Is faith a reliable method for determining truth?

[bluegreenearth]

For example:

Hebrews 11:3

3 By faith we understand that the universe was formed at Gods command, so that what is seen was not made out of what was visible.

There are numerous verses following the one above that equally proclaim, "By faith," something is understood or known to be true. Therefore, in this context, "faith" is being encouraged for use as an epistemology. How does "faith" function to reliably distinguish true claims from false claims or does it fail in that regard? What would demonstrate to the satisfaction of the Christian community that "faith" is not a reliable tool for discovering what is true or false?

[Realworldjack]

[Replying to post 146 by brunumb]

No, that is not the case at all. Doubt is the default position and you have the burden of proof for your claims.

You are very incorrect, I'm afraid. Because I have not made a claim which I cannot demonstrate to be true.

It is not up to the one doubting your claims to demonstrate that they are false.

At this point, you need to give us a claim I have made which I cannot demonstrate?

It is not up to the one doubting your claims to demonstrate that they are false.

The thing here is, I am not insisting there would be no reasons to doubt the claims. However, there seem to be those here who are insisting, there would be no good reasons to believe the claims. So then, who owns the burden?

Moreover, I have supplied the fact that we do indeed have the claims. Of course, I am not suggesting this would be enough evidence to believe the claim, but my question is, what reason at this point, do I have to doubt the claim?

The point is, there is indeed a reason we have the claims, and having the claims, is in the very least a piece in the chain of evidence which must be dealt with. So then, the question is, why, and how did we get the claims?

You see, until, or unless you deal with this fact, we cannot possibly move on. Because you see, not only do we have the claim of a resurrection, we also have the reason given for the claim, and all I am hearing is, "we should doubt the claim", but I am not hearing any reasons given to doubt the claim, other than the opinion that my, "default position should be doubt".

But you see, my default position is not doubt, but rather skepticism, meaning I do not easily believe something which is reported, but I do not require absolute proof, in order to understand there very well may be good reasons to believe a report.

So again, we have the reports, and what I need is a reason why we have the reports, so that we can move on, in order to determine what all would have to be involved, in order for that scenario to even be a possibility?

I will also point out the fact, saying "we cannot know why we have the reports" is no reason to doubt the reports, because not knowing why we have the reports, does not cause the reports to be false, which means this would not be a cause for doubting the reports.

[Realworldjack]

I happen to believe the reason we have the claims, is because the claims would be true, and I have gone through every scenario I can think of, in order for the claims to be false, and everyone of them would end up being just as incredible, as the claims themselves.

Here's a 'scenario' for you:

Your claims rest on the New Testament wherein Paul wrote in his letter to the Romans who were murdering Christians:
Let every person be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God. Therefore whoever resists the authorities resists what God has appointed, and those who resist will incur judgment. For rulers are not a terror to good conduct, but to bad.

I'm sure victims of the holocaust had this passage in mind as they marched to the gas chamber.
Your claims have a poor foundation.

None of what is said here, would have a thing in the world to do with the evidence we have in support of the resurrection. Paul was arrested himself, and it is believed he died as a martyr, being beheaded.

This is all I have to say here, because I do not intend on allowing the topic to be derailed.

[Danmark]

I happen to believe the reason we have the claims, is because the claims would be true, and I have gone through every scenario I can think of, in order for the claims to be false, and everyone of them would end up being just as incredible, as the claims themselves.

Here's a 'scenario' for you:

Your claims rest on the New Testament wherein Paul wrote in his letter to the Romans who were murdering Christians:
Let every person be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God. Therefore whoever resists the authorities resists what God has appointed, and those who resist will incur judgment. For rulers are not a terror to good conduct, but to bad.

I'm sure victims of the holocaust had this passage in mind as they marched to the gas chamber.
Your claims have a poor foundation.

None of what is said here, would have a thing in the world to do with the evidence we have in support of the resurrection. Paul was arrested himself, and it is believed he died as a martyr, being beheaded.

This is all I have to say here, because I do not intend on allowing the topic to be derailed.

You err here in several ways. Paul is the cornerstone of Christianity and the resurrection. Paul is at best a very problematic witness. Not just because he uttered that absurd claim about leaders being appointed by God, not just because he denigrated women, but because from the beginning of his turn around from persecutor of Christians, his testimony comes only after he has been delirious for 3 days with nothing to eat or drink. He is the earliest of NT writers. Paul falls, along with your claims for supernatural 'evidence' for extraordinary claims that defy everything we know about reality.

[Danmark]

[Replying to post 146 by brunumb]

No, that is not the case at all. Doubt is the default position and you have the burden of proof for your claims.

You are very incorrect, I'm afraid. Because I have not made a claim which I cannot demonstrate to be true.

