A challenge: debate the issue of religion with yours truly

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Declension
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13 Apr 2012, 11:43 pm

Joker wrote:
Hmm am I the only one seeing the Irony of Theists and Atheists debating religion :lol:


Huh? What am I missing? That's like the least ironic thing in the history of the world. It's like saying that it's ironic when people who like cats and people who like dogs argue about whether cats or dogs are better.



Lukecash12
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14 Apr 2012, 12:19 am

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The issue is that nothing would really meaningfully constitute a disproof of the resurrection.


On what grounds? There are historical criteria for accepting it, and there are historical criteria for not accepting it. In the realm of history, it's plenty approachable. If you are referring to the subject in a more broad, philosophical sense, it's plausibility and possibility can be debated over, specifically when it comes to naturalism versus simple empiricism.

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Good for them, but we can't cross examine them at this point because they are dead. So, we can't evaluate whether the story given of them is as accurate as what we'd like. We can't determine whether they are completely of sound mind, as they could easily have a mental issue, or even some existential crisis that made them easily persuaded.


Refer to my twelve facts post. It's been established and agreed upon, that they were skeptics and converts. There are criteria for examining the stories, and I've gone over several of those criteria. That folks like you are this skeptical of the sources involved, as if the criteria endorsed by historiography just aren't enough, then you are basically saying that Hannibal didn't cross the Alps, etc. A. N. Sherwin White, an esteemed historian who focused on Rome, commented to this affect, that secular historians don't have to put up with the same contrived and hyperbolic sounding skepticism. Everyone writes a biased document, and everyone from the past is dead. That doesn't mean we don't have the fine toothed comb of historiography to establish reliable records of the past.

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And it's entirely medically possible for memory alteration to occur after the fact. It's entirely medically possible for these claims to be false. (And given that scriptural contradictions and errors do occur, such as the two different death accounts of Judas in Matthew and Acts, fact checking was not as good as would be desired.) It's entirely possible for more than one person to have a similar subjective vision. (The key issue is that shared consciousness isn't strictly possible, but similar hallucinations are possible)

The simple issue is that the claim of subjective visions is 2nd to 3rd hand, and given the number of 2nd to 3rd hand miraculous claims that are regularly rejected, this doesn't really constitute great evidence.


Simply pointing out something as possible does not establish a warrant for it's being true. There has to be evidence corroborating such claims. And it is a fact that people don't share in the same subjective visions. What you are referring to are esoteric visions. When people have subjective visions, it is fairly rare for them to believe in them, let alone talk about them. Having an unprovoked subjective vision like that has a lot to do with one's own distinct psyche. Esoteric visions are more social in nature, but there isn't a precedent for that because all Jews either believed in an eschatological resurrection or no after life at all. People who have subjective visions and actually believe in them, are people who are emotionally unstable, having symptoms of paranoia, anxiety, and breaking into episodes. Such a condition is pretty rare, so I wonder how it is that you think a group of people either all or mostly had such a condition, or they all succumbed to believing in someone who is prone to episodic behavior, all of this while the belief in a physical resurrection contradicted their understanding of the afterlife.

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We're talking about a Jewish cult though, as Jesus was clearly not a mainstream figure given his y'know death at the hands of Roman and Jewish authorities. Given the diversity of cult views, even with some nihilistic death cults today, it's hard for actually argue that "unprecedented views" is really radically implausible.


You mistake what I mean by unprecedented. I was talking specifically within the context of Jewish theology, because cults take the ideas of their parent groups as precedent for most of their views, while often having revisionary and radical views. The precedent for Christian belief, was Jewish belief. The view that someone would be physically resurrected before the end times, had no precedent in the Jewish religion. Moreover, Jewish people were isolationists, whose scripture (the OT, or Tanakh) has isolationism as a primary motif. A Jewish group would not have borrowed theology from somewhere else, unless it was a group with Hellenistic sympathies. Christianity was for the Jew first, and then the Gentile. Remember? One of the main claims of the NT is that the OT is it's sole precedent, being a feature shared by each Gospel and being mentioned throughout the epistles. In particular, see material such as the sermon on the mount and the stoning of Stephen in Acts.

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We really can't determine how independent or reliable this attestation is. I mean, either you're talking about the books of the NT, which were really not independent, or you're talking about proclaimed witnesses, which we can't really cross examine. We really don't know if they were delusional, whether something odd was going on, whether there was a false 2nd to 3rd hand account that somehow went unchallenged, or anything else like that. I mean, to this day, there are multiple attestations for various UFO accounts, and various faith healings, but for the most part, these are not taken seriously. We don't necessarily know in advance how these events really didn't occur either, but false claims of this sort are incredibly common, and often if we had the sufficient evidence to reconstruct what happened, we can actually figure out what was really going on. We don't have this for Jesus or anything close, but rather we have texts that are not entirely reliable. I mean, let's face it, Mormonism has a book of witnesses, who were actual people who claimed to have seen what Joseph Smith was talking about, this is in many ways more reliable than the NT, but it's not something I take seriously, and I doubt you'd take it seriously either.


