on things you have studied? He never claims to be the pope, he claims to have studied it and will answer questions. He claims that he can answer questions about relatively mainstream beliefs.

A potential problem, or misunderstanding of our respective positions, is that moral absolutism doesn't necessarily follow from moral realism. From Wikipedia:

So while I think morality is objective (i.e. there are correct and incorrect answers to moral questions, independent of subjective opinion) I don't believe in moral absolutism. Moral questions are often complicated and messy and require careful thought, not sloganeering.

I agree with the gist of this. At some point any moral philosophy is going to reach a point where it relies on some axiom (cf: Sam Harris and 'the wellbeing of conscious creatures') but the purpose of my question to Lemonzest is not to undermine Christian moral ontology but to see if we share common ground on what questions of morality refer to.

I agree that objective morality doesn't have to be absolute. I should have said that the foundation or ground of objective morality must be absolute. The point is that any ontological ground for objective morality is subject to the same Euthyphro question which can only be answered in a way similar to the theistic answer. Here's a quote from the Morriston article:


So it comes to whether you think morality makes sense if it's grounded in an impersonal abstract or a personal being. There are interesting ways to develop this idea but probably better to do it in another thread.

I think calling a "fundamental disagreement" overstates it a bit. If you can not provide proof of these miracles, or at least explain why you think it is likely that they occured, then it would follow that you yourself have never seen sufficent proof that they occured, and that you yourself don't have sufficent evidence to believe they did. Essentially, you just believe because you believe while I disbelieve because upon asking for justification of Biblical claims, the only response is "well we just disagree, I can't prove any of this, I just think they happened, you don't."

Isn't it more justifiable to NOT believe something for which there is no evidence than it is to beleive it? But I suspect that by now you are saying something like "but I don't simply think it's true because I think it is true, I base it on the evidence." I am simply asking for you to be more clear about what this evidence is.

You have mentioned that manuscript evidence suggest the miracles are true, but you have not offered how that is so other to imply that the sheer volume of copies suggest the miracles are true. I imagine that you find this to be reasonable, but I'm simply asking you to help me see what I am missing, how is the # of copies of a story evidence for the truth of the story?

Also you just brought up WLC debate and said that there is extra-Biblical proof of Jesus' resurrection. What are those sources?

It isn't my goal to be right and you be wrong, I would love to believe that what you believe is true, but it is impossible given that you've not outlined any reason to think that is the case.

I mean this respectfully, but I also mean it as a challenge: you've spent two years of your life at a Bible school, you have bought into this lifestyle since you were 18 years old, you see yourself as someone that might be able to offer clarity about Christianity, yet in this thread in response to my questions and the questions of others I am given the impression that Christians just believe because they do, and that it isn't based on much evidence.

How seriously invested can you possibly be in this lifestyle if you can't actually defend it or give a well reasoned response for the hope you profess?

Are you the devil's advocate now?

Why don't you spend any time arguing against atheist arguments?

Or at trying to learn God's point of view and disseminating that view?

We have more than enough human views on this board.

How come the atheists judge God before learning God's perspective of things?

You seem to be approaching theists just like an unbeliever...Like man's perspectives are in control when they might not be.

There are two perspectives to everything just like there are two sides to every story.

Lemon, you are doing this wrong. When you make an assertion that is either true or false you have the responsibility of demonstrating it is true by backing it up with an argument or evidence. For your response to include a phrase like "I don't need to cite a bunch of examples" or "Seems like a no brainer" is offensive because I clearly told you that I saw no reason to believe that the world is more evil than good.

It is dialogue like that from many Christians that makes it hard for me to respect them; it clearly betrays that either you aren't interested in a respectful dialogue or that you don't actually have the capacity to have a rational dialogue. I suspect the latter is closer to the truth in your case which is forgiveable, but testifies to the fact that the things you believe are probably not based on as much evidence as you would imply.

The fact that you stole as a child is far too little information about the world to make a generalization about all mankind. There are roughly 7,000,000,000 people on this planet, do you really expect me to believe that there are more than 3,500,000,000 "war-makers" on earth? That is an incredible statement that you have made, and a sensible person realizes that it's an appeal to fear and emotion, a rhetorical device, but that clearly it is not literally true. But it would have to be literally true for someone to believe there are more war-makers than peace makers which is the statement you've made in defense of your claim.

Yep, you're another poster limiting a theist to playing by the unregenerate playbook rules to massage your own ego or preferences.

People really only do want to hear one side of the story on here.

Keep letting the mini-philosophers on here tell God to shut up so He can't tell His story through people.

Just be sure you aren't getting un-enlightened.

Splendour, if it hasn't been made clear, I gave up Christianity & theism about a year ago.

This is my view on God's morality too. God might have perfect knowledge of moral truths, he might be bound be moral truths, but the moral truths are true independent of any subjective opinion and therefore God's say-so wouldn't make killing a newborn baby a moral duty. There would have to be morally sufficient reasons for God to command that.

I addressed my rejection of WLC's argument here:

In other words, WLCs version of DCT might avoid a specific phrasing of the Euthyphro dilemma, but doesn't address the heart of the question. I'm not a philosopher, so my interest in the Dilemma is not really about whether or not changing a few words around will win points in a debate, but rather about seeing where people with different worldviews find common ground on moral intuitions.

Anyway, going to move on from this topic now.