The Leprechaun Fallacy and 50% Fallacy

[Touchstone]

I personally do not believe that possibility is on rival grounds with Christianity’s historical support at all for reasons given in the previous paragraph but if you do somehow believe this, you only add one more possibility to the “1 in 51” rather than particularly strengthen non-Theism. To believe it dilutes Christianity’s claims without diluting Atheism’s is something of a false dilemma.

I think that is precisely the case – leprechaunism weakens the claims of Christianity in some dilutive sense, and simultaneously strengthens the basis for concluding there is no God or gods, that all of that is so much fanciful thinking, borne of psychological inclinations and emotional desires (and cultural inertia!).

If person A makes a set of supernatural claims, and so do person B and C, and each of those claim sets are contradictory with respect to each other (A cannot be true if B is true, and vice versa, etc.), the contradiction itself weakens the case for all of them. A’s claims may still be true, but now must contend with the fact that B and C are thus necessarily false, yet earnest claims, if so. If B and C’s claims can be false, why not A?

Person D enters and says all of those supernatural claims are bogus. He begins with two of the three being correct on his part; if A is true, B and C are necessarily false, since they contradict A. D has a mathematical correctness across two thirds of the pool, to begin with. And the falsehood of any two of the three demonstrate just how plausible it is that the third is wrong, as well, that all of the supernatural claims are bogus.

If it dilutes the likelihood of the former, it dilutes the likelihood of the latter, as the former is of no less standing in logical likelihood than the latter.

No, as above. Atheism is the denial of supernatural claims, not a competing set of supernatural claims. It’s “anti-miracle” as opposed to “competing miracle”. More, competing and contradictory claims of miracles just dilute the credibility of all supernatural claims, in the way a lot of dishonest car salesman casts doubt on the integrity of the honest car salesman. If we know so many car salesman are con men, why do we trust this new guy coming up to shake our hand. It’s obviously not remarkable or extraordinary to meet a dishonest car salesman, so beware.

It’s not remarkable to extraordinary to encounter bogus supernatural claims (demonstrably), so why should Christianity not be similarly suspect?

After reviewing them, I conclude, with honesty and all humble respect due, that the criteria you have stated here are biased against believing in the supernatural, especially as concerns your apparent definition of what does and doesn’t constitute “Extraordinary.”

That’s absolutely correct. I’m biased against “miracle conclusions” in the way a gambler is biased against losing his stack of chips.

Consider:

You are sitting at a Blackjack table at a casino, you were just dealt 17, and the dealer has a 6 showing. What do you do? Do you hit or stand?

Both are actual options. There are ways to win and to lose with either choice. But if you want to win, and you apply reason, you understand that probabilistically, your chances are much better if you choose “Stand”. You can still lose with your 17 against the dealer’s 6 up, but your odds are much worse if you hit; you are likely to bust on the next card given to you.

So, “hit” is a real choice, and IT MAY BE THE RIGHT CHOICE. If you hit, you could get a 4, giving you a 21, and that 4 would have made 10 for the dealer with his 6 up card, making his down card likely to tie or beat you.

But so long as YOU DO NOT KNOW, “stand” is reasoned choice.It may be ultimately the wrong choice when the hand plays out, but no matter, it was still the reasoned choice at the time you made it.

Understanding that, we would say that the gambler is quite biased against the long shot, against the improbable choice. In the same way, the rationalist is quite averse the claim of miracles; they fly in the face of all the probabilities, statistics and observations we have. That’s why we call them miracles.

-TS

 

[Touchstone]

Extraordinary simply means “beyond what is usual, ordinary, regular, or established”, and this implies nothing of being limited to, or even specially applicable to, the supernatural. Although the supernatural certainly is extraordinary, there is no reason to believe that it is not possible for a natural, but highly unusual turn of events, to be equally or more extraordinary in terms of sheer believability.

That’s precisely what it means. Anything is possible, but it is BY DEFINITION less believable. If you have 20 in your hand at BlackJack, it is MORE BELIEVABLE that the next card from the dealer is a “non-ace”, than an “ace”. It could be an ace, but that would be statistically much more unlikely than some non-ace card.

