J
James_S_Saint
Guest
Then why do you do it so often yourself and call it back onto yourself?
You stick to the actual argument itself and I will also, just as I always do, but attack the person, and guess what.
- Status
You stick to the actual argument itself and I will also, just as I always do, but attack the person, and guess what.
S
Spock
Guest
Hogwash. It certainly does not belong to this thread, but I challenge you to browse through the threads, and find an example where I attacked the poster and not what the poster said. Just collect them and start a new thread with some title like: “Spock’s unprovoked ad-hominem attacks”. This should keep you occupied for a long time.
K
KindredSoul
Guest
I still believe that the above premise is one that has not been vindicated, without the creation of an unwarranted “either/or” dilemma. Instead, Atheism is one arguable claim among many about the world. One arguable claim says “A Triune God who was incarnate in Jesus exists and can work miracles.” One [possibly arguable] claim may say “Allah exists.” One arguable claim says “Nothing supernatural exists, and there is only that which can be naturally explained.” And add as many claims as belong and are appropriately arguable. The words in blue make Atheism a claim that also goes beyond the evidence just as much as other [arguable] claims have been said to, making it no less an “argument from ignorance” than I have seen atheists argue against the other claims, and so Atheism is likewise only one more arguable claim about the world among many, simply a claim that just so happens to be non-supernatural. Again, I see no reason to boost it upon to a special pedestal when it seems wholly unwarranted. And since it is one arguable truth claim among many, the introduction of another arguable claim dilutes it just as well as the other claims.
I do not see any vindicated reason to slice up the probability pie into Supernatural vs. Non-Supernatural, Miracle vs. Anti-Miracle, but rather it seems it should be sliced into Arguable Truth Claim vs. Arguable Truth Claim vs. Arguable Truth Claim [whereas Arguable means not only possible but something a modern person has real grounds to argue from known history and events], and so on, and Atheism only gets one slice, not half of that pie. I still do not see why I should accord it any more. The thought that truth claims should be split into Miracle vs. Anti-Miracle just because miracles are miraculous (supposed to be rare and out of the ordinary) is one that claims to be self supporting, as seems to be the case here, and I do not find this to be true; that is, it seems to beg the question a bit in the form of “We must be especially skeptical of world views with miracles because those miracles are rare things that don’t happen naturally like all of the things we see everyday,” which, boiled down to its essential claim, is a form of saying (while camouflaging the question begging) “We cannot trust truth claims which include miracles, because miracles would be miraculous.”
To address your car salesman analogy, by the way, I find that Atheism is just one more car salesmen among many, claiming “No I’m obviously the honest one, as any deeply thinking person will see,” but without actually proving that to be the case, even as he claims the others are less trustworthy because of their own lack of absolute proof in their trustworthiness.
It is remarkable to extraordinary, however, to encounter extravagantly convoluted circumstances behind supernatural claims on par with those that would have to explain the Resurrection claims in lieu of God, and although you believe such convoluted explanations are not necessary, I see no explanation that falls in line with the history surrounding the resurrection without being either supernatural or so convoluted as for it to be at least equally extraordinary that all the proper factors came into place. To say “These were just emotional people who made a mistake” doesn’t seem to fall in line with the history surrounding the events at all, and seems to ignore it altogether for the sake of maintaining skepticism without having to make the necessary convoluted claims to arrive at that stance. Also, the above comment, put into full and balanced context, would be like saying “It is not remarkable to extraordinary to encounter things we totally did not know about before, that previous means of gathering knowledge never detected, so why should the claim that there certainly/probably is no God not be entirely suspect as just one more example of that?” There is definitely a parallel, so far as I see.
CONTINUED…
K
KindredSoul
Guest
…CONTINUED (From Above)
Why deal with the Resurrection at all? The Resurrection claims were made in recorded history and thus are researchable, and these claims are logically arguable and historically supplemented (even if not necessarily true), so the proper explanation for those claims, whatever it is, has a real bearing on what I should believe about the world today, whether Theist or otherwise. Basically, we have the ability to deal with it and [attempt] to explain it (whatever different explanations may be reached), and therefore it ought not to be ignored in deciding what is and isn’t more likely. As argued before, the Christian explanation is no more extraordinary or unbelievable than the Atheist claim, and in fact in context of each explanation’s entire proposal, the Christian claim in its own context (world with an all-powerful God, for whom a Resurrection would not be difficult, even if exceedingly rare) is arguably less extraordinary than the Atheist claim in its own context (world without a God, in which such precisely contrived circumstances are still quite in need of convenient convolution, greatly defying probability, in order to occur). The Atheist explanation would only be the default “safer” one [as opposed to arguably roughly equal] in a world where one has already biased himself to believe there certainly is no God of any kind, and that bias must be so big that he is willing to make convoluted and extraordinary claims just to maintain it rather than consider the less convoluted but supernatural claim, which brings us back to begging the question. The question is only not being begged if the claim that there is no God has been proven, and this is not so. Otherwise, one is saying “We can be confident that there is no God because nothing miraculous has ever happened. If something miraculous seems to have happened, a non-miraculous explanation, no matter how convoluted or contrived, must be given priority because there is no God.”
