Oh dear god (pun intended). You are a moron. I tried to be civil but I will not have my intelligence compared to a teenager by someone who believes a man walked on water without falling in. Truth is, I know exactly what prayer is. It’s an empty, meaningless, non effective gesture that people like you make to give yourself the illusion that you or some being looking out for you has any kind of control in this world. That’s what prayer REALLY is (it’s been proven to not work time and time again), but this is about what Christian theology says it is. Clearly “a request line” is the most appropriate term.
I like how you really just dismiss the amputee argument (without even really refuting anything) before even understanding all the points and reasons that the atheist would make the argument in the first place. So I will spell it out for you nice and easy so even you can understand.
God is given all kinds of credit for miraculous things that happened long before we could document them. Water into wine, parting a sea, helping a little boy kill an 8 foot tall war general…all ridiculous claims that only a fool would think were true. BUT…now god just stopped? Now that we can better observe and document? Ha, convenient.
God is given credit for mysterious healings that are simply unexplained such as cancer remission. People like you are quick to cite these examples as “prayer working”. Again, it’s rather convenient that a missing arm or leg is plainly observable, and the regeneration of said limb miraculously would be conclusive proof that something out of the ordinary natural occurrences happened to make it so.
Did you really just try to argue that easing human suffering would damage/get rid of our moral fiber? GTFO. I won’t even dignify that with a response other than “Who has the logic of a 13 year now?”.
But I’m off to work…more on this later, if this thread isn’t closed.
Ah, i knew you had that thought “oh, this man believes in a god so i am smarter” your arguments are baseless and all a post containing your narrow point of view. You sir are the moron, and i can seriously show how uneducated you are with any argument you try to through in debates like this.
These arguments are nothing new and they are actually from atheists with a low education level. No atheist scholar or historian ever brought this argument up because of the horrible philosophy it contains as an argument. Thanks for using this to actually bold that you are ignorant but you just think you are knowledgeable due to your non-theistic beliefs.
Ah, lol… you see, as i said before, please know the Bible before actually attempting to argue about it.
The parting of the red sea is a mistranslation, in the original translation it is the sea of reads which is a marsh.
Goliath was a nephilim, and regardless of his height any one can die or get knocked out by being struck in between the eyes.
The water turning into wine was a private miracle, and it is also symbolic for the transformation of Judaism. Please do your research instead because your arguments are all based on what you saw in Bible movies.
So what if he is given credit by some people to cure a random cancer patient? Do you understand the nature of miracles, apparently not because your whole arguments reflects on your mistaken perception of what prayers are and that is a wish list to God. God does not heal or feed the sick because we have that power and that power comes from our humanity. God’s role of healing as said in the Bible is after the first life but for people in this earth it is our duty to care for one another.
Actually yes, it’s just what you call logic but since you want to cling on to your arguments you’ll just reject any sort of sense that dismisses your arguments.
God healing amputees would also lead to a request for the healing of the other sins of the world, until it is actually erased. He would heal all the sickness and feed those in poverty. While that is nice, the reality is that our humane and moral code is of no significance. Our Humane nature is what causes us to actually have compassion for them. That is the reason why there are no miraculous healing for amputees or stones turning into bread for those in poverty because God gave us our Humanity and the actual power to care and help them. It’s simple logic, why would it be just amputees when there are other different forms of unfortunate lives? Of course the request of healing would go to other unfortunate lives who feel they are suffering more… and God healing everybody would make the humanite he created us with of no use. We won’t be needing to do good, because God did it all.
C. S. Lewis: in a truly godless world, amputations wouldn?t be ?good? or ?bad?; they would simply be, a fact of life no different from a tree shedding leaves. Attacking theism on a moral basis undermines the argument.
Good question. The Sociological study is that cults/believers are born from something they believe is true, and a follower dieing for what they believed signifies there seriousness. Cult leaders gain their followers through a certain philosophical-charisma to influence them. The whole Christianity could not of started or evolved from something simple, that fast either. It just doesn’t stack well because the center of the belief is that this teacher was the God of Abraham in the flesh and that he rose 3 days after being killed, a belief like that can not be gained by just a creation of doctrine. People don’t believe anybody claiming to have divine visions, so it’s certain no one would just believe in God being a man and resurrecting. Read the deaths of the apostles to see how serious they believed in him, and there had to be something impressive to actually convince them. Islam’s religion was built from the Tanach and the gospels; totally acknowledging that those two where divine revelations, yet they gave something very very different from the two original revelations. The building of this religion was different, it had elements rooted from the Judeo-Christian beliefs yet at the same [there is a word i can’t say] so they had an old basis to establish on, showing that the Islam religion did not just come out of nothing either.
Hugo would try to assimilate them, but the parameters necessary for constucting the idea of Him simply don’t exist within the cranial masses of said else-washed masses.
