Well I’m surprised that you need to equivocate around the issue of honest dealing. Why not just agree and leave it to me to make that charge if I was going to? Instead you bring it yourself. Don’t expect me to talk you out of it.
Or us you out of your pet beliefs. Who is equivocating? Shall we talk about subjective exclusions.
It’s the second time you interjected yourself into a discussion I was having with someone and alluded to a used car salesman.
Be honest about it. I don’t wouldn’t blame you for seeing me that way. There is however a perfect judge and my conscience regarding every word I’ve written here is clear.
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And we have objective evidence of that subjective exclusion.
It is rather strange for someone to criticize people for excluding subjective evidence in one breath while accusing them of denying objective and verifiable data in the next breath.
Not if the facts are objective and verifiable. I could probably contact Rich Stearns and associates if you’d like. Or some ingenuousness could be exercised.
The claim that it is impossible to resuscitate someone after their heart has been stopped for 45 minutes does give off that used car salesman vibe. A quick google search turns up at least one other guy who had his heart stopped for hours and he survived without any serious effects.
A few excerpts from the article:
It is fact that the Cubs play their home games in Chicago. It is a fact that deep dish pizzas are popular in Chicago. Therefore, how can you deny that magical leprechauns aren’t real because they caused those two things to happen. Can you deny the objective and verifiable evidence of magical leprechauns?
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Never mind, I’m not sure it is something that can be exercised. It’s a state of being, isn’t it, and maybe a gift.
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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