This discussion must start with a short philosophical summary to why belief in God is a rational decision based on observable evidence and a logical thought process.
Premise: The rationality for a belief in God. This summary is attributable to Dallas Williard P.H.D UCLA.
-Begin Attribution
However concrete, physical reality is sectioned; the result will always be a state of affairs which owes its being to something other than itself.
No matter how you break down something physical, it will never have the reason for existence in itself. It will only point you to something else as the cause of its being.
There has not been one bit of evidence in this world which will demonstrate to you that there is a physical quantity existent which actually is uncaused and eternal.
Every physical quantity ever observed must go to something outside of itself for its explanation and cause.
Based on all evidence of phyical quantities; if there is anything that would explain its own existence, it would have to be non-physical.
-End Attribution
Everything the atheist believes will deny the above.
Main topic: Why not beleive that Mohammed flew on a horse from the Temple Mount up to Heaven but believe in Noah's flood?
This is a very hard question to articulate. There are many routes to explain this; but I've chosen the following.
It starts with the book of Luke in the Bible.
For those who don't know, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John are the 4 gospels in the Bible that tell the account of Jesus Christ..
Matthew and John knew Jesus, and mark did not.
Luke, the focus of this particular answer never met Jesus.
This requires a prerequisite read however on Luke. Books have been written on this subject, but for a very short summary please see the following before reading this furhter. Just the section mentoined below, not the whole encyclopedia article:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luke_the_Evangelist#Luke_as_a_historian
Anyone who knows the bible at all would ask, what do the gospels have to do with the Flood of Noah?
Philosophically at least, Jesus walking on water, and the Great Flood are connected. If you believe in the account and the miracles of Jesus Christ, then it is would be a default proposition, in my estimation, to beileve in the Great Flood. You would never believe in the former and not the later. While I do not wish to offend Judaism; I would probably never believe in the Old testament without the New; I would probably be an Agonostic. I think this is and has been the case for millions as obvious with the growth of Christianity after the death of Jesus, but the rather stable population of Judaism ( I know there's more to it than that, but this is a generality).
It is a common, illogical mistake of the "New Atheists" to try mixing the beliefs of all relgions and simply argue against that "thing" they have created rather than against Christianity. This manifests itself by arguing against Zeus, arguing against Thor, arguing against Isis, Osiris, Dionysus etc and pretending like they are arguing against Christianity. In Logic this is referred to as a "Straw Man Argument", basically attributing a bunch of beliefs to your opponent that they do not really believe and then arguing against the Straw Man. This is why it is frustrating arguing with Atheists, and I normally wouldn't waste my time; because by the time you get past all of the illogical absurdities, you're not even on square 1.
Important Note to Atheists: Christians are not Pagans. Christianity and Judaims have ALWAYS argued against Paganism. Christians do not believe, nor ever have believed that thunder is caused by gods banging hammers, or rain is caused by gods taking a leak, or that lava is caused by demons pouring forth their anger onto Eaerth, or that crops are pollenated by ferries at the "appropriate time".
The amazing part is, that those who wrote the bible, believed in God, but didn't believe in any of this. They were the only people on earth, who did not believe this. Every other god, of every other religion, attributed almost every natural event to "the gods." The writiers of the bible had every reason to attribute every natural event perceived on Earth to the gods; but they did not. That is amazing...
Even up until Jesus Christ came thousands of years after the time of Noah, there were very few who did not believe that all natural causes were the result of gods and "ferries" meddling with nature. The Romans, the Greeks etc , all believed that the gods were the cause of natural phenomonon. Jews however, believed that this was not the case, and there were only rare occurrences that God would intervene in nature; and these were super-natural events (or miracles in biblical vernacular). God was not normally behind every event in nature. The only times that the bible describes God in such a way would be found in poetic/song books such as the Psalms, Song of Solomon, Ecclesiastes; and was for the specific purpose of imagery and metaphor. The Jews in the New Testament often did not believe that God performed miracles any longer; they were known as Saducees.
AND NO, THE STORIES OF JESUS ARE NOT LIKE OTHER "MYTHS" like Osiris etc in the Book of the Dead. Please quit making fools of yourself by this embarassing argument made by run of the mill atheists everywhere. Please read this article in Wikipedia about this, this is pretty much an internet hoax that atheists everywhere seem to not have questioned because Bill Maher believes it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesus_Christ_in_comparative_mythology
Especially note the opening paragraph for a summary, here, I'll paste it:
"A number of parallels have been drawn between the Christian views of Jesus and other religious or mythical domains.[5][1] However, Eddy and Boyd state that there is no evidence of a historical influence by the pagan myths such as dying and rising gods on the authors of the New Testament, and most scholars agree that any such historical influence is entirely implausible given that first century monotheistic Galilean Jews would not have been open to pagan stories.[5][4] Paula Fredriksen states that no serious scholarly work places Jesus outside the backdrop of 1st century Palestinian Judaism.[6]"
This is in back drop to the often used fallacious "God of the Gaps" argument employeed by atheists. They set up a straw man; conveniently pretending that "the Religious" used to believe that thunder was caused by Thor banging a hammer, but Scientists came along one day and threw back the curtain on what really causes thunder and that "massive electrostatic discharge between electrically charged regions within clouds" causes lightning which then produces thunder. Then on goes the God of the Gaps; "the religious" believe that natural events are caused by the gods, and scientists come by and throw back the curtain. There's only one problem with it... the Bible of Christians does not teach that any of these things are caused by the gods; therefore the straw-man argument.
