Why Is There Belief in the Divinity of Jesus?

Originally posted by Conrau K
The Protestant "tradition", however, is at least minimalist (and I am talking about the standard, sola scriptura Protestants and not the likes of Bishop Spong). It restricts itself to a finite number of propositions; Catholics, and perhaps Orthodox churches*, are theoretically capable of an unlimited number, as councils or popes define new dogmas and add th ...[text shortened]... know all this; I'm just writing this because it often helps me to clarify my own position.

EDIT: Obviously you already know all this; I'm just writing this because it often helps me to clarify my own position.

Much, maybe most, of what I write on here is for that very purpose!

The other thing to consider with the Orthodox here is that whatever has not been “dogmatized” by a council is still technically open (e.g., ordination of women?). The Orthodox have not been as concerned, historically, as the Latin West to nail down doctrinal considerations as dogma (if I am putting that correctly); that has generally been reactive on their part—and, as you point out, was part of earlier councils. For example, Ivanhoe wrote some time back that the Magisterium was about to release a statement to the effect that a Catholic might hope that hell will ultimately be empty. The Orthodox need no such statement; I could be Orthodox and believe in ultimate universal salvation, or not. [Ordination of women: I suspect that would require a council, though... But it is not foreclosed.]

Originally posted by LemonJello
Woah, let's take this slowly because I want to be sure I understand what you are trying to say. You lost me quickly.

You started by claiming "Faith in God is equivalent to justification...." Then you go on to describe how by "faith in God" you mean a belief that God is benevolent, all-knowing, and love. So, it sounds like you are saying that the bel of epistemic justification? Is your faith justified? If so, how is it justified?

What I am conveying is my understanding of the Biblical view of God. I believe this Biblical view of God to be accurate and therefore I am conveying those beliefs as truth. I intermingled my reasoning as to why the Biblical teaching of faith in God equals justification is a Biblical teaching and true.

As far as epistemic justification for my belief in the Bible, I suppose you could frame me as a Foundatinoalist. In short, a belief is presumed to be true until defeating evidence appears. Also, such beliefs are self-justifying or self evident to me as being true.

I have evidences that the Bible is based in truth. For example, the Bible is a proven realiable source of history. However, are there any self defeating evidences that conflict with my view? Many would argue that there are, however, it is merely an arguement that cannot be proven. It is not enough evidence, in my opinion, to warrant my belief about the Bible to be invalid.

Additionally, and perhaps more importantly, many truths within the Bible appear self-evident to me. Specifically most teachings of Christ are indisputable in my opinion. They contain wisdom that can be logically argued as true.

Originally posted by whodey
What I am conveying is my understanding of the Biblical view of God. I believe this Biblical view of God to be accurate and therefore I am conveying those beliefs as truth. I intermingled my reasoning as to why the Biblical teaching of faith in God equals justification is a Biblical teaching and true.

As far as epistemic justification for my belief in th ...[text shortened]... hrist are indisputable in my opinion. They contain wisdom that can be logically argued as true.

As far as epistemic justification for my belief in the Bible, I suppose you could frame me as a Foundatinoalist. In short, a belief is presumed to be true until defeating evidence appears.

That's not what foundationalism holds. And I don't agree that the absence of defeating evidence should be the determining factor for justification. For instance, that potentially admits of justified beliefs for which there is absolutely no supporting evidence. Let's suppose one of your friends, for some strange reason, believes there is an invisible tree out on the horizon. Do you have good evidence at your disposal that defeats this belief? If not, do you thereby presume that his belief is true and justified? I think the main problem with your account of justification is that it doesn't make demands on evidence for our beliefs.

However, are there any self defeating evidences that conflict with my view?

Again, why should I think that defeating evidence is the lone thing we should be focusing on? If someone were to make some seemingly wild, outlandish claim about the world, you're telling me that you're just going to presume he is right until you can present good, defeating evidence? No. You're probably going to ask him what evidence he has for his seemingly outlandish claim. If he cannot provide any, then you're probably not going to give much credence to his claim.

Specifically most teachings of Christ are indisputable in my opinion.

So the parables and moral teachings of Jesus contain some wisdom. What's that got to do with whether or not your faith (which is, according to you, your belief in the existence of God as a benevolent, all-knowing, loving being) is justified?

