Mageth

that he walked among us, made friends, revealed much about His nature to a wide circle of people: both his friends and acquaintances, and in certain instances, to total "strangers". He shared our bread, probably worked construction for several years, helped out a bunch of sick people (both those physically and emotionally sick).

Umm..lots of people have done what you described. Does that make them god?

Pomp

leonarde,

Ah but many people believe He did just that: that he walked among us...

The problem with this response is that there is no real evidence for those of us living in 2002 CE that this really happened. If I wanted you to believe that I existed, I wouldn't have the friend of a friend of a friend of a friend give you a book with some stories about me in it, I'd walk up and introduce myself.

leonarde

PB,
Do you think that Socrates existed? If so, why?

Pomp

leonarde,

Do you think that Socrates existed? If so, why?

Not necessarily. There is a school of thought which holds that he was a character Plato created for his Dialogues (spellling?).

There is a difference between believing that a particular historical figure existed and that a particular historical figure was the incarnation of the creator of the Universe.

lpetrich

As to the question of Jesus Christ's historical existence, check <a href="http://www.jesuspuzzle.com" target="_blank">The Jesus Puzzle</a> for a well-argued case for the Jesus-myth hypothesis.

And I don't see any real difference between visions of the Virgin Mary and visions of many other deities.

If I wanted to make myself known to humanity, I would not hide away in some obscure part of the world and let some hagiographers write some slanted, contradictory, and bizarre-event-filled "biographies" of me. I'd appear directly, as directly as I am doing here.

Consider the case of the recent India-Pakistan confrontation over Kashmir. President GWB and Prime Minister Blair had sent diplomats there to help defuse that confrontation; one of the diplomats, according to the NYT, stated that he described to his hosts that the confrontation was leading to "madness".

Neither the President nor the PM dispatched their diplomats to obscure peasants in out-of-the-way provinces; neither of them expressed their messages in murky, pseudo-poetic language, etc.

So what an omnipotent or very powerful being would do for greatest effect would be what Bush and Blair have done here, to communicate directly and to keep on communicating in a very unambiguous fashion. Imagine everybody hearing a deep voice coming from the sky or something.

leonarde

Magdeth posted: Not in and of
itself. My point was different: I was following
Ipetrich's line of thought as it touched on what
Malaclyse had written. To wit:
1)Let's not be even bothered about the details
of the Marian apparitions (ie any evidence there
might be that they are genuine) since
2)even if a god existed he would not reveal himself in so extraordinary and indirect a manner
(ie having Mary appear to a peasant in 16th Century Mexico etc.) Malaclypse held that this
was a nonsensical way to reveal himself.

When I asked what a "sensical" way would be for a
god to reveal himself, Ipetrich hazarded: Now I understand that we humans
reveal ourselves to each other by various aspects
of our humanity: by sharing food and drink, by
working together to a common end, by serving one
another, by encouraging each other, by confiding
in each other etc.
Therefore I observed----though my expression of it
was perhaps inarticulate-----that the Incarnation
(ie the sharing of our human nature by God in the
person of Jesus) gave God the opportunity to do
just that: to reveal himself not in some extraordinary fireworks display such as the "miracle of the sun" at Fatima but in human terms:
by what he said and did as a human being, albeit
a human being with extraordinary wisdom, understanding and healing powers. The problem for
Jesus' contemporaries in Judea and Galilee was:
he was TOO darn human (ie they couldn't accept
any special relationship between this erstwhile
carpenter and the God whom the Jews knew to be
unitary, incorporeal, and largely unknowable....

Cheers!

lpetrich

Leonarde does not get the point. I reveal myself to others by visiting them in person, talking to them, sending snail-mail and e-mail messages, and so forth.

And if I was omnipotent and I wanted everybody to get some message, I would deliver that message to everybody. And I would do that by imprinting it on everybody's mind, so they'd always know what my message is.

That is much more efficient than revealing it to a few people and then letting a game of "telephone" happen.

leonarde

Ipetrich,
I think you are looking at it within just a
limited time frame: 100 years from now how will
people know that Ipetrich ever existed?
Most, of course, won't. But say your great-grandchildren take an interest in their family geneologies. They will perhaps find letters
written by or to you in some attic. Perhaps some
photos or computer disks will have been preserved:
in all probability your ancestors will (correctly)
take this at face value: they will learn a little
bit about you through these artifacts and records.
If you take the criticism of God's existence
seriously, as I do, you notice that it is from two
diametrically opposed views:

1)there's too much of the spectacular to these
things (Marian appearances, "miracle of the sun",
Shroud of Turin, Guadalupe cloak etc.)

2)it is all too ordinary: if Jesus had only appeared on national television we would have believed in him. (I rather think not: the mind is
a wonderfully flexible thing: people who can turn
the Gospels into mereest myths and Jesus into
a man of dubious historicity are liable to convince themselves that the TV appearance is of
no significance....)

I don't think it is useful to try to second guess
God: this is a temptation for believers too. But
for many unbelievers this second-guessing becomes
a-move-the-goalpost strategy: God didn't show me
EXACTLY what I wanted to see WHEN I wanted to see
it in the exact form I demanded. Therefore(?!) he does not exist.
Cheers!

Malaclypse the Younger

In order to determine that anyone existed more than about 100 years ago, we must assume naturalism. We must assume there there are naturalistic reasons for things like documents to exist, thus we can infer the presence of the reason from the existence of the document.

To conclude supernaturalism, however, from a process that assumes naturalism is self-contradictory.

Besides, the claim is not that some god existed 2000 years ago, the claim is that god exists now.

There exists records that show that person X lived 2000 years ago. However, there are no records that indicate person X died. The conclusion, however, that person X is still alive is not at all compelling.

lpetrich

The only way that that is a legitimate issue is because I'm far from omnipotent.

People would accept my existence because they would see that there is nothing fundamentally impossible or contrary to natural laws about my existence.

<a href="http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/richard_carrier/index.shtml" target="_blank">Richard Carrier</a> has addressed this question in "Why I Don't Buy the Resurrection" and his review of "In Defense of Miracles". Basically, he points out, as David Hume had pointed out 250 years ago, that reports of miracles have become much less common, at least in the writings of respectable chroniclers.

A good example is the miracles attributed to saints. Medieval ones could work lots and lots of miracles, while the Vatican has had to scrape the bottom of the barrel for miracles to attribute to recent saints.

Where have the miracles gone? Are there actually fewer miracles nowadays? Or has knowledge and critical sense improved enough to reject many reports of miracles? Let's see how leonarde's examples would fare:

Appearances of the Virgin Mary: most likely some kind of hallucination. Why doesn't she appear at big sports matches or similar gatherings?

The Fatima Sun Miracle: most likely afterimages of a stared-at Sun. This can easily account for multiple witnesses observing it -- and the failure of witnesses elsewhere to observe it that day.

The Shroud of Turin: almost certainly a medieval fake. It comes from a time and place where such fakes were legion, which ought to give its advocates pause.

The Guadelupe Cloak: clearly a case of over-perception, like seeing shapes in clouds or writing in Islamic miracle vegetables.

What do you mean, "it is all too ordinary"?

And I prefer Carl Sagan's perspective on the question of life after death: he did not want to believe, he wanted to know. At least according to his wife Ann Druyan.

That's a circular presumption.