We can with historiographical criteria, which I did. Moreover, you seem to disparage account keeping amongst eyewitnesses heavily. This seems to betray some ignorance of Middle Eastern oral tradition. I'd like to introduce you to the ICOT: htt p://ww w.biblicalstudies.org .uk/article_t radition_ bailey.ht ml

Once I'm back where my library is, I can refer to you numerous sources from the lens of cultural anthropology, on the subject of Semitic oral tradition.

Also, you are equivocating many different people from different theological and cultural backgrounds.

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Only the case if the burial story of Jesus given is correct. It's entirely possible that he really wasn't buried in the tomb of Joseph of Arimathea, but rather was put in a pit, and if that's the case, there wouldn't be a body. Even if Joseph of Arimathea's tomb was used, the problem is that nobody could really tell if the body was taken, or a false body was planted, or anything else.


If that were the case, then the claim would have fallen flat. To claim that a member of the Sanhedrin buried Jesus Christ in his family tomb? It would have been scoffed at and Christianity would not have had any traction in Jerusalem.

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Honestly, it's just not even close to a plausible place of attack. Miracle claims are as common as copper, incredibly difficult to unmask as false in more than one occasion, and sufficiently unlikely at the basic level that ANY miraculous claim should probably be dismissed. I mean, miracles are in the same kind of category as pseudo-scientific claims, and conspiracy theories, while it is possible that one or more of these claims are correct, the basic probability of ever identifying a correct one is so vanishingly small that they hardly deserve serious attention. I mean, let's be honest, have you ever tried debating a truther?

I mean, the best rule of thumb is to say, that unless the evidence is downright miraculously good, we ought to dismiss these claims. 2000 year old texts containing 2nd to 3rd hand accounts by a cult, and where the documents also contain falsehoods and other gross improbabilities are sufficiently bad as evidence that while they prove something, they'd never amount to sufficient to prove a miracle, especially to a person with background reasons not to believe.


Basically, you level an a priori objection to miracle claims, make as of yet unsubstantiated claims such as that "the documents also contain falsehoods and other gross improbabilities", and you equivocate this claim of a resurrection with other such claims. There are distinct theological differences between this resurrection and say, the Roman idea of apotheosis. Also, this particular resurrection claim does have first hand accounts supporting it, in the form of creeds, and depending on your stance on authorship quite a bit of the NT.

But this is historical criteria. Once we're done with this, I am perfectly comfortable moving on to the issue of naturalistic objections to the idea of a miracle.


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Lukecash12
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14 Apr 2012, 12:27 am

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And with that, there is no reason for the thread to even continue. All I can see going forward is just apologetic blathering just being answered by actual sense. That may seem a bit arrogant, but the surface plausibility issues are just massive, enough so that I just don't take apologists seriously.


Before I get into responding to all of that material, I would comment that a great deal of it seems to be a response to internet apologist type material. The arguments you knock over are either straw men, or arguments presented by people who don't have degrees in philosophy. None of them resemble point-counterpoint, P1 & P2 imply C, type arguments, that are made by professionals. At this point, I'm wondering how many peer reviewed journals you've read, because you seem to be taking potshots at typical Christians and wannabe apologists, not people like Plantinga, Clive, Pannenberg, Kierkegaard, Spinoza, etc.

Also, there is a fair amount of orthodox theology that I don't endorse and defend. For example, original sin. Before we get into all of that, I'd like to see how well you pass a little litmus, not to call you stupid or ignorant, but to see where we're at and what we need to establish. Please define and explain the reasoning behind the following:

Modus ponens
Ontology
Propositional logic
Kripkean possible worlds scenarios
Monism
Descriptive and normative ethics


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Last edited by Lukecash12 on 14 Apr 2012, 12:39 am, edited 1 time in total.

Declension
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14 Apr 2012, 12:38 am

Lukecash12 wrote:
people like Plantinga, Clive, Pannenberg, Kierkegaard, Spinoza, etc.


I think that your main problem is that you are presenting yourself as merely the messenger of the "expert consensus". You're not really defending the statement "Christianity is true", you're defending the statement "there are serious thinkers who believe that Christianity is true".

Arguments from authority are not always fallacious, but I think that in this case there are a lot of reason to be suspicious of authority. There is an obvious selection effect at work here. A lot of Biblical scholars believe in the Resurrection. Similarly, a lot of historians who focus on the Holocaust are Holocaust deniers.

Try to reference primary documents more, and reference Biblical scholars less. If this means that your posts would need to be fifty pages long, then maybe this thread wasn't such a good idea.



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14 Apr 2012, 12:41 am

Declension wrote:
Joker wrote:
Hmm am I the only one seeing the Irony of Theists and Atheists debating religion :lol:


Huh? What am I missing? That's like the least ironic thing in the history of the world. It's like saying that it's ironic when people who like cats and people who like dogs argue about whether cats or dogs are better.