What a crock! Absolute baloney. You've demonstrated nothing, you simply make absurd claims to support your belief in the supernatural and your own religious bias. If you take personal revelation over science, you can believe anything. Totem worship in the South seas is every bit as valid as any of the hocus pocus of Abrahamic religions.
Your 'eyewitnesses' are either anonymous or delirious and generally rely on multiple hearsay.

[Realworldjack]

[Replying to post 148 by benchwarmer]

I would also like to chime in here and point out this is patently false. In fact, some of us have been repeatedly saying that this is ALL we have. i.e. the claims in the Bible.

Exactly! And as I have pointed out, simply saying, "all we have is claims in the Bible" is not dealing with the fact, and seems to ignore the fact that, none of the authors contained in the Bible, could have possibly known about any sort of Bible, and so they were not writing in order to be in the Bible, which means it is the authors who are making the claims, not the Bible.

Next, we have far more than "claims by these authors" because the overwhelming majority of what is contained in the NT, would not be claims at all, and as we read these things, we can ascertain a number of things about some of the authors themselves.

As an example, we can know beyond doubt that Paul would have been alive at the time of Jesus, and we can also know the author of the two letters to Theophilus would have been alive at the time of Jesus, because we can know this author traveled around with Paul, on his missionary journeys.

This means we can know, that both Paul, and the author of the two letters to Theophilus, would have known the apostles personally, also knowing the claims they were making first hand.

With this being the case, we can be confident that the majority of what is contained in the NT, would have been authored by those who would have been alive at the time, and known the claims being made first hand, and as we couple this with the fact that what two of the other Gospel writers have to say, would have been very closely aligned with what the author of the two letters to Theophilus had to say, and so we can now be confident that the overwhelming majority of the NT was either authored, and, or attested to, by those we know would have been alive at the time of the alleged events. The point is, we have far more than simply claims, made in the NT.

The point is: Yes, we have claims. Now what?

Exactly! And the point is, these claims must be dealt with, because it is not enough to say, "they are simply claims" as if this settles the issue? Rather, we need to go on and determine how, and why we have these claims, in order to determine what all would have to be involved in order for the claims to be false? It is not enough to simply tell folks, they should doubt the claims.

I will point out again, I have no problem with those who want to stop right here, and simply doubt the claims. The problem comes in, when there are those of us who are not satisfied with simply doubting the claims, and go on to examine all the facts, and evidence involved, in order to determine what all would have to be involved for the claims to be false, and then have those who are unwilling to examine all the facts, which is demonstrated by the fact they can say, "all we have is claims", and to then go on to insist, that I would have no good reasons to believe.

The next thing to address is are these claims disconnected such that any extraordinary claims within have some chance at unbiased corroboration. It appears, and you admitted, that these claims are indeed connected. i.e. these people either knew each other and/or were copying/adding to what the others had already written.

The first thing we need to keep in mind here is, there are those who argue that, "we cannot know who the authors were, nor when, or where they may have wrote", and if this is the case, then we cannot know if they may have been connected in any way, and simply because they wrote much the same things, would not demonstrate they must, and had to be connected, in any way whatsoever.

So then, if you are going to argue, all these authors were indeed connected in some sort of way, then it is up to you to demonstrate this to be the case, and as I have just said, "simply because they report much the same thing, would not demonstrate this".

As for me, I happened to believe the authors were indeed very much connected, in that they knew each other very well, and spent a lot of time together, and all of them would have known all the facts, so well, they would have had no need in copying the others. So then, I believe they all were indeed very connected, but this would have no bearing whatsoever on whether what they report would be true, or false, and I cannot for the life of me understand why this would be a reason to consider the reports to be, unlikely?

Connected and/or biased claims (i.e. to promote a religion) do not exactly hold a lot of sway.

It can be demonstrated, that the majority of what is contained in the NT, would have been addressed to those who would have already been believers. With this being the case, it very well could be the case, and probably is the case, that the whole of the NT letters were addressed to those who would have already believed. So then, how can these letters be said to promote a religion, when those being addressed, would have already believed?

No one here has said "thus these claims are false". We have simply pointed out that these types of claims don't make for 'good' evidence that they are true since they appear to be well connected.

It also "does not make for good evidence" that these would be reasons to doubt the claims. We should indeed be skeptical, (meaning we should not easily believe the claims), but I do not see how the authors being connected, should cause us to doubt (meaning to consider unlikely) the claims?

No one is arguing against this. You appear to be misunderstanding what people are saying.

Yes, we have claims. The very basic reason we have these claims is because someone wrote them down. The next logical questions to ask are who wrote them and why?

