What is Faith?

My definition of faith:

Faith is accepting as truth that for which there is no sufficiently compelling evidence
Faith is accepting as fact that for which there is no ultimate proof
Faith is believing without seeing
Faith is trusting without good reason

Whenever I share my definition of faith with a Christian it is automatically, and with a high haughtiness, dismissed
And in it's place, the Christian asserts that faith is:

"confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see"

Can somebody please explain to me how my definition of faith differs from the biblical definition?

How does having 'confidence in what one hopes for'
differ from
'accepting as truth that for which there is no sufficient evidence'?

How does an 'assurance about what we do not see'
differ from
an 'acceptance as fact minus ultimate proof'?
We must here make a clear distinction between belief and faith, because, in general practice, belief has come to mean a state of mind which is almost the opposite of faith. Belief, as I use the word here, is the insistence that the truth is what one would “lief” or wish it to be. The believer will open his mind to the truth on the condition that it fits in with his preconceived ideas and wishes. Faith, on the other hand, is an unreserved opening of the mind to the truth, whatever it may turn out to be. Faith has no preconceptions; it is a plunge into the unknown. Belief clings, but faith lets go. In this sense of the word, faith is the essential virtue of science, and likewise of any religion that is not self-deception.

The quote above is from Alan Watts. I agree 100% with it.
 
But I'm not responsible either, remember?
I have no choice but to want to punish them.

1. It would also be self-evident to people without free will.
Swing-and-a-miss.

2. Calling a thing self-evident (and even that, you hedged with "may") is often code for

"It's obvious to me, but I can't show it."

To paraphrase Daniel Kaffee, I doesn't matter what you declare to be self-evident.
It only matters what you can prove.

Knowledge is justified true belief.

You are missing at least one of these, when it comes to free will.
Two, I would argue.

And if we don't have free will, our experience means absolutely nothing, because it's not free.

So - how do you prove that our experience does mean anything...
without circularly appealing to our experience, that is.
Beisdes being intuitively true, there is also evidence that we have free will. There is strong evidence that our minds are not tied to cause and effect determinism, ie the physical or naturalism. Therefore, we have free will.
 
Yes, but not of their own free will.
But the point you were trying to make was that you'd be wasting your time, and you would not.
Yes, you would because they would not be responding to the content of your argument. They would just be responding to an irrational stimulus.
El Cid said:
Irrelevant if all those things are imposed on someone who was not responsible for doing anything wrong. How can someone without a free will be affected by deterrence?
See directly above. Exactly for that same reason. Just because there might not be free will doesn't mean people are affected by outside events. A cue ball has no free will but is affected when the cue hits it.
Yes, but my point was they would not be responding to the content of your argument or evidence you present, they would just responding to an irrational stimulus like a cue hitting a cue ball.
El Cid said:
All moral actions have to be freely chosen, there are meaningless if they are predetermined.
A moral action is merely some actions we decide to group together because they share some characteristics and we slap a label on them. This is going to wind up to be merely a semantic point. OK, don't call some actions moral, call them schmoral. We'd still have laws, mothers will still love their children, parents would still want to raise their children a certain way, etc.
But the content of the laws would be meaningless. See above we would all just be stimulus robots or unreasoning animals. Just responding unthinkingly to stimuli.

El Cid said:
And science requires the weighing of evidence and logical reasoning. If your conclusions are predetermined then such things cannot occur.
Why can such things not occur?
See above.
 
Yes, you would because they would not be responding to the content of your argument. They would just be responding to an irrational stimulus.

Yes, but my point was they would not be responding to the content of your argument or evidence you present, they would just responding to an irrational stimulus like a cue hitting a cue ball.

But the content of the laws would be meaningless. See above we would all just be stimulus robots or unreasoning animals. Just responding unthinkingly to stimuli.


See above.
All of your points above are not arguments that a lack of free will is impossible, they are arguments that we are autonomons if there is no free will. For instance, whether the response is to the content or it’s just an automatic response, the response still happens because of the stimulus, so it still makes sense to do the stimulus.
 
