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Originally Posted by Matthew Green
I am just a beginning philosophy student. In fact, I have just completed my first logic course . . . .
May I suggest that you work a writing class or two into your schedule? I found it difficult to figure out what your argument actually was on account of your verbosity and repetitiousness. You need to learn to write much more concisely.
As for your argument itself, I will try to avoid repeating any criticisms already offered, but will note that I agree with them all.
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My apologies here. I realized that some of my statements were awkwardly worded. I have not realized that until I have actually gone back through my writings. I tend not to put that much of an effort it terms of editing my posts in discussion forums like these until errors are pointed out. I do make an effor to edit my posts but not as much as I now realize I can do-which is much more than I have been trying to do. Sorry!
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Originally Posted by Matthew Green
There are two chief reasons I disbelieve . . . . The chief reason that I disbelieve . . . .
First you say you have two, then you suggest (with "the") that you have only one. And, because of the aforementioned difficulty of understanding your prose, I couldn't really tell whether you have one, two, or some other number.
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My apologies again: I see your point here. What I
meant to say is that there are two chief reasons and this argument is one of the two chief reasons. The other reason is that the Bible is very errant, from start to finish, and I cannot believe, in all seriousness that it can be the work of any god. Honestly, I speak a lot more coherently than I write in discussion forums like these.
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Originally Posted by Matthew Green
The important fact under consideration here is that the resurrection is a necessary historical explanation. What this means is that there is no possible way that the resurrection explanation could be false if the facts that it purports to explain really did happen.
I can't quite parse that. The second sentence appears to be an attempt to define a technical term, necessary historical explanation, that you apparently have coined. At least, I've never encountered it before, and I've been reading about this stuff for most of my life. (I'm 60.) But, having read the definition -- if that is what you intended it to be -- I still don't know what you mean by necessary historical explanation.
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Well, what I had in mind was that the resurrection doctrine, as formulated by Christians, seems to be a necessary truth because God said that it was. They then try to turn it into a hypothesis to try and explain the empty tomb, postmortem appearances of Jesus, and so forth. They try and argue that it's a hypothesis which has some explanatory power. If they're going to argue that it's an historical hypothesis, worthy of careful and considerate thought- they have to accept the fact, then, by logical implication of their theology, that it's a necessary historical hypothesis.
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The gospels say there was a resurrection. Obviously, therefore, if what the gospels say happened did happen, then there is no way for the assertion that it did happen to be false. To affirm that, though, is simply to apply the logical axiom of noncontradiction. There is really no explaining to it.
Of course the gospels contain many assertions of fact, only one of which is that Jesus came back to life two or three days after being executed. They assert that one or more women found his tomb empty, that his disciples saw and talked with him at various times and places, and so on. But they are only assertions. They should not be treated as facts until the assertions are proven true.
What you can do as an intellectual exercise -- which perhaps is what you were attempting to do -- is assume for the sake of discussion that everything asserted in the gospels, excepting only the resurrection itself, happened exactly as asserted, and then see whether that assumption implies the factuality of Jesus' actually returning to life after being dead.
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To better understand my argument, I thought of a altenative (perhaps better) way of formulating it using natural deductive logic.
1.) If I am to believe that the Christian God exists, then I am to believe that he is a morally necessary Being.
2.) If I am to believe that he is a morally necessary Being, then whatever he says must be true as a matter of fact since a morally necessary Being cannot lie
3.) If I am to believe that a morally necessary Being cannot lie, then whatever he says must necessarily be true and any other alternative is necessarily false.
4.) If I am believe that the Christian God speaks only necessary truths, then the resurrection would be a necessary truth because the Christian God says that he raised Jesus from the dead, and since it is impossible for him to lie, it must be necessarily true.
5.) If the Christian God says that he raised Jesus from the dead, it's necessarily true that any alternative hypothesis for explaining the empty tomb, postmortem sightings of Jesus be necessarily false and historically impossible.
6.) It is not the case that alternative explanations are necessarily false and historical impossible (it's possible for the empty tomb to be explained by reburial and postmortem appearances by visions)
7.) If it is not the case that alternative explanations are necessarily false and historically impossible, then it must be the case that the Christian God must not have told the truth that he raised Jesus from the dead.
8.) If it is not the case that he raised Jesus from the dead, then it must be the case that the Christian God does not speak necessary truths.
9.) If it's not the case that the Christian God speaks necessary truths, then he cannot be a morally necessary Being.
10.) If it's not the case that the Christian God is a morally necessary Being, then the Christian God cannot exist.
This was the essence of my argument. My conclusion, I am not rational to believe that the Christian God exists. I hope this formulation is better than the first post I presented in this thread.
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Originally Posted by Matthew Green
The attribute [of God] under consideration is that of moral necessity.
That is another technical term that you seem to have coined. Unlike the other, I have seen it before, but never used the way you use it here. What you seem to be referring to is what everybody else refers to as God's moral perfection.
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I have heard of the term "moral perfection" but I tend not to use it because many Christians will simply argue that their God
chooses to be morally perfect.
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Originally Posted by Matthew Green
If God proclaims that he has raised Jesus from the dead, then it must necessarily be the case that this is true.
I understand that you're trying to show that this leads to a contradiction. Others have explained why your effort fails, but even if it didn't, you're not proving that the resurrection could not have happened. You're proving that only that God never said it did. But the men who wrote the gospels certainly did say it happened, and for all that your argument demonstrates, they could have been telling the truth.
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I was trying to argue, by somewhat of a
modus tollens kind of deductive argument, that the Christian god cannot exist because if such a being existed, then the resurrection would be the only possible explanation of the empty tomb and postmortem sightings- it is not the case that this is so, and thus if such a being existed, such a being should make it impossible for alternative explanations to be historically true.
I am going to apologize to you and all others who have found my posts unclear, unconcise, and in any way sloppy. I vow to do a much better editing job as far as my posts go and if I have to, perhaps I will invest time and energy into a writing course if I don't make any progress on here.
Matthew
08-31-2006, 11:17 PM
My Closing Post
