What is your strongest reason for believing in Christianity?

[bluegreenearth]

What is the single strongest reason that supports your belief in Christianity?

How could we determine if that reason is reliable or unreliable?

Note: Discovering you have an unreliable reason would NOT mean your belief is false; only that you require a more reliable reason to justify a high degree of confidence in the validity of the belief.

[benchwarmer]

[Replying to post 36 by Realworldjack]

The questions is written that way to encourage people to identify the reason serving as the foundation of their belief. Usually when people have multiple reasons, there is one that must remain reliable for them to maintain the belief even if all the other reasons were demonstrated to be unreliable. If that foundational reason were discovered to be unreliable, then none of the remaining reasons would be sufficient to warrant a high degree of confidence in the belief. So, I find it is more productive to begin the conversation by examining the reliability of the foundational reason rather than waste time debating the reliability of less significant reasons.

As for your remaining discussion, I have the following questions: What are the counter-arguments to your position that you are aware of? Why are those counter-arguments invalid or at least unpersuasive? What information or experience would you cause you to lower your confidence in the belief?

I find RR's response typical of the type of response given when there is no single solid reason. It seems throwing together a bunch of flimsy reasons amounts to an overall solid reason. At least that's the way it reads to me.

Then comes the complaining that WE must show the reasons are not solid rather than the other way around.

I found the OP question clear and concise. Basically, give us your top reason and explain why/how you came to the conclusion you did. Instead, what we get are a whole bunch of claims that all have about the same method for reliability. Just believe because other claims were made. Seems rather circular.

My top reason for NOT believing:

All we have are claims from authors (some anonymous) about what other people claimed. Since I have no way to independently verify these claims, I cannot honestly believe the claims. This does not mean the claims are false (as some like to strawman my position), but simply that I find no reasonable reason to believe the claims. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Not more unverifiable claims.

If there were a reliable way to verify ANY of the miraculous claims, this would be pasted into every response from every Christian. i.e. just do X and see for yourself! Funny how "do X" always boils down to "have faith".

[bluegreenearth]

[Replying to post 40 by JehovahsWitness]

I promise the following question is not meant to be condescending or rhetorical, but it will help me gauge how much background knowledge is required before we continue:

Are you familiar with the burden of proof fallacy and some of the other more common logical fallacies?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fallacies

[bluegreenearth]

[Replying to post 41 by benchwarmer]

What would you consider to be a reliable reason to believe in Christianity?

[bjs]

You choose to whom you believe or whom you trust ... I do the same.

I choose based on verifiable evidence, not emotion.

I just want to point out that the definition of “trust� is that we don’t have verifiable evidence. If someone only trusts when s/he has verifiable evidence, then that person doesn’t trust anyone. Which is his/her choice, but to me it seems like a sad, ineffective, and pointless life.

[bluegreenearth]

[Replying to post 44 by bjs]

The word “faith� generates a disproportionate amount of confusion in conversations about epistemology. Colloquially, the word “faith� is interchangeable with the word “trust.� The accusation that we all exhibit faith in our sources of knowledge is grounded on an equivocation with the concept of trust. If the meaning of “faith� always directly paralleled the meaning of “trust�, then it would resolve much confusion assuming everyone has the same understanding of what it means to trust. For example, you might trust an apple exists at the grocery store despite the fact that you are not on location to observe it. The foundation of your trust in this case is based on implicit empirical evidence you have collected from previous visits to the grocery store where you consistently observed apples in the produce section. Therefore, the application of faith here is reasonable because it refers to a conceptual truth as supported by an implicit empirical foundation. However, having a reasonable faith in a claim does not mean the claim is empirically true or that you can claim to know it is empirically true.

Conversely, if you had no prior knowledge of apples being sold at the grocery store, you would lack the implicit empirical foundation upon which your faith in the claim would be justified. Likewise, if your prior experiences with grocery stores were that they never maintained a supply of apples in the produce section, trusting the aforementioned claim would not be reasonable because the implicit empirical evidence contradicts it. Similarly, if a grocery store advertises an apple for sale with the capability of stopping in midair after it is thrown, you would have neither a conceptual nor implicit empirical basis to trust the advertisement. In fact, the available conceptual and implicit empirical evidence would better justify faith in the alternative claim which suggests the grocery store is advertising an optical illusion which creates the misperception of an apple stopping in midair.

Now, consider how the word “faith� is used in the following statement, “It is by faith you know the apple stopped in midair after it was thrown.� Here, faith is given as the method (epistemology) used to distinguish knowledge from belief. When the word “trust� is substituted for the word “faith� in this context, the statement suggests you acquired such knowledge by trusting the event happened exactly as described. However, there is no objective reason given to justify why that particular claim should be trusted. Therefore, your decision to trust the claim must have either been arbitrary or influenced by some form of undisclosed bias. As such, you could have equally chosen not to trust that particular claim for some arbitrary or biased reason and applied your faith towards another competing or contradictory claim instead. This ability to achieve two different or contradictory conclusions through the application of the same method exposes the unreliability of using faith as an epistemological foundation for acquiring a functional knowledge base.

[Realworldjack]

[Replying to post 36 by Realworldjack]

The questions is written that way to encourage people to identify the reason serving as the foundation of their belief. Usually when people have multiple reasons, there is one that must remain reliable for them to maintain the belief even if all the other reasons were demonstrated to be unreliable. If that foundational reason were discovered to be unreliable, then none of the remaining reasons would be sufficient to warrant a high degree of confidence in the belief. So, I find it is more productive to begin the conversation by examining the reliability of the foundational reason rather than waste time debating the reliability of less significant reasons.

