You read (probably just some of) the Bible, and you decided that it didn't seem true. That was your choice. You decided that it was not believable; whether that decision was active or passive does not change the fact that it was a decision that you made.
I don't base what I believe off of purely how my emotions react. I tend to look at things with very little emotion, actually. Emotion clouds your logic, preventing you from seeing how the right is right and the wrong is wrong. Think about it this way: believing that it is highly possibly that you are going to Hell for an eternity of torture due to separation from God is not the most appealing sounding belief.
Your analogy is flawed. A more correct analogy would be you waking up without vision and believing that you are blind. In reality, you might not actually be blind; your eyes might just be closed or covered. So, despite all the evidence that you can think of pointing towards you being blind, you might actually just need to open your eyes.
Your observations suggested them to you. Seeing a bolt of lightning hit a tree and start a fire could suggest to someone that perhaps they could start a fire, if they found something similar, like something that creates sparks for example. The observation suggested that it was possible, and so the suggestion of possibility was acted upon.
I'm a little hurt. It seems you don't remember that I've confided in some detail that I've read the entirety of the Bible multiple times and a few different versions of it, some as a child and some as an adult just for research purposes.
That was normal in the family I came from. They weren't those typical Christians who go to church once per week and largely forget it the rest of the time; they believed the Bible was a powerful book delivered by a god, and so naturally it was normal to read it all the time and try as hard as possible to understand it, the same way scientists might be obsessed if an extraterrestrial intelligence randomly transmitted a book's worth of advanced technologies currently beyond us.
While I'm not at all accusing you personally of thinking with emotions, mentioning Hell doesn't serve your purpose. When it comes to those who are religious for emotional reasons, it's just as common that fear of Hell drives them as desire for Heaven does.
I see where you're going with your analogy but you're missing my point and making it about something else. It's not about whether I'm right or not. I'm just saying that if my observations have led me to a certain conclusion, my emotions can't change it. So it's important in the analogy that I've actually been diagnosed by hundreds of doctors and I absolutely appear to be blind. The things you described would be considerable logical alternatives. That doesn't serve this analogy because that's something I definitely do. The point here is that when I don't see logical alternatives I won't doubt my perception just because my perception sucks. The point is that even if I badly wanted the Bible to be true, all my observations, to me personally anyway, show there's simply no way it is, not even possibly.
As for your last point, I've no real disagreement here. That's kind of what I've been saying. Obviously completely original ideas are almost always based on observations. My point was just that sometimes some of us observe the universe and form speculations or even conclusions rather than simply believing someone else who says they did that.
I had forgotten, since I don't remember much about most of the users on this website. Just a question: which versions of the Bible have you read? Catholics don't put a particularly large emphasis on the Bible itself, since it is just a book inspired by God that outlines the reasons we believe what we do.
It is still your decision as to whether or not you believe any of the alternatives to be possible or correct. You would just have to choose to reject some of the suggestions made by your own observations. That may seem to you to mean rejection of facts, whatever those may be, but, if God is real, the people suggesting the Bible to be false are falling into the predictions made by the Bible itself. People will doubt; people will say, "No, that's not true. I can prove that it's not true, and that this is what's true." After all, what your mind and the people around you suggest to be possible or impossible could be all false in the end.
Portions of? Only God knows (pun intended). So many. Front to back? Off the top of my head these come to mind:
• King James Version
• New International Version
• Good News Translation (also known as Good News Bible)
• One of the many 365 day plan Bibles, this one being a New Living Translation version if I recall
• Rainbow Study Bible (this is actually just New International Version but basically everything is color coded and the colors denote various topics)
• Some weird Bible I actually don't remember what was but seemed to be for children as it had heaps of pictures and was translated in very easily understood English kind of like the Good News Translation. It may have been what's known as the Children's King James Version but I don't know for sure.
Anyway, this is the way I see it. Look at your username. Is it Clunk42? Could you honestly just choose to believe it's something else without knowing you're lying to yourself? As for me, if I've observed something I don't have a choice in the matter. If someone held a gun to my head and said I would be shot if I didn't start believing your username was something else, I'd just die. I wouldn't want to die, and I'd try really, really hard to believe something else, but I would fail to. There's simply no choice there for me.
Interesting. I don't trust any of those translations.
It is still a choice, ultimately. You would just not be trying hard enough. You simply lack the will to try hard enough, just as I do not have the will to try hard enough to disbelieve my own truths if someone told me to do so. If you did not believe what you believe in to be true, you would not believe in it at all. Since you believe your current beliefs to be true, your mind rejects other beliefs that contradict them. It would take either an incredible amount of will or a suggestion of disbelief in order to change your beliefs. For example, if I started going around saying that I'm going to change my username to be "Clunk427", then it would be suggested in your mind that my username is going to be Clunk427. Then, if I continue to claim that my username will become Clunk427, you could eventually begin to think that my username will become Clunk427. You could believe this whether it ever becomes Clunk427 or not. If it were to end up never actually becoming Clunk427, and you believed that it would, then you would have held the wrong belief. However, if it did change, and you doubted that it would do so, then you also would have held the wrong belief.
