Do extrordinary events require extrordinary evidence?

[honestquestions]

Where in the Bible does it say of itself that it is true?

I am unaware of such a verse, therefore there is no circle.

That’s like saying I am unaware of gravity, therefore there is no gravity. What’s true is true whether or not we are aware of it.

Psalm 119:160
Thy word is true from the beginning: and every one of thy righteous judgments endureth for ever.

Revelation 21:5
And he that sat upon the throne said, Behold, I make all things new. And he said unto me, Write: For these words are true and faithful.

2 Timothy 3:16
All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness -

John 17:17
Sanctify them through thy truth: thy word is truth.

Why is it that most atheists know more about the religion than most believers following it?
Interestingly enough, here is a recent study done last fall to prove it: newsfeed.time.com/2010/09/28/survey-atheists-know-more-about-religion-than-believers/

 

[davidv]

Psalm 119:160
Thy word is true from the beginning: and every one of thy righteous judgments endureth for ever.

Revelation 21:5
And he that sat upon the throne said, Behold, I make all things new. And he said unto me, Write: For these words are true and faithful.

2 Timothy 3:16
All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness -

John 17:17
Sanctify them through thy truth: thy word is truth.

Why is it that most atheists know more about the religion than most believers following it?

Whether they know more about religion does not help them to understand what is written in the Bible. Religious knowledge does necessarily equate to biblical knowledge.

Interestingly enough, here is a recent study done last fall to prove it: newsfeed.time.com/2010/09/28/survey-atheists-know-more-about-religion-than-believers/

The quotes above don’t say what you seem to be implying. And its not clear how this addresses the OP.

 

[warpspeedpetey]

I tell you one, and let you figure out others. God cannot create a temperature of minus one Kelvin. Elementary physics.

G-d is prior to logic. To be G-d a being must be the literal act of existing. If the being we refer to as G-d were not the act of existence, then that being would be dependent on something else for its own existence and therefore not be G-d. As the very act of existing, absolutely everything else is dependent on G-d. Therefore the existence of logic is preceded by and depends upon G-d. We conclude then that the omnipotence of G-d is absolute. G-d can make something more stopped than stopped even if it presents us a logical contradiction, because in order to have a logical contradiction you must first have G-d.

 

[warpspeedpetey]

I do imagine a way it could be true that God exists. “Not believing it” is not fallacious in and of itself as you seem to indicate.

Why do you reject? it because…

1. Not enough physical evidence to verify His existence…then you admit the logical contradiction of verification
2. You don’t think the Miraculous claims are possible…then you admit to the Fallacy of Incredulity.
3. You simply choose not to believe…You admit to faith
4. You don’t think it matters because someone else does the same thing…You admit the Tu quoque fallacy.
5. You claim some variation of “not accepting is not the same as rejecting” they are literal and rational antonyms, choosing not to act is an act…You accept a logical contradiction notA~=notA.

So you are either…

1. A believer in the validity of a logical contradiction.
2. A person who accepts the validity of a logical fallacy
3. A person of faith

**It seems to me that you have no acceptable basis to reject the literal existence of G-d. **

 

[Betterave]

Actually, that’s how Hume is regarded as using it, to refer to statistic improbability, which he claims to base largely on prior experience.
…]

I’m sorry you went on to write so much about this, because I have to disagree right off the bat and for a very simple reason: There is no way to assess the antecedent statistical probability of the incarnation or the virgin birth or the resurrection, etc. - or of something like water freezing (in the case Hume mentions of the Indian who has never seen ice); therefore Hume cannot be referring to probability in this sense. Unless he’s very confused, which I guess is possible, but not likely. If you have a reference to support your reading of Hume I’d be happy to look at it and reconsider.

So actually, I do think you are wrong here. The skeptic, by claiming EEREE is claiming that the antecedent probability of the Ress. is so extraordinarily high, that extraordinary evidence (and according to Hume, no evidence would be enough) would be needed to establish it. So the skeptic by using EEREE is basing his refusal to believe the Ress. on the supposedly high antecedent improbability of Jesus rising.

This claim is flawed because he has no basis for it. That laws of nature show dead men don’t naturally rise, is irrelevant to the claim that God supernaturally raised Jesus. but my point is that even if the antecedent probability of the event of the resurrection is high, we can still believe it without extraordinarily evidence because we also take into account the probability that the evidence would be what it is, if the event did not occur.

