Pistis: Greek for "trust me / believe me"

this is an open letter to one of my critics you know who you are this is not the type of video that I ever wanted to make and I don't intend to do another but this time I feel like I have to while I still consider you an ally in my attempt to counter fundamentalist pseudoscience I also have to contest you where it is not possible to honestly agree with or accept your baseless assumptions or misrepresented misinformation not when you've made as many false accusations as you did hopefully you won't continue this trend you accused me of committing an association fallacy based on your assumption that I'm making logical leaps born of misinterpretations neither of which I'm making and you tried to require that I use the logical formula that you provided which was devised to be unworkable and therefore I shouldn't be limited to nor expected to use it an association fallacy would be like asserting that some Christians are bad therefore Christianity is bad that's the same thing you falsely accused me of in our debate though I didn't do it then either listing the ways that the commands of Christian doctrine are and have historically been dangerous is not an association fallacy if the basic tenets of the faith tell people that it didn't that God says it doesn't matter what they take into their bodies that they can hold venomous snakes and drink bleach and all that and it won't hurt them if they can just make believe hard enough or that they could should murder rape victims or even kill their own family and friends who don't share those beliefs those are dangerous lessons to teach even if most Christians disregard those bits of doctrine because the believers are generally better than their religion sure loses the infallible Word of a just and loving God and that's why we ignore all the bits that prove that it's obviously the words of men not God and certainly not any God worthy of worship you dismissed all my examples as just Christians behaving badly including my specific references to Jesus promoting slavery among other dangerous ideas yet you now denied dismissing him right along with the rest of my list the way you definitely did you also denied that the Bible actually does endorse capital punishment for LGBTQ people you said the Bible doesn't say that even though it certainly does or maybe you meant that it doesn't mean that anymore because God's eternal and unchanging word changed when Christians changed it when they made up the idea of a new covenant so they could pretend that whatever the Old Testament says doesn't matter anymore except whenever y'all say it still does you accused me of quote mining but you cherry picked a line out of Hebrews that directly contradicts what Jesus said at another verse that you yourself cited where Jesus specified that we had better follow every jot and tittle of all those old knows a ax Clause because if we break even one of them we will be called least in heaven and whoever practices every last one of those 613 Jewish Commandments will be called great in heaven that's what it actually says in context you said that I provided no empirical evidence that Christianity causes bad behavior ignoring the list of historical atrocities that were endorsed and enforced by Christian clergy and driven by Christian conviction earning Christianity the title of bloodiest religion in history that was the cited opinion of others although you said that was just my personal opinion or experience which you know is not true if such inhuman cruelty is promoted by your God and committed in the name of Jesus and that's not an attribution error like you said it was that's an accurate attribution but you tried to wave that away as if that's just my interpretation you asked for peer-reviewed studies proving that Christianity is dangerous when the Holocaust and the Mormon execution order in numerous other examples I already cited prove that obviously no one's going to do a peer-reviewed study to show whether a mother murdering her children to protect them from Satan is dangerous and we already know how mental illness can be cloaked in and thus enabled by religion regarding the studies that you cited you asked why I said they were a dodj because as I said in our debate what they showed was only that some isolated aspect of Christianity may not be necessarily dangerous if that belief is only intrinsic meaning that it is only for its own sake described as a framework of life which is fortunately nowadays usually interpreted only as being good people and ignoring much of what the Bible actually says to the contrary which you do it's much the same argument I often hear from believers asking what is the harm in believing what we want even if it isn't true but the reality is that the very concept of intrinsic religiosity was invented to counter a number of studies that showed a positive correlation with prejudice meaning that the more religious one is the more prejudiced they tend to be intrinsic religion is less though extrinsic religion definitely moreso so that serves your purpose only by omission because you admitted that Christianity really is dangerous when believers act on those beliefs extrinsically meaning that they use their religion as a means to an end in other words whenever religion does something to further its own agenda thus you can only say that Christianity is not dangerous by pushing out of sight that box of everything that is obviously - sharper explosive and only looking at the prettier box have relatively soft fluffy things that other box still matters given this argument we could just as easily debate whether Islam or any other religion is dangerous and your own demand to show peer-reviewed studies of intrinsic religion which show the same type of result once you negate the means of any belief to further its religious agenda believers in whatever religion could make the same claim of harmless faith that you did even when any extrinsic action taken by that religion could be potentially lethal or an attack on human rights your argument was a dodge because it evades the point that you quietly admitted that beliefs inform actions and that when your religion acts it is dangerous your argument was similar to saying that a bear isn't dangerous when it's asleep or that having a gun in your houses and dangerous just as long as no one has ever tempted to do anything with it although I would argue that just having religion is dangerous and I gave a specific example of its adverse effect on children remember when I said this even the slightest acceptance of Christianity still requires some denial of Natural Science even if it's just making believe things that are not evidently or even possibly true like the soul for example because you have to believe that or else you'll face the empty threat of a fate worse than death if you don't make yourself believe there's a definite danger to your ability to reason if you've been conditioned that what you must believe man-made mythology of impossible absurdity and for no good even when all the evidence says otherwise and yes there are peer-reviewed studies to prove what I said for example this study shows that non-religious children are more capable of distinguishing fact from fiction than religious children who are more susceptible to deceptive fantasies just like I already predicted they would be we didn't really need a study to confirm what we knew was already obvious right and notice that we're also only talking about intrinsic religiosity here another study published in the journal religions shows that air can be beneficial effects to any religion if the whole family or community shares that same belief and don't confront other beliefs in which case all those advantages would be lost and this again is intrinsic religiosity yet despite whatever psychological advantage comes from this the study also shows that students performance on reading math and science tests were all recognizably hampered by several forms of parental religiosity even when it is merely intrinsic as sticky just to intrinsic Christianity we then have scientific studies that prove that nothing fails like prayer and not only do prayers not help make anything better they actually make things worse even health related situations such that prayer fails even in the one instance where it should at least have a placebo effect so should we even give this topic any more study but even if there was no detriment at all to intrinsic religiosity the answer to the yes-or-no question of where Christian whether Christianity is dangerous is still definitely yes you don't get to pretend that extrinsic Christianity doesn't exist or doesn't count as if ignoring the most dangerous bits would mean