It’d be like trying fit Himself into one of the Trinity’s suits, the difference being that the endeavor in question, instead of not affording him enough breadth and leg room, would make*** His*** head hurt.
wth…i thought fossil records were infallible and could scientifically determine the age of the world
also to play more devils advocate (the irony), why do fossil record layers prove the sequence of the things that have died? isnt it possible that a cataclysmic flood might’ve buried much life on earth at the same time and the heavier things (dinosaurs) went to the bottom and the lighter animals have gone to the top? ive heard science say a few times that birds being on top proves that they came after and that somehow dinosaurs have evolved into birds.
Nice, i guess you were put in the microwave as a baby on low for 9 then?
you know whats funny is all the athiests who enjoy watching the vatican over the years slowly come over the fence to science. and then think to themselves. look even the vatican is saying it, science is even more reinforced now. even god reinforces science.
but you cant even put 2 and 2 together to see that the vatican is a parody of real christianity.
i can link multiple documentations of catholics and priesthood saying the most blasphemous things, the pope sitting on chairs with upside down crosses. but it doesnt stir a single braincell. or make a shred of doubt.
enjoy being a MILLER, JOHN (and not even understanding the implications of being MILLER, JOHN) for the rest of your life.
You might be too lazy or scared to read the main argument but it does a great job at dispelling some of the frivolous assumptions you have about the story. The story’s credibility is not historically good at all. The idea that the apostles died as martyrs for their beliefs is not historically supported or backed up by the NT adequately. And many other problems.
At this point, you have no good arguments to support the biblical account of the resurrection (you just repeat the same tired joke: story says his followers strongly believed it, thus it’s true). Which is just a fallacy.
You don’t provide evidence to support the credibility of the story itself. Carrier destroys the credibility of the story and shows how there isn’t adequate historical evidence for it. He also historically breaks apart the “disciples were martyrs so their beliefs were true” argument, which isn’t just historically bullshit, but also a logically fallacy, a fallacy you love for some reason, and call it “sociology” instead of the error it really is.
So my friend, you can either reply to Carrier’s historical refutation, or post a link to an article that actually addresses his “main historical argument”. If you don’t, I will assume you’ve lost this debate and can only present logical fallacies and rhetoric as evidence. Good day.
You can approach it from the perspective of what used to be known as “natural theology”. This means just approaching the question of God using reason and the things we experience in the world. It’s like philosophical theism, as opposed to religious theism.
You know by now that I consider the standards of proof required for historical validity are different from those required for the kinds of metaphyiscal claims the Bible makes, so I won’t comment further on that. I will just say however that philosophical debates can be just as thorough as historical debates (by using rigorous logic and also incorporating evidence from the sciences).
This is just flat-out wrong. I studied philosophy for a year and during that time I was introduced to the concept of a “theodicy”, which is an academic, philosophical attempt by a theist to solve the problem of evil (I can’t remember the name of the specific one we studied, but will post here if I do).
Once your reach the 2nd section (beyond the introduction), you’ll see that this paper quickly becomes very technical indeed.
So you’ve made it clear that you DO believe in miracles generally, but you have your canon of specific ones which you believe actually happened (resurrection being the core one). I’ve been thinking a bit more about this concept of ‘recorded miracles’, and why I’m so skeptical of them, and think I might be figuring out why that is exactly. If I could figure this out then I could explain to you more thoroughly why I require different standards of proof for historical truth as opposed to metaphysical truth.
I think the concept of a ‘supernatural miracle’ is, at the core, all about the relation between mind and matter. What is required for a miracle to have been said to occur is that a mind has totally transcended the laws of matter. God is of course the proposed ‘ultimate mind’, and is supposed to have created matter and the laws that govern it. So it follows that miracles should be possible for God, and would be excellent proof.
However, appeals to God as an explanatory device for seemingly miraculous things has been challenged by science. For instance: rainbows. Such a beautiful arc of colour, appearing in the sky seemingly randomly like that, well. That has to be the work of a divine artist’s brushstrokes, right? Only, people started to notice that they only occur during certain periods: when it is raining AND the sun is out. And so eventually an explanation for rainbows was arrived at which involved the scientific theory of light.
Now while the abstract point of whether the ‘natural’ laws which brought about the rainbow could still be the work of God, the miraculous nature of rainbows was lost (they no longer transcended the rules that govern matter and energy). If you’d based your faith on rainbows being unexplainable (the ‘rainbow gap’ if you will), then you’d best think again because they had been explained.
So I think that whenever there is a claim made for a miraculous occurence, science needs to be let loose on it with all of its rigours. Science is a framework with which we attempt to get a real understanding of the world we live in. It is a particularly successful branch of applied philosophy, if you will. It just WORKS (the computers we are using are evidence of that).
Now of course the best branches of history will be strongly scientific of course. We will attempt to date the sources we find as accurately as possible, and logically build a narrative from various sources of various degrees of reliability. But then there is also the history of mythology, and of fiction.
The latter are of course filled with miraculous occurences because, well, they didn’t actually happen. We live in a world where things can be written that did not occur, either because people were exercising their creative abilities, they were mistaken, or because they were deceptive.
So when an account of a miraculous occurence from the past emerges, the very highest levels of skepticism need to be applied because it is claming that an event with the very lowest probability of occuring actually happened. I agree with you that crying statues and the like are not miracles. I do not believe miracles happen in the modern world. So to convince me that they used to happen in the past will require the highest standards of proof.
