Dargo

I doubt the 500 figure myself even allowing for visions or someone (a relative perhaps) being mistaken for Jesus. By his own admission, Paul had little contact and apprently some conflicts with those who had personally known Jesus. I remember it being a big deal when I was a Christian, however.

Bible Humper

Hello Deadend,

This is a terrible argument for the christians, if this is their best, or only, answer then we are a couple moves away from checkmate!

First of all, the argument that the deity doesn't violate our freedom to believe in him or not has unacceptable implications for many of christianity's most cherished claims.

The first and most obvious are the numerous fantastical stories found in the Bible, the common Xian claim that the Bible is a credible eye-witness account needs to be abandoned if they are going to answer the above questions with the free-will defense. Xians who are fond of the free-will argument need to admit that the bible isn't credible enough to be evidence of anything.

Secondly, we have the Xian testimonies that claim the believer "felt the Holy Spirit" or "communicated with Jesus during prayer". These claims seem especially contradictory, how can one have free will to decide to believe if the deity makes it's presence manifest? Could these perceptions be compared to the make-believe lalaland which imaginative children inhabit, and could the Xian's alleged communication with Jesus be compared to the child's communications with his imaginary playmate Pete the bunny-rabbit?

Third is the christian philosophy itself. Is it believable to claim that the christian philosophy came from the omniscient mind of an unearthly entity? If "the Word" was as profound and inspirational as one would expect from the deity, and indeed as profound as has been claimed by Xians, it would contain ideas that clearly could not be the product of human thought and would remove all doubt of the Bible having been inspired by an actual deity. Incidentally, there would also be a uniformity of interpretation, human inventions would be unable to even approximate the diety's profundity so the correct interpretation would be apparent.

Fourth is the credibility of miracle claims, which are the foundation of the religion. Despite the fact that all religions have claims of amazing magical phenomena, we are supposed to reject the claims of all other religions as "tall tales" but take the Xian claims seriously. If the Xian miracles have credibility that the others lack, the free-will to believe in Yahweh or not has been taken away in a rather ham-handed manner. Blatant magical events are nothing less than absolute proof of supernature, though the Xian miracles in reality don't seem to have any credibility that the others lack.

Fifth are the claims that prayer results in actual intervention by the deity on behalf of the Xian. If the deity was to actually intervene in a manner that allows for the free-will to believe or not, then he would have to do so in a manner that allows natural explanations and especially "coincidence explanations", in which case it is obviously wishful nonsense when the Xian proudly proclaims that the deity helped him out. Especially silly are the claims that the deity always answers prayer, just that the answer is often "no", if all events in the believer's life that he applies prayer to are manipulated by the deity, how can you invoke the free-will defense?

The free-will defense seems to fill a vital role for theologians by attemping to offer a rationalisation for why the world works the way it does despite the benevolent attentions of an omnipotent deity. It fails. If any theists are interested in disputing this point, <a href="http://iidb.org/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=50&t=000641" target="_blank">come on over to my old thread where no christian dared to venture.</a>

If a theist is still willing to swallow that bitter pill which is the free will idea, he is left with an entirely solipsistic conjecture as his religion.

In other words, he is saying that a universe where his deity exists is indistinguishable in EVERY WAY from one where he does not!

If solipsism is nonetheless enough for them, perhaps the christians should think about the possiblility that we are all brains in a laboratory, being fed stimuli by a sophisticated computer in a perfect simulation of reality.

In actual fact, this "brain in a laboratory" scenario trumps christianity immediately by virtue of the fact that we can see how it could be done, in principle, when technology is able to reverse engineer the brain, feed stimuli directly instead of through sense organs, etc.

Contrast this with any and all supernatural solipsistic scenarios which suffer from the embarrassing fact that supernaturalism has yet to be discovered despite the fact that there have been trillions of claims by billions of believer which all turned out to be naturalistic after all when the mysteries of the phenomenon in question were at last unraveled.

Supernature has no sound argument. Much less a theistic variant of it. Much less the specific christian version of the theistic variant of it!

Yes, I'm done now.

[ October 26, 2002: Message edited by: Bible Humper ]</p>

Bible Humper

Actually, I'm not done quite yet.

On top of everything I mentioned above, it is patently absurd to attribute to the transcendant mind of an omniscient entity an over-riding desire for his creations to believe in him, specifically to believe in him without any evidence. "To have faith."

It is instead suspiciously consistent with the petty desires of the human minds of a worldly priest class.

[ October 23, 2002: Message edited by: Bible Humper ]</p>

Deadend

Well, Bible Humper, that was certainly a convincing refutation, makes me wonder; “Why weren't you around in 1705?!? ”

I had just finished reading the paragraph I replicated in the other post, when I came across this topic, and I thought I’d share it with you people.

Apparently Jaquelot was very influential in his days, and many proponents of the moderate Enlightenment adopted his arguments.

I wonder if present-day theologians have come up with a better explanation as to why Jebus didn’t show himself to more people after his death?

Mageth

4)Since his plan involved sending the Apostles in his place it was important that they have the
greatest certainty about his resurrection before
they started their own preaching careers.

So god thinks more of the apostles than me?

This argument falls flat on its face because if Jesus could appear to the apostles to convince them of his resurrection, then he could appear to anyone and everyone to convince them of his resurrection, free will argument be damned.

Shake

The networks wouldn't return his calls for a press conference, and since he had died several days earlier, his credit card accounts were cancelled, so he couldn't book any flights for his 'Resurrection Tour'!

Bible Humper

Thanks a lot for the thumbs up, Deadend, I appreciate that!

babelfish

Bible Humper, you deserve much more than a thumbs up, so


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lpetrich

Which reminds me of something Bertrand Russell had noted in "An Outline of Intellectual Rubbish" -- that in the 1830's in upstate New York, there was a prophetess who claimed that she could walk on water, and that she would do so on a certain date.

That date came, and she showed up. She asked the crowd if they were convinced that she could walk on water. They said, "Yes", and she said, "Then there is no need for me to do so." And left.

Bible Humper

Thank you so much Babelfish!!!