How could so many be unaware of something that is significantly more supported? The bible is one of the most scrutinized books in history.

Jibninjas,

You posit your evidence against ours. Of course we claim that the burden of proof falls on you, and we are right. But, stepping away from that for a second, I would say that most people that fall into the "deist is reasonable, theist isn't" population believe that faith is not only worthless but foolish.

Provide me some evidence that faith is a valuable thing in the context of the process of trying to uncover truth about the world.

Well it was my impression that the eternal torment theory was more supported. I really would have liked to hear Jib give reasons why annihilation is more supported, but I can settle on just discussing annihilation.

Jib, isn't annihilation unjust, as well? To give some lucky people the benefit of Heaven and annihilate the rest?

Maybe, but to a much much much lesser degree and is much more acceptable IMO. People who are annihilated have no idea what they are missing and don't suffer.

the whole concept of annihilationism + O3 God still makes little sense to me. Why does an O3 God, who has complete knowledge of a person's life and future, allow all these millions upon millions of people to be born into very poor and suffering lives, with no chance at redemption, and only to be annihilated after death? What about children (in remote areas with no chance of salvation) born with terrible diseases and deformities, only to die at a young age ... what purpose does their life serve other than to cause more pain and suffering? Wouldn't it not be better for them to not have been born at all?

Cause he's kinda a jerk, LDO?

(hmm, can you be a jerk and still O3?)

Because many people just accept what they believe and never look into why they believe it, or if it is even true. A lot has to do with trust as well. Personally, I trusted that the historical and popular belief in eternal torment was a clear cut case. So I never really questioned it. It was not until I was really pressed on this forum (SMP anyway) did I start to really dig into the matter for my self. People do not like to hear that what they believe is false, or can even be questioned.

Boyd has lost a lot of people throughout the years in his church because he pushes people to question everything. People as specifically said that they left because they did not believe it was right to question what they were taught.

None of this is new to you. You argue these same things every day. You just don't apply them to the "inner" areas of christianity.

This assumes that they were born with no chance of redemption. I don't believe that is the case. Wouldn't it be more cruel for God to take someone away, or to keep someone from being created (assuming that this is how it works, which I do not believe is the case) if there was even the smallest chance that they could be redeemed?

depends. from a mathematical perspective, yes, since supposedly getting to heaven is infinitely great, so even if the probability of being saved is 1/10^100, its still "good". From a practical perspective, no. Its like me saying, if you can get dealt a royal flush 5 times in a row, ill give you a billion dollars, otherwise, i get to punch you in the face. No sane person would take that deal.

regardless, since you dont believe that God can "keep someone from being created", its a moot point. pray tell, how do you believe it works? Clearly in the Bible, God has the ability to make infertile women fertile and vice versa, so it doesn't seem against his MO.

If you don't become a deist, I will lock you up in a room with Gunth and Secondchance

They don't enjoy Heaven/anything either. I'm just sayin', unjust should still = no God.

that is up for debate.
it seems like in the near future human beings will have the capacity to resurrect extint species from the drawing board such as neandertals,
this ought to raise many questions for christians!

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/n...urrection.html

Jib,

Six or seven weeks ago I covered the answer you are seeking in a conversation we had about whether or not we could reasonably conclude that Jesus was who he said he was if we accepted that the biblical accounts were historically accurate and that we could trust them. I said I would do you one better by removing the timeline and hearsay issues entirely in a scenario where you saw somebody die, and then saw them walking around a few days later. I asked if you thought that the most likely explanation was that that person was resurrected and your answer was yes. You were wrong. I will briefly try to explain why.

Lumping everything into a 'the bible is historically accurate' package is misleading. The reason is that there are two categories of events in the bible: normal and miraculous. The reason the bible is not entirely accepted as historically accurate is because of the miraculous claims. The doubt surrounding those claims is not because of the validity of the normal claims. Whether or not the normal claims are accurate has very little to do with whether or not we can accept the miraculous ones.

Consider a scenario in which, in a few thousand years from now, people dig up the ancient remains of New York City as well as a bunch of newspapers providing reliable evidence of its history, what was going on at the time, etc. The world would be justified in believing that New York City was then a real place. But that does relatively little in terms of providing a convincing argument that the events in the comics section of the newspaper described in the Spider Man comic strip actually happened. You can cite the number of first generation texts of the bible we have versus the number of Herodotus texts we have until the cows come home, but the historical accuracy of the normal, highly plausible claims are fairly trivial when it comes to whether or not the miraculous ones are justifiably believable.

Now, I know your argument is not 'some claims of the bible are true so they must all be' and I am not trying to paint it as such. But the distinction between the two types of claims being made is important as I will explain shortly. Your claim is that 'because we can trust that the normal claims made in the bible are accurate, we can reasonably conclude that Jesus was who he said he was based on the confirmed actions of the people who knew him.' The real meat of your argument are the 'Who would die for a lie?' McDowellesque defenses, and they are wrong. The reason that they are wrong is that they attempt to bridge the plausibility gap between the two types of claims I described above.

