Is Faith Reasonable?

[MTZehvor]

S.T.A.G.E. said:

MTZehvor said:

I'd be careful with the word evidence, because evidence can be just about anything. I could cite, for instance, the willingness of so many members of the early church to die for something they would have known for certain was a lie, or the consistency of similar stories found in religious texts all across the globe dating back to times where people could not have possibly interacted, or really something as simple as an example of people claiming that religion changed their life. Evidence can be anything that suggests that something exists, and evidence that may be entirely uncompelling to one person might be very much so to another.

 

If you get people to believe in your cause and become completely behind it they have great potential to die for it. Remember that people way back when were not educated in Europe when they fought in the name of god, or were even taught about god and kept in line. They didnt need scientific proof because back then that type of proof did not matter. People died for honor at the whim of their governments or even their monarchy. Its actually fairly recent that scientific facts and evidence came into the picture. Its also fairly recent that Christians have been so educated in the amount of years of Christianity's existence. With the evolution of law and science over the past two hundred years, many things have changed. The secular world has had an effect of on the modern Christian and they evolve their practice to match it.

I agree that it's possible to get people to die in a cause that they're unsure of; the same thing still happens today. What I think makes the early church unique in this regard is that they would have been completely aware of whether Jesus had actually risen from the dead or not, as they were claiming.

Also, I'm fairly certain everyone was quite aware of the length of Christianity's existence at the time, being a relatively new religion (or, rather, a new extension of a much older religion).