Littlefoot

Those attempting to show that the faith of Christianity is well grounded in fact often point to the historicity of the resurrection event. Supposedly the bible is valid evidence because


1) It is an eyewitness account
2) Said eyewitness accounts were preserved
3) Said eyewitnesses were reliable
4) The bible backs itself through archeology



Now, if Christians are being honest with their methodology any work of history that meets these criteria would be deemed historical. After all, the amount of evidence required is generally proportional to the level to which the potentially true event falls outside of our experiences and against our expectations. The idea that there was a Particular blacksmith named Tiberius in Rome wouldn’t require much evidence. As Rome had a large number of blacksmiths and Tiberius was a common name all that would probably be required would be a receipt, work order, or a sign etc. The idea that he personally made and fitted 50,000 horse shoes a day is a lot further outside of our expectations and would require much further evidence to be accepted as fact.
Similarly, people rising up after being genuinely dead for three days falls FAR outside of our observations and expectations. There have been roughly 12 billion people on the planet and to all appearances dead people stay dead. It is perhaps the most universal and well-observed fact of our existence. Any evidence that said universal constant had been altered or written an exception would require an extra ordinary amount of evidence. Certain sectors of Christianity think their level of evidence meets this requirement but do they evaluate other extraordinary claims in the same and consistent manner?

So here we go… Do any Christians arguing for the historicity of the resurrection event believe in magic? You know, witch craft, Satanism, people flying through the air, causing men’s members to disappear, sex with demons, shape shifting, the ability to control the weather.. the whole nine yards? 1

If not I have to ask why, the historical evidence of such events appears to meet if not exceed the criteria used for the bible.


It is an eyewitness account

Here is an excerpt from a book entitled THE MALLEUS MALEFICARUM, hammer of witches. The book was written as a handbook for hunting witches, the authors being authorized to conduct such hunts under the Pope Innocent the XIII under a papal bull. It describes at great length the powers, abilities, limitations of witches, and the means to root out and destroy them.


WE must not omit to mention the injuries done to children by witch midwives, first by killing them, and secondly by blasphemously offering them to devils. In the diocese of Strasbourg and in the town of Zabern there is an honest woman very devoted to the Blessed Virgin MARY, who tells the following experience of hers to all the guests that come to the tavern which she keeps, known by the sign of the Black Eagle.


Littlefoot: Now this is at least as much information, if not more, than we have of the authors of the bible. Finding this woman would have been a piece of cake. All you need to do is find the female owner of the black eagle inn in Zabern. If such a woman or inn did not exist then the local priests should have reported back on it.


And to make the matter clear we will quote a case which occurred at Spires and came to the knowledge of many. A certain honest man was bargaining with a woman, and would not come to terms with her about the price of some article; so she angrily called after him, "You will soon wish you had agreed." For witches generally use this manner of speaking, or something like it, when they wish to bewitch a person by looking at him. Then he, not unreasonably being angry with her, looked over his shoulder to see with what intention she had uttered those words; and behold! he was suddenly bewitched so that his mouth was stretched sideways as far as his ears in a horrible deformity, and he could not draw it back, but remained so deformed for a long time.

www.malleusmaleficarum.or...3_13a.html


Littlefoot: now this is certainly more information than we have on the 500 who supposedly saw Jesus, without a single name, town, time, or even country given.

1 Corinthians 15:6
After that, he appeared to more than five hundred of the brothers at the same time, most of whom are still living, though some have fallen asleep.



2) Said eyewitness accounts were preserved


An original copy of the 1496 edition is in the Lea Library at Penn, and is described by John Shea: " looks harmless enough from the outside. Barely five inches wide and eight inches tall, its spine has grown bare... Although its light-brown leather covers are mottled and worn, they are supported by two robust blocks of wood that suggest hard, frequent use." (The Pennsylvania Gazette, May-June 2003, p. 30)

Found at www.dailyreprobate.com/wo...bles_2.htm


Such evidence far exceeds that for the chain of knowledge of biblical events. There is no risk of false authorship, false accreditation, translation, editing or the inclusion of unoriginal materials. You have an original copy you can pick up, hold in your hand, and compare against any modern copy to check for errors at your leisure. Whatever the preservation of biblical texts implies for the truth of the resurrection event it applies more so here.


3) The eyewitness accounts were reliable.

