Sunday, June 14, 2015

Christianity and Disproof

Jerry Coyne, on p. 61 of his Faith vs Fact, asks the question:
It's a useful exercise to ask religious people what it would take for them to either abandon the "nonnegotiables" of their fath - like the view that Jesus was divine or that the Quran is the world of Allah - or to give-up on their faith entirely.

That's easy and well-known: Were the corpse of Jesus to be discovered, Christianity would be decisively disproven. And it's not so ridiculous as it might sound: We have in fact found the tombs of victims of Roman crucifixion.

Were the tomb of Mary to be discovered, especially with a body in it, that would disprove Roman Catholicism since the Church has taught the Doctrine of the Assumption authoritatively, but it would not necessarily disprove Christianity as such. But I would have a hard time continuing in Christian belief in such an event since my own faith is based on the historical witness of the Church.

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