If a Christian prays for their headache to go away, and it goes away, did Yahweh grant the prayer?
Prove it.
I already pretty much proved He exists, if He exists then He is the only Creator God you are praying to.
El Cid said:
No, Yahweh did. Allah does not exist.
Yahweh grants prayers to other gods?
Yes, sometimes. Yahweh is a merciful God.
Why be Christian, then?
So you can have a relationship with the King and Creator of the Universe and live in His presence forever.
El Cid said:
Yes, He determines if the drug will work.
Prove it.
See above.
 
All of your points above are not arguments that a lack of free will is impossible, they are arguments that we are autonomons if there is no free will. For instance, whether the response is to the content or it’s just an automatic response, the response still happens because of the stimulus, so it still makes sense to do the stimulus.
Also, the determinist is not saying "nobody responds to the content of what is said to them," they are saying "when people respond to the content of what is said to them, that response is caused rather than uncaused, and is part of an unbroken chain of causes and effects."
 
At one time, the laws of physics could not describe lightning.

Was lightning supernatural?
Most of the time scientific conclusions are tentative depending on what we are studying. I am not saying you should completely reject that over time we may change to a non-supernatural event. So it was with lightning.
 
You said we need to explore the events to determine if they are supernatural. But two of my examples of supernatural events occurred in the deep past. The BB and the resurrection of Christ. How do you explore events in the deep past?
With the same principles you determine the factual situation about anything, it's just a bit more difficult. But you still don't draw a conclusion unless the evidence is sufficient to make that conclusion.
What principles do you use for a one time event in the deep past? You can draw tentative conclusions. This is similar to my black hole example. They tentatively decided it probably was a black hole and then later it is confirmed. You can tentatively say that it is probably a supernatural event, then later it may confirmed or not.
El Cid said:
But the problem is that mainstream science has a philosophical bias against the possibility of the supernatural.
You're using the ostensible fact of a philosophical bias from science as a reason for a more favorable evaluation of the possibility of the supernatural. So when I say that you have to now support your claim that science has this bias, please don't offer as evidence the current position of science that there is no supernatural, as that would be circular reasoning (science doesn't accept the supernatural because they have a bias, and they have a bias because they don't accept the supernatural).

Do you have any evidence of some bias in mainstream science against the supernatural? It will have to be pretty widespread, by definition (of "mainstream" science).
Actually science cannot do anything, it is mainstream scientists in mainstream academia that have the bias. The book I reference below provides many examples throughout America where scientists that believe in the supernatural origin of life have gotten fired or punished for their conclusions about the origin of life.
El Cid said:
Read Jerry Bergman's book "Silencing the Darwin Skeptics". It applies to cosmology as well.
I'm here for conversation. If you'd like to talk about what's in that book, that would be great. Otherwise, we won't be able to talk about it.
See above.
El Cid said:
The astrophysicist Sara Seager says that we often have phenomena that remain unexplained. That is the career protective way of saying that it could be laws of physics violating, ie supernatural.
Again, you've put forward another claim - that unexplained phenomenon are merely a way to protect careers - that you will have to support and not just say it is so, and do so in a way that isn't circular. I await the non-circular evidence you present to support your claim.
I cant prove it, but I have a hunch that is what she was doing. Of course, she is unlikely to say that it is supernatural for the reasons I stated above.

El Cid said:
That is not what most scientists say.
If you have something from scientists in general that says that something merely "appearing" to be the case, as distinct from actually being evidence that supports some claim, is evidence we can throw on the pile to conclude that X is the case, please present it. Otherwise, basic logic and definitions of words argues otherwise. Things that appear to be the case can easily not be the case, and how could science work if they accepted "appear" to be?
Because conclusions in science are often tentative as I stated above.
El Cid said:
I agree we dont have a confirmed conclusion, but it is evidence.
Sure, it's evidence, but not enough evidence to reach a conclusion about the UFO, so the "U" in UFO remains.
Scientists could easily make a tentative conclusion that it is supernatural but they wont for the reasons provided above.
 