These authors had the official sanction of the Roman Catholic Church, one of the most sophisticated organizations on the planet at the time. A papal bull signed by innocent VIII gave the authors the right and obligation to root out heresy and witchcraft using the local church and state officials as well as any an all methods, the “particular methods� (torture) not excluded. Reasonable, thinking people would not have handed over that kind of power to people who were not reliable and trustworthy enough to root out fanciful rumor from extraordinary fact. The authors themselves would not have risked life and limb gallivanting about the countryside without reliable evidence that they were doing the right thing. They were well-educated respected men and professors of theology. If any action they were undertaking was against the biblical precepts or reason they would have been aware of it.


www.malleusmaleficarum.org/mm00e.html

They were not spotting witches behind every rock and tree and executing on a whim. They state that

THE second method of delivering judgement is to be employed when he or she who is accused, after a diligent discussion of the merits of the case in consultation with learned lawyers, is found to be no more than defamed as a heretic in some village, town, or province

www.malleusmaleficarum.or...3_21a.html

These were people who knew the serious implications and burdens of their job and conducted themselves as such.


4) Archeological evidence

In the diocese of Strasburg and in the town of Zabern

For in the diocese of Constance, twenty-eight German miles from the town of Ratisbon in the direction of Salzburg

Not long ago in the town of Ratisbon


There lived in a town of Wiesenthal
Quite lately a witch was detained in the Castle of Königsheim near the town of Schlettstadt in the Diocese of Strasburg

.. as well as the aforementioned black eagle inn.

Littlefoot: Historians have cooperated these towns all existed at the time where they were indicated, showing that these people were traveling about in the course of their duties and acquiring the local knowledge that can only come from first hand experience.



In short… The reasoning and methods used by those wishing to have the resurrection event considered historical would also render the witchcraft phenomenon of the European as real events that actually happened. If the methods are an acceptable and valid
way to determine history then we must also accept the reality of European witches possessing supernatural powers or risk falling victim to special pleading.

If you accept witches and witchcraft as real, then what is there to prevent jesus having faked his death or returned after the event through sorcery, illusion, or trickery? The very specialness, uniqueness and very reason for believing that jesus is god on the basis of his ability to ressurect himself goes right out the window if other people posses the supernatural ability to either confuse the eye witnesses or perform the event for real.



I can only hear god if i accept. I can only accept if i can understand. i can only understand if i hear god. There appearsto be a hole in the bucket dear
johny...

Justin

Greetings, Littlefoot,

I'm going to assume that the above post is your own work and research. If it is not, then please change all the references to "you" into the third person. I've also taken the liberty of seeting quote tags around the material you cite from the MM and/or other sources: if I've misattributed these citations, please feel free to correct me.

While I would love to congratulate you on a well-thought-out and well-spoken discussion on the possible historicity of the resurrection, your post has done little but mirror the errors and illogic that you accuse Christians of. Unfortunately, demonstrating those errors is going to take quite a bit of writing, so this is going to be a fairly long post. Let's take it argument by argument....

Point one: Straw Man Fallacy

First and foremost, this is not the "Christian" doctrine, per se: this is a Fundamentalist distorion of Christian doctrine. The actual Christian doctrine is "It's true because the Bible says so." Now, I know that doesn't sit well with you--it doesn't sit too well with me, either, and I reject it for the circular logic that it is.

The reliance upon the four arguments you cite above come not from the Bible, but from the Fundamentalist movement of the early 1900s. Let me give a bit of a historical digression.

Acceptance (or rejection) of the Bible as historical fact is an aspect of any culture that is affected by Christianity, but just like any other cultural phenomenon, it's cyclical, and usually local (as opposed to universal). There have been times and places in Church history when parts of the Bible were looked at as a book of allegory (see the Gnostics, the writings of Origen, and the Renaissance for examples), and other times and places when the prevalent view was that the Bible was literal truth (see the Jesuits, the writings of John Calvin, and the Medieval period for examples). These two world-views--we can call them the "Literalists" and the "Allegoricalists"--have met in conflict many, many times in Church history, but as with any other cultural phenomenon, both the Literalists and the Analogists were afffected by the culture they were raised in.

So in the 1700s and 1800s in England and America, there was an upswing of Allegorical belief--hence the advent of Deism, "hell-fire clubs," and the beginnings of our modern "occult revival." In the early 1800s, several movements arose in rejection of the Allegorialists, including the various Millerite movements, Evangelicalism, "Social Gospel," and (in the 1920s) "Fundamentalism" proper. Now, Fundamentalism started out as a means to gain control of specific denominations (starting with one branch of the Presbyterian church and spreading from there). The avowed purpose of Fundamentalism was to deny ordination to those seminary students who did not subscribe to certain "fundamental beliefs" regarding Christianity. Fundamentalism was an outgrowth of, and was greatly influenced by, the Evangelical movement of the late 1800s.