I say all this simply because it is where reason leads me, and it is intended in a completely level-headed, non-confrontational tone.
Blessings in Christ,
KindredSoul
You analogy, at length, depended on an already present assumption that “miracle conclusions” are the “losing” option, or more likely to be “losing”; so far the arguments for why that is have seemed me like complex forms of begging the question, as noted in my first paragraph of the first section of this post, and such question begging lies at the very heart of the 50% Fallacy. So far, your arguments that Atheism demonstrably deserves such an extreme privilege have not seemed, to me personally, to be supported nor to follow so necessarily from the evidence as has been suggested.
I do not believe that any ordinary level of “just humans being human,” short of the extraordinary insanity extraordinarily afflicting them all in the exact same way, fits with the history surrounding the events. These were real people, by all reason, who really claimed to have seen a man risen from the dead and really claimed to have seen Him ascend into Heaven, and who were really willing to die for those claims when they really could have retracted them and lived. Most of them died years later, when they would have had plenty of time to realize a lie, which they would have known for a fact to be a lie, was not worth dying for. Simple human behavior, short of an extraordinarily contrived case of it as I have argued, doesn’t seem to fall in line with the facts.
But you see, regarding the Resurrection claims, for example, if I demand extraordinary evidence for the extraordinary claims needed to explain the claims in a “natural” way (without ignoring the history), I am in the same boat regarding Atheism. And the Resurrection claims are real arguable claims researchable in recorded history that, if we go by the non-Theist principle of skepticism (in which faith is not so extolled as in Theism), must be considered and sufficiently dealt with before we can conclude that non-Theism is true, especially since the non-Theist explanations are even more extraordinary, given the non-Theist assumption of reality, than the Theist explanation, given the Theist assumption of reality. In other words, in a world with God the Resurrection is less extraordinary than, in a world without God, the non-Theist explanations [that take all of the historical implications into account] are. Thus I have every right to require extraordinary evidence of the non-Theist explanations just as much as the non-Theist might demand of the Christian explanation, if not more.
Why deal with the Resurrection at all? The Resurrection claims were made in recorded history and thus are researchable, and these claims are logically arguable and historically supplemented (even if not necessarily true), so the proper explanation for those claims, whatever it is, has a real bearing on what I should believe about the world today, whether Theist or otherwise. Basically, we have the ability to deal with it and [attempt] to explain it (whatever different explanations may be reached), and therefore it ought not to be ignored in deciding what is and isn’t more likely. As argued before, the Christian explanation is no more extraordinary or unbelievable than the Atheist claim, and in fact in context of each explanation’s entire proposal, the Christian claim in its own context (world with an all-powerful God, for whom a Resurrection would not be difficult, even if exceedingly rare) is arguably less extraordinary than the Atheist claim in its own context (world without a God, in which such precisely contrived circumstances are still quite in need of convenient convolution, greatly defying probability, in order to occur). The Atheist explanation would only be the default “safer” one [as opposed to arguably roughly equal] in a world where one has already biased himself to believe there certainly is no God of any kind, and that bias must be so big that he is willing to make convoluted and extraordinary claims just to maintain it rather than consider the less convoluted but supernatural claim, which brings us back to begging the question. The question is only not being begged if the claim that there is no God has been proven, and this is not so. Otherwise, one is saying “We can be confident that there is no God because nothing miraculous has ever happened. If something miraculous seems to have happened, a non-miraculous explanation, no matter how convoluted or contrived, must be given priority because there is no God.”
I say all this simply because it is where reason leads me, and it is intended in a completely level-headed, non-confrontational tone.
Blessings in Christ,
KindredSoul
T
Touchstone
Guest
An important reason to hang out on forums like this for me is to find opportunities to make a subtle, but profound point on this issue: Atheism, as I understand it as I embrace it, doe NOT say “Nothing supernatural exists”, but rather, “We have no rational basis to validate any claims of supernatural existence”.
These may seem interchangeable, but they are not, and your formulation is quite popular as an assessment of rational thinking, which I think is not reflective of rational thinkers. If I say:
(A) “We cannot identify any rational basis for concluding supernatural beings exist”.
I am open to the condition where a rational assesment discounts supernatural claims based on the evidence available, and YET supernatural beings DO exist, but are just beyond rational discovery or detection (currently).
That is quite a different proposition, openness to that possibility, as opposed to
(B) “Nothing supernatural exists.” That’s a much stronger claim, epistemically speaking.
I will grant that “Nothing supernatural exists” is a very handy, short phrase to throw out there, and atheists (myself included, I’m sure) take this shortcut, making this distinction a problem. But form a forward reasoning perspective, I don’t “outlaw” supernatural claims, but rather find that all of them, every single one, so far as I’m aware, fail to basic basic plausibility tests as evinced by comparing the evidence of those claims to all the other evidence we have to compare it to. Supernatural existence isn’t dismissed a priori, it’s just that those claims consistentl fail in trying to acquit themselves against the evidence.
