Is God based on “Facts” or “Trust/Faith”???

No, they have sex more often, and claim to enjoy it more. Academics are still debating why people have sex so often, as their own population implodes.

 

No, I don't bother keeping links to well established statistics. Nobody even knows how to use a fucking dictionary, and they just shrug when I tell them one in four people around them, still swear the sun revolves around the earth.

 

Perish the thought that Dawkins would be talking about God! Evolution happened. But how the universe happened and how life happened are still mysteries. Scientists have their theories. But if it "just happened", that would be amazing--bordering on miraculous. Add to that the fact that Pikaia survived the Burgess decimation. If that hadn't happened, we wouldn't be having this conversation. Of course, something else might have evolved. who knows. We might be the lucky winners of the Cosmic Sweepstakes! Or not. Looks to me like it might be a put up job. The game may be rigged!

 

I started as an atheist-materialist-rationalist in youth and investigated both Christianity and Islam with a rationalist temperament. I liked the figures of Jesus and Muhammad, but could not make any heads and tails of the religions as such due to the unprovable dogma . Both seemed like fascinating but incoherent jigsaw puzzles to me.

It was the study of eastern religious philosophies like advaita , buddhism, sufism, taoism later on that enabled me to develop a coherent understanding of what these religions are about, and put them in proper perspective and context.

Imho, Christianity and Islam at the moment are just practices done without understanding of the core essence , principles and context and this could be a reason for the volatility associated with them. Both these religions have the notions of eternal hellfire and devil, which believed upon, can induce incoherent fanaticism and inability to see the bigger picture. The dualism in these religions may have also affected their secular or theocratic political systems as well with a dualistic outlook which is bound to be conflict-prone.

The Devil or Shaitan in Christianity and Islam has a counterpart in Hindu-Buddhist scriptures as Mara-Maya, which in turn is but the indisciplined mind itself. Hence the focus on training and disciplining the mind in both Hinduism and Buddhism. There is no external entity as such.

Both hindu and buddhist scriptures refer to heavenly and hellish dimensions that correspond to positive and negative karmas, but these are of a temporary nature, and the heavenly astral pleasures are considered inferior to the bliss of enlightenment. Moreover, every sentient being has the divine Self or Buddha nature within him or her and hence innate divinity within would be incompatible with an eternal hell. Christ refers to this as 'the kingdom of God within', but I think there is not much comprehension of this amongst christians themselves.as the focus is on blind belief rather than coherent understanding.

Half the world is Christian no doubt, but if they heeded Jesus's basic and fundamental teachings of loving the neighbor, it could have prevented the two world wars in europe and present european conflicts as well between neighbors.

 

There's a problem with your theory called the Middle East. The actual fact is that the most religious places on earth are the most brutal violent places.

Four men were sentenced to death in the mob killing of an Afghan woman falsely accused of burning a copy of the Quran

 

That's the problem generalizing about the effects of "religion". "Religion" is the generic name for a vast collection of memes (Dawkins' usage), some of which are beneficial to their hosts, others virulent.

 

Hell is, I think, an example of a potentially viral meme which was useful in growing the religion but sometimes at the expense of the believers. Hell gets our attention. It is what has been called a zero-infinity concept , in which even the slightest probability of an infinitely horrible result is something many will find unacceptable. We discussed Hell in Bible study at my church last Sunday, the the discussion leader asked us what we understood it to be. I think of it metaphorically: Hell, as I conceive it, is a bad attitude, or more specifically a conscious rejection of any higher purpose beyond devotion to self and its appetites. More specifically yet, it is a projection of what reality would be like if everyone rejected a commitment to peace, love and social justice in favor of wealth, power, status and sensual indulgence. I think it's potentially very real; in fact we may be headed toward the brink: a "war of all against all", to borrow a phrase from Thomas Hobbes..