That’s right, provided we are talking about an antecedent statistical probability. If that is what we are talking about, then the case we are talking about is an absurd one and the skeptics are talking complete nonsense. In any case, the last principle you (and W. L. Craig) mention is sound, I just think that the lottery analogy is a poor one for illustrating what any intelligent person must actually mean by an “extraordinary” claim/event.

 

[Betterave]

No, that is not what I had in mind.

This is what I said: “Nevertheless, from the top of my head I can mention at least two laws of nature which will never be overturned, no matter how many observations are made. And no matter what God can or cannot do, he is unable to invalidate them. Can you guess what they are?”. I did not include the highlighted “of nature”, but I thought it was pretty obvious from the context. Shows that we can take stuff for granted, and still have a mutual misunderstanding. So, can you think of some physical laws which are inviolable for God?

You know you’re not supposed to use quotes if you’re going to change what is written between the quotation marks, don’t you? Just use square brackets if you want to add something after the fact. In any case, I think this is probably an irrelevant digression, so I won’t pursue it (for now ).

 

[Betterave]

Yes, there is. You made an error in your analysis. Once an event occurs IN nature (as a location), and if God does not stand right next to it, declaring that he did it, there is not reason to assume that the event was not of natural causes. We must assume that we did not know all the laws of nature and start from there.

Interesting: you and WSP agree on this. You are both wrong, however.

And, pray tell, just how do you know what nature alone can or cannot do? When did you gain omniscience?

That’s silly. We don’t have to be omniscient to have a good idea of what nature alone can or cannot do. We make judgments based on what we know; and we do know we’re not omniscient, so don’t bother groundlessly making that suggestion again.

You try to have your cake and eat it, too. On one hand you wish to substanitiate God by appealing to “miracles”, and of the other want to say that miracles can only be produced by God. Nice circular reasoning.

LOL! This seems really ironic. You are trying to have your cake (empirically derived, a posteriori scientific knowledge of the world) and eat it too (pretend that the form of that knowledge determines a priori that miracles are impossible). Have you heard of Nelson Goodman? The problem of recognizing a genuine law of nature is not at all the trivially easy task - which just happens to stack the deck against miracles - that you apparently think it is.

 

[StrawberryJam]

In all this back and forth I have seen no evidence. Ordinary or Extrodinary (sic) Extraordinary ones lack any evidence that anyone should accept.

Of course, there must be excellent evidence for God.

Where is it?

 

[Betterave]

Oops, it should have said not pray to…

The point is you can’t use circular reasoning. The bible is true because it says it’s true…

Okay; so you say, “The book of the aliens says that you shall not pray to gods before them, especially the large false one which would take over most of the world.”

I said, “Really?”

The correct answer to my question is not: “No, the book actually says…”
The correct answer, I’m pretty sure, is: “No, there is no such book.” Please correct me if I’m wrong and tell me more about it.

In any case, some people do claim to know that the Bible is true is because it says that it is. That is very rare though. You should try not to pick on the dumbest kid in the class in order to show how smart you are - with due respect (and I really don’t want to be unkind in saying this), it just tends to make you look petty and dumb.

 

[Betterave]

In all this back and forth I have seen no evidence. Ordinary or Extrodinary (sic) Extraordinary ones lack any evidence that anyone should accept.

Of course, there must be excellent evidence for God.

Where is it?

I’m sure we can get there eventually. We’ve just got some methodological issues to straighten out first.

 

[Betterave]

Yes, you definitely did miss something. You keep going back in forth from the majority to minority view. From the minority standpoint, if you and only you alone happened to match the winning number while 5 million other people didn’t, it is much more likely that a friend pranked you by recording a previous broadcast. People are pranked like this and with fake lottery tickets often. Winning powerball 1:195,000,000 Odds of getting pranked thinking that you won powerball 1:5,000

Ah, I see. I did not know that. So how does the prank work? You invite your friend over, hit play on the recording of the time his numbers won (odds of their being such a previous broadcast: much less that 5000:195,000,000, surely?! - or how does that work exactly?), then laugh at him when he thinks he has won? Strange. How many winners of the powerball lottery actually exist, I wonder?