EDIT: Also, whodey, suppose that for some proposition P there is no good evidence for it, and there is no good evidence against it (it's a case where a person should just suspend judgment on the topic). Now, there is no "defeating evidence" against P, but there is also no "defeating evidence" against not-P. Do you see a problem here? Under your account, we ought to presume that belief in P is true and justified; and we also ought to presume that belief in not-P is true and justified. 🙄😵

Originally posted by bbarr
It is a trivial matter to show that, as it stands, James' criterion for the acceptability of an epistemic principle is false. All that is required is a true proposition that is so conceptually complex it could not be held in thought by a creature with our finite conceptual capacities. I imagine that some logical theorems are like this; tautologous yet so lo
I'll respond to your question above in a bit, but I need to think about it carefully first.

I may be irremediably conceptually confused, but I'm pretty sure that James was talking about religious belief in that statement, rather than the nomological classes of truth which you've described.

Judge for yourself. Here is a larger excerpt from James' The Will to Believe:

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"...We feel, too, as if the appeal of religion to us were made to our own active good-will, as if evidence might be forever withheld from us unless we met the hypothesis half-way. To take a trivial illustration: just as a man who in a company of gentlemen made no advances, asked a warrant for every concession, and believed no one's word without proof, would cut himself off by such churlishness from all the social rewards that a more trusting spirit would earn,--so here, one who should shut himself up in snarling logicality and try to make the gods extort his recognition willy-nilly, or not get it at all, might cut himself off forever from his only opportunity of making the gods' acquaintance. This feeling, forced on us we know not whence, that by obstinately believing that there are gods (although not to do so would be so easy both for our logic and our life) we are doing the universe the deepest service we can, seems part of the living essence of the religious hypothesis. If the hypothesis were true in all its parts, including this one, then pure intellectualism, with its veto on our making willing advances, would be an absurdity; and some participation of our sympathetic nature would be logically required. I, therefore, for one, cannot see my way to accepting the agnostic rules for truth-seeking, or wilfully agree to keep my willing nature out of the game. I cannot do so for this plain reason, that a rule of thinking which would absolutely prevent me from acknowledging certain kinds of truth if those kinds of truth were really there, would be an irrational rule. That for me is the long and short of the formal logic of the situation, no matter what the kinds of truth might materially be.

"I confess I do not see how this logic can be escaped. But sad experience makes me fear that some of you may still shrink from radically saying with me, in abstracto, that we have the right to believe at our own risk any hypothesis that is live enough to tempt our will. I suspect, however, that if this is so, it is because you have got away from the abstract logical point of view altogether, and are thinking (perhaps without realizing it) of some particular religious hypothesis which for you is dead. The freedom to ' believe what we will ' you apply to the case of some patent superstition; and the faith you think of is the faith defined by the schoolboy when he said, " Faith is when you believe something that you know ain't true." I can only repeat that this is misapprehension. In concreto, the freedom to believe can only cover living options which the intellect of the individual cannot by itself resolve; and living options never seem absurdities to him who has them to consider. When I look at the religious question as it really puts itself to concrete men, and when I think of all the possibilities which both practically and theoretically it involves, then this command that we shall put a stopper on our heart, instincts, and courage, and wait-acting of course meanwhile more or less as if religion were not true [ Since belief is measured by action, he who forbids us to believe religion to be true, necessarily also forbids us to act as we should if we did believe it to be true. The whole defence of religious faith hinges upon action. If the action required or inspired by the religious hypothesis is in no way different from that dictated by the naturalistic hypothesis, then religious faith is a pure superfluity, better pruned away, and controversy about its legitimacy is a piece of idle trifling, unworthy of serious minds. I myself believe, of course, that the religious hypothesis gives to the world an expression which specifically determines our reactions, and makes them in a large part unlike what they might be on a purely naturalistic scheme of belief.] till doomsday, or till such time as our intellect and senses working together may have raked in evidence enough, --this command, I say, seems to me the queerest idol ever manufactured in the philosophic cave. Were we scholastic absolutists, there might be more excuse. If we had an infallible intellect with its objective certitudes, we might feel ourselves disloyal to such a perfect organ of knowledge in not trusting to it exclusively, in not waiting for its releasing word. But if we are empiricists [pragmatists], if we believe that no bell in us tolls to let us know for certain when truth is in our grasp, then it seems a piece of idle fantasticality to preach so solemnly our duty of waiting for the bell. Indeed we may wait if we will, --I hope you do not think that I am denying that, --but if we do so, we do so at our peril as much as if we believed. In either case we act, taking our life in our hands. No one of us ought to issue vetoes to the other, nor should we bandy words of abuse. We ought, on the contrary, delicately and profoundly to respect one another's mental freedom: then only shall we bring about the intellectual republic; then only shall we have that spirit of inner tolerance without which all our outer tolerance is soulless, and which is empiricism's glory; then only shall we live and let live, in speculative as well as in practical things."

http://falcon.jmu.edu/~omearawm/ph101willtobelieve.html

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Moderators: forgive the lengthy quote; I couldn't resist - so much of it is relevant to the discussion at hand.