I think it's best to just translate the original oneself using various translation methods and see what one makes of it all. I've done a bit of that. There's some variety here and there but my primary reasons for not believing it remain intact, version to version, method to method. I don't really have to split hairs; it's the general story itself that doesn't correspond with various truths I've seen evidence of.
What you were describing there regards the future though. Of course I'm open to the possibility that you might change your username. I'm simply not open to the belief that the comment I'm responding to doesn't say it was by Clunk42.
While the word "believe" might occasionally come out of me for practical reasons, I technically don't have any beliefs whatsoever as far as I'm concerned. There are only things I outright know (in my mind at least), strong speculations (what I might erroneously call "beliefs" for simplicity's sake), guesses, and things I don't know.
I wasn't even suggesting that those specific translations are what make you dislike Christianity. I was just stating my opinion about them. I both agree and disagree with what you say, since that could lead to personal biases entering your translation of the Bible, but the current translations of the Bible aren't necessarily trustworthy until proven to be so, and who best to prove them for yourself but yourself?
Religious beliefs are things that can only be proven in the future, just like the idea of me claiming to be changing my username. Eventually, they may be proven or disproven. Until then, it is a matter of belief. You can't prove Christianity currently, and you can't disprove Christianity currently. It's all a matter of belief. You believe that it's false; I believe that it's true. No amount of apologetics are ever going to be capable of swaying the beliefs until what is foretold in one of the religions becomes true. With Christianity, that would be the second coming of Christ, and with atheism, that would be an eternity of no massive religious events. Until something like that happens, none will be swayed by mere apologetics.
What I don't understand is this: why would you argue for something you are unsure of? If you do not know it to be true, then there's a very good chance that it's false. If it is false, then your entire argument is pointless at best, and entirely counterproductive at worst. Many people are like, "I wouldn't be so arrogant as to say I know what I say to be true," but, if you don't know what you say to be true, then your entire argument could be false. If you believe that everything you argue for could be false, then why would you argue for it? Figure it out for yourself before trying to figure it out for other people.
Thoughts on cancel culture
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You read (probably just some of) the Bible, and you decided that it didn't seem true. That was your choice. You decided that it was not believable; whether that decision was active or passive does not change the fact that it was a decision that you made.
I don't base what I believe off of purely how my emotions react. I tend to look at things with very little emotion, actually. Emotion clouds your logic, preventing you from seeing how the right is right and the wrong is wrong. Think about it this way: believing that it is highly possibly that you are going to Hell for an eternity of torture due to separation from God is not the most appealing sounding belief.
Your analogy is flawed. A more correct analogy would be you waking up without vision and believing that you are blind. In reality, you might not actually be blind; your eyes might just be closed or covered. So, despite all the evidence that you can think of pointing towards you being blind, you might actually just need to open your eyes.
Your observations suggested them to you. Seeing a bolt of lightning hit a tree and start a fire could suggest to someone that perhaps they could start a fire, if they found something similar, like something that creates sparks for example. The observation suggested that it was possible, and so the suggestion of possibility was acted upon.
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S0UNDS_WEIRD
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I'm a little hurt. It seems you don't remember that I've confided in some detail that I've read the entirety of the Bible multiple times and a few different versions of it, some as a child and some as an adult just for research purposes.
That was normal in the family I came from. They weren't those typical Christians who go to church once per week and largely forget it the rest of the time; they believed the Bible was a powerful book delivered by a god, and so naturally it was normal to read it all the time and try as hard as possible to understand it, the same way scientists might be obsessed if an extraterrestrial intelligence randomly transmitted a book's worth of advanced technologies currently beyond us.
While I'm not at all accusing you personally of thinking with emotions, mentioning Hell doesn't serve your purpose. When it comes to those who are religious for emotional reasons, it's just as common that fear of Hell drives them as desire for Heaven does.
I see where you're going with your analogy but you're missing my point and making it about something else. It's not about whether I'm right or not. I'm just saying that if my observations have led me to a certain conclusion, my emotions can't change it. So it's important in the analogy that I've actually been diagnosed by hundreds of doctors and I absolutely appear to be blind. The things you described would be considerable logical alternatives. That doesn't serve this analogy because that's something I definitely do. The point here is that when I don't see logical alternatives I won't doubt my perception just because my perception sucks. The point is that even if I badly wanted the Bible to be true, all my observations, to me personally anyway, show there's simply no way it is, not even possibly.
