Roger Pearse

None of these statements are correct, tho, and all these issues have been done to death in other theads.

All the best,

Roger Pearse

judge

You still have failed to come up with anything specific at all. If it's all the same I have better things to do. This is turning into a watse of time.


I was hoping you had something better than Google.

all the best.

Sauron

Oh, please. You know Peter as well as anyone. If the above were your actual goal -- trying to understand what he meant -- then why poison the well (and the atmosphere) by creating a fictitious list of unreasonable positions and asking Peter "is this really what you mean"?

I mean, *really*, Layman - "Have you stopped beating your wife lately" type of comments/questions?
Directed at Peter?

How, uh, *lawyerly* of you.

In the first place, nothing in Peter's statement amounts to an automatic exclusion of clergy.

In the second place, you went far beyond just asking about clergy:

Would all members of dogmatic sects simply be banned from contributing or would they have to fill out a form pledging faith in Kirby's methodological naturalistic creed as the only proper way to conduct history?

Should Infidels ban apologists and dogmatic Christians from contributing to this forum?

Are you going to ban comments on your Christian Origins website by apologists and dogmatic Christians? Perhaps you could have some sort of registration form declaring the resurrection to be a later Christian development before anyone could leave a comment?

Hyperbole Olympics, Layman style.

Which explains the blue text above, naturally. Because you considered the above to actually be something Peter would potentially consider.

Strawman. Peter's proposal wasn't based upon any power to enforce a point of view. It was based upon creating a hypothetical circle that included some people as serious contributors whose work should be accepted, and excluded others based upon a confessionary position that obstructed honest research.

Caught red-handed in exaggeration and hyperbole about Peter's rather innocent idea, you're backtracking heavily now.

Sauron

Uh, yes. I did. What I reported about muslims is just as specific as what christians have said about their own personal experiences.

As I suspected - when confronted with supernatural experiences from another religion that contradict christian claims, you're trapped. You cannot deny them their validity, without raising the same validity issue about christian experiences.

No, you were hoping I wouldn't respond, because now you have to make excuses and exit the debate.

Sauron

Never mind.

judge

If you think so.

I think I have a bit more personal experience in these things than yourself ,so I was hoping to get something more substantial from yourself.

It is actually an area of great interest to myself. However I think one has to explore these things for onesel (to some degree at least) rather than rely on google


Again I still have nothing specific to go on.


Whether you respond or not doesn't matter to me. As I mention this is genuinely an area of great interest to me,.
I'm not trying to win an argument or look good anonymously with another anonymous person on an internet forum.

I mean who really cares about that?
One needs IMHO to investigate things for oneself to find the truth often.
However you are just relying on google.

One needs to think for oneself and be open. I just don't understand how reading something on google convinces you of much in this area...and google is the only reference you have given.

Sauron

Just going off the evidence.

You don't.

Apparently not, since you are unaware of the muslim experience I have described. And now, instead of addressing that experience, you continue to stall.

A good idea. Go read up on the muslim experience, and then come back when you're ready to discuss it. If you want to use Google, that's OK too - I suggested it only as a way to remove your crutch.

Uh, yes you do.

Are you kidding? Millions of Muslims claim to have had personal experiences with Allah, who has revealed his Messenger to them. In fact, the usual comment I have heard is that "the words of the Prophet burned within us as we read them."

Let's see what creative excuse you manufacture this time.

Oh sure it is, judge. That's why you're ignorant of the muslim experience, and that's why you're desperate to avoid answering the original question.

What you're trying to do is apparent, judge: you're trying to avoid being checkmated for your earlier comment. As I said: when confronted with supernatural experiences from another religion that contradict christian claims, you're trapped. You cannot deny them their validity, without raising the same validity issue about christian experiences.

Uh, no. I'm not. The fact that I told you to go look it up on Google does not mean that is where I get my information from -- a point that would be obvious from my post, since I mentioned having heard / read the testimonies of these people.

But at heart, you're hoping to avoid directly discussing their supernatural experiences. You're worried because you know you can't discount them, without simultaneously putting your own beliefs under the microscope for the same reasons.

How lame. Here we see judge trying to throw Google into the air as many times as he can, hoping to distract everyone from his disingenuous behavior in failing to address the muslim experience.

gurugeorge

Absolutely spot on - except I'd just add that nearly every religion wants similar exemption for themselves from coming under rationalist scrutiny. This is because everybody wants a "piece of the action", everybody wants to be associated with the power of rationalism, the evident power that can do such impressive things as make aeroplanes, sewage systems, guns, penicillin, particle accellerators, relatively prosperous democracies, etc., etc.

Rationalism being a sort set of rules for thinking and investigating the world, religions therefore want to claim that they, too, are rational because they follow those rules - they want to elbow their way into the "club" of rationalists.

But religion is not a way of investigating the world, it is a way of saying we already have all the answers we need, and they have already been given by Prophet X or Avatar Y. It is the profession of a set of ideas that already purport to explain the world, without any investigation being necessary. Investigation is meant only to confirm and glorify the received view.

This is totally opposed to the spirit of rationalism that infuses historical inquiry. For this kind of inquiry, the answers are not already given, and investigation is meant to discover a truth that is presumed to be not necessarily easily known, not necessarily obvious, and may even be difficult to find.

Brother Daniel

In other words: "If God exists, then why wouldn't you take seriously claims that are against all evidence? Again, if God exists, then if you didn't take into account the possibility that the truth might be different from what the evidence points to, you'd be getting your history wrong, wouldn't you?"

Much of history may be wrong in any case. That's no excuse to turn away from evidence; evidence is all we have.

And yes, if you posit a deceptive God -- a God who deliberately arranges things so that the evidence points away from the truth -- then we are likely to be even more wrong. (But then it would be God's will for us to be wrong, and who can fight that?) Why would your preferred supernatural claims (i.e., rebellions against evidence) happen to be the right ones?

(If I'm misinterpreting you, then please clarify. Hint: You might want to spell out your preferred definition of supernatural.)
Are you suggesting that we should give up the study of history as utterly intractible? I would suggest that most participants in this forum would find that solution unsatisfying, at the very least.

Or are you merely speculating that future evidence might lend support -- support that is currently lacking -- to your view of history? Anyone, no matter how outlandish their opinions, could say the same thing. That speculation adds nothing to the discussion.
Feel free to provide an argument, if you have one.

Solitary Man

You mean you never made a claim at all? Wow, and all this time I thought I claimed that YOUR CLAIM was illogical. And then I showed it, and you, despite claiming otherwise, have yet to show a) how I've created a strawman, and b) that your original claim is logically sound.

Shift the burden all you want. Insult me all you can. That's all you've been doing. Calling names - that's how I know you've got nothing to stand on.