You see, I assert and truly believe that the claim that all of Jesus’s followers happened to be clinically insane (enough to all imagine that they had seen Him in Resurrected form with their eyes), or that they were all, to the last of them, willing to die for a lie, or that He was somehow perfectly healed by natural means so soon after His resurrection so as to seem good as new (and somehow seem to rise to the Heavens before their very eyes)–well, all those “natural” explanations seem no less extraordinary to me.

That does sound extraordinary – everyone is insane in the story. Fortunately that’s not a required interpretation of what went down. All that’s needed are some very natural human emotions and priorities working in a high-stress crisis environment. No insanity needed, just humans being human.

It stands to reason that “extraordinary” is only limited to supernatural, or more applicable to it, in the mind of one biased to not believe in the supernatural nor in a God Who can enact the supernatural at will.

Again, I’m biased against hitting on 17 with a 6 showing up for the dealer. Same principle.

In the mind of one with no bias either way, I honestly believe that the convoluted nature of the “natural” explanations for the events surrounding claims of Jesus’ resurrection prove even more extraordinary than the possibility that there is a God and that by this means Jesus really was Resurrected from the dead.

If you’re not biased either way, for the probable, or against it, I think we have the explanation. That’s not a reasoned approach to the evidence and observations around you. You’d get cleaned out quick at a BlackJack table (I’d likely lose ultimately, too, but I tand a very good chance of lasting much longer than someone who isn’t biased toward better probabilities).

Ergo, the Atheist explanation would demand no less extraordinary evidence than the Christian one, and we are again left with the fact that there is no more logical reason to come to the conclusion of Atheism than to the conclusion of Christianity.

I have no idea how that would even occur to you, let alone get supported. Atheism is what happens if you demand extraordinary evidence for extraordinary claims. If you view experience and evidence as a witness, as a statistical indicator of reality, and how it works, the claims of miracles and magic do not hold up. They may be right claims, but they aren’t reasonably supported, any more than hitting on 20 with a dealer 6 up would be. You can win that way, it just flies in the face of reason at the point where the rest of the card aren’t known, and you have to decide. Atheism is just a boring deference to the statistics, the weight of the evidence, the analysis of how many cards of what type are in the deck, etc.

-TS

 

[Spock]

Spock, I believe that, as you noted, much of your argument and TouchStone’s are the same, so much of it is already addressed insofar as his points are addressed. Even so, unique to your post is discussion of the nature of some biblical claims; insofar as that topic is relevant to this particular subject, Christianity’s validity thrives or dies only with the reality or falsehood of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ, and all that we believe about Old Testament [and certain New Testament] events and claims, aside from the more self-evident “This is what these people believed” parts, is arguably seen in light of what we conclude about His Resurrection based upon our review of the historical events surrounding the resurrection claim (which is not limited only to the Bible, but to historians’ [some of them anti-Christian] reactions and lack of conclusively refuting those very prominent claims that real historical people really made, the debunking of which would have been easy in that vital stage if they were “pulled out of thin air” without any arguable basis in reality), and discerning what our conclusion based on that must mean about those scriptural questions, rather than the other way around. Since the Resurrection, as the origin of Christianity as a distinct belief system, is the central and defining factor from which one would venture to demonstrate whether Christianity is [at least] as sound and logically believable/likely as Atheism, that is what I have focused on for these purposes. Even so, I had completed a response to your claims about the Bible and the question as to what effect it has on the validity of Sacred Tradition, but I realized that would take us into an entirely different realm of discussion that would begin to take us severely off topic. For the moment, we must simply consider that if one can make a reasonable case that Jesus rose from the dead and that natural explanations for those events are only equal or inferior, as I have pointed to as something that can be argued soundly, then belief in Christianity is at least as justified as belief in Atheism, regardless of how we work out the specific issues raised by your question. This means that the reason-ability of belief in the Resurrection is all that needs to be considered in evaluating Christianity as being of at least equal likelihood to Atheism, which in this particular discussion is the important matter. Of course, there are answers to your questions, and I believe you will probably be able to find those questions discussed elsewhere on the forum, where they can be addressed freely and deeply without their respective threads being lost to their initial purposes as this one would be.

