Raise your hand if you're sure...

Originally posted by whodey
Off the top of my head major religions that come to mind in the world today are Christianity, Islam, Judism, Hinduism, and Buddism.

You forgot Baha'ism.

Originally posted by whodey
I think for a religion to be credible, it must have certain elements.

1. A religion in question must show where we came from and where we have been and where we are going in relation to God. For example, it must show how we were created/evolved, how God has interacted with mankind throughout time, and where God has brought us today, and where we are go od of the Bible seems to dominate the stage of the major world religions of today. Go figure?

1. A religion in question must show where we came from and where we have been and where we are going in relation to God.

This statement implies—

(a) that these questions are answerable;

(b) that such answers can be “shown,” without our subjective interpretive involvement in deciphering the facts of the world presented to us in such a way as to arrive at answers;

(c) that there is a God to be in relationship with.

So, first, I think you need to demonstrate that (a), (b) and (c) are the case.

If one must assume a supernatural category (“God” ) in order to answer such questions, one must show—in the light of (a)—that such an assumption is itself justified. In other words, if the supernatural category is not real, then the answers thus provided may be simply fantasy answers. Surely, a simple “don’t know” would be better.

2. A religion that is credible must ground itself in truth.

This implies that there is a pre-religious set of truths upon which the religious viewpoint can be grounded. To assume as part of this that the Bible, for example, contains such truth begs the question, since the Bible is itself a collection of religious texts. What you need to show is that the Bible is grounded in some non-Biblical truth that can be “shown”. (The same for other religious texts, of course.)

3. and 4. both assume that there is a God, which means that there is a religious viewpoint to begin with; the questions you raise here have to do with comparing given religious viewpoints, not with whether or not such a viewpoint is valid to begin with. (If that is all you really intend with 1. and 2. as well, you can dismiss my comments there.)

According to your expressed understanding here—as I read it—Buddhism and Taoism are (with small exception perhaps) not religions at all. Neither is a large segment of Hinduism (viz., Advaita Vedanta and Kashmiri Shaivism; despite use of some theistic symbolism, neither of these expressions affirm a supernatural God of theism).

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In the “Theological Axioms” thread, I tried to lay out some axioms that I would see as necessary for any theological discourse to take place. My second one there (“communicability” ) is close to your 3.

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EDIT: Your 4. might be challenged within a historical context. For example, the revelation of YHVH was initially to a small tribal group and did not reach outside that group in any big way for millennia—and then only as, really, a new religious viewpoint that enabled that. Today’s tribal religion may be discovered to be the next millennium’s major religion...

Originally posted by Hand of Hecate
What makes Christianity's version of Spiritual Truth any more accurate than the other dubious invetions of humanities creative psyche? Why is Christianity any more valid than Hinduism for example?

What use would it be for anyone to attempt validating the bible to you, seeing how you are more than willing to validate a bowl of pudding? Even so, here is an offering:

The bible can be trusted as truth because its prophecies have been validated by history.

The prophetic book of Daniel, written in 600 B.C., accurately predicts the successive empires which would follow the fall of Nebuchadnezzar's Babylon. A prophecy which can be historically validated. Not only does Daniel, with the help of the Holy Spirit, accurately predict future history (what kingdoms would rise and fall between 600 B.C. and the time of Christ and beyond), he also accurately predicts when Christ, the Messiah, would appear on earth. He and Jesus also accurately predict the fall of the Jewish Temple in 70 A.D..

So, Daniel can already be proved to be an authentic prophet in his accurate prediction of future (future from his standpoint) world history, validating the integrity of the biblical texts. Now, if Daniel was right about future world history and accurately predicted when the Messiah would walk the earth, won't he also be correct about the Second Coming of Christ and of judgment day?

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Nebuchadnezzar's Dream

Generally, the Bible views history - both past and future - through the lens of Israel. But there are a few exceptions. Daniel Chapter 2 and Chapter 7 are distinctive in that they provide a Biblical glimpse of all of world history from Daniel's time during the Babylonian Empire (600 B.C.) until the final climax of human history when God Himself intervenes and establishes His own kingdom upon the earth.

Nebuchadnezzar, an outstanding general and the son of King Nabopolassar, inherited the kingdom upon his father's death. He had a troubling dream one night, and in seeking its significance he decided to put the court advisors (which he had inherited from his father) to the test. He insisted that they describe the dream he had and then interpret it for him. Of course, they could not. If he would tell them the dream, they would certainly have given their interpretation. They had no way of knowing what he had dreamt. So Nebuchadnezzar ordered them to be executed. (He knew how to reduce excess head count in his organization!)