It is ironic because why waste taste in debating about something that a non theist views as a fair tale kinda pointless really.



Lukecash12
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14 Apr 2012, 12:50 am

Declension wrote:
Lukecash12 wrote:
people like Plantinga, Clive, Pannenberg, Kierkegaard, Spinoza, etc.


I think that your main problem is that you are presenting yourself as merely the messenger of the "expert consensus". You're not really defending the statement "Christianity is true", you're defending the statement "there are serious thinkers who believe that Christianity is true".

Arguments from authority are not always fallacious, but I think that in this case there are a lot of reason to be suspicious of authority. There is an obvious selection effect at work here. A lot of Biblical scholars believe in the Resurrection. Similarly, a lot of historians who focus on the Holocaust are Holocaust deniers.

Try to reference primary documents more, and reference Biblical scholars less. If this means that your posts would need to be fifty pages long, then maybe this thread wasn't such a good idea.


I see your concern, but this was a preliminary post to feel out where my interlocutor was at. He seems to have a certain idea of Christianity and the arguments that Christians have presented, an idea that doesn't represent the scholastic tradition of defending Christianity. If he is not familiar with that realm, then he won't be familiar with the technical terms and models.

As for my references to scholarship in previous posts, I was mainly debunking incorrect notions about what the scholarly consensus is. The arguments I made there were my own, even though I align with most scholars on the issue of the resurrection. Moreover, I would say that I presented quite a few arguments that have more to do with historical methodology than agreeing with other scholars.

I have to say that it pleased me to see you giving me a little check-up as to whether or not I am using the appeal to authority fallacy. And what I mean by that, is that being an autistic savant surrounded by people with interests of a less academic bent, it is not often that I engage in quality discussions like this. Most people I spend time with, don't even know the definition of a fallacy, let alone types of fallacies and the difference between formal and informal fallacies. You kind of feel useless when you've learned the Latin names of every fallacious argument type, yet you've no one to share such discussions with. It's not that I'm better. It's just hard being so fundamentally different, having to go from A+B=C type thinking to the vagueness that is the rest of life and people.


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Last edited by Lukecash12 on 14 Apr 2012, 12:52 am, edited 2 times in total.

Awesomelyglorious
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14 Apr 2012, 12:51 am

Lukecash12 wrote:
On what grounds? There are historical criteria for accepting it, and there are historical criteria for not accepting it. In the realm of history, it's plenty approachable. If you are referring to the subject in a more broad, philosophical sense, it's plausibility and possibility can be debated over, specifically when it comes to naturalism versus simple empiricism.

There are no historical criteria for accepting a resurrection though. The event is pretty much excluded from the realm of history, and frankly, the very question is really more of a philosophical question at that point.

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Refer to my twelve facts post. It's been established and agreed upon, that they were skeptics and converts. There are criteria for examining the stories, and I've gone over several of those criteria. That folks like you are this skeptical of the sources involved, as if the criteria endorsed by historiography just aren't enough, then you are basically saying that Hannibal didn't cross the Alps, etc. A. N. Sherwin White, an esteemed historian who focused on Rome, commented to this affect, that secular historians don't have to put up with the same contrived and hyperbolic sounding skepticism. Everyone writes a biased document, and everyone from the past is dead. That doesn't mean we don't have the fine toothed comb of historiography to establish reliable records of the past.

Established to the point of justifying a miraculous event? The need of justification depends upon the background probabilities we're working with.

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Simply pointing out something as possible does not establish a warrant for it's being true.

Duh. :roll:

The issue isn't the truth, it's the problems in the way of knowing a truth if it's particularly implausible.

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There has to be evidence corroborating such claims. And it is a fact that people don't share in the same subjective visions. What you are referring to are esoteric visions. When people have subjective visions, it is fairly rare for them to believe in them, let alone talk about them. Having an unprovoked subjective vision like that has a lot to do with one's own distinct psyche. Esoteric visions are more social in nature, but there isn't a precedent for that because all Jews either believed in an eschatological resurrection or no after life at all. People who have subjective visions and actually believe in them, are people who are emotionally unstable, having symptoms of paranoia, anxiety, and breaking into episodes. Such a condition is pretty rare, so I wonder how it is that you think a group of people either all or mostly had such a condition, or they all succumbed to believing in someone who is prone to episodic behavior, all of this while the belief in a physical resurrection contradicted their understanding of the afterlife.

To undermine your claim? No, I don't need evidence to undermine it because by simply pointing out a large set of possibilities, your claim can fail. The issue is that the burden of proof for anything like a miracle is pretty high.

In any case, you're referring to a set of terminology that you have not provided.

