Evangelion

Synaesthesia –

Oh, I definitely agree with that.

Can we? Just what exactly did you have in mind? Extending a day by four or more hours, perhaps? Or how about that old family favourite, the miraculous pillar of fire?

No, it merely reinforces one of your particular beliefs about Jesus.

Really? Stilling a storm, raising people from the dead, curing a blind man with mud, healing lepers and paralytics… all of this can be faked with a clever brain and a gullible audience? Even when (as was the case on many occasions) Jesus’ audience consisted of vigorous opponents? I mean, these are hardly the sort of people who were hoping to see a miracle.

I agree with all of this.

diana

Nick,

I follow your reasoning, but what you're missing is that the vast majority of Xns can't or won't. You forget who you're dealing with. These are people who will listen until they can find a reason--even if it's erroneous--to claim that skeptics are admitting belief in Jesus' existence/divinity. Then they stop listening.

You'll find an imperceptible percentage who actually listen all the way through. The vast majority won't even listen to what you have to say, from the start. Those who do are most likely to hear only those things that suggest to them that you believe in their god.

It's the last group who's going to "educate" the middle group on what your magic show "admitted."

Xn psychology, in a nutshell.

d

Evangelion

IAPW -

Agreed. Indulging in a little hypothetical is hardly equivalent to "agreeing that Jesus existed."

But I accept that plenty of Christians wouldn't be capable of making this distinction. <img src="graemlins/boohoo.gif" border="0" alt="[Boo Hoo]" />

[ December 09, 2002: Message edited by: Evangelion ]</p>

Naked Ape

Have you ever wondered how modern baseball players can play ball after sunset? Electric lighting makes day last 24 hours long everyday (in hospitals, restaurants etc.)
I have seen miraculous pillars of fire at every arena concert to blow through town. I think they even had scary voice-overs, but that might have been the drugs.
Sorry, this sort of stuff goes over big with bronze age goat hearders but doesn't really attract the attention of the nintendo generation. 40 years in the wilderness, meet 3 second attention span.

Cheers,

Naked Ape

Synaesthesia

Well, we can do many of the miracles that convinced people that Jesus was God or that moses spoke for him.

Pillar of fire? Terrifying thing, the firey stem of the mushroom cloud. Far more powerful than anything primitive people could imagine.

Extending the day would be tough, but a compelling illusion thereof would be feasible with present technology and a bloody massive budget.

*lol* You don't really think those are the people who are going to be going around writing books about the event, and preaching to people about it. It's the BELIEVERS that tell the stories. They use the post hoc ergo propter hoc reasoning to conclude that a fellow stills a storm. They tell, and retell, with the gesture being rememberd as being closer and closer to the end of the storm, and it's end more and more sudden.

All it takes is stories of leper cures, or a leper feeling better, or a healthy person who has convinced himself (and others) that he once was blind and now sees.

Memory is embellished with time, be the memory conflabulated or mostly correct.

Yes Evangalion, that can all be faked with a clever brain and a credulous audience. Moreover, people can come to believe it without anyone intentionally tricking them. Popular delusions can form spontaneously and often do so.

I said
"But that's not the POINT. This is not meant to prove anything, it reiterates something that we already know... Magic is first and foremost about psycology - not technology. It's about using religious feelings, expectations, experiences to distort our perception."

To which Evangelion replied:
The point is not about Jesus but about evidence. I have no particular beliefs about Jesus other than the myth is far, far more than any man.

I ate Pascal's Wafer

Diana, I'm afraid I have to agree with you on this point. My big mistake was assuming that the people we would be talking with had a shred of basic logical understanding. You are correct in that they will listen just enough to find some shred of evidence that we are really admitting Jesus' existence. Then they will pull the "Lord, iar, Lunatic" thing or some other equally bad argument. It's happened to me before, and I should've taken it into account when forming my argument.

That said, the argument may still stand when discussing this with a reasonable liberal xian. This type is more likely to listen to your explanation all the way through, and should be bright enough to understand that you are not commiting yourself to the existence of Jesus by debunking his miracles.

