Originally Posted By Mr X For those folks who consider themselves religious in the traditional sense (meaning not so much "yes, I believe in spirituality" or whatever, but rather one who subscribes to a particular doctrine and faith)... What would cause you to admit that your particular faith is not true? Couple of examples I've come up with (both pretty out there, so please take it with a grain of salt in the "hypothetically speaking" manner I'm intending)... 1) Aliens from another world visit Earth and prove unequivocally (through carbon dating, and other corroborated scientific means) that THEY in fact wrote all the words in the bible (koran, bagdava-gita etc...) some 200,000 years ago and planted the documents in an effort to examine the effects of religion on a society. 2) Through new advances in medicine, doctors are able to revive an un-tampered with group of corpses which have been deceased for a matter of weeks (I'd say longer but that gets gross, not to mention less possible to be un-tampered with), such formerly dead people having never been informed of the idea or purpose of the experiment...and yet all or most of them return to life and testify to the fact that there is *nothing* beyond. Would either of these two events cause you to abandon your faith? Re-examine it? Or would you reject either event wholeheartedly? Is there any other example you could offer that would cause you to change your viewpoint on god and the afterlife? If so, please throw that in here (I realize that mine are a bit under-thought, I'm sure there are better examples). If not, would you say that absolutely NOTHING in the way of events or proof could possibly cause you to reconsider your religious viewpoints?
Originally Posted By wahooskipper If God came to me but he was not, in fact, God...but Alan Funt...and he said, "smile, you are on Candid Camera"...well, then I might begin to question my belief.
Originally Posted By Mr X Another potential "would you change" for the christians. What if god himself came down to earth and said "you were wrong about Jesus, he was just a good guy, not my son". Would you then reject christianity?
Originally Posted By RC Collins These are interesting questions, Mr X. I will consider them more fully. But off of the top of my head, let me say they appear to get into things like "how do we know what we know" and other philosophical questions. Plenty of people claim experiences with aliens, but are these people really dealing with "people" from another planet or something else? The second example, at first consideration, seems to me to be something that is not going to ever happen. But like I said, let me consider your questions further. In regards to Jesus Christ, Paul writes in the Bible that without the resurrection, our faith is in vain. Proving the resurrection didn't happen would do the trick. There have been several highly educated people over the last couple of centuries who set out to disprove the resurrection and ended up becoming believers in it, however, and this believers in Jesus. But since the resurrection either did or didn't happen in human history (as opposed to "in the spiritual realm"), it is, in theory, something that could be shown to have either happened or not. I'd be very interested if someone from a non-Christian faith could point to something similar as something that would change their mind. I wouldn't expect anyone to bases their belief mainly on something within themselves (like a feeling, or what their heart tells them) to be able to be swayed to unbelief if they are fervent. Changing my general belief in theism is a little more difficult, as it is very difficult to prove a universal negative (like: There is no God). People may believe that, but it isn't so easy to prove.
Originally Posted By RC Collins Yuck. My typing mistakes are the result of answering on the fly. Sorry.
Originally Posted By teddibubbles VERY Sound answer RC Collins. I am so there with you! and so my answer is the very same as RC Collins. and I think I would have to swim agenst the tide. and say. even if I was wrong.. I am betting my soul on this person Jesus. I love him. and he has given me more strangth. and hope ! than any alien. or other meaning to life ever could.. I only pray I am Found in Him on that day!.. I know I drive people away. on how I am. and am runing over ..on how I talk.. but if you only could understand.. that when you find out.. we are helpless. that nothing we can do saves us.. its the world off your sholders. to have someone../ something.. you truly feel comfortable in trusting .. the road is wide in posiblitys.. but I will take the narrow one way tract. that leads to > MY LORD Jesus! <
Originally Posted By SoThisIsLove Hi, Mr X. I just wanted to answer your question. I can quite honestly tell you that there is nothing that would change my mind. Not any of the scenarios that you mentioned, or any others that the rest of my family (non-believers can throw at me, either. My faith isn't something concrete that you can quantify and explain by science or something tangible that you can see or hold. I know that probably isn't a satisfactory answer for you, and I apologize for that, but I guess you can say that my faith goes to the very core of my being. I was born with this...oh, how to explain... How about this? A portion from William Wordsworth's "Ode on Intimations of Immortality": "Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting; The Soul that rises with us, our life's Star, Hath had elsewhere its setting And cometh from afar; Not in entire forgetfulness, And not in utter nakedness, But trailing clouds of glory do we come From God, who is our home: Heaven lies about us in our infancy!" I cannot ever remember a time that I have not believed and it's gotten stronger as I've aged. (I'm now in my dotage: 52! As it is quite doubtful we'll meet in this life, let's try and have an LP reunion some time in the next (even if you don't believe that there is one) and we'll compare notes, okay? Have a great day, Mr X. I appreciate your posts, even though I usually can't add much to the topics (Tokyo, etc). xoxo
Originally Posted By mrkthompsn I think the alien thing maybe. There is in fact an argument that aliens influenced major characters in the Bible, and that the "voice of God" was actually the voice of aliens.
Originally Posted By DAR I don't think anything would make me change. I'd have plenty of questions, any true believer should.
Originally Posted By RoadTrip I don't think anything could change my mind. Unless after death I truly became nothing but worm food. And if that were to happen, I'd have no mind left to change.
