RE: Alpha episode 2: Is there more to life than this? Join the Alpha Course for a share of the SBD from this series of posts
"To save a lot of typing I have placed a link here to an article which explains the convolutions and in fighting that went on before the Bible came into existence in the form we know today."
Your link took me to the footnotes so I'm not sure exactly what you wanted me to see. If the whole article, then I've read and studied many works like that before, so I'm familiar with the arguments. I won't even try to go into them all, but it's simply not true that the New Testament was only established in the fourth century. The New Testament was established by the Holy Spirit from the beginning of the Church. That makes it an infinitely stronger text than the U.S. Constitution, which was written only by men.
"Here is something to think about. There is an interesting article here which shows the remarkable similarity between the story of the Greek god of wine Dionysus (or Bacchus) and that of Jesus."
I'm familiar with those supposed similarities as well. I remember taking note of some of them back in high school, when I was a Christian who knew little about Christianity and didn't live by faith or know almost anything about the Bible.
On that, then, I would say first that when Jesus was casting out demons, they knew Him. According to God's Word, the whole existence of the universe is in Him. "In Him we live and move and have our being." And in this world and in human beings there's a spiritual dimension, and not only does God respond to it, but Satan does as well. The Bible says he can appear as an angel of light.
In no way, then, does it surprise me when in some superficial aspects of Jesus' life seems to have similarities to some of the false gods of the world. I took a quick look at Dionysus on Wikipedia earlier and they have a whole section comparing him to Jesus, but note that the supposed similarities don't impress many scholars - and I assume they mean secular scholars since Wikipedia is in no way Christian or conservative.
What's truly incomparable to me is how Jesus fulfills the Old Testament and further reveals what's in it.
Hello again @doule and thank you for your reply. I'm sorry the link didn't work correctly but you seem to have found the article I was referring to.
Surely this is something of a circular argument. To believe in the Holy Spirit you have to believe in the Bible and to believe in the Bible you have to believe that the Holy Spirit had a part in creating it. The only way you can square the circle on this one is to take it all on faith (as you seem to have alluded to later in your comment). No disrespect intended @doule but to my mind to rely on faith alone you have to abandon all rational thought and critical thinking.
May I ask you this question. From the way I read this in relation to what you wrote just before hand, do you believe that these 'false gods' existed?
I look forward to your reply.
But there's a circular nature to any belief system. Once people form firm beliefs about something, they see things through those beliefs. If I'm not mistaken you identify as atheist? Then isn't your immediate tendency when something challenges your atheism is to seek to defend atheism?
We all take things on faith all the time. If you go to a place you've never been before, and go to sit down in a chair, I'm sure you usually have faith that it's not going to collapse underneath you. But sometimes people might say to someone about a chair that appears to be safe, "don't sit there, it's broken" or otherwise warn people when something looks to be safe but they know it isn't. But pretty much we take things on faith because what we already know, or believe that we know, about someone or something outweighs what we don't know, or don't know yet. So yes I believe in the Holy Spirit and take what the Bible says on faith.
"They sacrificed unto devils, not to God; to gods whom they knew not, to new gods that came newly up, whom your fathers feared not."
In most if not all cases, they're demons, and the worship of them is satanically inspired.
Hello, @doule and thank you once again for continuing the discussion.
I would just like to go over a couple of points you made:-
I don't have a need to defend atheism. Atheism is the non-belief in a god or gods because of the lack of evidence. If you, or anyone, presented new evidence for the existence of a god then I would look at it, evaluate it and either retain or alter my position accordingly dependent on the results of that evaluation. I am quite willing to alter my views if the evidence is sound enough.
I don't take things on faith all the time. It isn't faith to sit on a chair without fearing it's collapse. It is an expectation built on experience of all the other times I have safely sat in chairs that this one won't fail. Faith is what you require in order to believe in something without any evidence for it.
Could I ask you, and please don't answer if it makes you feel uncomfortable in any way, but what experience did you have that convinced you that the Holy Spirit exists?
And I would imagine a lot of other religions say the same about your god. Why is yours any different from theirs?
I look forward to your reply. Take care till next time.
Hello again, @maninayton. I've been working on replying but other things came up. I can't agree with the definitions and assumptions in that paragraph, which I've seen other atheists use too. It's like they're devised to avoid some real difficulties.
Atheism isn't just the simple denial of something - God's existence. It's a world-view that makes many of its own claims about existence.
And there's plenty of evidence for God's existence, which is why even outside of Christianity and Judaism the possibility of God has always been taken seriously at the least.
The Bible speaks of the natural evidence of God's existence - all of the wonders of this world - and says it's obvious to everyone that there's a Creator. I wrote a post on this subject just recently.
In the atheistic view, the universe came to life and became self-aware and self-conscious by human beings coming into existence, and atheism also claims that not only might all that have happened accidentally, but it definitely did.
So, then, you're definitely sure that it was by accident that somehow out of the "Big Bang" came all of this order, and its richness, including most of all beings that make the universe capable of consciously experiencing itself? Do you really not see even the possibility that there may be a spirit world, and a spiritual purpose for this world's existence?
Actually, it is, because if you haven't tested it beforehand, then you don't know if it's safe or not. It is a matter of needing less faith rather than more faith, at least in the wealthy parts of the world with good furniture and things tend to be maintained, but it's still faith nevertheless.
Well, how about this? From the atheist viewpoint, the universe is at best ambiguous, in terms of whether or not everything has come about through accident, or was created by an all-powerful being. Yet the atheist feels assured that he has the answer, and that it definitely came about by accident. There's truly no definitive evidence for that claim, but the personal opinion of the atheist.
Before I go any further, let me ask you something. It would help me to answer your other questions. What is it that you like so much about atheism?
Well said @doule.