Well, I wouldn't say they would be an imperceptible percentage. Sure, the majority of xians I have debated with use dishonest tactics to try to convince themselves that I really do believe in their deity. However, there are a significant few who are really interested in my point of view on things. With these people I was able to state my arguments without fear that they were trying to get me to trap me, and I am certain that this argument would be no different. Whether or not they would accept my reasoning is a different issue, but they would at least let me make my case. Whether or not one were to pull this argument in a debate really depends on the xian you are debating.

Yeah, you're right again. We may be able to convince the middle group if we talk slow enough and use small words, but these people are much more likely to listen to their own kind. Once the last group convinces them that you really do believe in a deity there is no hope for further conversation. Their minds would be made up.

Yup.

-Nick

Evangelion

Naked Ape -

Nope. How does this have anything to do with the visible phenomenon of an apparently static sun?

*snip*

...was not available in the ANE.

Sure you have. Now all you need to do is tell me how this was done in the ANE - complete with a wandering pillar of fire which kept stride with the Israelites for 40 years, and turned into a pillar of cloud during the day.

Hey, either one is plausible.

That's not the point. The point is, "How were these miracles performed in the low-tech, low-budget Bronze Age?"

See, you can either dismiss the stories as myth (which is your prerogative, and I won't complain), or accept that something actually happened, and explain what that "something" was.

Evangelion

Synaesthesia -

Well I don't believe that anybody was convinced that he was God, and I don't believe that he is either.

Can you produce one which will lead people around for 40 years, and turn into a pillar of cloud by day - whilst simultaneously turning the day into night for anyone else who sees it?

It would require the sun to (apparently) defy its natural progress across the sky. You'd also need to have a sundial standing by, to "prove" that you'd been successful. Now, that's quite a doozy IMHO.

But perhaps it could be done.

*snip*

And now you've resorted to changing the goalposts.

As I said to Naked Ape, you can either dismiss the stories as myth (which is your prerogative, and I won't complain), or accept that something actually happened, and explain what that "something" was. You won't convince me that your viewpoint is a viable alternative by chopping and changing between these two positions during the course of a single rebuttal.

*snip*

Well, since that "evidence" concerns the existence (or otherwise) of Jesus, I'd say that it is about Jesus, after all.

MOJO-JOJO

Actually, I heard a comedian explain this one quite plausibly (whether it was 500 or 5,000). The bible says (I think w/o looking it up) that baskets of fish and bread meant to feed 50, were passed around to 5,000, and that everyone said they had had their fill (after the baskets were passed). The fundie thinking is that these baskets were immediatley replenished with the supernatural, magical powers of god as they were passed around and people took "their fill" of fish and bread. Now mind you.....we're not talking cooked fishsticks and rolls here.

Here it was, a hot "Jerusalem" day on the Mount. Jesus is preaching on and on, everyones' tummies start to rumble. So Jesus instructs his disciples to start passing around baskets of fish that have been sitting out in the hot sun and starting to stink to high Hades, along with bread that is now hard as a rock since it has been sitting out in the hot, arrid climate.

As the baskets come around, each of the 5,000 look into them, take a whiff of the rotting fish , experience a little gag reflex, then say "Er...no thanks, I'm full." Pretty simple really. The same fish and bread that started out, comes back at the end.

This was how Jesus encouraged "fasting".

[ December 10, 2002: Message edited by: MOJO-JOJO ]</p>

Synaesthesia

I don't know either, but it wouldn't have been the first or last time that somebody convinced many people of something so ridiculous.

You're missing the fact that, they aren't seperate positions in the first place. The goal is to show that people can be massively deluded. This can be due to trickery and expectation, expectation, trickery, retrospective elaboration, trickery and retelling and retrospective elaboration... Get the picture?

At any rate, many of the putative feats could be replicated today and without using elaborate technology.

Some of the feats would require elaborate technology - if they occured - but that doesn't mean elements of trickery and self deception didn't come into play. A small bit of sleight of hand can vastly increase the impact of preaching.

That's how my Dad's Shaolin teacher used to sell his medicine.

You asserted that our ability to trick people merely reinforced my particular beliefs about Jesus. I deny that, I am simply saying that this ability shows the evidential paucity of miracle claims. The existence of Jesus, his character, anything about him, doesn't change this in the least.