What do you believe is true even though you cannot prove it?

Interesting question posed at The World Question Centre and some fascinating replies:

http://www.edge.org/q2005/q05_print.html

I believe that we are not alone in the Universe but that there is no God or higher power of any kind responsible for our existence.

I also believe in God, although I don't think that there is any contradiction between a belief in God and respect for scientific learning.

And I believe our moral instincts and sense of good and evil are a reflection of the Creator's purpose in creating us.

I also believe it's possible that we are the only intelligent life form in the universe. I also believe it's equally possible that there are countless intelligent life forms in the universe.

Was perpetrated by the CIA as part of a coup to pave the way for the conservative revolution. This was supposed to start with Nixon's first term in 1960, but when the close election went to JFK due to shady events in Ill., the assassination was the next logical step. Johnson was bought off and refused to run for a second term, assuring that Nixon would get his chance in '68.

Of course, I can't prove this. ;)

I believe Nixon, Johnson, J.Edgar Hoover, and George H.W. Bush were all up to their ears in the plot to assassinate JFK, RFK and MLK.

I also believe the Bush family and the neocons assassinated JFK, Jr. and Paul Wellstone.

I also believe the neocon clique is the closest thing this country has ever seen of Satan's apostates/minions.

I'm not so sure I believe in Satan, though. :)

Thank you for this!

but I cannot prove it. And not even an enlightened person can do so. It's something that you must experience yourself to understand. At least that's the way I understand it.

I.e, that there was no historic person named Jesus on whom the Biblical Jesus was based. I believe that if the mythical Jesus is based on any actual historic person at all, it is only in the same way any mythical person is based on real people.

I also believe Shakespeare was the 17th Earl of Oxford, Edward de Vere.

I also believe my fillings are talking to me. :crazy:

There are actual historical, written records in Judea from 20-30 AD of a Jewish preacher named Yeshua of Nazareth (the Greek name of which is Jesus) who had a large following of supporters. The extent to what he actually did and who he was (turning water into wine, fishes and loaves, immaculate conception, son of God?, etc.) is completely debatable.

As a man, Yeshua (Jesus) was as real a person as you or I.

There are no unambiguous historical references to any real person named Yehoshua, Jesus or what have you. The total number of ambiguous references that have been construed to refer to Jesus is extremely small, and the literature analyzing each one's reliability is vastly larger. I can't prove there was no historical Jesus--you can't prove a negative, after all--but I haven't seen anything at all convincing to disabuse of that belief.

OK, whatever...

Are you referring to a birth or death certificate for one Jesus Q. Christ?

There is a record that Pilate existed. The burial box of the High Priest who is said to have ordered jesus executed has been found (ananias). There are some references to Jesus' brother James, executed some 20 years after Jesus.

But there are no contemporaneous non-christian references to Jesus in existence. There is one single paragraph in a history written by Josephus, which was written several years after the events described, but this is not an official roman record, it is a "history" written at at a time when history had a different meaning from today (it contains much bullshit, it was not based on the kind of sources that would be required today). Even christian historians beleive that this reference has been, at minimum, altered by early christians to emphasize certain doctrines. Of course the letters of Pliny the younger are strong testimony that shortly after jesus death there was a strong christian movement, but they are not records of jesus.

Despite this, the weight of the evidence is that he did exist. The gospels themselves are evidence, they are not history, but they certainly are historical documents. The stories they tell, and the work which has been done on tracing sources, are all evidence. At minimum, the evidence is that a man existed about whom many stories were created. Read about the "embarrassment principle" for some reasons why the gospels themselves, even if you don't beleive a word of the theology, probably contain stories which were genuine. That is to say, that those who wrote the gospels 1. received the story from another, earlier source contemporaneous with jesus, and 2. believed the truth of what they were writing.

Another interesting aspect of it is that there are no writings of jesus himself. Interesting, isn't it? Kinda embarrassing, too. Why would someone "make up" a religion based on a figure who was illiterate, why would all the accounts be third-hand? Why would a liar admit that the "best evidence" is missing? If you were going to make it all up, why wouldn't you just make up "the book of jesus" and pass it off as the direct, original source?

Why didn't they make up books by Zeus and Hermes, etc.?