Now, there were other things happening at this time: a growing acceptance of "old earth creation" theories, the growing acceptance of natural selection as the mechanism of evolution, and the German Higher Critical scholarship that was reducing the belief of the inerrancy of the Bible. Fundamentalists took these cultural changes as a direct attack on their faith, and responded with the fledgling science of Archaeology.

Well, we all know that after many years and false starts, archaeology and "Biblical Studies" are in the process of having a parting of the ways, but the use of archaeology is an important indicator: the Fundamentalist Christians were using the "weapons of the world" to defend their Scriptures--more specifically, to defend their interpretation of Scriptures as a literal, historical account of the events described therein. This interpretation is extra-biblical: no where in the Bible do you find God or Jesus saying "Hey, you have to believe in a literal six-day creation or you'll go to hell."

Littlefoot, your post does little or nothing in refuting, or even in discussing, the Biblical claims: the only thing that you are doing is attacking the extra-Biblical claim of Biblical Infallability.


Point two: Ad Hominem Fallacy

Your frequent use of words and phrasing with derogatory or semi-derogatory connotation is a classic example of "poisoning the well"--a sub-type of ad hominem attack. Your phrasing may not have been intended as derogatory, however, any college English teacher would have dunned you right there. Ad Hominem is not a logical tool--it's a rhetorical tool, and as such has no place in academic or scholarly analysis.

While your claim that "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence" is widely accepted in homiletics and debate, it is not acceptable academically. No evidence is "extraordinary," in that sense: all evidence has its merit, and the only use of asking for "extraordinary" evidence is to place one in a position to reject any evidence that does not fulfil the asker's criteria. Again, it's rhetoric, not logic or academics.

As a side note: the claim that Jesus rose from the grave is not an "extraordinary claim." Indeed, the concept of a dying and resurrected God is moderately common in Helenized cultures: from India to Europe, many of the areas conquered by Alexander and influenced by Hellenic culture have developed such a religious motif.

Point Three: Illegitimate Sources

The Malleus Maleficarum does, indeed, speak of witches: however, the Malleus (despite the claims of Montague Summers) was immediately rejected by the Church as a guide to rooting out the "heresy" of witchcraft. It was frequently used, but it was used by local, secular judges, not by the Church.

If you were not aware that the Malleus had been rejected by the Church, I'm not terribly surprised: many of the "historical" sources that deal with the European Witch Craze cite that book as an "example" of Church beliefs, but they do so erroneously. If one was aware that the Church had rejected it, but still used the Malleus as an "example" of Church doctrine, then that one is being disingenuous, at best.

Point 4: False Comparative

Besides the fact that the Malleus is not a legitimate insight to Church doctrine, there is also the fact that comparing the Malleus to the NT manuscripts is inappropriate. Due to technological differences (including papyrus vs. parchment, the use of the printing press, and techniques in bookbinding) and social differences (the NT writers being a heavily persecuted underclass vs. the Malleus printers being part of the dominant class), it is obvious that the Malleus will survive longer than the original manuscripts of the NT.

Point five: An-historical Assumption

It is frequently assumed that the Catholic Church was the "key player" in the persecution of "witches"--nothing could be further from the case. Most of the Witch Craze was the result of peasant superstitions and folk beliefs, quite a bit of it contradicting Catholic doctrine. Surprisingly enough, the Catholic Church actually did far more to protect those who were accused of witchcraft than to seek out and destroy them. In the 17th century, at least two Edicts of Silence were issued by the Spanish Inquisition--these edicts forbade any accusations of witchcraft.


Point six: Straw Man Fallacy, Reloaded

The treatement of "witchcraft" as a historical reality, based on the evidence you presented, is the straw man. In attempting to equate the putative resurrection of Jesus (which you do not believe in) with witchcraft (which you also do not believe in), and then debunking the straw man, you've yet to say anything substantive about the possibilities of the resurrection.

Yeppers ... unfortunately in this case, the "hole in the bucket" is one of your crafting.

Littlefoot, it was a well-intended paper, but I really fear that the main souce of the weakness was three-fold:
1: A general lack of understanding of the history of the Church;
2: Confusion between "rhetoric" and "logic";
3: Perhaps an underlying hostility to Christians and/or Christianity?

Now, I'm not at all sure about the hostility: your post certainly sounds hostile and derisive, but of course I'm behind the "ASCII wall," and may be reading something into the text that is not present. If you do not bear Christianity any hostility, then I apologize for mis-reading your essay.

