Religion and Ethics Forum
General Category => General Discussion => Topic started by: ippy on December 11, 2015, 08:33:30 PM
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http://tinyurl.com/pjbaymd
Agree or not it's an interesting read.
ippy
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Interesting article. Yes, she is right of course, but, with the news yesterday from the Chief Inspector of schools of the indoctrination of children in private schools and after-school groups, with some in appalling conditions, it is clear that there is still such a long way to go.
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http://tinyurl.com/pjbaymd
Agree or not it's an interesting read.
ippy
Does she go the full ''Trump'' on this?
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"Faith" is a private, personal thing for individuals to treasure in their own way.
It should not be sponsored by society in general, subject to special privileges, tax relief/grants or promoted by state education.
"Faith" is personal full stop. Not everyone has the same "faith" and the overwhelming majority of course have non.
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Yes the article did have that Trumpesques tone that indeed most secular humanist appeals seem to have.
It seems to be taken as read that religious people are evil swivel eyed with invariably the worst intent.
We are a post Christian society but are we yet a New atheist society? I think not.
In terms of Nicky Morgan she is first and foremost a Conservative minister of Education
which means that she uses the case for faith schools (established popular schools with a local connection) and extends it to justify whole chains of schools sponsored and run by big business which I would move have far less of a case to run schools( No expertise, shifting and inappropriate imposition of business models and no local connection). So it's a case of support Cameron get Morgan.
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"Faith" is a private, personal thing for individuals to treasure in their own way.
It should not be sponsored by society in general, subject to special privileges, tax relief/grants or promoted by state education.
"Faith" is personal full stop. Not everyone has the same "faith" and the overwhelming majority of course have non.
That is sentimental secular humanist dogma. Reality tells us that faith is no more private than the new atheist movement or secular humanism which is the prevailing world view of this country.
If The full gamut of the secular humanist agenda was to be enforced and there was no representation of religion there could not, with regards to no representation no taxation be any tax on religion. There would then be the spectacle of greedy atheists and businesses rushing to declare themselves as religions.
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OSBIWO....(good acronym) said;
If The full gamut of the secular humanist agenda was to be enforced and there was no representation of religion there could not, with regards to no representation no taxation be any tax on religion. There would then be the spectacle of greedy atheists and businesses rushing to declare themselves as religions.
Still trying to work out what that means, can anyone (fluent in gibberish) help?
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OSBIWO....(good acronym) said;
If The full gamut of the secular humanist agenda was to be enforced and there was no representation of religion there could not, with regards to no representation no taxation be any tax on religion. There would then be the spectacle of greedy atheists and businesses rushing to declare themselves as religions.
Still trying to work out what that means, can anyone (fluent in gibberish) help?
It is actually written in Vladdish (which is an excitable variant of gibberish), John, so it is immune to understanding - all you can do is treat it as a word collage (albeit a badly executed one).
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OSBIWO....(good acronym) said;
If The full gamut of the secular humanist agenda was to be enforced and there was no representation of religion there could not, with regards to no representation no taxation be any tax on religion. There would then be the spectacle of greedy atheists and businesses rushing to declare themselves as religions.
Still trying to work out what that means, can anyone (fluent in gibberish) help?
Chunsty is trying to pretend that it would be terrible if religions didn't have to pay tax (despite the fact that many religious organisations don't currently pay tax), because then religions wouldn't be entitled to representation (despite the fact that religion is currently represented in the House of Lords).
Because then 'greedy atheists' would declare themselves religions to avoid tax (and one must assume voting); despite the fact that if they wanted to do that they could do it now.
If this still doesn't make any sense that's because the concept of meaning and reason mean something completely different in Chunstyland to their common meanings in what the rest of us like to call reality
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Dear John and Gordon,
If The full gamut of the secular humanist agenda was to be enforced and there was no representation of religion there could not, with regards to no representation no taxation be any tax on religion. There would then be the spectacle of greedy atheists and businesses rushing to declare themselves as religions.
Vlad at his best, although I think greedy atheists is a cheap shot.
To understand Vlad you must first understand the mind of Vlad.
Hello Playmates.
http://tinyurl.com/hp9shpc
Gonnagle, A true fan of all things Vlad.
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Thanks for your help chaps.
I don't suppose we can expect too much from someone who can't even make up his mind who he actually is !!!
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Dear John,
I don't suppose we can expect too much from someone who can't even make up his mind who he actually is !!!
Billions of universes — and of galaxies and copies of each of us — accumulate with no possibility of communication between them or of testing their reality. But if a duplicate self exists in every multiverse domain and there are infinitely many, which is the real 'me' that I experience now? Is any version of oneself preferred over any other? How could 'I' ever know what the 'true' nature of reality is if one self favours the multiverse and another does not?
In another universe you are Vlad and Vlad is you :o :o
Hey!! don't blame me, it's Nearlysane wot dunnit.
Gonnagle.
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Dear World,
As this is another "we love Vlad thread"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-_UWMYbT6YY
Fifty seconds into the video.
My thanks again to Nearlysane, it is not a great leap from Spike Milligan to Tommy Cooper, hell!! it is not a great leap from Spike Milligan to Tommy Cooper to our very own Vlad, they should all be issued free on the NHS.
Gonnagle.
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Dear John and Gordon,
Vlad at his best, although I think greedy atheists is a cheap shot.
To understand Vlad you must first understand the mind of Vlad.
Hello Playmates.
http://tinyurl.com/hp9shpc
Gonnagle, A true fan of all things Vlad.
Thanks Mr G.
I'm afraid that's me........ a laugh, a song and then me letting meself and everyone down badly....... I theng you!
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"Faith" is a private, personal thing for individuals to treasure in their own way.
It should not be sponsored by society in general, subject to special privileges, tax relief/grants or promoted by state education.
"Faith" is personal full stop. Not everyone has the same "faith" and the overwhelming majority of course have non.
OK, so we will stop all public funding of any form of 'faith'. Not sure how political parties would take this ;) Perhaps we ought to stop all funding of any group that teaches anything to do with 'belief systems'.
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Hopey said
"Perhaps we ought to stop all funding of any group that teaches anything to do with 'belief systems'."
I think you are finally getting the point mate.
We need to deal in facts!
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I think you are finally getting the point mate.
We need to deal in facts!
So, no science, because that isn't fact, that is what we believe to be the case, today, and it may change tomorrow. That is the underlying problem, john. There is no such thing as fact when one gets down to the reality of life
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So, no science, because that isn't fact, that is what we believe to be the case, today, and it may change tomorrow. That is the underlying problem, john. There is no such thing as fact when one gets down to the reality of life
Therefore, claims such as that Jesus was resurrected from being dead aren't historical facts - works for me.
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Therefore, claims such as that Jesus was resurrected from being dead aren't historical facts - works for me.
I'm not sure that anyone has claimed that that is a irrefutable fact, Gordon. What they have argued is that given all the evidence on both sides of the debate, they believe that it is more likely than not. After all, all you and others like you have been able to do is produce 'normal' evidence, and we all know that for normal to be where it is on a spectrum, there have to have been 'extremes' as well.
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I'm not sure that anyone has claimed that that is a irrefutable fact, Gordon.
I think some of your fellow Christians do, but for those who don't then their faith is really just opinion, so that their justification for holding this opinion should surely be amenable to assessment, and this requires a method that can provide a meaningful basis to accept or reject what is claimed - this method seems to be unavailable in spite of Christians claiming they have supporting evidence for their opinions.
What they have argued is that given all the evidence on both sides of the debate, they believe that it is more likely than not.
Then 'they' are naive or are liars, probably more the former since 'likely' implies probability, and since probability is naturalistic then their claims should be amenable to the scientific method, which is based on the assumption of naturalism. It isn't though, and since the 'other side' (theists) have no comparable method that is specific to non-naturalistic claims involving what is 'likely' then they have no evidence that is amenable to a methodological review: however, their claims of evidence fall neatly into the variety of fallacies upon which all their arguments depend.
After all, all you and others like you have been able to do is produce 'normal' evidence, and we all know that for normal to be where it is on a spectrum, there have to have been 'extremes' as well.
Normality undoubtedly has its known 'extremes' that are quantifiable (hence they are considered to be 'extreme' based on stated characteristics): weather is a good example, especially given recent rainfall levels in parts of the UK - but here you seem to be conflating evidence-based 'extremes' with 'supernatural' claims, which is a non-sequitur in the absence of comparable methodologies.
You guys do love your fallacies!
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I think some of your fellow Christians do, but for those who don't then their faith is really just opinion, so that their justification for holding this opinion should surely be amenable to assessment, and this requires a method that can provide a meaningful basis to accept or reject what is claimed -
If we use the historical method I.e. The study of history based on account then alternatives to the standard understanding of history... That whatever else the earliest Christians believed the gospel narrative have less evidence.
That twenty centuries on some can,t believe it is not actually a scientific or therefore nota methodological argument.
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If we use the historical method I.e. The study of history based on account then alternatives to the standard understanding of history... That whatever else the earliest Christians believed the gospel narrative have less evidence.
That twenty centuries on some can,t believe it is not actually a scientific or therefore nota methodological argument.
Have a listen to "Any Answers" BBC radio 4 Saturday 12-12-15 1300, you'll love it Vlad.
ippy
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I think some of your fellow Christians do, but for those who don't then their faith is really just opinion, so that their justification for holding this opinion should surely be amenable to assessment, and this requires a method that can provide a meaningful basis to accept or reject what is claimed - this method seems to be unavailable in spite of Christians claiming they have supporting evidence for their opinions.
And there is a methodology that you have yourself outlined - that when all the various elements and evidences are taken into account (the 'physical' natural explanations, and the more spiritual, 'supernatural' ones) I find thast the natural explanations given by you and those on your side of the debate don't fit the situiation. For instance the oft-repeated example of Chinese Whipsers which is only ever exemplified from within the context of a highly-literate society as we are today, as opposed to a largely oral society that would have existed in 1st Century Palestine.
In that sense, I find your arguments actually argue against the very points you seem keen to make.
Then 'they' are naive or are liars, probably more the former since 'likely' implies probability, and since probability is naturalistic then their claims should be amenable to the scientific method, which is based on the assumption of naturalism. It isn't though, and since the 'other side' (theists) have no comparable method that is specific to non-naturalistic claims involving what is 'likely' then they have no evidence that is amenable to a methodological review: however, their claims of evidence fall neatly into the variety of fallacies upon which all their arguments depend.
Sorry (well, not really!! ;)) to labour the point, but the problem with your 'naturalistic' arguments is that they are often made from within a context that assumes that modern thinking applies across time (again, my reference to the oral/literary tradition is an example of this; as is, for instance, Floo's oft-repeated presumption that for a young teen-aged girl to have become pregnant, child abuse must necessarily have been involved). So not only are you limiting one's arguments to a naturalistic one, one is limiting that naturalistic argument to a specific time period and its practices.
You guys do love your fallacies!
I could say the same about you guys.
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I could say the same about you guys.
Not only could you say it but you have said it.
But of course, when we ask for evidence of the same you do a runner, also of course.
Examples provided on request.
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And there is a methodology that you have yourself outlined - that when all the various elements and evidences are taken into account (the 'physical' natural explanations, and the more spiritual, 'supernatural' ones) I find thast the natural explanations given by you and those on your side of the debate don't fit the situiation.
If you are proposing there are 'supernatural' explanations then you are proposing an oxymoron.
For instance the oft-repeated example of Chinese Whipsers which is only ever exemplified from within the context of a highly-literate society as we are today, as opposed to a largely oral society that would have existed in 1st Century Palestine.
Presumptive assertion - you are not in a position to describe in any detail how much, or little, change in re-telling is involved since you have no idea of what was circulating at the time, say, of the death of Jesus - your start point of the NT text is decades post-hoc: this argument, that you often advance, is a red-herring.
In that sense, I find your arguments actually argue against the very points you seem keen to make. Sorry (well, not really!! ;)) to labour the point, but the problem with your 'naturalistic' arguments is that they are often made from within a context that assumes that modern thinking applies across time (again, my reference to the oral/literary tradition is an example of this; as is, for instance, Floo's oft-repeated presumption that for a young teen-aged girl to have become pregnant, child abuse must necessarily have been involved). So not only are you limiting one's arguments to a naturalistic one, one is limiting that naturalistic argument to a specific time period and its practices.
All verifiable explanations of events (like claimed resurrections, as opposed to the moral climate of the time and place) are naturalistic: in that they involve cause and effect, probability etc, so any 'supernatural explanation', apart from being an oxymoron as things stand, are indistinguishable from fiction without a suitable method to do the distinguishing with - any luck with that yet?
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If you are proposing there are 'supernatural' explanations then you are proposing an oxymoron.
Only because you don't accept that there is anything other than the natural.
Presumptive assertion - you are not in a position to describe in any detail how much, or little, change in re-telling is involved since you have no idea of what was circulating at the time, say, of the death of Jesus - your start point of the NT text is decades post-hoc: this argument, that you often advance, is a red-herring.
Actually, we do have a good idea of what was circulating - Paul refers to it in material dating only a decade or so after Jesus' death and resurrection.
All verifiable explanations of events (like claimed resurrections, as opposed to the moral climate of the time and place) are naturalistic: in that they involve cause and effect, probability etc, so any 'supernatural explanation', apart from being an oxymoron as things stand, are indistinguishable from fiction without a suitable method to do the distinguishing with - any luck with that yet?
As I pointed out above, you only see the world in physical terms. I and others don't.
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Only because you don't accept that there is anything other than the natural.
As I pointed out above, you only see the world in physical terms. I and others don't.
And yet when asked, as you have been many, many times by many different people, to provide any reason why anybody else should take this even remotely seriously, you blob it every time.
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Only because you don't accept that there is anything other than the natural.
That would be because there seems to be no method to substantiate that there are non-natural things in reality as opposed to imagination, so you need to demostrate your method of apprehending non-natural phenomena.
Actually, we do have a good idea of what was circulating - Paul refers to it in material dating only a decade or so after Jesus' death and resurrection.
A decade or so is a notable interval between the anecdotal claim being made and it being recorded - enough time for human fallibility to influence matters. Even so, this doesn't address the other problem here, which involves the risk that the source anecdotes may have involved mistakes or lies. If so, and even if any original mistakes or lies we're accurately re-told over intervening years they would still be mistakes and lies - so how have you excluded these risks?
As I pointed out above, you only see the world in physical terms. I and others don't
Up to you then to demonstrate something that is non-physical, and to save time I don't mean the abstractions (e.g. 'beauty') that are examples of how our biology works.
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I'm not sure that anyone has claimed that that is a irrefutable fact, Gordon. What they have argued is that given all the evidence on both sides of the debate
But Christians ignore most of the evidence and give undue weight to the evidence that supports their claim.
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That would be because there seems to be no method to substantiate that there are non-natural things in reality as opposed to imagination, so you need to demostrate your method of apprehending non-natural phenomena.
A decade or so is a notable interval between the anecdotal claim being made and it being recorded - enough time for human fallibility to influence matters.
And yet antitheists have no problem with it in any other historical context.
Utter humbug Gordy....and you know it.
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And yet antitheists have no problem with it in any other historical context.
Utter humbug Gordy....and you know it.
As they say, Vlad, evasion noted.
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And there is a methodology that you have yourself outlined - that when all the various elements and evidences are taken into account (the 'physical' natural explanations, and the more spiritual, 'supernatural' ones)
You still need to tell us how you evaluate supernatural "evidence".
For instance the oft-repeated example of Chinese Whipsers which is only ever exemplified from within the context of a highly-literate society as we are today, as opposed to a largely oral society that would have existed in 1st Century Palestine.
But it has been demonstrated that, no matter what kind of society existed at the time, the early Christians did not preserve the gospel accounts accurately.
the problem with your 'naturalistic' arguments is that they are often made from within a context that assumes that modern thinking applies across time
What makes you think Bayes' Theorem was different in first century Palestine? What makes you think that the scientific method wouldn't have worked then if people had known about it and applied it?
So not only are you limiting one's arguments to a naturalistic one
We have to because, despite being asked hundreds of times, you have provided no means of evaluating the truth of supernatural arguments.
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Actually, we do have a good idea of what was circulating - Paul refers to it in material dating only a decade or so after Jesus' death and resurrection.
False. Paul does not refer to any of the gospel texts we have now. Furthermore, Paul explicitly denies receiving his version of the gospel from the people that knew Jesus.
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You still need to tell us how you evaluate supernatural "evidence".
Indeed ... still being very much the operative word.
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One benefit in allowing state funded faith schools, rather than totally private ones is it allows the state to have more say in what is taught.
A private school doesn't have to follow the national currriculum
https://www.gov.uk/types-of-school/private-schools
I think that's a backwards step if you are wanting all children to have a rounded education.
It's the private schools that are often the problem, not state funded ones.
Perhaps it's private faith schools you need to fund, as opposed to not fund.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-30129645
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One benefit in allowing state funded faith schools, rather than totally private ones is it allows the state to have more say in what is taught.
That's only a benefit if it means that the private schools don't exist.
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That's only a benefit if it means that the private schools don't exist.
That was my point.
Rather than complain about state funded faith schools, perhaps the answer is only to allow state funded faith schools.
It's another way of coming at it ;)
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You still need to tell us how you evaluate supernatural "evidence".
But it has been demonstrated that, no matter what kind of society existed at the time, the early Christians did not preserve the gospel accounts accurately.
What makes you think Bayes' Theorem was different in first century Palestine? What makes you think that the scientific method wouldn't have worked then if people had known about it and applied it?
We have to because, despite being asked hundreds of times, you have provided no means of evaluating the truth of supernatural arguments.
The scientific method is only truly possible and enforcible where there is sufficient surveillance and instrumentation.........but that's what it's eventually down to in secular humanism......control, enforcement, surveillance, instrumentation, measurement, monitoring, standardisation, conformity, improvement of the species.....
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False. Paul does not refer to any of the gospel texts we have now. Furthermore, Paul explicitly denies receiving his version of the gospel from the people that knew Jesus.
So, he is independent of them but the same things are believed.
Looking less like a story spun in a room by a committee of evil.
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So, he is independent of them but the same things are believed.
Looking less like a story spun in a room by a committee of evil.
Or Paul is especially susceptible to propaganda, him not having first-hand knowledge - this NT stuff is looking more and more like a story spun in a room by a committee of evil.
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Or Paul is especially susceptible to propaganda, him not having first-hand knowledge - this NT stuff is looking more and more like a story spun in a room by a committee of evil.
That's all in your head.
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False. Paul does not refer to any of the gospel texts we have now. Furthermore, Paul explicitly denies receiving his version of the gospel from the people that knew Jesus.
Sorry, jeremy, but if you read Paul's letters, he refers to the fact that he had originally been involved in persecuting the early Church and that his own conversion had occurred on one of these 'expeditions'. He also talks about what had been taught by the apostles on their visits to various places. He didn't have to have met the apostles - though I'd be very surprised if he didn't speak to them about the situation oin the occasions he met them (that wouldn't mean that he 'received his version of the gospel from them').
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Or Paul is especially susceptible to propaganda, him not having first-hand knowledge - this NT stuff is looking more and more like a story spun in a room by a committee of evil.
I supose iut would be the latter, Gordon, if you assume that the actors in the drama are all highly literate and in a position to compare information with each other - two things that I suspect weren't the case in this situation.
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I supose iut would be the latter, Gordon, if you assume that the actors in the drama are all highly literate and in a position to compare information with each other - two things that I suspect weren't the case in this situation.
I'm not assuming anything.
I'm simply noting that humans are fallible, early Christians were presumably fallible too, and that there is a risk in any circumstances that those involved, either individually or in groups, in supporting a cause may make mistakes or lie.
I've yet to see this risk meaningfully addressed by Christians as regards the less than certain provenance of their holy book.
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I've yet to see this risk meaningfully addressed by Christians as regards the less than certain provenance of their holy book.
Clearly, you haven't read any theological material. The issue has been the subject of debate for centuries, and especially since the advent of Biblical criticism.
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Clealy, you haven't read any theological material. The issue has been the subject of debate for centuries, and especially since the advent of Biblical criticism.
All theology is doing for you here is providing an argument from authority since the detail can't be known even where archaeology can narrow down some possibilities around the objects and writing styles etc.
However none of this can, for instance, confirm that the words attributed to Jesus were actually spoken by him (putting translation issues on one side for now). For example, how could you exclude the risk that some of what Jesus is said to have said during the Sermon on the Mount anecdote was added for effect by no doubt well meaning supporters?
This is surely a risk is it not?
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So, he is independent of them but the same things are believed.
But are they independent of him? The usual explanation for why Paul never talks about the gospels is that they hadn't been written yet.
Looking less like a story spun in a room by a committee of evil.
I don't think it is claimed by anybody that the Jesus story was spun by a committee of evil. There's so many straw men in your arguments, we'll have to start calling you Vlad the Baler.
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Sorry, jeremy, but if you read Paul's letters, he refers to the fact that he had originally been involved in persecuting the early Church and that his own conversion had occurred on one of these 'expeditions'.
So?
He also talks about what had been taught by the apostles on their visits to various places.
No he doesn't. He says he met Peter (years after his conversion), but he never says he was taught anything by Peter. In fact, he claims that his gospel came to him by revelation directly from Jesus. There is precious little about the life of Jesus in Paul's letters and the source of what there is is never disclosed.
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Yes the article did have that Trumpesques tone that indeed most secular humanist appeals seem to have.
Translation: "I didn't like the conclusions she came to."
It seems to be taken as read that religious people are evil swivel eyed with invariably the worst intent.
No, it seems to notice that some religious people are intent on blowing each other up.
We are a post Christian society but are we yet a New atheist society? I think not.
And that's relevant because no-one was claiming it or advocating it... um...? What?