For one thing, the "book," a text, a "gospel," did not have such primacy in the pagan beleifs as in christian beleifs. I.e., there is no one cannonical "book" detailing the acts or the commandments of zeus, hermes, etc., and therefore no need to question why they were not made the authors of these books that did not exist. (I would also suggest that the very idea of "god" inherent in classical paganism is not squarely comparable to the hebrew and christian god. The idea of a timeless, permanent "logos" which exists before creation and is the ultimate essence of all, that is very different from the classic greek gods, who were really just big people with magic powers; they nevertheless were entirely human, and weren't even primary "gods," there were "gods" before them and "gods" over them.

More comparable would be the Buddha, buddhism is founded around a canonical set of writings, and my understanding is that Buddha himself is reputed to be the author of many.

Pagans have biographies for gods and heroes whose purely mythological derivation most educated people take for granted. Maybe you think the Greek gods and heroes are based on real historical personages? Maybe you think the Algonquian hero Gluskap is based on a real historical person? Chances are, though, you take for granted that Gluskap and Hercules are stories. So why couldn't Jesus also be a story?

There is a form of literary analysis which involves the classification of "stories" into various types. I forget the name of this discipline. But there are clear and consistent differences between, for example, a creation myth, a fable, a moral story used to teach moral precepts, and a "mystical" story. Although the cannonical gospels are actually composed of sub-units that fall into many of these various categories and others I have forgotten, nevertheless there are elements of factual biography in the gospels that are absent in the "stories" of the pagan gods and goddesses.

I will give one reason, one very specific reason, that I think that the writings preserved in the bible indicate jesus was a real person. It is the letters of Paul. These are fascinating documents, puporting to be (and likely genuine) letters from an early evangelist to the groups of beleivers that he has organized in greece, turkey, and the balkans.

I beleive these letters are genuine because if you read them, you can see that Paul was a fucking nut. Seriously, a real personality comes through, and it is a seriously flawed personality, you can see that he is defensive, that he has an inferiority complex, and other aspects of a real personality. And its not intentional, clearly, it just shows in his writing.

The best specific example is when Paul speaks of the followers of Jesus in jerusalem. Paul was writing before the last jewish war, when the romans sacked jerusalem. At that time, there was a group of jesus' followers in jerusalem, among them Jesus' brother James. This group was lost to history after the war in AD 72. But when Paul talks about them, you can sense that he (Paul) has a huge inferiority complex because they had known Jesus personally and he (Paul) had not. If this is fiction, it is incredibly sophisticated, to purposely write in the voice of an insecure man who must admit that he does not have as much of a connection with the subject matter, jesus, as these others. Again, a myth or a fable would simply disregard difficulties and differences. In fact, Paul puts a fable into his letter when he talks about the followers who had known Jesus, when Paul talks of jesus appearing to him on the road to damascus (Paul claims he was just as good as the others because Jesus appeared to him in a vision, years after his crucifixion). Now again, here I sense that Paul is making it up (or deluding himself). but what is clear is that you sense his need to make up this story because of the palpable insecurity he feels compared to those who were followers of Jesus when he was alive; Paul is so defensive about being a Johnny-come-lately.

So I beleive that no forger or fiction writer with the purpose of establishing a religion would have made up these letters and gone to the extent of writing in character and making that character such a tortured, flawed guy. I beleive there was a Paul, and that Paul had actually met people who had known Jesus (he claims hundreds), and Paul beleived them, beleived that they had seen jesus. Thats called first hand testimony.

By the way, one last argument for me for the authenticity of Paul's letters; they are so odd and random. they are letters written over a 30 year period to various people for various reasons, and some of them are so mundane ("This is to introduce you to Jeremiah, he is a friend, give him money", stuff like that). There is no rhyme or reason to them, no indication that they were compiled with an aim of establishing any particular point. It really seems more like a random collection of the few documents that survived out of this guy's many letters. Again, if you were free to just "make it up," wouldn't it be more coherent, wouldn't you leave out the strange stuff like shopping lists?

Where can I see them?

But before that crap "revelations."

By the way, one of the letters describes Paul's version of a specific meeting between Paul and the jerusalem counsel, as they were called. And in the gospel known as the "Acts of the Apostles" is another account of the same meeting, supposedly from James and Peters perspective. There is a genuine feeling to this, when you see the differences and how they indicate real personalities and their differing perceptions of the same events. (This involves the story of how christians don't have to be circumsized, by the way).

I would recomend a New International Version (NIV) bible, the language is natural and the translation is said to be much more accurate than king james.