Littlefoot, it may sound like I'm criticizing you on a personal level: I'm certainly not intending to, and I hope that my post does not resemble a personal dig. If you want to look at it this way, consider my reply to your post as a (very circumspect and respectful) example of the debate you'ld get presenting this on a Theistic forum.

With respect,

Justin

Littlefoot

I don't know how the quote thingies work here. If you don't like my formating enough to complain about it, then show me how to use it, ok?



Greetings, Littlefoot,

I'm going to assume that the above post is your own work and research. If it is not, then please change all the references to "you" into the third person. I've also taken the liberty of seeting quote tags around the material you cite from the MM and/or other sources: if I've misattributed these citations, please feel free to correct me.

Littlefoot:Yup, i wrote it, except where i was quoting something, so its all my fault. OI made it pretty clear wheni wasn and a link provided to the full text of the work.



While I would love to congratulate you on a well-thought-out and well-spoken discussion on the possible historicity of the resurrection, your post has done little but mirror the errors and illogic that you accuse Christians of. Unfortunately, demonstrating those errors is going to take quite a bit of writing, so this is going to be a fairly long post. Let's take it argument by argument....


Littlefoot: thank you, but i think your conclussions rest on assumptions that are not true, i will take it point by point as well.



Point one: Straw Man Fallacy


Counterpoint 1: I am not responsible for feilds of farmers.

Christianity is hardly unified in doctrine, beleif, the methods that should be used to come to their beleif, or the methods (if any) used to presude others that their beleifs are true. The above argument has (as acurately as possible in outline form) been given to me by christians in chat boards, message rooms, and closely parralells the methods used by lee strobel in "the case for christ". I am not surprised that not all christians use this approach, but i did state and will restate here that this is a refutation of a specific christian argument that is being made by christians. Asking for one argument in response to ALL christian theologies is almost impossible: its simply too diverse. You assert here that that i am tossing the football to a strawman of my own creation, i would say that i am tossing it to some christians on the other side of the feild, but not everyone is playing catch. I'm only interested in this game with the folks who threw this football over in the first place.

Please don't get bogged down on this: Some folks seem to make a huge deal that my argument must be invalid because its not addressing any and all arguments for christainity: I am dealing with one and ONLY one argument here. that it doesn't respond to people not making the argument is a non sequetor, i was never intending to.


First and foremost, this is not the "Christian" doctrine, per se: this is a Fundamentalist distorion of Christian doctrine. The actual Christian doctrine is "It's true because the Bible says so." Now, I know that doesn't sit well with you--it doesn't sit too well with me, either, and I reject it for the circular logic that it is.

Littlefoot: Thats a very popular brand of christianity but is not the totality of it. The argument wasn't intended for them.




The reliance upon the four arguments you cite above come not from the Bible, but from the Fundamentalist movement of the early 1900s. Let me give a bit of a historical digression.


Littlefoot: *snip* I don't see how that is relevant as i have been receiving this argument in the here and now.



Littlefoot, your post does little or nothing in refuting, or even in discussing, the Biblical claims: the only thing that you are doing is attacking the extra-Biblical claim of Biblical Infallability.

Littlefoot: Again, i am not creating a pancea against all christian arguments, just something against the one claim that Jesus's ressurection was a historical event. I am not even attacking infalibility; slight differences in historical accounts are expected from multible veiwers and most christians liberal enough to make the argument are liberal enough to accept that. The one and only statement i am trying to refute here is that christiantiy should be accepted as true based on the weight of historical evidence for the ressurection of Jesus Christ.




Quote:
Now, if Christians are being honest with their methodology ....


Point two: Ad Hominem Fallacy

Your frequent use of words and phrasing with derogatory or semi-derogatory connotation is a classic example of "poisoning the well"--a sub-type of ad hominem attack. Your phrasing may not have been intended as derogatory, however, any college English teacher would have dunned you right there. Ad Hominem is not a logical tool--it's a rhetorical tool, and as such has no place in academic or scholarly analysis.

Littlefoot: And as i'm no longer in school, and was a forestry major there to boot, i realy don't care what shows up on someone elses hyperactive emotional rader.




Quote:
Now, if Christians are being honest with their methodology any work of history that meets these criteria would be deemed historical.


Littlefoot: Where's the ad hom in an IF statement? I think the fact that there are christians who make these arguments but don't accept the reality of witches shows that some folks are using a double standard.




While your claim that "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence" is widely accepted in homiletics and debate, it is not acceptable academically.