This paragraph is why it’s important for people like me to make the point regarding (A) and (B) above. (A) doesn’t go beyond the evidence, and is just the matching up of claims against that evidence. Supernatural beings may conceivably exist, but as a matter of evidential review, they fail. Over and over. And over again.
I don’t find the “pie metaphor” an apt one. I don’t know what “50%” even means in that case – it’s not a probability statement, as the numerators and denominators for that are inscrutable. What I think we can say is that objective knowledge and applied reasoning do perform in a verifiable way in many areas of life. They perform by making strong, precise predictions, and enabling applications and other knowledge to be built on top of them based on their demonstrable reliability. If that’s not “vindicated”, I don’t know what would be. We apply sceince to aerodynamics, and come up with ever-more-accurate models that allow us to design a plane in a computer simulator, which will fly the first time, from the first prototype. That’s vindication of the reasoning model, isn’t it? Evidence and reasoning from it are vindicated by the results of the airplane’s flight trials.
-TS
T
Touchstone
Guest
Yes, I think that’s the case, and no camouflaging needed. Dependence on miracles are ipso facto problems for any belief system, if we are judging these claims on evidence, and logical reasoning from that evidence. You’re right to see this as a problem – you’re playing on the atheist’s playing field so long as you grant the primacy of evidence and logical reasoning from it as the arbiter of “true”.
You may not agree that evidence and objective analysis are the best indicator for reality, and that’s fine. You are free to promote your own heuristic. But as a matter of evidence and reasoning from it, miraculous claims are inherent difficulties. I don’t hold them to be insurmountable, which is why I say that extraordinary claims demand extraordinary evidence; if we can establish via interlocking lines of astronomical, physics, geological and archaeological inquiry that the planet behaved in some very unusual ways about 3000 years ago (or whenever we suppose Joshua asked for the sun to be stopped in the sky), we’d give Joshua’s claims, fantastic as they are, a lot more credence than we do now, which is basically none. If we were to find the “astonomical smoking gun” that attested to that, that would be extraordinarily strong evidence supporting an extraordinary claim.
But as things are, it’s just talk. And talk is cheap. Real evidence isn’t.
I think you missed the thrust of my analogy, there. The quality I was addressing was not honesty, but the incredible supernatural claims being promoted. I’m not aware of any fantastic supernatural claims or miracles that atheism demands. Are you? If supernatural claims are offered, that contradict, we know that therefore some supernatural claims are bogus, imaginary, false. Just that conclusion, that bogus supernatural claims are common, every features of our culture is a problem for the credibility of Christianity in a way that they are not for materialism, even if Christianity’s claims are true. Even if Christianity’s claims are correct, it still gets stuck in a gaggle of impostors who are very difficult to distinguish from the real thing in terms of “true” claims about the supernatural.
Convoluted does not mena extraordinary. The process of hurricane formation is unthinkably convoluted, to the point of being intractable. But it’s not extraordinary or miraculous in the least. It’s positively mundane. A “Rube Goldberg” system of human interactions, all of which are plausible, physical-law-obeying interactions, does not militate against physical law. A “sweet, simple” miracle does.
Apocalyptic cults are not unique to 1C Palestine. It happens. And it doesn’t indict everyone (or anyone) involved as being insane. The dynamics are often complex, difficult to unravel, but like a hurricane, it doesn’t offend the laws of physics.
In any case, any difficulties we might confront in asking things like “why would that witness lie, or imagine things that weren’t there?” are DWARFED by the difficulties introduced by the postulation of, say, a resurrection. Even if it’s “mass craziness”, which I do not think is a required finding in the Jesus cult, we do have empirical evidence of mass craziness from apocalyptic cults. It happens, and there’s precedent for it. The resurrection has no such supporting evidence.
I think that’s right. God may exist. It’s a possibility that cannot be ruled out. There’s no way to perform an exhaustive search for God, even in principle, and that is what we would require to rule out that possibility. Yet, the evidence points to a godless universe. It may not be, but again, the next dealer card to you when you have 19 might be a deuce. Reason is informed by the evidence, and the evidence tilts away from the God hypothesis, rather than toward it.
-TS
T
Touchstone
Guest
That’s not a complaint against atheism per se, though. It’s a beef you have with rationalism itself. The metaphysical commitment of science, again, is that reality is real, and it’s partly (at least) intelligible through reasoning about evidence.
That’s a commitment that is wired into our physiology, and which we cannot jettison, even if we like. We are free, however, to abandon it in some areas, where we have the luxury of fanciful thinking – being foolish or mistaken won’t kill us, or force a an emergency override by our brain stem.
But at the end of the day, you are asking why should evidence and reasoning from that be privileged? My answer would be that the results of that heuristic are more effective in modeling and managing our surroundings than any other model – it’s performative in a way no other approach or “privilege” is.
Well, that would be a good subject to pursue in a different thread. Mormons make the same claim, as do Hindus and Muslims. Somebody there is off base, necessarily, and whoever it is demonstrates the practical plausibility of cults going supernova, no supernatural reality required.
Ok, what claims proceed from disbelieving in God do you find extraordinary, or militant against the evidence and observations of physical law?