What principles do you use for a one time event in the deep past? You can draw tentative conclusions. This is similar to my black hole example. They tentatively decided it probably was a black hole and then later it is confirmed. You can tentatively say that it is probably a supernatural event, then later it may confirmed or not.

Because conclusions in science are often tentative as I stated above.

“A tentative conclusion” means nothing. What actually matters is whether we have a conclusion that is confirmed and accepted, or not. A tentative conclusion is merely the latter, one that has not been accepted nor confirmed.

Science is nowhere near concluding that the supernatural is real.

Actually science cannot do anything, it is mainstream scientists in mainstream academia that have the bias. The book I reference below provides many examples throughout America where scientists that believe in the supernatural origin of life have gotten fired or punished for their conclusions about the origin of life.
Can you bring up the single best example from that book of someone getting fired? Then we can have a conversation about it.

You’ve already read that book, so you are capable of bringing any information you think is relevant from the book into this conversattion. If you will begin the discussion, I can decide for myself whether I need to read that book in order to hold up my end of the conversation.

Also, there’s nothing wrong with a scientist getting fired necessarily. It’s *why* they got fired, but without a specific example, we can’t really get into it.

And, what looks like bias to someone getting fired may well be proper reasons, but, again, it’s impossible to dig into that without you bringing up a specific example you want to talk about.

I cant prove it, but I have a hunch that is what she was doing. Of course, she is unlikely to say that it is supernatural for the reasons I stated above.
A mere hunch gets us nowhere. I have a hunch that you’re wrong, so now what? We’re at a stand-off because it’s my hunch versus yours. That’s why hunches don’t really mean anything. We need evidence and logic.

Scientists could easily make a tentative conclusion that it is supernatural but they wont for the reasons provided above.
That’s the claim you keep in making but you still haven’t provided any support for it. You might mention reasons why scientists do that, but there is still no empirical evidence that scientists are doing what they do for those reasons.
 
Unless Hengels evidence is stronger than the evidence of the contrary scholars.
You aren't offering that evidence, though; you're only offering the name, "Hengel."
Hengel is an expert in how books were distributed in the ancient world. He cites how Tertullian criticized Marcion for publishing his gospel without a title. He says "a work ought not be recognized which holds not its head erect...which gives no promise of credibility from the fullness of its title and the just profession of its author." Hengel argues that as soon as any two gospels were publically read in any one church, a phenomenon that occured no later than 100 AD it would have been necessary for them to be distinguished by some type of title. The unanimity of the attributions in the second century cannot be explained by anything other than the assumption that the titles were part of the works from the beginning.
El Cid said:
Most scholars believe it probably is the gospel.
IOW most scholars believe that the quotation from a 3rd century church father, in which Papias says a couple of sentences about Matthew, is probably an accurate account of what Papias probably wrote in the early 2nd century, and that Papias probably was expressing belief that the disciple Matthew wrote the gospel. On this rock you will build your church?
No, see more evidence above and there is other evidence I have not mentioned.
El Cid said:
No, we have the most important early Christian documents, almost all of which were written around 70 AD or earlier.
No, we have the most important early Christian documents that have survived. (In fact we have all the early Christian documents that have survived, both the important ones and the unimportant ones.) But you don't know what documents have been lost, and neither does anybody else. Given that fact, you can't possibly know what was known, assumed or guessed at about the disciple Matthew.
We have enough to see the big picture just as evolutionists believe that we have enough fossils to see the big picture of evolution even though many thousands of fossils are missing. So there is no evidence that Matthew was one of the more prominent disciples in the first century.
El Cid said:
Matthew was one of the more obscure disciples, not even as well known as Phillip or James. It is much more likely that if they were just making up an author they would have attached one of their names to it.
There is no historical law to the effect that people only attach celebrated names to pseudonymous texts.
Yes, but most textual scholars agree that ancient documents were primarily attached to the most prominent personages.
I offered you one possible reason why they might have used Matthew's name, which you don't address.
Just because it records he was a tax collector that converted, does not make him prominent enough.
And -- again -- we don't know what other possible reasons could have existed, because we know very little about who was saying what about which disciple in that time frame.
We dont know for certain, but the above are logical assumptions given what we know about first century documents.
El Cid said:
No, Paul claims he saw Jesus in the flesh in I Corinthians 15 and he was referring to this incident.
No he doesn't. He says Christ "appeared to me." He absolutely does not say "in the flesh." In the same chapter he goes on at length about how the resurrected body will not be "a natural body" but "a spiritual body." (1 Cor 15:44)
No, he quotes the creed as saying Jesus was buried, a non-physical body would not be buried. And there are multiple other places in Pauls writings where he plainly implies that the resurrected Jesus had a physical body.
El Cid said:
And since visions are subjective, the men with him would not have heard his voice, but they did, confirming this was not a vision but an actual bodily appearance.
Yes, if everything in the Bible is true, then everything in the Bible is true.
No, you dont have to believe in total biblical inerrancy to accept this passage.
El Cid said:
No, scholars recognize that the language is very different from Pauls and uses older terms, thereby confirming that Paul didn't write it.
ME: Paul says that somebody said that he appeared to those others.
YOU: No, in fact Paul gives a quote in which somebody said that he appeared to those others.