Littlefoot: That is malarky. If you wanted to posit that the vikings had made it to the new world in 500 AD you would need a lot more evidence than you would to convince historians that they were there in 1200 ad. All of respectable academia uses the general idea, even if they call it something else. note the example above: Are you telling me that a note saying "Tiberius the blacksmith personaly made and fitted 5,000 horseshoes in one day" would be equally usefull in proving tiberius the blacksmiths existance and his rather unusual feat?



No evidence is "extraordinary," in that sense: all evidence has its merit, and the only use of asking for "extraordinary" evidence is to place one in a position to reject any evidence that does not fulfil the asker's criteria. Again, it's rhetoric, not logic or academics.

Littlefoot: Ahhh but here's the kicker in my argument: I'll let the christian arguing from history pick the level of evidence required, as long as its applied equaly to both sources. I think both will either be included or excluded. If they're both excluded goodbye argument from history. If they're both included there's a quandary of determining that christ was not possesed of sorcerous powers capable of faking his death and or ressurection.

Like it or not, in any persuit dealing with the real world there are different standards of evidence. I've had people say this isn't so before, but no ones been willing to provide a counter example to the blacksmith problem above. or address that example. Proving troys existance would be relitively easy to proving that the walls were built by the gods. There are different standards for different supposed historical events that need to be met. If you don't like that phraseology fine, but its ludicris to dismiss the idea when its so prevelant.



As a side note: the claim that Jesus rose from the grave is not an "extraordinary claim." Indeed, the concept of a dying and resurrected God is moderately common in Helenized cultures: from India to Europe, many of the areas conquered by Alexander and influenced by Hellenic culture have developed such a religious motif.

Littlefoot: Even 6 people rising from the dead with a worldhistorical population of 12 billion does make it rather extraordinary.




Point Three: Illegitimate Sources

The Malleus Maleficarum does, indeed, speak of witches: however, the Malleus (despite the claims of Montague Summers) was immediately rejected by the Church as a guide to rooting out the "heresy" of witchcraft. It was frequently used, but it was used by local, secular judges, not by the Church.

If you were not aware that the Malleus had been rejected by the Church, I'm not terribly surprised: many of the "historical" sources that deal with the European Witch Craze cite that book as an "example" of Church beliefs, but they do so erroneously. If one was aware that the Church had rejected it, but still used the Malleus as an "example" of Church doctrine, then that one is being disingenuous, at best.


Littlefoot: Thats odd, as i have a link to the papal bull which was given to the authors backing most of what they said and prescribing their "particular methods" (torture) as legitimate. Could you point me to something saying it had been rejected, as i have provided something saying it was accepted?

Also witches existance and powers were a large part of catholic beleif for quite some time

Thomas Aquinas in summa theologica

Objection 1. It would seem that a spell cannot be an impediment to marriage. For the spells in question are caused by the operation of demons. But the demons have no more power to prevent the marriage act than other bodily actions; and these they cannot prevent, for thus they would upset the whole world if they hindered eating and walking and the like. Therefore they cannot hinder marriage by spells.
Reply to Objection 1. The first corruption of sin whereby man became the slave of the devil was transmitted to us by the act of the generative power, and for this reason God allows the devil to exercise his power of witchcraft in this act more than in others. Even so the power of witchcraft is made manifest in serpents more than in other animals according to Gn. 3, since the devil tempted the woman through a serpent.



http://www.newadvent.org/summa/505802.htm





Point 4: False Comparative

Besides the fact that the Malleus is not a legitimate insight to Church doctrine, there is also the fact that comparing the Malleus to the NT manuscripts is inappropriate. Due to technological differences (including papyrus vs. parchment, the use of the printing press, and techniques in bookbinding) and social differences (the NT writers being a heavily persecuted underclass vs. the Malleus printers being part of the dominant class), it is obvious that the Malleus will survive longer than the original manuscripts of the NT.

Littlefoot: I don't see what your point is here. I am merely saying that the malleus has not been altered, re written, had something lost in the translation etc. This is a necesary point for those making the argument from history.



Quote:
They were not spotting witches behind every rock and tree and executing on a whim. They state that

Quote:
THE second method of delivering judgement is to be employed when he or she who is accused, after a diligent discussion of the merits of the case in consultation with learned lawyers, is found to be no more than defamed as a heretic in some village, town, or province


www.malleusmaleficarum.or...3_21a.html

These were people who knew the serious implications and burdens of their job and conducted themselves as such.


