The burden of proof is on believers to prove God exists (according to atheist philosphers)

[Peter_Plato]

Well, if it happens only once every two-thousand years, then that is still quite extraordinary. It would make Jesus supposed resurrection more credible. But if I remember correctly, Jesus isn’t the only one who has risen from the dead. Jairus’ daughter was raised from the dead. Lazarus was raised from the dead. When Jesus died, many holy people rose from the dead (Matthew 27:50-51). And finally, Paul resurrected a man called Eutychus in Acts 20:7-12 after almost literally boring him to death.

Actually, Lazarus, Jairus’ daughter and Eutychus were resuscitated from the dead, they were not RESURRECTED from the dead. They all died a second time. It isn’t clear in what form the “holy people” “rose” from the dead in a bodily sense. Perhaps only their spirits were involved, but I haven’t looked at the reference.

Presumably, Jesus’ resurrection was not of the same kind since he never died again and his body was glorified and taken into the heavenly realm. From all contexts that would be a completely one-off event and was INTENDED to be. That would entail that such events are not given more “credibility” by occurring more often. It is the significance of such things which is important not whether they can be replicated.

I am sitting here this morning knowing that I have never existed before except embodied in the life I currently have. There is no way for me to replicate my life – it simply is not in my power to do that. The fact that I have no power to experimentally replicate my conscious existence does not, in the least, make it less credible nor less astonishing. However, it is the unique nature of some things which is precisely what ought to be the most important thing to be pondered. Unless, of course, one has a predilection towards making everything mundane, insignificant and pedestrian to begin with

Now merely because you have some kind of prejudice against one-off events seems to indicate some kind of investment in a particular view of reality – a take on reality that is, paradoxically, itself a ‘one-off’ reality – and serves, in fact, to discredit that view of reality according to its own epistemic principles since such a reality is itself not replicable.

 

[Peter_Plato]

1. Because the resurrection of the dead contradicts science.

Or demonstrates the limitations of science.

1. The source is biased.

“Biased” in the sense of disagreeing with your perspective. You need to demonstrate the soundness of your position before you can claim verifiable bias.

On the other hand, a position could lean towards the truth and some will still call that “bias” in some peculiar sense or other.

Witness: I saw that man rob the bank.
Inquisitor: Why are you biased against that man?
Witness: Huh?

1. Eyewitness testimony is unreliable, even if it comes from an unbiased source. If the story is written down by someone who was not an eyewitness, it becomes even more unreliable.

Scripture is inspired by God. Presumably God is an eyewitness to all historical events – can’t get more reliable than that.

Is God an unbiased source? Presumably.

Why would an unbiased source who is omniscient, perfectly just and eternal in perspective be “unreliable?”

Well, because you say so?

And your reliability quotient would be based upon what precisely? Not your biases, I suppose?

You were not an eyewitness to those events, either, and yet you claim to be in a position to judge what was written down as biased and unreliable?

You will have to provide more evidence than merely your state of disbelief.

 

[Peter_Plato]

The Catholic position, as I understand it, is that the Fall of Man really did happen, while disregarding the details about who, where and when. It seems to me that the Catholic Church wants to maintain it’s consistent with science - which rejects Genesis -, while still maintaining the historicity of the Fall, described in Genesis. That makes it’s vague and incoherent and those two reinforce each other. In short: I think the Catholic position is logically inconsistent and that’s why I’m not able to make a prediction for the Catholic understanding of Genesis that can be tested and verified/falsified.

The fall of man is entirely and logically consistent with the moral reality within which human beings find themselves.

Science does not provide the complete accounting for human reality – unless of course one has an epistemic and unverifiable bias towards science to begin with.

In effect, the scientific picture of human existence is not the only one that needs to be satisfied with regard to determining the “historicity” of the fall. The moral landscape also needs to be explained and science does not have much to say on that in terms of causal features – again without presuming a whole lot about the nature of human kind; a presumption which, itself, cannot be properly verified/falsified by the scientific evidence alone.

 

[Cheiron]

Or demonstrates the limitations of science.

To be more precise: the resurrection contradicts science. Either science is right and Jesus did not rise from the dead, or Christianity is right and Jesus did rise from the dead.

And if you want to say that science is right, but Jesus is an exception, then I need some really, really good evidence for that obvious case of special pleading.