There are multiple potential explanations as to why, for instance, the disciples would willingly change their beliefs to follow Jesus and why they would die for those beliefs. Such explanations include ignorance, deception, grandeur, nonexistence and miraculous (among others). The problem is that in order to justifiably believe that miraculous is probably what occurred, you need to bridge a huge gap. You need to accept that it is more likely that something which is known to never happen happened rather than any of the other explanations which are known to physically happen. In fact, to believe that the miraculous is probably what happened, you need to accept that it is more likely that that which is known to never happen happened when compared to all of the other potential explanations combined. And that is a huge gap. You can claim that it is extremely unlikely that any of them would have done what they did, but in order to accept your argument you need to accept that it is more likely that they were invulnerable to all of those other potential explanations which are known to occur, and that what is known to never occur did occur, rather than accept that they fell victim to one of a variety of things which are known to occur.

This is the primary reason that the historicity arguments fail. Some text describing what some people claim to have seen and experienced alone will never suffice to bridge the plausibility gap between that which is known to never occur and a variety of potential explanations which are known to occur. For that, you need something much more convincing. And it is not because of some preconceived philosophy, or naturalistic worldview, or anything else of that type. It is a simple problem of a standard of evidence.

Winner!

In my view, annihilationism is a stopping point for the thoughtful Christian before he or she becomes a universalist (or escapist). The truth is that the Bible is just not very specific about what hell or heaven is like. So whether you believe in eternal punishment, etc. is more a result of theology and philosophy than anything else. Any of the standard alternatives is compatible with the teaching of the Bible, and universalism seems to me theologically strongest. That is, it seems to me the view most consistent with the nature of the Christian God.

If you are interested, I highly recommend Marilyn McCord Adams (both a highly respected philosopher and an Anglican priest) on universalism. If you can find it, her article on the "The Problem of Hell: A Problem of Evil for Christians" is very good. SEP has a useful summary on this topic by Jonathan Kvanvig.

Edit: Incidentally, this is why I don't think this the problem of evil is more of a problem for Christians than for anyone who accepts the omnimax God and so not relevant for this thread.

I agree that the view on hell is more theology/philosophy than anything else. As far as universalism, I have not encountered any strong arguments for it yet (biblically anyway). I do know that there were early Church fathers that took to this view, if I remember correctly Origen was one.

I will look into Marilyn McCord Adams, as I am not familiar. I am about half way through the SEP article and will hopefully finish now.

Just finished the essay. Very well written, I very much enjoyed reading it. Thank you.

I think that the author points out a crucial issue with Universalism that I have never thought of before.

It seems to me that the one position that he really does endorse is what I have been espousing, which is the "natural consequence" view of annihilationism. It seems to me that this is the only position that is really whole from both a biblical and a theological/philosophical standpoint.

First, I am not claiming that because we can show with reasonable certainty that the "normal" claims are true, that this means we must accept the "non-normal" claims. My argument is more so that we know that the NT writings are accurate enough that the actions of the disciples and the early church demands an explanation. One that cannot be reasonably explained by anything other than the truth of the claims of the resurrection.

Secondly, I would agree that it is a simple problem of a standard of evidence. I just believe that my standard of evidence is consistent and rational, whereas your standard is not.

if the NT writings were accurate (they are not) all that would mean is the early christian disciples believed it was true. the fact that people believe in something is not evidence it is true. many false religions and cults have martyrs. stating the obvious here.

Seriously, setting aside if it's more reasonable (which i think it is), if you think the resurrection actually happened then the disciples being fooled in some form has to also fit the defintion of reasonable. Saying the resurrection happened is the ONLY reasonable explanation is ridiculous.

I understand what you are saying and I agree. I guess I would amend my statement to say that it is the most reasonable position. But it all really depends on your definition of reasonable.

then why don't you consider "people believe metaphysical claims to be true because they were/are true" the most reasonable explanation in regards to anything besides christianity?

why is everyone else who believes in a metaphysical explanation when an alternate physical explanation exists being foolish except christians?

God apparently created this divine realm called Heaven that is the greatest possible existence, agree? God is, by definition, omnibenevolent, agree? Existence in Heaven is better than existence on Earth, agree? God did not create us in Heaven, agree? God is not omnibenevolent. God does not exist (omnibenevolence falsified).

This is sloppy. Somebody could formalize it. I came up with this in a few seconds.

Jib, you are going to live in eternity with Splendor, Pletho, Gunth, etc, thoughts? Wouldn't you rather be annihilated?

Jibninjas, in this short video biblical scholar Bart Ehrman explains how the historical evidence for the resurrection of Jesus is extremely weak.

Given that you know human beings don't rise from the dead, and you know that the accounts of Jesus' resurrection are unreliable, and you know that many other religions have stories of resurrections - how is it you have come to the conclusion that Jesus' resurrection probably happened?

If Jesus' resurrection probably didn't happen, then Christianity probably isn't true, and you should probably become a deist.