Point five: An-historical Assumption

It is frequently assumed that the Catholic Church was the "key player" in the persecution of "witches"--nothing could be further from the case. Most of the Witch Craze was the result of peasant superstitions and folk beliefs, quite a bit of it contradicting Catholic doctrine.

Littlefoot: the only argument i've seen seems to concern exactly how these witches had their power, not that they did. Even if the malleus didn't have church approval (and the bull would suggest that for a while it did) its still the report of eyewitnesses and would match the eyewitness claims that some christians make for the bible.


It has indeed lately come to Our ears, not without afflicting Us with bitter sorrow, that in some parts of Northern Germany, as well as in the provinces, townships, territories, districts, and dioceses of Mainz, Cologne, Tréves, Salzburg, and Bremen, many persons of both sexes, unmindful of their own salvation and straying from the Catholic Faith, have abandoned themselves to devils, incubi and succubi, and by their incantations, spells, conjurations, and other accursed charms and crafts, enormities and horrid offences, have slain infants yet in the mother's womb, as also the offspring of cattle, have blasted the produce of the earth, the grapes of the vine, the fruits of the trees, nay, men and women, beasts of burthen, herd-beasts, as well as animals of other kinds, vineyards, orchards, meadows, pasture-land, corn, wheat, and all other cereals; these wretches furthermore afflict and torment men and women, beasts of burthen, herd-beasts, as well as animals of other kinds, with terrible and piteous pains and sore diseases, both internal and external; they hinder men from performing the sexual act and women from conceiving, whence husbands cannot know their wives nor wives receive their husbands; over and above this, they blasphemously renounce that Faith which is theirs by the Sacrament of Baptism, and at the instigation of the Enemy of Mankind they do not shrink from committing and perpetrating the foulest abominations and filthiest excesses to the deadly peril of their own souls, whereby they outrage the Divine Majesty and are a cause of scandal and danger to very many.

http://www.malleusmaleficarum.org/mm00e.html

Littlefoot: thats a papal bull. I don't think they had a stronger statement at the time. I'm hard pressed to come up with a reasoning for your assertation of an a-historical source here.






Surprisingly enough, the Catholic Church actually did far more to protect those who were accused of witchcraft than to seek out and destroy them. In the 17th century, at least two Edicts of Silence were issued by the Spanish Inquisition--these edicts forbade any accusations of witchcraft.

Littlefoot: thats 116 + years after the malleus. Just because the church changed its doctrine is not a call to be listing off logical falicies on my part.



Quote:
If you accept witches and witchcraft as real, then what is there to prevent jesus having faked his death or returned after the event through sorcery, illusion, or trickery? The very specialness, uniqueness and very reason for believing that jesus is god on the basis of his ability to ressurect himself goes right out the window if other people posses the supernatural ability to either confuse the eye witnesses or perform the event for real.


Point six: Straw Man Fallacy, Reloaded

The treatement of "witchcraft" as a historical reality, based on the evidence you presented, is the straw man. In attempting to equate the putative resurrection of Jesus (which you do not believe in) with witchcraft (which you also do not believe in), and then debunking the straw man, you've yet to say anything substantive about the possibilities of the resurrection.

Littlefoot: This entire line is based on the assumption that the argument is a strawman: it is not. I did not make the argument, modern day christians have.

I am attempting to demonstrate one of the following possibilities

1) The resurection of jesus does not meet sufficeint standards to be beleived on the weight of the historical evidence alone, and the argument from history goes right out the window. If someone is not making the argument from history, none of this is a problem for them.

2) The events descrived in both the malleus and the bible meet a set standard for being historical events. In this case witches are real. At this point i would ask the christian how they could determine that jesus was not himself a witch or sorcerer.

3) That the christian is using a different standard for the bible than other historical works. This negates the argument from history because the christian proponent of that argument is being disingenuous.




Quote:
I can only hear god if i accept. I can only accept if i can understand. i can only understand if i hear god. There appearsto be a hole in the bucket dear
johny...


Yeppers ... unfortunately in this case, the "hole in the bucket" is one of your crafting.

Littlefoot: thats my sig file. I don't see how i made the hole there.


Littlefoot, it was a well-intended paper, but I really fear that the main souce of the weakness was three-fold:
1: A general lack of understanding of the history of the Church;

Littlefoot: If you are going to make that claim i insist you back it with something other than your own assertation. I don't like being told i failed at something i set out to do. You interpret a change after a century as the church's "real" position on witchcraft: I do not and don't think its fair to be slighted for the disagrement.



2: Confusion between "rhetoric" and "logic";

Littlefoot: would you kindly point out what you think the difference is supposed to be and what you think i was using on my part?