“Biased” in the sense of disagreeing with your perspective. You need to demonstrate the soundness of your position before you can claim verifiable bias.

On the other hand, a position could lean towards the truth and some will still call that “bias” in some peculiar sense or other.

Witness: I saw that man rob the bank.
Inquisitor: Why are you biased against that man?
Witness: Huh?

I mean biased in the sense that the Bible is not a neutral account. The Bible is a product of the Christian community and contains stories that put Christ in a good light. This is not neutral and it makes me sceptical.

Scripture is inspired by God. Presumably God is an eyewitness to all historical events – can’t get more reliable than that.

Is God an unbiased source? Presumably.

Why would an unbiased source who is omniscient, perfectly just and eternal in perspective be “unreliable?”

Well, because you say so?

And your reliability quotient would be based upon what precisely? Not your biases, I suppose?

You were not an eyewitness to those events, either, and yet you claim to be in a position to judge what was written down as biased and unreliable?

You will have to provide more evidence than merely your state of disbelief.

My opinion of God is now worse than it was before. I’ll explain:

Earlier in this thread I pointed to the example of the eclipse in Luke, which simply can’t have happened. The last supper was a passover seder. Passover always begins on a full moon, while eclipses can only occur during new moons, when the moon is between the earth and the sun.

If scripture is inspired by God, then we are now faced with a dilemma: Either God inspired the author of Luke to write lies, in which case He is not “perfectly just.” Or God doesn’t know how eclipses work, in which case He is not omniscient. In fact, a God who isn’t smarter than humans isn’t much of a God at all.

 

[Vera_Ljuba]

Excellent. So your objection is otiose.

Except you never even attempted to answer. Which verses describe the LITERAL state of affairs, and which ones are allegorical?

It would be helpful for all your objections if you would divorce yourself from the Either/Or Fundamentalism.

That’s why you will never be able to refute Catholicism: we embrace the Both/And.

No, rational Catholics do not subscribe to your misconception.

An act is EITHER good OR evil… never, but never BOTH good AND evil. Actually, it would be to your benefit to study elementary logic… you know, the three axioms of logic. With special emphasis on the law of contradiction.

 

[Charlemagne_III]

No, rational Catholics do not subscribe to your misconception.

This cracks me up.

You and inocente are constantly attacking Catholics as irrational, until you decide that some of us are and some of us aren’t.

Wouldn’t that apply to atheists as well?

 

[Bradski]

The fall of man is entirely and logically consistent with the moral reality within which human beings find themselves.

Science does not provide the complete accounting for human reality – unless of course one has an epistemic and unverifiable bias towards science to begin with.

In effect, the scientific picture of human existence is not the only one that needs to be satisfied with regard to determining the “historicity” of the fall. The moral landscape also needs to be explained and science does not have much to say on that in terms of causal features – again without presuming a whole lot about the nature of human kind; a presumption which, itself, cannot be properly verified/falsified by the scientific evidence alone.

The story is allegorical, isn’t it?

 

[Cheiron]

The story is allegorical, isn’t it?

It’s all allegorical, except that one event called the Fall of Man, because if that is a metaphor, then there is no Original Sin and without Original Sin, there is no redemption through Jesus Christ. That’s why the Catechism says:

Original sin - an essential truth of the faith

388 With the progress of Revelation, the reality of sin is also illuminated. Although to some extent the People of God in the Old Testament had tried to understand the pathos of the human condition in the light of the history of the fall narrated in Genesis, they could not grasp this story’s ultimate meaning, which is revealed only in the light of the death and Resurrection of Jesus Christ. We must know Christ as the source of grace in order to know Adam as the source of sin. The Spirit-Paraclete, sent by the risen Christ, came to “convict the world concerning sin”, by revealing him who is its Redeemer.

389 The doctrine of original sin is, so to speak, the “reverse side” of the Good News that Jesus is the Savior of all men, that all need salvation and that salvation is offered to all through Christ. The Church, which has the mind of Christ, knows very well that we cannot tamper with the revelation of original sin without undermining the mystery of Christ.

How to read the account of the fall

390 The account of the fall in Genesis 3 uses figurative language, but affirms a primeval event, a deed that took place at the beginning of the history of man. Revelation gives us the certainty of faith that the whole of human history is marked by the original fault freely committed by our first parents.