I didn't say I thought anything. Lukecash12, you're trying to tell me that a resurrection is the most reasonable thing to believe. The background probability is that resurrections never occur, but LOTS AND LOTS of hard to explain and weird s**t does occur, where it becomes very difficult to look back, and figure out where everything went wrong.

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You mistake what I mean by unprecedented. I was talking specifically within the context of Jewish theology, because cults take the ideas of their parent groups as precedent for most of their views, while often having revisionary and radical views. The precedent for Christian belief, was Jewish belief. The view that someone would be physically resurrected before the end times, had no precedent in the Jewish religion. Moreover, Jewish people were isolationists, whose scripture (the OT, or Tanakh) has isolationism as a primary motif. A Jewish group would not have borrowed theology from somewhere else, unless it was a group with Hellenistic sympathies. Christianity was for the Jew first, and then the Gentile. Remember? One of the main claims of the NT is that the OT is it's sole precedent, being a feature shared by each Gospel and being mentioned throughout the epistles. In particular, see material such as the sermon on the mount and the stoning of Stephen in Acts.

No, I really didn't say anything about that.

As for Jewish groups borrowing or inventing theological beliefs? That's not utterly implausible. Syncretism doesn't have to be explicit. Once again, you're trying to convince us that the probability of syncretism occurring is LESS than a resurrection. There are more instances of syncretism than resurrections. There are more instances of theological innovations than resurrections. I can really realistically see a small cult under stress coming up with a resurrection idea that is held to by a small group trying to suppress cognitive dissonance, and that these suppressions along with memory erosions can result in something utterly distorted from the original facts.

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We can with historiographical criteria, which I did. Moreover, you seem to disparage account keeping amongst eyewitnesses heavily. This seems to betray some ignorance of Middle Eastern oral tradition. I'd like to introduce you to the ICOT: htt p://ww w.biblicalstudies.org .uk/article_t radition_ bailey.ht ml

And the criteria aren't designed for proving a miracle. They are not actual literal cross-examinations.

I'm not sure what you're really trying to get at with ignorance, as the simple issue is 1) human memory is fallible 2) the period of time for transmission into scripture was lengthy by most scholarly accounts, and 3) the texts actually make factually erroneous claims. So, Acts vs Matthew has two different accounts for the death of Judas. This shouldn't happen if the account-keeping is all great. Matthew and Luke rely heavily on Mark, who was not from the region, and made questionable geographic claims, which should be caught if a strong eyewitness tradition exists.

The problem is that if we can't trust eyewitnesses to control the smaller events, the larger and less plausible ones fall to pieces in terms of plausibility, as only ONE link in a chain has to fail for an idea to fail. So think of it this way, if your chain requires 12 links, and each link is independently 90% likely, then the overall chain is only 28% likely. That's kind of a problem.

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Also, you are equivocating many different people from different theological and cultural backgrounds.

Because this is a cross-cultural psychological phenomenon. The specifics really are not going to be sufficient to avoid lumping.

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If that were the case, then the claim would have fallen flat. To claim that a member of the Sanhedrin buried Jesus Christ in his family tomb? It would have been scoffed at and Christianity would not have had any traction in Jerusalem.

How do you know? It may be implausible, but LESS plausible than a miracle? Not really, people have believed crazier things. People have believed L. Ron Hubbard was a credible theological leader, I'm still shocked at that one.

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Basically, you level an a priori objection to miracle claims, make as of yet unsubstantiated claims such as that "the documents also contain falsehoods and other gross improbabilities", and you equivocate this claim of a resurrection with other such claims. There are distinct theological differences between this resurrection and say, the Roman idea of apotheosis. Also, this particular resurrection claim does have first hand accounts supporting it, in the form of creeds, and depending on your stance on authorship quite a bit of the NT.

Hume's argument to miracles is a well-established one in the philosophical tradition and still discussed.

Unsubstantiated?????? Now, you're just full of it. EVERYONE, except the fundamentalists, KNOWS there are issues that are clearly bizarre in scripture. I mean, once again, Judas's death Acts vs Mark. Look at the differences. One of the accounts has to be false because they contradict. "Other gross improbabilities" include all of the other magical and miraculous claims, which in most texts are considered unreasonable to take seriously. However, just issues where authors make weird geographic claims are sufficient.

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But this is historical criteria. Once we're done with this, I am perfectly comfortable moving on to the issue of naturalistic objections to the idea of a miracle.

And the issue is not historical criteria but rather truth. Historical criteria are a method, and some would basically claim that miracles are outside of history's scope altogether. Bart Ehrman has flatly said so more than once.



Last edited by Awesomelyglorious on 14 Apr 2012, 1:15 am, edited 1 time in total.

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14 Apr 2012, 1:14 am

Lukecash12 wrote:
I see your concern, but this was a preliminary post to feel out where my interlocutor was at. He seems to have a certain idea of Christianity and the arguments that Christians have presented, an idea that doesn't represent the scholastic tradition of defending Christianity. If he is not familiar with that realm, then he won't be familiar with the technical terms and models.

