> >It is by a leap of faith that we believe them and discredit the Vedas or
> >the various writings of Mohammed for example.
> No sir. Here I just have to disagree. If a leap of faith is all we
> have to go on then we are not able to dismiss the Vedas or anything else
> any more than they can dismiss us. Everything becomes subjective.
Everything we know is NECESSARILY subjective. Subjectivity, IMO,
isn't a bad thing. Its absloute relativism that's a problem. If we
can't think from other people's perspectives, then we're in a whole heap
of trouble.
On this note, I guess you would be asking why I would choose
Christianity over Hinduism, or perhaps something more mature like Zen
Bhuddism? The fact of the matter is that the Christian revelation deals
better with reality than all of those other philosophys (Bhuddism, and
espically the Zen variations thereof have no God.)
> >The Illiad and Oddesy are pretty darned reliable, for example,
> >predate the NT by 600 years, and we don't believe what they talk about, as
> >we have no evidence for a Cyplose.
> Actually the Illiad is the second most reliably preserved document
> from antiquity. The NT is first. The comparison between the two can be
> found in the early chapters of "Evidence That Demands a Verdict". Compared
> to the NT the Illiad's preservation is frankly pathetic.
Do you doubt, that Homer, whoever he was, wrote about Cyclopses and
Sirens? He believed them to exist: a cursory study of the culture tells
us that, and many others belived with him, that is until the Greek
enlightenment of ~600 B.C.
Homer was simply putting it down in much the same way as Aesop wrote
down the fabels.
> >> What exactly do you mean "we can't _prove_ Christianity"?
> >> Depending on your standard of proof I may or may not agree.
>
> >If we could all agree on a set first principles in the first place,
> >it might be possible, but one must start with postulates somewhere. Why
> >should I pick the Christian postulates over the conucopia available?
>
> What I meant by "standard of proof" was, e.g.- scientific proof;
> legal-historical proof; modern historical investigatory proof....
> What type of proof would you want to consider?
I don't know. Pick one. The fact of the matter is that the Bible
contains accounts of many one-time events that cannot be duplicated in
this age.
(Of course, there are also all those extadorinary things that we see
on a pretty regular basis, but the press doesn't pick up on.)
Stephen