crocodile deathroll

I my case it was the tooth fairy and Santa Clause the first to go, because at least they did not threaten me with eternal damnation if I doubted their existence.

CD

uhcord

<a href="http://www.cygnus-study.com/" target="_blank">http://www.cygnus-study.com/</a>

Nice little site about the bible

ex-preacher

To anyone using common sense, there are hundreds of contradictions in the Bible. To anyone who is committed to seeing the Bible as inerrant, each of the contradictions can be explained away using a set of hermeneutical rules which render any document inerrant. Even if all the "apparent contraditions" turn out to be solvable (which they don't) one must still wonder: What kind of perverse God would allow so many apparent contradictions into his Bible? Is he trying to fool honest searchers?

I would encourage you to read Mark 2:25-26 and compare it to 1 Samuel 21. Jesus makes three errors regarding the events in 1 Sam 21. They are so blindingly obvious, I'll let you spot them. Given these contradictions, one of the following must be true:

1. 1 Samuel is mistaken.

2. Jesus was mistaken.

3. The author of Mark was mistaken.

To top it off, both David and Jesus engage in situational ethics, thereby undermining the Christian claim to absolute morality.

[edited to correct biblical reference - Mark 2, not Mark 3]

[ March 30, 2002: Message edited by: ex-preacher ]</p>

madmax2976

<strong> Once again Atticus has failed to support his own case before asking others to support something else. Please support your claim that anyone knew something was a lie and died for it. Please support that anyone who was killing people because of their beliefs cared one iota whether they changed those beliefs or not.

Once you have supported these things, THEN we discuss what's more likely - someone being crazy enough to die for a lie or someone rising from the dead. I'll be happy to argue why the probabilities for the former are a whole lot higher than those of the latter.

Really Atticus, Josh McDowell is an extremely poor apologist. You could better than his type of well refuted arguments.

GunnerJ

Sadly, it seems Atticus has scampered off, maybe to lick his wounds. I only regret that I never got the entertainment of seeing him try to refute my arguments. See ya, Finch, and say hi to Metacrock for me!

Great job, people! Score one more for the good guys!

[ March 30, 2002: Message edited by: Rimstalker ]</p>

Malaclypse the Younger

MINSTREL: [singing] Brave Sir Robin ran away,
ROBIN: No!
MINSTREL: [singing] Bravely ran away, away.
ROBIN: I didn't!
MINSTREL: [singing] When danger reared its ugly head, he bravely turned his tail and fled.
ROBIN: No!
MINSTREL: [singing] Yes, brave Sir Robin turned about
ROBIN: I didn't!
MINSTREL: [singing] And gallantly, he chickened out. Bravely taking to his feet,
ROBIN: I never did!
MINSTREL: [singing] He beat a very brave retreat,
ROBIN: All lies!
MINSTREL: [singing] Bravest of the brave, Sir Robin.
ROBIN: I never!

[ March 30, 2002: Message edited by: Malaclypse the Younger ]</p>

crocodile deathroll

Why did an Xtian God have to reveal him self to just a rag tag bunch of tribesman in the Middle East and rely them to spread the word on the backs of donkeys to Rome, centuries later with Roman sailing vessels to the far west of Europe, eventually then by the Spanish Conquistadors to the New World in the 15th century AD and not until the 20th century these Evangelists overcome the language barrier of 800 languages in New Guinea to spread the word of the "Lord" there.
Why did this Global Conversion need to be so laboriously slow!

CD

Tercel

Theli,

Whether intelligences are "order" in and of themselves is debatable. I would argue that an intelligence is an irreducible and basic concept which can not be defined in terms of things like "order". But it is clear that intelligences do a good job of creating order.

I'm inclined to think you're sidetracking the argument here a bit. I was arguing that if the Christian God exists then the world should be orderly and by contrast if naturalism is true then it makes no predictions as to the orderliness or otherwise of the universe. And that therefore we do not have to assume naturalism to accept the existence of order in the universe.

I am NOT arguing that "The universe has order therefore it requires a designer". -That would seem to me to be a very bad version of a combination of the cosmological and design arguments.