Hunh?
1) Don't use technical terms. Avoid them like the plague. This is an online discussion. I also simply hate them as a matter of prejudice. I slip sometimes, but I still hate them.
2) Lukecash12, you're just biased out of your mind. Demons causing earthquakes is clearly a reference to Plantinga's Free Will Defense, where he speculated about natural evil being caused by demons. Skeptical theism undermining knowledge of a good God causing an evil God to be considered relatively plausible is taken straight from Stephen Law. The issues involving infinite possible worlds are really going back to the idea of Transworld manipulability, which goes to a paper written by Dean Zimmerman where he points out that there was no reason why TWP should work given that TWM appears utterly plausible. (And note, TWP really only applies to Molinism, as otherwise God doesn't have the problem)
3) I'm really just being dismissive. I think your ideas are obviously false and stuck primarily to objections from the face of how things look. I have no concerns about literally addressing every person in the Christian tradition or even really much more than brushing it aside. (Although Kierkegaard? He's not known for apologetics. I don't know why you'd actually point to him at all.)

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I have to say that it pleased me to see you giving me a little check-up as to whether or not I am using the appeal to authority fallacy. And what I mean by that, is that being an autistic savant surrounded by people with interests of a less academic bent, it is not often that I engage in quality discussions like this. Most people I spend time with, don't even know the definition of a fallacy, let alone types of fallacies and the difference between formal and informal fallacies. You kind of feel useless when you've learned the Latin names of every fallacious argument type, yet you've no one to share such discussions with. It's not that I'm better. It's just hard being so fundamentally different, having to go from A+B=C type thinking to the vagueness that is the rest of life and people.

Eh, honestly, this is not going to likely be a great experience for you. Most people on the forum are not approaching this from a significant background, most of it informal. So... that's going to be a difficulty there.

Frankly... I just don't take apologists seriously, so at some point I am likely to block you out/ignore you.

In any case, I really don't care for the Latin terms at all, so avoid using them. Actually, avoid ever using a "fallacy term", go back to the logic. Too many people misuse "ad hominem" assuming that every insult to somebody is an ad hominem, or they don't know what appeals to authority are fallacious or not, or anything else like it. I find they hinder more than help. I have a broad familiarity with most of the terms. I am not going to get into specifics for you. Not only that, but I am certainly not going to rely on memory half of the time for most of the details. Frankly, I have no interest in an overly wonk-ish debate with you on the matter, as those tend towards cleverness and quibbling. I simply find the idea ridiculous, so... there is little role for an argument. It's kind of like "Here is a hand. Here is another. Therefore there are two objects in the external universe. Therefore an external universe exists.". Never going to convince the die-hard epistemic skeptic, but... who cares about the extremist anyway? They're kind of just fooling themselves.



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14 Apr 2012, 2:27 am

@Awesomelyglorious:

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Hunh?
1) Don't use technical terms. Avoid them like the plague. This is an online discussion. I also simply hate them as a matter of prejudice. I slip sometimes, but I still hate them.
2) Lukecash12, you're just biased out of your mind. Demons causing earthquakes is clearly a reference to Plantinga's Free Will Defense, where he speculated about natural evil being caused by demons. Skeptical theism undermining knowledge of a good God causing an evil God to be considered relatively plausible is taken straight from Stephen Law. The issues involving infinite possible worlds are really going back to the idea of Transworld manipulability, which goes to a paper written by Dean Zimmerman where he points out that there was no reason why TWP should work given that TWM appears utterly plausible. (And note, TWP really only applies to Molinism, as otherwise God doesn't have the problem)
3) I'm really just being dismissive. I think your ideas are obviously false and stuck primarily to objections from the face of how things look. I have no concerns about literally addressing every person in the Christian tradition or even really much more than brushing it aside. (Although Kierkegaard? He's not known for apologetics. I don't know why you'd actually point to him at all.)


1. Technical terms were made specifically because they have specialized and practically useful meanings. You are essentially asking me to be vague and unprofessional, which is basically the antithesis of me.
2. And from what rule of inference did you infer that I'm biased out of my mind? A and B don't imply C, friend. My referencing different philosophers and technical terms does not mean I endorse certain views. You haven't any idea who I'm a party to yet, aside from my being a Christian theist. In debate, I am exceedingly explicit and literal, for just that reason. Such a careful and trained approach is the reason that academics make progress on difficult subjects while others don't. This is the reason we have cell phones, etc., because of patience, training, and technicality. You don't have to be a professor. But I see no purpose in composing arguments that are vague and obtuse. If we aren't connecting on a certain topic then we can just agree to disagree. Or you can very well decline to debate with me. It's no biggy, and I'm not like this when it comes to everything. You won't see me acting like a professor on subforums other than this one.
3. Yes, I noticed as much, considering how much you've presumed about me. You and I come from different worlds, it seems. I take a minimalist approach when I refer to my interlocutor's view, until I have the material I need, while you demonstrably do the opposite. You have, essentially, defined a parabola without any x-axis figures.