Well, we have a problem right away because most of the claims are anonymous. When anonymous people claim things, it's hard to ascertain their motivation or figure out if these people actually really knew anything or were just writing down what they heard/read from others.

The next issue is that these anonymous (for the most part) claims are also not even claiming to be first hand witnesses. So why did these claims get written down? Well, it appears they were just writing down what other people told them. This is hardly convincing stuff.

Again, none of this rules out the claims being true, but it certainly casts doubt on them being 'good' evidence for something we have no real world experience with. i.e. bodies that have been dead for a number of days spontaneously coming back to life, wandering around, then flying off into the sky.

The first thing here is the fact that, simply because an author does not identify themselves, is not any sort of evidence that the content would be false, and, or we should doubt the content.

Next, as far as the author of the two letters to Theophilus, these things would not be "hard to ascertain" at all. To begin with, this author tells his audience, exactly why he is writing these letters to him, and he goes on to tell his audience he had, "carefully investigated everything from the beginning", and when we go on to examine the facts, we can know this author would have been alive at the time, would have known the apostles, and the claims they were making, which means he would have been very capable of investigating the facts involved, because he would have been well acquainted, with those making the claims.

Classic strawman. No one here, that I've noticed, is claiming you have NO reason. YOU were the one claiming you have 'good' reasons. Your burden of proof or at least burden to back up with something.

And I have, by providing the fact that we have the claims, and I have at this point went on even further to demonstrate certain things we can know beyond doubt, by reading the information we have.

The problem is, no one is even attempting to deal with this fact, and simply saying these claims, "are only claims", is not dealing with the fact.

Strawman number 2. Who said they were lies?

You certainly love to throw out the "straw man" accusation, but it is not working out, because I clearly said these things would have been examples one could use. I never suggested anyone claimed this to be the case.

In other words, we all would have to agree that it is a fact we have the claims, and we would also have to all agree that there must, and has to be a reason why we have the claims, and simply acknowledging that we cannot be absolutely certain why we have the claims, would not in any way mean, there would not be reasons to believe that we have the claims, because the claims may in fact be true.

The point is, I am attempting to get someone to give us some sort of suggestion as to the reason we have the claims, in order to go through all that would have to be involved for that particular scenario to even be a possibility. Until, or unless we do this, I am giving reasons to support the claims, and we have no reason to doubt.

Strawman number 3

Thus far, we have no "straw men" because I made it very clear, these would be examples folks may use, and never suggested anyone was making the argument.

No on is saying the case is settled, we are asking you for the 'good reasons' to accept the only thing we have which are the claims. Strawman number 4?

So then, exactly what does it mean to say, "all we have is claims"? Next, I have not said, "we should accept the claims, but rather examine all the facts, and evidence involved. There is a difference between simply accepting a claim, as opposed to examining all the facts, and evidence involved in order to determine if there are good reasons to believe the claim.

Strawman number 5. Who has said you have NO good reasons to believe these claims?

My friend, do you see the word "if"? Do you also see the question mark at the end of the sentence? In other words, I am not saying, "since you are insisting I have not good reasons to believe the claims". But rather, "if you are insisting"? It's a question.

We are busy waiting for YOU to tell us these good reasons. So far all we have been presented are yet more claims.

What other claim have I presented, besides the fact that we have the claims?

What can we do to verify any of it?

Your problem here is the fact that I have never said anything about the claim being, verified, of proven, but have rather said we have facts, and evidence to support the claim, and one of those facts, is the fact that, we have the claims, and it would also be a fact that there is a reason we have the claims.

So then thus far, I have supplied the fact that we have the claim, which would be considered testimonial evidence, and I have also now at this point went on further to demonstrate that the overwhelming majority of the NT would have been authored, and, or attested to, by those who would have been alive at the time, would have known those making the claims personally, because they would have spent much time with those making the claims.

All I have received thus far in return is, "all we have is claims, the authors would have been connected, the authors wrote anonymously, and the claims cannot be verified", none of which would demonstrate the claims would be false, nor would it have a thing to do with a reason to consider the claims unlikely, and it would have nothing whatsoever to do with demonstrating there would be no reason to believe the claims.

Already dealt with. We have claims.

And here is the example. Acknowledging we have the claims, is not in any way dealing with the fact that we have the claims, because you are not dealing with the reason we have the claims, and telling me, "we cannot know exactly why we have the claims", is no reason for me to doubt that the reason we have the claims, may very well be the reason given by those who made the claims.

Granted, pointed out, and even researched.

Good! Now we are getting somewhere. So exactly what "research" have you done? And what did you ascertain from this "research"? This is exactly what I am looking for. So then, please tell us of the "research".