As for your last point, I've no real disagreement here. That's kind of what I've been saying. Obviously completely original ideas are almost always based on observations. My point was just that sometimes some of us observe the universe and form speculations or even conclusions rather than simply believing someone else who says they did that.
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Clunk42
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I had forgotten, since I don't remember much about most of the users on this website. Just a question: which versions of the Bible have you read? Catholics don't put a particularly large emphasis on the Bible itself, since it is just a book inspired by God that outlines the reasons we believe what we do.
It is still your decision as to whether or not you believe any of the alternatives to be possible or correct. You would just have to choose to reject some of the suggestions made by your own observations. That may seem to you to mean rejection of facts, whatever those may be, but, if God is real, the people suggesting the Bible to be false are falling into the predictions made by the Bible itself. People will doubt; people will say, "No, that's not true. I can prove that it's not true, and that this is what's true." After all, what your mind and the people around you suggest to be possible or impossible could be all false in the end.
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Portions of? Only God knows (pun intended). So many. Front to back? Off the top of my head these come to mind:
• King James Version
• New International Version
• Good News Translation (also known as Good News Bible)
• One of the many 365 day plan Bibles, this one being a New Living Translation version if I recall
• Rainbow Study Bible (this is actually just New International Version but basically everything is color coded and the colors denote various topics)
• Some weird Bible I actually don't remember what was but seemed to be for children as it had heaps of pictures and was translated in very easily understood English kind of like the Good News Translation. It may have been what's known as the Children's King James Version but I don't know for sure.
Anyway, this is the way I see it. Look at your username. Is it Clunk42? Could you honestly just choose to believe it's something else without knowing you're lying to yourself? As for me, if I've observed something I don't have a choice in the matter. If someone held a gun to my head and said I would be shot if I didn't start believing your username was something else, I'd just die. I wouldn't want to die, and I'd try really, really hard to believe something else, but I would fail to. There's simply no choice there for me.
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Clunk42
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Interesting. I don't trust any of those translations.
It is still a choice, ultimately. You would just not be trying hard enough. You simply lack the will to try hard enough, just as I do not have the will to try hard enough to disbelieve my own truths if someone told me to do so. If you did not believe what you believe in to be true, you would not believe in it at all. Since you believe your current beliefs to be true, your mind rejects other beliefs that contradict them. It would take either an incredible amount of will or a suggestion of disbelief in order to change your beliefs. For example, if I started going around saying that I'm going to change my username to be "Clunk427", then it would be suggested in your mind that my username is going to be Clunk427. Then, if I continue to claim that my username will become Clunk427, you could eventually begin to think that my username will become Clunk427. You could believe this whether it ever becomes Clunk427 or not. If it were to end up never actually becoming Clunk427, and you believed that it would, then you would have held the wrong belief. However, if it did change, and you doubted that it would do so, then you also would have held the wrong belief.
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I think it's best to just translate the original oneself using various translation methods and see what one makes of it all. I've done a bit of that. There's some variety here and there but my primary reasons for not believing it remain intact, version to version, method to method. I don't really have to split hairs; it's the general story itself that doesn't correspond with various truths I've seen evidence of.
What you were describing there regards the future though. Of course I'm open to the possibility that you might change your username. I'm simply not open to the belief that the comment I'm responding to doesn't say it was by Clunk42.
While the word "believe" might occasionally come out of me for practical reasons, I technically don't have any beliefs whatsoever as far as I'm concerned. There are only things I outright know (in my mind at least), strong speculations (what I might erroneously call "beliefs" for simplicity's sake), guesses, and things I don't know.
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Clunk42
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I wasn't even suggesting that those specific translations are what make you dislike Christianity. I was just stating my opinion about them. I both agree and disagree with what you say, since that could lead to personal biases entering your translation of the Bible, but the current translations of the Bible aren't necessarily trustworthy until proven to be so, and who best to prove them for yourself but yourself?
Religious beliefs are things that can only be proven in the future, just like the idea of me claiming to be changing my username. Eventually, they may be proven or disproven. Until then, it is a matter of belief. You can't prove Christianity currently, and you can't disprove Christianity currently. It's all a matter of belief. You believe that it's false; I believe that it's true. No amount of apologetics are ever going to be capable of swaying the beliefs until what is foretold in one of the religions becomes true. With Christianity, that would be the second coming of Christ, and with atheism, that would be an eternity of no massive religious events. Until something like that happens, none will be swayed by mere apologetics.
What I don't understand is this: why would you argue for something you are unsure of? If you do not know it to be true, then there's a very good chance that it's false. If it is false, then your entire argument is pointless at best, and entirely counterproductive at worst. Many people are like, "I wouldn't be so arrogant as to say I know what I say to be true," but, if you don't know what you say to be true, then your entire argument could be false. If you believe that everything you argue for could be false, then why would you argue for it? Figure it out for yourself before trying to figure it out for other people.