In terms of Nicky Morgan she is first and foremost a Conservative minister of Education which means that she uses the case for faith schools (established popular schools with a local connection) and extends it to justify whole chains of schools sponsored and run by big business which I would move have far less of a case to run schools( No expertise, shifting and inappropriate imposition of business models and no local connection). So it's a case of support Cameron get Morgan.
You can have an opinion on Faith schools that's independent of whom you vote for because you accept the need to compromise on certain issues. You can recognise the inherent divisiveness of segregating children on the basis of the faith-position of their parents.
O.
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OK, so we will stop all public funding of any form of 'faith'.
I think faith groups should be funded on the same criteria as any other charitable institution or formal gathering and association: as a rugby club we have a degree of social provision, and so have special tax statuses we can apply, or we can incorporate as a form of business if we prefer, and there are pros and cons to that. I fail to see why churches are any different.
Not sure how political parties would take this ;) Perhaps we ought to stop all funding of any group that teaches anything to do with 'belief systems'.
I think we should stop teaching churches as somehow 'special' because they teach belief systems, and stop holding them to different standards on no obvious basis. I'd not support a blanket ban on funding religious institutions any more than I'd advocate a blanket ban on any other form of organisation.
Each case needs to be judged on its own merits.
O.
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I'm not sure that anyone has claimed that that is a irrefutable fact, Gordon.
Some have - not many here - and that sort of certainty is worrying.
What they have argued is that given all the evidence on both sides of the debate, they believe that it is more likely than not.
They have argued that, but not very successfully.
After all, all you and others like you have been able to do is produce 'normal' evidence, and we all know that for normal to be where it is on a spectrum, there have to have been 'extremes' as well.
There do have to be extremes in a spectrum, but you are suggesting something that doesn't lie on the spectrum at all. 'Normal' and 'extreme' are categorised by a methodology which doesn't apply to the claims that are being made - you need a methodology of your own to justify those claims.
O.
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If we use the historical method I.e. The study of history based on account then alternatives to the standard understanding of history... That whatever else the earliest Christians believed the gospel narrative have less evidence.
If we use the historical method the evidence for an origin for the Jesus myth is reasonable, but the chances that the New Testament accounts are accurate is extremely weak.
That twenty centuries on some can,t believe it is not actually a scientific or therefore nota methodological argument.
Indeed, what people do or don't believe is a very poor indicator of the facts. What the evidence supports is a methodological argument, and the methodological argument is that there is no reason to accept claims of magic - Jesus might have existed in some form, but that form was a teacher and preacher, not an avatar of a god.
O.
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If we use the historical method the evidence for an origin for the Jesus myth is reasonable, but the chances that the New Testament accounts are accurate is extremely weak.
And what ius the proof that you have for this assertion, O?
Indeed, what people do or don't believe is a very poor indicator of the facts. What the evidence supports is a methodological argument, and the methodological argument is that there is no reason to accept claims of magic - ... O.
What all the evidence I've come across suggests that life is more than merely physical, and that therefore evidence based purely on physical factors is incomplete. You, and others here disagree with that: that's life.
... Jesus might have existed in some form, but that form was a teacher and preacher, not an avatar of a god.
I think you will find that Christianity doesn't teach that, let alone regard Jesus was an avatar of anything. It teaches that Jesus was and remains God.
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And what ius the proof that you have for this assertion, O?
The prevailing historical opinion on Jesus, which suggests that the stories are based on a real figure, but in the absence of any contemporary accounts fall short of supporting the specific claims.
What all the evidence I've come across suggests that life is more than merely physical, and that therefore evidence based purely on physical factors is incomplete.
And this is the bit where I point out that you don't have a methodology to validate that 'evidence' and that therefore it's just 'a feeling' which is no more nor less definitive than my 'feeling' that there is nothing beyond the material. You can have any beliefs you want, but unless you have a methodology to justify them they're just your opinion: I respect your right to it, but I don't have to give the content any time whatsoever.
I think you will find that Christianity doesn't teach that, let alone regard Jesus was an avatar of anything. It teaches that Jesus was and remains God.
Yes. And, if we presume for a moment that was true, how is that not an avatar?
O.
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I think you will find that Christianity doesn't teach that, let alone regard Jesus was an avatar of anything. It teaches that Jesus was and remains God.
Avatar definition:
a manifestation of a deity or released soul in bodily form on earth; an incarnate divine teacher.
https://www.google.be/search?rls=en&q=avatar+definition
As far as Jesus is concerned, I think that nails it (if you believe the Christian account).
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As far as Jesus is concerned, I think that nails it (if you believe the Christian account).
Pun intended, presumably :)
O.
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Avatar definition:
https://www.google.be/search?rls=en&q=avatar+definition
a manifestation of a deity or released soul in bodily form on earth; an incarnate divine teacher.
As far as Jesus is concerned, I think that nails it (if you believe the Christian account).
http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/manifestation
The problem with the definitions here is that none of them truly represent what Christ taught about himself and what Christianity teaches about him. I suppose that a combination of numbers 1 and 1.3 is nearest to what Christianity teaches.
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As far as Jesus is concerned, I think that nails it (if you believe the Christian account).
http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/manifestation
The problem with the definitions here is that none of them truly represent what Christ taught about himself and what Christianity teaches about him. I suppose that a combination of numbers 1 and 1.3 is nearest to what Christianity teaches.
The problem with that is that there is no clear definition of the qualities of gods, no definitive list of the material properties of avatars, the claims of what Jesus may or may not have said are contentious at best, and translated through at least two languages - on of those translations being as concerned with poetic license as precise meaning - and probably based on at least third hand accounts of any activities that did happen, before you even consider the likelihood that it's all made up in the first place.
Given that, the concept of an avatar is a close enough description of a deity's manifestation in a physical form which is, ultimately, however Christian theology might dress it up in their own unique language, what Jesus' place in the Holy Trinity represents.
O.
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The problem with that is that there is no clear definition of the qualities of gods, no definitive list of the material properties of avatars, the claims of what Jesus may or may not have said are contentious at best, and translated through at least two languages - on of those translations being as concerned with poetic license as precise meaning - and probably based on at least third hand accounts of any activities that did happen, before you even consider the likelihood that it's all made up in the first place.
For one thing, O, I'm not aware that there is a huge body of translations that is based on poetic licence. I realise that the AV/KJV and the more modern New KJV are often deemed by 20th and 21st century linguists to use 'beautiful poetic language', but when the KJV/AV was first produced the language used was the everyday vernacular. Perhaps you are suggesting tht the English language has become more mundane and bland over the centuries ;)
Secondly, there is remarkably little evidence to suggest that the material in the Gospels was "probably based on at least third hand accounts of any activities that did happen"; and quite a sizeable body of evidence to suggest that the accounts we know as Mark and Luke were written within the lifetimes of the apostles and therefore may well have had eye-witness input into their writing. Furthermore, even the most sceptical of scholars seem to believe that there was a pre-Gospels document on which the three Synoptic Gospel writers drew: if there was, and sadly we are not aware of any extant copies, there would have been even more evidence for eye-witness input.
Thirdly, and finally for now, given that the information had been doing the rounds for nigh-on 30 years before the earliest date for the first Gospel's writing, the likelihood "that it's all made up in the first place" is pretty slim, since the authorities would have had plenty of time and means to disprove the claims.
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Thirdly, and finally for now, given that the information had been doing the rounds for nigh-on 30 years before the earliest date for the first Gospel's writing, the likelihood "that it's all made up in the first place" is pretty slim, since the authorities would have had plenty of time and means to disprove the claims.
We've dealt with this presumptive nonsense before: there is no certainty that the authorities at the point Jesus was allegedly killed, and in the following days, didn't see this as being just an execution of an troublesome rabble-rouser.
I don't suppose they'd be worrying that some supporters of the late Jesus would subsequently make ridiculous claims about the dead Jesus (assuming he was dead) not staying dead.
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We've dealt with this presumptive nonsense before: there is no certainty that the authorities at the point Jesus was allegedly killed, and in the following days, didn't see this as being just an execution of an troublesome rabble-rouser.
So, are you suggesting that they had him killed sort of for the hell of it? Under what circumstances would they have had a troublesome rabble-rouser executed, who was clearly not claiming political power from either them or the Roman authorities? Remember that, if he was executed, this wasn't something that the Jewish authorities could do on their own initiative - they had to have Roman involvement. If anyone is being presumptive here, it would seem to be you.
I don't suppose they'd be worrying that some supporters of the late Jesus would subsequently make ridiculous claims about the dead Jesus (assuming he was dead) not staying dead.
They were clearly worried enough to have Jesus arrested and charged on a trumped up accusation of blasphemy, and then passed to Pilate for final judgement. This wasn't just some run-of-the-mill Zealot freedom-fighter. They probably weren't expecting "that some supporters of the late Jesus would subsequently make ridiculous claims about the dead Jesus (assuming he was dead) not staying dead", but it is clear that later they ran a programme to eradicate those same supporters, hence Paul's involvement and trip to Damascus.
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As far as Jesus is concerned, I think that nails it (if you believe the Christian account).
http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/manifestation
The problem with the definitions here is that none of them truly represent what Christ taught about himself
No the problem is that you don't want to admit that Christian ideas aren't unique.
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Secondly, there is remarkably little evidence to suggest that the material in the Gospels was "probably based on at least third hand accounts of any activities that did happen";
I agree. I think the gospels are mostly based on activities that didn't happen and are therefore not "third hand", much less second or first hand.
and quite a sizeable body of evidence to suggest that the accounts we know as Mark and Luke were written within the lifetimes of the apostles and therefore may well have had eye-witness input into their writing.
I'm not aware of any evidence to that effect. Perhaps you'd like to summarise it. You should probably start by telling us when each of the Apostles died and what evidence leads you to that date.
Furthermore, even the most sceptical of scholars seem to believe that there was a pre-Gospels document on which the three Synoptic Gospel writers drew: if there was, and sadly we are not aware of any extant copies, there would have been even more evidence for eye-witness input.
That's a bit of a stretch from the truth. Most scholars think that the main source for Matthew and Luke was Mark and possibly some other document since lost. There's no evidence of any there written sources.
Thirdly, and finally for now, given that the information had been doing the rounds for nigh-on 30 years before the earliest date for the first Gospel's writing, the likelihood "that it's all made up in the first place" is pretty slim, since the authorities would have had plenty of time and means to disprove the claims.
How do you know they didn't?
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So, are you suggesting that they had him killed sort of for the hell of it? Under what circumstances would they have had a troublesome rabble-rouser executed, who was clearly not claiming political power from either them or the Roman authorities? Remember that, if he was executed, this wasn't something that the Jewish authorities could do on their own initiative - they had to have Roman involvement. If anyone is being presumptive here, it would seem to be you.
I've no idea of the precise details of the case, and more to the point neither do you!
The Romans are reported to have crucified countless numbers of people, so crucifixion was probably routine - doesn't the story go that two other miscreants were crucified alongside Jesus, so that Jesus is alleged to have been crucified really isn't all that remarkable. You are reading more into this, such as the motivations of the 'authorities', than is there, and you are doing so based on records created by the supporters of Jesus - can you see the risks here?
They were clearly worried enough to have Jesus arrested and charged on a trumped up accusation of blasphemy, and then passed to Pilate for final judgement. This wasn't just some run-of-the-mill Zealot freedom-fighter. They probably weren't expecting "that some supporters of the late Jesus would subsequently make ridiculous claims about the dead Jesus (assuming he was dead) not staying dead", but it is clear that later they ran a programme to eradicate those same supporters, hence Paul's involvement and trip to Damascus.
Were they worried, or were the just routinely executing a trouble-maker?
Again you are over-egging the pudding by adding your personal tastes into the mix, such as in assuming that Jesus was seen by the authorities as being a significant figure at the point of his alleged execution: there is a risk that this may be propaganda added later by supporters of Jesus to promote his reputation as they wrote the accounts you are basing your argument on.
The point you are labouring here, that the 'authorities' at the time could have any scotched rumours of the resurrection of Jesus by simply producing the body, assumes that; a) the 'authorities' saw Jesus as being a special case, and b) they knew of the rumours of Jesus being resurrected in the days immediately following the alleged execution.
As the Americans say: you are 'reaching'.
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It seems to me that while antitheists here accept historical works written a few decades after the events they do not extend that to this particular context.
An open and shut case of special pleading and probably historical revisionism and generic fallacy as well.
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The point you are labouring here, that the 'authorities' at the time could have any scotched rumours of the resurrection of Jesus by simply producing the body, assumes that; a) the 'authorities' saw Jesus as being a special case, and b) they knew of the rumours of Jesus being resurrected in the days immediately following the alleged execution.
My last response on this was a dismissive one liner, so let me expand a bit on the point.
Let us, for the moment, assume that the Christian account of the early church is true. If the authorities were concerned about its rise, why didn't they produce the body? In fact, there seems to be no record at all of them doing anything to counter the rumours of Jesus' resurrection. Christians say that this is because the rumours were true and there was no body. However there is a better explanation.
The obvious answer is that the authorities were not aware of any rumours to counter. Either that,or they didn't see Christianity as a threat. It's not as if it was the only Jewish Messianic splinter sect or the only Greek mystery religion. The Romans were quite tolerant of different religions and there were many different beliefs in the empire.
Another possibility is that the authorities did produce the body but, for some reason, the documentary evidence hasn't reached the present day. For a long period in European history, Christians were the sole custodians of the preservation of written documents. Why would they lose an account of a failed attempt to discredit Christianity. The answer, of course, is that they wouldn't, but they would "lose" an account of a successful attempt.
The mythicists also have an answer to the problem. If Jesus was a mythical god-man, only morphing into the current legend at a later date, the evidence would be exactly as it is. The authorities wouldn't have countered Jesus' resurrection because everybody knew - even the proto-Christians of the time - that Jesus wasn't a real human being.
Of all the possible explanation for the silence of the authorities, the Christian one is the least credible.
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It seems to me that while antitheists here accept historical works written a few decades after the events they do not extend that to this particular context.
An open and shut case of special pleading and probably historical revisionism and generic fallacy as well.
Vlad, this has been mentioned on a number of occasions and, amazingly, there has never been an honest response.
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It seems to me that while antitheists here accept historical works written a few decades after the events they do not extend that to this particular context.
The gospels aren't dismissed solely because they were written decades after the alleged events.
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It seems to me that while antitheists here accept historical works written a few decades after the events they do not extend that to this particular context.
1. How about some examples for comparison.
2. Please also ensure that these examples contain supernatural claims.
3. Please then explain why you think the main concern being expressed here is the gap between the events and the account - that may be an issue of course, but in the case of the NT is is less of an issue than what being claimed in the account.
Of course 'historical works' can cover a great deal of ground, and can include fiction!
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Vlad, this has been mentioned on a number of occasions and, amazingly, there has never been an honest response.
Don't be silly - while the gap between the events the NT portrays and the NT being written is an issue, since it gives more time for human fallibility and artifice to have an effect, the main problem with the NT is what its core claims are: Jesus being divine, resurrected after having been dead etc etc.
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1. How about some examples for comparison.
2. Please also ensure that these examples contain supernatural claims.
2a. That they are anonymous
2b. That their sources are unknown.
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My last response on this was a dismissive one liner, so let me expand a bit on the point.
Let us, for the moment, assume that the Christian account of the early church is true. If the authorities were concerned about its rise, why didn't they produce the body? In fact, there seems to be no record at all of them doing anything to counter the rumours of Jesus' resurrection. Christians say that this is because the rumours were true and there was no body. However there is a better explanation.
The obvious answer is that the authorities were not aware of any rumours to counter. Either that,or they didn't see Christianity as a threat. It's not as if it was the only Jewish Messianic splinter sect or the only Greek mystery religion. The Romans were quite tolerant of different religions and there were many different beliefs in the empire.
Another possibility is that the authorities did produce the body but, for some reason, the documentary evidence hasn't reached the present day. For a long period in European history, Christians were the sole custodians of the preservation of written documents. Why would they lose an account of a failed attempt to discredit Christianity. The answer, of course, is that they wouldn't, but they would "lose" an account of a successful attempt.
The mythicists also have an answer to the problem. If Jesus was a mythical god-man, only morphing into the current legend at a later date, the evidence would be exactly as it is. The authorities wouldn't have countered Jesus' resurrection because everybody knew - even the proto-Christians of the time - that Jesus wasn't a real human being.
Of all the possible explanation for the silence of the authorities, the Christian one is the least credible.
The trouble with the mythicists is that there isn't much evidence that Jesus morphed into God man at a later date since the evidence is of communities believing in the Gospel accounts and christology within two decades in the epistles.
There is no evidence of anyone thinking that Jesus wasn't a real person until a decades AND decades later. If you are prepared to accept that and yet quibble over the first couple of decades after then you are a bigger purveyor of Humbug than even I took you for.
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The trouble with the mythicists is that there isn't much evidence that Jesus morphed into God man at a later date since the evidence is of communities believing in the Gospel accounts and christology within two decades in the epistles.
That is the later date to which I refer. The earliest gospel was written in the late 60's or early 70's. It is clear that, by that time, at least some Christians believed the current version of Christianity.
There is no evidence of anyone thinking that Jesus wasn't a real person until a decades AND decades later.
There is no evidence that Jesus was a real person until the 50's, twenty years after his alleged death.
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The obvious answer is that the authorities were not aware of any rumours to counter. Either that,or they didn't see Christianity as a threat. It's not as if it was the only Jewish Messianic splinter sect or the only Greek mystery religion. The Romans were quite tolerant of different religions and there were many different beliefs in the empire.
Some fairly simple responses to this set of suggestions, jeremy. Whilst it is true that Jesus and his group weren't the only Jewish Messianic splinter group, all the others were politico-military in nature and seem to have been generally dealt with by the Roman authorities as opposed to the Jewish authorities. The fact that it was the Jewish authorities who took the initiative in Jesus' case, seems to suggest that they knew that this was more than just a bog standard politico-military splinter group. Clearly, they assumed that Jesus was simply a human being, otherwise, why arrange for him to be executed. However, we also know that the disciples began their public preaching within a month or so of the resurrection - in the centre of Jerusalem and at the height of a Jewish religious festival, with a reported 3000 conversions on that first day of preaching. This wasn't some minor sect which the authorities ignored, because we are also told that they started to persecute the groups thgat were orming - hence Saul's trip to Damascus, during which he was converted.
Another possibility is that the authorities did produce the body but, for some reason, the documentary evidence hasn't reached the present day. For a long period in European history, Christians were the sole custodians of the preservation of written documents. Why would they lose an account of a failed attempt to discredit Christianity. The answer, of course, is that they wouldn't, but they would "lose" an account of a successful attempt
Yet, if it was the Jews who produced the body, it would have been the Jews who preserved the information, as they have doe with huge amounts of other documentation. Furthermore, whilst "For a long period in European history, Christians were the sole custodians of the preservation of written documents" this didn't even begin to be the case until the 5th or 6th century AD, if not later; where is the reference in the older documentation that exists, to the effect that the Jews had produced this evidence - or are you saying that the later Christians had gone though every document and scrubbed this reference? If so, do you have any evidence to this effect?
The mythicists also have an answer to the problem. If Jesus was a mythical god-man, only morphing into the current legend at a later date, the evidence would be exactly as it is. The authorities wouldn't have countered Jesus' resurrection because everybody knew - even the proto-Christians of the time - that Jesus wasn't a real human being.
The proiblem with this argument is that this is exactly what the Jewish authorities would have been trying to combat. They wouldn't have wanted a story that the God that they worshipped had come to earth in the form of a human being - as had been forecast many centuries earlier - and that they had not simply ignord him, but had him executed.
Of all the possible explanation for the silence of the authorities, the Christian one is the least credible.
Well, none of your three explanations are any more credible, for the reasons I just given.
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It seems to me that while antitheists here accept historical works written a few decades after the events they do not extend that to this particular context.
And you've no doubt got a list of examples rather than just this vague assertion, right?
An open and shut case of special pleading and probably historical revisionism and generic fallacy as well.
I'm glad to see you grasp the concept of special pleading now - does that mean we're not going to have to suffer another rendition of the Kalam Cosmological Argument in bollocks minor next year?
O.
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The gospels aren't dismissed solely because they were written decades after the alleged events.
But it is the most commonly-used explanation for dismissal, jeremy.
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2. Please also ensure that these examples contain supernatural claims.
As I have been saying Gordon is dressing up his philosophical point in the raiments of so called historical study.
History has nothing to say about the theology, Jesus is reported himself to have dismissed attaching too much to miracles But the sticking point is the seeing of Christ in the experience of the resurrection.
The circumstances are that those reporting on the resurrection believe they saw it.
You must concede therefore that they saw something, interpreted it as something which you can't, but reported what they saw. or that they were lying. You have gone straight to the ''lie'' because of your beliefs and prejudices.
Which brings me to your request to talk about you specially pleading.
Take Derren Brown's or Dynamo's tricks. What do you make of those did people see something.....I bet you agree with that in the affirmative. Did it look as if the impossible had happened......I bet you agree in the affirmative.......and yet here you are specially pleading that nothing....nothing happened, that they did not see anything. That they could not possibly have seen anything.
Well you may say.....It is all a Darren Brownesque illusion. Only if Brown or Dynamo or Troy submitted themselves for crucifixion and death and then resurrection without the magic of television would we be able to confirm that.
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But it is the most commonly-used explanation for dismissal, jeremy.
No it isn't - the core objection is the nature of what is being claimed in the NT as being fact.
The gap in time between the events and the NT record being made, given human fallibility, just adds an additional concern.
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And you've no doubt got a list of examples rather than just this vague assertion, right?
It's not a vague assertion. We know that people go on about new testament evidence to be invalid because they are not first hand accounts or thatthey are written decades after the event but most history books are not written first hand or within two decades of the events.