The claims we have are mostly anonymous

So, what about this, would give us any reason to consider the claims to be unlikely? Because you see, we need to keep in mind that the authors were writing to audiences at the time, and would have had no idea, nor any concern that any one else besides their original intended audience would have read these letters, and they certainly would have had no idea that there would be those of us some 2000 years later who may read them.

With this being the case, the authors may have seen no need in identifying themselves, since they would have known the audience personalty, and the audience would have known the author personally, and would have had no need for the author to identify themselves. I see nowhere where this would be a reason for doubt about the content.

written well after the events

Exactly how have you determined when these things were written? Next, what do you consider to be, "well after the event"?

Because you see, we can know the author of the two letters to Theophilus would have been alive at the time of the alleged events, and that this author did in fact travel around with Paul on his missionary journeys. This author ends his second letter to Theophilus with Paul being under arrest in Rome, which means that this author could not possibly have penned his second letter until after the arrest, and he tells Theophilus, this arrest lasted some 2 years. Moreover, we have direct evidence from the letters of Paul, that Luke was indeed with him on his journeys, and also that Luke would have been the only one with Paul, while under arrest.

So then, since we know the author could not have written his second letter, until the arrest of Paul in Rome, we know that this second letter could not have been written before, 60 AD, which would be some 30 years after the crucifixion. Knowing this would have been his second letter tells us the first letter would have had to have been written before this.

The question here is, what is the point? Would this have anything to do with the information being accurate? Because you see, it seems to me, that if we could know these letters were written any earlier than this, then this would be reason to doubt, because we would be getting information, before it happened.

and appear connected through textual analysis by scholars on both sides (religious and secular).

Which would have no bearing whatsoever with the information being true, or false. Let us simply imagine for a moment, that the authors are exactly the ones the letters are attributed to. If this is indeed the case, then we know for a fact that all the authors would have been very well connected. Moreover, we know for a fact that the author of the two letters to Theophilus and Paul would have been very well connected, because we know for a fact that they spent decades together. So then, what is it about this fact, that would cause me to consider the information to be, unlikely?

Because you see, the fact that they are connected sort of gives it more validity, because we can read, and compare the letters one may have written to one particular audience, with the letters of the other, to a completely different audience.

When we do this with the letters of Paul, and compare them to the two letters addressed to Theophilus, what we learn is, these two men did indeed spend decades together, and that Paul did indeed travel the known world at the time planting Churches, and that Paul eventually is arrested for what he is preaching, and continues to preach it anyway, and we can know from these letters, that both authors would have been alive at the time of the alleged event, would have known, and spent a good deal of time with those making the claims, and would have heard those claims, first hand.

I'm still looking for a reason to doubt here, and you are not helping me out, but rather are giving me all the more reason to understand there is every reason to believe.

We can even go read our own Bibles in multiple translations and/or original languages to compare for ourselves what we have.

Which we have just done, and it is not helping your case.

On top of that, by looking in our Bibles, we appear to have ALL the claims collected in one spot for easy reference.

This is correct, but it can be verified, demonstrated, and proven, that the authors would have had no idea at all, that this would ever occur. So I do not see a point here in the least?

What do you mean we've given you NO reason? I just gave a bunch of reasons to consider above and they have been given before in this very thread. It is granted that you may dismiss these reasons and consider them not an issue, but we have certainly provided some reasons to consider.

And we have just considered them all, and they are lacking very sadly, I'm afraid.

There has been a whole lot of back and forth in this thread and the sum total as far as I can tell is that we have the claims in the Bible. That's it.

As I have said, "if there are those who want to stop right there, and simply choose to doubt the claim on this basis, then I have no problem with that in the least". I am not condemning anyone, I am not insisting you go further, and I am not insisting you think, believe, and, or see things in the same way that I do, as far as these claims.

If there were some good corroborating claims from obviously disconnected sources or some sort of physical evidence to be examined, etc. it would have been proudly plonked down pages ago.

It seems to me, you are not looking for reasons, and evidence, but are rather looking for proof, when there is none to be found either way. In other words, I am not insisting at this point that the claims can be demonstrated to be true. However, the claims cannot be demonstrated to be false.

With this being the case, there are facts, and evidence which support the claims, and there very well may be reasons, to doubt the claims. You very well may have looked at the facts, and evidence, and they are not convincing to you, while I have looked at the facts, and evidence, and cannot for the life of me understand how all of these things could have been fabricated, in some sort of way.

You, and others here may have your default position as doubt, and I have no problem with that in the least, but please do not insist that I should think the same say. Because you see, my default position is not doubt, (meaning to consider unlikely). Rather, my default position is skepticism, (meaning not easily convinced).

This means, I have done all I can do to find a reason to doubt the claims, even considering all the ones which have been supplied here on this thread, and elsewhere, and they are just not working out for me.