Something like that is usually extremely hard to evaluate.
There is no universally obvious and undeniable proof that is accepted by everyone - otherwise no one would be a naturalist, would they? However, I believe that there are good and sufficient reasons to believe that the Christian God has an influence on our universe and hence I'm a Christian. I also think there are a number of problems inherent in the atheist/naturalist world-view, and even if I wasn't a Christian I doubt I could accept such a view.

There are a huge number of considerations that come into evaluating this sort of thing, all of which provide varying degrees of evidence or probabilities. There are all sorts of Natural Theology arguments for supernaturalism (arguments which don't require any specific revelation on God's part) such as the Cosmological, Ontological, Fine Tuning, Pervasive Simplicity, Consciousness, Logic, Meanings, Objective Morality etc. Then there are the arguments from specific revelations such as Miracles (Scientifically investigated ones, as well as those in Personal Testimonies and historically investigated ones) or subjective Religious Experiences (either had by you, or recounted by others in Personal Testimonies) etc. And, of course, arguments involving the historicity of important points in the Bible such as the argument for the Resurrection (which I'm arguing an extremely brief version of at the moment with you), the Trilemma etc. Then there are the miscellaneous considerations of such things like the Shroud of Turin, the power of the Christian world-view to explain the world (eg Science, the character of human nature), After Death Experiences etc

Obviously not all of these arguments are equal, some I think provide good evidence, others not so good. Perhaps in your or others opinions many of the arguments are completely worthless. All the things I listed above, I see as providing at least a little evidence of supernaturalism. Some of the arguments I find all but absolutely convincing alone (I'm a fan in particular of the Consciousness, Miracles, and Religious Experiences arguments), however it is the Cumulative weight of the arguments which for me really drives the point home. Each argument adds it's own little bit of evidence and they add up to give evidence which I see as being beyond all remotely reasonable doubt. After all, if even a single instance of any one of the above arguments is true then supernaturalism is true.


Anyway, on to my short rendition of a version of the argument for the Resurrection.

I'm not sure that people necessarily have such preferences: Simply calling yourself a prophet seems to have always been good enough before that to get peoples' attention. The idea that Jesus was God doesn't seem to have gone down very well with the Jews either, far from making them listen to Jesus it seems to have inspired them to kill him for blasphemy.

However the Jews believed in the same God as the Christians, yet the Jews were not persecuted for their beliefs when the Christians were.

Jesus had a brother named James. (Not to be confused with James the son of Zebedee and brother of John) What's the problem?

Some (possibly all) Catholics (as I understand it) believe that Mary remained a virgin always and that whenever Jesus' brothers and sisters are referred to it actually means Jesus' Cousins or half-brothers and half-sisters (Presumably the children of Joseph and a previous wife). Is this what you're asking about? I see no problem with Jesus having full-blooded brothers and sisters as long as Jesus is the oldest child of course - the virgin birth and all.

A "supernatural" or "miraculous" event is where an entity outside the universe interferes with the universe. Agreed?
Hence the claim that God intervened in the natural order and raised Jesus Christs from the dead in vindication of Christs claims and nature is a supernatural one.
However, no where in your description of your alleged event do you mention supernatural interference:
<strong>"If I said that I was on Jupiter the other day picking strawberries with Stalin, would you believe me?"</strong>
The event is simply presented by itself with no supernatural context whatsoever. As it stands it's pretty absurd, you were on Jupiter (with no explanation/reason given on how you got there) were picking strawberries there (no explanation/reason is given as to why there are strawberries on Jupiter) and an alive Stalin was there (with no explanation/reason given as to (a). How Stalin was alive, and (b). why he was on Jupiter) and apparently you are now back from Jupiter (with no explanation/reason given as to how you got back).
The story would be hugely more believable if you could at least provide some basic answers to those questions, even if they were only something like "God did it". Of course that immediately raises the question of "Why did God do it?", "Why you?", "Has he done anything like it before?", "Why haven't other people experienced the same thing?", "How do you know the answers to these questions?".