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The trouble with the mythicists is that there isn't much evidence that Jesus morphed into God man at a later date since the evidence is of communities believing in the Gospel accounts and christology within two decades in the epistles.
Except that the epistles suggest that some such communities existed even before the epistles were written - so suggesting that they had been in existence for some time. For instance, the book of Galations, the earliest of the accepted Pauline epistles and dated to between 45 and 55 AD starts off -
Paul an apostle—not from men nor through man, but through Jesus Christ and God the Father, who raised him from the dead— 2 and all the brethren who are with me,
To the churches of Galatia:
3 Grace to you and peace from God the Father and our Lord Jesus Christ, 4 who gave himself for our sins to deliver us from the present evil age, according to the will of our God and Father; 5 to whom be the glory for ever and ever. Amen.
There Is No Other Gospel
6 I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting him who called you in the grace of Christ and turning to a different gospel— 7 not that there is another gospel, but there are some who trouble you and want to pervert the gospel of Christ.
(Revised Standard Version)
The two sections I've bolded indicate that Paul was writing to groups of Christians who had already been in existence for some time - long enough to gather together in a worshipping set-up and who were already beginning to fall away from the teachings they had originally heard, teachings that Paul was determined to reinforce.
There is no evidence of anyone thinking that Jesus wasn't a real person until a decades AND decades later. If you are prepared to accept that and yet quibble over the first couple of decades after then you are a bigger purveyor of Humbug than even I took you for.
I would disagree that There is no evidence of anyone thinking that Jesus wasn't a real person until a decades AND decades later.
. Galations - written no more than 20 years and possibly as soon as 10 years after the events - refers to the concept as something that the Christians in Galatia had already been taught.
If Galatia - in what is now modern day Turkey and somewhere around the area of Ankara - had already heard the message within 10 years of the events, is it likely that the message wouldn't have been even better known in the place it started - Jerusalem and Judea?
Extraneous [/quote] isolated!!
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No it isn't - the core objection is the nature of what is being claimed in the NT as being fact.
The gap in time between the events and the NT record being made, given human fallibility, just adds an additional concern.
Sorry, Gordon, but having been involved in this virtual debate for nigh on 15 years now, not to mention all the years of face2face debate before that, the most common objection I have met is that the NT material dates from 'many decades' after the events and that that therefore casts doubt on the veracity of the claims made in them.
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Except that the epistles suggest that some such communities existed even before the epistles were written - so suggesting that they had been in existence for some time. For instance, the book of Galations, the earliest of the accepted Pauline epistles and dated to between 45 and 55 AD starts off -
(Revised Standard Version)
The two sections I've bolded indicate that Paul was writing to groups of Christians who had already been in existence for some time - long enough to gather together in a worshipping set-up and who were already beginning to fall away from the teachings they had originally heard, teachings that Paul was determined to reinforce.
I would disagree that . Galations - written no more than 20 years and possibly as soon as 10 years after the events - refers to the concept as something that the Christians in Galatia had already been taught.
If Galatia - in what is now modern day Turkey and somewhere around the area of Ankara - had already heard the message within 10 years of the events, is it likely that the message wouldn't have been even better known in the place it started - Jerusalem and Judea?
I think you've got your wires crossed Hope I frequently point out that although the epistles are a couple of decades after the event they point to well established Christian communities.
Just stick to one bottle before mid day in future.
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As I have been saying Gordon is dressing up his philosophical point in the raiments of so called historical study.
History has nothing to say about the theology, Jesus is reported himself to have dismissed attaching too much to miracles But the sticking point is the seeing of Christ in the experience of the resurrection.ote]
The circumstances are that those reporting on the resurrection believe they saw it.
So, we are dealing with wholly subjective accounts and since people are known to be fallible then we need to be cautious.
You must concede therefore that they saw something, interpreted it as something which you can't, but reported what they saw. or that they were lying. You have gone straight to the ''lie'' because of your beliefs and prejudices.
Depends on what the say the saw surely? If I claim to have seen an aeroplane flying overhead this morning (and I have) then I could be lying, but the lie is believable since it fits with how reality normally operates. However, if I claim that I saw a kangaroo fly past my window then I am either grossly mistaken or I am lying - and I'd say seeing flying kangaroos anywhere (and not specifically in Scotland) is about as believable as the claimed resurrection of Jesus.
Which brings me to your request to talk about you specially pleading.
Take Derren Brown's or Dynamo's tricks. What do you make of those did people see something.....I bet you agree with that in the affirmative. Did it look as if the impossible had happened......I bet you agree in the affirmative.......and yet here you are specially pleading that nothing....nothing happened, that they did not see anything. That they could not possibly have seen anything.
Well you may say.....It is all a Darren Brownesque illusion. Only if Brown or Dynamo or Troy submitted themselves for crucifixion and death and then resurrection without the magic of television would we be able to confirm that.
I'm not saying it was a contrived trick at all - so be careful around all that straw.
I'm suggesting that if Jesus really was killed then he stayed dead and there is a much simpler explanation for claims that he didn't stay dead and that the resurrection didn't happen at all: which is that this element is most likely fictitious propaganda - no props, magic wands or rabbits popping out of hats.
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Sorry, Gordon, but having been involved in this virtual debate for nigh on 15 years now, not to mention all the years of face2face debate before that, the most common objection I have met is that the NT material dates from 'many decades' after the events and that that therefore casts doubt on the veracity of the claims made in them.
Then you have misunderstood.
If it were the case that the main objection was the delay in reporting then someone like me would need to concede that if some new account of the resurrection popped up that was dated to the week of the alleged death and resurrection of Jesus then I would be more likely to take the resurrection claim seriously - wrong!
They delay in reporting, combined with the possible iases of those doing the reporting, is just an additional risk in terms of mistake, exaggeration or lies creeping in.
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So, we are dealing with wholly subjective accounts and since people are known to be fallible then we need to be cautious.
Depends on what the say the saw surely? If I claim to have seen an aeroplane flying overhead this morning (and I have) then I could be lying, but the lie is believable since it fits with how reality normally operates. However, if I claim that I saw a kangaroo fly past my window then I am either grossly mistaken or I am lying - and I'd say seeing flying kangaroos anywhere (and not specifically in Scotland) is about as believable as the claimed resurrection of Jesus.
I'm not saying it was a contrived trick at all - so be careful around all that straw.
I'm suggesting that if Jesus really was killed then he stayed dead and there is a much simpler explanation for claims that he didn't stay dead and that the resurrection didn't happen at all: which is that this element is most likely fictitious propaganda - no props, magic wands or rabbits popping out of hats.
It's a case of who and how fallible you want them to be Gordon. As I pointed out to you there seem to be an awful lot of people who were well aware that these things don't happen, were down to earth hairy arsed artisanal types, what about the doubting Thomas accounts........................
Demonstrate fictitious propaganda. Which could be easily countered.
So far your argument depends on sweeping ideas which are staple conspiracy theorists resorts. Fallability, gullibility, propaganda all of which vaguely explain the biggest conspiracy in history...............The G Files oooooooeeeeeeeoooooooo.
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So, we are dealing with wholly subjective accounts and since people are known to be fallible then we need to be cautious.
Couldn't agree with you more, Gordon.
Depends on what the say the saw surely? If I claim to have seen an aeroplane flying overhead this morning (and I have) then I could be lying, but the lie is believable since it fits with how reality normally operates. However, if I claim that I saw a kangaroo fly past my window then I am either grossly mistaken or I am lying - and I'd say seeing flying kangaroos anywhere (and not specifically in Scotland) is about as believable as the claimed resurrection of Jesus.
It also depends on what such people expected to see. The Gospels make it pretty clear that the disciples scattered after the crucifixion, many returning to their pre-Jesus jobs. This isn't the behaviour of people who were expecting something amazing, but the behaviour of people whose raison d'etre for the last few years had been destroyed. Furthermore, the very fact that the news of Jesus' resurrection was brought by a woman is made so much of - someone whose word was of very little value in that society - makes it even less likely to have been just made up.
The disciples didn't anticipate the resurrection so wouldn't have been pre-creating the stories that they then shared with the Jews in Jerusalem for the Pentecost festival.
I'm suggesting that if Jesus really was killed then he stayed dead and there is a much simpler explanation for claims that he didn't stay dead and that the resurrection didn't happen at all: which is that this element is most likely fictitious propaganda - no props, magic wands or rabbits popping out of hats.
People have been trying to come up with the 'much simpler explanation' for 20-odd centuries, Gordon. Are you going to break that deadlock with some amazing discovery?
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Whilst it is true that Jesus and his group weren't the only Jewish Messianic splinter group, all the others were politico-military in nature
Firstly, how do you know that, secondly, so what?
However, we also know that the disciples began their public preaching within a month or so of the resurrection - in the centre of Jerusalem and at the height of a Jewish religious festival, with a reported 3000 conversions on that first day of preaching.
The only source for this is Acts which is a late unreliable document.
Furthermore in spite of this alleged huge conversion, other sources remain silent. Either nobody else noticed it going on or later Christians suppressed their accounts.
This wasn't some minor sect which the authorities ignored
And yet the lack of any documents from these authorities leads us to the probable conclusion that it was a minor sect that the authorities ignored.
because we are also told that they started to persecute the groups thgat were orming - hence Saul's trip to Damascus, during which he was converted.
Where's the evidence that Saul was anything more than a leader of a lynch mob?
Yet, if it was the Jews who produced the body, it would have been the Jews who preserved the information, as they have doe with huge amounts of other documentation.
And Jewish sources remain silent on the subject of Jesus. Why do you think this means anything other than they had the perception that there was nothing to care about?
Furthermore, whilst "For a long period in European history, Christians were the sole custodians of the preservation of written documents" this didn't even begin to be the case until the 5th or 6th century AD, if not later
But it did happen.
where is the reference in the older documentation that exists, to the effect that the Jews had produced this evidence - or are you saying that the later Christians had gone though every document and scrubbed this reference? If so, do you have any evidence to this effect?
So you dig yourself an even deeper hole. It seems more and more likely that the "authorities" never wrote anything about Jesus which simply destroys your claim that Christianity had a huge impact int the 30's and 40's.
In point of fact, there are gaps in several historical documents - not necessarily Jewish - covering the period that includes Jesus' alleged resurrection. These seem a little suspicious.
The proiblem with this argument is that this is exactly what the Jewish authorities would have been trying to combat. They wouldn't have wanted a story that the God that they worshipped had come to earth in the form of a human being
You do realise that this was not an uncommon meme in the Greco-Roman World of which Palestine was part. It's absurd to think they cared about yet another minor cult with yet another resurrection myth.
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It's a case of who and how fallible you want them to be Gordon. As I pointed out to you there seem to be an awful lot of people who were well aware that these things don't happen, were down to earth hairy arsed artisanal types, what about the doubting Thomas accounts........................
I'd love to respond to this point, Vlad, but sadly I've no idea what your point is.
Demonstrate fictitious propaganda. Which could be easily countered.
Certainly - Bill Clinton: 'I did not have sexual relations with that woman.'
So far your argument depends on sweeping ideas which are staple conspiracy theorists resorts. Fallability, gullibility, propaganda all of which vaguely explain the biggest conspiracy in history...............The G Files oooooooeeeeeeeoooooooo.
Not really - I'm just asking you guys what steps you have taken to assess the risk of mistakes or lies in the NT accounts: do date I've yet to see a response that actually addressed these risks.
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But it is the most commonly-used explanation for dismissal, jeremy.
No it isn't. The mot commonly used explanation is that they contain supernatural bullshit.
Serious people who actually think about it note it as one of a set of reasons that together show the gospels as not historically accurate.
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Sorry, Gordon, but having been involved in this virtual debate for nigh on 15 years now,
And you seem to have learned nothing in those 15 years.
the most common objection I have met is that the NT material dates from 'many decades' after the events and that that therefore casts doubt on the veracity of the claims made in them.
But nobody would seriously put it up as the only argument. If the only problem with the gospels is that they were written 30-40 years after the event, it wouldn't be a problem. However, there are many problems of which this is one. Misrepresenting the sceptical position in the way you do is dishonest.
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It also depends on what such people expected to see. The Gospels make it pretty clear that the disciples scattered after the crucifixion, many returning to their pre-Jesus jobs. This isn't the behaviour of people who were expecting something amazing, but the behaviour of people whose raison d'etre for the last few years had been destroyed. Furthermore, the very fact that the news of Jesus' resurrection was brought by a woman is made so much of - someone whose word was of very little value in that society - makes it even less likely to have been just made up.
This is special pleading pure and simple.
The disciples didn't anticipate the resurrection so wouldn't have been pre-creating the stories that they then shared with the Jews in Jerusalem for the Pentecost festival.
So the story goes, as you tell it.
People have been trying to come up with the 'much simpler explanation' for 20-odd centuries, Gordon. Are you going to break that deadlock with some amazing discovery?
There is nothing to discover - all you have here is one middle-eastern religious superstition, mixed in with the events and culture of that time and place in antiquity, that is indistinguishable from fiction.
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I'd love to respond to this point, Vlad, but sadly I've no idea what your point is.
Certainly - Bill Clinton: 'I did not have sexual relations with that woman.'
Not really - I'm just asking you guys what steps you have taken to assess the risk of mistakes or lies in the NT accounts: do date I've yet to see a response that actually addressed these risks.
Well if a lie Gordon it is such a whopper it should have been slapped down. It would have to be a one off.
One also has to look at similar claims which have never been anywhere near as successful. In terms of evidence if this is a scam it shouldn't work as extensively as it obviously does.
If you dismiss it as you do Gordon you have to demonstrate why this works and yet the same stunt never worked before or since.
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It's not a vague assertion. We know that people go on about new testament evidence to be invalid because they are not first hand accounts or that they are written decades after the event but most history books are not written first hand or within two decades of the events.
No, we go on about the New Testament because it was first documented well outside the lifespan of the people involved - but claims are made for it that it is first-hand accounts - because there are no contemporary supporting pieces of evidence to support the claims and because it makes supernatural claims without anything like sufficient evidence to support them which people claim are actually true.
The New Testament is treated like every other historical document - it is checked against other contemporary sources, reviewed in light of objective evidence of the physical history, reviewed in light of the cultural understanding of the time and a judgement made on its historical context.
It's not treated as though it were special by historical analsyis, though it is by the people who object to that and want it to be.
There are any number of 'historical' documents that have been rejected after analysis - the Protocols of Zion or whatever that nonsense was called would seem to be the most obvious example.
From my viewpoint I think the concession of the historical mainstream that the New Testament figure of Jesus is probably based on a real person is a hedge against an outright dismissal of the claims as baseless.
O.
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No, we go on about the New Testament because it was first documented well outside the lifespan of the people involved
So you do not accept a date for the first epistles at 45- 55 AD?
Even if you are you automatically either invalidate any histories written at the same distance from the events or special plead that Christian documents must be treated differently.
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Well if a lie Gordon it is such a whopper it should have been slapped down.
Would it? These were credulous times as regards religion.
It would have to be a one off.
Would it? Why?
One also has to look at similar claims which have never been anywhere near as successful. In terms of evidence if this is a scam it shouldn't work as extensively as it obviously does.
What similar claims?
Must be windy where you are, Vlad, since you seem to be flying a kite.
If you dismiss it as you do Gordon you have to demonstrate why this works and yet the same stunt never worked before or since.
Ah - the old switcheroo burden of proof-wise: I'm just asking how you guys have assessed the risk of mistakes or lies in the NT accounts - any chance of an explanation?
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Would it? These were credulous times as regards religion.
What similar claims?
Must be windy where you are, Vlad, since you seem to be flying a kite.
Ah - the old switcheroo burden of proof-wise: I'm just asking how you guys have assessed the risk of mistakes or lies in the NT accounts - any chance of an explanation?
No Gordon if you make a positive assertion you need to justify it. If you suggest an alternative history you need to provide it.
The case for an historical Jesus is Good. To treat it as a lie is flawed since as I have told you but you ignored it is the type of scam that doesn't work.
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Would it? These were credulous times as regards religion.
Then it would have kept on giving and giving. The roman empire should have had loads of messiahs. There should be at least several messiah based religions. However there is only really one.
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Then it would have kept on giving and giving. The roman empire should have had loads of messiahs.
Yes, there were hundreds of them. I think Josephus talks about two hundred.
There should be at least several messiah based religions. However there is only really one.
that has survived to the present day.
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No Gordon if you make a positive assertion you need to justify it. If you suggest an alternative history you need to provide it.
The case for an historical Jesus is Good. To treat it as a lie is flawed since as I have told you but you ignored it is the type of scam that doesn't work.
I haven't made a positive claim, Vlad.
I've simply noted that making mistakes and telling lies is known human behaviour and I've asked how you guys have addressed the risks in relation to the NT - so, are you going to evade again or answer?
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Yes, there were hundreds of them. I think Josephus talks about two hundred.
that has survived to the present day.
But no evidence that they had anywhere near the same impact. All short lived, unsuccessful scams showing that messiahism didn't work......and probably derivative. All except one.
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Then it would have kept on giving and giving. The roman empire should have had loads of messiahs. There should be at least several messiah based religions. However there is only really one.
It did - antiquity was crawling with religious sects.
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I haven't made a positive claim, Vlad.
I've simply noted that making mistakes and telling lies is known human behaviour and I've asked how you guys have addressed the risks in relation to the NT - so, are you going to evade again or answer?
And we know that a lie of this magnitude doesn't work. That is my assessment of the risk and damn fine it is too. There is little risk of this being a lie and working. That is the evidence. Jeremy P cites 200 that didn't work.
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It did - antiquity was crawling with religious sects.
Not anywhere near the scale of Christianity.
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And we know that a lie of this magnitude doesn't work. That is my assessment of the risk and damn fine it is too. There is little risk of this being a lie and working. That is the evidence. Jeremy P cites 200 that didn't work.
So, your 'assessment' consists of what you'd like to be the case. Here is a quote from Bertrand Russell - he could be talking about you, Vlad!
If a man is offered a fact which goes against his instincts, he will scrutinize it closely, and unless the evidence is overwhelming, he will refuse to believe it. If, on the other hand, he is offered something which affords a reason for acting in accordance to his instincts, he will accept it even on the slightest evidence. The origin of myths is explained in this way.
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Not anywhere near the scale of Christianity.
Argumentum ad populum.
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So, your 'assessment' consists of what you'd like to be the case. Here is a quote from Bertrand Russell - he could be talking about you, Vlad!
No my assessment is of what is the case. This type of lie does not work as a world religion vis the extinction of them all.
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No my assessment is of what is the case. This type of lie does not work as a world religion vis the extinction of them all.
Hope the weather stays calm for you, Vlad, as you drift helplessly upon the Ocean of Fallacies without sail, oar or rudder to help you.
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Hope the weather stays calm for you, Vlad, as you drift helplessly upon the Ocean of Fallacies without sail, oar or rudder to help you.
The question remains though Gordon why are messianic sects unsuccessful except one?
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No my assessment is of what is the case. This type of lie does not work as a world religion vis the extinction of them all.
Except Christianity.
And Islam.
And Buddhism.
And Jainism.
And Hinduism.
And Sikhism.
And Shintoism.
And Mormonism (for those that don't think it's part of Christianity)
And Ba'hai.
And Scientology.
Apart from those, what have the Romans ever done for.. oh, wait, wrong sketch. Sorry, carry on, I felt a bit funny there...
O.
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Except Christianity.
And Islam.
And Buddhism.
And Jainism.
And Hinduism.
And Sikhism.
And Shintoism.
And Mormonism (for those that don't think it's part of Christianity)
And Ba'hai.
And Scientology.
Apart from those, what have the Romans ever done for.. oh, wait, wrong sketch. Sorry, carry on, I felt a bit funny there...
O.
Only one though is messianic though.
Perhaps you should have read how the thread was going before contributing.
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Only one though is messianic though.
Perhaps you should have read how the thread was going before contributing.
Why? Messianic is only a requirement for a religion to flourish in the wake of the previous religion, it's a cultural meme. Why pre-emptively exclude other religions?
You'd arbitrarily selected a Messiah property as 'necessary' to be true, but if I arbitrarily select polytheism then you either have to acknowledge that Satan's at least a demigod in the conventional portrayal or switch to decide that Christianity's not all that.
If the property of durability validates religions, then whether they're Messianic or not is irrelevant. If the property of having a messiah counts for something, you need to justify that claim on its own.
O.
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Why? Messianic is only a requirement for a religion to flourish in the wake of the previous religion, it's a cultural meme. Why pre-emptively exclude other religions?
You'd arbitrarily selected a Messiah property as 'necessary' to be true, but if I arbitrarily select polytheism then you either have to acknowledge that Satan's at least a demigod in the conventional portrayal or switch to decide that Christianity's not all that.
If the property of durability validates religions, then whether they're Messianic or not is irrelevant. If the property of having a messiah counts for something, you need to justify that claim on its own.
O.
What does this have to do with comparison between messianic sects.
I have never said non messianic view points couldn't make the world grade.
What is worse than butting in and getting it wrong is then trying to justify it. why are you doing it?
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The question remains though Gordon why are messianic sects unsuccessful except one?
That Christianity has survived isn't an indication that Christianity is true or correct. That it did survive involves people and the use of religion in social and political terms and we still see this today, but where in some places (like here in the UK) what we are now seeing is the influence of Christianity weakening, just as others religions have done.
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That Christianity has survived isn't an indication that Christianity is true or correct. That it did survive involves people and the use of religion in social and political terms and we still see this today, but where in some places (like here in the UK) what we are now seeing is the influence of Christianity weakening, just as others religions have done.
So let me get this straight. The growth of Christianity means nothing in terms of it's correctness but it's weakening influence does?
Which messianic religion is it losing out to?
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So let me get this straight. The growth of Christianity means nothing in terms of it's correctness but it's weakening influence does?
