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I'm kind of struggling with your question, so maybe I'm not answering it correctly.
You can go on absolutely blind faith, which is kind of silly, or you can go by faith of experience.
If I need a piece of equipment here tomorrow from Houston to do a job, and I haven't yet found anyone to transport it, I could call the customer and say, blindly, "I have faith the machine will be here tomorrow". Just taking a flyer.
OR
If I have found the transporter, and know him to be a very good and reliable driver, and he's agreed to take the job, I could then call the customer with reason behind my faith, and say "I have faith the machine will be here tomorrow".
You are right. In fact this is the refutation of the 'you have faith that your car will start' apologetic. That is not Faith but Experience and some understanding. Faith is when you keep turning the key and revving the engine and expecting the car to Fly (indeed according to Matthew, if you have Faith, it will)..
Miracles, in usual experience, don't happen. We need some very, very good evidence before we accept that they do, or did.
Faith is what we get when the evidence doesn't turn out to be all that good.
Last edited by TRANSPONDER; 03-12-2019 at 03:36 PM..
He didn't need to write 'a book';
HE is the author of LIFE - of everything that exists, big & small.
Look around you - He's given us everything we need.
HE wrote the plan to salvation; with his life, and with his body/blood,death, and resurrection.
His Gospel was already being preached in his church hundreds of years before 'the book' was written/canonized.
Seems His message is STILL getting through loud an clear 2000+ years later! Look around you!
Most just won't listen! The path is indeed narrow ....
You are saying Jesus created the world and all life? I thought god did that, not the son of god.
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Originally Posted by TRANSPONDER
You are right. In fact this is the refutation of the 'you have faith that your car will start' apologetic. That is not Faith but Experience and some understanding. Faith is when you keep turning the key and revving the engine and expecting the car to Fly (indeed according to Matthew, if you have Faith, it will)..
Miracles, in usual experience, don't happen. We need some very, very good evidence before we accept that they do, or did. #
Faith is what we get when the evidence doesn't turn out to be all that good.
It turns into faith when you don't have a backup plan. Yes, in my experience, my car will start. But I show my FAITH by not having a backup car in the driveway for my run to the airport tomorrow.
Similarly, when I take my laptop on an overnight trip, and I've just replaced the battery in the mouse, I pack more batteries just in case. It's highly likely the mouse battery will last - it certainly should last 10X the amount of time I will be using it, in my experience, but I don't have faith that it will not go dead.
It turns into faith when you don't have a backup plan. Yes, in my experience, my car will start. But I show my FAITH by not having a backup car in the driveway for my run to the airport tomorrow.
Thank you. You endorsed my whole point. If you really believed the Gospels, you wouldn't need a backup car because you knew that God would ensure your car would always start. But the REAL reason you don't have a backup car is that on experience you gamble that you can trust the star to start because they are made to be reliable. But you Know very well that sometimes they don't work and your backup is not Faith based repair but a technological one.
To put it in plain terms - you trust 'science' every day of your life and not God - even if you give God the credit, afterwards.
Quote:
Similarly, when I take my laptop on an overnight trip, and I've just replaced the battery in the mouse, I pack more batteries just in case. It's highly likely the mouse battery will last - it certainly should last 10X the amount of time I will be using it, in my experience, but I don't have faith that it will not go dead.
There you are - it is feasible to have backup batteries. If you had the money and a big enough carport, you might have a backup car too. You don't have one, not because of lack of Faith but your lack of space.
Jesus said this message isn't for everyone. Let those who have ears to hear, hear.
You can believe He didn't say that, but you can't really believe it was me who came up with that idea independently.
No, I don't believe you came up with that, but I can (and do) believe what is self-evident. Namely, that the men who wrote down the stories several generations (40-100 years) later, none of whom were present at the time, chose words that supported their cause. Which were then further shaped and molded by the translators who took them from the original drafts to support their cause, and further teased and twisted by the editors who packaged them together (leaving out the portions and entire books that didn't fit THEIR cause).
All of which works heavily against "Jesus said...."
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Than you. You endorsed my whole point. If yoy believe the Gospels would wouldn't have a backup car because you knew that God would ensure your car would alsways start. But the REAL reason you don't have a backup car is that on experience you can trust the star to start because they are made to be reliable. But you Kow very well that sometimes you don't and your backup is not Faith based repair but a technological one.
To put it in plain terms - you trust 'science' every day of your life and not God - even if you give God the credit'
There you are - it is feasible to have backup batteries. If you had the money and a big enough carport, you might have a backup car too. You don't have one, not because of lack of Faith but lack of space.
It's actually that I feel differently about the two cases. I feel faith in my car, it's a feeling.
When I think about that mouse, that has really NEVER died before its time, I don't feel that same faith.
And yeah, I could line up a friend a few days ahead and warn them I may need a ride to the airport, but I feel faith in my car's ability to start.
And I feel much, much more faith that I will get an answer when I call on my Lord.
It's actually that I feel differently about the two cases. I feel faith in my car, it's a feeling.
When I think about that mouse, that has really NEVER died before its time, I don't feel that same faith.
And yeah, I could line up a friend a few days ahead and warn them I may need a ride to the airport, but I feel faith in my car's ability to start.
And I feel much, much more faith that I will get an answer when I call on my Lord.
Oh dear. Having set out, quite excellently, the difference between reasonable expectation and Faith, you then slap the two together.
Well at least, thanks for pointing up my other argument - about having ears to hear is one thing, using them listen is another. You have now sidelined a grasp on the way the world works in favour of a Faith -claim.
If Jesus was the smartest man, which he would have to be if he also was a god, then the natural question follows, why didn't he write any parts of the bible? Why did he talk in riddles, rather than clarity for future generations to understand? Why didn't he write in Hebrew, or Aramaic?
If he did, then the argument could be made that at least the NT was the "word of god". But no one is making that claim. Instead, we have this game of telephone, and things were written forty to 100 years after the supposed incidents.
Jesus as god really didn't think this one out, did he?
I don't know that the personal authorship of Jesus -- or lack thereof -- has nearly so much to do with the credibility of Holy Writ, as does whether its content is logically consistent (even internally, much less externally) and with things like whether the high credibility bar created by the fabulist mythos of the Amazing Miracle-Working God-Man is ever reached.
I can predict that most Christians (especially the fundamentalist variety) would just say that even if Jesus wrote it, you still wouldn't believe it, and in this particular instance, they'd be correct, because alleged authorship by itself doesn't matter one way or the other.
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