3: Perhaps an underlying hostility to Christians and/or Christianity?

Now, I'm not at all sure about the hostility: your post certainly sounds hostile and derisive, but of course I'm behind the "ASCII wall," and may be reading something into the text that is not present. If you do not bear Christianity any hostility, then I apologize for mis-reading your essay.

Littlefoot: i get that alot on just about everything i write. I think too directly and too straitforward, people mistake that for hostility. I veiw arguments as a mosh bit: bashing into each other in good fun.

Littlefoot, it may sound like I'm criticizing you on a personal level: I'm certainly not intending to, and I hope that my post does not resemble a personal dig. If you want to look at it this way, consider my reply to your post as a (very circumspect and respectful) example of the debate you'ld get presenting this on a Theistic forum.

With respect,

Vorkosigan

There's too much stuff here. You should break this thread into separate pieces. Otherwise the ensuing buildup of reply and counter-reply will expand beyond anyone's ability to control, and you'll find yourselves arguing about things you actually agree on.

Vorkosigan

Justin

Hi, Littlefoot, thank you for responding.

Oh, it wasn't a complaint, certainly. I just didn't want to get confused as to who said what, so I did that for my own clarification.

As for the quote tags ... well, I'm a computer programmer, so I tend to "cheat" and type them in by hand. The easiest way to see the quote tags in action is to hit the little "quote" button at the bottom of the post you're replying to. At the top of the text box, you'll see the word "quote" in square brackets (the two keys to the right of the letter P on a standard keyboard), and at the bottom you'll see the same thing, except it will have a slash before the word quote.

For me it's easiest to hand-code the quotes, but it's optional--if you don't feel the need to do fancy stuff with the tags, don't worry about it. No big deal.


:shrug: Then be prepared to write a lot of articles that get ignored by your intended audience. If you want someone to actually evaluate and listen to your point of view, then you'd better learn to write to the target audience--if you just want to make bombastic articles that make you feel good about your rejection of their arguments, then you're on exactly the same logical level of the Christian who writes bombastic articles that make them feel good that you're "going to hell," and they're not.

Sorry ... that sounds hostile, and I don't mean it to, but I don't have any other way to phrase it. I can't see argument as a "mosh pit" (cute analogy on your part), and in part, that's why: I've seen too many Christians who want to bludgeon people into intellectual submission, and it doesn't sit well with me.

Logic is a method of analyzing thought and argument: one of it's purposes (among others) is to analyze statements to ensure consistancy. Used properly, it can even be helpful in finding truth in certain areas of inquiry. Rhetoric is the study of argument--by connotation, rhetoric can use logic, but can also use quote-mining, spin, and even dissembling and disingenuity. The only thing that matters in rhetoric is winning the argument.

For some people, rhetoric is fun: they like arguing, they argue to win, and they use any and all tools available, whether those tools are actually logical or not. If that's where you're at, cool--have fun. It's not a hobby I personally enjoy, but tastes differ. However, if you're interested in rhetoric, ignore my critique--it would remove some of the more effective rhetorical weapons that are at your disposal.

Justin

Clutch

At the same time, argument by labelling is thoroughly pointless, and the principle of charity is central to well-meaning discussions of the sort you claim to value.

Consider: it is certainly a rhetorical flourish, one adding no rational force, to say, "...if Christians are being honest with their methodology...". But it is uncharitable (in the argumentation sense) to dismiss the subsequent point on the grounds of the ad hominem flavour of the rhetoric. The point could be framed just as well in terms of a requirement of consistency, not honesty; indeed, this seems to have been the intent, but you do not consider the point at all.

The complaint that not all Christians advance the arguments targetted is at most an attenuation of the OP's relevance -- not a vitiation of it. The post is aimed at those holding the views engaged, who are, if not a majority, at least the most vocal and politically powerful minority. That some do not hold those views is hardly a critical flaw in the arguments themselves; to claim otherwise is a non-sequitur.

Many of your specific claims amount to little more than blanket assertions about academics, logic, and so forth. They do not seem particularly accurate. For example, there is certainly no general academic view on the question of extraordinary claims and extraordinary evidence. Understood as a point about probabilities, though, it is not outrageous to state that the claim that a low-probability event has occurred requires more support for rational acceptability than the claim that a high-probability event has occurred.

I was little moved by littlefoot's arguments, and less moved by yours, where they exist.

Littlefoot

[QUOTE=Justin]Hi, Littlefoot, thank you for responding.



Oh, it wasn't a complaint, certainly. I just didn't want to get confused as to who said what, so I did that for my own clarification.