Anyway, it seems you’re actually just saying that for every 5000 winners of the powerball lottery, there is 1 person who is pranked into thinking he won. So we have the situation again where the antecedent probability of winning is, yes, very, very low, but is irrelevant to the probability given the evidence - the probability of being pranked is much higher than the antecedent probability of winning, but the probability of being pranked is still very low (1 in 5000); in other words, the probability that you have won, given the evidence, is still very high. So you’re very much missing danserr’s point here. You’ve unwittingly played right into his (her?) hands. Can you see that?

 

[StrawberryJam]

I’m sure we can get there eventually. We’ve just got some methodological issues to straighten out first.

I am patient, you know that by now.
Thank you for being patient with me all this time.

 

[danserr]

You’ve unwittingly played right into his (her?) hands. Can you see that?

It’s how he and every skeptic on this thread have been arguing all thread. They’ve been using Extraordinary events to refer to extraordinarily improbable antecedently (before considering the evidence.).

There is no way to assess the antecedent statistical probability of the incarnation or the virgin birth or the resurrection, etc. - or of something like water freezing (in the case Hume mentions of the Indian who has never seen ice);

I agree, and I have all thread. But Hume does it anyway. He claims that miracles are “by definition” extraordinarily improbable. And bases his refusal to believe them on this alone. And for this he has been harshly criticized and rejected by nearly all even atheist philosophers today. amazon.com/Humes-Abject-Failure-Argument-Miracles/dp/0195127382/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1301633481&sr=1-1

You have a hard time thinking Hume is making such a bad argument, but he is. Earman (not ehrman) shows it in his book.

My citation, 'Hume seems to imagine a scale in which the evidence is being weighed. On the one side of the scale is the evidence for a particular miralce, which (he concedes for the sake of argument) amounts to a full proof. But on the other side of the scale stands all the evidence from all in the people in all the ages for the regularity of the laws of nature, which also amounts to a full proof [the error of this is already obvious to you, but keep reading for a moment]. He writes “A miracle is a violation of the laws of nature, and as a firm and unalterable experience has established these laws, a proof against miracle, from the very nature of the fact is as entire as any argument from experience can possible be imaginined.”

• Hume, Enquiry concerning human understanding, 10.1.90
  cited from Reasonable Faith (2008) p.250.

Now take Ehrman:
miracles are so highly
improbable that they’re the least possible occurrence in any given instance. They violate the way
nature naturally works. They are so highly improbable, their probability is infinitesimally
remote, that we call them miracles… Historians can
only establish what probably happened in the past, and by definition a miracle is the least
probable occurrence.

• from taken reasonablefaith.org/site/DocServer/resurrection-debate-transcript.pdf?docID=621 p.12.

It’s ridiculous I know, what this is how Hume, Ehrman, and the skeptic who says EEREE are using he term.

 

[Warrenton]

Of course, there must be excellent evidence for God.

Where is it?

The extraordinary evidence for God is the Church.

As St. Paul said, it is also in the world around us.

One odd thing about the world is that we keep discovering new things. One would think, after 6,000 years, or 1/2 million, depending on your calculations, we would have discovered most of what is out there. But, everytime we look into the microscope with a better lense we find …smaller stuff. Why?

All of these are so much a part of our lives that we take them for granted, just as we take each other for granted.

That is a fact. Exhibit A: Richard Gere and Cindy Crawford divorced (there’s philosophy for you!!).

But, if one mulls individuality, one begins to see how astonishing it really is.

 

[Betterave]

I am patient, you know that by now.
Thank you for being patient with me all this time.

Thanks. There are some people with whom it is very difficult to be patient. You aren’t one of them.

 

[Betterave]

It’s how he and every skeptic on this thread have been arguing all thread. They’ve been using Extraordinary events to refer to extraordinarily improbable antecedently (before considering the evidence.).

But still, saying that much doesn’t tell us what they should mean by “antecedently extraordinarily improbable”…if, that is, they want to construct an even remotely intelligible argument.

I agree, and I have all thread. But Hume does it anyway. He claims that miracles are “by definition” extraordinarily improbable. And bases his refusal to believe them on this alone. And for this he has been harshly criticized and rejected by nearly all even atheist philosophers today. amazon.com/Humes-Abject-Failure-Argument-Miracles/dp/0195127382/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1301633481&sr=1-1

You have a hard time thinking Hume is making such a bad argument, but he is. Earman (not ehrman) shows it in his book.