Hell seems to be something that entered the Abrahamic religious traditions late in the game--probably during the couple of centuries when Palestine was a Persian province, with amplification during the Maccabees' struggle with the Seleucids in the second century BCE. I think its origins were Zoroastrian. Before then, Judaism had no tradition of Hell, although it did have the concept of Sheol. Traditionally, that was not a place of punishment, but a kind of warehouse for the shades of the dead--much like Hades in the Greco-Roman tradition; Kur, Ganzer or Kigal for the Sumerians; and Aralu or Kurnugia for the Babylonians. Ecclesiastes 9:10 and Job chp 7. tell us we'll all end up there together. In Judea, the Sadducees who controlled the priesthood or Temple cult, didn't believe in an afterlife with places assigned to good and bad souls. The latter belief seems mostly to have taken off after the Macabbees rebellion when it seemed to many Jews that surely there must be separate places where deceased brave warriors and cowardly traitors, respectively, were assigned according to their merits. That belief seems to have caught on with the Pharisees and the Essenes--the most Persianized of Jewish sects. Jesus referred to Gehena, a place on the outskirts of Jerusalem where refuse was burned, and before that, children were sacrificed to Molech. Christan theologians today think of it as a place of eternal separation from God.

Actually, only about a third of the world's population is Christian, but about one-quarter is Muslim. Put them together and they account for about half of us. Or if we add Jews (0.2%), a slight majority is Abrahamic.

 

Jesus performed miracles and then rose from the dead. That's pretty convincing proof that there is a God.

God parted the red sea.

There are so many historical accounts. Judaism has preserved the same old testament for thousands of years. The early christians had the same culture of preserving religious texts.

 

Then I guess you also need to have faith that the stories are true. Much of the bible is a historical account. Like I said the Jewish culture was very meticulous about preserving these documents and they have not changed since their inscription except by translation. But the original texts are still preserved. Some parts of the bible may be able to be interpreted differently, but historical accounts leave little room for interpretation. Like when we say, the Jews fled from Egypt, how else could that be interpreted? Or that God parted the red sea? Or that Jesus rose from the dead?

Also check Exodus 14:21. Moses stretched out his hand, and the Lord caused the sea to go back.

Found this excerpt about history:

1. Historical science is different from other sciences, especially from most natural sciences, both with respect to its object as well as with respect to its methods and ways of proving, and its ways of collecting data and presenting results.
It is, therefore, inadequate to apply categories used in natural science for historical investigations. While something may be “proven” in a chemical laboratory by repeating an experiment and observing that the results are the same as in a previous round, this cannot be done in the realm of history. It is also inadequate to expect “proof” for events in ancient history of the sort that is available in the present through photography and other modern technological means. No one will doubt the existence of Napoleon or the special event of his death on the isle of St. Helena just because there are no photographic pictures available documenting specific events of his life or death.

2. Questions about historical events (or states) need to be investigated and answered based on evidence.
Evidence is normally a “witness” of some kind or other, like an eye-witness report, a piece of ceramics, a coin, etc.

3. The degree of certainty will, among other things, depend on the number of available witnesses.
In historical science, a single witness will be taken as a decisive piece of evidence only with great caution. The more the (author of a) single source has proven to be credible, the more one will need to take it seriously. Even if there is only a single witness, it cannot be discarded outrightly; that is, there is no general rule that will allow us to assume that the event (or state) reported did not take place.

The more independent witnesses that are available, the higher the degree of certainty will normally be afforded to a specific event (or state).

The result: Is there “proof” in history?
According to what we have pondered so far, we may conclude: Something is in fact proven in history if there are several independent, reliable witnesses that concur in their witness, and if the event (or state) can be understood as a meaningful element in a comprehensive course of events (or sequence of states). More or better proof, or a different kind of proof, is not available for every event (or state), at least in all eras of history before the introduction of live-recording technologies.

--

I'd say that the witnesses of Jesus' resurrection are reliable.

 

All the evidence indicates that the reason the US is both the richest and the most religious country in the developed world, is because we've made the stupid dictionary and analog logic taboo.