Even if you could give reasonable answers to all these questions, you are asking me to accept an entire metaphysical system based on one claim by one person who I don't know very well at all - and hence could easily be insane or lying for all I know.

Yes. The resurrection of Jesus occurs in the context of the Jewish and Christian traditions and has a perfectly plausible explanations/answers to all the above questions regarding the context. It is apparently attested by multiple witnesses and despite persecution for their belief in it's truth none of those witnesses' recanted their testimony and many of them were even killed because their testimony. These witnesses were also known as people of great integrity, founders of a religion which places a great emphasis on improvement of character, love, morality and truth and has probably contributed as much to our culture’s appreciation of these things than all other sources combined.
The secular writer Pliny (c112AD) writing to the Emperor Trajan on the subject of Pliny’s persecution of Christians recounts his understanding of the Christian practices as follows: “they had been accustomed to assemble on a fixed day before day light and sing by turns a hymn to Christ as a god; and that they bound themselves with an oath, not for any crime, but to commit neither theft, nor robbery, nor adultery, not to break their word and not to deny a deposit when demanded”

Overall the allegation of any major deliberate deception by all the alleged witnesses would seem to be unlikely in the extreme, and the multiplicity of witnesses would seem to rule out completely any idea of insanity or hallucination as explanations.
Certainly the Resurrection of Jesus would seem to have reached a sufficient level of credibility to make it seriously worthy of further investigation.

There are numerous problems with any theory involving lying. If multiple people use the same lie, then it must surely be some sort of conspiracy. It is unclear that these people had anything to gain by such a conspiracy but it is clear that their testimony cost many of them persecution and some death. A recantation of their testimonies by any of these conspirators would no doubt have been devastating to the fledgling movement and would doubtless have been recorded in triumph by the persecutors and the person would probably be recorded as a traitor by any of the Christian writers. Yet these conspirators were not what we would expect of such dishonest deceivers, far from it: As I mentioned above: in all else they emphasised honesty and integrity. Their leader was known by all as "James the Just" and widely respected for his character outside of the Christian movement. These conspirators were clearly incompetent also: According to them the first witnesses to their Messiah's resurrection were women. That was a very stupid thing to do in 1st century Judea. While we regard a women's testimony as equivalent to a man's, at the time women didn't have a high legal status and they were considered as unreliable witnesses in any court of law - that is, when they were even accepted as legitimate witnesses. The conspirators in all their cunning as they derived their web of carefully constructed lies were stupid enough to decided to have their first supposed witnesses as women. The fools apparently failed to work out that it would be a far more convincing story it the witnesses were all men - especially for the first resurrection appearances at least.

Thus the conspiracy theory leads to a situation where our conspirators are men great integrity, yet are despicable liars and deceivers; they are men of great cunning as to weave a clever web of deceit, yet they are ignorant of their own culture's customs that they are stupid enough to place unreliable women as important witnesses in they story; they are motivated in all this for no apparent reason, yet are prepared to sustain serious punishment even death for their commitment to their conspiracy.

I think we're talking past one another a little bit here. My comment that "Naturalism cannot be used to disprove Supernaturalism without begging the question" was simply a trivial noting that you cannot simply assume naturalism - not without begging the question anyway.

What disproves supernaturalism? By it's very nature supernaturalism is quite hard to disprove.
Imagine two men are on an island in the middle of the ocean. There is nothing but sea stretching from horizon to horizon as far as they can see. The first says "I think there's more land out there beyond the horizon", but the other disagrees and says that their island is all the land that exists on their world.
Clearly the only way that the second man could disproves the first one's claim would be to explore the entire planet and find that there was indeed no other island. Similarly the only way the first man could disprove the second's claim would be to explore the planet and find another island.