Do try reading for comprehension, Vlad, since I have nowhere suggested that the growth or decline of a religion correlates with the truth of its claims.
It is the role of religion in social and political terms throughout history that is relevant, along with wider issues such as education and expanding knowledge, whereby the simplistic explanations of religion have less currency than they once did, leading to reducing influence.
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Do try reading for comprehension, Vlad, since I have nowhere suggested that the growth or decline of a religion correlates with the truth of its claims.
It is the role of religion in social and political terms throughout history that is relevant, along with wider issues such as education and expanding knowledge, whereby the simplistic explanations of religion have less currency than they once did, leading to reducing influence.
I think that thesis is quite debatable Gordon but what get's me is your implicit linkage with education and non religion.
I can see a correlation historically between increased wealth in employment and increasing materialism...which requires the abandonment of concentration on religion and some of those precepts valued in religion and people confusing what the do with the way the world is or should be but whether all that has any virtue I don't know. There has certainly been a dumbing down and a return to a curriculum and educational elitism which obviously suits ''The few''......Today it is very much in the areas where religion is receding that ''Most toys wins''.
That RE has been piss poor for decades is obvious in your own assumptions.
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Chuns,
I think that thesis is quite debatable Gordon but what get's me is your implicit linkage with education and non religion.
Why? The correlation is a strong one - in general, the higher the educational standards the lower the religiosity, and vice versa.
I can see a correlation historically between increased wealth in employment and increasing materialism...which requires the abandonment of concentration on religion and some of those precepts valued in religion and people confusing what the do with the way the world is or should be but whether all that has any virtue I don't know.
You might want to try to unscramble that a little, but if you're heading towards the notion that material wellbeing correlates with declining religiosity, that's probably true - possibly something to do with the fatalism of, "well it's crap here, but at least I'll get my reward in the afterlife" or some such being less important when access to medicines and the like mean it's not so crap here after all. That said, the bored wealthy do sometimes seem to be fertile ground for the barmier extremes of supersitionism.
There has certainly been a dumbing down and a return to a curriculum and educational elitism which obviously suits ''The few''......Today it is very much in the areas where religion is receding that ''Most toys wins''.
Is that right? No doubt you'll be along soon to provide some examples of this supposed dumbing down. From my perspective, educational practice has changed from rote learning to creative and sceptical thinking but that seems to me to be a change for the good.
That RE has been piss poor for decades is obvious in your own assumptions.
What makes you think that RE is "piss poor" exactly? It seems to me that describing the different superstitions and attendant practices of different peoples is a useful way to encourage children to accept others and otherness - a much healthier approach in my view than the sectarianism of faith schools.
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What does this have to do with comparison between messianic sects.
One of my points is that you are rather arbitrary in your decision to limit to Messianic Arab cults - in any small environment you will get competition for resources that tend towards monopoly.
I have never said non messianic view points couldn't make the world grade.
Perhaps, but the justification of accepting the validity of Christianity 'because it survived' presumably equally applies to the others?
What is worse than butting in and getting it wrong is then trying to justify it. why are you doing it?
I'd say what is worse is trying to rig your argument with arbitrary restrictions before you start. I'm doing this to point that out.
O.
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One of my points is that you are rather arbitrary in your decision to limit to Messianic Arab cults - in any small environment you will get competition for resources that tend towards monopoly.
Perhaps, but the justification of accepting the validity of Christianity 'because it survived' presumably equally applies to the others?
I'd say what is worse is trying to rig your argument with arbitrary restrictions before you start. I'm doing this to point that out.
O.
Gordon alleged that there was no consideration among Christians that Christianity could be a lie. I think that's the whole point of someone like CS Lewis coming up with the trilemma and I have refuted Gordon by considering that with hundreds of messianic religions only one has made it to world class status. I have made no statement of that in itself proving correctness just that messianic religions do not work. The 'lie' component invariably fails. In fact messianic religions because of the numbers involved do not work.........and yet one has.
Gordon asks us to consider messianic lies. I have................. they evidently don't work.
We are then left wondering why Christianity has.
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Gordon alleged that there was no consideration among Christians that Christianity could be a lie.
No I didn't - I asked you what steps you'd taken to assess the risks of mistakes or lies. For all I know you have done this: hence my question.
I think that's the whole point of someone like CS Lewis coming up with the trilemma and I have refuted Gordon by considering that with hundreds of messianic religions only one has made it to world class status.
No you haven't, you've just fallen for survivor bias.
I have made no statement of that in itself proving correctness just that messianic religions do not work. The 'lie' component invariably fails. In fact messianic religions because of the numbers involved do not work.........and yet one has.
You've introduced this messianic dimension, as part of you falling for survivor bias.
Gordon asks us to consider messianic lies. I have................. they evidently don't work.
We are then left wondering why Christianity has.
I never mentioned messianic: you did. As regards why Christianity has survived, that is down to people.
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No I didn't - I asked you what steps you'd taken to assess the risks of mistakes or lies. For all I know you have done this: hence my question.
No you haven't, you've just fallen for survivor bias.
You've introduced this messianic dimension, as part of you falling for survivor bias.
I never mentioned messianic: you did. As regards why Christianity has survived, that is down to people.
Gordon
You accused me of not considering the lie aspect. I have and you have been found out.
Stop trying to slither out of your meet, condign, righteous and just humiliation by conjuring survivor bias.
I am not about to take on the faith of others. That is mere intellectual assent. I must realise it's truth....................otherwise it's just what you guys have.................... factoids and more factoids. Which you can take or leave.
Why did it survive? I'm asking.
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Gordon
You accused me of not considering the lie aspect. I have and you have been found out.
Stop trying to slither out of your meet, condign, righteous and just humiliation by conjuring survivor bias.
In that case you'll be able to explain the basis of your discounting the possibility of lies in the NT - won't you!
I am not about to take on the faith of others. That is mere intellectual assent. I must realise it's truth....................otherwise it's just what you guys have.................... factoids and more factoids. Which you can take or leave.
Why did it survive? I'm asking.
People, Vlad, just people and their agendas.
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Gordon
You accused me of not considering the lie aspect. I have and you have been found out.
Stop trying to slither out of your meet, condign, righteous and just humiliation by conjuring survivor bias.
I am not about to take on the faith of others. That is mere intellectual assent. I must realise it's truth....................otherwise it's just what you guys have.................... factoids and more factoids. Which you can take or leave.
Why did it survive? I'm asking.
It is quite amazing that on the subject of lies, you should lie about what Gordon said, particularly when you quoted his post which shows your lie. Why do you find it so necessary to lie so often on here?
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It is quite amazing that on the subject of lies, you should lie about what Gordon said, particularly when you quoted his post which shows your lie. Why do you find it so necessary to lie so often on here?
Gordon's assertion about an assessment of lying was countered in reply 91 with an assessment given.
He then makes the assertion again in reply 94. The assessment of the possibility of lying is made again
Gordon then repeats the accusation a second time in post 98.
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Gordon's assertion about an assessment of lying was countered in reply 91 with an assessment given.
He then makes the assertion again in reply 94. The assessment of the possibility of lying is made again
Gordon then repeats the accusation a second time in post 98.
In #87, which you responded to in #91, I said;
'Not really - I'm just asking you guys what steps you have taken to assess the risk of mistakes or lies in the NT accounts: do date I've yet to see a response that actually addressed these risks. '
In post #94 I said;
'Ah - the old switcheroo burden of proof-wise: I'm just asking how you guys have assessed the risk of mistakes or lies in the NT accounts - any chance of an explanation? '
and in post #98 I said;
'I've simply noted that making mistakes and telling lies is known human behaviour and I've asked how you guys have addressed the risks in relation to the NT - so, are you going to evade again or answer?'
On each occasion I've asked how you've addressed the risks of mistakes or lies in the NT - any chance of an answer or are you, as usual. going to wriggle and evade?
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Gordon's assertion about an assessment of lying was countered in reply 91 with an assessment given.
He then makes the assertion again in reply 94. The assessment of the possibility of lying is made again
Gordon then repeats the accusation a second time in post 98.
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No my assessment is of what is the case. This type of lie does not work as a world religion vis the extinction of them all.
In the fourth century, Rome started to favour one particular religion that happened to be a bit stronger than the others. That and the penchant of its followers for proselytising others may be guaranteed Christianity's success.
It was a lottery. Christianity had the winning ticket.
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In the fourth century, Rome started to favour one particular religion that happened to be a bit stronger than the others. That and the penchant of its followers for proselytising others may be guaranteed Christianity's success.
It was a lottery. Christianity had the winning ticket.
Ah, the Darwinian answer. Care to evidentialise?
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Ah, the Darwinian answer. Care to evidentialise?
Is "evidentialise" even a word? My spell checker says no.
Please rephrase your question in English.
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Is "evidentialise" even a word? My spell checker says no.
Please rephrase your question in English.
Do you care to back up your thesis with some historical evidence that it's purely a matter of luck.
I accept your theory isn't strictly Darwinian since there is also the question of fitness as opposed to mere complete randomness.
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Gordon's assertion about an assessment of lying was countered in reply 91 with an assessment given.
He then makes the assertion again in reply 94. The assessment of the possibility of lying is made again
Gordon then repeats the accusation a second time in post 98.
No, he ask how you counter it, nor that you fail to do so, and you continue to cite posts that show that. Why is that you continue to lie? Are you trying to make your opinions look bad? Are you Farmer in disguise?
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No, he ask how you counter it, nor that you fail to do so, and you continue to cite posts that show that. Why is that you continue to lie? Are you trying to make your opinions look bad? Are you Farmer in disguise?
Gordon's overall thesis is as I understand it that Christians do not have any consideration for lies and mistake.
I pointed out that these are covered by at least Lewises Trilemma. Christians do ask these questions.
What I am saying is that out of the 200 or so messiahs concurrent with Christ not all can be deluded but some are, not all can be mistaken but some are and some must be liers. That messiahism dies out shows that the lie, the mistake and delusion do not work as explanatories for a messianic religion.
So a messiah story which survives may by elimination of what doesn't actually work, may actually be true.
That is what Gordon never considers.
That I'm giving him and you the time of day is currently surprising me.
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Gordon's overall thesis is as I understand it that Christians do not have any consideration for lies and mistake.
I pointed out that these are covered by at least Lewises Trilemma. Christians do ask these questions.
What I am saying is that out of the 200 or so messiahs concurrent with Christ not all can be deluded but some are, not all can be mistaken but some are and some must be liers. That messiahism dies out shows that the lie, the mistake and delusion do not work as explanatories for a messianic religion.
So a messiah story which survives may by elimination of what doesn't actually work, may actually be true.
That is what Gordon never considers.
That I'm giving him and you the time of day is currently surprising me.
No, this isn't what Gordon has that he asked how YOU take account of the possibility of mistakes and lies. And yet again you lie and misrepresent that, why?
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Oh and BTW. Yes all messiahs and any followers could be wrong.
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Gordon's overall thesis is as I understand it that Christians do not have any consideration for lies and mistake.
No, I'm simply asking how they addressed these risks.
these are covered by at least Lewises Trilemma. Christians do ask these questions.
Only if you think the naive opinions of an apologist represent meaningful questioning - if you do, Vlad, then perhaps you'd explain the underlying reasoning.
What I am saying is that out of the 200 or so messiahs concurrent with Christ not all can be deluded but some are, not all can be mistaken but some are and some must be liers. That messiahism dies out shows that the lie, the mistake and delusion do not work as explanatories for a messianic religion.
So you have returned to the fallacy of survivor bias.
So a messiah story which survives may by elimination of what doesn't actually work, may actually be true.
Maybe, but how have you excluded the risks of mistakes or lies?
That is what Gordon never considers.
That I'm giving him and you the time of day is currently surprising me.
Surprises me too, given your performance in this thread.
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Oh and BTW. Yes all messiahs and any followers could be wrong.
But one could be right.
That an extensive Christian community existed very shortly after the events and within living memory means that corroboration of the events on which a gospel faith was built would have been highly likely.
Gordon and those like him never give an exemplar lie or mistake which this phenomenon can be compared and assessed in the light of. If you'd like to produce one be my guess.
Gordon gravitates to the lie option. That for me suggests he is guilty of the generic fallacy....that his lie hypothesis is based on a caricature of Christians which he holds.
I have made these points explicitly and more than once on this board. Gordon is wrong and you have chosen to partake of his wrongness.
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No, I'm simply asking how they addressed these risks.
Only if you think the naive opinions of an apologist represent meaningful questioning - if you do, Vlad, then perhaps you'd explain the underlying reasoning.
So you have returned to the fallacy of survivor bias.
Maybe, but how have you excluded the risks of mistakes or lies?
Surprises me too, given your performance in this thread.
You are just plundering the list of fallacies Gordon.
survivor bias? is that a proper one or one that you just made up?
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But one could be right.
That an extensive Christian community existed very shortly after the events and within living memory means that corroboration of the events on which a gospel faith was built would have been highly likely.
Gordon and those like him never give an exemplar lie or mistake which this phenomenon can be compared and assessed in the light of. If you'd like to produce one be my guess.
Gordon gravitates to the lie option. That for me suggests he is guilty of the generic fallacy....that his lie hypothesis is based on a caricature of Christians which he holds.
I have made these points explicitly and more than once on this board. Gordon is wrong and you have chosen to partake of his wrongness.
Gordon has not gravitated to any hypothesis, you continue to lie and misrepresent. Given that I will leave you to it. I have no idea why you think this amount of lying is in any way good for your case.
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That an extensive Christian community existed very shortly after the events and within living memory means that corroboration of the events on which a gospel faith was built would have been highly likely.
Assertion and special pleading.
[/quote]Gordon and those like him never give an exemplar lie or mistake which this phenomenon can be compared and assessed in the light of. If you'd like to produce one be my guess.[/quote]
The burden of proof is yours, Vlad.
Gordon gravitates to the lie option. That for me suggests he is guilty of the generic fallacy....that his lie hypothesis is based on a caricature of Christians which he holds.
I think you mean 'genetic' fallacy.
I have made these points explicitly and more than once on this board. Gordon is wrong and you have chosen to partake of his wrongness.
Actually, Vlad, all you've done is evade and misrepresent.
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Gordon has not gravitated to any hypothesis, you continue to lie and misrepresent. Given that I will leave you to it. I have no idea why you think this amount of lying is in any way good for your case.
Are you saying that Gordon does not think of Christianity as most likely a mistake, delusion or a lie?
Are you not at least a bit suspicious that the word lie crops up in Gordon's posts?
You may go and take your silly mind games with you.
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Assertion and special pleading.
Gordon and those like him never give an exemplar lie or mistake which this phenomenon can be compared and assessed in the light of. If you'd like to produce one be my guess.
The burden of proof is yours, Vlad.
I think you mean 'genetic' fallacy.
Actually, Vlad, all you've done is evade and misrepresent.
Ching....That's 10,000 Gordon Bingo points!!!
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Assertion and special pleading.
Gordon and those like him never give an exemplar lie or mistake which this phenomenon can be compared and assessed in the light of. If you'd like to produce one be my guess.
The burden of proof is yours, Vlad.
I think you mean 'genetic' fallacy.
Actually, Vlad, all you've done is evade and misrepresent.
From Gordon. Post 82
'' I'm suggesting that if Jesus really was killed then he stayed dead and there is a much simpler explanation for claims that he didn't stay dead and that the resurrection didn't happen at all: which is that this element is most likely fictitious propaganda - no props, magic wands or rabbits popping out of hats.''
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Gordon has not gravitated to any hypothesis, you continue to lie and misrepresent. Given that I will leave you to it. I have no idea why you think this amount of lying is in any way good for your case.
From Gordon post 82
''I'm suggesting that if Jesus really was killed then he stayed dead and there is a much simpler explanation for claims that he didn't stay dead and that the resurrection didn't happen at all: which is that this element is most likely fictitious propaganda - no props, magic wands or rabbits popping out of hats.''
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From Gordon. Post 82
'' I'm suggesting that if Jesus really was killed then he stayed dead and there is a much simpler explanation for claims that he didn't stay dead and that the resurrection didn't happen at all: which is that this element is most likely fictitious propaganda - no props, magic wands or rabbits popping out of hats.''
So!
I'm stating my opinion on likely explanations but I fail to see how my opinion gets you off the hook of explaining how you have assessed the risk of mistakes or lies in the NT.
Shifting the burden again, Vlad - it does you no credit.
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So!
I'm stating my opinion on likely explanations but I fail to see how my opinion gets you off the hook of explaining how you have assessed the risk of mistakes or lies in the NT.
Shifting the burden again, Vlad - it does you no credit.
I have already stated how and why I have dismissed the likelihood of your lie hypothesis.
You have a burden because you have stated it is fictional propaganda. That being a positive assertion means you have a burden of proof.
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I have already stated how and why I have dismissed the likelihood of your lie hypothesis.
You haven't dismissed anything Vlad - you've simply evaded.
You have a burden because you have stated it is fictional propaganda. That being a positive assertion means you have a burden of proof.
No I haven't: I've said that mistakes and lies are one possible explanation that fits with known human behaviour, so in my view they are very likely the case. But my view isn't the point here: the point is that I've repeatedly asked you how you have assessed these risks but it seems you have no answer, hence you continue to evade and wriggle.
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You haven't dismissed anything Vlad - you've simply evaded.
No I haven't: I've said that mistakes and lies are one possible explanation that fits with known human behaviour, so in my view they are very likely the case. But my view isn't the point here: the point is that I've repeatedly asked you how you have assessed these risks but it seems you have no answer, hence you continue to evade and wriggle.
Obviously I'm not giving you the response you want. I have included your assertion.....it is likely to be a lie....that is a positive assertion please justify.
You don't like having to justify yourself do you?
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Chunderer,
I have already stated how and why I have dismissed the likelihood of your lie hypothesis.
No you haven't. You claim to have "assessed" it, but absent a method of any kind to distinguish your whateverpopsintomyhead-ism from just guessing about stuff your have no means of assessing anything, and thus no rationale for your "dismissal".
You have a burden because you have stated it is fictional propaganda. That being a positive assertion means you have a burden of proof.
No, as ever you have this wrong. What's actually being said is that you have no means to distinguish the stories you think to be true from fiction - a very different matter. And given the supernatural nature of those stories (and by the way your dismissal of different supernatural stories from other faiths entirely) then you have a huge burden of proof to establish even a method to determine their truth value.
Oh, and yes survivor bias is a real thing. You're doing it a lot here by implying that in some unexplained way the success of your particular faith must in some way be connected with its supposed truthfulness (would you say the same about the more successful faith of Islam?). You seem to be entirely oblivious to the fact that the same could be said of the Aztec faith, the Sumerian faith, the Norse faith etc by their proponents when they happened to prevalent.
A famous example of survivor bias was the case of the USAF bombers. They were coming back from raids in WWII badly shot up and the officers concerned decided to add more armour where they could, but not so much as to make them too sluggish in the air. As the engines had hardy any bullet marks but the fuselage had lots, they decided that the extra armour should be added to the fuselage.
Big mistake. Turns out that the engines were the most vulnerable places to be shot, so very few that had their engines shot up made it back to base. The sample they had in front of them then actually showed that being hit in the fuselage did hardly any serious damage and so the armour should in fact be added to the places that showed least damage - ie, the engines.
The same mistake is essentially what you're doing here.
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Vlad,
Obviously I'm not giving you the response you want. I have included your assertion.....it is likely to be a lie....that is a positive assertion please justify.
The overwhelming evidence is that lies, mistakes, delusions, misattributions etc are the more likely explanation for supernatural claims than those claims being true. You know this to be the case because you apply the same principle in respect of supernatural claims other than those in which you happen to believe.
Why should your particular suite of supernatural claims be exempt from the principle?
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Obviously I'm not giving you the response you want. I have included your assertion.....it is likely to be a lie....that is a positive assertion please justify.
You don't like having to justify yourself do you?
You are still evading Vlad - that people tell lies and make mistakes is hardly an earth-shattering observation of mine. No doubt you've come across these risks in real-life.
However, where remarkable or unusual claims are made then mistakes or lies are a risk to be addressed by those who take such claims seriously, like you, and where those who are more sceptical, like me, can reasonably ask on what basis there has been meaningful scrutiny of the claim its supporters - like you.
So, how can you reassure my sceptical self that you have applied any sort of review to the remarkable claims made in the NT? It seems you haven't, or you can't, so you need to at least recognise the risk that the divine bits in the NT really are indistinguishable from fiction.
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Chunderer,
No you haven't. You claim to have "assessed" it, but absent a method of any kind to distinguish your whateverpopsintomyhead-ism from just guessing about stuff your have no means of assessing anything, and thus no rationale for your "dismissal".
No, as ever you have this wrong. What's actually being said is that you have no means to distinguish the stories you think to be true from fiction - a very different matter. And given the supernatural nature of those stories (and by the way your dismissal of different supernatural stories from other faiths entirely) then you have a huge burden of proof to establish even a method to determine their truth value.
Oh, and yes survivor bias is a real thing. You're doing it a lot here by implying that in some unexplained way the success of your particular faith must in some way be connected with its supposed truthfulness (would you say the same about the more successful faith of Islam?). You seem to be entirely oblivious to the fact that the same could be said of the Aztec faith, the Sumerian faith, the Norse faith etc by their proponents when they happened to prevalent.
A famous example of survivor bias was the case of the USAF bombers. They were coming back from raids in WWII badly shot up and the officers concerned decided to add more armour where they could, but not so much as to make them too sluggish in the air. As the engines had hardy any bullet marks but the fuselage had lots, they decided that the extra armour should be added to the fuselage.
Big mistake. Turns out that the engines were the most vulnerable places to be shot, so very few that had their engines shot up made it back to base. The sample they had in front of them then actually showed that being hit in the fuselage did hardly any damage and so the armour should in fact be added to the places that showed least damage - ie, the engines.