I am certainly unaware of any credible source for the life or death of Jesus (which was a very common name at that time) or resurrection, outside the Bible. The alleged resurrection is just the last one of the other incredible events and actions attributed to him. The Romans were notoriously good at keeping historical records, and such events could not have escaped their attention. (Mass miracles, etc.)

I understand that a thorough discussion of the Bible is outside the scope of this thread. I did not want to go there, anyhow. What I wrote up, was just a very brief summary, why non-believers (or non Christians) would dismiss the Bible as an ancient legend - without accusing the authors to be either liars or lunatics.

 

[Eucharisted]

How kind to use such a gentle warning. But you sould not have minced the words. The usual phrase is a bit different: “It is better to be thought to be an idiot, than to open your mouth and confirm it”. Wasn’t that what you wanted to say? However, you could have addressed the points you find erroneous, rather than giving a blank dismissal.

Yes, that was the inspiration, though Billy Madison is also

I didn’t feel like giving specific corrections, because you have been corrected numerous times on this forum already. I really couldn’t tell you anything that you have not heard before. But I will say this: Catholic.com is a great resource on Catholicism - use it!

 

[James_S_Saint]

You are sitting at a Blackjack table at a casino, you were just dealt 17, and the dealer has a 6 showing. What do you do? Do you hit or stand?

Both are actual options. There are ways to win and to lose with either choice. But if you want to win, and you apply reason, you understand that probabilistically, your chances are much better if you choose “Stand”.

A man of reason would getup and leave.

It is interesting how often a man claims “reason” when at a table designed to ensure his loss. Equally when in contest with religion, there is no actual winning, you are merely playing a game where you gain the temporary catharsis of a “win” in battle while all the while only being hooked into a guaranteed loss of the war.

Reasoning people, don’t gamble until they really have to.

 

[Touchstone]

A man of reason would getup and leave.

It is interesting how often a man claims “reason” when at a table designed to ensure his loss. Equally when in contest with religion, there is no actual winning, you are merely playing a game where you gain the temporary catharsis of a “win” in battle while all the while only being hooked into a guaranteed loss of the war.

Reasoning people, don’t gamble until they really have to.

Well, you’ve missed the force of that vignette, then. It matters not why you are there. For the purposes of my point, if you are there, intent to win rather than lose, then your reasoning will produce a strong bias against “long shot” decisions when the dealer asks you what you want to do. There’s no point in saying “you must play, it’s a metaphor for life”, even if that has some force in response, because it’s irrelevant. The idea here that I’m conveying is that given an objective (winning, making good assessments about the truth of a proposition, etc.) and some background information (statistics, historial evidence), reason suggests one path over another, predictably and by principle. Atheism hews to that same resolution, favoring a principled assessment of historical evidence, statistical patterns and observations and local states as the indicator for “best bet” conclusions. Dead people are vastly more likely to stay dead after three days in the grave than they are to be revived. Anything is possible in principle, but all the evidence we have in view says that is NOT how the real world works, and accepting a claim like that would only be warranted in view of some overwhelming evidence and objective support for such a claim.

-TS

 

[James_S_Saint]

And you missed the whole “vignette” of trying to win a battle when you already lost the war.

What you don’t see is that while you are so very busy calculating the odds and strategizing to perfection in every way you can conceive, your opponent in this game is calmly trying to tell you that all of your thinking is a waist of time because it has already been thought out. You see him thinking things that you are beyond certain can’t be right, yet interestingly he stays in the game (lives) as long or longer than you and he seems to have to strain his brain so much less than you and actually builds a bank larger than yours.

You are missing the entire point to the virtue of taking advice (faith) because you are lured into thinking that you have to understand the whole game of life yourself and further entrapped into such a lust by the certainty that your opponent’s thinking could not possibly be right. He most certainly must be wrong, you think. He is so obviously foolish. Yet he wins more than you. Maybe it is because what he thinks is not as relevant as what he does because of what he thinks. — Maybe.??

Sometimes you can think something right and do a wise thing and sometimes you can think something wrong and do an even wiser thing.