Daniel had been taken captive as a teenager to be trained at court, and was in that job classification along with his three friends, so they, too, were subject to the same execution order. Daniel petitioned his supervisor for a chance at the challenge, and after a night of prayer, his appearance before the throne of the king is one of the more dramatic episodes in Scripture. Daniel not only described the dream precisely - confirming to the king that Daniel's gift was genuine - and he then also provided the interpretation.

Thou, O king, sawest, and behold a great image. This great image, whose brightness was excellent, stood before thee; and the form thereof was terrible. This image's head was of fine gold, his breast and his arms of silver, his belly and his thighs of brass, His legs of iron, his feet part of iron and part of clay. Thou sawest till that a stone was cut out without hands, which smote the image upon his feet that were of iron and clay, and brake them to pieces. Then was the iron, the clay, the brass, the silver, and the gold, broken to pieces together, and became like the chaff of the summer threshingfloors; and the wind carried them away, that no place was found for them: and the stone that smote the image became a great mountain, and filled the whole earth. This is the dream; and we will tell the interpretation thereof before the king. - Daniel 2:31-36

Strange dream, eh?

Daniel then gives them the interpretation: the series of four metals represent a series of empires. The head of gold represented Nebuchadnezzar, and the kingdom of Babylon. But it would be followed by another, and then another, and then a final one. In the days of the final empire, God Himself would establish His own kingdom with the "stone cut without hands," an allusion to the Messiah who would come to rule. (The consistency of idioms throughout the Bible is, itself, remarkable. The "stone cut without hands" is also" the stone which the builders rejected," the rock of offense," and always speaks of Christ, Ex 17:3-6, 33:22; Ps 118:22; Isa 8:14, 28:16; Zech 3:9 (cf. Rev 5:6); Mt 21:43,44; Acts 4:11; Rom 9:33; 1 Cor 10:4; 1 Pet 2:4-8)).

Later in his life, Daniel received a vision of four beasts, which are recorded in Chapter 7. It turns out that while the idioms are quite different from the dream in Chapter 2, the subject is the same: four empires are depicted as summarized in the following diagram:

http://www.khouse.org/images/artpics/times_of_the_gentiles.jpg

The details in the text are remarkable, and are also later employed in the Book of Revelation (Revelation 13:1, 2; 17). Babylon was conquered by Cyrus the Great who established the Persian Empire. After about two centuries, the Persians were conquered by Alexander the Great, whose exploits are further detailed in Daniel 8 and 11. The Greeks were, in turn, conquered by the Romans. But who conquered the Romans? No one. In the fifth century A.D., the western leg of the Roman Empire simply disintegrated into pieces (Daniel 2:41-43). (The eastern leg of the empire endured another 1000 years before falling to the invasion of the Muslims.)

Most conservative scholars recognize that the fourth empire will have two "phases": the fragments are destined to reassemble to form the final empire that is so prominent in prophetic Scripture.

It is interesting that each of the "pieces" of the western leg had its "day in the sun," but none of them achieved the dominance of the original: Germany under Charlemagne and the subsequent "Holy Roman Empire." (As Voltaire observed, "It was neither holy, Roman, nor an empire!" ) Even Hitler suggested a bid for continuance by calling his regime, "The Third Empire." The emerging reassembly of the fragments of the ancient Roman Empire would seem to have profound implications for those who take their Bibles seriously. And there's more.

The angel Gabriel visited Daniel and provided him the famed "Seventy Week" prophecy that predicted, among other things, the precise timing of the Messiah presenting Himself as a king to Jerusalem (Daniel 9:25; Zech 9:9; Luke 19:38-40). He would then be executed and Jerusalem and the Temple would be destroyed (Daniel 9:26; Luke 19:41-44).

Jesus gave four disciples a private briefing on His "Second Coming," and He pointed to this very passage in Daniel as the key to end time prophecy (Matthew 24, Mark 13, Luke 21). This four-verse prophecy is unquestionably the most astonishing in the entire Bible and deserves your diligent study. It not only establishes, with amazing precision, the chronology and details of the Gospel narrative, but it also lays out the framework for scenario of the Second Coming. But we will focus only on one small detail for our purposes here.

In describing the destruction of the city and Temple, the text notes:

…and the people of the prince that shall come shall destroy the city and the sanctuary… - Daniel 9:26.

