Rex
You are doing the straw man thing. No one said 'bullet proof', that is unattainable.
I didn't say you said it was bulletproof. Please try to make any accusations of fallacious argumentation accurate or you yourself perpetrate a fallacy.
I asked for bulletproof. It is a pity you feel bulletproofness is not possible for your beliefs, but I commend you for your honesty .
I have considerably more confidence than that in my beliefs, especially as regard to the general outline of human origins and the development of life on Earth. That is pretty bulletproof.
Is it enough to convict in a court of law?
No, of course not, not a decent court of law at any rate.
I encourage you to read Lee Strobel's, 'The Case for Faith' and 'The Case for Christ', as well as Josh McDowell's two books, 'Evidence that Demands a Verdict'.
I am fairly familiar with most Jesus apologisms. I would say it is quite possible Jesus has some kind of historical validity as a man. However, the additonal claims of miracles etc., are no more credible than those made for other "godmen" through history.
If it impossible to establish divinity or paranormal power in a few paragraphs you actually write yourself, I don't think you can, and don't think it is my place to prove your claims by reading books that also obviously fail to provide simple concrete proof of the divinity/paranormal claims - if they did, you'd have c&p'd it.
That is the same way that I view the Naturalist Philosophy with its teachings on evolution and natural origins. You pretend that you have no axioms or presuppositions and I have demonstrated that you clearly do.
No, DEMONSTRATE and SAY are two different things Rex. You avoid the fact that general evolutionary theory is not a few strands here and there but a massive wharp and weft that can be seen in every aspect of biological life on this planet, both extant and as recorded in the fossil record.
Your apologisms are neccesary as all you have is a few books you accept, largely on faith, are true accounts of the life of a man who was not a man.
The naturalistic philospohy you object to so strenuously might have a lot of detail that has and will shift as new discoveries are made, but the general theories are very very well attested to.
Only by exclusion of masses of supporting data and highlighting incongurous detail can you build any sort of platfrom, and then only to those who don't have the ducational background to know just how partial an argument you present.
You are comparing chalk and cheese, and I am glad it is you eating the chalk and me the cheese.
No, it is a facetious assertion.
Inappropriate humour? To you mate.
I can understand why you might not LIKE the comparison. To me someone who cannot prove the divinity or paranormal nature of Jesus in a manner a court of law would find acceptable is EXACTLY the same as someone who could not prove their 'close encounter' with 'aliens' to a court of law. Please point out the faulty logic or admit you just don't like the comparison despite the obvious and clear equivalency.
I have evidence of miracles. Whether or not is 'proof' depends on several factors.
Evasion of issue and LOW standards of evidence. Other people make indistinguishable claims to you, but ones that also exclude the possibility of your claims being true, not unless there are lots of gods out there all of whom deny the other exist. Differentiate yourself or be lumped in with those you are functionally similar to.
Not at all, our scholars have demonstrated a obvious consistency in the 66 books of the Bible.
Maybe that's why the pagans chose them as the source book for a religon they hoped would bind a disintigrating Empire together. Presuppositons lie in each avenue of thought you display to us Rex.
Prophecies have been fulfilled and the risen Christ is alive and communicates with Christians.
Prove a prohecy has been fufilled. Just one will do, as per earlier definitons excluding post-fact prophecy and ambiguous prophecy. And again, you ignore the issue, which is equivalently unverifiable claims are made by other religionists and theists and you cannot show any real difference between your claims and theirs. Despite this you assert 'you' are right and they are wrong.
Stop claiming you are different from other believers in the paranoramal and SHOW me.
You can see Christ throughout the O.T. and we can look back at the Cross of Calvary today and see the salvation of mankind.
What if the NT was just written to tick off the boxes of what some people THOUGHT was the meaning of certain passages in the OT? "Oh, here it says he will do this, I know, we'll have him do x y and z in the scroll to make it look like he's fufilling the prophecy". If, for example, Judges 3.46 said "And the Messiah will wear sandals and a chicken suit", all the people involved in writing the NT have to do is say "and he wore sandels and a chicken suit" and BING! they have 'proved' he is the Messiah even if he actually wore Doc Martins and a baseball cap. This is why you acceptance of such 'proofs' is rather delightfully trusting.