As an example, for the life of me, I cannot understand how, the fact that the authors were mostly anonymous, and even if the things were recorded well after the events, (which I will be waiting for you to tell us how you have determined this to be a fact, along with how long, "well after" actually is), and that the authors may have been connected, would be any cause for, doubt, (meaning to consider unlikely)? I just don't see it?

One can only assume any following 'evidence' is going to simply assume the preceding claims must be true in order to continue.

I am not assuming the claims must be true. Rather, I am attempting to determine how in the world they could be false, by examining all the facts, and evidence, and you are not helping me in the least, but are rather giving me every reason to continue to hold the position I have.

[Don McIntosh]

I understand that this may be how you honestly feel about the concept of faith. But it's one thing to simply describe faith as conclusion-assuming, bias-confirming, and so on, and another to explain exactly why faith should be so described. In the absence of such explanation, your description appears, ironically enough, to assume a conclusion without justification.

The way the phrase "by faith" is interpreted with consideration given to the context of the verses from the book of Hebrew was the explanation I gave.

Okay, but the mere fact that you have "interpreted" Hebrews a certain way still falls short of an explanation or justification for the interpretation. Meanwhile, it's not like the writer of Hebrews states outright that faith actually means to "assume conclusions" or "confirm biases." Apparently you have personally inferred that from the text, but so far I have seen no justification for such an inference.

Besides, an argument could be made that when the writer of Hebrews says "faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen," he actually speaks for all of us. The way a Christian believes God spoke the world into existence is essentially the same way an atheist believes that life arose from a pool of inorganic chemicals without the help of God or anyone else " by faith.

The inherent self-correcting mechanism contained within the process of science is what makes it a reliable epistemology. Your criticism actually demonstrates the reliability of science as an epistemology in that science is able to: 1) identify where it was in error and 2) update itself accordingly.

I would say the opposite is true: its conclusions being continually in need of self-correction is precisely what makes science an unreliable epistemology. Imagine that I had to correct myself repeatedly in the course of our debate because I was found to be factually in error. You would be right to object if I turned around and said that my position was epistemically more reliable than yours for that very reason " because it was "self-correcting" while yours was not.

More to the point, if any given theory or pronouncement of science is subject to being falsified or corrected at any time, it's not a source of knowledge, because it's not true. Probable or justified, perhaps, but not true. I say that because true statements are not subject to correction, let alone falsification, not even in principle.

Remember that knowledge has to be both true and justified. I gave just two of countless possible examples of a theory that was either falsified or replaced by a better theory that was incompatible with it. Clearly a theory that is eventually falsified cannot be true, and just as clearly a theory that is replaced by another because it lacks sufficient evidence, simplicity, explanatory power, etc., cannot be justified. And yet the vast majority of scientific hypotheses have met with one of those two fates.

Remember also that in science theoretical conclusions are always tentative and probabilistic, that is, not entirely true. That's largely because science depends upon inductive and abductive rather than deductive reasoning. Consider the inference below:

All men are mortal.
Socrates is a man.
Socrates is mortal.

The conclusion follows inescapably from the premises. If the premises of a deductive argument are true, and the argument is valid, then the conclusion is not simply probable or justifiable, but true. Now consider the inductive argument:

Every swan ever observed has been white.
All swans are white.

The conclusion doesn't really follow in a logical sense, but only seems justified in some probabilistic, intuitive way. We just basically tend to think that if every particular instance of X to date has exhibited property Y, then all X are Y. (And in this case the seemingly scientifically justified conclusion "All swans are white" has turned out to be false. It was thought to be true by most people in the world until the first black swan was discovered in Australia in 1697.)

Although it might seem counter-intuitive, the gauge for reliability in science is not the ability to always produce a single correct answer but whether its proposed explanations are falsifiable yet survive every test designed to falsify them. More importantly, reliability is also determined by a scientific explanation's ability to make future testable predictions.

That sounds reasonable enough at a glance, but "not yet falsified" is hardly equivalent to "true." And again, for us to have knowledge about X our beliefs about X should be both justified and true. Here the fact that the theory has so far survived numerous falsification tests means that belief in it is increasingly justified, yes, but the fact that it may be falsified next week means that it is not true in any meaningful sense. I realize that may seem, to use your own phrasing, counterintuitive, but I will try to explain why that must be so nonetheless.

Theoretical science largely depends, as you mentioned, on predictive power. Lets take your first example:

For example, paleontologists used the Theory of Evolution to predict that the ancestor of all amphibians should be a transitional species featuring a skeletal structure with characteristics of both fish and amphibians.