Donald Duck still wants to be Emperor of the World, and half of our religious congregations still claim the sun revolves around the earth. Religion is obviously a way to prevent academia from destroying the world faster. Maybe, someone should invent a new one.

Knowing our own academics are killing us, while they blame everyone else, and can't teach a child how to share their words and play nice, could be the next religious dogma.

Knowing your teachers and the mainstream are all hypocritical liars, religion can't be about anything other than faith.

 

I have to admit, I had my doubts. There was the long decades after his death and the writing down of the accounts of the apostles. Then there is the fact that the oldest actual text that we have of the New Testament dates back to hundreds of years after the last apostle died, i.e they date to the 4th century. We have no actual proof of what was actually written in the 1st century. Add to this that there are over 8,000 of these old manuscripts and none of them are alike, and are even contradictory. When the King James Version was written in the early 1600's it did not use any of these 8,000 manuscripts but relied on previous translations of those documents to create a version that was suitable to the King and Parliament.

Then there are alternate translations of the aramaic words we understand to be of Jesus which are done in the context of Middle Eastern mystics at that time, and they are very different from what we know them to be in the Bible.

But then when I realized that news reporters went out and interviewed the apostles, and they then appeared on the evening news, I had to say, 'Yes, those witnesses are reliable. History was made...



Did the resurrection and the other events of Jesus really happen? I have seen things in Native American ceremony and other indigenous ceremony that would tell me, yes this certainly could have happened. I have seen many kinds of miraculous things. And after all, there are other traditions of people dying and resurrecting from the dead. Odin is one example, and the Rig Veda provides another example. There are many, and even communion ceremonies were performed to honor some of these. In fact, in another week, I will be supporting at a Lakota Sundance where we could argue that the dancers go through a metaphoric death of sorts, and why do they do this---so that the people---all people, all of creation---may live. So yes, I would agree that it could have happened, and it could've happened exactly the way it is portrayed in the Bible we know.

But we have to be careful as to what we say is factual proof, even historical proof.

 

Over the past two decades, we have been drip fed the facts.
My biggest fear is that the penny will drop too suddenly and all hell will break loose on earth.

 

The full truth was not palatable back then, but sadly it will be even less palatable today.

 

I think that you are nearer to knowing the truth than most people on this planet.
Important clues lie within this poem by TS Elliot. You will need to read it with a clear head and think even more clearly about what it all means. Particularly the final verse.

‘A cold coming we had of it,
Just the worst time of the year
For a journey, and such a long journey:
The ways deep and the weather sharp,
The very dead of winter.’
And the camels galled, sore-footed, refractory,
Lying down in the melting snow.
There were times we regretted
The summer palaces on slopes, the terraces,
And the silken girls bringing sherbet.
Then the camel men cursing and grumbling
And running away, and wanting their liquor and women,
And the night-fires going out, and the lack of shelters,
And the cities hostile and the towns unfriendly
And the villages dirty and charging high prices:
A hard time we had of it.
At the end we preferred to travel all night,
Sleeping in snatches,
With the voices singing in our ears, saying
That this was all folly.

Then at dawn we came down to a temperate valley,
Wet, below the snow line, smelling of vegetation;
With a running stream and a water-mill beating the darkness,
And three trees on the low sky,
And an old white horse galloped away in the meadow.
Then we came to a tavern with vine-leaves over the lintel,
Six hands at an open door dicing for pieces of silver,
And feet kicking the empty wine-skins,
But there was no information, and so we continued
And arrived at evening, not a moment too soon
Finding the place; it was (you may say) satisfactory.

All this was a long time ago, I remember,
And I would do it again, but set down
This set down
This: were we led all that way for
Birth or Death? There was a Birth, certainly,
We had evidence and no doubt. I had seen birth and death,
But had thought they were different; this Birth was
Hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death.
We returned to our places, these Kingdoms,
But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation,
With an alien people clutching their gods.
I should be glad of another death.

 

People have wasted their entire lives researching the provenance of the bible. what clicked for me is when someone asked me, do you believe that an all-powerful God is capable of preserving His word here on earth? So then as per the OP it's more about faith. it is a matter of the heart not of intellect.

