If God were real then would it make sense to say 'You made a promise, I don't see it being fulfilled, therefore you aren't real'?
Or would it make more sense to ask 'Why am I not seeing the promise fulfilled? do I misunderstand the promise, it's extent, it's conditions, etc?'
It should be obvious, that if God is real, then a perceived failure of one of His promises is more rationally explained by a failure somewhere on our end (our understanding, our fulfilling any conditions of the promise, etc) rather than an evidence of His nonexistence.
On the other hand, if God is not real, then there is no basis by which to judge His promises one way or the other. Because judging a biblical promise assumes there is an objective standard of truth and reality, which in turn assumes an underlying objectively true and real basis for reality itself. And that assumes cause and effect, which in turn requires a Cause for the underlying strata of reality.
In other words, to deny the existence of God is to deny the existence of true knowledge, which means an atheist has no rational basis for judging whether God exists or not.
The brilliant author and somewhat intelligent apologist C. S. Lewis famously posited that Jesus had to be 1) a liar, 2) a lunatic, or 3) Lord. But he forgot (maybe I should put quotation marks around that?) one, as pointed out by the former Christian, now agnostic (at least, last I knew), author Bart Ehrman: 4) legend.
Ehrman may not have been the first. It's a pretty obvious omission. So obvious that I'm not really sure why Lewis omitted it. Could it be that he thought it (maybe in Ehrman's alliterative form, or not) but left it out, not wanting to address it, or not wanting his readers to get too carried away thinking about #4?
"Legend", btw, doesn't mean "didn't exist". As you point out, legends tend to grow around characters (some real, some perhaps not). I, too, believe that Jesus most likely existed as a real person, and many of the things written about Him were likely true.
Legends do not develop around people existing at the same time the legends develop, in the manner the 'legend' of Jesus developed in the same area and in the same time he allegedly existed.
When the 'gospel story' began to be circulated, there were numerous people (thousands, in fact) who not only heard the story, but who were in the unique position of being able to refute the story as mere myth or legend. If the gospel story were a 'legendization' of true facts concerning a real rabbi named Jesus, it would have been easy to refute by the very people who lived in those areas at the time the events are said to have happened. But there are no 'refutations' from the same time period as the earliest christian writings.
Timmy, when you mention CS Lewis, you should know he also said this -
"I have been reading poems, romances, vision-literature, legends, myths all my life. I know what they are like. I know that not one of them is like this.' This was in reference to the Gospels, by the way.
Jesus is not on the same level as Odysseus. Homer was a single source to the story of Odysseus, did not claim to be an eyewitness, did not claim to have interviewed witnesses. The story of Odysseus is part of an epic poem, and epic poetry was known - even back then - to be highly embellished. It was part of the literary genre of epic poetry, you see.
The gospels were not from the same literary tradition as epic poetry, have nothing of the same qualities as epic poetry, were produced by different authors, and were contemporary with the events and people they described.
Legends do not develop around people existing at the same time the legends develop, in the manner the 'legend' of Jesus developed in the same area and in the same time he allegedly existed.
When the 'gospel story' began to be circulated, there were numerous people (thousands, in fact) who not only heard the story, but who were in the unique position of being able to refute the story as mere myth or legend. If the gospel story were a 'legendization' of true facts concerning a real rabbi named Jesus, it would have been easy to refute by the very people who lived in those areas at the time the events are said to have happened. But there are no 'refutations' from the same time period as the earliest christian writings.
Timmy, when you mention CS Lewis, you should know he also said this -
"I have been reading poems, romances, vision-literature, legends, myths all my life. I know what they are like. I know that not one of them is like this.' This was in reference to the Gospels, by the way.
Jesus is not on the same level as Odysseus. Homer was a single source to the story of Odysseus, did not claim to be an eyewitness, did not claim to have interviewed witnesses. The story of Odysseus is part of an epic poem, and epic poetry was known - even back then - to be highly embellished. It was part of the literary genre of epic poetry, you see.
The gospels were not from the same literary tradition as epic poetry, have nothing of the same qualities as epic poetry, were produced by different authors, and were contemporary with the events and people they described.
Actually, the written Gospels were not contemporaneously written. Whether they were written (possibly a few decades after the events) by eyewitnesses is in dispute. AKA we don't know.
Those who look into these questions may be biased, either way: some might think that they had to have been written by the disciples named in their titles, otherwise, well, then the Bible isn't perfect! (Not allowing for the book titles being added later, according to the tradition that, e.g., Luke wrote the Gospel According to Luke -- the name itself even hinting at this.) (And not allowing for the text itself being perhaps perfect, even if, say, Luke didn't write "Luke", as that text doesn't say Luke write it. It's anonymous.)
Other scholars could be biased the other way, I suppose. Those who, as some say, want the Bible not to be God's Word. That want to sin, and don't want there to be a God that gave us commands that they don't want to follow. So, I guess those guys could come up with all kinds of cockamamie schemes to make it look like the Gospels are unreliable.
I suppose.
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Hebrews 13:23 Know ye that our brother Timothy is set at liberty
If God were real then would it make sense to say 'You made a promise, I don't see it being fulfilled, therefore you aren't real'?
