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View Poll Results: Which is more irrational? | |||
Believing the Pentateuch stories (First five books of OT) are factual | 2 | 13.33% | |
Believing the Gospels' stories are factual | 0 | 0% | |
Neither 1 or 2 is irrational | 1 | 6.67% | |
1 and 2 are equally irrational | 12 | 80.00% | |
Voters: 15. You may not vote on this poll |
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12-04-2007, 09:21 PM | #11 |
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By definition, isn't all religious faith irrational?
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12-04-2007, 09:25 PM | #12 |
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Define gospel stories being factual:
I think you probably mean Jesus was resurrected, Jesus did miracles, etc. Is that right? |
12-04-2007, 09:36 PM | #13 |
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Seattle's purpose may simply be to incite discussion, in which case he is successful.
If he is intending to ask an accurate question or to illustrate a point, he has artfully worded the question "inartfully". Define "rational"? Are we using the classical definition thereof, or some modern morphed version of the word? If we take Moses or Jesus out of the equation, and say Mr. Leftkovitz decided to cross the Mississippi and parted the Mississippi the other day, but no pictures were had but a group of people swore to it, how many would instinctively doubt that story? If Mr. Swarthmore informed Foxnews that he walked across the bay from San Francisco to Sausolito, without using the Golden Gate Bridge, how many would roll their eyes? Are the events empirically justified and therefore rational? None of the miraculous events meet any modern or classical definition of rationality.
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12-04-2007, 10:14 PM | #14 | |
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Quote:
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12-04-2007, 10:33 PM | #15 |
Join Date: Jan 2006
Location: Seattle, WA
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I don't know why this is so hard. Does anybody not understand what "irrational" means? Google "irrational+definition." Those who claim the question is defective are dissembling. I'm not asking whether you've had a spiritual witness or in any way about faith.
I find it curious people think it's so ridiculous to believe the world was created 6,000 years ago, and they dismiss people who hold this belief as automatically hillbillies or unschooled, but not ridiculous to believe Christ turned water into wine, raised Lazarus from the dead, walked on water, cured lepers, or rose form the dead himself. I submit that belief in the Gospels is no more or less irrational than believing the OT's creation story, applying the same empirical methods that cause us to reject the OT stories as implausible. Beyond the fact that the events described in the Gospels aren't possible in any of our life experience, the Gospels themselves, within their four corners, lack credibility. it has been shown that the first of them was written forty years after Jesus' death, and they are likely not based on eyewitness accounts. They are demonstrably highly stylized and derivative. There is not even a pretense otherwise. The authors will even say now and then that the occurrence of a given event fulfilled such and such OT prophesy. They are internally inconsistent, etc.
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Interrupt all you like. We're involved in a complicated story here, and not everything is quite what it seems to be. —Paul Auster Last edited by SeattleUte; 12-04-2007 at 10:41 PM. |
12-04-2007, 10:39 PM | #16 | |
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Quote:
So if the compilers never intended for the Genesis myth to be interpreted as a scientific rendering of creation or evolution but rather as an allegory, how can it be 'irrational' to accept the compilation in the spirit in which they were compiled and intended to be interpreted? And then you wish to quantify levels of "irrationality", as which unobservable belief is more unbelievable than the other? huh.
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