rhutchin

Better expressed as--

- The Bible provides a person information with which to make decisions.

- One assumes the risk of not accepting as true information that is true.

- A person has faith when he cannot personally validate an outcome on which he takes a position (e.g., that which happens to a person after death).

- The Bible is true if it provides true information.

The Evil One

No. You don't get it. Let me try again. It is NOT "my opinion" that the word of a human being, taken alone, does not count for much.

It is an objective fact about the nature of evidence that the word of a human being, taken alone, does not count for much.

This is a fact because it is the inevitable outcome of the following observations:

- Humans sometimes lie.
- Humans are sometimes mistaken about things they think are true.
- Humans are sometimes deluded about things they think are true.
- It is frequently not possible to tell, from observation of a human's testimony, whether the human who produced it was lying, mistaken, or deluded.

From these four facts it inevitably follows that the unsupported testimony of a human being is one of the weakest types of evidence. This is not something I have "determined" or "chosen" for myself. It is a fact.

If you want to oppose this deduction, you can either claim that humans are never deluded/mistaken/deceptive, or that it is always easily detectable when humans are deluded/mistaken/deceptive. If you do attempt to claim either of these things then please be prepared to back it up because you will be flying in the face of universal experience.

The unreliability of unsupported human testimony is so well-established a fact that nations have actually enshrined it, in one form or another, in their laws of evidence, where it is used to decide the most serious of matters (guilt or innocence, life or death).

It may be the way your system operates. Please don't project on to those of us in touch with the reality of the nature of evidence.

Johnny Skeptic

Message to rhutchin: Why should anyone pay attention to the Bible? If a man rejects the Bible, no credible evidence exists that there are risks in doing so. Even if there are risks in doing so, no decent man can will himself to accept a God who has committed numerous atrocities against humanity. If God told lies, you would not be able to love him, and yet you ask people to love a God who has committed numerous atrocities against mankind.

Why do you think that God deliberately withholds information from some people what would cause them to accept it if they were aware of it? What, if any benefits do God and mankind derive from this questionable behavior?

There is not sufficient evidence that God is not evil. Paul says that Satan masquerades as an angel of light, but there is no credible evidence that Paul could have known whether or not Satan is an angel of light, or whether or not God is an angel of light. The odds are no better than even that God is who the Bible says he is. Jesus said in order for a man to become saved, he must love God with all of his heart, soul, and mind. Logically, a commitment like that is not possible based upon no better than even odds.

You said that people can ask God for help. Does that include asking him to stop creating hurricanes and killing people with them? Does that include asking him to stop people from being injured or killed in automobile accidents that are not their fault?

There is not any credible evidence that asking God for tangible benefits ever works. It appears that the odds are at least even that today, all tangible benefits are distributed entirely at random according to the laws of physics? If God distributes tangible benefits, for some strange reason he frequently distributes them without any regard for a person's needs or worldview. In such a case, that is not rational behavior for a loving God. In fact, it would mean that God is evil, or mentally incompetent. Even Attila the Hun did not kill his own faithful followers.

Genetically, or by some other means, God has ensured that everyone must sin at least some of the time, so you can't claim that if no one sinned, God would never hurt anyone, or allow them to be hurt.

Julian

Errr... No. Science, nature, and facts as far as we can measure and verify them, do not care one bit about anybody's opinion. That's the whole point of the scientific method: provide evidence for your position. Something that the Aristotelians were entirely unable to do, empiricism being a foreign concept to them. Aristotle single-handedly set back science by almost 2,000 years. Well, him and the devotees who followed him down the centuries, men of little wisdom and enormous egos.

Maybe you think that the circumference of the Earth is subject to opinion? The distance to the moon? The force of Earth's gravity at sea level?

Please, don't attempt to answer those questions.

Julian

ETA: Just to clarify my earlier post. Although the church, in the form of the Congregation of the Index and the Holy Inquisition with the compliance of the Pope, did the damage, cheered on by the Aristotelians, there were quite a number of church people who liked and supported Galileo. In fact, it was to a large extent due to the beneficial encouragement of Piccolomini, the Archbishop of Siena, that Galileo recovered from his laughable trial and went on to produce 'Two New Sciences.'

seebs

Paul made this point a LONG time ago.