Clean off your mirror and look more closely at who is really being fooled.

 

[Spock]

What you don’t see is that while you are so very busy calculating the odds and strategizing to perfection in every way you can conceive, your opponent in this game is calmly trying to tell you that all of your thinking is a waist of time because it has already been thought out.

A waist is a terrible thing to mind… A mind is a terrible thing to waste… just for your edification. Touchstone has explained very clearly the reasoning process. We are “obliged” to choose something which is very likely over something that is terribly unlikely - at least when it comes to rational decisions.

 

[James_S_Saint]

A waist is a terrible thing to mind… A mind is a terrible thing to waste… just for your edification. Touchstone has explained very clearly the reasoning process. We are “obliged” to choose something which is very likely over something that is terribly unlikely - at least when it comes to rational decisions.

And for your edification so as to not further waist your mind;

The something that is more likely is that for thousands of years of people thinking about this issue including the most revered Greeks and Romans, when they finally chose Christianity, it is far more likely that they knew far more of what they were doing than you ever will.

It’s just a probability game.

Do you also tell your doctor how to operate?

The Leprechaun didn’t get their attention at all. Jesus did.

 

[Spock]

And for your edification so as to not further waist your mind;

The something that is more likely is that for thousands of years of people thinking about this issue including the most revered Greeks and Romans, when they finally chose Christianity, it is far more likely that they knew far more of what they were doing than you ever will.

It’s just a probability game.

Do you also tell your doctor how to operate?

The Leprechaun didn’t get their attention at all. Jesus did.

Haha! Is that an argument??? That some highly superstitious people “chose” another superstition?

 

[James_S_Saint]

Haha! Is that an argument??? That some highly superstitious people “chose” another superstition?

So you are so impressed with yourself that you think all of the best minds in Greece and Roman were merely superstitious primates even though 100’s of years before Jesus came along, they had produced such people as Aristotle, Archimedes, Plato, Socrates, and such. If those people, who were not superstitious at all left a legacy that could not stand up to new thoughts, perhaps they were missing something. But the truth is, their legacy saw what you do not see in the logic of Jesus as they proclaimed him as the “Logos”.

Now you come along and propose that in your conspicuous naivety, you are wiser then all of them and especially those who came after those most elite names. Why? Because you are more evolved? Because you think that all you believe is from the great and holy consortium of Science? You wish. But Science has never disagreed with Jesus in any way to this day. And you are anything but more evolved, most probably less. You simply have no real idea of either side of the proposed arguments because you presume fault without proper study.

I would wager that it is not you who are so much more greatly wise than those over the past 2000 years, but rather that you are so unwise as to think that you know more than all of those who came before you.

The much more likely proposition is that you are merely and typically presumptuous and egocentrically insecure, so desperate in wanting to be recognized as wise and logical, that you desperately seek to announce fault in anyone but yourself.

But as I said, it is merely a game of probability.

 

[liquidpele]

A man of reason would getup and leave.

It is interesting how often a man claims “reason” when at a table designed to ensure his loss. Equally when in contest with religion, there is no actual winning, you are merely playing a game where you gain the temporary catharsis of a “win” in battle while all the while only being hooked into a guaranteed loss of the war.

Reasoning people, don’t gamble until they really have to.

The poker game is a metaphor for choices in life.
Unless you make no choices at all in life, you’re constantly doing what was described. Stop trying to be difficult.

 

[James_S_Saint]

The poker game is a metaphor for choices in life.
Unless you make no choices at all in life, you’re constantly doing what was described. Stop trying to be difficult.

The excuse in the “vignette” was a proposal to use reason. But reason dictates that you not try to outwit the experience of all of those before you who have already challenged that game and proposed to leave it.

Reasoning dictates that you take advice and have faith in those older and wiser than yourself.

 

[liquidpele]

The Leprechaun didn’t get their attention at all. Jesus did.

A good point to bring up, but one Touchstone briefly touched on already. Essentially, you have 2 choices about why this is.

1. Jesus really was God
2. History is pop culture

You’ll enjoy that video, it’s not about religion or atheism. Anyway, what you choose as your answer doesn’t matter, but you should at least understand that both options exist.