That's not how it played out for me--and while a Christian I did what you and everyone else does-- (wait for it...)
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Or would it make more sense to ask 'Why am I not seeing the promise fulfilled? do I misunderstand the promise, it's extent, it's conditions, etc?'
--I rationalized that it's all my fault. But then, after I realized the bible is not inerrant, not inspired by a supposedly Omniscient Holy Spirit, but instead is full of human mistakes, the same way a collection of ancient books cobbled together would be expected to be--only then did I begin to reinterpret that my experience with my erstwhile omnipotent, omniscient loving heavenly father god was imaginary and superstitious--and (although painful at first) everything added up much better than it did as a believer! So it's no wonder an imaginary being does not and cannot fulfill any claimed, large or small measurable promises.
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It should be obvious, that if God is real, then a perceived failure of one of His promises is more rationally explained by a failure somewhere on our end (our understanding, our fulfilling any conditions of the promise, etc) rather than an evidence of His nonexistence.
Okay, but if god is not real, then it all makes sense why god does nothing measurable, and why there are mistakes, contradictions, and lies throughout the bible (about which I haven't really begun to post yet.) Oh, and also explains why god stays forever hidden from the five verifiable senses, that is, unless you are one of the characters named in of one of those ancient Bronze age/Iron Age writings, such as Paul, Isaiah, Moses, Abraham, and the dozen other chosen ones, some of whom needed no faith, because they were allowed to SEE and/or HEAR the supposed Real Thing. But today, your whole life hangs upon what some anonymous guy wrote and claimed those others guys supposedly experienced.
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On the other hand, if God is not real, then there is no basis by which to judge His promises one way or the other.
No, there are several valid ways to judge--ways that we use every day just to survive on earth. Humans learn what is "true" from the experience of what works or what doesn't work. Of course, some people do not learn from experience, and they therefore suffer the consequences (often just a matter of pain, not necessarily fatal.)
If a bible makes a claim, and that claim bears upon something that intersects with current scientific "truth", those claims eventually become testable as science improves. (Heehehe, but the bible is not even ALLOWED to improve, because it's already perfect. Therefore, science eventually fills in the gaps about what humankind used to claim was supernatural god effect. Science is allowed to change its mind according to current evidence, but bible believers are not. )
Other kinds of claims are testable only logically (rhetorically.) Some claims are testable in yet other ways, but to the true believer, there exists NO AMOUNT of evidence and/or logic that can be considered valid toward disproving a given religious dogma--such as that your bible is inspired by your god, inerrantly, infallibly. And that is more or less the very definition of faith--to keep believing REGARDLESS what your own experience, or the knowledge and experience of the rest of mankind would OTHERWISE indicate. Therefore, rivers and oceans of rationalizations and mental gymnastics are required to defend what the bible claims--and those oceans of rationalization are actually a thriving industry today . But why would an onmipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent god need to be defended on ANY front? Perhaps the believers' standards of omnisciency and onmipotency are pretty low, where mine are high. Anyhow, I could do a much better job of showing my creation that I at least exist, even if I (just like your Yahweh god) wished to remain hidden from the senses.
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In other words, to deny the existence of God is to deny the existence of true knowledge
No, that works only within a world of belief/faith that presupposes that the ancient writings that describe the Yahweh god are correct.
So the Gods that demanded human sacrifices like Moloch and the Aztecs and Mayan Gods are more reasonable?
Not really--they are all probably equally bad. When considered according to behavior of the god, and according to the behaviors apparently commanded to the believers of these gods, the Yahweh deity is probably as demonstrably blood-loving as the Moloch diety.
We don't have any surviving writings from Molech worshippers, perhaps because naturally, the winning side gets to tell the story. We only have OT references to "high places" (shrines) to Molech and the practice of child sacrifice to Molech.
Leviticus 18:21:
‘Do not give any of your children to be sacrificed to Molech, for you must not profane the name of your God. I am the LORD."
Seems god misses a great teaching moment--notably silent about the overall immorality of killing children, but rather Yahweh was more concerned about preventing a local competing god Molech from getting the credit for or esteem from the sacrifice. ("Don't profane ME.")
Yet Yahweh would eventually get his share of several kinds of fleshly sacrifices--he even says he likes the smell of burnt flesh (at the least from millions of animals.)
Yahweh gave Abraham the now-famous head fake, which indicates the Yahweh does appreciate the appearance of a child sacrifice, at least when requested. "No, wait, Abe, your experience today was just fodder to make a point, but nice going, you were willing to burn Isaac for me. But I'm a-gonna really sacrifice my only begotten Son down the road!"
(At least for a few hours, and then the Really Sacrificed Son gets to return good as new ALSO.)
But God didn't stop war hero Jephtha from killing his own daughter. I guess keeping a misguided promise is WAY more important to an omniscient, omnipotent god. After all, Jeptha made the roll call of the faithful (Hebrews 11:32.)
In history books, when a leader signs off on killing people, the killing is considered his doing, for example, "Hitler killed 6 million Jews."