that the unified collective isn't still dangerous you showed an image of Steven Anderson leader of the independent fundamental Baptists who advocate killing disobedient children as the Bible says we should you said that it would not be a no true Scotsman fallacy for you to dismiss such religious extremists who interpret scripture differently from the way that you do but no you can say they're bad Christians and I'll agree with you since they're bad people but you can't say that they're not truly Christian as if they're not Christian at all though I do wish you guys would agree on a universal definition of what a Christian is because different denominations seem to have different about that also however you choose to interpret your scriptures doesn't change the fact that what you call the Word of God really does advocate killing disobedient children even though Christians no make excuses to ignore that part there are also things that you know Christianity teaches that are not in the Bible but are common Christian interpretations of what the Scriptures really don't say you criticize me for pointing that out to saying that nowhere in the bible does it say that the children will go to hell if they don't believe but even if that's not in the Bible you know that Christianity teaches that anyway and you told my wife that you even believe that yourself so your hypocrisy is showing sir as science has a requirement that all postulations must be based on a preferably on a prerequisite of supportive evidence then assuming things that are not evidently supported would be a rejection of scientific principle you say that assuming a soul without evidence is justified because of your unwarranted assumption that it isn't that it just it's not part of nature and that only confirms what I said that it is an unsupported assertion of a baseless assumption with no discernible truth to it in this case it's not just it's not evidently true it's evidently not true it's not just that there's no evidence for it there's evidence against it - and you said theology is not logically impossible but there are many claims in theology that are not logical and none of them are rational you can't even show a precedent or parallel or verified phenomenon to indicate that what you believe is even possibly true so it would be dishonest to say that it is that's an empty assertion and we are talking about man-made mythology of impossible absurdities that are obviously bored of imaginative fantasy but that have no basis in reality and I have to add that apologetics arguments duck and dodge or even obvious Kate the burden of proof they do not in any sense meet that burden having absolutely no basis in fact still even after all these centuries is not an increasingly strong position like you tried to make it out to be your primary criticism against me is the semantics of Khoi Nghia Creek as if that changes the current English word or could be different from the previous Hebrew yet you cite in your vacuous attack a passage to love thy neighbor which is a reference to community unity which you said was extrinsic not intrinsic and I think you're mistaken about that but the verse he referred to was a repeated line that actually means or actually meant originally love your fellow Jew as yourself which contradicts what Jesus said in Matthew 10 about how you're supposed to hate yourself and your whole family but it reinforces the message that Jews are chosen people and that Jesus didn't want his gospel to be given to Gentiles or Samaritan dogs as he described them because Jesus's character is that a proof of a provincial and ethnocentric faith healer know better than we see on TV today but a more primitive one with no concept of the world as a whole much less its relevance in the cosmos in your attempt to accuse me of every fallacy you know a name for you of course included the straw man fallacy which I never use doesn't matter because every time I describe something correctly but pejoratively I get accused of straw Manning even when every word I use in that description is defensively accurate likewise you described my correct explanation of the God of the gaps fallacy as if it was a fallacious Lee circular argument assuming again things I never thought are implied in assigning to me a philosophical position that you already know I don't hold just to misrepresent me however you can assuming I assumed things I didn't assume and you shouldn't have sassoon that I did incidentally materialism is nothing more than not assuming fanciful notions that are not evidently true and therefore shouldn't be asserted as if they were or even could be then on top of all that after I gave my honest opinion and perspective as well as a well reasoned and well supported argument you called me a liar that's typical Christians often accuse me of lying every time they disagree with me even when they can't show that anything I said was factually false much less deceptive but I have no reason to lie because I have no faith to defend like you do unlike you I am free to change my mind if the evidence compels me to do so or if I find that it fails to adequately support whatever I shouldn't believe already the only advantage I have over you is that I can show the truth of my position you cannot thus any dishonesty on my part would undermine the one thing I believe in being the value of truth itself the goal of some apologists may be to defend the faith against all reason and many have admitted exactly that but my goal is to improve understanding my own as well as others you can't do that if you won't admit your own mistakes or correct them so my information has to be accurate or it's worthless and errors must be admitted and corrected at first opportunity that's why I have no reason to lie about any of this the way believers - and demonstrably will so don't call me a liar just because you disagree with me or because you didn't understand what I said which is common - or because you want me to interpret things more charitably than they deserve you shouldn't call anyone a liar unless you can immediately show that what they said was wrong and that they knew it was wrong when they said it as an attempt at deception if you accuse someone of lying when what they said wasn't even wrong then it's like calling check prematurely or sinking the cue ball along with the eight you lose even when you might have won it makes you the liar I didn't contradict myself either I said that many Christians will admit that religious faith does not depend on scientific evidence but that those who debate that say that I'm using the wrong definition even though I can cite many supportive references right from their own Scripture as well as many other scriptures to show that I'm right and they can't produce one citation that backs their claim without contradiction and - they can't ever cite any actual testable empirical evidence that would qualify in the context we're talking about how can you pretend that faith or pissed us if you prefer even could be based on scientific evidence if you already know that no such evidence exists now on the definition of faith this is where we actually agree though you somehow don't understand or didn't realize that you admitted that the common mainstream definition that I use for the word faith in English is not incorrect that I'm wholly justified in saying that the religious faith is not dependent on scientific evidence your friend Erik Hernandez had knitted that - you said that faith is not about rational inquiry it's an act of volition it's it's a confidence or loyalty and I agree completely I always have and I said so but then you said that faith is something you do after you reason how can you reason your way into any religion when none of them can show any actual factual truth to their claims not even enough to distinguish their belief from the delusions of pure imagination a weak induction fallacy which you all see falsely accused me of is when premise is not strong enough to support the conclusion yet you are proposing things that are not supported by your premises and you're actually criticizing me for not doing the same thing that you are you ignored that I did in fact include references to actual scholars who explained the definition of faith that I use but none of that was an appeal to Authority like you said it was many of these are not authorities I list them because your fans have repeatedly alleged that faith as a belief that is not dependent on evidence is somehow my own personal definition this assortment of quotes from earlier sources prove that your fans are wrong that the definition that I use is not one of my own making but the main one already in common parlance since long before I was