Kierkegaard did work on quite a few subjects, just like Immanuel Kant.

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Eh, honestly, this is not going to likely be a great experience for you. Most people on the forum are not approaching this from a significant background, most of it informal. So... that's going to be a difficulty there.

Frankly... I just don't take apologists seriously, so at some point I am likely to block you out/ignore you.

In any case, I really don't care for the Latin terms at all, so avoid using them. Actually, avoid ever using a "fallacy term", go back to the logic. Too many people misuse "ad hominem" assuming that every insult to somebody is an ad hominem, or they don't know what appeals to authority are fallacious or not, or anything else like it. I find they hinder more than help. I have a broad familiarity with most of the terms. I am not going to get into specifics for you. Not only that, but I am certainly not going to rely on memory half of the time for most of the details. Frankly, I have no interest in an overly wonk-ish debate with you on the matter, as those tend towards cleverness and quibbling. I simply find the idea ridiculous, so... there is little role for an argument. It's kind of like "Here is a hand. Here is another. Therefore there are two objects in the external universe. Therefore an external universe exists.". Never going to convince the die-hard epistemic skeptic, but... who cares about the extremist anyway? They're kind of just fooling themselves.


Ah, but I've never held much hope of discussing such subjects with people who have my background, until I enter the professional world. I find it silly that you are telling me to avoid using fallacy terms and opt instead to go back to the logic. It's none of my concern whether or not other people understand the precise definition and nature of a fallacy, when I point out a fallacy (since you seem to say you know and understand fallacies, you will notice that I can, in fact, recognize them). Pointing out fallacy types is literally remedial to me, because I've been doing that since I was ten. Maybe you mean to suggest that I will pull us into a sophistical discussion, or supply you with obtuse arguments like the one you typed within quotation marks. That isn't the case either.

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There are no historical criteria for accepting a resurrection though. The event is pretty much excluded from the realm of history, and frankly, the very question is really more of a philosophical question at that point.


And who says it can't be both? One thing at a time, friend, one thing at a time. There are manuscripts to study, so historiography applies, doesn't it? This is by no means a standalone proof for the resurrection. Maybe it would be convincing to deists. There's no point in us talking past each other. If that is your sole criticism of the resurrection, then we may as well drop historiography.

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Established to the point of justifying a miraculous event? The need of justification depends upon the background probabilities we're working with.


Historiography has only to do with what is possible and more or less plausible, given historical data. People just happen to take more mundane things within the purview of historiography to be true, because there aren't concerns like the possibility of a miracle, when you are wondering who won the 2nd Punic War.

I agree that I've yet to prove the resurrection. I've simply pointed out twelve facts.

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Duh. Rolling Eyes

The issue isn't the truth, it's the problems in the way of knowing a truth if it's particularly implausible.


According to the historical data, it's more than a little plausible. Your critique pertains more to whether it's possible.

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To undermine your claim? No, I don't need evidence to undermine it because by simply pointing out a large set of possibilities, your claim can fail. The issue is that the burden of proof for anything like a miracle is pretty high.

In any case, you're referring to a set of terminology that you have not provided.

I didn't say I thought anything. Lukecash12, you're trying to tell me that a resurrection is the most reasonable thing to believe. The background probability is that resurrections never occur, but LOTS AND LOTS of hard to explain and weird sh** does occur, where it becomes very difficult to look back, and figure out where everything went wrong.


An issue with that approach: you are improperly reducing the components of the twelve facts proof. What I mean by that is that the twelve facts are cumulative and complementary. The argument doesn't fall because of one little possibility being pointed out at a time, because each piece of data made to look weaker in the argument is complemented by other data, to the point that saying that they had a hallucination involves far too much contrivation, in fact impossibly too much contrivation. Not all data complements other data in the twelve facts arguments. It's just that you are reducing down the data too far.

Also, preferring what you consider a little bit less crazy of an explanation instead of the craziest one, isn't valid in terms of historiography. Maybe there is another explanation aside from the resurrection, but it certainly isn't an explanation like that. You seriously think that everyone either shared in a rare condition, or spontaneously went against their religious background, or started believing the ravings of one of their group when that person was showing episodic symptoms and trying to convince them of contrary sounding theology?

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No, I really didn't say anything about that.

As for Jewish groups borrowing or inventing theological beliefs? That's not utterly implausible. Syncretism doesn't have to be explicit. Once again, you're trying to convince us that the probability of syncretism occurring is LESS than a resurrection. There are more instances of syncretism than resurrections. There are more instances of theological innovations than resurrections. I can really realistically see a small cult under stress coming up with a resurrection idea that is held to by a small group trying to suppress cognitive dissonance, and that these suppressions along with memory erosions can result in something utterly distorted from the original facts.