Earl Doherty has a critique of Paul's letters at http://pages.ca.inter.net/~oblio/jhcjp.htm

There is little biographical information about Jesus in the letters, its true. They are mostly sermons (dull stuff), some organizational and political stuff about the organization of the early beleivers, and some odd things. The odd ones are the most interesting, again because I can't beleive that anyone bothered to preserve them, just as I cannot beleive the personality quirks were not edited out. But there are very definite references to jesus as a person, and it shows clearly, as I mention, in Paul's wierdness and defensiveness about the fact that unlike the other apostles, Paul did not know Jesus when he was "alive."

I am not proselytizing, I don't think these letters "prove" any doctrine of faith or anything else, only arguing mostly from a literary critical standpoint that these writings are not fictional, and that Paul met people who personally knew jesus. (as far as doctrine, like most liberal christians I tend to think self-hating puritannical paul hijacked the religion when the jerusalem group were killed in the war, and is responsible for all the bad elements of traditional christianity).

The one in which Paul admits to feeling inadequate because he didn't meet Jesus?

Honest.

I've seen their meetings....just cuz' I don't speak their language doesn't mean I don't know what they're saying!

lies within a much higher dimensional space.

I hope that extra-dimensionals or infra-dimensionals do not pester you for pondering their existence!

Well actually, sorry, I don't believe that. Nor is their any proof of it. ;)

I believe that some people love me. Can't be proven, but I know it's true. :shrug:

By which I mean that my being, essence, consciousness is something more than just a chemical and electrical phenomenon, that my being has some intrinsic worth, that there is some higher meaning to my existence, that my thoughts and dreams and beliefs are more than just some evolutionary accident incidental to the the replication of my genes.

Whether the soul is immortal, what is god, the relationship of the soul to god, I have no clue, but I believe in the soul.

There's no way to prove or even describe what Love is, or Art for that matter.

But I believe in them, just the same.

Obviously, I have no way to prove that. It's a deep-seated gut feeling.

And that we go through many incarnations.

AND, I also believe that the chances of us being alone in the universe seem pretty slim.

Edited to add: I also think that, if you believe in the Judeo-Christian God, there is no reason to think that this God did not create evolution. Both things can actually be possible! So knock it off with the intelligent-design-in-the-public-school crap! Study God-stuff at Sunday School and study the Theory of Evolution at public school!

Hence "Squatch"...my handle

Grew up in Montana...just 'felt' that Sasquatch was out there.

Have friends who lived in California that went looking for Big Foot.

I was armed to the teeth, but man was I scared shitless. Luckily, it had no idea I was there and kept on walking.

My friend who lived in California (moved back to Montana) said he heard one call ( I guess it's like a high pitched scream/screech)

and about 30 yards away in a recently burned out pine forest. I was sitting in an upturned rootwad waiting for a deer to amble by.

At shooting light, my hunting buddy shot a deer about 1 mile away. I heard the rifle report. About 5 minutes later, I see a figure moving across the hillside below me very quickly. It stopped directly downhill from me, kind of straightened up a bit, looked over its shoulder, and then kept going.

I had a 44 magnum revolver with me at the time, and I think it would have been inadequate. I think the creature I saw was a juvenile, but still huge. It was just about sunlight and the animal I was looking at was very clear and distinct.

When my friends returned, I told them about it, to which they blew me off. So, later I asked them why we had a huge bonfire going.

I still get the heebie jeebies when I think about this story.

I've had encounters with bears in the woods, once while fly fishing, but I have never been as scared as when I saw that thing.

all the fundies will float up into the sky leaving the planet to us and we will finally have peace on earth.

not a reality!

LOL

I saw one when I was around 11. I also saw something weird a few years ago but it was less clear. I guess I believe that earth does in fact have visitors from other places.

Visitors from other worlds? That seems unlikely, but is possible.
But I believe that UFOs do exist. I just don't know what they really are.

Cheney behind 9-11, Bush cheated twice.

I just don't know what to say

They share a collective consciousness and are responsible for much of the idiotic driving I encounter.

<eom>

Do you supose we live in the same reality?? But then again what is reality??

...find a way to add more oil wells and further drilling off the Central California Coast. I know he has said NO..but, I believe he has plans, already.





Tikki

agenda.

Not to be getting all serious and all... :silly:

If a line segment intersects two straight lines forming two interior angles on the same side that sum to less than two right angles, then the two lines, if extended indefinitely, meet on that side on which are the angles less than the two right angles.

that have passed away are waiting for us and we will meet up with them someday in the hereafter and everyone will be happy.

Have another beer. :beer:

can't prove it, but i believe.

Believe time is NOT as we know it.