The same mistake is essentially what you're doing here.
No I have assessed the available evidence evidence that there was an extensive community which believed the gospel assertions at a time when it would have been possible to check the stories and accounts. This should have collapsed more rapidly than the messianisms which eventually and invariably did.
Now, on what basis does Gordon dispute that. What evidence or grounds does he base his likelihood of fictional propaganda?
So what evidence is Gordon working on?
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Chunster,
No I have assessed the available evidence evidence that there was an extensive community which believed the gospel assertions at a time when it would have been possible to check the stories and accounts. This should have collapsed more rapidly than the messianisms which eventually and invariably did.
Utterly wrong.
First, how exactly would you suggest that anyone would "check the stories and accounts" when they happened decades earlier and no-one thought them important enough to write down?
Second, on what basis would you dismiss the countless other communities that believed in different supernatural claims entirely and became just as established as the one you selected?
Third, why would you think survivorship has anything to do with truthfulness given the countless examples of chance and happenstance in other areas that can also lead to survival?
Fourth, if you really want to commit the fallacy why then would you dismiss, say, Islam when it satisfies the same criterion?
Fifth, what makes you think that time and place in which you happen to exist so special that the prevalent religion must be the true one, whereas the Aztec, Norse, Sumerians etc would have been wrong for doing just the same thing?
Now, on what basis does Gordon dispute that. What evidence or grounds does he base his likelihood of fictional propaganda?
So what evidence is Gordon working on?
Again, the evidence is probability-based - all claims of the supernatural we know of are more probably explained by causes other than their truthfulness - ghosts, the Loch Ness Monster, Jack Frost, whatever. You know this to be the case because you also do just the same thing in respect of the supernatural claims in which you happen not to believe. That you apply special pleading to exempt the suite of claims in which you do happen to believe for reasons known only to yourself is just another of the many fallacies on which you rely.
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Chunster,
Utterly wrong.
First, how exactly would you suggest that anyone would "check the stories and accounts" when they happened decades earlier and no-one thought them important enough to write down?
Second, on what basis would you dismiss the countless other communities that believed in different supernatural claims entirely and became just as established as the one you selected?
Third, why would you think survivorship has anything to do with truthfulness given the countless examples of chance and happenstance in other areas that can also lead to survival?
Fourth, if you really want to commit the fallacy why then would you dismiss, say, Islam when it satisfies the same criterion?
Fifth, what makes you think that time and place in which you happen to exist so special that the prevalent religion must be the true one, whereas the Aztec, Norse, Sumerians etc would have been wrong for doing just the same thing?
Again, the evidence is probability-based - all claims of the supernatural we know of are more probably explained by causes other than their truthfulness - ghosts, the Loch Ness Monster, Jack Frost, whatever. You know this to be the case because you do just the same thing in respect of the supernatural claims in which you happen not to believe. That you apply special pleading to exempt the suite of claims in which you do happen to believe for reasons known only to yourself is just another of the many fallacies on which you rely.
The epistles show that communities were established within two decades. Many of the personnel would still be available for consultation.
Other communities with supernatural stories are I move less concerned with time and place. I have never said I discount those stories.
Evidence shows that believing communities existed there interpretation may be wrong but I do not think that is likely because of the paucity of alternative explanations.
I have said that the survivability of Christianity is not dependent totally on what happened historically. Even the impact of a resurrection would have faded. What keeps Christianity going is the encounter possible with Christ here and now. I'm not sure that survival bias is apt. In any case Christianity has a philosophical dimension as if there is a time limit on ideas.
which is why of the minor religions based on Christianity they are versions of unorthodox ideas extant since the time of Christ.
Your biggest misrepresentation is that you are championing old religions and I totally dismiss them. Wrong on both counts I'm afraid.
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Chunderer,
The epistles show that communities were established within two decades. Many of the personnel would still be available for consultation.
That's some supposition given that the transmission of the stories would have been likely to have passed through many hands over a period of decades but, even if Fred in the commune who was a hundred degrees of separation from the originator of the story somehow had access to that originator nonetheless, that would say nothing whatever to whether that originator had correctly attributed a cause for the event they thought they saw.
Other communities with supernatural stories are I move less concerned with time and place. I have never said I discount those stories.
First, you have no idea whether other communities were less concerned with time and place.
Second, you're trying to make an argument for the supposed truthfulness of a story based on a believing community decades later. Apart from the fallacies and bad reasoning that entails, if you don't discount different communities with different beliefs then presumably you must apply the same reasoning to think their stories to be true too?
Or are we back to special pleading just for your story again?
Evidence shows that believing communities existed there interpretation may be wrong but I do not think that is likely because of the paucity of alternative explanations.
What "paucity"? There are many other (but less thrilling) explanations - that you dismiss then out of hand says nothing to their probable truthfulness.
I have said that the survivability of Christianity is not dependent totally on what happened historically. Even the impact of a resurrection would have faded. What keeps Christianity going is the encounter possible with Christ here and now. I'm not sure that survival bias is apt. In any case Christianity has a philosophical dimension as if there is a time limit on ideas.
First, it's only a belief in a "possible encounter" - a belief that might help sustain the faith because of its appealing nature - but only a belief nonetheless.
Second, of course survivor bias is relevant and you've blundered into it several times now. If you want to make a claim for truthfulness that doesn't rely on it - a supposed "philosophical dimension" for example - then by all means attempt it, but you need to to jettison the survivor bias fallacy in any case.
...which is why of the minor religions based on Christianity they are versions of unorthodox ideas extant since the time of Christ.
You'll need to put that into comprehensible English if you want me to reply, but insofar as I can unscramble it the same could have been said of splinter faiths from that of the Aztec gods.
So what?
Your biggest misrepresentation is that you are championing old religions and I totally dismiss them. Wrong on both counts I'm afraid.
You of all people are accusing someone else of "misrepresenting"? Wow.
Anyways, I do no such thing - I merely point out that, if you want to use bad arguments for your faith, then you have no choice but to accept the same bad arguments for other faiths entirely when the same criteria apply.
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Chunderer,
That's some supposition given that the transmission of the stories would have been likely to have passed through many hands over a period of decades but, even if Fred in the commune who was a hundred degrees of separation from the originator of the story somehow had access to that originator nonetheless, that would say nothing whatever to whether that originator had correctly attributed a cause for the event they thought they saw.
First, you have no idea whether other communities were less concerned with time and place.
Second, you're trying to make an argument for the supposed truthfulness of a story based on a believing community decades later. Apart from the fallacies and bad reasoning that entails, if you don't discount different communities with different beliefs then presumably you must apply the same reasoning to think their stories to be true too?
Or are we back to special pleading just for your story again?
What "paucity"? There are many other (but less thrilling) explanations - that you dismiss then out of hand says nothing to their probable truthfulness.
First, it's only a belief in a "possible encounter" - a belief that might help sustain the faith because of its appealing nature - but only a belief nonetheless.
Second, of course survivor bias is relevant and you've blundered into it several times now. If you want to make a claim for truthfulness that doesn't rely on it - a supposed "philosophical dimension" for example - then by all means attempt it, but you need to to jettison the survivor bias fallacy in any case.
You'll need to put that into comprehensible English if you want me to reply, but insofar as I can unscramble it the same could have been said of splint faiths from that of the Aztec gods.
So what?
You of all people are accusing someone else of "misrepresenting"? Wow.
Anyways, I do no such thing - I merely point out that, if you want to use bad arguments for your faith, then you have no choice but to accept the same bad arguments for other faiths entirely when the same criteria apply.
I think you start with a fixed idea that the communities were more than two decades away from the events and that the people are 100 degrees of separation.
Of course the full gospel is that Jesus is risen. Paul of course is the well known model for this, the encounter with the risen christ and his accounts are those which tell us about the established communities within two decades....(think 1995) of course the communities are established which suggests that people were meeting the personnel much earlier than two decades.
You also seem to say that Christianity is believing somebody else's story and experience. This is not the Christianity of the epistles which talk about appropriating a living risen Christ for one's self with that in place resurrection is the logical explanation.
Survivor bias is no good for establishing Christianity in a person. It's not appropriate to bring it up.
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No I have assessed the available evidence evidence that there was an extensive community which believed the gospel assertions at a time when it would have been possible to check the stories and accounts. This should have collapsed more rapidly than the messianisms which eventually and invariably did.
Now, on what basis does Gordon dispute that. What evidence or grounds does he base his likelihood of fictional propaganda?
So what evidence is Gordon working on?
I'm not working on evidence at all really: I'm simply observing that people are potentially fallible and that mistakes and lies are always a risk when dealing with accounts of anything, and especially so when they come from supporters (or detractors) of a cause or movement. I've simply asked you how you have assessed these risks in relation to the NT content.
Your answer seems to be that there were communities in the 1st century, messianic or otherwise, that believed what the NT says - but this doesn't address the risks since they may, and possibly in good faith, have believed what may well have included mistakes or lies given the supernatural aspects: that they did believe doesn't confirm that what they believed was true though, hence the need to assess the risks.
You can of course choose to believe the NT is correct just on the basis of personal faith and in spite of the risks of mistakes or lies, which seems to be your position - but the risks are still there all the same.
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I have assessed the available evidence evidence that there was an extensive community which believed the gospel assertions at a time when it would have been possible to check the stories and accounts.
What evidence is that? There's no historical evidence of early Christian communities (let alone extensive ones) that believed what is in the gospels. The only evidence we have is Paul's letters and they imply that, at least in some cases, the "extensive community" didn't necessarily believe the gospel. Why else did he spent all that time arguing with the Corinthians about whether Christ was raised from the dead?
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What evidence is that? There's no historical evidence of early Christian communities (let alone extensive ones) that believed what is in the gospels. The only evidence we have is Paul's letters and they imply that, at least in some cases, the "extensive community" didn't necessarily believe the gospel. Why else did he spent all that time arguing with the Corinthians about whether Christ was raised from the dead?
So there is no historical evidence you say.
There are Paul's letters you say.
Elements of the early community, which you suggest did not exist, didn't necessarily believe in the Gospel according to you. Nice trick if you don't exist.
The evidence for the above, according to you, is that Paul argued with these elements.
I agree there were unorthodox ideas about Christ. That only adds to the authenticity, I'm afraid.
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Chuns,
I think you start with a fixed idea that the communities were more than two decades away from the events and that the people are 100 degrees of separation.
Of course the full gospel is that Jesus is risen. Paul of course is the well known model for this, the encounter with the risen christ and his accounts are those which tell us about the established communities within two decades....(think 1995) of course the communities are established which suggests that people were meeting the personnel much earlier than two decades.
You miss the point entirely. Even allowing for the passage of time and for the changes stories undergo in multiple re-tellings, that still says nothing to how accurate or otherwise the account would have been of the first person on the spot. There are many possible but material explanations for a miracle story, and even if Person A genuinely thought he had seen a genuine miracle that says nothing whatever to whether he actually did see a genuine miracle. How then, many re-tellings down the line, would anyone else be able to verify the genuineness of the miracle explanation rather than just re-report that Fred thought he'd seen a miracle?
You also seem to say that Christianity is believing somebody else's story and experience. This is not the Christianity of the epistles which talk about appropriating a living risen Christ for one's self with that in place resurrection is the logical explanation.
Sort of. Religious faiths are "believing somebody else's story and experience" - do you seriously suggest that if you'd been abandoned as a child on a desert island you'd have come up with the stories in which you happen to believe all on your own? You might think that you've "appropriated a living Christ" but the more prosaic explanation is that instead you've had some experiences you find to be profound, and the religious stories with which you happen to be most familiar offer a convenient causal explanation.
Do you seriously think that, if you'd been born in a different time and at a different place, you wouldn't just as readily be saying something like, "that'll be the Nigerian Ant God then" for your causal explanation?
Seriously?
Oh, and whatever else you may think you have please don't ever suggest that it's a "logical" explanation given the absence of any method of any kind to distinguish your claims from wishful thinking and just guessing.
Survivor bias is no good for establishing Christianity in a person. It's not appropriate to bring it up.
It's precisely "appropriate" because it's what you did with your implied, "how come Christianity flourished and other faiths fell away if not for Christianity being true" mistake. I set out the bad thinking this entials in several points that you just ignored, so here they are again:
First, how exactly would you suggest that anyone would "check the stories and accounts" when they happened decades earlier and no-one thought them important enough to write down?
Second, on what basis would you dismiss the countless other communities that believed in different supernatural claims entirely and became just as established as the one you selected?
Third, why would you think survivorship has anything to do with truthfulness given the countless examples of chance and happenstance in other areas that can also lead to survival?
Fourth, if you really want to commit the fallacy why then would you dismiss, say, Islam when it satisfies the same criterion?
Fifth, what makes you think that time and place in which you happen to exist so special that the prevalent religion must be the true one, whereas the Aztec, Norse, Sumerians etc would have been wrong for doing just the same thing?
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Chuns,
You miss the point entirely. Even allowing for the passage of time and for the changes stories undergo in multiple re-tellings, that still says nothing to how accurate or otherwise the account would have been of the first person on the spot. There are many possible but material explanations for a miracle story, and even if Person A genuinely thought he had seen a genuine miracle that says nothing whatever to whether he actually did see a genuine miracle. How then, many re-tellings down the line, would anyone else be able to verify the genuineness of the miracle explanation rather than just re-report that Fred thought he'd seen a miracle?
Sort of. Religious faiths are "believing somebody else's story and experience" - do you seriously suggest that if you'd been abandoned as a child on a desert island you'd have come up with the stories in which you happen to believe all on your own? You might think that you've "appropriated a living Christ" but the more prosaic explanation is that instead you've had some experiences you find to be profound, and the religious stories with which you happen to be most familiar offer a convenient causal explanation.
Do you seriously think that, if you'd been born in a different time and at a different place, you wouldn't just as readily be saying something like, "that'll be the Nigerian Ant God then" for your causal explanation?
Seriously?
Oh, and whatever else you may think you have please don't ever suggest that it's a "logical" explanation given the absence of any method of any kind to distinguish your claims from wishful thinking and just guessing.
It's precisely "appropriate" because it's what you did with your implied, "how come Christianity flourished and other faiths fell away if not for Christianity being true" mistake. I set out the bad thinking this entials in several points that you just ignored, so here they are again:
First, how exactly would you suggest that anyone would "check the stories and accounts" when they happened decades earlier and no-one thought them important enough to write down?
Second, on what basis would you dismiss the countless other communities that believed in different supernatural claims entirely and became just as established as the one you selected?
Third, why would you think survivorship has anything to do with truthfulness given the countless examples of chance and happenstance in other areas that can also lead to survival?
Fourth, if you really want to commit the fallacy why then would you dismiss, say, Islam when it satisfies the same criterion?
Fifth, what makes you think that time and place in which you happen to exist so special that the prevalent religion must be the true one, whereas the Aztec, Norse, Sumerians etc would have been wrong for doing just the same thing?
You are still spinning the evidence for the earliest Christian community in order to turn your several decades between the start of the Christian community and the events into a self hypnotising mantra.
Historical study suggests however communities wit an orthodox doctrine at two decades.
There is evidence of the development of non orthodox beliefs about Jesus pointing to the establishment of these communities even earlier than the twenty years.
Hopefully that will put you straight on the historical aspects although going by your post which ignores my previous statements ............I doubt anything can put you straight.
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Sort of. Religious faiths are "believing somebody else's story and experience" - do you seriously suggest that if you'd been abandoned as a child on a desert island you'd have come up with the stories in which you happen to believe all on your own?
But it's more than just the stories isn't it?.....It's inclinations and philosophy, hopes and fears of all the years met him in tonight and all that sort of thing
Do you seriously think that, if you'd been born in a different time and at a different place, you wouldn't just as readily be saying something like, "that'll be the Nigerian Ant God then" for your causal explanation?
Seriously?
Well you are trying to peddle the predominant religion aspect here......supporting survival bias in the process I might add......however you yourself and those like you are proof against the very point you are making. Plus the fact your argument suffers from your weak grasp of what religions actually believe
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I agree there were unorthodox ideas about Christ. That only adds to the authenticity, I'm afraid.
We have evidence of the unorthodox (to modern Christian) views but we have no evidence of early Christians with orthodox (to modern Christian) views.
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We have evidence of the unorthodox (to modern Christian) views but we have no evidence of early Christians with orthodox (to modern Christian) views.
That almost doesn't matter even if it wasn't crap.
What there is absolutely no sign of though is Jesus Mythers which only come to pass after several decades and I'm not just talking about 2 or 3 i.e. centuries.
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That almost doesn't matter even if it wasn't crap.
Well we don't. Paul bangs on about the Corinthians not accepting the resurrection, but he doesn't say anything about communities and the empty tomb or the virgin birth.
What there is absolutely no sign of though is Jesus Mythers which only come to pass after several decades and I'm not just talking about 2 or 3 i.e. centuries.
Could you reassemble that sentence in English please.
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Well we don't. Paul bangs on about the Corinthians not accepting the resurrection, but he doesn't say anything about communities and the empty tomb or the virgin birth.
Could you reassemble that sentence in English please.
Don't spin things as unorthodox then Jezzer.
You will know that the unorthodox includes Ebionites to those who thought he was some kind of holy hologram. But there were no reports of Jesus Mythers.
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Don't spin things as unorthodox then Jazzer.
Nobody knows what orthodox and unorthodox was in those days.
But there were no reports of Jesus Mythers.
You mean there are no such reports that still exist.
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You mean there are no such reports that still exist.
Oh yes , play that card when it suits you. I think you've just blown a big section of your argument.
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Oh yes , play that card when it suits you. I think you've just blown a big section of your argument.
No, it's all part of the general thrust which is that you re asserting gospel believing Christian communities in the mid first century without a shred of evidence.
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The epistles show that communities were established within two decades. Many of the personnel would still be available for consultation.
No, the epistles CLAIM that communities were established within two decades. Even if it is the case, that 'community' could be two guys in a hut for all we know.
Other communities with supernatural stories are I move less concerned with time and place. I have never said I discount those stories.
Why do you 'move that'? How, given the fact that the epistles were subject to editing and amendment after the fact, do you determine that the specificity around dates was not added later? How do you balance the specificity around dates - uncommon amongst accounts, as you suggested - against the documented finding that when people are creating lies they tend to add in spurious levels of detail?
Evidence shows that believing communities existed there interpretation may be wrong but I do not think that is likely because of the paucity of alternative explanations.
What, like the entire edifice is a creation?
I have said that the survivability of Christianity is not dependent totally on what happened historically. Even the impact of a resurrection would have faded. What keeps Christianity going is the encounter possible with Christ here and now.
That would be an encounter that you cannot substantiate in any way, right?
I'm not sure that survival bias is apt. In any case Christianity has a philosophical dimension as if there is a time limit on ideas.
All religions have a 'philosophical dimension'. Naturalism, as your Tourette's-like recurrent ejaculation of 'philosophical materialism' has a philosophical dimension.
Your biggest misrepresentation is that you are championing old religions and I totally dismiss them.
We're not 'championing' old religions (or different new ones to yours, either) but rather pointing out that yours isn't really anything qualitatively different.
O.
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No, the epistles CLAIM that communities were established within two decades. Even if it is the case, that 'community' could be two guys in a hut for all we know.
Could be. Also don't forget that a member of the church in Corinth almost certainly never met any of the members of the church in Jerusalem given the difficulty of travel in those days. Even the only person from the early church that we have any real evidence of (Paul) only visited Jerusalem a couple of times.
given the fact that the epistles were subject to editing and amendment after the fact, do you determine that the specificity around dates was not added later?
You don't need to speculate editing here. The epistles of Paul aren't specific about time or place. Vlad is pretending there is more evidence there than actually exists.
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Chunderer,
You are still spinning the evidence for the earliest Christian community in order to turn your several decades between the start of the Christian community and the events into a self hypnotising mantra.
Again, no I’m not. Notoriously time and the re-telling of stories almost invariably corrupt them, often beyond recognition from the original version. Even if by some remarkable co-incidence that did not happen in this case though, that still leaves you with the “Fred says he saw a miracle” problem.
How would you suggest that folks decades after the event and who probably never knew Fred would retrospectively test Fred’s methods for eliminating the various alternative – but less thrilling no doubt – explanations for what he actually saw?
Historical study suggests however communities wit an orthodox doctrine at two decades.
There is evidence of the development of non orthodox beliefs about Jesus pointing to the establishment of these communities even earlier than the twenty years.
No, there are some accounts to that effect as there are for many other communities believing in many other supposed gods. The David Koresh/Jim Jones communities were established quickly too. So what?
Hopefully that will put you straight on the historical aspects although going by your post which ignores my previous statements ............I doubt anything can put you straight.
Hopefully you will now finally grasp the absence of any meaningful “historical aspects” for miracle stories, and will instead begin to realise the hopelessness of your position.
But it's more than just the stories isn't it?.....
No.
It's inclinations…
Otherwise known as personal preferences and wishful thinking…
… and philosophy
None of which withstands scrutiny…
…hopes and fears…
“Hopes and fears” cannot establish objective facts for other people, however strongly they are held.
…of all the years met him in tonight and all that sort of thing
In English please.
Well you are trying to peddle the predominant religion aspect here......supporting survival bias in the process I might add......however you yourself and those like you are proof against the very point you are making.
No, you are. You attempted to argue that the survival of your particular faith must in some way have something to do with its truthfulness. That’s called survivor bias.
I merely pointed out in reply that many peoples in many places at many times could have employed the same bad reasoning that you attempt to justify their own predominant faiths.
Plus the fact your argument suffers from your weak grasp of what religions actually believe
That may or may not be the case. Your problem though is that you attempted an argument that was wrong. If now you want to withdraw it and attempt a different argument to do with “what religions actually believe” then by all means give it a go, and we can at least remove the arrow of survivor bias from the quiver-full of logical fallacies you so gleefully tote around.