Here we have a phenomenon, a certain transitional species (T), purportedly predicted by evolutionary theory (E) and subsequently observed. Now given that there are upwards of eight million species of organisms on earth, it would not surprise me in the least if we found a species just like T even if creationism were true and evolution were false, simply because of the sheer range of diversity of organisms and characteristics available for observation. Also I have big questions about the level of subjectivity involved in determining which characteristics belong to either fish, or amphibians, or both; but let's assume the criteria are perfectly objective and unambiguous, and that such a transitional species has in fact been discovered. In that case, your argument would go something like this:

If E, then T
T
E

Students of logic will immediately recognize this as a fallacy, specifically the fallacy of affirming the consequent. Because there are potentially any number of possible explanations for T other than E, observation (or countless observations) of T is not sufficient to secure the truth of E. Indeed, that argument for evolution is no more valid than an argument that the creaking of doors in my house in the middle of the night is caused by the activity of ghosts:

If G, then C
C
G

Even if it's true that if ghosts were to swing open the doors in my house in the middle of the night they would creak, and even if the doors do in fact creak in the middle of the night, this does not mean that ghosts are responsible for the noise. The doors swinging open, hence creaking, may be due to the activity of my daughter, the dog, a draft in the house, angels, demons, etc.

The same objection holds for all the other predictions you listed for evolutionary theory, or for any number of predictions listed for any other scientific theory. So here we have another reason why scientific inferences should be tentatively accepted rather than dogmatically declared. Observations in keeping with predictions may make a theory stronger and more useful than it was before, but will never render a theory true.

[Danmark]

I understand that this may be how you honestly feel about the concept of faith. But it's one thing to simply describe faith as conclusion-assuming, bias-confirming, and so on, and another to explain exactly why faith should be so described. In the absence of such explanation, your description appears, ironically enough, to assume a conclusion without justification.

The way the phrase "by faith" is interpreted with consideration given to the context of the verses from the book of Hebrew was the explanation I gave.

Okay, but the mere fact that you have "interpreted" Hebrews a certain way still falls short of an explanation or justification for the interpretation. Meanwhile, it's not like the writer of Hebrews states outright that faith actually means to "assume conclusions" or "confirm biases."

That is exactly what the author writes in Hebrews 11:1 "Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things unseen."
IOW, faith is assuming assurance (confirmation bias) of what we were already taught and hope for.
If there were any doubt, it is removed in the next verse,
"For by it the people of old received their commendation.
Then, for those too obtuse to 'get it, the author gives an example,
" By faith we understand that the universe was created by the word of God, so that what is seen was not made out of things that are visible."
Thus we are told that the universe came from nothing but the 'word' of God, no process, no 14 billion years, no black hole, no evolution, just 'poof!' by word alone, magic.
Hebrews 11:1-3 is a perfect description of confirmation bias, of assuming the conclusions we were taught and for which we received commendation.

[Don McIntosh]

That is exactly what the author writes in Hebrews 11:1 "Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things unseen."
IOW, faith is assuming assurance (confirmation bias) of what we were already taught and hope for.
If there were any doubt, it is removed in the next verse,
"For by it the people of old received their commendation.
Then, for those too obtuse to 'get it, the author gives an example,
" By faith we understand that the universe was created by the word of God, so that what is seen was not made out of things that are visible."
Thus we are told that the universe came from nothing but the 'word' of God, no process, no 14 billion years, no black hole, no evolution, just 'poof!' by word alone, magic.
Hebrews 11:1-3 is a perfect description of confirmation bias, of assuming the conclusions we were taught and for which we received commendation.

Talk about confirmation bias. Here you have taken a decidedly uncharitable interpretation of the text, assumed that to be the only interpretation possible, then apparently concluded that anyone who disagrees with your interpretation must be obtuse.

Yes, by faith we believers understand that the universe was created by the word of God. This belief stands in sharp contrast to your implicit belief that the universe was created by some "process" involving 14 billion years, a black hole(?), and evolution. Has anyone personally witnessed this process? Of course not. I doubt anyone here has even seen the purported evidence for this process firsthand. How then to believe the process to have actually taken place? By a belief that extends beyond what evidence directly justifies, i.e., by faith " faith in scientific naturalism, and faith in the word of scientific-naturalistic authorities.

Given that faith by definition provides assurance beyond what evidence directly justifies, it appears we all operate from an "epistemology of faith." But of course an epistemology that operates by faith and yet explicitly denies any role for faith in the acquisition of knowledge is incoherent. So I think that by openly acknowledging the important role of faith in the acquisition of knowledge, Christianity is much more coherent, hence rational, than positivism, or scientific-naturalism, or any other faith-denying epistemology.

Now consider some of our brothers and sisters in the text of Hebrews 11.

By faith Noah acted when he was "divinely warned" [=warned by God].

By faith Abraham obeyed when he was "called [by God] to go out" from his hometown.