As for your remaining discussion, I have the following questions: What are the counter-arguments to your position that you are aware of? Why are those counter-arguments invalid or at least unpersuasive? What information or experience would you cause you to lower your confidence in the belief?

The questions is written that way to encourage people to identify the reason serving as the foundation of their belief. Usually when people have multiple reasons, there is one that must remain reliable for them to maintain the belief even if all the other reasons were demonstrated to be unreliable. If that foundational reason were discovered to be unreliable, then none of the remaining reasons would be sufficient to warrant a high degree of confidence in the belief. So, I find it is more productive to begin the conversation by examining the reliability of the foundational reason rather than waste time debating the reliability of less significant reasons.

I really do not see how this makes sense? As one poster has already submitted, his reason would be the, "resurrection." However, certainly he does not believe in the resurrection, simply because it is reported to have occurred. Rather, he now has to find reason to suggest these reports may in fact be reliable, with facts, and evidence to support. So as you can see, we are already building reason, upon reason.

As for your remaining discussion, I have the following questions: What are the counter-arguments to your position that you are aware of?

GOOD GRIEF! Would you like me to write a book here? Allow me to give you a very small sample. There are those who attempt to argue, that the name Theophilus means "lover of God" and the author of the letters to Theophilus may have been addressing all those who love God, which means he would not have been addressing one individual, but a wider audience. Next, there are those who argue that Mark wrote his Gospel first, and that the author of Matthew, and Luke, would have had a copy of Mark, added to it, and also must have had another source which would be referred to as "Q". Of course then there would be those who would argue that Paul would not have authored the letter to Timothy I referred to, and the list goes on, and on from there. So where would you like me to stop?

Why are those counter-arguments invalid or at least unpersuasive?

Again, GOOD GRIEF! I cannot write a book here. You do understand there are actually books that have been written on these very topics, right? I also have been on this site for close to seven years now, and have addressed each one of these issues, and I will assure you the post will not be short, because there would be a lot to consider.

This sort of seems to be the problem to me, because there are those who seem to believe these things, are all so simple, and there are simple answers. But as time has shown, there are no simple answers involved in this debate.

So then, why don't you simply pick one for me to address, and I will spend a couple of days dealing with the reasons the objection would be invalid?

What information or experience would you cause you to lower your confidence in the belief?

If there were some sort of explanation to explain the facts, and evidence we have for the resurrection, with facts, and evidence to support this idea, which would not be just as extraordinary, and absurd, as a resurrection seems to be.

[William]

[Replying to post 40]

JehovahsWitness: Personally someone would have to provide me with convincing arguments that...

• (a) life could arise without an intelligent Creator
  
  (b) that the bible is not the word of God
  
  (c) I cannot trust my own mind's capacity to assess information and experiences .

Of course once opponents have successfully achieved #3 it would invalidate any information offered by 1-2 which would leave my conviction in tact.

William: Regarding (b) the bible itself claims that Jesus is The Word of GOD, which is something that many minds appear incapable of even understanding, let alone assessing what that actually means in relation to choosing to place that title upon a mere book.

Once one's mind is clouded by the false, the Truth is unattainable to them, and in the case of books, the search for life in symbols upon paper becomes just another idol to worship.

[bluegreenearth]

[Replying to post 46 by Realworldjack]

I feel your frustration with constructing a lengthy response to a complex issue. This is precisely why I try to encourage people to pick their strongest reason for us to investigate rather than attempt a thorough analysis of every nuanced reason for holding a belief. At the same time, I understand your point about the perceived necessity of supporting a belief with multiple reasons. So, may I suggest you consider the following:

1. Try to classify your reasons into a few basic categories (e.g. manuscript evidence, archaeological evidence, personal experience, emotional appeal, etc.)

2. For each category, ask yourself if you would retain your belief if the evidence in that category were not available or demonstrated to your satisfaction to be unreliable. If you would retain your belief even without having that supporting evidence, move onto the next category and repeat the same exercise.

3. When you land on a category of evidence that would cause you to doubt the belief if it were not available or demonstrated to your satisfaction to be unreliable, then respond with that information.

[benchwarmer]

[Replying to post 41 by benchwarmer]

What would you consider to be a reliable reason to believe in Christianity?

Given that believing in Christianity requires believing in supernatural claims, I honestly cannot say what I would definitely find convincing. It would have to be something that I can verify for myself that doesn't just rely in believing the wild claims of others.

For example, in the Bible is says Christians should be able to ask for things in faith and receive them.

https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?s ... ersion=NIV

John 14:14 New International Version (NIV)
14 You may ask me for anything in my name, and I will do it.

Thus, if I were able to witness a Christian praying for an individual to be healed of a terminal illness or regrow a missing limb then that would be fairly convincing I think. Now, this would have to be repeatable and done under strict observation to ensure no illusions are being performed (of the type that magicians regularly perform on stage).

If ALL Christians were able to perform these feats then I'm pretty sure I would find that convincing and reliable since I assume not all Christians could be illusionists. Hospitals emptied, starving children fed, wars ended, and so forth would be pretty compelling evidence. Especially if other religious persons of different faiths could not accomplish these things.

Note carefully that I said Christians performing these things, I don't expect to be able to do them myself before I become a Christian. I'm only asking those who already believe to put the claims in the Bible to the test. Of course many will trot out that God shall not be tested. Convenient.

[bluegreenearth]

[Replying to post 49 by benchwarmer]

I appreciate receiving your honest response. Thanks.

Personally, I like the response Matt Dillahunty gives to that question. I'll paraphrase it: I don't know what would convince me to believe in Christianity, but if God exists, he should know. Since God hasn't made the effort to provide me the evidence I need to be convinced of his existence, he either does not want me to believe or does not exist. Either way, it is not my problem.