Originally posted by epiphinehas
[b]I don’t think that’s the case. I think what bbarr was pointing out was that the word “faith” can be used in epistemically irresponsible ways

I concede every one of bbarr's points, and I don't think I've misunderstood him. Outside of his main point, i.e., it being an error to declare all instances of belief instances of faith, I'm pretty sure h ...[text shortened]... could be wrong about that; perhaps you might clarify yourself, bbarr, at least for my sake.[/b]

It is difficult for me to be clear about all this, primarily because I rarely use the term 'faith' and am typically unsure of the intended sense of the term when I hear it used by others. Further, there is a fine line between excavating and stipulating the sense of terms used colloquially. So, what follows is largely vague and exploratory, so please bear with me, and begins with natural language considerations. Now, many terms that refer to psychological states or properties are not used univocally. Think of all the ways the term 'faith' is commonly deployed in speech. Consider the following handful of examples:

1) S has faith that P.

This reads as though faith is a type of propositional attitude, similar in structure to belief, desire, fear, etc. in that faith is a stance one can take with respect to some proposition. I could believe that it will rain, desire or fear that it will rain, or have faith that it will rain. But the difficulty here is specifying the difference between faith and the other propositional attitudes. It seems clear, to me at least, that the claim 'S has faith that P' analytically entails the claim 'S believes that P'. It would certainly be strange for somebody to claim that he has faith it will rain while sincerely believing that it will not rain. Note that this is one reason it is so hard to understand just what Kierkegaard is getting at when he speaks of the psychology of the Knight of Faith. But it is also strange, though perhaps less so, to construe faith as wholly cognitive, unconnected to conative or affective states. Typically people do not claim to have faith that P when they simply do not care whether it is the case that P. Further, people typically claim to have faith that P only when that take some broadly pro-attitude towards P. It is natural to claim that one has faith that his friends will treat him well, but it sounds strange to claim that one has faith that his enemies will treat him viciously. But, if this is right, then faith is a mongrel state, much like optimism, possessing characteristics of both belief and desire. If faith is construed in this way, then there is no reason to think that faith, by its very nature, is epistemically irresponsible. Whether an instance of faith is epistemically responsible will depend on the evidence upon which it is partly based.

2) For S, P is an article of faith.

Unlike (1), this does not read as though faith is a propositional attitude, but like (1) it entails the claim 'S believes that P'. The term 'faith' here seems to demarcate a class of propositions constitutive of either an epistemic orientation or a normative worldview. If the former, these are the propositions that serve as epistemically basic and are taken to be non-inferentially justified (if one is a foundationalist of either the internalist or externalist variety), or those nearest the center of the web of belief and most insulated against revision urged by the tribunal of experience (if one is a holist or coherentist). If the later, these propositions are those that specify the deepest, most fundamental normative commitments one has; commitments that function as first principles, perhaps tacitly, in practical deliberation. Since, on this reading, 'faith' refers to classes of propositions specified by function within the cognitive and/or evaluative life of agents, rather than to propositions specified by either their content or evidential backing, it will be an open question whether any particular article of faith is epistemically irresponsibly held. Again, it will be the evidence that decides. Of course, settling disputes at this level will often be difficult, and the threat of begging the question in such disputes looms. In many cases the best we can do to settle disputes about the nature of epistemic justification or of the credentials of first-order moral judgments is to construct localized consistency arguments of the form "if you believe that, then you commit yourself to this implausible entailment", where we hope the implausibility of the entailment is evident to our interlocutor.

3) S takes P on faith.