By faith Sarah "judged him faithful who had promised" [God].

Much the same could be said of Moses, Joshua, David, Gideon, and so forth. In these cases, faith is obviously more than simply, arbitrarily believing something for no reason and on no grounds whatsoever, but is a wise (commendable) response to God making his existence and purposes known in experience.

[benchwarmer]

[Replying to post 148 by benchwarmer]

I would also like to chime in here and point out this is patently false. In fact, some of us have been repeatedly saying that this is ALL we have. i.e. the claims in the Bible.

Exactly! And as I have pointed out, simply saying, "all we have is claims in the Bible" is not dealing with the fact, and seems to ignore the fact that, none of the authors contained in the Bible, could have possibly known about any sort of Bible, and so they were not writing in order to be in the Bible, which means it is the authors who are making the claims, not the Bible.

I'm really quite puzzled how acknowledging the fact that we have claims is not dealing with this fact. How exactly are we not dealing with it? There are claims. We agree.

Where we disagree is what to believe based on those facts. Just because I don't believe these claims does not mean I haven't dealt with them. I could make the same assertion about you. You haven't dealt with the fact that all we have are the claims. How is this a helpful approach to debate?

Next, we have far more than "claims by these authors" because the overwhelming majority of what is contained in the NT, would not be claims at all, and as we read these things, we can ascertain a number of things about some of the authors themselves.

Now you've lost me. How is someone writing something down NOT a claim about what is written down.

As an example, we can know beyond doubt that Paul would have been alive at the time of Jesus, and we can also know the author of the two letters to Theophilus would have been alive at the time of Jesus, because we can know this author traveled around with Paul, on his missionary journeys.

We can certainly deduce things based on the claims made. Does your "beyond doubt" mean 100% certainty?

If we have a number of disconnected claims about something and/or can reliably date the materials through physical analysis we can certainly come to some likely conclusions. However, we are still dealing with claims. You seem to be saying that just because something is relatively certain it doesn't involve claims. This is odd and confusing to me.

This means we can know, that both Paul, and the author of the two letters to Theophilus, would have known the apostles personally, also knowing the claims they were making first hand.

Correction, we MAY deduce these things with some certainty assuming we are confident about the various claims and physical evidence that can be examined.

With this being the case, we can be confident that the majority of what is contained in the NT, would have been authored by those who would have been alive at the time

Then I suggest you submit some papers for peer review on your Biblical research. The majority of scholars seem to disagree with your assessment. Perhaps you know something they don't? There is a clear progression of the gospel writings and they appear to have been written decades after the fact by unknown authors. How you can arrive at certainty of what you are claiming is beyond me.

The point is: Yes, we have claims. Now what?

Exactly! And the point is, these claims must be dealt with, because it is not enough to say, "they are simply claims" as if this settles the issue? Rather, we need to go on and determine how, and why we have these claims, in order to determine what all would have to be involved in order for the claims to be false? It is not enough to simply tell folks, they should doubt the claims.

You are building a stawman again. We do NOT have to determine the claims to be false. We can simply question the truthfulness of them based on the actual evidence or lack thereof.

If I write down a claim that my rabbit has a purple stripe does this mean that you must now falsify this claim? Are you now forced to determine what makes this false? Or can you simply question this claim and ask for more evidence?

Please falsify that my rabbit has a purple stripe.

If you can't, I guess you are not dealing with the fact that I have made the claim? This is the type of argument you are putting forth.

I will point out again, I have no problem with those who want to stop right here, and simply doubt the claims.

Then I guess you have no problems with me. No where have I said the claims are false. This is the strawman you seem to be building all on your own.

The problem comes in, when there are those of us who are not satisfied with simply doubting the claims, and go on to examine all the facts, and evidence involved, in order to determine what all would have to be involved for the claims to be false, and then have those who are unwilling to examine all the facts, which is demonstrated by the fact they can say, "all we have is claims", and to then go on to insist, that I would have no good reasons to believe.

It's quite easy to come up with numerous reasons how the claims could be false. That is not the point. You are making the positive assertion you have good reasons to believe these claims. At one point you even asserted there were numerous, disconnected sources and this was one of the good reasons to believe. Yet the numerous, disconnected sources were never produced. In fact you agreed they are connected.

So, since you claim to have good reasons to believe, this is what we are all waiting for.

We have already provided some reasons to be cautious in believing based on a few, connected, mostly anonymous sources. This doesn't seem to faze you though. Fair enough.

The next thing to address is are these claims disconnected such that any extraordinary claims within have some chance at unbiased corroboration. It appears, and you admitted, that these claims are indeed connected. i.e. these people either knew each other and/or were copying/adding to what the others had already written.

