by jimwalton » Fri Mar 22, 2019 2:46 pm
First of all, I guess I need to talk about the nature of faith. In the Bible, faith is evidentiary. I define Biblical faith as "making an assumption of truth based on enough evidence to make that assumption reasonable." In my opinion, belief is always a choice, and is always based on evidence. When you sit down in a chair, you didn’t think twice about sitting down. You believe that the chair will hold you. Faith? Yes. You've sat in chairs hundreds of times, but you can't be absolutely sure it will hold you this time. Things do break on occasion. But you make an assumption of truth based on enough evidence to make it reasonable for you to make that assumption, and you sit down. That's faith, and it was a conscious choice based on a reasonable body of evidence. It's not really an opinion, but an assumption of truth based on evidence.
You'll notice in the Bible that evidence precedes faith. Faith doesn't pertain to "opinion" in the Bible. There is no "close your eyes and jump off a cliff" and good luck to ya! God appears to Moses in a burning bush before He expects him to believe. He gave signs to take back to Pharaoh and the Israelite people, so they could see the signs before they were expected to believe. So also through the whole OT. In the NT, Jesus started off with turning water into wine, healing some people, casting out demons, and then he taught them about faith. And they couldn't possibly understand the resurrection until there was some evidence to go on. The whole Bible is God revealing himself to us all—and I mean actually, not through some exercise of faith.
My faith in God is a conscious choice because I find the evidence compelling. It's in a different category than opinion. It's an assumption of truth based on enough evidence to make it reasonable for me to make that assumption. When you read the Bible, people came to Jesus to be healed because they had heard about other people who had been healed. They had seen other people whom Jesus had healed. People had heard him teach. Their faith was based on evidence. Jesus kept giving them new information, and they gained new knowledge from it. Based on that knowledge, they acted with more faith. People came to him to make requests. See how it works? My belief in God is based on my knowledge of the credibility of those writings, the logic of the teaching, and the historical evidence behind it all. The resurrection, for instance, has evidences that give it credibility that motivate me to believe in it. My faith in the resurrection is an assumption of truth based on enough evidence that makes it reasonable to hold that assumption. Jesus could have just ascended to heaven, the disciples figured out that he had prophesied it, and went around telling people He rose. But that's not what happened. He walked around and let them touch him, talk to him, eat with him, and THEN he said, "Believe that I have risen from the dead." The same is true for my belief in the existence of God, my belief that the Bible is God's word, and my understanding of how life works.
> That seems pretty darn satanic to me.
It seems satanic to me, too. Terrible.
> If you're basing your positions on 'faith' and not based on logic, evidence, or reason, how do you know you're not doing something satanic?
Therefore I am basing my position on faith, which is based in logic, evidence, and reason—all three. What we believe is also based on what the Bible says, which gives us a concrete, objective plumb line to measure our desires, tendencies, attitudes, and actions against. That's how we know we're not doing something satanic. We have an objective measure against which to evaluate something.
> My current belief is that if Christians are right then about 30-45% of them are under Satan's influence as their beliefs are just fundamentally unChristian.
The Bible says pretty clearly that there will be a lot of fakers, posers, hypocrites, and apostates in the Church (Mt. 13.24-30, 35-43, and other places).
First of all, I guess I need to talk about the nature of faith. In the Bible, faith is evidentiary. I define Biblical faith as "making an assumption of truth based on enough evidence to make that assumption reasonable." In my opinion, belief is always a choice, and is always based on evidence. When you sit down in a chair, you didn’t think twice about sitting down. You believe that the chair will hold you. Faith? Yes. You've sat in chairs hundreds of times, but you can't be absolutely sure it will hold you this time. Things do break on occasion. But you make an assumption of truth based on enough evidence to make it reasonable for you to make that assumption, and you sit down. That's faith, and it was a conscious choice based on a reasonable body of evidence. It's not really an opinion, but an assumption of truth based on evidence.
You'll notice in the Bible that evidence precedes faith. Faith doesn't pertain to "opinion" in the Bible. There is no "close your eyes and jump off a cliff" and good luck to ya! God appears to Moses in a burning bush before He expects him to believe. He gave signs to take back to Pharaoh and the Israelite people, so they could see the signs before they were expected to believe. So also through the whole OT. In the NT, Jesus started off with turning water into wine, healing some people, casting out demons, and then he taught them about faith. And they couldn't possibly understand the resurrection until there was some evidence to go on. The whole Bible is God revealing himself to us all—and I mean actually, not through some exercise of faith.
My faith in God is a conscious choice because I find the evidence compelling. It's in a different category than opinion. It's an assumption of truth based on enough evidence to make it reasonable for me to make that assumption. When you read the Bible, people came to Jesus to be healed because they had heard about other people who had been healed. They had seen other people whom Jesus had healed. People had heard him teach. Their faith was based on evidence. Jesus kept giving them new information, and they gained new knowledge from it. Based on that knowledge, they acted with more faith. People came to him to make requests. See how it works? My belief in God is based on my knowledge of the credibility of those writings, the logic of the teaching, and the historical evidence behind it all. The resurrection, for instance, has evidences that give it credibility that motivate me to believe in it. My faith in the resurrection is an assumption of truth based on enough evidence that makes it reasonable to hold that assumption. Jesus could have just ascended to heaven, the disciples figured out that he had prophesied it, and went around telling people He rose. But that's not what happened. He walked around and let them touch him, talk to him, eat with him, and THEN he said, "Believe that I have risen from the dead." The same is true for my belief in the existence of God, my belief that the Bible is God's word, and my understanding of how life works.
> That seems pretty darn satanic to me.
It seems satanic to me, too. Terrible.
> If you're basing your positions on 'faith' and not based on logic, evidence, or reason, how do you know you're not doing something satanic?
Therefore I am basing my position on faith, which is based in logic, evidence, and reason—all three. What we believe is also based on what the Bible says, which gives us a concrete, objective plumb line to measure our desires, tendencies, attitudes, and actions against. That's how we know we're not doing something satanic. We have an objective measure against which to evaluate something.
> My current belief is that if Christians are right then about 30-45% of them are under Satan's influence as their beliefs are just fundamentally unChristian.
The Bible says pretty clearly that there will be a lot of fakers, posers, hypocrites, and apostates in the Church (Mt. 13.24-30, 35-43, and other places).