Like (2), this usage of the term 'faith' is closely tied to issues of inference and deliberation, but unlike (2) this claim does not invariably entail the claim 'S believes that P'. I have heard this expression used to indicate that one has taken a proposition as a hypothetical posit; a provisional assumption for the purpose of guiding inquiry. Here, unlike the first two examples, the will is implicated in faith. Nothing in either (1) or (2) entails that S chooses to take any particular stance towards P. But here we have a use of 'faith' that seems to require choice. An agent must choose, perhaps in some limited manner, to deliberate and act as though P was the case. The term "leap of faith" is most clearly an example of this usage, but admonishments to have faith often take this sense as well, at least when they are not mere exhortations in the face of flagging confidence. Now, a case could be made that posits of this sort are epistemically irresponsible, since if one had sufficent evidence for P one would not need to posit P provisionally, and why treat the world as though P were true if there is insufficient evidence that P is true? But there is no guarantee that, for all P, the world is such that the truth or falsity of P is discoverable independently of treating the world as though P were true. Conditional proofs work this way in logic, after all. Further, since provisionally positing P does not commit one to the belief that P, it is always open to one who takes P on faith to cite pragmatic reasons for the positing.

More later...

Originally posted by whodey
So what you are looking for is material "proof" for an immaterial God? Do you see any problems with this?

Of course I can point to evidences such as the material appearance of Christ and his teachings, but I have no such proof as you well know.

The bulk of my evidence lies within the teachings of Christ, namely, loving your neighbor as yourself and eve ...[text shortened]... e in our lives and drive home the notion that this is ALL that matters in this material world!

…So what you are looking for is material "proof" for an immaterial God? Do you see any problems with this? ...

Yes! I do see a problem with that! And that is precisely the point! And that is precisely why I don’t believe there is a god!

…Of course I can point to evidences such as the material appearance of Christ and his teachings, but I have no such proof as you well know.

The bulk of my evidence lies within the teachings of Christ, namely, loving your ...

I do not disbelieve that there was once existed a preacher called Christ and he preached love etc. I didn’t in anyway say nor imply anything other than that so I am not asking you or anyone else for proof that there once existed a preacher called Christ.
I do disbelieve that there exist a “god”.

…Unfortunately, such concepts as love has little place in this material world. In fact, it does not exist in and of itself in the material world other than to clumsily describe it as a series of chemical reactions in the brain. ... (spelling corrected)

And yet my brain exists in the material world and is capable of having such states of the brain such as love, fear etc.

…As for burden of proof, I have no burden of proof because if God wanted us to have proof we would have it. Why would I lay upon my heart a burden that God did not see fit to address? In fact, many have had proof of his existence Biblically but it did little to sway them from rejecting him in the end, so what benefit has there been shown for proving his existence in the past to mankind? ...

All these questions presuppose the existence of a “god”. I claim there is no god. So the burden of proof still stands.

…In short, all I can do is point to the immaterial such as how we show love in our lives and drive home the notion that this is ALL that matters in this material world!...

I may agree with you here -but I show love without believing in an existence of a “god” -so why can’t you?

Originally posted by Conrau K
Obviously A and B are the same: for A, you have said, Z if and only if (X and Y); for B, you have just said the same thing but framed negatively: not Z if and only if (not X or not Y), where "or" is an inclusive disjunction. To observe they have the same truth values (given the values of X and Y) is rather trivial because they mean the same thing.

And y en of proof. There are numerous instances in which your criteria fail or have no answer.

…And you already know what I think of your criteria for deciding the burden of proof. There are times when, intuitively, the burden of proof will fall on people who deny obvious existential claims like "there is no president of the USA." … (syntax corrected)

If there was no evidence nor reason nor premise for believing “the existence of a president of the USA” then, the burden of proof would be on you to prove he exists. But, given the fact there is already strong evidence that he exists (from witnesses to his existence and the fact you and others saw him giving speeches on TV etc), obviously providing the proof has already inadvertently been done for us so the is no rational requirement to prove that he exists but, rather, given this actual evidence, the burden of proof is on the person that claims "there is no president of the USA." -so my criterion works just fine here.

…And many claims do not have existential import so obviously your criteria fails to satisfy a lot of situations, like if I said "All aliens eat mars bars". On whom does the burden of proof rest when such a statement is voiced? …

So what? My criterion is for existential propositions only and I did not say nor imply otherwise. To say “there is a god” is still an existential proposition and so my criterion still applies to that proposition.

…And, as I explained before re Santa, even though he does not exist, we often make descriptive statements about Santa - the fact that Santa is fat is not impaired by the fact that he does not exist. …

Again, so what? Again, my criterion is for existential propositions only and I did not say nor imply otherwise. If somebody says “Santa is fat”, because we implicitly assume that the person who says this doesn’t believe that there exists a Santa, we implicitly assume that that person is not implying the existential proposition “there exists a fat Santa”. Given that no existential propositions are implied when we talk about things that we assume everybody else believes are just mythology, my criterion simply doesn’t apply.