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Again, no I’m not. Notoriously time and the re-telling of stories almost invariably corrupt them, often beyond recognition from the original version. Even if by some remarkable co-incidence that did not happen in this case though, that still leaves you with the “Fred says he saw a miracle” problem.
bh, as usual you refer to the situation of oral re-telling from within the context of a high-literacy context. As I have pointed out before, that is far too simplistic an approach to the situation that would have existed in 1st century Palestine.
How would you suggest that folks decades after the event and who probably never knew Fred would retrospectively test Fred’s methods for eliminating the various alternative – but less thrilling no doubt – explanations for what he actually saw?
The problem here is that documentary material began to appear fall sooner than 'decades' after the events involved. We know that Paul's first epistle - to the Galatians - dates from as early as 45AD, and even the most sceptical of Biblical scholars seem to posit the existence of a written record that was independent of Paul, and which the Gospel writers drew upon. Furthermore, since the events of Easter and Pentecost occurred only weeks apart, it is likely that any Jews from the diaspora woud have stayed for both events, thus acting - unwittingly perhaps - as eye-witnesses in addition to the 11 disciples and the other 60-odd followers of Jesus.
Hopefully you will now finally grasp the absence of any meaningful “historical aspects” for miracle stories, and will instead begin to realise the hopelessness of your position.
Before one can "begin to realise the hopelessness of one's position" one has to be presented with viable altewrnatives that don't rely on misrepresentation of a number of scientifically-proven and -provable aspectsd of the situation.
Otherwise known as personal preferences and wishful thinking…
Things that can equally be applied to your position, by the way.
None of which withstands scrutiny…
Again, a criticism that can be equally be applied to the many alternative scenarios that have been posited by a variety of posters and debaters over the years/decades.
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bh, as usual you refer to the situation of oral re-telling from within the context of a high-literacy context. As I have pointed out before, that is far too simplistic an approach to the situation that would have existed in 1st century Palestine.
And, again, this myth of mystical recall abilities amongst pre-literate cultures is not supported by the evidence. Review of tales from extant pre-literate cultures shows that themes carry on, with some gradual drift, but precise details are lost relatively quickly.
The problem here is that documentary material began to appear fall sooner than 'decades' after the events involved. We know that Paul's first epistle - to the Galatians - dates from as early as 45AD, and even the most sceptical of Biblical scholars seem to posit the existence of a written record that was independent of Paul, and which the Gospel writers drew upon.
But it's questionable whether the Paul of the epistles is the Paul mentioned in the Gospels, and it's entirely possible that the Paul that created the Epistles equally created the document that the Gospels are based upon. The Gospels themselves don't turn up until well after the expected lifespan of anyone who might have been alive at the time of the alleged events, and there are no records from anyone else at the time to validate the claims.
Furthermore, since the events of Easter and Pentecost occurred only weeks apart, it is likely that any Jews from the diaspora woud have stayed for both events, thus acting - unwittingly perhaps - as eye-witnesses in addition to the 11 disciples and the other 60-odd followers of Jesus.
And yet none of them mentioned anything to anyone literate in the area, none of the local authorities saw fit to record anything about it despite their usual efficiency at doing so.
Before one can "begin to realise the hopelessness of one's position" one has to be presented with viable altewrnatives that don't rely on misrepresentation of a number of scientifically-proven and -provable aspectsd of the situation.
You likely don't accept that Islam is based upon Muhammed's actual encounter with angels and eventual departure on a winged horse of some sort - you think this is a creation. Likewise Joseph Smith's accounts. Why, then, does this New Testament account seem viable to you? The 'viable alternative' explanation is that it's as much a creation as those purported sequels are.
O.
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No, the epistles CLAIM that communities were established within two decades. Even if it is the case, that 'community' could be two guys in a hut for all we know.
Why do you 'move that'? How, given the fact that the epistles were subject to editing and amendment after the fact, do you determine that the specificity around dates was not added later? How do you balance the specificity around dates - uncommon amongst accounts, as you suggested - against the documented finding that when people are creating lies they tend to add in spurious levels of detail?
What, like the entire edifice is a creation?
That would be an encounter that you cannot substantiate in any way, right?
All religions have a 'philosophical dimension'. Naturalism, as your Tourette's-like recurrent ejaculation of 'philosophical materialism' has a philosophical dimension.
We're not 'championing' old religions (or different new ones to yours, either) but rather pointing out that yours isn't really anything qualitatively different.
O.
This looks like straw clutching Rider. You have to look at the little details in the documents....And of course follow the BARTehrMAN!
I respect philosophy full stop. Doesn't mean I agree with all of it though.
Rider said: Even if it is the case, that 'community' could be two guys in a hut for all we know.......Argumentum ad populem
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Rider said: Even if it is the case, that 'community' could be two guys in a hut for all we know.......Argumentum ad populem
Then that would be argumentum ad hardly-anyone, Vlad.
So, as regards these messianic communities you set such great store by - what details do you have about them?
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Hope,
bh, as usual you refer to the situation of oral re-telling from within the context of a high-literacy context. As I have pointed out before, that is far too simplistic an approach to the situation that would have existed in 1st century Palestine.
And as usual you have no evidence of any kind to suggest that the people involved were any less prone to recall error than are modern people. It's an intriguing notion to speculate that games of Chinese whispers couldn't have worked because everyone then had perfect memories, but unless you can point to some change over the last 2,000 years in the physiological way memory actually works then all you have is wishful thinking.
And besides, as I've explained to Vlad several times (but he's just ignored) even if by some unknown process they did have perfect recall, still all they'd have is, "Fred thinks he saw a miracle" - which of course says nothing to whether Fred actually did see a miracle.
The problem here is that documentary material began to appear fall sooner than 'decades' after the events involved. We know that Paul's first epistle - to the Galatians - dates from as early as 45AD, and even the most sceptical of Biblical scholars seem to posit the existence of a written record that was independent of Paul, and which the Gospel writers drew upon.
Furthermore, since the events of Easter and Pentecost occurred only weeks apart, it is likely that any Jews from the diaspora woud have stayed for both events, thus acting - unwittingly perhaps - as eye-witnesses in addition to the 11 disciples and the other 60-odd followers of Jesus.
That's not the problem at all. However many times you repeat, "Fred thinks he saw a miracle" still all you'd have is a story that Fred thinks he saw a miracle. The real problem is that, if Fred himself had no way (or possibly inclination either) to test his hypothesis, then those who had only his version of events repeated to them would have had no way to do it either.
Before one can "begin to realise the hopelessness of one's position" one has to be presented with viable altewrnatives that don't rely on misrepresentation of a number of scientifically-proven and -provable aspectsd of the situation.
Flat wrong. History is naturalistic in character - it has no tools to assess the veracity or otherwise of miracle stories, whether yours or anyone else's. That's why claiming historical evidence for miracles is ipso facto hopeless.
Things that can equally be applied to your position, by the way.
No, because arguments stand or fall on their merits. "Hopes and fears" and the like on the other hand offer nothing for others to consider and critique.
Again, a criticism that can be equally be applied to the many alternative scenarios that have been posited by a variety of posters and debaters over the years/decades.
You're missing it. The supposedly philosophical arguments for god(s), from Aquinas to Lane Craig, can be undone by more rational argument. The "alternative scenarios" to which you refer are plausible, real world explanations that require fewer assumptions than supernatural ones (not least the existence of the supernatural in the first place) and so Occam's razor applies.
It's simple enough.
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Hope,
And as usual you have no evidence of any kind to suggest that the people involved were any less prone to recall error than are modern people. It's an intriguing notion to speculate that games of Chinese whispers couldn't have worked because everyone then had perfect memories, but unless you can point to some change over the last 2,000 years in the physiological way memory actually works then all you have is wishful thinking.
And besides, as I've explained to Vlad several times (but he's just ignored) even if by some unknown process they did have perfect recall, still all they'd have is, "Fred thinks he saw a miracle" - which of course says nothing to whether Fred actually did see a miracle.
That's not the problem at all. However many times you repeat, "Fred thinks he saw a miracle" still all you'd have is a story that Fred thinks he saw a miracle. The real problem is that, if Fred himself had no way (or possibly inclination either) to test his hypothesis, then those who had only his version of events repeated to them would have had no way to do it either.
Flat wrong. History is naturalistic in character - it has no tools to assess the veracity or otherwise of miracle stories, whether yours or anyone else's. That's why claiming historical evidence for miracles is ipso facto hopeless.
No, because arguments stand or fall on their merits. "Hopes and fears" and the like on the other hand offer nothing for others to consider and critique.
You're missing it. The supposedly philosophical arguments for god(s), from Aquinas to Lane Craig, can be undone by more rational argument. The "alternative scenarios" to which you refer are plausible, real world explanations that require fewer assumptions than supernatural ones (not least the existence of the supernatural in the first place) and so Occam's razor applies.
It's simple enough.
You have no idea what I meant when I talked about hopes and fears etc.
What I meant was that Christianity is the fulfilment of philosophy and many things besides.
Of course anybody like you who doesn't know his Ant god from his elbow isn't going to catch any of that.
You represent everything that's bad in intellectual totalitarianism and none of the good.
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Vlunderer,
You have no idea what I meant when I talked about hopes and fears etc.
I know what dictionaries say these words mean. If though you have unique, Vladdish meanings for them then the onus is on you to tell us what they are.
And once you've done that, perhaps you could turn your mind to why you think these "hopes and fears" have anything to say to objective truths.
What I meant was that Christianity is the fulfilment of philosophy and many things besides.
Only if you're satisfied with "philosophy" that's demonstrably wrong. Some of us though set the epistemic bar a little higher than that.
Of course anybody like you who doesn't know his Ant god from his elbow isn't going to catch any of that.
Well, so far at least you've provided nothing to "catch". That I can readily substitute different gods entirely as the outcomes of your bad reasoning should at least give you pause about using that bad reasoning I'd have thought, but that's a matter for you I guess.
You represent everything that's bad in intellectual totalitarianism and none of the good.
Pointing out the fallacies on which you rely isn't "totalitarianism", it's just pointing out that you rely on fallacies for your position.
Try a argument that isn't fallacious on the other hand and then we'll have something to talk about. You might for example finally want to attempt a method of some kind to distinguish your "intuition" from just guessing about stuff...
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Vlunderer,
I know what dictionaries say these words mean. If though you have unique, Vladdish meanings for them then the onus is on you to tell us what they are.
And once you've done that, perhaps you could turn your mind to why you think these "hopes and fears" have anything to say to objective truths.
Only if you're satisfied with "philosophy" that's demonstrably wrong. Some of us though set the epistemic bar a little higher than that.
Well, so far at least you've provided nothing to "catch". That I can readily substitute different gods entirely as the outcomes of your bad reasoning should at leas give you pause about using that bad reasoning I'd have thought, but that's a matter for you I guess.
Pointing out the fallacies on which you rely isn't "totalitarianism", it's just pointing out that you rely on fallacies for your position.
Try a argument that isn't fallacious on the other hand and then we'll have something to talk about. You might for example finally want to attempt a method of some kind to distinguish your "intuition" from just guessing about stuff...
''All arguments for God are undone by more rational arguments'' .......when did that happen?......and did it happen anywhere outside your head.
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Chunderer,
All arguments for God are undone by more rational arguments .......when did that happen?......and did it happen anywhere outside your head.
You've clearly been asleep at the wheel - there are no defensible arguments for an objectively true god. That's why for example the RE you deride teaches "this is what various peoples believe" rather than, "these religious claims are factually true". Confine yourself to a "well it's true for me", subjective god on the other hand and that's no-one's business but your own.
By the way, did I miss your attempt finally to attempt a method to distinguish your "intuition" from just guessing about stuff?
PS Your further evasions are noted.
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There are no arguments for an objectively true anything
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''All arguments for God are undone by more rational arguments'' .......when did that happen?
A long, long time ago.
.....and did it happen anywhere outside your head.
In lots of extremely clever and thoughtful heads.
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NS,
There are no arguments for an objectively true anything
You're getting way above Vlad's intellectual pay grade now. For practical rather than strict epistemic purposes I'd be content to settle for "objectively true" in the sense that the computer in front of me is objectively there based on intersubjective experience, whereas the pixies dancing on the keyboard are not objectively there. When we get into "but all rests on axioms, therefore true objectivity is impossible" Vlad tends to go nuclear and claim that his "intuitive" truth claims about an objective god are therefore as valid as my truth claims about my computer. He's oblivious to the problem that that allows in the FSM too, but there it is.
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A long, long time ago.
Don't tell me.......In a galaxy far, far away.
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Chunderer,
Don't tell me.......In a galaxy far, far away.
No, any decent library will do.
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NS,
You're getting way above Vlad's intellectual pay grade now. For practical rather than strict epistemic purposes I'd be content to settle for "objectively true" in the sense that the computer in front of me is objectively there based on intersubjective experience, whereas the pixies dancing on the keyboard are not objectively there. When we get into "but all rests on axioms, therefore true objectivity is impossible" Vlad tends to go nuclear and claim that his "intuitive" truth claims about an objective god are therefore as valid as my truth claims about my computer. He's oblivious to the problem that that allows in the FSM too, but there it is.
Oh No you've spilled your spaghetti and meatballs on your computer again. I suppose you'll say you did it to show up the invisible dancing Pygmy but we know you have trouble eating and internet guffing at the same time. Nurse Hillsides chucking his food around again.
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There's an easy solution, don't use the term objectively. It may make the discussion harder because people go nuclear but it is simply more accurate to talk about intersubjectivity based on common axioms.
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Chunderer,
Oh No you've spilled your spaghetti and meatballs on your computer again. I suppose you'll say you did it to show up the invisible dancing Pygmy but we know you have trouble eating and internet guffing at the same time. Nurse Hillsides chucking his food around again.
Further evasions noted.
How's that method to distinguish your "intuited" claims of objectve truths from just guessing about stuff coming along?
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NS,
There's an easy solution, don't use the term objectively. It may make the discussion harder because people go nuclear but it is simply more accurate to talk about intersubjectivity based on common axioms.
I'm not sure that " intersubjectivity based on common axioms" is an easier solution than using "objectively" is it? Strictly you're right, but there are lots of words that are commonly understood to mean on thing but strictly mean something else. Funnily enough someone I spoke to only today used "ephemeral" for example, meaning not lasting very long. It would have been unnecessarily gittish of me to respond with,"actually that word means lasting just one day" I'd have thought.
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Chunderer,
Further evasions noted.
How's that method to distinguish your "intuited" claims of objectve truths from just guessing about stuff coming along?
What is so good about the FSM? he's spaghetti and noodles isn't he........surely that's a matter for Heston Blumenthal not philosophy.
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No it isn't - the core objection is the nature of what is being claimed in the NT as being fact.
The gap in time between the events and the NT record being made, given human fallibility, just adds an additional concern.
Been reading through some of this thread. In reply to this post, I'd point out that a long gap in time between the events and the reports is commonly supposed because it reduces the possibility that many other people could have witnessed Jesus' miracles, and so have been able to corroborate the written reports. How have you eliminated this risk, G? ;)
If there was a 0.001% possibility of there being a God, which I've seen someone, I think it was Floo, say, then does the NT describe how he/she/it would be likely to manifest itself. Or maybe you think there is 0% chance of there being a God.
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NS,
I'm not sure that " intersubjectivity based on common axioms" is an easier solution than using "objectively" is it? Strictly you're right, but there are lots of words that are commonly understood to mean on thing but strictly mean something else. Funnily enough someone I spoke to only today used "ephemeral" for example, meaning not lasting very long. It would have been unnecessarily gittish of me to respond with,"actually that word means lasting just one day" I'd have thought.
There are tons of words that have changed meaning, but if we use objectively to mean not objectively, we then need another word surely? If you want to use objective in a non classical sense then I suggest you really need to be clear about it.
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Been reading through some of this thread. In reply to this post, I'd point out that a long gap in time between the events and the reports is commonly supposed because it reduces the possibility that many other people could have witnessed Jesus' miracles, and so have been able to corroborate the written reports. How have you eliminated this risk, G? ;)
If there was a 0.001% possibility of there being a God, which I've seen someone, I think it was Floo, say, then does the NT describe how he/she/it would be likely to manifest itself. Or maybe you think there is 0% chance of there being a God.
Given probability is a naturalistic concept, there is no sense in talking of a super naturalistic concept's probability. Your post is not even within shouting distance of being wrong.
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Chunderer,
What is so good about the FSM? he's spaghetti and noodles isn't he........surely that's a matter for Heston Blumenthal not philosophy.
Not if someone thinks he's "intuited" the objective truth of the FSM. Absent a method from either of you to distinguish your intuitions from just guessing about stuff, that puts his argument on the same footing as your own.
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Chunderer,
Not if someone thinks he's "intuited" the objective truth of the FSM. Absent a method from either of you to distinguish your intuitions from just guessing about stuff, that puts his argument on the same footing as your own.
Part of the issue here is a sort of dual category error. Vlad and others of his ilk see their god as a solution to a transcendental search (note that neither justifies the solution or validates the search). Merely substituting another set of terms doesn't mean there is no solution or that the search is invalid. The correct approach is to ask for the question to be validated.
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To expand here, trying a reductio doesn't work as it doesn't reduce anything.
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Been reading through some of this thread. In reply to this post, I'd point out that a long gap in time between the events and the reports is commonly supposed because it reduces the possibility that many other people could have witnessed Jesus' miracles, and so have been able to corroborate the written reports. How have you eliminated this risk, G? ;)
So, Spud, are you saying here that the gap between the alleged events of the death of Jesus and the NT reports of these in the NT is being deliberately exaggerated so as to weaken the relevance of presumed eye-witnesses? Do tell, since as far as I can see even your Christian scholars (for want of a better term) acknowledge there is a gap of several years to decades - perhaps you have the advantage of them.
You'll need to clarify this since I can't see there is a risk at all, never mind one that is comparable with the risks of people making mistakes or telling lies (which is known human behaviour).
If there was a 0.001% possibility of there being a God, which I've seen someone, I think it was Floo, say, then does the NT describe how he/she/it would be likely to manifest itself. Or maybe you think there is 0% chance of there being a God.
Since 'God' isn't probability-apt I think you are offering a non-sequitur until such times as you have a method that is suited to supernatural agents. So, have you?
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So, Spud, are you saying here that the gap between the alleged events of the death of Jesus and the NT reports of these in the NT is being deliberately exaggerated so as to weaken the relevance of presumed eye-witnesses?
It does seem to be the case that some here want to place the NT documents at as far a distance from the events as possible, and when they do so they make it very obvious that this then disqualifies them as eye-witness accounts - so, yes, there does appear to be a deliberate attempt to exaggerate.
You'll need to clarify this since I can't see there is a risk at all, never mind one that is comparable with the risks of people making mistakes or telling lies (which is known human behaviour).
As you suggest, making mistakes and telling lies is a known human behaviour. The risk of your position is at exactly the same condition as the situation you are claiming is with ours.
Since 'God' isn't probability-apt I think you are offering a non-sequitur until such times as you have a method that is suited to supernatural agents. So, have you?
As you've been told before, there is a methodology - except that, because it is suited to the non-physical aspect of nature that is what you call the supernatural, it doesn't work with the mindset that you have.
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As you've been told before
Exactly who has been told before? Every time that you've been asked to provide a methodology for the examination and evaluation of supernatural claims you've blobbed it.
there is a methodology - except that, because it is suited to the non-physical aspect of nature that is what you call the supernatural, it doesn't work with the mindset that you have.
So what is it? How is it applied? How does it function? How do you know that it functions accurately? Why have you consistently failed to provide answers to any of these specific questions?
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Chunderer,
Not if someone thinks he's "intuited" the objective truth of the FSM. Absent a method from either of you to distinguish your intuitions from just guessing about stuff, that puts his argument on the same footing as your own.
But there is a problem here Hillside. To make spaghetti, flying and monstrosity to be merely intuited we have to ask in what sense we are to understand these terms.
If we are talking about invisible spaghetti, flying etc we have to ask in what sense they are those things.
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Exactly who has been told before? Every time that you've been asked to provide a methodology for the examination and evaluation of supernatural claims you've blobbed it.
So what is it? How is it applied? How does it function? How do you know that it functions accurately? Why have you consistently failed to provide answers to any of these specific questions?
Shaker, you quoted the answer to your first pair of questions within your own post. As for the second paragraph, I could ask you the equivalent question regarding cancer. Is it predominantly 'bad luck' as a study carried out a few months ago seemed to suggest, or predominantly lifestyle-related as a more recent study claims?
However, I suppose one way of seeing whether it functions correctly is whether or not the various alternative explanations given can be made without pretty straight-forward devalidation.
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Part of the issue here is a sort of dual category error. Vlad and others of his ilk see their god as a solution to a transcendental search (note that neither justifies the solution or validates the search). Merely substituting another set of terms doesn't mean there is no solution or that the search is invalid. The correct approach is to ask for the question to be validated.
Two points here; not sure that I've ever come across a person of faith who regards "their god as a solution to a transcendental search", though there may be some. Could the same argument not be made for the searching that scientists are so busy doing even as we debate?
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Shaker, you quoted the answer to your first pair of questions within your own post.
Don't lie. My questions were "Who [membership of this forum] has been told of this alleged methodology for evaluating supernatural claims?" and "What is the methodology for evaluating supernatural claims?"
I didn't "Quote the answer" to these questions at all. I'm asking you to provide the answers thereof. What are they? Or will you just dodge, bluster, evade, obfuscate, obscure, bullshit and finally run away as usual?
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Two points here; not sure that I've ever come across a person of faith who regards "their god as a solution to a transcendental search", though there may be some. Could the same argument not be made for the searching that scientists are so busy doing even as we debate?
What does "transcendental" actually mean?