The people" that destroyed the city and sanctuary were, of course, the legions of the Roman Empire in 70 A.D. The Legions V, X, XII, and XV laid siege to Jerusalem and destroyed it precisely as Gabriel (in Daniel 9) and Jesus predicted (Luke 19:41-44).

Daniel's 70 Weeks

Daniel, originally deported as a teenager (now near the end of the Babylonian captivity), was reading in the Book of Jeremiah. He understood that the seventy years of servitude were almost over and he began to pray for his people.

The Angel Gabriel interrupted Daniel's prayer and gave him a four-verse prophecy that is unquestionably the most remarkable passage in the entire Bible: Daniel 9:24-27.

These four verses include the following segments:

9:24 The Scope of the Entire Prophecy;
9:25 The 69 Weeks;
9:26 An Interval between the 69th and 70th Week;
9:27 The 70th Week.

"Seventy weeks are determined upon thy people and upon thy holy city, to finish the transgression, and to make an end of sins, and to make reconciliation for iniquity, and to bring in everlasting righteousness, and to seal up the vision and prophecy, and to anoint the most Holy Place (Daniel 9:24).

The idiom of a "week" of years was common in Israel as a "sabbath for the land," in which the land was to lie fallow every seventh year (Leviticus 25:1-22; 26:3-35; Deuteronomy 15). It was their failure to obey these laws that led to God sending them into captivity under the Babylonians (2 Chronicles 36:20-21).

Note that the focus of this passage is upon "thy people and upon thy holy city," that is, upon Israel and Jerusalem. (It is not directed to the Church.)

The scope of this prophecy includes a broad list of things which clearly have yet to be completed

A very specific prediction occurs in verse 25:

"Know therefore and understand, that from the going forth of the commandment to restore and to build Jerusalem unto the Messiah the Prince shall be seven weeks, and threescore and two weeks: the street shall be built again, and the wall, even in troublous times" (Daniel 9:25).

This includes a mathematical prophecy. The Jewish (and Babylonian) calendars used a 360-day year (Genesis 7:24; 8:3,4; Revelation 11:2; 12:6; 13:3,4) ; 69 weeks of 360-day years totals 173,880 days. In effect, Gabriel told Daniel that the interval between the commandment to rebuild Jerusalem until the presentation of the Messiah as King would be 173,880 days.

The "Messiah the Prince" in the King James translation is actually the Meshiach Nagid,...

Originally posted by Hand of Hecate
So if I decide that I've had a spectacular spiritual connection with a bowl of pudding I can't call my spiritual revelation a religion unless I fulfill your criteria?

OK, let's see:
1. Obviously we all came from pudding... cosmic pudding, but pudding nonetheless. God has taken the pudding and shaped it into all we see around us. Ultimately, as ...[text shortened]... he world. All hail the Great Spiritual Cosmic Pudding.

Pudding unto you my Brother.

Is that with or without vanilla waffers?

Originally posted by vistesd
[b]1. A religion in question must show where we came from and where we have been and where we are going in relation to God.

This statement implies—

(a) that these questions are answerable;

(b) that such answers can be “shown,” without our subjective interpretive involvement in deciphering the facts of the world presented to us in such a way as ...[text shortened]... answers thus provided may be simply fantasy answers. Surely, a simple “don’t know” would be better.

All I am saying is if one is pursuing a specific religion in which they feel they have found the "path" to God one must conclude that answers are possible and God wishes to relate to them in some way. Otherwise they are wasting their time. If, in fact, God does exist but has no interest in relating to us or there is no way to come to revelations in terms of our purpose/goals that he has set before us then we are simply wasting our time in pursuing such a God. That is why I say it is a waste of time trying to pursue any type of God that is not percieved as offering a relational aspect to humanity at large. Why pursue something or someone that has no interest in being revealed or in being discovered?

You see this is what attracts me to Christianity. God is said to be a God of love and, in fact, he even came to earth to die for us because he desires to break the chains that prevent us from interacting with him and communing with him. I think that all major religions seem to indicate something similar, however, the love message of Christianity I think is unsurpassed!!

Here is the love arugement. If there be a God he is a God of love. Why? If we were created by a God we would then have attributes of this God. For example, what you create is an indication or reflection of yourself. It shows what is important to you as well as your level of intelligence etc. One cannot create in a vaccum and this is one of the reasons the scritpures say that we were created in the image of God.