“Arguable” is in the eye of the beholder, it seems. I have an employee who thinks astrology is “arguable”, and he’s quite serious. Another endorses homeopathy as “arguable”. I think the support for any claims of “arguability” really only obtain through having to actually argue each.
But of course, if you are troubled by giving evidence and reasoning from it “privilege”, I think it may well be a waste of time.
In a world with God, “extraordinary” doesn’t mean what it does in a godless world. “God did it” is always an explanation, for any phenomena. That doesn’t mean a theist must pull that lever first, but your point here is well taken; in a world with God on patrol, anything can happen anywhere, and there isn’t any reasoning that can come up against that. If one desires to believe in the miracle, reason is no obstacle to that.
Yes, and we would say the same things about Mohammed’s Midnight Journey and Joseph Smith Jr.'s ummim and thummim. They all dress themselves up in hearsay, and adorn themselves with the jewelry of devotion, and fervor, but any court of law would find against them on the merits, because the language you are using is euphemistic, as opposed to probitive and substantial to the question of what really happened. We can research the historicity of Mohammed’s midnight ride all we want, and we are still left with a fabulous, fantastic story that is unsustainable against the claim that it was simply imagined, or made up.
If we are willing to grant privilege to evidence and reasoning on the evidence, that is.
-TS
J
James_S_Saint
Guest
Actually they most often claim merely that Atheism refers specifically and only to not believing in a god. They disavow any concern regarding the supernatural until it involves God specifically and especially if it involves the Christian God.
T
Touchstone
Guest
I don’t think it can ever be integrated into an “assessment of likelihood”, by its very nature. What is the “probability of a miracle?” There’s zero background information to base that on. As soon as a miracle is posited, “likelihood” becomes an afterthought, a non-starter, because ‘likelihood’ is stolen concept from the uniform, non-miraculous parts of reality. The only reason we say “this rock is likely to fall to the ground when I drop it” is because there’s no will or caprice involved. It’s just physical law, and therefore has innate uniformity and predictability. As soon as you say “what is the probability God will intervene and shoot the rock into the sky when I let go?”, it’s game over, full stop. You have nowhere to go with that question, once you throw out the “privilege” given to evidence and experience.
I think you’ve forgotten what “extraordinary” means, here. People dead three days getting up and walking around, resurrected, is perfectly extraordinary to our experience. We have LOTS of ordinary experience of people dead three days staying dead. That’s a meaningful use of “extraordinary”, calling a resurrection claim “extraordinary”.
Saying a godless, or godful universe is “extraordinary” is nonsense. There’s no “ordinary” to compare that to. We don’t have a hundred million test universes, like we have 100 million people who stay dead after three days, to establish a baseline for “extraordinary”. So you must mean something else, like “unbelievable”. But that works right to my point – rationalism doesn’t defer to the caprice of your, or my sense of “believable”. It can quantify and substantiate the extraordinary, and hence dubious, nature of a resurrection claim in a way you cannot assert for the only universe we’ve got. Our universe is a sample size of 1, and thus utterly useless in determining what is “ordinary” or “extraordinary”.
No. We don’t see, or sense God in any objective, sensory way. That’s a reasonable basis for starting with a lack of belief in God. It’s not the end of the investigation, but where no God is self-evident or necessary, we remain ambivalent. We are open to persuasion toward God’s existence by evidence, but it’s not a “tie” if we begin with God not present in any observable or testable way. Same for leprechauns, by the way.
Well no, not becuase there is no God. It must be given priority because that preference is proven to perform well, better than any competing heuristic. No other reaction has the kind of performance against real world tests that that stance does. Evidence is persuasive, and reasoned logic applied to the evidence in an objective (team sport) way just kills any other methods when tested in the real world. It’s why airplanes fly and medicine heals.
It’s privileged because it has earned the privilege, by performing to human ends.
I say all this simply because it is where reason leads me, and it is intended in a completely level-headed, non-confrontational tone.
Thank you, I appreciate the thoughtful criticism you have to offer, and hope my responses are as thoughtful and considered in response.
-TS
T
Touchstone
Guest
Sure. By “we” there, I meant all of us, not just atheists. For all of us, we do not have an evidence-based case for endorsing supernatural claims. This is partly tautological; the reason we call them miracles in the first place is that they do not comport with our knowledge of nature and physical plausibility.
-TS
J
James_S_Saint
Guest
I’m a little confused as to who “we” or “all of us” are in that.
But regardless. Your concerns are merely a matter of understanding what the words actually mean. You already believe in what you are actually arguing against. You just don’t understand the words and prefer to keep the definitions that will make a case for you. (But that’s a different thread
)Actual miracles are very scientifically verifiable.
Actual supernatural is very logically provable.
…as are the other concepts that you protest.
T
Touchstone
Guest
OK, well zowie, then, get going! If you are right about that, you will be famous by Tuesday! That would be huge, worldwide news.I’m a little confused as to who “we” or “all of us” are in that.
But regardless. Your concerns are merely a matter of understanding what the words actually mean. You already believe in what you are actually arguing against. You just don’t understand the words and prefer to keep the definitions that will make a case for you. (But that’s a different thread
Actual miracles are very scientifically verifiable.