But is that even possible in the case of the resurrection? What scientific tests could be applied?
we could find the tomb where Jesus was supposedly buried in.
But then what? There are a million and one reasons for there not being any remains there after such a long period. It was so long ago that we cannot even make enquiries with witnesses. I mean there is only one thing that could conclusively prove the resurrection of Jesus and that is
to have him present in the modern world.
This is because he could then submit himself to scientific research, and PROVE that he was an immortal man (which is a spectacular violation of the 2nd law of thermodynamics)
I’m not opposed to the idea of miracles. In fact, I hope we do bear witness to one. Personally, I think the one that would be most interesting, and which would have the lowest likelihood of causing mass insanity, would involve extra-terrestrial, intelligent life, but that’s another subject entirely, and is also connected to all my ID theories… But anyway, we see no such miracles. So why should we believe the words of the Bible? The reasoning that only the apostles were shown the standards of proof that actually apply to miracles is very ad-hoc reasoning.
Would take more than a stroke to convince me, as plenty of people have those.
An example of a “divine smack” which would convince me would be at the moment Richard Dawkins, giving a public lecture, makes some particularly anti-God remark, he turns to stone. That would convince me, right there and then. The wikipedia entry would be interesting huh.
I hope you can understand the logic as to why atheists won’t accept Christian miracles, now.
This is again a theistic argument on general grounds, so I’d be more inclined to take it seriously. Do you see the divide now? You do not have to use the Bible to defend God, and I’d always reccomend to practitioners of the revelatory faiths to shift over to general theism and see how they get on with that.
I used to call myself a “symbiotic panentheist” y’know. :looney:
Spanky: if there are any questions you’d like me to give my answers to, could you please just reiterate them briefly if I havent given my answers here? I can’t find what you’re referring to.
EDIT: for me, when I was a theist, my “ressurection” if you will was “abiogenesis” (the origin of life from non-life). While it too happened a long-ass time ago, it is a subject that can be studied now because we have access to everything that was presumably there when it occured. We don’t need a SPECIFIC miracle, but a GENERAL one. Argh anyway I hope some of this makes sense, gone a bit outside my comfort zone in this post. Anyway you get the gist of it.
EDIT2: ah shit I knew I forgot something: the Turin Shroud case. Look at that one, that’s a case of Christian scientists getting hold of a miracle from the past and giving it the treatment. Turned out not to come to anything though. But there’s no physical remains of the resurrection, so it has even less chance of being proven than the shroud.
Dude, the argument from carrier is really old so i’m very aware of what he wrote, tektonics tackles the contents of Carriers argument; the link i gave you is a page of the Philosophical argument yet there are other sections that lead to the other two - the historical area. The main argument would not make any sense with out these 3 supporting cases because these 3 are the academic basis. Which is Why JP Holding strikes the general case and the other contents… read the other sections. Carrier’s article has another reaction from Glenn Miller. http://www.christian-thinktank.com/shellgame.html
Richard also has other proposals that differs and some what contradicts from the article you gave: The Burial of Jesus in Light of Jewish Law, The Plausibility of Theft which is found in the the Journal of Higher Criticism (2001) <- i think he dismissed this one. So which is the right argument?
Richard Carrier has supported allot of different anti-resurrection proposals that have coherence to the argument in his link, Jesus beyond the Grave for example which suggests that Jesus had a long lost twin. The only anti-christian conspiracy Carrier never gave set his whole lips on was the Zeitgeist one because that was middle school refutable.
Part 1 of Tektonics link - deals with: "General Case for Insufficiency: The Event is Not Proportionate to the Theory"
Part 2 of tektonics deals with: Probability of Survival vs. Miracle
Part 3 deals with : General Case for Spiritual Resurrection
None of them address the main historical points of his “Main Argument” and the main argument stands independent of the other parts. The other parts are arguing quite different things (whether a resurrection is enough to make someone equal to God, etc) Quite different from what we are talking about on this forum.
As it stands you failed to address the specific historical refutations Carrier presented and failed to provide a response to his “main argument”. Therefore, the credibility of your bible stories is extremely dubious, the authenticity of the “martyrs argument” is not historically supported, and the logic behind all of this is lacking.
Overall, you haven’t given me anything useful. Those other links are not what we are arguing. You have failed to support your case and have bored me. So I’m done explaining things to you, thanks for trying and failing.
None that I can think of off of the top of my head, but I appreciate the eagerness to clarify.
I will say, I’ve been reading John Stott’s “Basic Christianity,” and he makes a point that helps me understand where you’re coming from.
He says " Much of the controversy between science and religion has arisen through a failure to appreciate this point. The empirical method is largely inappropriate in the sphere of religion. Scientific knowledge advances through observation and experiment. It works on data supplied by the five physical senses. But when we inquire into the metaphysical, no data are immediately available. God today is neither tangible, visible nor audible. Yet there was a time when He chose to speak, and to clothe himself with a body which could be seen and touched."
Is this essentially what you’re saying about the metaphysical nature of God or is there more to it than that?