But unlike islands, the realm of the alleged supernatural is not easily explored by the man who seeks to prove there are no islands. He can however conclude that he sees no positive evidence for the existence of the supernatural realm, and thus by Occam's Razor, he has no reason to believe in it's existence and that the burden of proof is placed on the man who made the claim. (Fair enough, I don't deny that supernaturalists have a burden of providing at least reasonable evidence for our claims before we can demand to be believed)

As I mentioned, the burden of proof lies on the person making any supernatural claim. Of course many things can alter the credibility of a supernatural claim and of course all such claims are not automatically correct. (We would have a big problem where conflicting claims existed wouldn't we?)

Any attempt I made here to list certain criteria would be bound to be incomplete. There are many ways we have of evaluating the truth of various claims we see in the world around us. We meet many thousands of advertisements, infomercials, news items and other truth claims during our lives. Whenever we talk to other people, be it our friends, family or strangers we are either consciously or subconsciously evaluating the likelihood of truth of everything they say to us. Okay, so some people are innately gullible and some are skeptical of absolutely everything to the point of insanity, however most of us can analyse such claims and form very reasonable and accurate judgements as to the likelihood of their accuracy without much difficultly. Supernatural claims are not significantly different to any other sorts of claims that we meet every day and we can use the same sorts of skills and ideas to analyse them making any modifications minor modifications that are appropriate for dealing with the particular subject matter.
It might be strange at first to see this sort of analysis done in a more formal written process as opposed to letting you semi-conscious intuition evaluate truth claims, but I hope you can see me using these sorts of criteria in my discussion about the truth of the resurrection. If I did decide to give you a list of criteria all I would do is look through my argument above and ask myself "what sort of criteria have I semi-consciously used here as I wrote this?"

Tercel

Tristan Scott

Wide eyed wanderer asked:

I don't know about flies, but Macabees settled the land prior to Jesus' birth.

madmax2976

<strong> If any deity actually exists, it could be a largely “messy” deity from our perspective. There is no reason to assume a deity would prefer our sense of “order” over some other sense of order.

It needs to be noted that any arrangement is an “order” of some kind. Whether it should be considered orderly is going to be a matter of perception. It is entirely conceivable that an arrangement we would consider to be disorderly could be considered orderly by some other type of beings.

Additionally, it would seem that naturalism does predict the universe to be orderly, at least from our perspective, since if it was largely random, naturalism would fall apart. We would not be able to explain most phenomena as there would be no regularity under which we could predict certain events. Methodological naturalism would surely crumble away and then metaphysical naturalism would soon follow.

<strong> And of course we think there are a number of problems inherent in the theistic/supernaturalistic worldview.

<strong>[/quote]
….. All the things I listed above, I see as providing at least a little evidence of supernaturalism. Some of the arguments I find all but absolutely convincing alone (I'm a fan in particular of the Consciousness, Miracles, and Religious Experiences arguments), however it is the Cumulative weight of the arguments which for me really drives the point home. Each argument adds it's own little bit of evidence and they add up to give evidence which I see as being beyond all remotely reasonable doubt. After all, if even a single instance of any one of the above arguments is true then supernaturalism is true.
</strong>[/quote]

But of course each of these arguments has been critiqued by those from the other side and sufficient reasons have been layed out to doubt the value of such arguments. The only way for there to be any “cumulative” case is if any of the arguments actually stands up to critique. If none of them do, well, zero plus zero plus zero is still zero.

And of course it is misleading to lump all supernatural claims together, particularly since there are supernatural claims that contradict one another.

Furthermore, any refutation of naturalism must show that any phenomena cited could not, even in principle, be incorporated into a naturalistic framework. For instance, a “miracle” could easily be the work of a technologically advanced civilization, or even some unknown natural property we do not yet understand. This gets down to the heart what supernaturalism even means - what is it? How do we really define it? Is it just what we find to be unusual or amazing? Is it just what we find to currently be beyond our own capabilities? We could define the supernatural as that which is impossible under a naturalistic view, but then how would we
ever prove such a thing?

<strong> Please support the contention that Christians were persecuted specifically for the “beliefs” they held and not for specific actions they might have done that the Roman government didn’t appreciate.

Just for our benefit, list some of these persecutions, so that we can verify exactly which ones your speaking of. Please provide names, dates and whatever support you have that the persecutions actually took place.