Without Genesis, no Fall, no sin, no Christianity. It’s that simple.

 

[Abba]

To be more precise: the resurrection contradicts science. Either science is right and Jesus did not rise from the dead, or Christianity is right and Jesus did rise from the dead.

And if you want to say that science is right, but Jesus is an exception, then I need some really, really good evidence for that obvious case of special pleading.

I mean biased in the sense that the Bible is not a neutral account. The Bible is a product of the Christian community and contains stories that put Christ in a good light. This is not neutral and it makes me sceptical.

My opinion of God is now worse than it was before. I’ll explain:

Earlier in this thread I pointed to the example of the eclipse in Luke, which simply can’t have happened. The last supper was a passover seder. Passover always begins on a full moon, while eclipses can only occur during new moons, when the moon is between the earth and the sun.

If scripture is inspired by God, then we are now faced with a dilemma: Either God inspired the author of Luke to write lies, in which case He is not “perfectly just.” Or God doesn’t know how eclipses work, in which case He is not omniscient. In fact, a God who isn’t smarter than humans isn’t much of a God at all.

But, you are the one claiming it was an eclipse. The apostles did not say it was an eclipse - you are. It wasn’t an eclipse it was a darkness on earth and the light of the sun did not penetrate it.

In an eclipse you can see the moon slowly covering the sun, but, what happened at calvary was abrupt - boom - darkness - unexpected.

Matthew, Luke, and Mark say that a darkness fell on the land. The land was covered with darkness and there was an earthquake. It is a supernatural phenomenon. In Exodus 10:21, Moses extended his hand over the land of Egypt and there was darkness over all the land. The sun danced in Fatima. These are supernatural phenomenon where God does something that is not within His design of natural and physical laws.

Now, Tertullian understood that the sun itself did not give light. Whether that was also the case (he said it was archived at the time it happened), it is still a supernatural phenomenon.

God the creator of heaven and earth, can command nature and it’s laws, He created these things. Jesus can walk on water, raised the dead, resurrected and walk thru a door etc… There are a lot of supernatural phenomenon mentioned in scripture. Why would the darkness be different? Why does it have to be an eclipse?

Amos 4:13
For behold, He who forms mountains and creates the wind And declares to man what are His thoughts, He who makes dawn into darkness And treads on the high places of the earth, The LORD God of hosts is His name.

In the book of Amos, God addresses the problem of the Israelis who couldn’t wait until the full-moon/Sabbath were over so they could get back to doing business. I would need to re-read it again afresh but, when He says: “And on that day,” declares the Lord GOD, “I will make the sun go down at noon and darken the earth in broad daylight" this may be foretelling of what was going to happened on the day Our Lord was crucified. So, on a day when there could be no eclipse, on such a day! Unexpected to freak them out. On that day, He would darken the earth.

If the above information is not sufficient food for thought; you need to explain why the darkness that befell the land had to be an eclipse.

 

[Abba]

An act is EITHER good OR evil… never, but never BOTH good AND evil. .

I’m not so sure I agree with this. I think I will go with Aristotle on this and say it depends on the particular situation. That is if you are saying that an act can only be good or evil. So, act x is alway evil and act y is always good.

 

[Vera_Ljuba]

This cracks me up.

You and inocente are constantly attacking Catholics as irrational, until you decide that some of us are and some of us aren’t.

Wouldn’t that apply to atheists as well?

Of course it would. No one has “dibs” on stupidity. All we asked in this thread, which parts of the so-called word of God is factual and which ones are allegorical? And there is no attempt to answer. It was over 2000 years ago that the church compiled the Bible. During these 2000 years there was no attempt to separate the wheat from the chaff?

We do not say that something allegorical is useless, far from it. Fiction has value, sometimes even more value than the actual description of the events. But it is imperative that facts be separated from fiction. Without the ACTUAL “fall” Christianity is irrelevant.

 

[Vera_Ljuba]

I’m not so sure I agree with this. I think I will go with Aristotle on this and say it depends on the particular situation. That is if you are saying that an act can only be good or evil. So, act x is alway evil and act y is always good.

Welcome to the rational world of “relativism”. Park your car, come in, and let’s have a nice fireside chat.