Christianity is plagued with people who want to close the door behind them when they come in. *sigh*

People often think of Christianity as practiced as being full of hypocrites, but in fact, there is plenty of room for more.

Julian

To corroborate this, it bears ponting out that Anecdotal Evidence and Testimonial Evidence, which is what is being talked about here, constitutes a logical fallacy when used as evidence, because any such statements cannot be verified scientifically. In other words, such evidence, being limited in representation by its very nature, does not constitute evidence in any measure since it cannot be used to draw reliable, statistically valid inferences. This is why television commercials almost always rely on such support and medical trials never do.

For a historical testimony, which is almost always limited, one must weigh the plausibilty of the claims, consider any archaeological evidence, any causal and resulting events, reasonable social context, and many other factors to arrive at a tentative conclusion.

To make a decision on the nature of the universe, morals, ethics, lifestyle, and a host of other significant points, on the basis on any historical claim or writing, even under the best of circumstances, is not only irrational, it is downright dangerous.

Julian

Julian

The problem for you moderates is that the fanatics, hypocrits, and fundamentalists are far, far louder and exceptionally more active, drowning you out in the process. It is as much your problem as it is ours, the way I see it. Nothing like zeal, especially of a religious nature, to motivate you to elbow obstacles (read: moderate and reasonable christians) out of the way. The more you understand, the more thoughtful you get. Compare the fundamentalist to the less vociferous bystanders/believers...

I think we can be forgiven for occasionally confusing christianity with its more 'prominent' members, they are, after all, who we are bound to hear.

Just sayin'

Julian

JPD

No you haven't really improved on anything there - you've just rephrased it in a transparent attempt to make the content of your Bible sound more likely to be the truth.

You should apply those same arguments to every piece of text in existence whether it makes the claim or not. Surely you wouldn't take the chance of dismissing a piece of work because it doesn't tell you directly and explicitly that you must believe X, Y and Z? But why stop there? You are so fond of trying to make everything in the Bible sound just great - your attempts to make Biblegod sound just are laughable and invariably culminate in "Well it's your risk / we can't judge God by our standards / God is good (the last 2 standing in appropriate contradiction of one another)." I gave the example of the rabbit with lazer eyes earlier on - you didn't deal with it at all - the best you could do was say that it was low risk. You were unable to dismiss it as zero risk. You are going to have - if you take the Biblical risk seriously - to deal with every other potential risk in (or beyond) existence and work out the approximate risk non-belief in it carries. Or perhaps you have determined that, because of your belief in the Bible, and what it tells you, that all other risks should be ignored, ie. that this is the one true risk. Your argument is so poor as to carry negligible weight.

rhutchin

I made the statements more complete and less liable to misunderstanding. Your original statements were not the best that you could have done in explaining the situation.

I agree. The presumption of truth should prevail until determined otherwise.

Not really. I want everyone to understand that whicht he Bible says because people must make decisions based on what the Bible says and those decisions have eternal consequences.

OK. So what's the issue? Let's take a current topic - global warming. Everyone basically agrees that it is getting warmer, on average, in the world. There is big disagreement about the effects on man's activities on this warming and whether man can change his activities to make a difference. Some people assign low risk to doing nothing (i.e., letting nature run its course) and others view this as a high risk option. Neither side can assign a "zero" risk to any position because no one can really prove what is happening. So, you claim that a rabbit with lazer eyes exists and that poses a danger to me. Do I call you a liar without first determining that you are lying? I don't see why. Instead, I determine how many people have been zapped by this rabbit and based on that, I assign a low risk to the danger. Nonetheless, I still don't have sufficient evidence to assign zero risk. If you state that you made it up and it is all a lie, then I can assign zero risk.

OK. All people have to deal with everything. That's life. My argument is directed to the decision that I make. It carries great weight with me. Your arguments carry great weight with you. Each of us assigns risk in making decisions. We each assume the risk of making a bad decision and we both, presumably, seek to lessen the risk of a bad decision as much as possible. Do you think that you are doing something different?

rhutchin

Regardless whether there are moderates, conservatives, liberals, fanatics, hypocrits, fundamentalists, etc. anyone can read the Bible for themselves. It does not matter how loud a person is or how others view him. What matters is whether he is telling the truth. Why listen to anyone? Let everyone read the Bible and make their own decisions.