Why Are Things Believed ?

@moonbus said
It is astonishing how you manage to miss the point of nearly every question put to you. It’s not about how bad hell is. It’s about how you came to believe in this particular image; how you came to believe in hell has nothing to do with truth or reality. You have not been to hell, so you do not know whether there really is such a place.

Stop avoiding the question. How did y ...[text shortened]... it? How did HE know? since he’s not been there either. Why would you trust someone who doesn’t know?

With respect to Hell, what Jesus said in the Bible. Odd when the subject was the supernatural didn’t care why.

@kellyjay said
With respect to Hell, what Jesus said in the Bible. Odd when the subject was the supernatural didn’t care why.

So that's OP option d), based on authority. Namely, on the author(s) of a book.

Now, next questions: were you there when Jesus allegedly said that? Were you there when those bits of the Bible were written? Did you personally verify that those bits correctly reported Jesus's actual words? No.

So, actually, the authority you rely on is not Jesus, but someone else: the author or authors of some scroll or scrolls. But we don't have all the scrolls any more. What we have is a redacted selection, copies of copies of copies, of a once much larger collection of scrolls.

The authority you rely on is a cabal of Roman bishops who decided, for reasons you don't know, to canonize some scrolls, and not canonize others, in the year 325 AD.

Were those bishops there when Jesus allegedly said those things? Did those bishops personally verify that whatever scrolls they were looking at were eyewitness accounts, accurate, complete, without diminution or addition? No. So why did they believe (in miracle stories about virgin birth and resurrection all the rest of it)?

Do you trust Roman Catholic bishops?

Do you see where your 'authority' answer leads? It leads to regress of other 'authorities' and into quicksands of doubt.

@kellyjay said
If you dislike a proposition and it is true, your attitude toward it isn't going to alter
its truthfulness, regardless of your opinion. If you are using your likes to make
decisions, that isn't using reasoning. That doesn't stop you or anyone from doing it,
but rational decisions are based on logic and reason.

Third time of posting 🙂

Is that yes or no….?

So you were talking about and explaining how people use their moral compasses and rational reasoning to discern what is correct?

@kellyjay said
People like me

Yes. There are people - like you - who believe in the Jesus' "-hell" is way worse thsn Auschwitz-Birkenau thing. So, why is it that some people believe this Auschwitz-Birkenau thing - like you do - when other people don't?

@moonbus said
Why are things believed?

Proposed answers: not because they are true, but because

a) they seem to someone to be true, or

b) they seem to someone to explain some complex or mysterious phenonemon better than an alternative hypothesis, or

c) they seem to someone to be consistent with or logically implied by something else which seems to be true, or

d) some putative authority figure says they are true.


<>Discuss.

Sorry -- I thought this was going to be about topics a step or two before those proposed answers.

@fmf said
Yes. There are people - like you - who believe in the Jesus' "-hell" is way worse thsn Auschwitz-Birkenau thing. So, why is it that some people believe this Auschwitz-Birkenau thing - like you do - when other people don't?

Now you understand why I said you turned it into a class of people, a group, some apart from others.

@kellyjay said
Now you understand why I said you turned it into a class of people, a group, some apart from others.

Observing that you have beliefs in common with other people has got nothing to consigning you to a "class". And you harping on about it just means you are dodging the question.

@kellyjay said
There is a class of people who believe in hell?

Don't be so feeble.

Why do people like you believe this 'Jesus-Auschwitz-Birkenau' stuff when other people don't?

@moonbus said
So that's OP option d), based on authority. Namely, on the author(s) of a book.

Now, next questions: were you there when Jesus allegedly said that? Were you there when those bits of the Bible were written? Did you personally verify that those bits correctly reported Jesus's actual words? No.

So, actually, the authority you rely on is not Jesus, but someone else: ...[text shortened]... r 'authority' answer leads? It leads to regress of other 'authorities' and into quicksands of doubt.

You must love Roman Bishops, who didn't write the Bible; they also didn't control
the text of the Bible; others wrote those, which were sent around the world and
put into several different languages, copied over and over. So there are copies
from different time frames, in different languages, by the thousands brought in to
make up the Bible. Anyone screwing with a translation couldn't do it without it
being noticed; unlike today's media, where history can be changed by what we see
on the web, allowing only what some want the masses to see, that level of control
wasn't there then.

Concerning scripture, it isn't even here now; the sheer number of historical
documents would clearly show it. There are too many documents from the time
that validate the text. Even the dead sea scrolls validated the OT as it was written;
your complaint isn't valid, in my opinion. The main issue today is translations
because some have indeed rewritten text to support their views, which makes their
translation stand apart from the rest. However, comparing the new translations to
older documents and their sheer number, it isn't difficult to find the proper
interpretation.

@fmf said
Don't be so feeble.

Why do people like you believe this 'Jesus-Auschwitz-Birkenau' stuff when other people don't?

I'm not the one separating people by groups; that would be you. People are
different, that isn't good enough for you?

@divegeester said
Third time of posting 🙂

Is that yes or no….?

So you were talking about and explaining how people use their moral compasses and rational reasoning to discern what is correct?

Pick one dive, I can answer you and you still make it up as you go, it doesn't really
matter what I say to you.

@kellyjay said
I'm not the one separating people by groups; that would be you. People are
different, that isn't good enough for you?

Why do people like you believe this 'Jesus-Auschwitz-Birkenau' stuff when other people don't? Because "people are different" is a cop-out afraid-of-the-topic "answer".

@kellyjay said
There are too many documents from the time
that validate the text.

Really? Name ONE "from the time".

@fmf said
Really? Name ONE "from the time".

The earliest ones are decades after the originals; you look at other historical
documents that are accepted as is, compared to the NT text, the NT in sear
numbers of copies and how close some of them are from the origins the NT
documentation by far exceeds all others. Do you see that differently?

@fmf said
Why do people like you believe this 'Jesus-Auschwitz-Birkenau' stuff when other people don't? Because "people are different" is a cop-out afraid-of-the-topic "answer".

Some people don't believe in the holocaust either, some don't believe man walked
on the moon, and some think dead dirt is the origin of all life by a long string of
good fortune. Some people, if you want to segregate people, then do so.