The first thing we need to keep in mind here is, there are those who argue that, "we cannot know who the authors were, nor when, or where they may have wrote", and if this is the case, then we cannot know if they may have been connected in any way, and simply because they wrote much the same things, would not demonstrate they must, and had to be connected, in any way whatsoever.

This has already been covered. More than once. This argument fails. Miserably. Scholarly textual analysis can be used to show commonality among the texts we have. It's one way to determine they are connected. The other is when they were written. If one text is written well after another and appears to have verbatim content to the first one, then I think we can at least consider that copying has happened. Connection.

Connected and/or biased claims (i.e. to promote a religion) do not exactly hold a lot of sway.

It can be demonstrated, that the majority of what is contained in the NT, would have been addressed to those who would have already been believers. With this being the case, it very well could be the case, and probably is the case, that the whole of the NT letters were addressed to those who would have already believed. So then, how can these letters be said to promote a religion, when those being addressed, would have already believed?

Are you claiming that there's no need to promote the ideas of the religion to people who already believe it? What's the point of the letters then? Is it not to codify the stories, provide something to point at when explaining to nonbelievers, and give instruction and/or clarifications? Sounds like promotional material to me. Not necessarily aimed at those who don't believe, but aimed at shoring up the beliefs of those that do.

No one here has said "thus these claims are false". We have simply pointed out that these types of claims don't make for 'good' evidence that they are true since they appear to be well connected.

It also "does not make for good evidence" that these would be reasons to doubt the claims. We should indeed be skeptical, (meaning we should not easily believe the claims), but I do not see how the authors being connected, should cause us to doubt (meaning to consider unlikely) the claims?

Well if they are just copying what the other one wrote down, we don't really even have multiple claims do we? Just one claim that others copied. Note I'm not saying this is exactly what happened, but it sure seems that way. Thus the doubt.

Classic strawman. No one here, that I've noticed, is claiming you have NO reason. YOU were the one claiming you have 'good' reasons. Your burden of proof or at least burden to back up with something.

And I have, by providing the fact that we have the claims, and I have at this point went on even further to demonstrate certain things we can know beyond doubt, by reading the information we have.

You have what? Stawmanned us by saying we are telling you that you have NO reasons? I agree, you have done that.

We appear to be going in circles. We agree there are claims and then you start saying we are telling you that you have NO reasons. ??

The problem is, no one is even attempting to deal with this fact, and simply saying these claims, "are only claims", is not dealing with the fact.

You keep repeating this as well. To what point? I dealt with this earlier.

Strawman number 2. Who said they were lies?

You certainly love to throw out the "straw man" accusation, but it is not working out, because I clearly said these things would have been examples one could use. I never suggested anyone claimed this to be the case.

Hey, if the shoe fits. If you are not stawmanning us, then I apologize if this was really the case. The way you brought them up implied we were taking this position. Why are you trying to tell us which positions we could take? We are already providing our own positions, no need to dream up other ones. The ones you are suggesting are indeed strawmen that no one here is using, so it seems pointless at best.

I'm going to stop here. Clearly we are going in circles.

You believe you have good reasons, but thus far can't seem to get the rest of us on the same page. The only page we line up on are that we do indeed have some claims to look at.

[Danmark]

That is exactly what the author writes in Hebrews 11:1 "Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things unseen."
IOW, faith is assuming assurance (confirmation bias) of what we were already taught and hope for.
If there were any doubt, it is removed in the next verse,
"For by it the people of old received their commendation.
Then, for those too obtuse to 'get it, the author gives an example,
" By faith we understand that the universe was created by the word of God, so that what is seen was not made out of things that are visible."
Thus we are told that the universe came from nothing but the 'word' of God, no process, no 14 billion years, no black hole, no evolution, just 'poof!' by word alone, magic.
Hebrews 11:1-3 is a perfect description of confirmation bias, of assuming the conclusions we were taught and for which we received commendation.

Talk about confirmation bias. Here you have taken a decidedly uncharitable interpretation of the text, assumed that to be the only interpretation possible, then apparently concluded that anyone who disagrees with your interpretation must be obtuse.

Go ahead, give us a different 'interpretation of Hebrews 11:1-3. I did, line by line. You object to mine, yet you offer no other. I suspect it is because mine is spot on.

This is what really gets me about Christian apologists. Take a text with very clear meaning, but a meaning that is embarrassing to a rational man, and the either have no answer or go off on some speculative journey where 'yes' does not mean yes and 'no' does not mean no.
Please, explain how the text does not mean exactly what it says and what I said.

While you're at it, you can explain that by "this generation" and "while those standing here are still alive" means "2000 years later (and counting). Bible literalists do not take the Bible literally when its meaning is inconvenient. That is what I mean by 'obtuse.'