If Paul is accurately quoting an older creed, he's still quoting what somebody said. It's still correct to say that "Paul says that somebody said that Jesus appeared to those others." It's still hearsay. It's still not strong evidence.
Most of history is hearsay.
El Cid said:
Actually I basically agree with your link, it says basically what I am saying. If scholars can plainly recognize that a text that is much older and written very differently from the writer who quoted it, then it plainly is an independent source.
That link says, very explicitly, that if Person A is getting his account from Person B, then these are not two independent sources. You can call the anonymous author(s) of the older creed the source for the story of Christ's appearance to the 500, or you can call Paul the source. You simply cannot call them both "independent sources."
Not only are they two different authors separated by time and belief, they are referring to two different events. How can that NOT be two independent sources?
 
Hengel is an expert in how books were distributed in the ancient world. He cites how Tertullian criticized Marcion for publishing his gospel without a title. He says "a work ought not be recognized which holds not its head erect...which gives no promise of credibility from the fullness of its title and the just profession of its author."
Tertullian was writing around 180-220 A.D. His attitude was not necessarily the attitude of Christians a hundred years earlier.

Hengel argues that as soon as any two gospels were publically read in any one church, a phenomenon that occured no later than 100 AD
OK; I don't know nearly enough to dispute that, anyway.

it would have been necessary for them to be distinguished by some type of title.
Reasonable conclusion, in my (mostly ignorant) opinion.

The unanimity of the attributions in the second century cannot be explained by anything other than the assumption that the titles were part of the works from the beginning.
No, they can also be explained by the assumption that the names first hopefully/erroneously assigned to them were accepted by the community without a great deal of skeptical examination, along the lines of "I've heard someone say that this was by Matthew" --> "We're pretty certain this was by Matthew" --> "It's the Gospel According to Matthew." Maybe skipping the middle stage, if somebody with enough prestige in the community started calling it "The Gospel According to Matthew."

We have enough to see the big picture just as evolutionists believe that we have enough fossils to see the big picture of evolution even though many thousands of fossils are missing. So there is no evidence that Matthew was one of the more prominent disciples in the first century.

Yes, but most textual scholars agree that ancient documents were primarily attached to the most prominent personages.
I didn't say that Matthew was a prominent disciple, or that further documents might tell us that he was actually very prominent. I said that we know essentially nothing about him, but that people in the middle of the first century would be likely to know more -- whether or not they wrote that knowledge down -- and it could very well be that some of that knowledge could account for why his name was chosen as the author of "his" gospel, even if he didn't write it. Maybe he was known to be devoted to the topic of prophecy. Maybe he was known to be always talking about the Davidic lineage. Maybe he was known to be a note-taker. There are lots of things that could have been the case, which we'll never know.