Actual supernatural is very logically provable.
…as are the other concepts that you protest.
-TS
J
James_S_Saint
Guest
Not hardly and for the same reason that you denied your statement of faith… because you resist the use of the word and its actual meaning. You WANT the meaning of the words to be invalid, else your chosen enemy will end up being right instead of you. You will be embarrassed and humiliated if you were to accept anything that invalidates your own argument in such a passionate arena.
But let’s not get side tracked into this issue of real versus preferred definitions. Continue with your arguments about the Leprechaun and the 50% fallacy.
L
liquidpele
Guest
K
KindredSoul
Guest
Actually, it is possible for anybody to believe that, not only Atheists. I do not believe it myself, but if someone were willing to have a completely blind faith, they might hold that same stance and believe in Christianity, so I do not think that it is a good definition for Atheism in particular; consider, someone with only that premise and unwilling to have any faith whatsoever would be something of an extremely malleable Agnostic, not leaning toward any conclusion whatsoever, unwilling to say anything to either side of the argument except “I’m not sure your claim is true, as I cannot prove it, but I’m also not any more sure your claim is false…” Indeed, on the very extreme end of relying solely on that basis of reasoning the person might indeed be inclined not to outright doubt leprechauns, and so how much less should they outright doubt a religion like Christianity (which, I have argued and still find the argument sound, has much more rational basis than leprechauns, a basis I remain convinced is at least on par with Atheism), and if they would doubt Christianity due to being unproven despite its rational basis they would just as easily doubt the implications of Atheism due to being unproven despite any rational basis it has. The reason for this is that a person holding that stance and not going beyond the evidence [or to irrelevant evidence] should, when studying an event like the Resurrection, allow the evidence to stand on its own and speak for itself instead of concluding that the most objective conclusion is that it is false. Unless one has faith that the implications of anecdotal evidence are both true and universal (and this is a very real faith, on par with religious faith) then investigation of claims like the Resurrection must be based on the circumstances surrounding those claims, not on the merits of the anecdotal, day-to-day evidence, especially when such claims as the Resurrection never claimed to be day-to-day occurrences in the first place, meaning it would be inappropriate to say “Since people do not rise from the dead in our day to day experience, neither did Jesus.” Again, this means that one cannot decide that the Atheist explanation of those events is any more logically justified than the Christian explanation unless one has gone beyond the relevant evidence by using evidence which is totally irrelevant to the specific claim being made.
Consider, the Resurrection arguably wouldn’t mean much [for Christianity] anyway if identical events happened on an everyday basis, or even once in a blue moon besides that one time. Its uniqueness (besides the resurrection of a foretold anti-Christ, depending on how literally that is interpreted) is the entire point of it, yet we cannot say that it is for that reason impossible to investigate rationally, and this is due to the real historicity of the claims and circumstances surrounding the belief. Something being totally unique in all of history does not automatically mean belief in it is without any rational basis, especially if the event is surrounded by historically recorded circumstances and events from which implications [regardless of how absolutely proven or not] can be rationally drawn. To say uniqueness excludes being rationally defensible treats an event like the Resurrection as though the unique circumstances and historical evidence surrounding it count for nothing simply because we don’t experience resurrections today. The reality of the claim is then not being judged on its own merits and historical evidence at all, but based upon our own expectations based upon the irrelevant absence of such things since then. That absence would only be relevant if the witnesses of the Resurrection had somehow asserted an understanding that such things should or even could happen every other day or at least every once in a blue moon, but such a “happens all the time or at least on occasion” understanding actually seems to directly contradict their understanding of it.
Further, unless taken out of their historical context and judged by irrelevant criteria, such things as the exact circumstances surrounding the Resurrection may indeed be a rational basis for believing in the supernatural, which is just what Christians conclude. A rational basis need not be absolute undeniable proof, or else we could not conclude for or against either Atheism or Christianity in any fashion whatsoever. A rational basis need only be just that: A basis. As addressed above, if one can argue, from the circumstances and recorded history surrounding it, that the Resurrection occurred, they are in fact demonstrating a rational basis–that basis being the argument from the force of the historical evidence and circumstances. This is not, as seems to be continually implied, pulled out of thin air, nor is it pulled out of stories so ancient that we cannot explore recorded history to attempt to discern their origins. Nor, for that matter, is it pulled out of claims of vague events [nothing is vague or easily mistakable about seeing a dead man alive and then rising to the heavens] that no group of people ever claimed to witness with their own eyes and or for which the presumed eyewitnesses were unwilling to die for those would-be-easily-retracted [if it were a lie, as they would have known, having been supposed eyewitnesses] claims.