 

Moses parted the Red Sea by the power of God, whose agent he was. But I agree with you it probably didn't happen--except as myth. There is no proof outside the Bible that the Red Sea ever parted or that Exodus ever happened. Biblical scholars are divided over whether it was the Red Sea or the Sea of Reeds--a marshy area of the Suez Isthmus--with most modern scholars favoring the latter. New Evidence from Egypt on the Location of the Exodus Sea Crossing: Part I third century B.C.E. Ptolemaic scholars translated the Hebrew Old Testament into the Greek Septuagint, they seem to mistranslated yam suph (Reed Sea) into Eruthrá Thálassē (Red Sea). Thanks to the reluctance of the editors to scrap any version of the Exodus story, there are actually at least two versions of the "parting of the sea" in the Bible incorporated into Genesis--this according to Bible scholar Richard Elliott Friedman, who accepts the Graf Welhausen hypothesis that the Bible was authored by four different writers. (The Bible, With Sources Revealed) The earlier account, the so called "J" (Yahwehst) version, starting in the middle of Exodus 14:21, states that "Yahweh drove the sea back by a strong east wind all night , and made the land dry...", allowing for a more naturalistic interpretation in which the Hebrew were able to cross by foot while Pharaoh's chariots were unable to follow. The other so-called P (Priestly) version is the one familiar to Hollywood audiences (omitting the v. 21 language about the east wind blowing all night) in which Moses stretches "his hand out over the sea...and the waters were divided."

This underscores the basic problem of going by a literal translation of scripture. Why is it important for twentieth century Christians to go by the understandings of Bronze Age or early Iron Age Jews concerning the age of the earth, or how the Sea of Reeds was parted? Are we being tested as to our capacity to believe the unbelievable? Is the literalist who throws reason and good judgment out the window and goes by language alone, the exemplar of piety? Which seems more plausible? That the Pentateuch, with its many apparent contradictions, was written by a single author (Moses) taking dictation from God? Or that it is the product of several humans seeking God, writing at different times, for different audiences, and with different agendas? Personally, my faith--guided by reason, available evidence and judgment--inclines me to the latter explanation.

I've already made clear my personal view that not only religious truth but all truth rests on faith--in the sense that nothing is certain, not even that. it is possible we're living in a matrix-style computer simulation designed by extraterrestrials, mad scientists, or some alien kid, as part of a science project. Faith, as I understand it, is a bet on which version of reality we accept as our world view. As you say, it doesn't guarantee that the version I bet on is true. We place our bets and take our chances. But Intuitively, I reject the relativist view that any person's view is as good as another's. I think (erroneously or not), that it is likely that an objective reality exists and that by exercise of our reason and sensory evidence we can distinguish more plausible from less plausible versions of reality. Saint Augustine warned us in his Confessions against taking a woodenly literal interpretation of scripture. Augustine of Hippo on the Literal Meaning of Genesis - Spectrum Magazine #:~:text=More%20than%2015%20centuries%20before%20Darwin%E2%80%99s%20Origin%20of,on%20theological%20grounds%20entirely%20apart%20from%20scientific%20concerns.
"Reckless and incompetent expounders of Holy Scripture bring untold trouble and sorrow on their wiser brethren when they are caught in one of their mischievous false opinions and are taken to task by those who are not bound by the authority of our sacred books. For then, to defend their utterly foolish and obviously untrue statements, they will try to call upon Holy Scripture for proof and even recite from memory many passages which they think support their position, although they understand neither what they say nor the things about which they make assertion." He thought, for example, that it was foolish to believe literally in the details of Genesis. By so doing, he spared Catholicism the awkwardness of rejecting Darwin. When reason and scripture seem to conflict, the prudent Christian should consider whether his/her understanding of either or both might be faulty. Aristotle considered reason to be the distinguishing attribute of humans. Why would the Creator give us that in the expectation we should set it aside when exercising our religious faith?

 

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