Z wrote:
But the only difference between modern day Christians and ISIS is that the members of ISIS have more faith. This is why having "strong faith" is not a virtue, but a vice ….
Faith is evil. It is inhumane.
I am dumbfounded. There is no fundamental good in what ISIS is doing, chopping off heads, executing innocent people, children and all, wreaking havoc upon the region and terrorizing the world, in the purported name of Islam. Pure abomination and ultimate evil. To elevate the faith-based motivation of such a group ahead of a simple Christian sitting in a pew on a Sunday in peaceful prayer strikes me as extremely insensitive and unfair. “Strong faith” is what gets us through, gives us hope, copes with all these inhumanities. If humans didn’t know it, didn’t possess it, didn’t practice it, our world would be a cesspool for sure. Most of the goodness that comes from man stems from a position of faith. Even governments rely on the charity of others or they couldn’t support their own people. In so many ways, faith moves people to do good that would never otherwise be done. Say that it’s not a God, but a chemical, that moves that action, and I’ll say dream on. Something external turned that chemical on, an empathy that comes from without, a faith. If that’s evil, then I’m truly clueless and I don’t want any part of this humanity. While I would agree that our nature is fallen and capable of great evil, to say faith is an evil in itself is denying the movement of a spirit within each of us that is essentially holy and good. And yet we routinely deny or ignore its rightful place in our everyday lives, and that’s on us.
Z wrote:
Faith is irrational.
Not irrational, simply necessary in order to accept as true all that has happened in the world that cannot necessarily be seen. In my view, the existence of an ultimate deity that is the source of everything can be reasoned in conjunction with science and nature, but faith in that deity is not all simple reason. We have more to rely on than just science for that, all the things that science can’t explain, all the unseen wonders, all the revelations, the God/man encounters written about, the miracles in life, the coming of Jesus and his resurrection, the hidden working of the spirit that is in each of us, etc. Having faith in these “realities” is far from irrational.
Z wrote:
We have many more choices than A) what you can pinch and B) magic. Between these two choices is an entire universe of wonder that you're simply missing, because your insistence upon things beyond this world draw your attention and contemplation away from it.
My faith draws me closer to, not further from, the things you mention (er..other than neutrinos perhaps…those are outside my bailiwick).
Z wrote:
Since you can have faith in literally anything, even fictional things, there is no guarantee with faith that it brings you closer to reality, since it has no internal error correction (being immune to direct criticism).
I never liked that flying spaghetti monster approach. To me, it just trivializes what faith is trying to say. A true understanding of faith (which is truly beyond our limited human understanding) would lead us toward the ultimate reality, not away from it. “Faith is to believe what you do not yet see, the reward of this faith is to see what you believe” (St. Augustine). I will never see a FSM. To believe in it would indeed be irrational, so of course you can’t have faith in anything. People don’t walk around intentionally making up things to believe in to make their lives more bearable and explainable. God works in our lives where we are, when we are. He knocks on the door of each and every person in a way that can reach them in conjunction with their particular human understanding and capacities. We have the capacity to accept this as something that, albeit unexplainable in all facets, is nonetheless true and happening, and because it cannot be fully understood and explained, makes it something to believe in, to trust. “Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways submit to him,
and he will make your paths straight.” (Proverbs). What matters is “in all your ways”. That’s what we can control, that’s what each of us knows. Nobody else on earth can know, only you, what those “ways” are. We must acknowledge that our “ways” suck, and so we need to conform them to something else, we need a model, and that has been given to us in Jesus.
Orion wrote:
Easter option #5: The Romans never gave the body of Jesus to anyone and just buried him in a mass grave or disposed of the body however it is they would dispose of those executed by the state.
Then you would simply choose to deny the biblical accounts as mere fiction and part of some conspiracy/plot to supplant Judaism, etc. Would have required a whole bunch of collaboration, and some pretty smart people over the last two thousand years have accepted the burial as truth. And anyway, this still would not account for my point #3.
Orion wrote:
#6: The entire narrative evolved into its "Present" form sometime around 70 years after the events happened. Earliest copies of the earliest copy of Mark do not contain an account of the resurrection of Jesus. That part was added later.
Well, this certainly would be a major embarrassment for Christianity, except of course that you have it wrong. First off, Mark was written about 70AD. Paul’s Letters pre-date Mark, and they mention the resurrection story (1 Corinthians 15, circa AD50’s). So, the fabrication you speak of had to be earlier than Mark for Paul to have already knows about it.
Moreover, Mark clearly knew about Jesus’ impending death and resurrection. The gospel includes a series of predictions Jesus specifically made about this (Mark 8:31, 9:30, 10:33). Even at the beginning of his gospel, Mark makes it clear that Jesus is not merely a great man, but the “Christ” (Messiah) and the “son of God”. He calls his story a “gospel” – a message of good news (Greek translation), not a tragedy. Finally, Mark’s account is not missing the resurrection itself. Even in the earliest manuscripts, the stone has been rolled away from the tomb (16:4), the body is gone (16:6), an angel announces that Jesus has risen from the dead (16:6), and predicts that he will appear to his disciples in Galilee (16:7).
Whether or not you believe in the resurrection, it is clear that Mark was bearing witness to it in his gospel accounts.
Orion wrote:
#7: Jesus never existed in any meaningful way we would call existing. Much like Heracles, Osiris, Thor, etc. there may be some grounding in actual events, but those true events would be far different from the legendary accounts we have today.
Legend? Thor? So many fulfillments of old-testament prophesy would be very clever to be able to manufacture like that, a grand conspiracy of 2,000 years still going, and we’re all on the take. Again, you are discounting the eye-witness and contemporary accounts of his life and miraculous story, so many martyrs including his own closest group in those earliest years, that he spoke with an authority none had ever heard before or since, and that it still resonates with and changes people to this day.
Frostheart Grueburn wrote:
… Off to the sauna on the swordpoint, and then some rolling naked in the snow afterwards! A meal of hákarl and lutefisk will follow for sodomizing the spelling of the names. Perkeleen vasamat.
Exactly. I certainly don’t want that waiting for me in the next life!
I'm sure that's how they'd view resistance to them.
Off to the sauna on the swordpoint, and then some rolling naked in the snow afterwards! A meal of hákarl and lutefisk will follow for sodomizing the spelling of the names. Perkeleen vasamat.
I cannot name the numbers accustomed to the tender tinkling of harps and Justin Bieber who upon hearing it attempt to stuff potatoes into their ears and then run off into the woods where bears and wolves and a species of carnivorous moss eat them! 
