Religion-Psychology?

[OrianasDaad]

Mabye, regardless of any psychological issues, people who believe in a specific religion do so for a number of reasons. I can think of a few that don't sound so illogical or crazy.

- As a whole, belonging to a Religion leads to a person having a life based on a code of conduct, a morality. Most of these religions are considered "Good", in the societies where they thrive. Whether or not this code of morality is backed up by fact or not, many people need the confirmation from an outside source on most anything they do.

- Religions almost always create a social group of some sort. Some people need this sort of societal structure. It's the same way for people who would rather play cards at a B&M than online. Online is potentially much more lucrative, but it lacks the social element. This is one of the reasons my wife goes to church.

There are some drawbacks to religion. Most religions consider their own dogma to be "right". This causes some conflict between religions with even sometimes small differences. Your average Babtist, Muslim, Buddhist and Catholic are all going to be good people. They all believe in God, but they believe in Him differently.

I'm don't have any degrees, and the most complicated theological work I've read is Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis. I'm an Objectivist and believe in Engineered Design. Most of these Ideas I have spring from my own head (as is proper), but I realize that my lack of background may prove to be inadequate to the question. We do what we can.

I'll be looking forward to your book on the subject of Gambling and Religion when your research is done, though.

[eastbay]

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The correct formulation is, assuming that Jesus claimed to be the Son of God, the following 3 choices -
1. Jesus was as crazy as someone who thinks he's a fried egg.
2. He was evil.
3. He was the Son of God.

Your move.

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Oh, grow up.

First, granting the extremely tenuous assumption that there actually was a person named Jesus who also claimed to be the son of God...

Didn't God create everything? Aren't we then all God's children? Given that he did, and that we are, then doesn't it follow that if I'm God's child, and I'm male, aren't I the son of God also?

So now it appears there are three possibilities:

I'm crazy
I'm evil
I'm the son of God, too

Your move! (Or, preferably, you could drop this ridiculous "argument.")

eastbay

[gasgod]

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This comic book, Sunday school version of religion (Christianity, in this case) drives me to distraction…


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You've just reduced one of the great minds of the 20th century to comic book level. This was C.S. Lewis' argument. I've never heard it answered. Maybe you can.

The correct formulation is, assuming that Jesus claimed to be the Son of God, the following 3 choices -
1. Jesus was as crazy as someone who thinks he's a fried egg.
2. He was evil.
3. He was the Son of God.

Your move.

[/ QUOTE ]

Try a different assumption:

Assuming that second and third hand accounts of events in the remote past are notoriously inaccurate, one of three things must be true.

1. Jesus existed and was divine
2. Jesus existed and was not divine
3. Jesus did not exist

Both arguments (yours and mine) are essentially meaningless. Let's try again:

Assuming that 93 is a prime number, one of the following must be true:

1. The number 31 does not exist
2. The number 3 does not exist
3. It is impossible to multiply 31 by 3


GG

[JoshuaD]

David, are you agnostic or an atheist? I ask because your argument provides that any athiest -- who by definition is 100% sure there is no God -- is in the same boat as anyone who is 100% sure there is a God.

[gasgod]

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David, are you agnostic or an atheist? I ask because your argument provides that any athiest -- who by definition is 100% sure there is no God -- is in the same boat as anyone who is 100% sure there is a God.

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atheist: one who believes that there is no deity. (From Merriam-Webster online)

"Believes" doesn't imply certainty. For examply "I believe that UTG has a high pocket pair." or "I believe it will rain later today."


GG

[revots33]

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If you are not sure, that's different. If you believe that your SPECIFIC religious beliefs are an underdog to be true but you merely HOPE they are, I have no problem with that.

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David, you just described me perfectly.

My rational poker-playing brain does get in the way of my faith sometimes, I'll admit. But then again, faith and rationality don't really go together do they? Isn't faith the belief in something that goes against rational thought? A virgin having a baby? A man rising from the dead? Hard to argue these things rationally. All you really have to go on is faith.

Ah well, must be the 12 years of Catholic school that did it to me. Those damn nuns. [img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img]

[BeerGolfPoker]

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In that post you said:

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It leaves out the possibility that Jesus did not exist.


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This is irrelevant because the assumption is that He existed and claimed to be God. Non-existence doesn't speak to the logic of the argument, it simply denies the premise.