As for the quote tags ... well, I'm a computer programmer, so I tend to "cheat" and type them in by hand. The easiest way to see the quote tags in action is to hit the little "quote" button at the bottom of the post you're replying to. At the top of the text box, you'll see the word "quote" in square brackets (the two keys to the right of the letter P on a standard keyboard), and at the bottom you'll see the same thing, except it will have a slash before the word quote.


Littlefoot: i think there's a step here you're leaving out.. something always goes wrong with those things.


For me it's easiest to hand-code the quotes, but it's optional--if you don't feel the need to do fancy stuff with the tags, don't worry about it. No big deal.




:shrug: Then be prepared to write a lot of articles that get ignored by your intended audience. If you want someone to actually evaluate and listen to your point of view, then you'd better learn to write to the target audience--if you just want to make bombastic articles that make you feel good about your rejection of their arguments, then you're on exactly the same logical level of the Christian who writes bombastic articles that make them feel good that you're "going to hell," and they're not.

Littlefoot: including the point that quite frequently christians use a double standard when making the argument from history is certainly a valid point to bring up when discussing their argument.

I am attempting to stop before it starts the idea i've frequently come accross that the bible can be argued historically by its own special catagory of history. That is hardly on the level of saying that someone is going to hell, or is apriori wrong because they don't beleive in god. If someone doesn't want the accusation to apply then they can always say that they are using one set of standards for historical evidence of both types.




Sorry ... that sounds hostile, and I don't mean it to, but I don't have any other way to phrase it. I can't see argument as a "mosh pit" (cute analogy on your part), and in part, that's why: I've seen too many Christians who want to bludgeon people into intellectual submission, and it doesn't sit well with me.

Littlefoot: I've never seen an argument/debate that didn't wind up that way. however thick the velvet over the gauntlet.




Logic is a method of analyzing thought and argument: one of it's purposes (among others) is to analyze statements to ensure consistancy. Used properly, it can even be helpful in finding truth in certain areas of inquiry.

Rhetoric is the study of argument--by connotation, rhetoric can use logic, but can also use quote-mining, spin, and even dissembling and disingenuity. The only thing that matters in rhetoric is winning the argument.

.




or some people, rhetoric is fun: they like arguing, they argue to win, and they use any and all tools available, whether those tools are actually logical or not. If that's where you're at, cool--have fun. It's not a hobby I personally enjoy, but tastes differ. However, if you're interested in rhetoric, ignore my critique--it would remove some of the more effective rhetorical weapons that are at your disposal.

Littlefoot: Ok, so you're basically accusing me of making a species argument that appeals to psycology rather than the facts? While i don't claim to go on pure logic (i think its mostly useless in something as complecated as real life situations) i do think that everything i've presented is a REASON to beleive what i'm saying without polemics

this is what i want to lead into with my if statement

outline:

IF christians are using the same method of historical interpretation to conclude THEN they should conclude the malleus describes historical events as well.

(provide evidence that the malleus does meet criterea given to me by christians and the above statement is true)

Two conclusions can be reached if those work

1) (my personal veiw) That the above methods are insufficient to determine something far outside our experience as a historical fact and the argument from history fails.

2) The events described in both the malleus and the bible are historical events. Thus witches weilding supernatural powers exist. It would thus become difficult for christians to rule out jesus, or in fact any supernatural even in the bible, from being the work of sorcerers.


The only real offence i've taken is at the comment from ahistorical sources.

Littlefoot

[QUOTE=Clutch]At the same time, argument by labelling is thoroughly pointless, and the principle of charity is central to well-meaning discussions of the sort you claim to value.

Consider: it is certainly a rhetorical flourish, one adding no rational force, to say, "...if Christians are being honest with their methodology...".


Littlefoot: thanks for the comment, and advice. that wording would certainly be much better.

it is not outrageous to state that the claim that a low-probability event has occurred requires more support for rational acceptability than the claim that a high-probability event has occurred.

Littlefoot: I can't seem to understand the resistance i'm getting on that point. Do you know of a historian that would back that? It seems something so simple to me i don't think that they would bother to state it.

Sven

For each text block you want to quote, you need a quote at the beginning in square brackets [], and a /quote at the end, also in square brackets. Substitute b for quote and you get text in bold face (that's how I made the above appear in bold), substitute i for quote and you get text in italics. Hope that helps - because your posts are almost unreadable.

Peter Kirby

To make it a bit more clear:

[QUOTE]
This is material written by the other guy.
[/QUOTE]

This is my comment.

best,
Peter Kirby