You just assume no one was trying to make a religon, despite evidence that religions have been made time and time again through history.
Mohammed was a caravan robber who conquered others by force and established Arabian Kingdom law as holy. His followers fought over the spoils of his kingdom and his legacy is not good news but death to all who do not convert.
Oh please learn something about Islam today before you make yourself look foolish. And I suppose Jesus's followers were excellent unto one another and never fought? How you deceive yourself!
You argue about ambiguous prophecies yet you will close your eyes to ths same ambiguous evidence that seem s to fit the evolutionary models.
Ah come on. Have you actually studied biology or evolution from the point of view of someone wanting to learn, or just the standard 'enough to feel I can disporve it' model that so many religionists follow?
If you did study it properly you would realise that the general model is more-or-less unimpeachable. It is everywhere you look if you open your eyes. Even religious beliefs obey evolutionary theory! For example, Creationism was and is (outside of the USA) dying out, so it evolved into the biggest oxymoron of the century, intelligent design. Hellfire became obviously unreconcilable with a loving god to any educated person, and most religions with such doctrines typically changed them as they lacked credibility holding onto the old doctrines.
Any substancial admission on the skeptic's part soon leads to the conversion of the skeptic.
What are you babbling about? For example - Velociraptors did not disembowl their pray with their horrid claws, contrary to previous thought. Does that mean they didn't evolve or did not exist. NO.
There is no Papacy or Emperor forcing people to believe (or die) anymore. That horrid corruption was broken on the foundation of the Reformation and the realization of Christian freedom.
Funny comment 'no .... forcing people to die anymore'. Jonestown? Blood Transfusions? Shunning? No wonder you think you have a decent argument; you ignore so much data in arriving at a conclusion you don't even see all the examples of how wrong you are.
Islam still forces 'belief' by the sword.
Like I say, educate yourself about a subject before making generalisations based on the interpretation of a relative handful of Muslims today. One can equally do that to some Christians if one is similarly uninformed or wilful in one's desire to ignore data.
Go ahead and see what happens to Islamists who convert to Christianity in civilized places like Egypt then tell me that is not true.
Now that is a strawman argument as I would not call Egypt civilised.
One of the reasons that Christians argue for Christ is because our faith is the only one with a logical and consistent worldview that has any evidence as being correct. That's why C.S. Lewis made such a strong case for Christianity...
No way are you going to tell me that 'Mere Christianity' makes a strong case for Christianity!! His entire argument for god's existence is 'we have a conscience', if I recall that appalling little book correctly (sorry Ross ). As he was entirely ignorant of the evolutionary pressure on a social animal to develop a 'conscience' it's not surprising HE thought it was a good one, but for anyone who would claim to be educated today it's a JOKE of an argument to stand behind.
and the writers of today follow suit.
THAT I will agree with, but only because current apolgetics regarding the existence of god are just as inadequate as C. S. Lewis's. Still, "The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe" books were fun, and the film is out in November.
The only thing that gets in our way are heretics who claim to be Christian yet constantly compromise and villify their own faith. The Bishop Spongs of the world.
And here we see it is all based around YOUR definiton of "what it is to be Christian". You, who cannot prove the accuracy of your beliefs, have the temerity to criticise co-religionists who have equally valid opinions as to the definiton of Christianity.
Maybe faiths need to villify themselves and compromise, in order to improve? Maybe each generation's take on god is as good as the next generations, given that most religions tend to boil down to systemised versions of 'be nice to your neighbour', differing only in how many heads/arms the god has.
Break out the loin cloth and nose bone Rex, it's time to accept your beliefs for what they are. As good as the next religionists.
Prove otherwise... something you have thus far failed to do.
For example, you ignore the God of the Bible authorised ethnic cleansing and condemned the virgin girls of those ethnically cleansed to being war booty for the soldiers. Of course, whether "32,000" vriguin girls were condemned to rape by the murderers of their families and then a life of sexual slavery is moot, as there is not one shred of archaelogical evidence for the Israelites spending 40 years in the wilderness... oh, but you ignore that too, don't you... ?
... but this bloody thirsty misogynist is is the charcter of god as expressed in his word and as removed from most modern Christians as some passages in the Qu'ran are removed from modern Muslim.
But your selective vison blinds you to this...