You are just picking a lesser poison, then. If resurrection is impossible, then it is impossible. But that is also a poor explanation. One of the cornerstones of Judaism was resisting syncretism. Just because they are ancient people, doesn't mean that they are so much more likely to have such symptoms as suppression and memory erosion, and you seem to forget that two of them were skeptics. If you think that once all of the data is accumulated, that that is a good explanation, then I would think you are literally delusional.

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And the criteria aren't designed for proving a miracle. They are not actual literal cross-examinations.

I'm not sure what you're really trying to get at with ignorance, as the simple issue is 1) human memory is fallible 2) the period of time for transmission into scripture was lengthy by most scholarly accounts, and 3) the texts actually make factually erroneous claims. So, Acts vs Matthew has two different accounts for the death of Judas. This shouldn't happen if the account-keeping is all great. Matthew and Luke rely heavily on Mark, who was not from the region, and made questionable geographic claims, which should be caught if a strong eyewitness tradition exists.

The problem is that if we can't trust eyewitnesses to control the smaller events, the larger and less plausible ones fall to pieces in terms of plausibility, as only ONE link in a chain has to fail for an idea to fail. So think of it this way, if your chain requires 12 links, and each link is independently 90% likely, then the overall chain is only 28% likely. That's kind of a problem.


1. Yes, it is. But in order to understand the degree of the issue of memory, one must understand Semitic oral traditions.
2. Not a problem for people using ICOT.
3. Once again, you've not substantiated that (and I mean that in the sense that you haven't proven it, not that it's not an issue), nor does it make them generally unreliable. In fact, for a classical era document to have some errors in it, helps to point out the authenticity of the text. If everyone were to have collaborated on a story, it would be suspicious.

Something as important as the resurrection, which found it's way into several creeds, wouldn't really be subject to memory and relay issues like the telephone game or forgetting your wedding anniversary. The ICOT primarily survives through socialization. There are social controls, and it is different from the rote memory that we are used to because to them it was just social interaction, not information cramming.

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Because this is a cross-cultural psychological phenomenon. The specifics really are not going to be sufficient to avoid lumping.


Or so you say, even though there are fundamental differences in thought that are involved. Just because we can give them a label does not mean we can equivocate them. You have yet to point out what it is about these groups that substantiates your views. Is it a social process that they all have in common? Do esoteric rituals have similar effects on different people from different groups? Those would be valid avenues to compare them from.

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How do you know? It may be implausible, but LESS plausible than a miracle? Not really, people have believed crazier things. People have believed L. Ron Hubbard was a credible theological leader, I'm still shocked at that one.


That is because people have entirely different education, religious upbringing, and standards than those found in the ancient world. That's the reason that different people have believed different crazy things throughout the past. They don't just indiscriminately think crazy thoughts.

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Hume's argument to miracles is a well-established one in the philosophical tradition and still discussed.

Unsubstantiated?????? Now, you're just full of it. EVERYONE, except the fundamentalists, KNOWS there are issues that are clearly bizarre in scripture. I mean, once again, Judas's death Acts vs Mark. Look at the differences. One of the accounts has to be false because they contradict. "Other gross improbabilities" include all of the other magical and miraculous claims, which in most texts are considered unreasonable to take seriously. However, just issues where authors make weird geographic claims are sufficient.


Clarification: Unsubstantiated by you. I need to know how you think about that issue in the texts to discuss it with you. How is it, specifically, that you think that they contradict one another? Can they be complementary? Do they render those NT texts basically unreliable?

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And the issue is not historical criteria but rather truth. Historical criteria are a method, and some would basically claim that miracles are outside of history's scope altogether. Bart Ehrman has flatly said so more than once.


And I agree with Ehrman, in that historians can't just prove the resurrection using historiography. It's a philosophical issue, too. We don't want historians to start claiming that Arjunas talked to Krishna, as if that was something they could prove, do we?


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14 Apr 2012, 4:07 am

Declension wrote:
Do you really think that you needed to make a separate thread for this? Just go to the 7th page of any long thread in PPR. :wink:

But I think that you have the issue backwards. Let's assume for now that God exists. What is your evidence that Jesus was God?


The assumption that any god exists is an extraordinary claim. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. (As Carl Sagan said.) The burden of proof in any god is the first order of business, in my opinion. Otherwise, you might as well debate the question of the number of angels that can dance on the head of a pin.



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14 Apr 2012, 4:46 am

Rocky wrote:
The assumption that any god exists is an extraordinary claim. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. (As Carl Sagan said.) The burden of proof in any god is the first order of business, in my opinion. Otherwise, you might as well debate the question of the number of angels that can dance on the head of a pin.


Don't get me wrong, I agree that he needs to establish both (a) God exists and (b) Jesus was God. But it doesn't matter which order he establishes them in. I find (a) really boring, and it's harder to establish (b) anyway, so we might as well get it out of the way.