Scientists are searching to find out how reality works.
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Don't lie. My questions were "Who [membership of this forum] has been told of this alleged methodology for evaluating supernatural claims?" and "What is the methodology for evaluating supernatural claims?"
I didn't "Quote the answer" to these questions at all. I'm asking you to provide the answers thereof. What are they? Or will you just dodge, bluster, evade, obfuscate, obscure, bullshit and finally run away as usual?
OK, let's start at the beginning. There are a number of people of faith on this board who have found a methodology for evaluating 'supernatural claims', as you call them. It is as a result of such a methodology that they are peopole of faith. However, since these supernatural claims are, by definition, outside of the purely physical, scientific aspect of reality that you and your ilk believe to be the limits of that reality, it is nigh on impossible to explain in naturalistic language how that methodology works. The nearest analogy I can think of now is Archimedes' 'Eureka' moment when he understood something that had been outside his comprehension - but which had existed for an eternity prior to that moment. I suppose another analogy would be drinking percolated coffee for the first time after years of drinking instant. One suddenly realises that the former is an experience that the latter doesn't really come near to.
As for your comment that 'I didn't "Quote the answer" to these questions at all' , perhaps you missed the piece in the section you quoted that said:
"except that, because it is suited to the non-physical aspect of nature that is what you call the supernatural, it doesn't work with the mindset that you have."
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bh, as usual you refer to the situation of oral re-telling from within the context of a high-literacy context. As I have pointed out before, that is far too simplistic an approach to the situation that would have existed in 1st century Palestine.
And as I have pointed out, your assignation of super human retelling abilities to early Christian communities is completely without foundation. If anything, the evidence contradicts your assertion.
The problem here is that documentary material began to appear fall sooner than 'decades' after the events involved. We know that Paul's first epistle - to the Galatians - dates from as early as 45AD,
And what does that tell us about the life of Jesus?
and even the most sceptical of Biblical scholars seem to posit the existence of a written record that was independent of Paul, and which the Gospel writers drew upon.
Are you talking about Q? Nobody knows the date of that document if it even existed.
Furthermore, since the events of Easter and Pentecost occurred only weeks apart, it is likely that any Jews from the diaspora woud have stayed for both events, thus acting - unwittingly perhaps - as eye-witnesses in addition to the 11 disciples and the other 60-odd followers of Jesus.
Now you are making stuff up.
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What does "transcendental" actually mean?
Good question; perhaps you ought to be asking NS, as it was he who introduced the idea. For me, it means 'relating to the spiritual'. However, I was questioning the use of the term associated with 'search' in his post, as I'm not sure that many regard their faith as a search merely for something spiritual, but for reality as well.
Scientists are searching to find out how reality works.
Which reality? That which is limited to the physical, or that which includes the full gammut of our senses?
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OK, let's start at the beginning. There are a number of people of faith on this board who have found a methodology for evaluating 'supernatural claims', as you call them.
No. There are a number of people who claim to have found a methodology for evaluating supernatural claims. None of them, however, seem keen on sharing that method with the rest of us. I think we can be forgiven for thinking they are all bullshitting.
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OK, let's start at the beginning. There are a number of people of faith on this board who have found a methodology for evaluating 'supernatural claims', as you call them.
Let's start even closer to the beginning than that; there's at least one person "of faith" on this board who thinks that they know of a methodology for evaluating supernatural claims (as just about eveybody calls them) but who consistently fails to provide a definition and procedure of such a so-called method when asked to do so by multiple people multiple times.
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Good question; perhaps you ought to be asking NS, as it was he who introduced the idea. For me, it means 'relating to the spiritual'.
Or the subsitution of one woolly, oft-used but poorly-if-ever-defined word with another. Capital.
Which reality? That which is limited to the physical, or that which includes the full gammut of our senses?
Are these things different? What are your reasons for thinking so?
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And, again, this myth of mystical recall abilities amongst pre-literate cultures is not supported by the evidence. Review of tales from extant pre-literate cultures shows that themes carry on, with some gradual drift, but precise details are lost relatively quickly.
Yet studies also show that pre-literate cultures had linguistic mechanisms by which to stabilise stories and details. Hebrew is often given as an examplar languageof this.
But it's questionable whether the Paul of the epistles is the Paul mentioned in the Gospels, ...
Its also questionable as to whether Paul is mentioned in the Gospels any way. Iirc, the first mention of Paul is in Acts 13.
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And as I have pointed out, your assignation of super human retelling abilities to early Christian communities is completely without foundation. If anything, the evidence contradicts your assertion.
A number of people, over the years, have suggested that the evidence contradicts my assertion - yet have never produced any evidence.
And what does that tell us about the life of Jesus?
and what relevance does this have to the debate; the question wasn't about the life of Jesus but how an author might or might not have eliminated errors of transmission - and if the material was written a lot earlier than what some here would like it to have been, they would have been more likely to have been able to refer to the eye-witnesses.
Are you talking about Q? Nobody knows the date of that document if it even existed.
I was, though I have to say that I am fairly dubious about the idea - but it does seem to be a fairly common thread in the arguments of a whole host of scholars, including those of non-Christian or no religious beliefs.
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Let's start even closer to the beginning than that; there's at least one person "of faith" on this board who thinks that they know of a methodology for evaluating supernatural claims (as just about eveybody calls them) but who consistently fails to provide a definition and procedure of such a so-called method when asked to do so by multiple people multiple times.
Largely because, as has been said by several people, the explanation would be outside the scientific mindset of the likes of yourself.
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Largely because, as has been said by several people, the explanation would be outside the scientific mindset of the likes of yourself.
So what procedure do you have for ascertaining as to whether these so-called claims amount to anything or nothing?
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So what procedure do you have for ascertaining as to whether these so-called claims amount to anything or nothing?
Again, as I've pointed out in an earlier post this evening, the flimsy nature of the alternative explanations suggests that the 'traditional' ones aren't as unviable as some here would have us believe. Secondly, there is experience - something that even scientists rely on as one form of confirmation; thirdly, there is study such as Biblical criticism and theology, history and linguistics.
As for your question about reality "Are these things different? What are your reasons for thinking so?" I have heard eminent scientists state that the physical, scientific aspects of life aren't the be-all and end-all of reality. Not to mention supporters of science making such comments as 'science doesn't deal in right and wrong'.
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NS,
There are tons of words that have changed meaning, but if we use objectively to mean not objectively, we then need another word surely? If you want to use objective in a non classical sense then I suggest you really need to be clear about it.
Not really - there are lots of words like that, and either we endlessly stick to strict, classical definitions or we roll with it for the sake of easy discourse. People almost invariably say "anticipate" when they actually mean "expect" for example (and indeed they use "invariably" when they actually mean "usually") but for the sake of normal conversation I generally accept the usage the author seems to intend rather than pull them up on strict definitions.
Having said that, Vlad in particular seems to have a set of meanings all of his own for commonplace words - "feelings" for example - but until he finally provides a Vladdish/English dictionary to help out, the rest of us have little choice but to use the actual meanings nonetheless.
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Chunderer,
But there is a problem here Hillside. To make spaghetti, flying and monstrosity to be merely intuited we have to ask in what sense we are to understand these terms.
If we are talking about invisible spaghetti, flying etc we have to ask in what sense they are those things.
But that's not a problem at all if you continue to assume that the rest of us will accept the same inexactitude about your your claims for a "god". In what "sense" does this god of yours have the characteristics you claim about "him"?
Unless you can answer that, all you have is special pleading.
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Again, as I've pointed out in an earlier post this evening, the flimsy nature of the alternative explanations suggests that the 'traditional' ones aren't as unviable as some here would have us believe.
Such as?
Secondly, there is experience - something that even scientists rely on as one form of confirmation
Actually no. Founded upon empiricism as it is, direct personal apprehension by the senses is the highest court of appeal of science there is. Occasionally you get the odd scientist who thinks that mathematical beauty is higher - Dirac came close to this point of view, and he was a very odd man indeed - but it fails the acid test of experience. It's not possible for the unaided human eye to see atoms directly; but by various highly sophisticated technical methods it is. That's an issue of size and scale, not a logical or intrinsic bar. I can't see a distant relative in Canada, but that's not because she is incredibly small.
thirdly, there is study such as Biblical criticism and theology, history and linguistics.
A quite staggering exercise in both hand-waving and question-begging. Are you actually serious?
As for your question about reality "Are these things different? What are your reasons for thinking so?" I have heard eminent scientists state that the physical, scientific aspect of life isn't the be-all and end-all of reality.
I suppose congratulations are in order - you've just added another dud to your dismal arsenal of fallacies.
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Hope,
OK, let's start at the beginning. There are a number of people of faith on this board who have found a methodology for evaluating 'supernatural claims', as you call them. It is as a result of such a methodology that they are peopole of faith.
Really? Wow! That's great, because I've chased the likes of Vlad all over this mb to find out what that method might be, only he and others endlessly run away from the question.
Could you just share then finally what even one of these methods might be?
Ta everso.
However, since these supernatural claims are, by definition, outside of the purely physical, scientific aspect of reality that you and your ilk believe to be the limits of that reality, it is nigh on impossible to explain in naturalistic language how that methodology works.
Not a problem. Just use any language you like, provided of course it enables the dispassionate reader to distinguish these claims from just guessing about stuff.
Go for it!
The nearest analogy I can think of now is Archimedes' 'Eureka' moment when he understood something that had been outside his comprehension - but which had existed for an eternity prior to that moment. I suppose another analogy would be drinking percolated coffee for the first time after years of drinking instant. One suddenly realises that the former is an experience that the latter doesn't really come near to.
Aw stop now. The Eureka moment was then testable against real world, observable phenomena. What test would you propose to evaluate the claim "God!" so the rest of us could determine that the claimant wasn't wrong about that?
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Hope,
Oh, and as you have just ignored my previous rebuttal of your last effort here here it is again:
"Hope,
bh, as usual you refer to the situation of oral re-telling from within the context of a high-literacy context. As I have pointed out before, that is far too simplistic an approach to the situation that would have existed in 1st century Palestine.
And as usual you have no evidence of any kind to suggest that the people involved were any less prone to recall error than are modern people. It's an intriguing notion to speculate that games of Chinese whispers couldn't have worked because everyone then had perfect memories, but unless you can point to some change over the last 2,000 years in the physiological way memory actually works then all you have is wishful thinking.
And besides, as I've explained to Vlad several times (but he's just ignored) even if by some unknown process they did have perfect recall, still all they'd have is, "Fred thinks he saw a miracle" - which of course says nothing to whether Fred actually did see a miracle.
The problem here is that documentary material began to appear fall sooner than 'decades' after the events involved. We know that Paul's first epistle - to the Galatians - dates from as early as 45AD, and even the most sceptical of Biblical scholars seem to posit the existence of a written record that was independent of Paul, and which the Gospel writers drew upon.
Furthermore, since the events of Easter and Pentecost occurred only weeks apart, it is likely that any Jews from the diaspora woud have stayed for both events, thus acting - unwittingly perhaps - as eye-witnesses in addition to the 11 disciples and the other 60-odd followers of Jesus.
That's not the problem at all. However many times you repeat, "Fred thinks he saw a miracle" still all you'd have is a story that Fred thinks he saw a miracle. The real problem is that, if Fred himself had no way (or possibly inclination either) to test his hypothesis, then those who had only his version of events repeated to them would have had no way to do it either.
Before one can "begin to realise the hopelessness of one's position" one has to be presented with viable altewrnatives that don't rely on misrepresentation of a number of scientifically-proven and -provable aspectsd of the situation.
Flat wrong. History is naturalistic in character - it has no tools to assess the veracity or otherwise of miracle stories, whether yours or anyone else's. That's why claiming historical evidence for miracles is ipso facto hopeless.
Things that can equally be applied to your position, by the way.
No, because arguments stand or fall on their merits. "Hopes and fears" and the like on the other hand offer nothing for others to consider and critique.
Again, a criticism that can be equally be applied to the many alternative scenarios that have been posited by a variety of posters and debaters over the years/decades.
You're missing it. The supposedly philosophical arguments for god(s), from Aquinas to Lane Craig, can be undone by more rational argument. The "alternative scenarios" to which you refer are plausible, real world explanations that require fewer assumptions than supernatural ones (not least the existence of the supernatural in the first place) and so Occam's razor applies.
It's simple enough."
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Hope,
Yet studies also show that pre-literate cultures had linguistic mechanisms by which to stabilise stories and details. Hebrew is often given as an examplar languageof this.
"Studies" eh? Well, that'll be the definitive answer then.
Hang on though - just to seal the deal you understand - what studies would they be exactly? And while you're about it, perhaps you would explain the non-possibility of even minor mistakes given the cumulative effect such mistakes can have on the final versions of the stories.
Thanks.
PS Oh, and even if you do manage to demonstrate that by some means unknown to medical science some people 2,000 years ago did have eidetic memories, how then would that even begin to approach the "Fred thinks he saw a miracle" problem?
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A number of people, over the years, have suggested that the evidence contradicts my assertion - yet have never produced any evidence.
That is a lie. You choose not to hear the evidence is more like it.
How do we know the evidence contradicts your assertion? Because Paul tells us that divine revelation trumped oral storytelling. Paul does not claim to have received the gospel accurately from the other Apostles, he claims to receive the gospel by revelation. The early Christian communities placed more faith in divine revelation than stories from eye witnesses. This means that they have no motive to accurately transit oral histories.
Then we examine the gospels. Matthew and Luke both use Mark as a source and both make editorial changes. They both use another document called Q (or Luke had Matthew as a source) and at least one of them makes editorial changes to that. So here we have two earlyish Christians, neither of whom seem above changing the text to suit their purposes. So there's no reason to suppose that their predecessors were above changing the text either.
and what relevance does this have to the debate;
I don't care. You just made a blatantly false assertion about the oral transmission of the gospels and I will continue to call you out on it every time you do it, because it is dishonest and you are lying.
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Jeremy,
No. There are a number of people who claim to have found a methodology for evaluating supernatural claims. None of them, however, seem keen on sharing that method with the rest of us. I think we can be forgiven for thinking they are all bullshitting.
Didn't we chase Hope himself all over this mb for an answer to that, only for him finally to propose that "it's in the Gospels" was his "method"? Why on earth he'd think that to be a method of any kind is anyone's guess, but that was the best he had I think.
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Chunderer,
But that's not a problem at all if you continue to assume that the rest of us will accept the same inexactitude about your your claims for a "god". In what "sense" does this god of yours have the characteristics you claim about "him"?
Unless you can answer that, all you have is special pleading.
But this is a standard bluehillside Category Cock Up isn't it.
Comparing invisible spaghetti to omniscient God.....or worse, thinking that invisible spaghetti is the same category as an invisible God. That just flags you up as a materialist...in which case I can sum up your position in a few words what you take reams to do and then we have to pick.
The only God which could exist is a measurable one so God does not exist.
or to put it another way if it's invisible or impervious to empirical measurement or sense.........how can we know it is spaghetti and in what sense is it spaghetti?
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Chunderer,
But this is a standard bluehillside Category Cock Up isn't it.
There is no "standard bluehillside category error" (a term you've never understood by the way) and no it isn't. If you seriously think that personal intuition is a reliable guide to an objective truth for the rest of us, then you have no choice but to accept the same "method" for any other claim of objective truth.
That you may want to garland the claim with characteristics downstream of the notion that personal intuition is a reliable guide to objective truth is a separate matter that fails in any case on its own terms, but it has nothing to do with the original contention about intuition.
Comparing invisible spaghetti to omniscient God.....or worse, thinking that invisible spaghetti is the same category as an invisible God. That just flags you up as a materialist...in which case I can sum up your position in a few words what you take reams to do and then we have to pick.
And again you make the same epic error as always. The point is that the argument for god and the FSM - ie, personal intuition - is the same, not that the eventual details of the outcome of that argument are the same.
Why is this so difficult for you to grasp?
The only God which could exist is a measurable one so God does not exist.
You said it...
...or to put it another way if it's invisible or impervious to empirical measurement or sense.........how can we know it is spaghetti and in what sense is it spaghetti?
If it's invisible or impervious to empirical measurement, how can we know that it's concerned with human affairs, merciful, vengeful, in thrall to chucking thunderbolts around or any other of the countless claims you and others make for this god?
You can't have it both ways: either you can make claims about the properties of this god (in which case you can make claims about the properties of the FSM) or you can't (in which case you can make claims about neither).
Which one do you plump for?
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Chunderer,
There is no "standard bluehillside category error" (a term you've never understood by the way) and no it isn't. If you seriously think that personal intuition is a reliable guide to an objective truth for the rest of us, then you have no choice but to accept the same "method" for any other claim of objective truth.
That you may want to garland the claim with characteristics downstream of the notion that personal intuition is a reliable guide to objective truth is a separate matter that fails in any case on its own terms, but it has nothing to do with the original contention about intuition.
And again you make the same epic error as always. The point is that the argument for god and the FSM - ie, personal intuition - is the same, not that the eventual details of the outcome of that argument are the same.
Why is this so difficult for you to grasp?
You said it...
If it's invisible or impervious to empirical measurement, how can we know that it's concerned with human affairs, merciful, vengeful, in thrall to chucking thunderbolts around or any other of the countless claims you and others make for this god?
You can't have it both ways: either you can make claims about the properties of this god (in which case you can make claims about the properties of the FSM) or you can't (in which case you can make claims about neither).
Which one do you plump for?
yes there are problems with your comparisons Hillside.
You are trying to say that the ineffability of God is the problem. It isn't really....the problem is you trying to say that spaghetti is ineffable or leprechauns or unicorns!
As I say category f*** upon category f***
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NS,
Not really - there are lots of words like that, and either we endlessly stick to strict, classical definitions or we roll with it for the sake of easy discourse. People almost invariably say "anticipate" when they actually mean "expect" for example (and indeed they use "invariably" when they actually mean "usually") but for the sake of normal conversation I generally accept the usage the author seems to intend rather than pull them up on strict definitions.
Having said that, Vlad in particular seems to have a set of meanings all of his own for commonplace words - "feelings" for example - but until he finally provides a Vladdish/English dictionary to help out, the rest of us have little choice but to use the actual meanings nonetheless.
This has nothing to do with Vlad and if you want to use objective to mean what lots of people believe then you are not just using an ad populum but using it it a particular strong manner.
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It does seem to be the case that some here want to place the NT documents at as far a distance from the events as possible, and when they do so they make it very obvious that this then disqualifies them as eye-witness accounts - so, yes, there does appear to be a deliberate attempt to exaggerate.
The point here surely is that the only sensible approach is to accept what those who have studied this have proposed, so that personal opinion or preference becomes irrelevant. Here is a wiki-page that gives a summary of dates for biblical books, and give the earliest date of 51CE for 1 Thessalonians, 68-70CE for the earliest Gospel (Mark) and 90-110CE for the last Gospel (John).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dating_the_Bible
So, do you dispute these dates? If not then we can work on the basis that the earliest Gospel wasn't written until 30+ years after the alleged death of Jesus and the earliest letter is around 20 years later - so plenty of time for human fallibility to have an effect.
As you suggest, making mistakes and telling lies is a known human behaviour. The risk of your position is at exactly the same condition as the situation you are claiming is with ours.
As you've been told before, there is a methodology - except that, because it is suited to the non-physical aspect of nature that is what you call the supernatural, it doesn't work with the mindset that you have.
Pish and piffle!
If you are saying that the 'methodology' you've used here is dependent on your 'mindset' then, to be frank, you don't have a 'method' at all. Your approach opens the door to fallacy central - so say hello to Mr Confirmation Bias, Mrs Argument from Authority (and her son named 'Tradition'), good old Special Pleading (rascal though he is) and everyone's favourite old-codger, who is of course dear old Uncle Personal Incredulity (who you need to be very wary of for he is very persuasive)!
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Yet studies also show that pre-literate cultures had linguistic mechanisms by which to stabilise stories and details. Hebrew is often given as an examplar languageof this.
Themes, yes, that thematic nature is one of the reasons, its suggested, that Hebrew as a language is relatively stable by comparison with other languages from the region. That's only a relative measure, mind.
That consistency over time is why the current interpretation of ancient Hebrew documents can be considered to be relatively reliable despite cultural changes in the intervening period.
However, none of that suggests that precise detail is well retained, and the investigative work by sociologists and anthropologists reliably indicated that even pre-literate cultures do not have some sort of savant talent for perfect recall.
O.
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Again, as I've pointed out in an earlier post this evening, the flimsy nature of the alternative explanations suggests that the 'traditional' ones aren't as unviable as some here would have us believe.
Firstly, there's no reason to produce an alternate explanation for events that we have no real reason to think ever happened at all, but even if elements of them did any explanation is more viable than magic.
Secondly, there is experience - something that even scientists rely on as one form of confirmation; thirdly, there is study such as Biblical criticism and theology, history and linguistics.
Scientists don't rely on experience in isolation - scientists have demonstrated in any number of different ways how unreliable human experience can be. It's an indicator, but nothing more than that, and nothing but the most basic claims would be considered validated purely by a claim of human experience.
Biblical criticism starts and ends with: you have an author with a vested interest and no external validation - that makes your source questionable at best. Theology is the art of tangling complex linguistics into knots to try to obviate the obvious nonsense in claims about God. History and linguistics do nothing to support Biblical claims - Old Testament or New - whatsoever.
Not to mention supporters of science making such comments as 'science doesn't deal in right and wrong'.
It doesn't make a judgment on whether believing in God is morally right or wrong, no, but it does make a judgment on whether making claims about the nature of reality are justified: claims of gods are not justified.
