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Old 21st February 2008, 05:26 PM
Harvey1 Harvey1 is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by evangelicalhumanist
Thus, the literal truth of statements about the rent veil in the temple, corpses rising from their open tombs, the sun standing still for any period of time, etc. must all remain, at the very best, unanswered. And this must also be the case for the religious "truth" about the existence of God or the spiritual resurrection of Christ.

EH, I would separate historical notions of fact and philosophical notions of fact. In the case of history, especially ancient history, I don't think we can fully verify miracles. We can state that certain testimony appears in all probability to be reliable (e.g., Paul's communication about the resurrection of Jesus, direct transporting to heaven before God's throne, healings, prophesying, etc.), but we cannot verify that these events require miraculous interpretations (i.e., an intervention in physics) to properly classify. All we can say is that these things are, historically speaking, unexplained without more data.

In the case of metaphysics, you've entered the realm of philosophy, and herein we can say more about whether it makes philosophical sense to say if scientific laws are laws of nature or human inventions, or whether God is likely to exist, etc.

However, in both cases we can still make faith based statements with good reason. For example, after reading and studying Paul, I think he would not have likely converted to Christianity and suffered so great in his life had he not seen Jesus in some kind of resurrected form. You, on the other hand, may not come to that conviction by reading Paul. You might consider him to have some kind of psychological disorder, and wouldn't consider it further. We both have our reasons for our distinct beliefs. Similarly, I look at the philosophical arguments for God, and I shake my head wondering how anyone could deny a personal God exists, but again, we each have our reasons.

I think my reasons are pretty good, and so I feel pretty comfortable in believing and being a Christian.
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