Originally Posted By RC Collins Okay, I’m back. >>1) Aliens from another world visit Earth<< How do we determine that we are actually dealing with aliens from another world, and not a hoax being perpetrated by other earthlings, by spiritual beings (fallen angels), or a delusion? >>and prove unequivocally (through carbon dating, and other corroborated scientific means)<< This assumes that the unnamed means are reliable enough to trust for a definitive determination. >>that THEY in fact wrote all the words in the bible (koran, bagdava-gita etc...) some 200,000 years ago and planted the documents in an effort to examine the effects of religion on a society.<< So these aliens purposely planted conflicting holy books? They don’t sound very nice to me. I’ll assume that they make it clear that the Bible was fiction. Well then, yes, I would try to ascertain from these seemingly trouble-making aliens what the actual truth is, since they seem to be more advanced than us. The thing is, for certain parts of the Bible, we have a good idea who the authors are, and these are people who lived in history. So, not only would the aliens have had to have written the Bible, they would have also had to have planted items found by archeology and non-Biblical historical accounts as well (that refer to the Bible authors, for example). >>2) Through new advances in medicine, doctors are able to revive an un-tampered with group of corpses which have been deceased for a matter of weeks (I'd say longer but that gets gross, not to mention less possible to be un-tampered with), such formerly dead people having never been informed of the idea or purpose of the experiment...and yet all or most of them return to life and testify to the fact that there is *nothing* beyond.<< So you’re saying that there is no mind-body or spirit-body duality, so that there is no consciousness and no “place†for these people to go when they are dead, and like a tape recorder, their mind (brain) stops any awareness at the point of death, and, as far as they know, the next moment is the moment they are being revived? The problem with this scenario is that it does not preclude that there is an afterlife. It would only tend to show that they haven’t experienced it yet, OR, if they have, they are not able to remember it upon resuscitation. There are Bible-believers who believe in “soul sleep†or some variation thereof (Jehovah’s Witnesses, for example), who don’t expect to be returned to awareness/â€life†until the end of the world as we know it. So, I wouldn’t see this is conflicting with such views. I, however, believe the Bible teaches that we are at least a dichotomy (body and spirit OR soul), perhaps a trichotomy (body, spirit AND soul), and that to be “absent from the body is to be present with the Lord†and that at the end of the world, I’ll regain my body, albeit a resurrected and transformed one. Jesus is recorded as having told the one of the thieves crucified alongside Him that they would be in “paradise†together that day. This second experiment would not dissuade me from my general faith. >>If not, would you say that absolutely NOTHING in the way of events or proof could possibly cause you to reconsider your religious viewpoints?<< As wrote in a previous post, there ARE things that could cause me to reconsider my religious viewpoints, because they are not entirely based on internal and subjective things. >>What if god himself came down to earth and said "you were wrong about Jesus, he was just a good guy, not my son". Would you then reject christianity?<< If I could be reasonably certain that this was really God, I would cease worshipping Jesus. As things are now, I believe Jesus is God (though He is not the “Fatherâ€). I also believe that the Holy Spirit indwells me (like any other follower of Christ) and that I’ve experienced His presence in my life. Of course, that aspect is impossible to prove to another person. But if the objective evidence was strong enough against it, I could reconsider all of that as some sort of mental game my brain played on me. To me and many other Christians, the heart of Christianity is fellowship with Jesus Christ. The rest is details. Religion is what springs up around that relationship. Some churches have different styles, different forms of leadership, different songs, different outreaches, different beliefs in secondary doctrines, different ways of administering sacraments… but they can all be Christian churches if they proclaim the core doctrines of Christianity. What I’m getting at is that I first and foremost decide to join a church based on that relationship with Jesus Christ, not all of the rules and practices and aesthetics of the church. It can be a “nice†place, but if it isn’t proclaiming sound doctrine, then I wouldn’t join. I haven’t adopted my beliefs because of the church I attend. I started attending the church I do primarily because of my beliefs.
Originally Posted By RoadTrip If non-believers were truly confident in their choice, would they need to talk about it so much? Just wondering... It seems most religious threads here are initiated by the non-believers.
Originally Posted By mele <<If non-believers were truly confident in their choice, would they need to talk about it so much?>> Maybe on LP, but I'm not so sure that's true out in the real world. I mean, most non-believers don't get together on a weekly basis and discuss their non-beliefs about religion. ;-) I'm glad that we can all talk here about these things because I've learned a lot about what people believe, what they don't believe. It's interesting.
Originally Posted By RoadTrip <<I'm glad that we can all talk here about these things because I've learned a lot about what people believe, what they don't believe. It's interesting.>> I agree. It just has always seemed curious to me that so many threads about religion were started by X and jonvn, who were among the most vocal about not believing. On the other hand, most gay marriage threads have been started by conservatives, so I guess you tend to talk about the stuff you have no use for.
Originally Posted By mele I think we like to talk about issues to define ourselves. When we talk about the things that irritate us, when we keep trying to endlessly prove our point, it's kind of an ego-stroke, you know? For most of us, knowing we're "right" isn't enough. We want others to admit it and if we have to hit them over the head to get them to admit we're right, we're pretty willing to do it. Well, at least I think that's what could be driving some of my participation in WE. I'm working on it. ;-)
Originally Posted By pecos bill Religion and non belief kind of go together. Pretty tough to discuss atheism without religion being brought up.
Originally Posted By DyGDisney I was going to answer pretty much what RoadTrip answered. If I die, and there is nothing after, well, then, I guess I'd change my mind. But I'd be dead, so couldn't change my mind.
Originally Posted By mele ^^I think that's why it's important to live your life in the best way possible, living up to your dreams and your own standards. Even if religion turns out to be false, if it brought you peace and comfort and made you into a person you are proud of, then it has all been worth it. (Of course, the same is true if you don't believe. Live your life in a way that you can be proud of and you've done the best you can.)
Originally Posted By utahjosh One thing I love about my religion is that it gives everyone an equal opportunity, no matter when they lived or what they believed here on earth. God is an all-knowing and all-loving judge.