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14 Apr 2012, 4:57 am

Declension wrote:
Rocky wrote:
The assumption that any god exists is an extraordinary claim. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. (As Carl Sagan said.) The burden of proof in any god is the first order of business, in my opinion. Otherwise, you might as well debate the question of the number of angels that can dance on the head of a pin.


Don't get me wrong, I agree that he needs to establish both (a) God exists and (b) Jesus was God. But it doesn't matter which order he establishes them in. I find (a) really boring, and it's harder to establish (b) anyway, so we might as well get it out of the way.


The premise of the OP seemed to imply that we should challenge his beliefs. That seemed backwards to me until he presented some proof (or even any argument) that his beliefs had any possible merit.



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14 Apr 2012, 6:00 am

Rocky wrote:
Declension wrote:
Do you really think that you needed to make a separate thread for this? Just go to the 7th page of any long thread in PPR. :wink:

But I think that you have the issue backwards. Let's assume for now that God exists. What is your evidence that Jesus was God?


The assumption that any god exists is an extraordinary claim. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. (As Carl Sagan said.) The burden of proof in any god is the first order of business, in my opinion. Otherwise, you might as well debate the question of the number of angels that can dance on the head of a pin.


Yes, those points are quite apt. But I'm working in no particular order, because as Declension pointed out by his own example, different people will be interested in different issues here. You presumably wonder what my model looks like, in terms of hierarchy and what claims are fundamental to what. So, I'll lay out the basic reasons that I am a Christian theist:

1. I align with empiricism as a philosophy, and would support it as an epistemic model using several approaches.
2. I do believe, given the physics that I have worked through, that naturalism fails to explain the nature and origin of the universe. Because our universe is most definitely inflationary, and inflationary models suffer from entropy, the lack of a well defined quantam mechanism to start the expanding and contracting parts of the cycle, and while thus failing to explain the big bang event opens up the problem of an infinite regression of causes.
3. That rules out material and efficient causes, leaving final and personal causes, for the universe. Other theoretical models have been proposed, but they fail to explain infinite regression, and they still suffer from entropy. So, material and efficient causes just don't work.
4. In order for there not to be an infinite regression of causes, whatever caused our universe must have a different relationship with time (by extension cause and effect) and matter.
5. The individual described by the texts found within the Bible fits these criteria. However, I don't simply insert Yahweh in there as an answer, because that would of course be God-of-gaps/proxy type logic. I insert Yahweh in that equation because of the resurrection. Naturalism, not seeming to me as a hindrance to such an one or thing which made the universe, seems to me to describe, explain, and set probability boundaries around events, but those lines may very probably get scrambled on a smaller than atomic level (and I would assert that quantam mechanics aren't normally explained properly in these discussions), and NDE's I also find potent when it comes to debunking naturalism. In fact, I think naturalism is an empirical plateau that merely represents our current powers of observation, which will be soon replaced by another empirical plateau.
6. Given the remote possibility, the historical plausibility, and the high historical probability, of the resurrection, I don't simply level an a priori objection to it. I took the resurrection, and traced it's implications to see if it fits well with the considerations of these previous numbers, and it seemed to do just that. The resurrection validates the teachings of Christ, thus proving theism. The teachings of Christ explicitly validate the contents of the scriptures, meaning that the purpose and nature of creation (at least in terms of what we can glean from the scriptures) has to do with the unique experience of living things, possessing both subjective and objective senses, and their relationship with the Creator.
7. Now, I ask myself, what is morality? What relationship has it with ethics? To what extent is it more descriptive or normative? What is it's relationship with intelligence? It seems to me, that from the viewpoint of a Christian theist, that morality doesn't need to be defined by descriptive or normative ethics. It can be described as contingent upon and preceded by God and His relationship with us. Intelligence seems to be the prerequisite for engaging in the relationship.
8. Lastly, I ask myself, is God an exemplar deserving/undeserving of a cooperative relationship with me, and am I an exemplar deserving/undeserving of a cooperative relationship with him? The teachings endorsed by Him, seem to be the answer key, so I study biblical scholarship to determine an answer to those questions for myself.

But there are other modes of confirmation than those listed. I have also had a subjective experience of God, as detailed in the NT.


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ruveyn
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14 Apr 2012, 6:59 am

Debating religion is a bloody waste of time.

ruveyn



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14 Apr 2012, 7:14 am

Coming to WP to criticize Christianity is like going on the Christian broadcast network to criticize Atheism or Islam, you won't get much of an opposition to your position and what you do get is the same tired shite that has been proven false since the ancient greeks.



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14 Apr 2012, 11:51 am

Lukecash12 wrote:
01001011 wrote:
Define what is 'god'.


The most universal definition of God, is that there is an intelligent Creator.


Define 'intelligent'. Biologists are still debating how to compare the intelligence of different spices of animals. Good luck of assessing the 'intelligence' of 'the creator'.

Define 'creator'. Do you have a scientific theory of creation? Otherwise your 'creator' is just nonsense gibberish.