born do you have to misunderstand or misrepresent everything well if you're an apologist seems that answer must be yes you brought up having faith in my wife too but that has the fallacy of equivocation mixing different definitions or context with deceptive effect I did specify that we are only talking about religious faith and know your trust in God is not based on scientific evidence not in your case and not in any other believers case either your doctrine is explicit on this point you are commanded to believe or else be damned if you don't regardless of evidence no deny that all you want but that is the truth no ahran being told to believe something just because we are told is not inheriting the greek word pista s' what is your source for this no ancient Greek scholar says this as far as I'm aware I think what those people are asking for when they're asking for an expert they're asking for the ex who agrees with them they're seminary their theology their apologists have come up with their usage of the word and those of us who use it a different way or somehow outsiders so you're never gonna satisfy those people until you find an expert and you're right why do we even need experts why can't we just pick it up and read it yeah well somebody asked me for a to quote a theologian and you were on a list at NH they saw your name and reacted because you were an atheist therefore you are not a theologian and the common concept of theologian that I that I looked up was you know some of them has academic scholarship in the study of religion you know and preferably the common understanding is that person would also have an understanding of ancient Greek or Hebrew or what-have-you and even that strictest definition describes yourself sir so it was it was a little bit irritating to have people criticized that you don't count somehow there that there's some way to dismiss you as not being a theologian well on the one hand it is true I don't earn my living as a professional theologian so that's kind of true well there was no specification that you have to be professional matter of fact I saw a number of Christian websites that were advocating that every Christian should be a theologian in the sense that they should pursue an academic or a scholarly you a an educational a scholarly sense of what is theology and what is the knowledge of God and so by that by that looser definition which Christian groups are advocating for you would be called a former theologian in which case still and you know for example the word priest you know with the Reformation with Martin Luther and all those they rebelled against the idea that priests were only these special clergy appointed by the Catholic Church and the Baptist Church now for example has the doctrine of the priesthood of all believers so they're all pre they're all communicating with God directly so the word theologian really doesn't mean anything the theology is the study of God and since God is a concept and not actual thing there's a phrase that I cleaned theology is a subject with no object and even if you disagree with that even if you disagree that theology is a subject with no object you can't avoid the fact that all these theologians who are experts I'll disagree with each other so when you say you need to be a theologian which theologian which theology which school which seminary which degree because you don't have to be an expert to to see that all the experts disagree with each other so it really it's a matter of picking your expert and most people tend to pick the experts that fit within their own theology within the particular view so yeah I have a degree in religion but I'm not bragging about it I got a degree in religion from Azusa Pacific University I studied two years of Koine Greek I translated much of the New Testament from Greek into English which is no big deal I mean it doesn't it's really not that big a deal of translate from one language to another Koine Greek it turns out is not our very precise and exact language anyway it was sort of more of a street language at the time certainly more corrupt or more degraded than what we would call classical Greek which seem to be a lot more precise so I'm not claiming that I'm a great Greek scholar but you don't have to be because what's the mystery a language is a language and it can be translated into another language and yeah there's a lot of debates among translators if you pick you know what are there about eighty or ninety different English translations of the Bible many of them disagree with each other and each one of them had scholars professional scholars who were experts in the language translating those and you'll pick up different English versions and have different words for those same words so there's a lot of leeway there's some discretion there's some there's some arguments about what these words actually mean when it comes to the word faith you won't find an agreement different theologians have different definitions of the word faith as applied in the Old Testament of the New Testament some say is just trust some say faith is uh you know like like I have faith in the character of my dad because I know my dad's a good man and I might be wrong he might be a serial murderer who knows but I'm gonna go with it I'm gonna have faith from what you know based on kind of a rational basis there's that definition but the Bible the New Testament definition and this is one of those rare words in the Bible where we actually have a definition we don't have definitions of the word evil or wicked or a lot of these things we have to infer their definitions from usage but in the Bible in Hebrews 11 we have an exact definition faith is the substance of things hoped for and the evidence of things not seen and if you look through the New Testament you see the word faith used all the time in the sense of believing something without evidence you can see it belief with evidence as well just like the character of my dad is based on some evidence that I'm rounding off to say he's a good man admitting I might be wrong you find all kinds of verses like the prayer of faith will heal the sick for example it says in James you know if there's anybody sick among you let the elders come anoint their head and the prayer of faith will heal the sick so if faith is based on rational principles if if if faith is a leap above what's reasonable then what's reasonable is to observe that that verse doesn't work reasonably scientifically the prayer of faith does not heal the sick you know once in a while there's some coincidence but in general that does not heal the sick so a rational faith would have no choice but to conclude that that Bible verse is wrong when Jesus said all things whatsoever ye shall ask for in prayer believing you shall receive all things it's what he said you didn't say maybe or some of it or once in a while or if you're good he said all things whatever you ask for in prayer believing which is faith you shall receive so a rational faith would be forced to conclude that that Bible verse at least is raw rationally that is a bad wrong teaching and that's not how most Christian apologists use the word faith they think they think there is enough evidence like the resurrection of Jesus maybe or maybe maybe prophecy or maybe miracles or maybe change lives or they think there's some evidence out there it's not a hundred percent but it gives you a basis upon which then you can base your faith and make that additional leap above and beyond that's what they're saying but that's not what the Bible says and the Bible doesn't define faith in any any sort of rational apologetic way well I've always specified that I'm when I'm talking about faith in contrast with with reason then we're talking about religious faith and we and we did the evidence that we're talking about is I'm only talk about scientific evidence because I'm aware that people will tell all kinds of subjective impressions or arguments from Authority or assumed conclusions circular reasoning or there's fallacious evidence that you could cite but we're talking about scientific evidence and one of the things that one of my critics says when he asked me to get to find a a scholar in in coin II a Greek who would say that that pista' s-- is defined as denying evidence of reason which I never said I said that in the context in a way that pista says even if we accept that it is a trust it is a trust that you are commanded to believe or else and you will be damned if you don't believe but it's not that you are given evidence nor are you permitted to change your mind if the evidence dissuades you if the if it no amount of evidence is ever allowed to disprove a faith-based belief you're just supposed to believe