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All I was saying here is that it is a plausible possibility that the argument does not address. Sure, you can present the argument in such a way that Jesus' existence is "assumed", though by doing so you make it irrelevant to the small but certainly significant portion of non-Christians who do not believe that Jesus existed at all, because they will of course reject that assumption.

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While this could properly be labeled "terribly irrational", it does not necessarily mean that Jesus was a crazy person or that he was severely mentally ill.


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This is hair splitting. Substitute terribly irrational for insane in the 3 options, no real difference.

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You do a great job here of copying and pasting the last and probably least significant sentence of a full paragraph in which I explained why this is not hair splitting. Here's the most important sentence you missed:

"He could have convinced himself based on the circumstances surrounding his life and the world at that time that he fit the mold of the Son of God based on the supposed Old Testament prophecies, and then from there taken this notion to its extreme conclusion and touted himself as the Son of God out of a sincere belief that he, indeed, was."

If this explains why Jesus thought he was God, then it definitely does NOT necessitate that he was a lunatic. Plenty of people have been misguided or held extreme views about the nature of their own being, but it does not follow at all from this position that one is a lunatic. Therefore, this succeeds in providing an alternative possibility to your "lord, liar, lunatic" trifurcation, and accordingly damages the argument severely.

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Jesus was a persuasive ethical teacher with great influence and polarizing or even rebellious views.


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That's the point. How could He be an ethical teacher and claim to be the Son of God at the same time, unless He was the Son of God? He couldn't be ethical unless He was telling the truth. How ethical is it to say "Your sins are forgiven", unless it's true?

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Where did I imply that according to this possibility Jesus claimed to be Son of God? I am simply entertaining the possible case that Jesus existed as a great ethical teacher. You can't just assume for the sake of your argument that the Gospel accounts of Jesus' life are the rock-solid truth and that he necessarily claimed to be God - what non-Christian is going to accept those terms? Why would I accept your "premise" that what the Gospels say about Jesus is true, when it is clearly the case that as a non-Christian there are MANY things written in the Gospels regarding his life with which I don't agree?

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His teachings and sayings were then simply greatly exaggerated by the writers of the Gospels.


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Again, this simply denies the premise and doesn't speak to the logic of the argument.

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WTF? What premise of the argument does this deny? Are you implying that one of the necessary assumptions of this argument is that Jesus claimed to be the Son of God? This is an unnecessary assumption, because there is no logical reason why Jesus could not have existed as a man and not claimed to be God, and furthermore it is an assumption that non-Christians have no reason to accept, given the fact that there is no reliable historical source (and this includes the Gospels) that establishes that Jesus claimed to be the Son of God.

Don't you see the problem with have the assumption/premise that Jesus claimed to be the Son of God? It basically relies on the Gospel account according to which he made these claims - but the non-Christian is going to do anything but accept this assumption. He does not trust the Gospel accounts. That's why he's a non-Christian.

If you want to insist that this is a premise of your argument, then I can't stop you - it's your argument. However, the argument then loses all of its persuasive power because I and almost any non-Christian will simply reject this frivolous assumption because it is unnecessary and historically unestablished.

[NotReady]

Are you trying to win the award for the most illogical, irrelevant non sequitur in history?

[maurile]

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Are you implying that one of the necessary assumptions of this argument is that Jesus claimed to be the Son of God?

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He didn't imply it. He explicitcly stated it.

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This is an unnecessary assumption, because there is no logical reason why Jesus could not have existed as a man and not claimed to be God, and furthermore it is an assumption that non-Christians have no reason to accept, given the fact that there is no reliable historical source (and this includes the Gospels) that establishes that Jesus claimed to be the Son of God.

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Correct. The Lord/Liar/Lunatic nonsense is a false trichotomy for precisely the reasons you've stated.

[NotReady]

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What premise of the argument does this deny? Are you implying that one of the necessary assumptions of this argument is that Jesus claimed to be the Son of God?


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Absolutely.

What you haven't understood, and no one else who rushed to jump on me has understood, is I was defending C.S. Lewis' argument. Lewis did not offer the argument to prove the existence of God or that Jesus existed or even to prove that Jesus was God. He offered the argument in the context of answering those who claimed that Jesus was a Great Moral Teacher. Lewis point is that Jesus could not be a GMT, because He claimed to be God, so if He was deceived about that or lying about it, how can we trust His moral teachings.

If someone has offered the Lewis argument as proof of God's existence, then it might have some relevance as part of a much larger argument. But the logic of Lewis concerning the point he was making is unshakeable.