CONTINUED…
K
KindredSoul
Guest
…CONTINUED (From Above)
CONTINUED…
Yes, but situations such as the Resurrection, with all its circumstances and grand implications, do not fail to hold up to review over and over again, because those circumstances and those claims have never, on that level and with circumstances so precise, been made since then. We cannot thus conclude “Well, the 99 other times that a man seemed to rise from the dead and rise to Heaven before the very eyes of a group of people who were willing to die for this claim, we proved it was a hoax.” You see, again, all the supernatural is being lumped together for a reason that hasn’t been properly justified. If the probability of something like the Resurrection is going to be discerned totally from the probability of other subsequent events like it, we must judge it only from events that, even if not identical, are precisely equal to it. We can be confident [from a simple review of history] that if a previously crucified dead man named Jesus did not rise from the dead and then ascend to heaven 2000 years ago, then an extraordinarily unique hoax [or an extraordinarily unique case of mass insanity] made a group of people be willing to die for the claim that they were eyewitnesses to such a concrete and objective thing. Although a man rising from the dead doesn’t happen commonly today, neither has any demonstrable hoax happened on par with the kind of hoax that would have to have been pulled off otherwise (whether intentional by Jesus, or accidental by a chance and very precisely convenient insanity on a massive scale). Thus, unless we generalize by saying “supernatural” is “supernatural” despite the fact that two different supernatural events can be wildly different and unique from each other and thus should each be judged on their own terms, then we have no statistical support for either explanation of the Resurrection. Why, therefore, does the Atheist explanation carry more weight? I do not see that it does.
I had already defined arguable, for our purposes, based upon terms that defy the ability of something pulled out of thin air or abstract stories alone to be called “arguable.” In this case, something arguable is something that has more going for it than mere abstract possibility, something that can be argued from real circumstances and events that were really known to exist in history, and which clearly say something really happened to make even eyewitnesses believe they were in fact eyewitnesses to a given event, “something” that is not therefore casually dismiss-able and thus that warrants an individual’s investigation on its own terms, not merely the terms of his present everyday experience, when he is formulating a world view. There is plenty of reason to believe that the Resurrection fits the criteria, whereas I see no demonstrable reason to believe the it does not.
I am not troubled by it. On the contrary, for me personally it edifies my faith to use evidential reason, for when I study the evidence for the Resurrection on its own merits, I truly do reason from it that Jesus Christ most probably raised from the dead. I acknowledge that others often reason differently from it than I, which is why I do not make claims that my particular conclusion has a 50% chance of being true and all other particular conclusions combined have only a small small chance by comparison. This is the crux of my entire point: Many Christians can and do look at evidence and reason from it, just as do Atheists. Faith is an asset thereto, but more from the recognition that faith is necessary to draw any conclusion [including the conclusion that they certainly weren’t supernatural] about those events with significant confidence. But the Atheistic conclusion about such events, even if based on reason and evidence, has no monopoly on being based on reason and evidence at all; Atheists go out on a limb and conclude that the events are not supernatural [because that is what they reason to be most likely], whereas Christians go out on a limb and conclude that they are supernatural [because that is what they reason to be most likely]. The evidence itself, for its part, comes with no label telling us which side is rightly interpreting it. The Atheistic process of coming to a conclusion on this matter demonstrates no superiority to the Christian process. Both are reasoning from the evidence surrounding the claims, and each comes to his own conclusion. It does not follow that one of them is demonstrably using a vastly superior line of logic over the other in reaching their respective conclusions.
If Mohammed’s midnight ride has as much historical support to it as Christianity (which, incidentally, would only legitimately add Islam to the equal mix of possibilities which includes Atheism, because Christianity’s claims, as I am convinced by the historical evidence, are [at least] equally sustainable as claims of their falsehood, so far as reason dictates to me), then Mohammed would have had multiple self-claimed witnesses to his midnight flight (as there were to the Resurrected and Ascending Jesus) who were later willing to face certain, guaranteed death, by certain martyrdom (not by merely being willing to battle, as this carries hope of winning) that they could have avoided just by admitting they had never witnessed those things, if in fact they had not.
CONTINUED…
K
KindredSoul
Guest
…CONTINUED (From Above)
I am under the impression, from my passing familiarity with the religions, that both Mohammed and Joseph Smith were prophets whose prophetic and miraculous experiences were more internal or private to themselves as lone individuals, more shrouded in mystery, and any individuals [whose existence and later martyrdom is historically reasonable to believe] who followed them, even among those who might have known them personally, followed them from faith in their claims, not from witnessing those miraculous claims for themselves. Likewise, what small hints of evidence that might have convinced “eyewitnesses” of their claims seem, at best, rather minor and insubstantial, so that it would have been not that extraordinary at all for the prophets themselves to fabricate such proof. Even further, the events in themselves seem to have been of a nature that, so far as the parts any group of demonstrably real individuals claimed to witness, was ambiguous enough so that eyewitnesses might be fooled without any extraordinary conditions having to be met. That’s quite a bit different from actually seeing your presumed Messiah standing in front of you when He has died, then actually seeing Him rise to Heaven. If Jesus could fabricate that, it would be far more extraordinary than if Mohammed and Joseph Smith had fabricated any evidence their witnesses might have claimed to see and been willing to die for.