Originally posted by Andrew Hamilton
[b]…And you already know what I think of your criteria for deciding the burden of proof. There are times when, intuitively, the burden of proof will fall on people who deny obvious existential claims like "there is no president of the USA." … (syntax corrected)

If there was no evidence nor reason nor premise for believing “the existence of a p ...[text shortened]... t we assume everybody else believes are just mythology, my criterion simply doesn’t apply.[/b]

If there was no evidence nor reason nor premise for believing “the existence of a president of the USA” then, the burden of proof would be on you to prove he exists.

This is a significant jump from your prior claim that "The burden of proof is NOT on the person that refutes the claim of the existence of something X (such as the claim of the existence of a “god&ldquo😉, the burden of proof is on the person that supports the claim of the existence of something X."

To clarify: the burden of proof falls on a person who makes an existential claim of which there is insufficient evidence and on a person who denies an existential claim for which there is sufficient evidence. Is this your criteria for the burden of proof?

Originally posted by vistesd
[b]EDIT: Obviously you already know all this; I'm just writing this because it often helps me to clarify my own position.

Much, maybe most, of what I write on here is for that very purpose!

The other thing to consider with the Orthodox here is that whatever has not been “dogmatized” by a council is still technically open (e.g., ordination of wom ...[text shortened]... nation of women: I suspect that would require a council, though... But it is not foreclosed.][/b]

The issue of women priests is probably an area when the notion of tradition becomes even more complicated. The prominent argument in the RCC against women priests is that it contradicts sensus fidelium (the sense of the faithful) which has continuously denied the validity of female orders. The argument holds that the consistency of the Catholics, and particularly Catholic theologians and the doctors of the church, against the notion of female ordination constitutes in itself a part of the sacred tradition. There are other arguments against female priests (the nutpial theology of the priesthood and the selection of male apostles) but these are not regarded as insuperable theological barriers, whereas the other does (probably). I do not know if Orthodox churches have this either.

I agree the RCC has a tendency to dogmatise, whereas the Orthodox is more open - although, given the headstrong rejection of the filioque clause, there are obviously limits to their doctrinal flexibility.

Originally posted by Conrau K
[b]If there was no evidence nor reason nor premise for believing “the existence of a president of the USA” then, the burden of proof would be on you to prove he exists.

This is a significant jump from your prior claim that "The burden of proof is NOT on the person that refutes the claim of the existence of something X (such as the claim of the exist l claim for which there is sufficient evidence. Is this your criteria for the burden of proof?[/b]

…This is a significant jump from your prior claim that "The burden of proof is NOT on the person that refutes the claim of the existence of something X (such as the claim of the existence of a “god&ldquo😉, the burden of proof is on the person that supports the claim of the existence of something X."…

No. It isn’t a “significant jump from my prior claim” -it is implicitly the same claim.
Obviously, I consider it implicit from my previous claim that if the proof is already there for the existence of X, then obviously there will cease to be a burden of proof for the claim that X exists because the proof is already there! That is because this is simply self-evident. I never implied otherwise.

…To clarify: the burden of proof falls on a person who makes an existential claim of which there is insufficient evidence and on a person who denies an existential claim for which there is sufficient evidence. Is this your criteria for the burden of proof?…

Correct-

-except I noted that you use the word “criteria” and not “criterion” in the above statement which makes me slightly suspicious you may have slightly misunderstood what I am saying. Obviously “criteria” is a whole SET of “criterions” to base a judgement on something. But I am only making use of one single “criterion” here. Just to make sure there is absolutely no misunderstanding here: the criterion I use has and is supposed to have very limited scope for application (mainly because it applies only to existential propositions) and it is NOT to be confused with a general “criteria” for all propositions regardless of whether or not they are existential. I do not claim that this particular criterion can be extended to non-existential claims nor it is not supposed to and nor can it.

Originally posted by LemonJello
That's not what foundationalism holds. And I don't agree that the absence of defeating evidence should be the determining factor for justification. For instance, that potentially admits of justified beliefs for which there is absolutely no supporting evidence. Let's suppose one of your friends, for some strange reason, believes there is an invisible tree ...[text shortened]... our account of justification is that it doesn't make demands on evidence for our beliefs.

