NT, I find the point-by-point comparisons using the quote function here exhausting.  First of all, I’m glad we have a real scientist here (of course, since you have spent some time undercutting scientific authority here, that’s not helping much), and your critiques have some merit, but the fact is, scientists do have facts–from which they can arrive at opinions, which you are free to call beliefs–but where’s your facts?  Absence of evidence isn’t evidence of absence.  Because it’s not evidence of anything.  

It might be helpful if you shared a bit with us about how you came to your present position (which I’m still struggling to understand).  And if you abandoned the formatting thing, and just typed a few paragraphs of prose.  Or is that too–prosaic?

Mine comes from being raised Catholic.  My father studied to be a priest before marrying my mom (the Josephite order, which was racially integrated), but he was a very liberal decent (and of course flawed) man who believed that we’re here to help others.  We went to a church where Vatican II was not only accepted but embraced, and the priests were some of the most intelligent, liberal, and well-spoken people I’d ever met (much more so than many of their parishioners).  

I believe all the abuse stories (well, most of them), but no such stories came from our parish.  And so I got something closer to Jesus’ real message–which wasn’t about hate. Or lording it over everybody else, “Ha ha, we’re going to heaven and you’re not.”  Nobody ever tried to make me believe that.  So the anger some people with a religious background feel–it’s not there in me.  Because I had nothing to react against.  

But I still was forced to recognize, over time, that much of the gospel story could never have happened. I believed in Jesus.  Not in Magic Jesus.  

And because I’d known religious people who were precisely what religious people are supposed to be (and more), I would bristle when I heard professional atheists (a pretty dismal group of people, by and large, who I don’t think represent most non-believers very well, and I don’t consider Bart one of them, because he has actual knowledge to share), dismiss and deride people just for following their beliefs.  Like the Irish socialist James Connolly (a hero of mine), I saw all that for what it was–snobbery and elitism.  A way of feeling superior to the hoi polloi.  And not much real substance behind it.  Just a different way of handing out tracts.  Without the neat Jack Chick artwork.  

So what was I supposed to do with that?

This is what I do with that.  

Your turn.  

Okay, it took me like two seconds to read that, and it told me nothing I hadn’t already assumed.  Your pearls may well be of great price, but all you showed me was you read a few books to ‘challenge your beliefs’–which are?

I see no reason why you couldn’t have posted that here, but leaving that aside–what the hell?  I shared, you didn’t.  

This isn’t a dialogue.  It’s you posting stuff, and me not understanding it, because 1)Your posts are confusingly formatted and 2)You haven’t given us any context about where you’re coming from–except that you’re something in Neuroscience.  Me, I’m a library clerk.  What’s that got to do with the price of tea in Palestine?  

Not enough to work with.  I don’t know what we’re talking about, and if that remains the case, we might as well stop talking.  Or find a more defined area of inquiry to discuss.  You’ve been extremely vague.  In effect, you’ve really said nothing.  Which doesn’t prove you have nothing to say.  But as of this point in time, I still don’t know what it is.  

I see now that there were two, but I only could read the PS, and I still can’t access the other.  PM system’s a bit clunky.  I think maybe you should have stuck with the main response.  I’ll try to read it later.  

I’m not THAT interested. 

I respect your privacy, but if we’re here to discuss beliefs, part of that is OPENLY discussing how we came to those beliefs. 

We don’t actually have to discuss beliefs, because there are real facts when you read between the lines–and they don’t point to Jesus having any powers other than charisma, compassion, and a keen intellect.  Powers that actually exist in reality. 

There is no instance of this happening with a member of our species, and in any event, the virgin birth is a story that came into being well after Jesus was dead.  Many of the most important early Christian writers clearly didn’t believe he was divinely conceived, as is evidenced by that subject only being raised in two of the 27 books of the New Testament.  The story became very popular, but in the early days, it was a story told by a minority of Christians.  Probably not told at all the first few decades after the crucifixion.  

However, if you believe in a God who can rewrite the rules of nature, why not?  It’s silly to argue science in this context.  This is not a discussion about science.  If a virgin gave birth to a healthy male baby, would that prove Jesus was divinely conceived, or that anything he said was true?  The whole point of the virgin birth is that it proves Jesus is unique.  Same for the resurrection.  If you could explain either event scientifically, then nobody would be much impressed.  

I don’t really go to science to tell me what the truth is.  Science is there to tell me the facts.  The truth is something else again.  And the most important truths in the gospels aren’t about magic tricks.  

I not only don’t believe Jesus could do miracles, I don’t want to believe it.  That would make him less, somehow.  His life, his suffering, would be meaningless if he knew all the time his pain, his death, would just be temporary.  I think he believed he had to sacrifice himself (or at least be willing to do it) to bring about the Kingdom.  Jesus is more remarkable if he’s just an ordinary human being, as opposed to some divine freak of nature.  We’re surrounded by superpowered beings in the movies and TV these days.  It’s so–mundane.  

If you can’t prove it, it’s not a fact.  If you can prove it, it’s not a truth (it may be true to state that it’s a fact, but that’s not the same thing).  

“Love is better than hate.”  “Peace is better than war.”  “Knowledge is better than ignorance.”  Would you agree these are truths?  How could you ever prove them?  I could easily come up with solid factual reasons to doubt all three.  In pure Darwinian terms, probably all three are false, or at least dubious.  Humans have by far the most knowledge of any animal that has ever existed–and will never last as long as the dinosaurs.  Or cockroaches.  Or the e. coli bacteria.  So what’s so great about us?  In objective terms, not much.  

Facts are about what is or is not.  Truths are more about aspirations, our desire to transcend the material universe, be more than eating machines out to reproduce ourselves.  That’s why science can’t address truth, because science is only about what what is or is not real.  And even that is very hard to determine at times.  But science definitely can’t go beyond that without becoming corrupted.  Science can very easily be turned into an ersatz religion, at which point stating something that goes against consensus isn’t an alternate view–it’s heresy.  

Susan Sontag once wrote “The opposite of fact is fiction.  The opposite of one great truth may be another great truth.”  Facts don’t contradict each other.  Truths do.  That’s why when we say “Speak your truth” we really mean “Tell us what you see.”  What you see is real to you, but not to everyone.  However, some people speak a personal truth so remarkable that it leaves a lasting mark on everyone.  Even those who don’t agree with it.  That’s what Jesus was.

And you want to talk about whether he could do magic tricks.  Feh.