And if your case is based on the proposition "the only reason Matthew's name could have been assigned was because he was the actual author," then I don't need to show that any of these alternative explanations are true. Rather, you need to show that they are all implausible. Really, even beyond that, you would need to make the case that there couldn't have been any other possible explanations which we just haven't thought of: because, again, we don't know the guy at all.

Crude parallel: let's suppose that a thousand or so years from now we have lost almost all of our knowledge of ancient Egypt, and a great deal of our knowledge of the 19th-21st centuries. But we know that the Pharaoh who is named by far the most often in scattered and fragmented allusions to ancient Egypt is King Tut. Somebody from the 30th century argues, "he must have been a massively important figure in Egyptian history, to dominate mentions like this." Of course he wasn't; he's famous because his was the only tomb recovered intact, and that this was a very celebrated event. But they don't know that, because they know hardly anything about these matters. They can make some guesses, and some of those guesses could be reasonable, but it would be crazy for them to think "we know The Answer."

Just because it records he was a tax collector that converted, does not make him prominent enough.
But I wasn't arguing that his being a tax collector made him prominent. I was arguing that his being a tax collector made him literate, and being literate might have made his name a good candidate for authorship even though he wasn't prominent.

No, he quotes the creed as saying Jesus was buried, a non-physical body would not be buried.
Being buried in a physical body does not imply being resurrected in a physical body.

And there are multiple other places in Pauls writings where he plainly implies that the resurrected Jesus had a physical body.
Examples? And even if Paul believed that the resurrected Jesus had a physical body, that does not mean he appeared to Paul in that body.

No, you dont have to believe in total biblical inerrancy to accept this passage.
And you don't have to accept it if you don't believe in inerrancy.

Most of history is hearsay.
The parts of history that are nothing but hearsay are exactly the parts we are and should be most skeptical about. And that's even leaving the supernatural elements aside.

Not only are they two different authors separated by time and belief, they are referring to two different events. How can that NOT be two independent sources?
OK, I think I understand you now. You mean one event (Jesus appearing to 500 at once) is attested to by one source, the anonymous source which is recited by Paul, while the second event (Jesus appearing to Paul) is attested to by a second source, Paul himself. Do I have that right?

If so, fine; there were people not long after the crucifixion who were claiming that Jesus had appeared to 500; and not too long after that, Paul claimed Jesus had appeared to him. I've never disputed either claim.
 
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If so, fine; there were people not long after the crucifixion who were claiming that Jesus had appeared to 500; and not too long after that, Paul claimed Jesus had appeared to him. I've never disputed either claim.
I meant, I don’t dispute that these people did in fact make those claims around that time. Obviously I dispute the truth of those claims.
 