After that, perhaps you can explain why this makes any difference, since its been reported that Jews, Muslims, Wiccans, Mormons, Amish, Buddhists, Mennonites, Native Americans, Falun Gong, homosexuals - all have endured persecution. I think it would be more difficult to find a group that had not ever been persecuted in some way by some other group. Throughout history, Christians and Muslims particularly have often been the victims, and the perpetrators of persecution.

<strong> Why? What precisely is it that would make this a “supernatural” event? Is is because the interference cannot currently be explained in naturalistic terms? Is it because its magic - i.e. there is no explanation nor will there ever be one?

The point is that if we could actually verify this being and determine the process by which it interfered and explain how it all works, then I would see no reason to term it “supernatural”.

<strong> Again what is a supernatural event? The unsual or the fantastic? The wonderous? The unknown? Magic?

If he explained his experience as incorporating magical powers that “whisked” him to and from Jupiter, would this not then qualify it as a supernatural event?

<strong> Who witnessed this supposed resurrection? Names please.

How do you know that no one ever recanted their beliefs? Why would you think that any recantation, by any follower, would have actually been recorded? How do you know they were killed “for their testimony” and not just because they were the current patsey’s on the block, suitable targets for some mean folks who get their jollies out of hurting people? How do you know the persecutors gave a rat’s ass about whether they “recanted” or not? How many is “many”? How can they “testify” to something that no one supposedly saw - Jesus actually rising from the dead? When did this persecution supposedly take place?

You seem to have a naïve understanding of belief Tercel. Humans have done some of the most irrational things because of their beliefs. The Aztecs regularly sacrificed people because of their belief that this appeased their Gods. People have lit themselves on fire because of their beliefs. The Japanese committed ritual suicide because of their belief in the importance of their honor. People have (and still), pierced, poked and otherwise mutiliated themselves because of one belief or another.

<strong> Which people are you referring to? Those in Pliny’s time or Jesus’s time? Does integrity imply that you can’t be mistaken about a belief or otherwise duped into believing something that’s not true?

<strong> Perhaps, but lets not forget this religions’ practice and potential for discrimination, persecution, slavery, bigotry, child abuse, wife abuse, totalitarianism, cultural rape, and the infamous blackmail of eternal torture for finite wrongdoings. Just like almost any belief system, it’s a mixture of good and bad. Course neither its good or bad practices demonstrate that it is actually true.

<strong> Only if they knew it was a lie. How do you tell whether someone knows something is a lie? What about cognitive dissonance? What about delusion? What about wishful thinking?

In a time where people believed in all sorts of deities and supernatural forces and where it doesn’t appear that anyone went around attempting to debunk religious claims, I would think any of the above much more plausible than any real supernatural event - particularly given the historical failure of supernaturalism to ever actually explain anything.

<strong> Hogwash. At least some of those who testified about Joseph Smith and his golden tablets were reported to have recanted their testimony, and yet Mormonism is flourishing.

Sai Babba’s reported miracles have been cast in much doubt by investigators, yet followers still remain.

There have been documentary’s exposing faith healers such as Benny Hinn, yet people still flock to see him to be healed.

Johnathan Edwards has been investigated and the tricks he uses have been exposed, but people still believe he actually speaks with the dead.

Despite government explanations and lack of any real evidence, many people still believe there was a UFO coverup at Roswell and that Mars has a face engraved on it.

Cognitive Dissonance is alive and well Tercel. Just ask Jim Jones’ and David Koresh’s followers.

<strong> Cool. Christians in 112 AD were reported to have been of good character. Christianity hardly has any market cornered on good character, but what has this to do with whomever you are claiming as an actual witnesses of the resurrection? They lived many years earlier.

<strong> Whats more likely is that someone named Jesus gained a marginal following - got himself executed - and over time legends grew up around this individual stemming from some oral tradition that was perpetuated by his followers - No conspiracy needed.

However, I’ll be happy to compare the likelihood of any conspiracy, straw argument that it is, with the likelihood of someone rising from the dead if you like.

<strong> Its seems as equally hard to prove as well.