that regardless of evidence I mean you know and and I would and now I'm talking to somebody who I would at least consider to be a scholar in Quenya Greek could you tell me if with what I'm saying is accurate because that the critic tells me that that the implication that we believe what the Bible tells us to believe simply because the Bible tells us to believe it and not because of an overwhelming preponderance of evidences he says it's not implied in any of the cited examples yeah so scholars would not with each other on this I think what's happening is they're cherry-picking so you can't take the word PC or pcs or bestows whatever any of those words based upon that route you cannot take it and find one exact exclusive definition you'll find all sorts of usages and definitions and if you want you can pick a couple of verses that say see look here's how we are using the word and understanding the word I think it's there's a lot of Christian apologists who want to feel like their faith is rationally justified they don't want to feel like stupid you know mindless people who are just believing whatever they want to feel like their faith that they have invested in there in Jesus and in the Bible make some kind of sense and so it's embarrassing that to them to this type it's not embarrassing to all of them there's a whole bunch of maybe extreme Pentecostals and others who are total faith who even in spite of contrary evidence they're gonna believe it yeah one of my critics couldn't criticize me because saying I was imagining I was contradicting myself when I said that a number of Christians will make this admission you know they're actually proud that they believe something that is entirely based on faith and not based on evidence but that those who debate this point with me then want to bring up evidence matter fact I'm gonna be doing an interview tomorrow with somebody who says he has scientific evidence of God but that's what they never produce and and the guide tomorrow I'm certain of what he's going to present is something that science can't explain this and then he's going to assume that that means it's evidence for God but yeah it's a God of the gaps fallacy and again fallacies are not evidence yeah yeah and you mentioned that there's different Christians that have different interpretations and they're there there's more fights between Christians than there are between Christians and atheists I mean there's more denominational splits and all that and I guess the basic question is why if the Bible is clear if the Bible is this inspired word from this loving caring God to you and me then it should be really clear when you open up a drawer in the hotel room you find a Gideon Bible there there is no expert in scholar sitting there next to you pointing to each we're saying by the way here's what the original means it if if that's required to understand this book that God look to us then God is inept he did a very bad very sloppy job of communicating his message and why is it even in the hotel room if I can't even understand it without some you know Seminary graduate or some somebody with a degree in theology explaining it to me you and I should be able to just pick it up same thing with the Quran or any other religious way what you and I if it's from a God and it's from a God to you and to me including to us atheists then we should be able to just pick it up and read it and go yep that's what it means and if there's fights and disagreements about that if you need one of your Christian friends to explain to you what it really really means well that means God they're doing God's work better than God did himself because he failed to make his case you mean just get a couple clarifying questions out you you not only specialized in Koine Greek you actually taught Khoi Nghia Greek for time didn't you yeah so yes and no I suppose I I got a masters of theology from capital Bible seminary where I took under Thomas Edgar I study Koine Greek can read it for six years and then of course during the PhD I did a lot of substituent not a lot but if some subset to general work so I'm I'm always reading to call myself an expert on anything and certainly there are people that are vastly more competent excuse me vastly more competent in the field but I mean I I know my way around the donate testimony I guess okay so it is it has always been my contention that the the way that a word is used or what you know you might have a meaning of a word but then in this case we're talking about an implication it would have to be implied by the context in which is it is used and in every case that I've ever seen and I have a new number of examples throughout scripture you are told to believe or else you are told to believe because this is what you have to do or you're going to go to hell if you don't you're told to believe with some sort of an implication that you you have to trust the authority of whoever is telling you to do to to believe I believe me because I said so it was the kind of way I read it and my my critics in Christianity want to insist that the being told that something is to believe something simply because you were told to is not inherent in the Greek word mistis and I'm saying it's not part of the word it's not part of a definition of the word but it is in the context that it is used in Scripture it is implied that you are to believe not because the evidence has compelled you but because the authority demands it yeah I mean pestis in and of itself as is a complex word as you've pointed that a number of times and so whether you go to the Synoptics you go to john or you go to the epistles or even the later pastoral epistles or hebrews you know and even in these books there can be variations within the way that they're used you know if your listeners are looking for a good place to start on this you can look at something like the you know the anchor Bible dictionary or they can go pick up Bower Decker Arden Gingrich which is a New Testament Greek English lexicon and they can you know pista s-- is there and it'll break down the different ways that that the word is used not only in the New Testament tax but also in you know early Christian literature and one of the things that I think is really important and I you know I watched the debate and then I've listened to some of the follow up things and I feel like there some things that I don't know if you're talking past them or if they're just looking for something to try to to pick on I'm not sure I get the impression that they're because they keep trying to accuse me of every logical fallacy they know one name for even when none of those like my definition of what they are and what I'm saying that's clearly not the case so I think they're just looking to grasping at whatever straw they can to try to find something to accuse me of so that they can this what it looks like to me I mean because I'm going to used of all these fallacies that how can you accuse me of this and I know it's a bit of an aside but to sort of to sort of camp on that for a second when Eric Hernandez came on and said well you you said that she'd been doing this for twenty years and it's actually been 17 years and and now it's been 22 years you haven't updated your script you know I was listening to that and I thought well god I guess I'm a liar because I've said I've been a Christian for 25 years and every time I say it now I have to think all right no wait a minute what was five or six was I six I don't remember so then and when did I actually you know so that sort of thing this I think it just sort of goes to this it's very disingenuous and I I think just trying to try to grab on to something but it's interesting to me because I was having a conversation recently with someone and you know the the analogy was made and I think it's a really great analogy and you hear it all the time with Christian apologists and he actually even said that and he is not a Christian apologist it's like you know faith is like sitting in a chair right you know and and I don't know that the chair is gonna hold me up but when I sit down I have faith that it will and I said the the problem and I think the fundamental problem with that analogy is that in this analogy you've never sat in the chair right if we're talking about belief in the biblical text you're talking about belief in a chair that you've never sat in right now if if we're trying to go back to the context of you know Abraham and Moses even even in those contexts people that have walked and talked with God even even those circumstances their faith is lauded because they believe things that went against what they saw as reality so Abraham Abraham is told time and again look out count the you know stars