I’m pretty sure I’ve read Earman’s book but I don’t remember the details. As far as what you have written above - “[Hume] claims that miracles are “by definition” extraordinarily improbable” - it seems that this is really quite in line with my point: he is talking about something that is extraordinarily improbable “by definition” (whatever that means), and not something that is extraordinarily improbable statistically speaking (statistics and probability is a real branch of mathematics with rigorous procedures - it is irrelevant to the kind of cases Hume is referring to).

My citation, 'Hume seems to imagine a scale in which the evidence is being weighed. On the one side of the scale is the evidence for a particular miralce, which (he concedes for the sake of argument) amounts to a full proof. But on the other side of the scale stands all the evidence from all in the people in all the ages for the regularity of the laws of nature, which also amounts to a full proof [the error of this is already obvious to you, but keep reading for a moment]. He writes “A miracle is a violation of the laws of nature, and as a firm and unalterable experience has established these laws, a proof against miracle, from the very nature of the fact is as entire as any argument from experience can possible be imaginined.”

• Hume, Enquiry concerning human understanding, 10.1.90
  cited from Reasonable Faith (2008) p.250.

Here I would say this “scale” is obviously a heuristic device. It clearly has nothing to do with real statistical probabilities. Right?

Now take Ehrman:
miracles are so highly
improbable that they’re the least possible occurrence in any given instance. They violate the way
nature naturally works. They are so highly improbable, their probability is infinitesimally
remote, that we call them miracles… Historians can
only establish what probably happened in the past, and by definition a miracle is the least
probable occurrence.

• from taken reasonablefaith.org/site/DocServer/resurrection-debate-transcript.pdf?docID=621 p.12.

Again, there is no reference here to anything that could possibly fall in the domain of statistical probabilities.

It’s ridiculous I know, what this is how Hume, Ehrman, and the skeptic who says EEREE are using he term.

So I agree that the argument is ridiculous, and your construal may even be the way that many people who accept the argument construe it, but if we are looking to refute the strongest interpretation of the argument, I don’t think this lottery analogy does it.

**

 

[ManOnFire]

In all this back and forth I have seen no evidence. Ordinary or Extrodinary (sic) Extraordinary ones lack any evidence that anyone should accept.

Of course, there must be excellent evidence for God.

Where is it?

From a scientific standpoint, there is no evidence of God. There is also no evidence of no God. It’s your choice what to believe.

Your question has been answered to the best that it is possible (until the end). You continue to ask the question as if life owes you an answer that meets with your satisfaction. Therein lies your problem. You can demand the answer, but life doesn’t care to give you /owe you an answer. That’s the part you can’t get over. You have made yourself a minigod who demands an answer. Likewise, you can demand an answer to Zeno’s paradox, but you won’t get an answer there either. Continuing to ask it has morphed into “asking the wrong question.” If you could find a way to move forward to “what comes next,” you’d be doing the best you could, which is all anyone can ask of each of us. At that point, you could choose the Covenant for behavior, or not. Your choice.

 

[Keeler]

G-d is prior to logic. To be G-d a being must be the literal act of existing. If the being we refer to as G-d were not the act of existence, then that being would be dependent on something else for its own existence and therefore not be G-d. As the very act of existing, absolutely everything else is dependent on G-d. Therefore the existence of logic is preceded by and depends upon G-d. We conclude then that the omnipotence of G-d is absolute. G-d can make something more stopped than stopped even if it presents us a logical contradiction, because in order to have a logical contradiction you must first have G-d.

No sane believer maintains that God can create married bachelors, ot 4 sided triangles, or “more stopped than stopped”. Therefore you are insane, which is not a surprise.

 

[Keeler]

You know you’re not supposed to use quotes if you’re going to change what is written between the quotation marks, don’t you? Just use square brackets if you want to add something after the fact. In any case, I think this is probably an irrelevant digression, so I won’t pursue it (for now ).

It is good to know that you are very dependable. Any excuse is a good excuse to evade a question, and mumble something about some irrelevancies.

 

[warpspeedpetey]

No…God can create married bachelors, ot 4 sided triangles, or “more stopped than stopped”…

*Why *can’t He?