But it is an obvious earlier source even before Paul converted.
All you are doing is restating something I've already stipulated to: there were Christians, soon after the crucifixion, who believed Christ had appeared to his followers.
Yes but according to historians "When an event or saying is attested by more than one independent source, there is a strong indication of historicity." This is one of the five criteria for historicity.
El Cid said:
And James is not anonymous
"The Epistle of James has been traditionally attributed to James the Just since 253, but, according to Dan McCartney, it is now common for scholars to disagree on its authorship." (Wikipedia)
I wasnt talking about the Epistle of James but there is evidence he wrote it. I was referring to him not being anonymous we know who he was from multiple sources including an extrabiblical source.
El Cid said:
and his existence and death for belief in the resurrection has been confirmed by extrabiblical sources.
What are you referring to? Josephus doesn't say he was killed for belief in the resurrection, he only says James was accused (maliciously) of "breaking the law." But let's say it's true that James died because he was an unrepentant believer in the resurrection. Therefore...?
The law that He broke is most likely blasphemy for believing in the divinity of Christ, and probably what convinced him was the resurrection.
You keep claiming there's a powerful case for the resurrection, but so far, all it seems to consist of is "there were people who believed in the resurrection."
See above about one of the criteria of historicity.
El Cid said:
Two were probably eyewitnesses
This, of course, is vigorously disputed.
Yes, but there is evidence for them being eyewitnesses nevertheless.
El Cid said:
and all four constitute independent sources
Matthew and Luke are not independent of Mark.
Just because they may have copied sections or used the same sources as Mark does not mean that they are not independent of Mark. They both have information that is not in Mark
El Cid said:
written relatively near the events that occurred.
Within a human lifetime, OK. And there are many, many things that have been written within days of the events that occurred which are still full of gross and palpable lies. You see this particularly often in war, but really in any endeavor in which partisan passions run high. "Written relatively near the events" obviously does not imply "credible."
This is another criterion of authenticity according to historians "The closer the time between the event and testimony about it, the more reliable the witness, since there is less time for exaggeration, and even legend to creep into the account".
El Cid said:
Not as hostile as Paul but he was a skeptic. If known skeptics become convinced of an event, that is strong evidence for that event. . . . It would take a great deal of evidence to convince a hostile and highly skeptical person like Paul. It would be similar to Richard Dawkins converting.
There have been people who were at first hostile to and highly skeptical of QAnon who became convinced that Hillary Clinton eats babies. People change and convert for many, many reasons besides the existence of strong evidence.
Yes, but the big difference is that none of the people that claimed Hillary eats babies were people that actually knew her and had no relationship to her. With the resurrection most of the people that saw Him after His death were friends and family members that knew Him well.
El Cid said:
And Historians have trusted events with much less evidence than there is for the resurrection.
Then perhaps historians were being too trusting about accounts of those events. Seriously, if you say "Player A got into the Hall of Fame with a poorer record than Player B," the conclusion might be "Player B should be in the HOF," or it could be "Player A never should have gotten in." This is indisputable, isn't it?

El Cid said:
No, there is evidence that they did believe in the bodily resurrected Christ.
There are accounts saying that they believed that. We know essentially nothing about most of them as individuals; they survive as mere names. We can't hope to know the process by which they came to their faith, so you simply can't conclude "the only reason they would have died for their faith is if they saw the bodily resurrected Christ."
No, there are accounts written by they themselves that state that they believed in His bodily resurrection. In addition, Generally people that believe in an afterlife are less afraid of death. This can be seen in the 60s when atheist protestors of Vietnam used to chant "Better Red than dead!". And very few of the greatest soldiers such as the Congressional Medal of Honor winners were atheists. And seeing the resurrected Christ would strengthened their belief in the afterlife greatly and would have made them more able to die for their faith.
 
Yes but according to historians "When an event or saying is attested by more than one independent source, there is a strong indication of historicity." This is one of the five criteria for historicity.
That's not "according to historians," it's according to a book called The Case for the Resurrection of Jesus by Gary Habermas and Michael Licona, or so says my Google search.

Even if this were the consensus of historians, secular as well as religious, what is the basis for believing that a historian who does follow these criteria would in fact be able to filter true historical accounts from false historical accounts? Has there been some kind of experiment in which historians who used the criteria succeeded, and those who ignored them failed? It's hard to imagine how that would work.

Common sense may indeed tell us that, all other things being equal, an event attested to by more than one independent source is more likely to have really happened than one attested to by only one source. That doesn't mean that some events couldn't be very, very unlikely, even with multiple sources. Miracles are intrinsically very unlikely events.

I wasnt talking about the Epistle of James but there is evidence he wrote it. I was referring to him not being anonymous we know who he was from multiple sources including an extrabiblical source.
There are multiple sources that say James the Just/James the brother of Jesus did exist. But I still don't understand what exactly you're saying about James as a "source" for the resurrection. If an anonymous person says "the resurrected Jesus appeared to James," that doesn't make James a source. The only source for the appearance to James is still the anonymous person who said it. Again, if I say "the following people -- Ann, Bob, Charlotte, Dennis, Ellen... Zelda -- saw me levitate the pyramids," that does not constitute twenty-six sources for my levitating the pyramid; the only source is me. (And of course I'm lying.)

The law that He broke is most likely blasphemy for believing in the divinity of Christ, and probably what convinced him was the resurrection.
Those claims need support.