in the sky you know that the dust before you your descendants will be this way and Abraham goes I'm really old my wife's really old past it you know the age of giving birth and God says trust me have faith right well faith is saying in that circumstance trust the have have confidence right in what I say simply because I said so right because and of course the implication of the biblical text is because it's God and God is always faithful and and God you know brings those things to pass it or not but that it essentially speaking but this is the point I mean you're looking at things as though they are not that's what you're doing so when you you know in the book of Hebrews for example Hebrews chapter 11 the big chapter excuse me that everybody goes to about faith this is perseverance but this is a perseverance chapter saying look think back look at the track record that God had Hey and and and even in that circumstance he goes and he lists the people that believed God but never saw the promise it never saw those things come about and yet they persevered and I think that's the essential character so you know I was talking to another friend of mine a very strong evangelical Christian from my days at Hopkins her best friends there and he has a very similar background to me and he said I said so we were talking about this in particular and I said well how do you know you know that the God that you believe in is the God of the Bible I mean how how do you reconcile that and he said well it here you know it's a subjective experience right and he said I I'm very and this is a very intelligent and very very intelligent man and he said I'm fully aware of that he said but I I have faith and my belief allows me to say I know that God exists and it's the God of the Bible like I know the sun's gonna come up tomorrow right and I think that's the essential character of faith right now when we talk about pista' s-- in this in this way I think it's absolutely critical to recognize that from the perspective of the biblical text they're basing that forward-looking faith that sorry that forward-looking trust and confidence on gods fidelity they're looking back and they're saying we we know God's character and that's what he said I you know I I I know the character of the God that I serve the problem I think and this is what I this is what I keep hearing you say is that we're not sitting in that chair we haven't had the experience of sitting in that chair and having it hold us up where we're looking at a book from 2000 years ago from 2500 years ago that says people sat in this chair and it held them up and so you don't have that direct connection you don't have that direct evidence what you have is I think at the ultimately subjectivity and you have to say that I I look around at things and I I see God working you know and and because of that I believe that that if I persevere in this well first of all I believe that because of these evidences that I see subjectively God you know doing things around me working things out in my life those sorts of things that the biblical texts are true it corresponds to reality in a way that nothing else does and because of that I will persevere I will hold on and believe and have this faith that allows me to in the face of things that appear completely to the contrary I will still hold on and persevere and I'll stop talking in a second I apologize aren't but that's what that's why I want I think it's second Peter second Peter 3 where Peters talking about or the writer of second Peters talking about scoffers that are coming to last gonna come in the last days and they're gonna say yeah where is the sign of this coming you know all things continual in since creation and that the text is saying I think I think very clear the point of the text is that people are looking around at the evidence right at what they see and they're saying look your faith your belief system using that more I guess I'm a substance of sense they're a body of truth your body of truth that that is your faith is saying that these things are gonna come about and yet we don't see that in fact we see the opposite happening therefore your God's not real your gods are not going to do what you say those sorts of things and Peter's response is to say have faith right God isn't you know he's not slack he's not being slack as men consider slackness he's being patient right in other words there's a there's a way that it's really early apologetics I think right there's a let's look at this a different way to try to justify to give a rationale as to why God hasn't come back and broken through and done these things like we anticipated he was going to and it's because he's being patient with the world he's actually being even more loving could that be true sure do I think that's true no I don't think that's clause that some guy I don't think that's a likely say probable it does it's not probable yes that was the word I was searching for thank you so yeah yeah I I read that the root meaning of pissed is can be summed up as convincing or persuasion via force that forced trust forced belief is the meaning of pissed Asst that it can be that it can all evidently be traced back to and the pi e pi p IE word and then i don't know how to pronounce that meaning to trust which is the somatic root verb of the word the end with the primary meaning appearing to be to confess to compel or force and i'm guessing that that means to convince here but obviously not you know with evidence and then the last line is all of this is evidently cited from an oxford study on the matter but i don't have the person who wrote that i don't have them here to explain exactly what then perhaps you can yeah I mean I think it sounds like what they're trying to get at is it the story that I I gave when I was pastoring out in Virginia talked about and I'm certainly not the only one that has done this but you know a little boy that's standing up on on a deck and his father's down on the ground seven feet below and he says jump now it's a dead little boy his dad's seven feet down that's a long way down and he knows that you know when you hit the ground after falling that far it really hurts and and but he looks at his father and his father says I will catch you so it's he's he's making himself trust by acting right he's saying yes I have put in I'm putting my trust I'm having faith and and I you know you can almost picture the boy closing his eyes and kind of jumping off it I mean Indiana Jones right and the Raiders of the last Lost Ark is that the right one that's nothing but the Holy Grail Holy Grail yeah he's where he's standing at that chasm right you have to believe you have to believe he's not walking across that chasm like it's a sidewalk because he can't see it that's the point he's got to stand there sweat running down his face and he puts that leg way up in the air and falls forward because he he that's what it sounds like that definition is going at he's making himself have faith in that object again we are not doing it because this is indicated by evidence again this is because this is what you're told to believe and it's it's in the face in many cases even in the biblical text it's in it that's the whole point it's in the face of looking around and saying it doesn't seem like this is the case in fact it seems like very much the opposite is the case you read through the Book of Daniel the Book of Daniel specifically I'm specifically written many parts of it as many you know texts are of that genre to keep the community going to keep the be persevering and say have faith you know God's going to overcome and so and the thing is I don't think that any of the people that have criticized you would say anything against anything that I've said here and that's why this is a strange thing about people to what they do I mean I got into it with Erick Hernandez right and he's angry that I've missed a fine faith and then when I tell him what I said twice in the debate I said that you you the faith is based on subjective impressions I admit that there can be subjective evidence but obviously subjective evidence is not reason for me I need objective evidence we're talking about empirical evidence we're talk about something testable we're talking about scientific evidence I've always clarified that of course well when we're talking to creationist is given that I'm clarifying that but I but I listened to that and I listened to that debate again between you and and Michael this morning and you you must have said scientific evidence about ten times I mean it wasn't it wasn't in short supply you sang scientific evidence I mean I don't well that's why I was baffling to me thank you I can only remember having having