Your Truth, My Truth, The Truth... (disciple, Mormonism, atheist, Islam)

[MoonBeam33]

Practitioners of most religions declare their faiths to be The Truth. Atheists believe what they have is The Truth.

If there is a car accident and there are three witnesses all on opposite street corners, all three will give you a different account of the accident and each will believe they are telling the truth.

What makes your Truth trutheir than anyone else's truth?


I'll give two rules for the discussion: 1)"God says so" is not valid reasoning and 2)You can't use your own holy book to prove your own holy book.

[Mr. In-Between]

I can only assert that my truth is true for me. I believe (very strongly, of course) that it is a universal truth, but I can only state with certainty that it is true for me. And the reason it is true for me is because it is the only thing that feels right to me, that makes sense, that answers every question that can be answered.

[cpcu12345]

Anyway, a disciple said that not to engage in debates.

[bluecheese]

The so called 'truth', where religion is concerned, is very elusive. Surely if a deity really existed it would make is presence clear to all without a shadow of a doubt? Making it a matter of faith is playing silly beggars with humans!

[ReachTheBeach]

This is stolen from a post by another member.

Religions assume that belief is a decision, but it really isn't. Belief happens automatically when one is presented with compelling evidence. Religion tries to turn belief into a decision or act of will.

I will turn it around and ask a question...

I pick a number between 1 and 5 and then ask people to tell me what the number is until I have been given all numbers as answers. Did the people who gave me the right answer speak the truth even though they told me something they really didn't know for sure?

[cpcu12345]

Originally Posted by bluecheese

The so called 'truth', where religion is concerned, is very elusive. Surely if a deity really existed it would make is presence clear to all without a shadow of a doubt? Making it a matter of faith is playing silly beggars with humans!

Either you spake presumsely or had fallen to the stereotype.

[old_cold]

Forensic evidence and scene reconstruction, in other words, evidence, will determine which witness that has the most accurate version.

[cpcu12345]

Originally Posted by old_cold

Forensic evidence and scene reconstruction, in other words, evidence, will determine which witness that has the most accurate version.

Negative to the unecessary resource draining methods. It is like when you do the math, you don't really have to prepare crates of apples to finish your test.

[TRANSPONDER]

Originally Posted by MoonBeam33

Practitioners of most religions declare their faiths to be The Truth. Atheists believe what they have is The Truth.

If there is a car accident and there are three witnesses all on opposite street corners, all three will give you a different account of the accident and each will believe they are telling the truth.

What makes your Truth trutheir than anyone else's truth?


I'll give two rules for the discussion: 1)"God says so" is not valid reasoning and 2)You can't use your own holy book to prove your own holy book.

"What makes your Truth trutheir than anyone else's truth?"

Evidence. Witness testimony is open to error, never mind bias. This is understood. So what is the implication? That they all say that the same thing happened, but they remember it differently. The errors in remembering does not mean that the thing did not happen.

So the only point of your post is to try to validate the discrepancies in the Bible. If there is any other point to it, enlighten me.

Pre p.s reading your post again I think you are NOT arguing for a particular apologetics view and even are questioning it. If so, take my post as aimed at the 'Witnesses don't always agree' argument and not at you particularly.

But what cannot be explained by 'Witness faulty memory' (claimed to prove that they are telling the truth, not collaborating) is when the stories are so different and contradictory that they cannot be telling the same story - they cannot be telling the truth. Examples - the Nativity and the resurrection. The ONLY real point of agreement is Bethlehem and resurrection. Which is why they were written (0)

Nor can a very important event that all of them should have known and if they had all know it, they should all have at least mentioned it. Examples -the transfiguration (not mentioned by John) the raising of Lazarus and the spear - stab (mentioned only by John) and the massacre of innocents (1) the assassination attempt in Luke at the outset of the Ministry - whereas Matthew and Mark say nothing of it, though they both mention the 'rejection at Nazareth', with the 'Is this not Joseph's son' - in a different place; which leads to the third debunker of the true but differing eyewitness claim: fiddling the text

The text is the same in many cases. I mentioned the 'Rejection at Nazareth' in a different place and that assassination attempt that must be Luke's invention - it is inconceivable that Matthew and Mark did not know of it or thought it unimportant and indeed the court of law would surely discredit that testimony.
We find the same in John with what is undeniably the temple cleansing shifted to before the baptism (2) leaving a gap in the Passion narrative. This isn't poor memory - this is fiddling the story.
The same is found in Luke where the anointing at Bethany (in all the other three) is missing - but something damn' like it appears much earlier in Galilee (7.37) it is surely the same story heavily disguised.

These are just a few of the more important examples of these three kinds of evidence against the Gospels being eyewitness and there are many more - enough to sink this 'someone else's truth'. argument.

On the evidence - understood and assessed fairly, the gospels collapse as reliable - just as the OT does. That is why I say that on all reason and evidence atheism is true. (3)

(0) That's a new one. The 'weaving tother' argument is surely deception - of the self and attempts to deceive others.

(1) attempts to minimize it as a rather small and unimportant massacre of children , camouflage it with Herod's other misdeeds or claim that others may have not heard about it will not wash as, if one disciple knew of it, they ALL did and if they all did, they should all have mentioned at least something about Herod's attempt to assassinate Jesus. But only Matthew even hints at it.

(2) and this is John's own work because he writes a link at 4.45 to refer back to this as an earlier event.

(3) which is to say it is correct on reason and evidence not to believe in the god -claims for any religion, and particularly not the Bible -based ones (Judaism, Christianity, Mormonism and Islam): they all go down the chute.

[Shirina]

As an atheist, it just makes the most logical sense to presume that all of the religions can't be right but they CAN all be wrong -- and that's what resonates with me. Further research seemed to bear that out.

However, honest atheists will always tell you that there might be a god of some kind out there floating around in the cosmos, but there's no evidence. Therefore, it's silly to waste one's life behaving as though there was 100% conclusive proof that such a god exists.

Atheists should never make the claim that "there is no God ... Period" but the lack of evidence of this god is the same thing as no god at all (tips hat to Carl Sagan for that idea).