Jayhawker Soule

And I am interested to know what, if any, information you believe contradicts The Vedas. Please do not rely on a priori conclusions discounting miracles or supernatural events.

Jonsey3333

How can you come up with an a posteriori proof against events that happened about 2000 years ago? A posteriori means argument from experience, and none of us were there to experience it.

Also, do you mean arguments against the New Testament interpreted literally?

-Mike

lpetrich

Richard Carrier has some reasonable arguments against the occurrence of miracles in "Why I Don't Buy the Resurrection".

Essentially, he takes off from David Hume, who noted that reports of miracles had become much rarer when he had lived, which was 250 years ago. A conclusion still true. Consider medieval saints, who were often reported to have worked lots and lots of miracles. But the Vatican has had to scrape the bottom of the barrel in its search for miracles to attribute to recent would-be saints.

So why have reports of miracles become much rarer? A simple hypothesis is that there are no "real" miracles, and that reports of miracles are any of of misunderstood natural phenomena, figments of the imagination, and fakery -- and that these hypotheses have become much more widely accepted at the present time than in all of humanity's previous history.

I also note that believers in one religion's miracles are often extremely skeptical about other religions' miracles -- why exempt one's religion from the scrutiny that one devotes to other religions?

[ March 28, 2002: Message edited by: lpetrich ]</p>

WJ

One way to attack the miracle aspect of living moving things in the modern day is to review phenomenological existence or happenstance. Take ghosts for example. Apparently the same electrical force [field] that is used in the brain and other physical matter on earth is manifested by moving things around rooms, and making sounds.

Miracles, phenomenology, or illusionary? If you say illusionary, then you must prove dreams do not exist. Or if they do exist, that they do not represent reality in some way.

Get it?

Walrus

[ March 28, 2002: Message edited by: WJ ]</p>

Reverend Mykeru

Atticus_Finch

Please discount the notion that you only exist for the time it took you to type:

All other memories and thoughts you have are an implanted illusion to maintain your typing that same sentence, again and again, in a temporal loop until the end of time.

Now, you may deny that is the case. In fact, you were created with imbedded a priori conclusions such a thing is not possible. It's how we control you.

<img src="graemlins/banghead.gif" border="0" alt="[Bang Head]" />

Another fine case of philosophical projection perfectly analogous to the psychological kind:

People who argue untenable things (Apologists, New Agers and frustrated cranks) like to make a big production about how their unsubstanciated claims have been "discounted" a priori (they like the word, even if they misuse it, because it sounds all philosophical and shit). Which is really a plea not for doing away with a priori assumptions but, rather, to adopt their a priori assumptions instead.

In fact, Atticus, since you have never seen a miracle, as defined as a violation of natural law, on what do you base your belief that miracles occur? Certainly not experience, since you have none. It sounds, in fact, that your belief that miracles occur is -*gasp*- an a priori assumption. I mean, how else can you buy into venerable tales from the Big Black Book unless you are making a whole slew of a priori assumptions?

[ March 28, 2002: Message edited by: Reverend Mykeru ]</p>