What does it take to believe?
As a youth worker many moons ago, I remember taking a 6th-form double lesson (quite why they let me loose with their 6th-form RE students for nearly an hour-and-a-half I'll never know?) where I'd been asked to help them think about the evidence for the resurrection.
We did the now well-worn route of looking at alternative explanations - eg. hallucination; swoon etc. (and if you've never thought through the historical evidence for the likelihood of Jesus being raised, you could do worse than read Who Moved the Stone? by Frank Morrison).
At the end of the session I asked who was convinced by the evidence. The huge majority of hands went up.
Was there a mass conversion? No, of course not.
Seth Godin - prolific (and usually wise) writer about marketing and business, gets the point very well:
Why do you believe what you believe?
As a youth worker many moons ago, I remember taking a 6th-form double lesson (quite why they let me loose with their 6th-form RE students for nearly an hour-and-a-half I'll never know?) where I'd been asked to help them think about the evidence for the resurrection.
We did the now well-worn route of looking at alternative explanations - eg. hallucination; swoon etc. (and if you've never thought through the historical evidence for the likelihood of Jesus being raised, you could do worse than read Who Moved the Stone? by Frank Morrison).
At the end of the session I asked who was convinced by the evidence. The huge majority of hands went up.
Was there a mass conversion? No, of course not.
Seth Godin - prolific (and usually wise) writer about marketing and business, gets the point very well:
...no spreadsheet, no bibliography and no list of resources is sufficient proof to someone who chooses not to believe. The skeptic will always find a reason, even if it's one the rest of us don't think is a good one. Relying too much on proof distracts you from the real mission--which is emotional connection....and if that's true for business, how much more for religious belief.
Why do you believe what you believe?
Leave a comment