specified that twice but but one of the times was in the presentation itself where I said you can have faith is based on subjective impressions they give you arguments from Authority of course you assume the authority just like the leap of faith like we're talking about or it can be logical fallacies and I've got been given a lot of logical fallacies in defense of faith when I said it can be based on anything but scientific evidence and then when Erick Hernandez asked his question he gave the general thing the elective like the both the equivocation thing where you can switch over to whether we have whether we have faith in our wives or whatever it was I interrupted his question to clarify that we're only talking about religious faith and that religious faith is not dependent on scientific evidence and he thanked me for the clarification and then continued with an answer that was wrong and continued to attack me for it and I made what the most important point I think I could make if anybody and I've heard lots of people say that they have scientific evidence for God but nobody's ever able to produce any right and so inspiring philosophy I forget his real name that I miss defining that but he doesn't have scientific evidence nobody has scientific evidence so why are they even bothering to argue with this that was though they don't have it so what is the point that was the thing that I think was most confusing to me about Aaron and his question because what he seemed to be saying was you've been doing this for twenty years surely you would have done surely you'd be able to recall like his litmus test almost to see if you actually had been studying Christianity if the debate was about the the ills of Christianity in the world and you know whether it's good or bad that the litmus test to see if you'd been doing this for twenty years was it you could name a Greek scholar someone who specializes in Koine Greek that defines faith the way that you do no no not the way that I do that was the other thing that defines faith in a way that I don't oh right do you know any any any tiny scholars who specialize in coiny a Greek who would define pista' s-- as denying evidence or reason which of course is not my argument right so that is actually a straw man a literal straw man fallacy so this is one of the lists of fallacies that inspiring philosophy used against me while accusing me of a list of fallacies that do not apply so it looks like he's just desperately trying to find whatever he can to to colorize this in some way and but I mean it was a straw man because that's not the argument that I make I was stating that pista is implied in the context like like look for example at proverbs right you know trust in God with all your might and lean not on your own understanding right so you're not supposed to know things you're just supposed to believe what you're told is that am i reading that wrong is that the way that that's written I mean I have to go back and look at the Hebrew and see how the Septuagint translates that would be it would be good if you would do that because and I wouldn't mind if you did that right now because you're fluid in Hebrew as well right yeah me so what would not the Greek pissed us be based on Hebrew I mean the Hebrew concept is the same where does it not so the Hebrew it's it's a it's a little complex so the Hebrew root olive mem none it was a little it's been it's been said that I'm tryna remember who said it it might've been Healy that said the Old Testament doesn't define faith it describes it yeah and I think that's probably a fair way to but again it's never because of you know it's not like the quote that I put in the in my response video where I put in a code attributed to the Buddha where he says you know don't believe things because you're told to don't believe it because you read it believe it because that's what the evidence indicates after you have studied it right so they mean that's what it would mean if faith was based on evidence that's the kind of description it would get but we don't ever have a description that is remotely like that anywhere in the scriptures not not in the Christian scriptures not of the Jewish not in not in Hindu scriptures not in Islam we we always have descriptions of faith as being believe what you're told simply on the authority of those who claim it or because you're gonna go to hell if you don't yeah I mean I've got it up here and I'll look at in just a second I think that probably the most important thing that I think either is being missed or maybe I just haven't heard maybe I haven't heard all of their responses where they explain it something I'm not sure but as it stands right now what I don't understand is there's a difference between how the biblical text presents God's fidelity and Christ's fidelity which is solid right which is unwavering which is fully you know that's the whole point you you you can absolutely trust in God right and that's how its presented so if you were to ask a biblical author do you believe do you think that you have good reasons to believe that yeah course I mean look at the Exodus and look at what God did in creation and excuse me you know to my experience a very they're very commonly claimed evidence but it is never scientific evidence which is why I always have to specify yeah so and so when they tell me every time they tell me that that faith is is not a belief that is not based on evidence faith depends on evidence and what is the evidence well it's the scripture it's the circular argument of believing right what you believe because you believe it and and that's the see that's the that's where I think this is sort of getting lost I've also been accused of this I said you know that I P told me that you teach you can't believe something simply because you force yourself to believe it yet I have encountered countless religious believers who do exactly that who brag that that is what they do I mean I think we're see this is where I think words are getting different usages of words are getting mixed up let the whole the whole point of the text you know what when Jesus says essentially I think it's in mark for you know why don't you have more faith you said you you cowards you know well why don't why is it that you don't have faith and then they say well even he you know columns the see even the CEO you know the winds and listen obey his voice again these are these are Indiana Jones moments that we're talking about here where you're you're you're you're having to say in the face of adversity in the face of God seemingly not being here trust believe that's why this is also very baffling to me lack of evidence that's that's the implication and it's it's in the face of it's in the face of evidence to the contrary and that's that's what it is so but I think that the bigger thing here is that in the biblical text it's assumed belief and you know particularly in the Old Testament text its belief in the God of creation the God of Israel and and that's assumed so when you get to the New Testament text it's belief in the resurrection right there's there's development that's taking place there um and I see you here oh I think they could be arguable that you hear a lot more about faith but the thing is you know when you see like in in the Pauline you know Tex look for something like first Corinthians 15 they have this basis where they can say oh look I saw he saw you saw you know and look these five hundred other people so you can go ask them if you want to so that in that sense they would say yeah we have we have evidence right step two even in those cases they don't have anybody you can go ask crimeans I mean they often leave it often use this thing but you all many people saw it you know it was widely known everywhere everybody knows this and so you're supposed to be convinced by that like like when when Jesus died and in one account we have like the earthquake and everything breaking in half and the Sun going dark for hours and and then we have undead Saints so these are Jewish Saints right that are wandering around undead and many people saw them and we're supposed to buy that and that's there was no undead anything there was no people creeping out of their graves and there was no hundreds of people who saw that and I saw similar things with you know like that an entire town in Mexico saw the Madonna appears in the sky so like everybody can see there's five hundred people and how can you question five hundred people seen this well I can question it because I'm reading it in a weekly world news in which a mega news magazine that is known to have lied about an awful lot of stuff so I think they're just lying about five hundred people having seen this