Talk about flawed analogies. Well, we could sure start now, anyway.
Since you’ve already gone 12 rounds on this particular viewpoint of yours multiple times before beginning this thread, one might ask why this is so important to you. What is the worst thing that would happen if you considered the testimonies you cite to simply be subjective evidence? Would it hurt your faith in some way? If so, why?
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Just as one does not have to believe Jewish myths to entertain the proposition that God walked the Earth as a Jew, one does not have to believe others’ interpretations of their own lives. Jesus stands alone. His credibility depends entirely upon Himself. And He has it. [He actually has enormous credibility, second top none, even if He weren’t God walking]. Regardless of His cultural baggage. And our subjective personal little stories; they don’t have to be believed either. Ancient Jewish claims and ours have no credibility to touch His.
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Why would I do that and falsely label them when they are factual and honest and true? And in Rich Stearns’ case, pretty much undoubtedly additionally verifiable as well. Don’t forget that I have my own factual accounts as well (and @SkovandOfMitaze has one too).
Not at all. It’s moot anyway, because they are factual.
The point is, faith is not just blind faith, scrunch up your eyes and clench your teeth and believe just for the sake of believing or because it makes you feel good, a “pet belief” or because you were brought up as a Christian, had an emotional experience or you admire something about the Gospel story. There is real evidence.
For me, this is your key assertion. Granted that every event in the Stearns case occurred, how do you determine that the set of events was too improbable to occur by chance (given who he is, his situation, his likely friends, etc)? ‘Feels improbable to me’ is a notoriously bad metric and I don’t see how to make any kind of principled estimation of the real probabilities.
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If you won five different lotteries in a day in the same order that you bought the tickets at different places, even in different states, you might have more than a clue that something was rigged. I would hope so, anyway. And when there are multiple accounts over the centuries of God’s providential interventions…
Fortunate or not, there’s still the rational possibility of solipsism if you can’t stomach belief in God.
So you are saying that “subjective” equals “false”?
Well, I believe you when you say your faith is more than those things. But maybe it is some of those things for some people. That’s the nature of subjectivity.
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Yes, I would. In fact, I can even calculate the probability of that happening. Whereas here, I have no idea whether I should be surprised or not.
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No, because I’m not talking about anything subjective. I’m saying that objective means factual.
We have instances recorded here of people becoming Christians with what could be considered subjective experiences, and I am not denying the validity of those – Francis Collins, Sy Garte and Philip Yancey, for instance, don’t have ‘external evidence’ that I recall. (And Rich Stearns’ account is not about coming to faith, anyway.)
That possibility doesn’t interest me, nor does it strike me as particularly relevant to this thread. (And why wouldn’t I be able to stomach belief in God?)
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Someone here has said that.
Sometimes it is also a matter of interpretation. We know that both perception and memory are not independent of belief – that is a matter of demonstrable scientific fact. We are not video cameras. We understand, encode, and store information according to the significance we attach to things and that significance is highly subjective. This routinely becomes a big factor in how we evaluate the testimonies of personal experience – we know only too well that we may likely have understood the same events rather differently than the person telling their tale.
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Here’s the first Merriam-Webster definition for objective:
expressing or dealing with facts or conditions as perceived without distortion by personal feelings, prejudices, or interpretations
Is this how you would categorize the testimonies that you cite?
That is how I would characterize the external facts, certainly. That is what this is about.
Given belief in a remarkable series of events, some have referred to it as religious solipsism. Hitchens did this.
To be like God and determine not only good and evil, but even reality itself.
It’s surprising how often you find it hidden beneath the use of plural pronouns. Did Hegel really say the goal of this life is for reason to become conscious of itself?
God is so remarkable in his power and judgement, he can fulfill the solipsists most wishful expectations for all eternity. It’s a real hall of mirrors that progresses to infinity.
Dr. George went into some of the specifics that made his case unique. I can find the link to the video if you are interested. I’m not a doctor, or a used car salesman, but can relate to his experience, and this makes his story more believable.
By the way, the individual from the story you referenced made a comment about how blessed he is, so his recovery may also be connected with believing prayer.
I’ve kind of fell of the thread and so I’m not 100% certain where it’s at. I just seen the tag.
For me the reason why my prayer being answered was important to me is that first it’s how I came to know the gospel. If that prayer was never answered, I may have never become a Christian. The second reason is that if that one prayer was never answered, and my life continued in he way it did, but I somehow became a Christian because I wondered into some church and studied the Bible and so on, by this point in my life I would have abandoned the faith because no prayer has really been answered except that one. That single prayer being answered is the sole reason I personally believe in Yahweh.
Additionally I’m not a deist and so I believe God interacts with us. I’m also a cessationist and so I don’t believe a lot of the really crazy supernaturally charged stuff like someone being instantly raised from the dead now dad sorely by prayer and I don’t believe in things like someone was feeling a darkness come over them and they saw a demon and they prayed and suddenly they seen the cuff of a white and gold sleeve and the hilt of a diamond sword and it lit up the room driving away the demonic and a pace came over them and the heard a voice say “ I am your creator and I love you” I just simply can’t believe it. Even if I trust the person and believe they 100% believe it , I simply won’t be able to accept that as fact.
I don’t think Yahweh is a genie, and I think she prayer is answered there is almost always some percentage of it randomly happening, but that many of us just know , whatever that and to you and however subjective it is, that it’s from Yahweh and it’s very important to us.
As in my story, I just won’t ever be able to put aside my faith in it being from Yahweh and replace it wth faith that it was just coincidence. If it’s coincidence then I’ll have to say everything else is and therefore for me that would mean a insignificant amount of reasons to leave a door open for God since I have no other reason to believe in Yahweh. Naturalism and the unknown can explain everything else.
Interesting discussion. I generally look at objective evidence as something you and anyone else can measure. Now, how you interpret that measurement becomes a subjective thing, as outside influences may influence how it is explained, but the number you get is objective. As an engineering friend once said, if you can’t put a number on it, it is just an opinion.
Even unlikely things have a possibility, however remote, of happening. Another friend is fond of saying that life is a series of probabilities. A heart starting spontaneously after 45 minutes is unlikely, but not impossible. More likely perhaps is either so low and slow a pulse that it was not detected, which kept things going enough for eventual recovery. And, of course, it is common to stop hearts, cut them out and sew them into another body and restart them.
And while I long for some objective evidence, even the 4 gospels are subjective and variable accounts written by little known or unknown witnesses. John probably has the best documentation as being an eye-witness account, and he is writing not as a historical chronology of events, but as a theological document.
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That sounds an awful lot like a platitude to me, Phil, sorry. If you were in Rich Stearns’ or Maggie’s shoes, I don’t think you would be dismissing the reality of the facts that way. It is tantamount to denying God’s sovereignty, and I won’t be doing that either.
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