Sorry, you know I am not as trained in this epistemology stuff as you kids are. All I have is a brief exposure to it all. Perhaps my angle is completly off the epistemology charts? I know, lets come up with a completly new theory in epistemology and we will call it the whodey theory. 😀

So here it goes. We will use your example of the friend in question, who sees an invisible tree on the horizen. The mere fact that my friend claims to see a tree is evidence that perhaps something is there, however, is it enough evidence for me to believe that it is there? My response is, probably not. To my knowledge, trees are apart of the material world and only function in a material world and this bit of knowledge is new and foriegn to me. I would then ask for evidence regarding the invisible tree. If no such evidence could be provided, then my skeptism would increase regarding the evidence provided. As for my beliefs of an invisible God, however, there is more evidence other than peoples personal testimonies that what I believe is true. I could share them if you like but I think we have discussed most of them in times past. Perhaps these evidences are not proof, however, they are eought to sway me to believe what I believe.

Now getting back to personal testimonies, if everyone I met came to me and claimed that the invisible tree existed, I would probably begin to question my own skeptism and perhaps begin to believe that it is actually there. Again, the more testimony I get from people believing the tree existed, the more evidence supports its existence. Additionally, suppose I had been taught since birth that the invisible tree existed and had no one even questioning this belief? This would add to the likelyhood that I would believe that it existed. This type of thinking is in line with the Biblical claim that faith comes by hearing. Doubt only comes from dissenting voices even if you are the first, however, to be the first would be to go against the grain which means there is probably less of a chance you will challenge this belief. If you were the only one making the claim that the tree did not exist, you would have to come to one or two conclusions which is either something is wrong with your conclusion or something is wrong with everyone elses conclusion. However, to go against what everyone else believes takes a great deal of courage and a detemination that you know without a doubt what the truth actually is. This is part of why the testimony of Christ is so appealing to me. He went against the grain and spoke against many commonly held beliefs of his time. In fact, he paid for it with his life. My conclusion then, is that he had to have had enough motive to go against the grain to act in such a way. So what was his motive? Was it money, was it power, was it sheer lunacy? Studying his life and his teachings, I would have to rule out all three, rather, his motive seems to have been stading up for what he considered to be truth. In addition, his teachings appeal to me on a level that provides additional evidence that the man knew what he was talking about. It is like you knew the truth about something all along but had never been able to formulate the words or even thoughts to know this truth. Then when you hear it, it is like a light bulb going off inside you and it stays on. In fact, I am sure you have had similar experiences about other "truths" in your life.

Originally posted by LemonJello

Again, why should I think that defeating evidence is the lone thing we should be focusing on? If someone were to make some seemingly wild, outlandish claim about the world, you're telling me that you're just going to presume he is right until you can present good, defeating evidence? No. You're probably going to ask him what evidence he has for his seem ...[text shortened]... m. If he cannot provide any, then you're probably not going to give much credence to his claim.

Do you think that the teaching that there is a God is an outlandish claim? In fact, if it were the case, why is it that most people seem to believe in a God? Now using your epistemology skills, how do you explain this discrepency? Conversly, how many people believe in invisible trees? Do you not think there is much more logic/evidince behind the belief in an invisible God than an invisible tree?

Originally posted by Andrew Hamilton
I may agree with you here -but I show love without believing in an existence of a “god” -so why can’t you?[/b]

And that is the 64 dollar question. Why can't mankind show love for his fellow mankind in a consistent manner? You know this world is a messed up place right? That is why Christ came and he has made me be more consistent with my showing love for others.

Originally posted by Andrew Hamilton
I do not disbelieve that there was once existed a preacher called Christ and he preached love etc. I didn’t in anyway say nor imply anything other than that so I am not asking you or anyone else for proof that there once existed a preacher called Christ.
I do disbelieve that there exist a “god”.

Well of course you are entitled to your beliefs, however, what of other sources such as the Jewish scribe Josephus who wrote of him even though he was never a follower? He had no motivation for saying that he existed as did his followers. It then seems to me that my belief that he existed is supported by more evidence than your claim that he never existed.

Originally posted by whodey
Well of course you are entitled to your beliefs, however, what of other sources such as the Jewish scribe Josephus who wrote of him even though he was never a follower? He had no motivation for saying that he existed as did his followers. It then seems to me that my belief that he existed is supported by more evidence than your claim that he never existed.

I think you still misunderstand be because I messed up my grammar because I was using too many double negatives for which I apologise 🙂

I was saying that I DO believe that there once existed a preacher called Christ!
My fault for using such confusing grammar but you should be able to work out that this is what I was in fact saying if you read what I said very carefully.

I never would claim that he never existed! that is what I was trying to say all the long but not doing a very good job of it.