I have never, on the other hand, seen anyone demonstrably fabricate (in a way that actually fooled anyone in such a grand way) anything on an equal level to what Jesus would have had to fabricate (if the Resurrection were false) down to this very day, and it seems that if someone managed to do so it would probably have to exploit the technology and advancements of today. If Jesus had fabricated such a thing I would find that at least as extraordinary a claim as His Resurrection. Yet a claim, or one equally extraordinary, seems to me to be the only way that the Atheistic explanation for His resurrection (namely, that it wasn’t supernatural) can be true. By the criteria of “Extraordinary claims need extraordinary proof” Atheism’s claim about the Resurrection needs no less proof than Christianity’s. Yet if Atheism’s claim about the Resurrection is wrong, then the Atheist assumption about the world (that we have no reason to believe in the supernatural) is wrong as well, because the Resurrection would certainly be such a reason. This is essentially why Atheism is no more reasonable nor logically likely than Christianity.
CONTINUED…
I am under the impression, from my passing familiarity with the religions, that both Mohammed and Joseph Smith were prophets whose prophetic and miraculous experiences were more internal or private to themselves as lone individuals, more shrouded in mystery, and any individuals [whose existence and later martyrdom is historically reasonable to believe] who followed them, even among those who might have known them personally, followed them from faith in their claims, not from witnessing those miraculous claims for themselves. Likewise, what small hints of evidence that might have convinced “eyewitnesses” of their claims seem, at best, rather minor and insubstantial, so that it would have been not that extraordinary at all for the prophets themselves to fabricate such proof. Even further, the events in themselves seem to have been of a nature that, so far as the parts any group of demonstrably real individuals claimed to witness, was ambiguous enough so that eyewitnesses might be fooled without any extraordinary conditions having to be met. That’s quite a bit different from actually seeing your presumed Messiah standing in front of you when He has died, then actually seeing Him rise to Heaven. If Jesus could fabricate that, it would be far more extraordinary than if Mohammed and Joseph Smith had fabricated any evidence their witnesses might have claimed to see and been willing to die for.
I have never, on the other hand, seen anyone demonstrably fabricate (in a way that actually fooled anyone in such a grand way) anything on an equal level to what Jesus would have had to fabricate (if the Resurrection were false) down to this very day, and it seems that if someone managed to do so it would probably have to exploit the technology and advancements of today. If Jesus had fabricated such a thing I would find that at least as extraordinary a claim as His Resurrection. Yet a claim, or one equally extraordinary, seems to me to be the only way that the Atheistic explanation for His resurrection (namely, that it wasn’t supernatural) can be true. By the criteria of “Extraordinary claims need extraordinary proof” Atheism’s claim about the Resurrection needs no less proof than Christianity’s. Yet if Atheism’s claim about the Resurrection is wrong, then the Atheist assumption about the world (that we have no reason to believe in the supernatural) is wrong as well, because the Resurrection would certainly be such a reason. This is essentially why Atheism is no more reasonable nor logically likely than Christianity.
I have not forgotten. However, people being able to fabricate having been dead for three days (after having been flogged and crucified, or for a modern equivalent something equally as doubtlessly devastating both visually and physically), then having risen from the dead good as new, then rising to Heaven, all the while doing all this right in front of witnesses who were in their closest inner circle, who would therefore be willing to cause their own deaths by defending that they had seen these things because the illusion was so perfect…well, that is perfectly extraordinary to our experience as well, as far as I am aware. By its own merits, an identical hoax [or even anything precisely equivalent to it] is equally rare and unheard of (i.e. if it happened it hasn’t since happened) as an actual resurrection. The same is true of a varied group of people each and every one being equally insane in just the right way for them all with unison to believe all of these things had happened before their collective eyes when none of these things even so much as seemed to happen in reality [if the previously established extraordinary fabrication on Jesus’ part is not the given explanation]. Therefore, I find the Atheist explanations of the Resurrection to be just as extraordinary as the Christian explanations. And we have already established why how we explain such an event as this matters in the grand scheme of both of our world views. The likelihood of our respective claims can really be tested in the ontological microcosm [of sorts] of how reasonable our explanations for such events [based on their own merits] are, and the Resurrection would seem to be the grandfather of them all, when it comes to things that have happened since recorded history and therefore can be researched at all.
CONTINUED…
K
KindredSoul
Guest
…CONTINUED (From Above)
But even if other religions’ miraculous claims are truly comparable to the Resurrection in terms of having equally supportive historical evidence from which to be reasoned, although it honestly doesn’t seem to be the case to me, they would only provide other similar microcosms, and this only means we’ve both [potentially] got equal problems in having to explain them before we can go beyond the evidence and assume our explanation of those events (and therefore our world view) is by default the right one; assuming neither of us is willing to rely on [at least] a grain of faith and that we feel the need to prove everything absolutely before we believe it, then we would have to disprove those supportable claims before we could believe anything about our own, since those religions’ claims would then pose a very real and rationally valid (if the events were equally supportable to Resurrection claims) alternative to our own respective explanations. Of course, Christianity allows faith, and does not suffer the dilemma in practice, since we would simply admit that faith allows us to not feel the need to disprove every other possibility, especially (though not only, though I have found this to be the case without fail) as long as on rational terms our own is [at least] roughly equal to any given alternative. Atheists technically have the same right, incidentally, as there is no official Atheist guideline prohibiting it, so I have always been puzzled as to why non-theists are often [but not universally] unwilling to consider that perhaps their own position is also faith based to the same as-of-yet-necessary-human-experience extent as Christianity’s, even if in a [to themselves, if not to those who disagree with them] less obvious way. Either way, on a strictly rational, no-faith basis, we would both, Atheists and Christians be in the same exact hot water unless we first absolutely disprove any and all historically supportable claims of all other world views, assuming such claims exist on truly equal par with the resurrection claims; again, the reasons for which the Resurrection serves as a good measure have been covered at length, due to the special nature of the claims and the [at least] equally extraordinary nature of all explanations of the claim, Atheist or otherwise.