Yes, but there is evidence for them being eyewitnesses nevertheless.
There have been many people on both sides of this, of course. They all claim to have the preponderance of evidence on their side. It's not a topic I pretend to any expertise on; all I can say is I haven't seen any evidence on the "pro" side which seems very powerful to me. Of course it's possible this is a function of that very lack of expertise, but I don't plan to take a degree in the topic. (And neither do I claim that I have very powerful evidence on the "con" side.)

Just because they may have copied sections or used the same sources as Mark does not mean that they are not independent of Mark. They both have information that is not in Mark
This is now a semantic argument about what the word "independent" means in this context, so I'll just agree with this summary: they both copied/used some sections from Mark (or from Mark's source) and each added material of their own.

This is another criterion of authenticity according to historians "The closer the time between the event and testimony about it, the more reliable the witness, since there is less time for exaggeration, and even legend to creep into the account".
Again, this is according to Habermas & Licona, not according to "historians," and again, I'd like to see how this criterion has been demonstrated to be valid in practice. I'd particularly like to see how Habermas/Licona, or any historian, has calculated a minimum time after the event in which exaggeration or invention becomes incredible. I've seen exaggerations/inventions about events which took less than 24 hours to circulate. See, for example, the "Ghost of Kyiv." (Again, this is especially true about war, but also about any events in which one side or other is passionately invested.)

Yes, but the big difference is that none of the people that claimed Hillary eats babies were people that actually knew her and had no relationship to her. With the resurrection most of the people that saw Him after His death were friends and family members that knew Him well.
The analogy just illustrates the general point that people can be persuaded of the truth of mind-boggling claims, for reasons other than there being strong empirical evidence for them. Are you saying it's plausible that people can believe in mind-boggling horrors about those they don't know, but it is not plausible that people can believe in mind-boggling miracles about those they know and revere? Because I see no reason to think the latter case is much less likely than the former.

No, there are accounts written by they themselves that state that they believed in His bodily resurrection.
What are you referring to? There's an account in Luke about Thomas coming to believe in the bodily resurrection when he touched the wounds of the risen Christ. But that is not "an account written by Thomas himself," obviously.

In addition, Generally people that believe in an afterlife are less afraid of death.
This is just completely irrelevant to the claim that the afterlife exists, let alone that Jesus was resurrected. Generally, people who believe their children are the most perfectly beautiful babies in the world are less likely to neglect them, but by definition all but one of them must be wrong. (Sometimes, very, very wrong, in my experience.)

This can be seen in the 60s when atheist protestors of Vietnam used to chant "Better Red than dead!"
Which protests were these, where the chanting was only open to atheists? I'm actually old enough to remember the anti-Vietnam protests, and I don't remember any such chants, atheist-led or not. It's a phrase that sometimes came up in print, along with the flip side "better dead than red."

Anyway, the irrelevance of belief in the afterlife can be seen in the fact that my father, a lifelong atheist, volunteered for extremely hazardous duty in World War II.
 
Again, this is according to Habermas & Licona, not according to "historians," and again, I'd like to see how this criterion has been demonstrated to be valid in practice. I'd particularly like to see how Habermas/Licona, or any historian, has calculated a minimum time after the event in which exaggeration or invention becomes incredible. I've seen exaggerations/inventions about events which took less than 24 hours to circulate. See, for example, the "Ghost of Kyiv." (Again, this is especially true about war, but also about any events in which one side or other is passionately invested.)
This is true. I work for a large organisation where accurate information is important. Things often veer from accurate to inaccurate with just one person between me and the source of the information.
 
This is true. I work for a large organisation where accurate information is important. Things often veer from accurate to inaccurate with just one person between me and the source of the information.
The interesting thing is that someone put that book in your hands and you have to trust it by the nature of what it is.

If that is the word of God, and He exists to say it, then He can be held to the promises made in it in the way you received it. That the way to truth and life being handed down to you as God intended.

It's all up to you. Nobody can force your hand nor argue you into it. As you know it would need to be God proving something to you because Lord knows you haven't found it elsewhere.
 
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