At the hands of Joshua, God signed off on the killing of populations of men, women, babies, children, animals, what-have-you. Deut 20:16...thou shalt save alive nothing that breatheth."
Of course, Christians are required to claim it was all for a good, righteous cause. But recall, I am considering blood-spilling BEHAVIOR, and not so much a believer's THEOLOGY behind how they personally rationalize such behavior performed by their always-good gods. Molech and the Aztecs no doubt had their THEOLOGIES also, which made sense to them.
Yahweh signed off on the killing of Job's first 10 children. Yeah, it's supposed to make everything okay that Job managed to have more children as replacements. Would you accept "replacements" for your dead family?
Anyhow, the bible god reads as petty, jealous, violent, and all too human--no better than any of the other gods. Fortunately, none of them really exist except in our imaginations.
Not really--they are all probably equally bad. When considered according to behavior of the god, and according to the behaviors apparently commanded to the believers of these gods, the Yahweh deity is probably as demonstrably blood-loving as the Moloch diety.
We don't have any surviving writings from Molech worshippers, perhaps because naturally, the winning side gets to tell the story. We only have OT references to "high places" (shrines) to Molech and the practice of child sacrifice to Molech.
Leviticus 18:21:
‘Do not give any of your children to be sacrificed to Molech, for you must not profane the name of your God. I am the LORD."
Seems god misses a great teaching moment--notably silent about the overall immorality of killing children, but rather Yahweh was more concerned about preventing a local competing god Molech from getting the credit for or esteem from the sacrifice. ("Don't profane ME.")
Yet Yahweh would eventually get his share of several kinds of fleshly sacrifices--he even says he likes the smell of burnt flesh (at the least from millions of animals.)
Yahweh gave Abraham the now-famous head fake, which indicates the Yahweh does appreciate the appearance of a child sacrifice, at least when requested. "No, wait, Abe, your experience today was just fodder to make a point, but nice going, you were willing to burn Isaac for me. But I'm a-gonna really sacrifice my only begotten Son down the road!"
(At least for a few hours, and then the Really Sacrificed Son gets to return good as new ALSO.)
But God didn't stop war hero Jephtha from killing his own daughter. I guess keeping a misguided promise is WAY more important to an omniscient, omnipotent god. After all, Jeptha made the roll call of the faithful (Hebrews 11:32.)
In history books, when a leader signs off on killing people, the killing is considered his doing, for example, "Hitler killed 6 million Jews."
At the hands of Joshua, God signed off on the killing of populations of men, women, babies, children, animals, what-have-you. Deut 20:16...thou shalt save alive nothing that breatheth."
Of course, Christians are required to claim it was all for a good, righteous cause. But recall, I am considering blood-spilling BEHAVIOR, and not so much a believer's THEOLOGY behind how they personally rationalize such behavior performed by their always-good gods. Molech and the Aztecs no doubt had their THEOLOGIES also, which made sense to them.
Yahweh signed off on the killing of Job's first 10 children. Yeah, it's supposed to make everything okay that Job managed to have more children as replacements. Would you accept "replacements" for your dead family?
Anyhow, the bible god reads as petty, jealous, violent, and all too human--no better than any of the other gods. Fortunately, none of them really exist except in our imaginations.
As you know, Marc, we skeptics are often accused of reading things into the scriptures that aren't there. I find that amusing and sometimes annoying, since it is the defenders that are constantly reading things into them, in order to make them sound less vile. Case in point: Jephthah.
There are a couple of things we could add to make God look less horrible: one is to read into it that Jeph didn't actually kill and burn his daughter. No, ya see, that would be evil. So of course, God wouldn't allow that. Instead, he "sacrifices" his daughter's virginity. She goes to the mountains with her friends to mourn this can-never-have-sex sacrifice her dad foisted upon her. Ya see.
Never mind that J's original promise was to offer the first thing he saw as, specifically, a burnt offering. And that he was distraught when his daughter was that first thing from his house. And that it was said later that he did what he promised. And that it is a pretty odd thing to do to mourn for a few days something that is about to happen, if that thing about to happen was to begin her eternal virginity. (Which presumably had already started, like, the say she was born!)
Yeah, it's hard work sometimes to make these stories less horrible than a straight reading. Not always, though. Sometimes they just yell "Context!" and think that works.
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Hebrews 13:23 Know ye that our brother Timothy is set at liberty
32 And what shall I more say? for the time would fail me to tell of Gedeon, and of Barak, and of Samson, and of Jephthae; of David also, and Samuel, and of the prophets:
33 Who through faith subdued kingdoms, wrought righteousness, obtained promises, stopped the mouths of lions.
34 Quenched the violence of fire, escaped the edge of the sword, out of weakness were made strong, waxed valiant in fight, turned to flight the armies of the aliens.
__________________
Hebrews 13:23 Know ye that our brother Timothy is set at liberty
(Bewailing her virginity, of course, is something she would likely do if she was, up to that point, a virgin, considering that she would never be able to unvirginize, given that she was about to die.)
__________________
Hebrews 13:23 Know ye that our brother Timothy is set at liberty
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