In any case, it’s late. To bed with me.
Blessings in Christ,
KindredSoul
But even if other religions’ miraculous claims are truly comparable to the Resurrection in terms of having equally supportive historical evidence from which to be reasoned, although it honestly doesn’t seem to be the case to me, they would only provide other similar microcosms, and this only means we’ve both [potentially] got equal problems in having to explain them before we can go beyond the evidence and assume our explanation of those events (and therefore our world view) is by default the right one; assuming neither of us is willing to rely on [at least] a grain of faith and that we feel the need to prove everything absolutely before we believe it, then we would have to disprove those supportable claims before we could believe anything about our own, since those religions’ claims would then pose a very real and rationally valid (if the events were equally supportable to Resurrection claims) alternative to our own respective explanations. Of course, Christianity allows faith, and does not suffer the dilemma in practice, since we would simply admit that faith allows us to not feel the need to disprove every other possibility, especially (though not only, though I have found this to be the case without fail) as long as on rational terms our own is [at least] roughly equal to any given alternative. Atheists technically have the same right, incidentally, as there is no official Atheist guideline prohibiting it, so I have always been puzzled as to why non-theists are often [but not universally] unwilling to consider that perhaps their own position is also faith based to the same as-of-yet-necessary-human-experience extent as Christianity’s, even if in a [to themselves, if not to those who disagree with them] less obvious way. Either way, on a strictly rational, no-faith basis, we would both, Atheists and Christians be in the same exact hot water unless we first absolutely disprove any and all historically supportable claims of all other world views, assuming such claims exist on truly equal par with the resurrection claims; again, the reasons for which the Resurrection serves as a good measure have been covered at length, due to the special nature of the claims and the [at least] equally extraordinary nature of all explanations of the claim, Atheist or otherwise.
That does not seem true at all. There are arguments to be made, arguments that are not demonstrably faulty, for Christianity, and these arguments rely on logic and evidence, and have been touched upon throughout the thread. Furthermore, these arguments have just as much substance, as far as I have ever seen, as arguments that there is no God. I must admit to being suspicious when any world view claims that logic and reason is specially its playground more than any other, especially when countless people who use logic and reason come to disagree with that world view, and I have only proponents of that world view to tell me that those who disagree are simply using logic incorrectly. It is again a question begging claim, and begging the question is a logical fallacy, not something to be gladly accepted, especially not by a world view which claims that logic is its own personal and [to some degree] exclusive domain.
Aside from the fact that it is by evidence and objective analysis that I conclude Christianity is most the likely option (which poses a problem to the premise that Atheism has an exclusive or better hold on that arena) I admittedly do not believe that they are indicators of reality that can lead us altogether unquestionably to any one conclusion about a given world view by themselves; however I clearly, given what I said at the beginning of this paragraph, do not accept the premise that they automatically lead one to Atheism, nor that they lead to Atheism more easily than to Christianity. As long as we have events in recorded history such as the resurrection claims (and the appropriate founding circumstances) to deal with, a person cannot conclude that Atheism is the neutral or most natural position. If I were going to believe Atheism was the default position based upon logic without any faith, I would have to believe that such conundrums as the Resurrection Claims coupled with such historical circumstances and evidence as surrounds them didn’t exist and therefore did not have to be dealt with or explained [with conclusive and proven certainty] in coming to my position.
See earlier in this response (in an earlier segment of it) for the argument, which I find sound, that any history-compatible Atheistic arguments that would specifically explain the Resurrection Claims (or something just as grandoise) are likewise extraordinary. As is argued more at length earlier, I have never seen even any comparable hoax pulled off. Generic apocalyptic mass craziness, so far as I have seen, has never risen remotely to the level which that of the Apostles would have to have risen to in order to explain the Resurrection Claims, as it would be a far more precise form of craziness than a mere willingness to commit suicide due to an emotional high or to mistake very vague events [monumentally unlike dead men being alive and afterwards rising to Heaven] as supernatural. Nor has any deliberate hoax, on a precisely equal scale, been so ambitious and even potentially successful. Even though we have no precedent for men rising from the Dead in Jesus’ exact [or precisely equal] circumstances, we are equally lacking in precedent for hoaxes or craziness that would explain something of a precisely equal nature. The claim that the Christian explanation is so emphatically dwarfed [or dwarfed at all] by Atheistic explanations is a claim that overlooks these factors.
In any case, it’s late. To bed with me.
Blessings in Christ,
KindredSoul
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