 

[liquidpele]

The excuse in the “vignette” was a proposal to use reason. But reason dictates that you not try to outwit the experience of all of those before you who have already challenged that game and proposed to leave it.

Reasoning dictates that you take advice and have faith in those older and wiser than yourself.

You’re attacking the metaphor and not the real life scenarios that it represents. Anyone can attack a metaphor… it’s by definition not the real situation.

Even simple choices about what to have for dinner typically take some reasoning. How far of a drive is it, how much do I want to pay, etc. If someone came up to you on the street and said they were Jesus and could you give them $100, would you do it or would you apply your reasoning skills? You said that reasoning dictates you take advice and faith at times, and that’s true, but I’m not sure why you think that refutes his example. He wasn’t saying everything was a 100% logical choice, he was saying that choosing “faith” as the reason is akin to taking a gamble against logic.

 

[James_S_Saint]

A good point to bring up, but one Touchstone briefly touched on already. Essentially, you have 2 choices about why this is.

1. Jesus really was God
2. History is pop culture

You’ll enjoy that video, it’s not about religion or atheism. Anyway, what you choose as your answer doesn’t matter, but you should at least understand that both options exist.

There are far more options than those 2. Those are designed to force a conclusion.

I would propose that Jesus proposed something that made sense to kings who were hardly mere superstitious fools. You make the assumption that anyone in those days was as ignorant as the common masses.

 

[James_S_Saint]

You’re attacking the metaphor and not the real life scenarios that it represents. Anyone can attack a metaphor… it’s by definition not the real situation.

No. You are presuming the first fault that comes to mind and not reading what I am saying.

 

[liquidpele]

There are far more options than those 2. Those are designed to force a conclusion.

I would propose that Jesus proposed something that made sense to kings who were hardly mere superstitious fools. You make the assumption that anyone in those days was as ignorant as the common masses.

Of course, I was summarizing all of “Jesus was NOT God” in the one reason as it’s the most probable for that genre.

Don’t overuse the word “ignorant”… it just means without knowledge. Everyone in 100 AD thought the sun revolved around the earth, that was ignorant, but that’s okay, we just hadn’t progressed far enough. At any rate, I didn’t imply that so I’m not sure why you brought it up.

 

[liquidpele]

No. You are presuming the first fault that comes to mind and not reading what I am saying.

You were saying that one should take into account the choices and history of those before you, I got that. My point was that while that is sometimes valid, if everyone does that and the first person at the table was an idiot, none of you are going to do well. It’s better to look at how well a previous person did, and in life it’s usually not possible to leave the table - choices have to be made.

 

[Spock]

So you are so impressed with yourself that you think all of the best minds in Greece and Roman were merely superstitious primates even though 100’s of years before Jesus came along, they had produced such people as Aristotle, Archimedes, Plato, Socrates, and such. If those people, who were not superstitious at all left a legacy that could not stand up to new thoughts, perhaps they were missing something. But the truth is, their legacy saw what you do not see in the logic of Jesus as they proclaimed him as the “Logos”.

Now you come along and propose that in your conspicuous naivety, you are wiser then all of them and especially those who came after those most elite names. Why? Because you are more evolved? Because you think that all you believe is from the great and holy consortium of Science? You wish. But Science has never disagreed with Jesus in any way to this day. And you are anything but more evolved, most probably less. You simply have no real idea of either side of the proposed arguments because you presume fault without proper study.

I would wager that it is not you who are so much more greatly wise than those over the past 2000 years, but rather that you are so unwise as to think that you know more than all of those who came before you.

The much more likely proposition is that you are merely and typically presumptuous and egocentrically insecure, so desperate in wanting to be recognized as wise and logical, that you desperately seek to announce fault in anyone but yourself.

But as I said, it is merely a game of probability.

It is not about “me” - no matter hard you try. Trying to convert the lack of substance into an ad-hominem is an old and despicable tactics - frequntly employed by you - personally. It is about those people, who were the children of their time, with all the rampant superstitions around them. They made wonderful advances in mathematics, but when it came to natural sciences, they were ignorant. That is not a put-down, just a statement of the fact.