We (relativists) say that a certain act is either good or evil, according to the circumstances. They cannot be BOTH good AND evil at the same time in the same respect.

 

[Cheiron]

But, you are the one claiming it was an eclipse. The apostles did not say it was an eclipse - you are. It wasn’t an eclipse it was a darkness on earth and the light of the sun did not penetrate it.

I use a Roman Catholic translation of the Bible into Dutch vernacular. The Willibrordbijbel, if you wish to look it up. It says:

[44] Al rond het zesde* uur werd het donker in heel het land, tot het negende uur. [45] Er was een zonsverduistering. Het voorhangsel in de tempel scheurde middendoor. [46] Toen riep Jezus luidkeels: ‘Vader, in uw handen beveel Ik mijn geest.’ Na deze woorden stierf Hij. [47] De centurio, die zag wat er gebeurde, verheerlijkte God en zei: ‘Waarachtig, die man was een rechtvaardige.’ [48] Alle mensen die voor dit schouwspel waren samengestroomd, gingen naar huis; ze sloegen zich van rouw op de borst om wat ze hadden gezien. [49] Al zijn vrienden bleven uit de verte staan toekijken, ook de vrouwen* die Hem vanuit Galilea waren gevolgd en dit gadesloegen.

The website is: willibrordbijbel.nl/index.php?p=page&i=66811,66816

The part in bold says: “There was an eclipse.” If this is a wrong translation and a lie, don’t blame me. Blame the Catholic Church for promoting falsehoods and misguiding me.

Matthew, Luke, and Mark say that a darkness fell on the land. The land was covered with darkness and there was an earthquake. It is a supernatural phenomenon. In Exodus 10:21, Moses extended his hand over the land of Egypt and there was darkness over all the land. The sun danced in Fatima. These are supernatural phenomenon where God does something that is not within His design of natural and physical laws.

Now, Tertullian understood that the sun itself did not give light. Whether that was also the case (he said it was archived at the time it happened), it is still a supernatural phenomenon.

God the creator of heaven and earth, can command nature and it’s laws, He created these things. Jesus can walk on water, raised the dead, resurrected and walk thru a door etc… There are a lot of supernatural phenomenon mentioned in scripture. Why would the darkness be different? Why does it have to be an eclipse?

Amos 4:13
For behold, He who forms mountains and creates the wind And declares to man what are His thoughts, He who makes dawn into darkness And treads on the high places of the earth, The LORD God of hosts is His name.

In the book of Amos, God addresses the problem of the Israelis who couldn’t wait until the full-moon/Sabbath were over so they could get back to doing business. I would need to re-read it again afresh but, when He says: “And on that day,” declares the Lord GOD, “I will make the sun go down at noon and darken the earth in broad daylight" this may be foretelling of what was going to happened on the day Our Lord was crucified. So, on a day when there could be no eclipse, on such a day! Unexpected to freak them out. On that day, He would darken the earth.

If the above information is not sufficient food for thought; you need to explain why the darkness that befell the land had to be an eclipse.

With all due respect, you’re missing the point. I criticize the credibility of the gospel of Luke because it is not consistent with what we know about astronomy. Saying that the darkness was the result of a miracle does not solve the problem. I’m still left with a phenomenon that contradicts science.

 

[PRmerger]

The Catholic position, as I understand it, is that the Fall of Man really did happen,

Yes.

while disregarding the details about who, where and when. It seems to me that the Catholic Church wants to maintain it’s consistent with science

Well, yeah. The Catholic Church is one of Science’s greatest patrons.

We just don’t take the fundamentalist (and rather irrational) Science Alone approach.

• which rejects Genesis

Science no more “rejects Genesis” than Ophthalmology rejects Shakespeare’s "Their savage eyes turned to a modest gaze by the sweet power of music."

In short: I think the Catholic position is logically inconsistent and that’s why I’m not able to make a prediction for the Catholic understanding of Genesis that can be tested and verified/falsified.

Egg-zactly.

“I’ll believe if there’s fossil evidence, but I don’t think there can be fossil evidence for the Catholic understanding of Genesis”.

Don’t make a demand that you know can’t be fulfilled.

 

[PRmerger]

I criticize the credibility of the gospel of Luke because it is not consistent with what we know about astronomy. Saying that the darkness was the result of a miracle does not solve the problem. I’m still left with a phenomenon that contradicts science.