Having said that, one need only look at our needs/desires to see that we also need this "love". What is our life without such love? In fact, without such love our existence has no meaning and the absence of which in many lives is the root of sin and disfunction in our society ar large.

Edit: When I say that God is knowable I am in no way implying that he is knowable in terms of all mysteries about him, rather, I am saying that we are capable of revelations about him and communing with him. For example, you may "know" your wife depending on how much time you spend with her and how much time you communicate with her, however, she is not knowable in terms of all of her secrets and mysteries, rather, she reveals what she wishes to reveal and/or what you are capable of understanding. This is why the command to seek God is a continuous theme throughout the Bible. He that does not seek will not find.

Originally posted by vistesd
2. A religion that is credible must ground itself in truth.

This implies that there is a pre-religious set of truths upon which the religious viewpoint can be grounded. To assume as part of this that the Bible, for example, contains such truth begs the question, since the Bible is itself a collection of religious texts. What you need to show is tha ...[text shortened]... ed in some non-Biblical truth that can be “shown”. (The same for other religious texts, of course.)

To say that there are no pre-religious set of truths upon which a religion is based would be to imply that religions at large are formed in a vacuum. Or you could say that such religions are based upon purely made up facts. However, how would one then relate to such a religion? What would be its purpose? Religions are formed via percieved truths about the world at large and how one interacts with it.

Originally posted by vistesd
According to your expressed understanding here—as I read it—Buddhism and Taoism are (with small exception perhaps) not religions at all. Neither is a large segment of Hinduism (viz., Advaita Vedanta and Kashmiri Shaivism; despite use of some theistic symbolism, neither of these expressions affirm a supernatural God of theism).

Very interesting. Ok, scrap the Far Eastern religions as being religions. I guess all the major religions of the world are then left with are religions based upon the God of the Bible. Is that what you are implying?

Originally posted by vistesd
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EDIT: Your 4. might be challenged within a historical context. For example, the revelation of YHVH was initially to a small tribal group and did not reach outside that group in any big way for millennia—and then only as, really, a new religious viewpoint that enabled that. Today’s tribal religion may be discovered to be the next millennium’s major religion...[/b]

Yes, I thought about this as I was writing it. However, there are many evidences that at its roots the Jewish religion had evangelical intentions in terms of reaching out to the entire world rather than just a tribe of people who were the Hebrews. An example is the Torah stating that through Abraham all the nations of the world will be blessed. The focus here is not simply the Jewish people even though they may have been the first. My theological view is that God began a work. He began with a man who then gave birth to a nation who then gave birth to the Messiah who then reached out to all of mankind. One must start somewhere and work out from there, no?

Originally posted by Nordlys
You forgot Baha'ism.

The Baha'i Faith.

Originally posted by DoctorScribbles
That's precisely why orangutan's solution is crap. You are a human being, in virtue of which you must navigate the world as it is represented in your set of beliefs. To the extent that you wish to survive, you cannot simply shed all of your beliefs as if they were burdens instead of essential assets. You should have known better.

pwnd

Originally posted by Varqa
The Baha'i Faith.

Sorry if I used a wrong word. Do Baha'i consider it offensive to call their faith "Baha'ism", and if so, why?

Originally posted by epiphinehas
What use would it be for anyone to attempt validating the bible to you, seeing how you are more than willing to validate a bowl of pudding? Even so, here is an offering:

The bible can be trusted as truth because its prophecies have been validated by history.

The prophetic book of Daniel, written in 600 B.C., accurately predicts the successive empi ames translation is actually the Meshiach Nagid,...

This is useful and I plan on reading Daniel closely at my earliest opportunity. However, it is my understanding that it is widely held that the book of Daniel was written in the 2nd century BC and not the 6th century as you attest.

I must admit to not being nearly conversant enough to challenge the historical accuracy of the Book of Daniel. I am curious as to how you are so able to throw such faith into the accuracy of this work. Are you a scholar of ancient history, have you done anything to support or validate your claim that Daniel was accurate? Are you ready to address the inaccuracies both in 6th descriptions of events and towards the rather abrupt end of the book? I would have to rely on the work of others to push back on you as I just don't have the knowledge to discuss it myself.

By the way, I would much rather read your own thoughts than your Ivanhoesque cut and paste jobs.

Originally posted by Nemesio
pwnd

Ha! You wouldn't know getting pwnd from a bowl of pudding.

Originally posted by Hand of Hecate
Ha! You wouldn't know getting pwnd from a bowl of pudding.

pwdding