yeah I mean it gets back to like in John 2029 I think that's the best organ and everybody brings us up well they've never got the perverse immediately before that I sure you know they say well well well doubting Thomas needed evidence and he got Evan so that's proof that faith is based on evidence are you ignoring the very next thing that said there where Jesus said that you believed because you had evidence right you because you see me blessed are those who have not seen yeah and yet well even what does that mean that means that you are not blessed if you believe on evidence that the true faith and I've seen this in scholarly articles as well that the true faith is those with who believe even when there is no evidence and this is scholarly journals that I'm reading now but they're not New Testament scholars there's always got an excuse right so you can't be just that this is what it says in in English in Hebrew in Arabic it doesn't matter that other religions mean it doesn't matter that older religions have the same context of faith always believe what I say because I say and it it never describes a necessity of evidence or you're not permitted to change your mind either so even if there was evidence that you could have you can't base it on that you because you're not allowed to change your mind about it you can never let evidence disrupt or disapprove of faith basically that's forbidden yeah I mean I think this is why this I know I keep saying that it's why this baffles me so much because there's a difference between you know when you get to the book of John a lot there are a lot of things that are different about John and in this respect and the Synoptics because John you start to get statements about this proof right you know you know these things are written and even in the even though later epistles you know this this idea that look we can hear these witnesses and the we saw these things we touched and we handled them so that they're they're providing that basis now the reason for that I mean just assuming for a second the absolute validity of the entirety of the New Testament let's just assume that for the sake of argument right the it you know the rationale here is that look this person is risen right and and because of that he is he is able he's able to bear that weight of absolute fidelity right and you can trust him because things are going to be coming in the very near term where you're gonna want to not persevere you're gonna want to leave the faith right and don't because think back think back think back to the fidelity of God think back to the fidelity of Christ now lets them let's just go with that for a second if you're a first century Christian fine right now you could make an argument that the that the biblical text is is providing evidence it's not providing evidence in the now what it's doing its providing evidence of what has gone you know before so that you will continue to have this faith moving forward based on the fidelity of that object we're not there but were two thousand years removed from that so the idea that there's this action if we were there you know we're told that that we can tell the mountain to jump into the sea and and and it will happen if you believe hard enough now is the word pista s-- involved in that at all yeah I mean one of the things that you see in the Synoptics is that you can have more or less faith I mean that's if the faith of the mustard seed I mean it's the the Pistons of the mustard seed I mean I haven't looked at that particular verse but I'd almost I would almost I'll just look yeah and what does it matter I mean if you have if you have he says if you have but the faith of a mustard seed which again doesn't matter or doesn't relate to what we're talking about or the way that I define faith or the way that I shouldn't say that I define it because other people defined the common English language use of faith as a belief that is not dependent on scientific evidence long before me and they didn't consult me but there are a handful of inspiring philosophies fans who want to say that this definition that I quoted from dozens and dozens of classic sources it's somehow they all consulted me I guess cuz I made that that's my own personal definition that dictionaries and scholars and so forth we're using long before I was born I mean I'm like I'm no expert in okay I'm forgetting his name Aquinas yes I go but even Aquinas you I just just doing a little bit of reading there's that there's a definite distinction I think that could in fact I've heard something down that he said here and again you know I haven't I haven't read this in all of its context but you know he's discussing specifically what faith is and is faith something that is something that has seen something that has not seen so again like I always say this I'm not an expert in Thomas Aquinas writing so but you know I've heard a number of things from from st. Augustine hmm worried he talks about faith being a belief that is without proof and if certainly Augustine would be a respected scholar in this although you know he he didn't speak Greek so somehow the the meaning of the Greek word is independent both of the common English word and the previous Hebrew word and I don't get how that's supposed to be significantly different but that's let's just camp on that for a second cuz I think actually that's a really good point this is sort of the the thing that the thing that I really questioned throughout the entire that section of the discussion and there's a very distinct there's a great distinction between how we use faith today and and the object of that faith not not necessarily the object but the access perhaps do we have to the fidelity of that object today the evidence of the fidelity of that object say Oh God and how its presented in the New Testament text right the way that it's presented that the biblical text is you have these experiences like like actual experiences with the divine he see him walking on water you know you see him healing the sick raising the dead I have to wonder whether anybody's actually seeking that either because when you read Paul he he was such a mystic I mean he would take he would take dreams he would take hallucinations and and and declare that as if that's that's evident as if that was genuine communication but I mean even if we even if we just grant that's what I would say like even if we just grant the entirety of the New Testament just granted and the the difference in the faith that those individuals had I think it would be I think I'll be incorrect to say that today when we use faith and we talk about what people have to do in order to have faith in a religion that we would use the word pista s-- to try to to try to wrestle with that in that in to try to equate those two because the way that the way that faith is being presented in the biblical text is you have this background again assuming just going with the text just going with how they present it you know these these disciples are walking around with them right and they're there they're watching them do all these miracles and it's interesting even then they don't believe right is that even then they don't have enough to actually they see him do all these miraculous things and then the water starts to get kind of rough and they go oh we're gonna die and he says you cowards have more faith well what would it be I mean because this wasn't the realistic way of looking at it I mean Jesus was if he existed at all he was a first century faith healer which means that he would have been every bit the scam artist that modern faith healers are right there's times and he can't even bathe heal people and then he has to make the admission that you know that that that eight would how'd he call himself a physician or a doctor or somebody either is not welcome in his own hometown or can't perform any miracles in his own hometown and that's because familiarity breeds contempt and people recognize him aren't you the shyster that grew up here you know we're not by we know your bullshitter we're not gonna believe you right so this is the way I see it I mean so when you hang out with a faith healer if you were hanging out with you know any any of the modern faith healers in the 70s or 80s you know when the when the police come knocking you know your people are going to abandon you because they know that it's all a game of pretend you know I mean Oral Roberts made the confession that that when he was he was asked by one of his believers was happening to work security but but this guy just wanted one example of a person who was medically documented to have been unable to walk documented to have been in a wheelchair for years you know that we can prove that