I hope you see how circular this is, Cheiron.

“I don’t believe in the Bible because it contains myths.”

AND

“The resurrection is a myth. It’s in the Bible, therefore the Bible is a book full of myths”.

 

[PRmerger]

If human fossils appeared suddenly - that is, with no “missing links” like homo erectus - in earthlayers in the area where the Garden of Eden supposedly was, then that would give credibility to the Genesis story, whatever the age.

You do understand that “missing links” like Homo Erectus are entirely compatible with Catholicism, yeah?

Again, it certainly sounds like you’ve forgotten you’re on a Catholic forum and think, instead, that you’re on a Bible Alone forum?

I feel as if you might as well come here and say, “I’ll believe when I find the artifacts of Joseph Smith’s golden plates!”

Em…ok. But that’s Mormonism, not Catholicism you’re arguing against.

 

[Cheiron]

Yes.
Egg-zactly.

“I’ll believe if there’s fossil evidence, but I don’t think there can be fossil evidence for the Catholic understanding of Genesis”.

Don’t make a demand that you know can’t be fulfilled.

I did not say that there is fossil evidence for Genesis, I indicated what would constitute evidence for me.

I did not say there can be no fossil evidence for the Catholic understanding of Genesis, I said it’s so muddy that I don’t know what would constitute evidence.

I hope you see how circular this is, Cheiron.

“I don’t believe in the Bible because it contains myths.”

AND

“The resurrection is a myth. It’s in the Bible, therefore the Bible is a book full of myths”.

Why are you asking me? Who said those things? And why is it important?

 

[PRmerger]

1. Because the resurrection of the dead contradicts science.

Here’s that circular reasoning again rearing its ugly head.

“I’ll believe when there’s evidence that something miraculous (inexplicable to science) has occurred!”

AND

“The resurrection is contrary to science, therefore I won’t believe”.

Why not simply evaluate the “clues” and see where they lead, rather than starting from the position, “I’m not going to believe” and ending with the position “I’m not going to believe”?

1. The source is biased.

How so?

Why would the authors lie about such a thing? What did they gain from lying?

1. Eyewitness testimony is unreliable, even if it comes from an unbiased source. If the story is written down by someone who was not an eyewitness, it becomes even more unreliable.

So you don’t believe in anything that occurred in history recorded by eyewitnesses? Really?

 

[Cheiron]

You do understand that “missing links” like Homo Erectus are entirely compatible with Catholicism, yeah?

Again, it certainly sounds like you’ve forgotten you’re on a Catholic forum and think, instead, that you’re on a Bible Alone forum?

I feel as if you might as well come here and say, “I’ll believe when I find the artifacts of Joseph Smith’s golden plates!”

Em…ok. But that’s Mormonism, not Catholicism you’re arguing against.

I give up.

 

[Peter_Plato]

An act is EITHER good OR evil… never, but never BOTH good AND evil. Actually, it would be to your benefit to study elementary logic… you know, the three axioms of logic. With special emphasis on the law of contradiction.

Except PR wasn’t speaking of evil, remember?

She was pointing out that writings need not be either ALWAYS historical or ALWAYS allegorical. Where does EVIL get introduced into what she wrote?

Well, yeah.

We don’t take a fundamentalist approach to the Bible.

Imagine if your child came home sneering about how valueless education is because “Some of the things they make me read are allegorical, but some of the things are 'historical when they want them to be’’. Sheesh! I demand that things either be ALWAYS allegorical or ALWAYS historical!”

You’d need to sit down and have a talk with your child and say, “Dearest, you are making an either/or demand where none needs to be. Atheists do this a lot. And so do fundamentalists. But the judicious approach is to accept allegory when it’s, em, allegory, and history when it’s…history. There isn’t always a need to make this weird demand. It’s ridiculous.”

Besides that, the law of non-contradiction implies that it is “impossible to predicate of the same thing, at the same time, and in the same sense, the absence and the presence of the same fixed quality.”

It could be true for example, that although A and B may sound mutually exclusive, it is entirely possible that given a particular linguistic structure and the ambiguity – imprecision – of some words that A may be partly B and partly not B at the same time. Ergo, some thing A may be both good and ~good (evil is the privation of good) at the same time in the same respect.