mP:SO when are you going to apologise for using the TF as proof of Jesus? is it honest to quote this knowing it is likely a fraud, without mentioning this fact?
You are a class act, mP. You presumably read every word I said and I never used Josephus as an evidence of Christ. I simply said that many scholars believed the TF was tampered with, not completely fabricated. I doubt you’ve read Josephus as extensively as I have and suspect your opinions are based on those you’ve read from other sites. You’re inability to grasp even simple arguments and address them is another indication that I’m dealing with someone who isn’t out of high school. In all likelihood I was reading Josephus before you were born. And if you’re a former Jehovah's Witness, I can remove a few more years from your education. So if I’m right and you’re at that point of your life, you need to pontificate less and read more.
DeWandelaar:...there are too many uncertainties about the origins of the writings/writers and the inconsistencies that are found in these scriptures are enormous. Trying to convince me by referring to the bible or to biblical figures or saying things like “The bible says...” or “The book of Mormon says...” are useless because for me it holds no authority.
I thought we were talking about what it would take for you to be converted. I’m not aware of trying to convince you through appeal to scriptures. Perhaps you confused my responses to others as to yourself. Also, when you ask questions as to why you should believe a book written in other languages and so forth, of course I’m going to respond using the scriptures because that answers the questions you put to me, assuming they’re not rhetorical questions.
So you’re refusal to answer my question about conversion backs up my earlier observation that even if God were to reveal himself to man with no room for doubt, there would be many people who would not be converted. You said such a display would make you believe, but from your response I strongly doubt you would be converted.
And that’s why God doesn’t do it. If he did reveal himself with no question and you refused to change your life and your heart, accordingly, your condemnation would be sure. By choosing to remain ignorant, or in a state of disbelief, you can’t be condemned under the laws of justice as you would if you knew and then refused obedience to God. And there are many people like you who don’t know if there’s a God and they don’t care. They just want to live their lives and be left alone.
Qcmbr: Oh Cold, your belief in these miracle stories, sans evidence, is the cost of faith.
On this we agree, Qcmbr. I have tremendous faith in the stories that come down to us through people like Wilford Woodruff and others. For example, he relates the story of a former LDS fellow, turned anti-Mormon, who attacked him as he left the man’s home. According to Woodruff, the man was struck dead on the spot and Woodruff spoke of that experience for the rest of his life. So yes, I believe these things happened. As for the casting out of devils, how many people with severe emotionally disturbed disorders are possessed? We don’t know. You can say they’re all suffering from psychological disorders, but how do you know? You mention your own experience and now you dismiss it.
Daniel C. Peterson, in his paper, Secular Anti-Mormonism, relates a story of his own:
Many years ago, as a missionary in Switzerland, another elder and I met a woman at the door while we were tracting. When we told her that we represented The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, she smiled quite oddly and, even more oddly by Swiss standards, invited us in. She immediately fetched her husband, and asked us to tell him the name of the Church that we represented. He too smiled oddly when he heard it, and I began to wonder what sort of people we had found. But then he explained that he was a Yugoslavian-born physician who had once been a Melchizedek Priesthood holder in our Church. And he told us a story that, I confess, I have never checked since; I may have some of the details wrong, but the gist of it is as follows:
Decades before, he had served as a counselor to a priesthood leader in his native country as the communists were consolidating their power there. Several times, he said, this priesthood leader had dreams warning him that members of his congregation needed to flee because the secret police would soon be coming for them. And the man was right every time. However, the former counselor, with whom I was speaking, had eventually made his way to medical school in Switzerland, where his studies had taught him that revelation was an illusion. But how, I asked, did he account for his former priesthood leader’s remarkably accurate record of forecasting visits from the secret police, a record of which I knew (and know) nothing but what he had told me? “Brain chemistry and chance,” he replied. There was, in other words, no substantial or necessary link between the various brain states of the priesthood leader and external events. That they coincided was just sheer good luck for those who thereby escaped the clutches of the commissars. (I might add that the German missionary with whom I was working that particular day, a converted German merchant sailor who was, to put it mildly, plain spoken, thereupon asked if he could visit the home again with his tape recorder, because, he said, this man furnished an unforgettable specimen of how Satan deceives people. Visibly surprised by such bluntness, the man agreed that he could return.)
Peterson adds, “If there were powerful arguments compelling us to forsake religious belief, and if there were no persuasive arguments for such belief, we might feel ourselves obliged to accept what I, at least, regard as the bleakness of the secular, naturalistic worldview. But we are not so compelled, and there are persuasive arguments for belief. The question is at the very least equally balanced. And in such a situation, as William James brilliantly argued against W.K. Clifford, religious belief represents a rational choice.”
Skepticism, at the price of faith, is a poor trade-off in my view. Perhaps one day you will see that.