Atheists will almost invariably point to the dispute between Galileo and the Catholic Church as the smoking gun. They fail to mention that the Catholic Church asserted this based on Catholic Doctrine, not biblical citation. Galileo was a fervrent Christian (If you doubt this... research it. He wasn't just a little bit religious, but extremely devout), but disagreed with the Pope that the Bible claims that the Earth is the center of the Universe. It was Artistotle that the Catholic Church cited for this (why, I'm not entirely sure).
So.. the point is; Judaims and Christianity are not like the Pagan relgions. That should be obvious to everyone; but apparently is not.
On Hiduism: It's another Pagan religion with everything in nature attributed to gods. The Earth is on the back of an elephant. It seems pretty easy to convice an atheist that this is not true... enough said.
Buddhism was an shoot off of Hinduism...
The point here is that Christianity and Judaism are completely different than any other religion and of Paganism (See GK Chesterton, The Everlasting Man). Any inspection of religions of the world would demonstrate this. Some refer to these as "Eastern Religions" and "Western Religions", which of course is absurd. Christianity at one time was the dominant religion in places such as Egypt, Saudi Arabia, later France and Eurpoe, later the Americas North and South, today it's center is in Africa and South America. Today in China there are at least 70 million Christians.
That leaves one religion left, which is also used as a Straw Man on which to cast the beliefs of Christians by Atheists and then argue against; that is a separate discussion, but brings us to Mohammed and his flying horse.
The reason I believe in the Ark and I do not believe in Mohammed's flying horse is because I believe what Luke wrote, but I do not believe what Mohammed wrote.
First, since atheists enjoy to argue that all Religions are so much like, please find me any text of any religion, anywhere on Earth, ever, that starts as follows, taken from Luke Chapter 1:
"1 Many have undertaken to draw up an account of the things that have been fulfilled[a] among us, 2 just as they were handed down to us by those who from the first were eyewitnesses and servants of the word. 3 With this in mind, since I myself have carefully investigated everything from the beginning, I too decided to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus, 4 so that you may know the certainty of the things you have been taught."
There were eight authors of the New Testament. Seven of the eight were martyred for their beliefs.
This in comparison to 1 author of the Koran. Mohammed claims to have received visions from Gabriel and write them down. Mohammed died from of being poisoned following his conquest of the Jewish settlement of Khaibar.
Mohammed was a pedaphile and a warrior. Everything in the Koran is based on what that one man was supposedly given in visions from Gabriel. Everything in his account tended toward him leading alot of people in conquest and later ending up in paradise with alot of sex with women. Umm, as I stated earlier, if I wasn't a Christian, I would be an agnostic...perhaps a Jew, not sure, but Islam is an untenable notion at least to me; but obviously that doesn't disprove anything either. But I think that everyone admits that Mohammed is the only real witness to what he saw and his followers take his word for it.
The bible is very different obviously, in almost every way to Islam and every other religion. This is despite the persistent insistance of atheists who try to insist that all religions are pretty much the same.
You've probably heard this so bear with me, but 10 of the 12 disciples were martyred for their beliefs, and who dies for what they know to be false, especially at that rate. Your reply is "well so are many muslims who die in the belief that they will meet virgins in paradise" or "so did all the hale bopp commet believers commited suicide believing they were going to go up and meet a commet in the sky." And my response, is yes, without doubt, they believed what the claimed. When cult followers die, they probably all die believing devoutly in what they claim. At least most of them certainly died believing what they claimed.
When the apostles died, they would have all died knowing for a fact that Jesus did not rise from the dead. In the 30 years after Jesus' death, thousands of Romans became Christians based on something they saw, or someone they knew and trusted claimed they saw; and they died for it in a big way under Nero in 54 to 68 AD, and for many years after that. They would have all died for something they either were not sure was true, or knew not to be ture. In the book of Acts, Luke describes the apostles going out among the Romans, and other people performing miracles, and preaching the gospel. People don't die by the hundreds and thousands for miralces they know they didn't see.... Sorry, I'd need a definitive proof of something of this nature ever having happend on large scale. Either all of these people were on drugs and hallucenating, or it is as they say.
So, in short, the reason why I believe in the Flood of Noah and not Mohammed's flying horse, Al-Buraq, is quite simply because I believe the words of Jesus and the account of Luke and do not believe the words of Mohammed, or Pagans.