this person actually spent years in a wheelchair met Oral Roberts and could walk after them he said you just wanted one name one person that he could verify and the answer of course was oral roberts said there's a lot of exaggeration in this business business right it's an exaggeration and it's a business it's a bullshit scam that's what it is and that's what it has always been ever since Jesus I used to watch that of this is the side that I used to watch a lot of the Trinity Broadcasting Network to kind of giggle just to get mad I always find it funny that Benny Hinn you know he never he never heals somebody that doesn't have an arm and then they grow an arm on stage but that never happens you know it's always that they can't hear out of their right ear or they can't see really well out of their left eye and then all of a sudden like shorter than the other did you ever okay so there's a thing you just arch your pelvis a little bit and then it looks like one leg is longer than the other and then while they're praying you just change the position of your pelvis and then your leg appears to be the same I mean this is a common scammy it's done a lot a lot of these like traveling yeah what is it revival things yeah that Tara meeting stuff right and then like Bobby Tilton who claimed that he'd seen midgets grow in his faith healing no you haven't if there's no documentation to back that there's literally no truth to the whole thing and that's my position it the truth is what the facts are right show me the fact that's the evidence that's the thing we can show to be true show me the truth of your religion and none of these people can and that's why they get so angry when I point out that that there is no evidence for this position and I think that's they just don't want to admit what it really is so they all go around cowing to each other about how I'm wrong but the only way they can say that I'm wrong is by straw man in my position yeah I just I don't I get if I had to if I had to speculate or theorize maybe about I'm probably using both of those words wrong in this context but why it is that there was a reaction it seems like the hey I haven't been in the YouTube game for very very long but um one of the things that I have noticed from the apologists that I have watched is that so much it seems like what they're trying to do is to say we do have evidence it seems like a lot of it ends up being you know logical syllogisms that seem to imply certain things but but based on false premises so it does seem that that happens but it ends up being that it seems like there's this move this movement away from embracing that faith is required and not arguments yeah I just I feel like I've had to explain to many believers that arguments are not evidence and the most common one is the God of the gaps you know we eat well here's evidence of God you can't explain this ignorance is not evidence yeah yeah I I think at the end of the day from me and kind of going back to the conversation that I had with this friend of mine from Hopkins against wrong the evangelical Christian and I respect the hell out of them though I disagree with him is that at the end of the day he says yeah it's it's faith great I mean I can't I can't prove God to you I don't even I don't even know what that would mean but I have had I've had an experience with him that I know to be real and I know that I will say yo pagan I was a neo-pagan occultist once upon a time I had plenty of personal subjective evidence of a paranormal experiences that I had witnessed myself to use as my own subjective evidence but of course none of that could bear scientific scrutiny yeah and that's the thing and I think even if I'm if I'm not mistaken Eric when he was on with you said well of course she can't use didn't he say that of course you can't use scientific I think it may be even did IPA even say that like you can't use scientific to prove the supernatural and it so I feel like they think the thing is is you actually can there are a number of specific claims that there are several supernatural claims that can be tested science I see I say yeah I mean that's what a Louis Pasteur was famous for disproving a a supernatural claimed he disproved one of the claims of vitalism that he don't believe was that when something dies anything that's died it whether it's been digested or whatever so so poop rotting fruit with you and of course dead animals whatever the reason that they smell bad is because they're their life force is ebbing out and the life force smells bad and that life force can turn into vile forms of life like maggots mold and mice and so Louis Pasteur disproved that which is not a spontaneous generation was a supernatural belief in lifeforce part of vitalism it has absolutely nothing to do with how you know the scientific explanation of how life came about from prior matrix it was Booker wills by Rudy verso who didn't believe in spontaneous generation so but but people are going to misrepresent however they want in order to preserve their belief I just think at the end of the day you know to kind of to kind of maybe tie this all together for me anyway at the end of the day I think that Pistons in the New Testament business as it is used therein in the biblical text it has a range of meanings but you know really it's very often you're talking about the fidelity of an object of faith Christ God or you're talking about that belief that you have and often in in that object and oftentimes in spite of evidence to the contrary around you and just to be clear there is not exceptional moment when faith is dependent on evidence or when you are permitted to allow evidence to counter a faith-based belief no I mean I think that's the I think that's the point of it is that you stand fast stand firm even though it seems weird that God hasn't come back and all this time you know or it seems like the waves are gonna take you down or it seems like you have a wife that's you know past childbearing age and I tell you that you're gonna have a son and not only you're gonna have a son so you're gonna have descendants like the seashore you know all of the things around you so I mean think about it Genesis 22 when that test there's so much it's so much of faith and the Old Testaments about testing but you know Abraham is told after all this after after all these promises that God has made about descendants descendants descendants in the face of all these Tammy Sarah laughs right she laughs I'm gonna have it here give me a break and even after all of that when he's born he's growing up and God says take him up there and kill him I mean this is the point this is why Abraham's faith is such a magnificent thing in the biblical text because on so many different occasions he looks at things as though they're not because he trusts in that God that he counts to be faithful that he counts to have to be worthy of that belief and I don't they see this is the thing I think and I'm speaking from a from a position that I think is supporting the Christian faith now faith in general right I thought I'm gonna do surprise surprise I think that you do Christians you do a disservice to put down faith like this that's how this comes across to me this is my opinion when you when you when you hang so much when you try to minimize faith and say no no no no faith faith you get tons of evidence with faith right you you that's the whole point you get all this evidence you have no I think that's doing it a disservice you have evidence of the fidelity of the object of your faith the thing that's that's allowing you to move forward but the things that you're believing in the promises that are being given are things that you can't see and and I think you do it a disservice to downplay that because I think that's actually a really beautiful for just from a literary standpoint it's a beautiful thing to see with Abraham and the New Testament writers pick up on it I think do I think that that makes Christianity sure no but but I think it does a disservice to try to say no no faith is something that you know you don't it the way that it comes across is you don't really need faith in the way that we think about it you know you can you could prove what it is that you're hoping for and I just don't I don't I don't see that being the case I also have to look at the the idea that anybody that is willing to kill their own children because the voices in their head told them to is not somebody that you want to base the you know three of the major religions on

Channel: AronRa

Views: 34,210

Rating: 4.853229 out of 5

Keywords: Joshua Bowen, Dan Barker, Koine, Greek, faith, belief

Id: vFZDDvtJcjc

Length: 74min 32sec (4472 seconds)

Published: Fri Aug 16 2019