O.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dating_the_Bible
Interestingly, the material I've been working from was also published on wikipedia. I'll look it out, as I printed it out about a year ago, and it is on my wall in front of the computer. (Seem to remember that I'd have posted the link on a thread back then). Your link provides some earlier dates for the 'Earliest Known Fragment', as well as a few earlier 'Dates determined by scholars' to the one I have.
http://research.omicsgroup.org/index.php/Dating_the_Bible (It's a similar layout to the wikipedia page, but gives somewhat different dates to the one you give.
So, do you dispute these dates? If not then we can work on the basis that the earliest Gospel wasn't written until 30+ years after the alleged death of Jesus and the earliest letter is around 20 years later - so plenty of time for human fallibility to have an effect.
So, no I don't dispute the dates in your link, scholars do.
If you are saying that the 'methodology' you've used here is dependent on your 'mindset' then, to be frank, you don't have a 'method' at all. Your approach opens the door to fallacy central - so say hello to Mr Confirmation Bias, Mrs Argument from Authority (and her son named 'Tradition'), good old Special Pleading (rascal though he is) and everyone's favourite old-codger, who is of course dear old Uncle Personal Incredulity (who you need to be very wary of for he is very persuasive)!
I would disagree with your suggestion that my " ... approach opens the door to fallacy central." Rather, it asks the question of what reality is. Is reality ONLY to do with the physical, scientific world, or is there more to it.
Its perhaps worth noting that reality, even within the 'physical, scientific world', isn't static. For instance; reality, here in the UK, is that the national speed limit is 70mph; the reality in Germany is that it is 130kph (just shy of 81mph).
Similarly, the reality is that light is a wave, but also a particle. As I understand it, which it is depoends on one's viewpoint.
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Firstly, there's no reason to produce an alternate explanation for events that we have no real reason to think ever happened at all, but even if elements of them did any explanation is more viable than magic.
That, of course, assumes that the natural physical is the only aspect of reality, O.
Scientists don't rely on experience in isolation - ...
I didn't suggest that they do; nor did I suggest that any Christian does.
Biblical criticism starts and ends with: you have an author with a vested interest and no external validation - that makes your source questionable at best.
Shows how limited your understanding of Biblical criticism is - it is far wider than that very narrow summary
Theology is the art of tangling complex linguistics into knots to try to obviate the obvious nonsense in claims about God. History and linguistics do nothing to support Biblical claims - Old Testament or New - whatsoever.
Again, theology covers far more than your simplistic summary.
It doesn't make a judgment on whether believing in God is morally right or wrong, no, but it does make a judgment on whether making claims about the nature of reality are justified: claims of gods are not justified.
Again, only if reality can be proven to be purely naturalistically physical.
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Rather, it asks the question of what reality is. Is reality ONLY to do with the physical, scientific world, or is there more to it.
So far as we can tell, yes. If you have a methodology for verifying other elements, go ahead and present it, but we both know that's been asked before and you don't have one.
Its perhaps worth noting that reality, even within the 'physical, scientific world', isn't static. For instance; reality, here in the UK, is that the national speed limit is 70mph; the reality in Germany is that it is 130kph (just shy of 81mph).
Both of those are cultural artifacts, not natural laws - science does not 'discover' the output of cultures, at best (and unfortunately too rarely) it informs them.
Similarly, the reality is that light is a wave, but also a particle. As I understand it, which it is depoends on one's viewpoint.
Not exactly - it's light. At times it's helpful to think of it acting as a wave, because of the behaviour it exhibits, and times it's helpful to think of it as a particle. This is because we have models that are simplifications of the actuality to enable us to more quickly determine likely outcomes where the simplifications don't affect the outcome.
O.
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By the way, here's another list of dates for the NT books from a US University site
http://www.athabascau.ca/courses/rels/204/dates.htm
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http://research.omicsgroup.org/index.php/Dating_the_Bible (It's a similar layout to the wikipedia page, but gives somewhat different dates to the one you give.
So, no I don't dispute the dates in your link, scholars do.
O.K. - we'll go with your link, which places the date ranges at 60-70CE (Mark), 60-90CE (Luke), 70-110 (Matthew) and 80-95CE (John) as the earlier. Even so, and using the information in your link, it still seems like there is a minimum gap of approaching 30 years post-hoc, during which time any changes in the details during re-telling over that length of time are unknown. Even then this doesn't address the risks that the original stories (prior to any re-telling) might involve mistakes or lies.
Seems to me then that the NT accounts involve too many risks and uncertainties to be considered as being reliable.
I would disagree with your suggestion that my " ... approach opens the door to fallacy central." Rather, it asks the question of what reality is. Is reality ONLY to do with the physical, scientific world, or is there more to it.
Its perhaps worth noting that reality, even within the 'physical, scientific world', isn't static. For instance; reality, here in the UK, is that the national speed limit is 70mph; the reality in Germany is that it is 130kph (just shy of 81mph).
Don't be silly - all you've cited here is the difference between two regulations that have been determined locally by people legislating on traffic management: this is no more relevant than saying that some horses are grey and others aren't. So, and apart from it being an embarrassingly simplistic analogy, I can't see that it in any sense this helps your argument that there is some 'other' form of reality.
Similarly, the reality is that light is a wave, but also a particle. As I understand it, which it is depoends on one's viewpoint.
So? That physicists have investigated light and described it as having various properties is in what way relevant to this discussion?
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O.K. - we'll go with your link, which places the date ranges at 60-70CE (Mark), 60-90CE (Luke), 70-110 (Matthew) and 80-95CE (John) as the earlier. Even so, and using the information in your link, it still seems like there is a minimum gap of approaching 30 years post-hoc, during which time any changes in the details during re-telling over that length of time are unknown. Even then this doesn't address the risks that the original stories (prior to any re-telling) might involve mistakes or lies.
Assuming, for the moment, that there genuinely were a group of apostles following Jesus around...
It was extremely unusual for someone of the era to live beyond 50 - those are figures from Romans of the era, but they are representative of the level of health care and the like of the times. ('Average' lifespans of the time are considerably lower, but are skewed significantly by infant mortality). Given that the various followers of Jesus were professionals at the time of meeting him they'd likely be in their late twenties to early thirties at the time, which means they'd all be extraordinarily old (for the time) by the time the Gospels were written.
O.
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O.K. - we'll go with your link, which places the date ranges at 60-70CE (Mark), 60-90CE (Luke), 70-110 (Matthew) and 80-95CE (John) as the earlier. Even so, and using the information in your link, it still seems like there is a minimum gap of approaching 30 years post-hoc, during which time any changes in the details during re-telling over that length of time are unknown. Even then this doesn't address the risks that the original stories (prior to any re-telling) might involve mistakes or lies.
Seems to me then that the NT accounts involve too many risks and uncertainties to be considered as being reliable.
Don't be silly - all you've cited here is the difference between two regulations that have been determined locally by people legislating on traffic management: this is no more relevant than saying that some horses are grey and others aren't. So, and apart from it being an embarrassingly simplistic analogy, I can't see that it in any sense this helps your argument that there is some 'other' form of reality.
So? That physicists have investigated light and described it as having various properties is in what way relevant to this discussion?
Why have you excluded the epistles which also form a record of what was believed and who believed it?
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Why have you excluded the epistles which also form a record of what was believed and who believed it?
Just because people believe something to be true doesn't mean it is!
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NS,
This has nothing to do with Vlad and if you want to use objective to mean what lots of people believe then you are not just using an ad populum but using it it a particular strong manner.
Well, perhaps. I do try to be as nice as I can to Vlad (“nice” meaning “kind”, rather than the original “foolish”) but frankly I find his myriad (“myriad” meaning “lots”, rather than the original “10,000” specifically) efforts to be so egregious (meaning “bad” rather than the original “distinguished”) that it’s hard sometimes to do.
Frankly I find his dishonesty to be awful (meaning “terrible” rather than the original “full of awe” – and for that matter “terrible” meaning “lousy” rather than the original “invoking terror”) and his attempts at reasoning so hard to fathom (“fathom” meaning “understand” rather than the original “encircle”) that he’d be better advised at least giving us a clue (meaning “hint” rather than “ball of yarn”) if he expects a measured response.
Let’s be generous though and limit ourselves to calling him naughty (meaning rude or badly behaved rather than the original “having nothing”) – after all, he really can’t help himself it seems.
Incidentally, that's not what an ad pop entails in any case. In inductive logic if, say, 90% prefer cheese and onion to salt an vinegar crisps then there's a better than even chance that the next person asked will prefer the former too. Same with words - their meanings can shift over time according to usage: if 99% think that "anticipate" actually means "expect", then eventually that becomes its meaning and the original is lost.
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Just because people believe something to be true doesn't mean it is!
Precisely, Floo. Which is in part why I don't believe the stuff that you and others here are so keen to mnake reality out to be - purely naturalistically physical.
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Just because people believe something to be true doesn't mean it is!
Or mean it isn't. The point here is that Gordon widens the gap between the events in order to accommodate his Chinese whispers theory.
Orthodoxy was established within two decades.
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Ah, bluey, bluey, bluey. A man after my own heart in so many respects ... as a bit of a stickler I do occasionally take a stand over trying to rescue the proper distinction between disinterested and uninterested, say, or the proper meaning of 'begging the question' but it's a largely futile endeavour.
All of which is entirely off-topic but there's no chance of keeping me out of a discussion on the English language and its usage, even if it is a digression.
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Why have you excluded the epistles which also form a record of what was believed and who believed it?
In my earlier post I mention I Thessalonians as being the earliest bit of the NT (at 50/1CE) so there is a minimum gap of approaching 20 years - plenty of time then for errors to creep in, and even then this says nothing about whether the very earliest oral accounts were free of mistakes or lies.
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NS,
Incidentally, that's not what an ad pop entails in any case. In inductive logic if, say, 90% prefer cheese and onion to salt an vinegar crisps then there's a better than even chance that the next person asked will prefer the former too. Same with words - their meanings can shift over time according to usage: if 99% think that "anticipate" actually means "expect", then eventually that becomes its meaning and the original is lost.
As said this has nothing to do with Vlad so no need for him to be covered here.
As to the relevant bit, I wasn't clear it would seem, I'm not saying that words don't change, though I think we are using objective here in a technical sense and in philosophic terms and that it retains the specific meaning that does not equate to intersubjectivity. Further the ad pop point is not about word meaning but that if it is things are objective because most people think something then that is reifying ad pop as methodology.
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Or mean it isn't. The point here is that Gordon widens the gap between the events in order to accommodate his Chinese whispers theory.
Orthodoxy was established within two decades.
The Moron church orthodoxy was established within two decades, and they had documentary evidence that their founder a) existed and b) was a con-man. I don't think that Christian orthodoxy in a relatively uncritical setting establishing an orthodoxy in the same time-frame is claiming very much.
Creating an orthodoxy isn't difficult, it's the start point of a creation given that at the moment of creation of the story everyone who knows believes the same things.
O.
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Or mean it isn't. The point here is that Gordon widens the gap between the events in order to accommodate his Chinese whispers theory.
No I didn't.
In my earlier post (and in my most recent one) I did mention 1Thessalonians as being the earliest in the NT and cited the link I used, and when Hope posted another link I then cited the dates in that for the 4 Gospels - I didn't cite 1Thessalonians because the difference between the two links was just 1 year (50CE and 51CE).
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Chunderer,
yes there are problems with your comparisons Hillside.
You are trying to say that the ineffability of God is the problem. It isn't really....the problem is you trying to say that spaghetti is ineffable or leprechauns or unicorns!
As I say category f*** upon category f***
Aw bless – and still you blunder into the mistake of your own making about category error. C’mere a minute – no, closer than that…Comfy? OK, now I want you really, really to concentrate just for a bit until this finally sinks in.
OK then. Let’s say that Fred claims that not walking on the cracks in the pavement increases the chances of Arsenal winning.
Still with me? Righto…
Now let’s say that Mary claims that not walking on the cracks in the pavement keeps her bad dreams away.
Now Arsenal winning and not having bad dreams are different categories of experience right? Yes indeedy they are. Here’s the thing though: the two claims that not walking on cracks in the pavement can affect future events are precisely the same category of claim.
Still with me? Good – hang in there, we’re nearly done now…
So, on the one hand you seem to think for some reason known only to yourself that your personal “intuition” about a god is a reliable guide to an objective truth for the rest of us, yet you deny exactly the same category of claim – personal intuition as a reliable guide to something else (ie, the FSM) to someone else. Even if you think the outcomes of this process to be in different categories, that’s neither here nor there – the point rather is that the process in both cases is one and the same.
I really can’t think of a plainer way of explaining this to you. If you continue to career off the rails with your misunderstanding of category error though, there’s not much more I can do for you.
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No I didn't.
In my earlier post (and in my most recent one) I did mention 1Thessalonians as being the earliest in the NT and cited the link I used, and when Hope posted another link I then cited the dates in that for the 4 Gospels - I didn't cite 1Thessalonians because the difference between the two links was just 1 year (50CE and 51CE).
Which is 17 or 18 years after the event talking to established communities.
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Shakes,
Ah, bluey, bluey, bluey. A man after my own heart in so many respects ... as a bit of a stickler I do occasionally take a stand over trying to rescue the proper distinction between disinterested and uninterested, say, or the proper meaning of 'begging the question' but it's a largely futile endeavour.
All of which is entirely off-topic but there's no chance of keeping me out of a discussion on the English language and its usage, even if it is a digression.
Hey, you're talking to man who puts semi-colons in texts so I'd give you a run for your money on hopeless sticklerism I think. For some reason I've found myself shouting at the radio recently every time someone tells me that a river has burst its banks - rivers almost never "burst" their banks, they just overflow them but the different use has it seems become a commonplace.
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It was extremely unusual for someone of the era to live beyond 50 - those are figures from Romans of the era, but they are representative of the level of health care and the like of the times. ('Average' lifespans of the time are considerably lower, but are skewed significantly by infant mortality). Given that the various followers of Jesus were professionals at the time of meeting him they'd likely be in their late twenties to early thirties at the time, which means they'd all be extraordinarily old (for the time) by the time the Gospels were written.
O.
OK, O, let's take the fishermen amongst the apostles: we are told that they were working with their father and other relatives when Jesus called them - so that would suggest that your lower age limit is somewhat inflated - I'd suggest that they could have been aged anywhere between 14 and their mid-twenties (otherwise they would have been referred to as having their own businesses, not working with father). I say 14, because the majority of Jewish boys would have attended what we would regard as primary school, up to the age of 12 or 13, and would then have gone out into the world of work. We are also told that Peter had a mother-in-law (Matthew 8), so realistically I'd be surprised if he was as young as 14. There is no mention of any children, so either his wife died in childbirth and he never remarried, or he was young. So, let's say he was mid-twenties when Jesus called him. By the time Jesus died, he would have been in his late 20's and by the time the first two Gospels were being written he would have been around 50. Remember that just because something was 'published' on a given date doesn't mean it couldn't have been written, or at least in draft form, before then.
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Chunderer,
Aw bless – and still you blunder into the mistake of your own making about category error. C’mere a minute – no, closer than that…Comfy? OK, now I want you really, really to concentrate just for a bit until this finally sinks in.
OK then. Let’s say that Fred claims that not walking on the cracks in the pavement increases the chances of Arsenal winning.
Still with me? Righto…
Now let’s say that Mary claims that not walking on the cracks in the pavement keeps her bad dreams away.
Now Arsenal winning and not having bad dreams are different categories of experience right? Yes indeedy they are. Here’s the thing though: the two claims that not walking on cracks in the pavement can affect future events are precisely the same category of claim.
Still with me? Good – hang in there, we’re nearly done now…
So, on the one hand you seem to think for some reason known only to yourself that your personal “intuition” about a god is a reliable guide to an objective truth for the rest of us, yet you deny exactly the same category of claim – personal intuition as a reliable guide to something else (ie, the FSM) to someone else. Even if you think the outcomes of this process to be in different categories, that’s neither here nor there – the point rather is that the process in both cases is one and the same.
I really can’t think of a plainer way of explaining this to you. If you continue to career off the rails with your misunderstanding of category error though, there’s really not much more I can do for you.
You fail to make the distinction that one is testable and the other not.
With Fred we can test his hypothesis. With Mary we are reliant on trusting her word.
And cannot finally say that her method of avoiding bad dreams is not efficacious.
Your argument suffers from your own ruthless reductionist agenda.
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Chunderer,
You fail to make the distinction that one is testable and the other not.
With Fred we can test his hypothesis. With Mary we are reliant on trusting her word.
And cannot finally say that her method of avoiding bad dreams is not efficacious.
Your argument suffers from your own ruthless reductionist agenda.
AAARRRGGGHHH, AAARRRGGGHHH, AAARRRGGGHHH...
You can look at the Arsenal scores after the event to see whether or not they won. You can attach electrodes to Mary's head to see whether or not she had nightmares.
In neither case though would you be able to test whether not stepping on the cracks in the pavement had changed anything at all.
That's the point - if you seriously think that "personal intuition" is a reliable method or process to establish objective truths, then that's the beginning and end of the matter. That claim stand or falls on its merits - you cannot though just use special pleading to claim that it only works in respect of one set of claims but not in respect of another.
Good grief. I need a lie down with a wet towel wrapped around my head...
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Good grief. I need a lie down with a wet towel wrapped around my head...
How will you convince Vlad that will help, though? I think you'd be better off praying... :)
O.
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Which is 17 or 18 years after the event talking to established communities.
Yep - plenty long enough for content changes to creep in during the re-telling of stories that, and let us not forget, may contain mistakes or lies to start with, where these risks haven't been meaningfully excluded, and where we can only see the end point of this process (the NT) but not the detail of the original oral accounts.
On that basis I'd say that those who treat the NT as being historical fact are unjustified in doing so in view of the problems surrounding its provenance.
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Chunderer,
AAARRRGGGHHH, AAARRRGGGHHH, AAARRRGGGHHH...
You can look at the Arsenal scores after the event to see whether or not they won. You can attach electrodes to Mary's head to see whether or not she had nightmares.
In neither case though would you be able to test whether not stepping on the cracks in the pavement had changed anything at all.
That's the point - if you seriously think that "personal intuition" is a reliable method or process to establish objective truths, then that's the beginning and end of the matter. That claim stand or falls on its merits - you cannot though just use special pleading to claim that it only works in respect of one set of claims but not in respect of another.
Good grief. I need a lie down with a wet towel wrapped around my head...
Hang on though. If both assertions are testable.Then Fred and Mary may be just giving hypotheses rather than personal intuitions. Why are you leaping to the latter conclusion.
In which case you are using an example of two testable ideas and comparing it to untestable ideas.
I think you need your towel.
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Yep - plenty long enough for content changes to creep in during the re-telling of stories that, and let us not forget, may contain mistakes or lies to start with, where these risks haven't been meaningfully excluded, and where we can only see the end point of this process (the NT) but not the detail of the original oral accounts.
On that basis I'd say that those who treat the NT as being historical fact are unjustified in doing so in view of the problems surrounding its provenance.
That is of course true.
And the first few hours are probably critical in themselves. Ask 10 eye witnesses to an event what happened, even just hours after the event, and you are likely to get very varied answers. Add in a sprinkling of confirmation bias and people ended up swearing blind that something happened which never did. Add evolution of stories through transmission one to another over decades and what comes out is likely to bear little resemblance to what actually happened. And this is, of course, even less likely if the people reporting decades later see a particular 'happening' as critical to their faith.
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Yep - plenty long enough for content changes to creep in during the re-telling of stories that, and let us not forget, may contain mistakes or lies to start with, where these risks haven't been meaningfully excluded, and where we can only see the end point of this process (the NT) but not the detail of the original oral accounts.
On that basis I'd say that those who treat the NT as being historical fact are unjustified in doing so in view of the problems surrounding its provenance.
The only thing is that the communities are established.
Paul though talks about 500 witnesses available for consultation.
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The only thing is that the communities are established.
Paul though talks about 500 witnesses available for consultation.
Paul talks about lots of things, but no-one corroborates his story from the time. Decades later documents turn up alleging the events of the day - which is convenient - yet the local authorities of the day have no recollection of this, and unfortunately anyone who was alive at the time is already dead.
O.
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That is of course true.
And the first few hours are probably critical in themselves. Ask 10 eye witnesses to an event what happened, even just hours after the event, and you are likely to get very varied answers. Add in a sprinkling of confirmation bias and people ended up swearing blind that something happened which never did. Add evolution of stories through transmission one to another over decades and what comes out is likely to bear little resemblance to what actually happened. And this is, of course, even less likely if the people reporting decades later see a particular 'happening' as critical to their faith.
An interesting post which drops the distinction between supernatural and natural claims......and therein lies the problem since the inevitable process of information becoming incorrect must have happened in events which you take for granted as true.
Particularly in history where there was not video evidence and even there where evidence could not be mocked up......which probably makes it never.
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An interesting post which drops the distinction between supernatural and natural claims......and therein lies the problem since the inevitable process of information becoming incorrect must have happened in events which you take for granted as true.
No, that argument is showing why your confidence in the claims is unwarranted, not why the claims themselves are nonsense.
O.
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The only thing is that the communities are established.
So! There are lots of Mormons in Salt Lake City so does that confirm the truth of Mormonism?
Paul though talks about 500 witnesses available for consultation.
So! How do you know he is correct, and even then how do you know what these witnesses might have said, and even then how do you know that what they might have said was true?
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The only thing is that the communities are established.
Paul though talks about 500 witnesses available for consultation.
The 500 people claim really undermines him. Why - because if 500 people (a significant proportion of the population in those days) had actually seen a person they knew to have died be alive again, that would spread like wildfire. Each person telling perhaps 5 others of friends and family and in a couple of transmission steps much of the population would know. Yet this astonishing 'revelation' lies dormant for decades, and tends to resurface not locally but in distant parts.
So you'd either need to conclude that seeing a dead man alive again was no big deal and therefore not something to become the 'talk of the town'.
Or that it never happened - or that the claim of 500 witnesses at one point is a massive exaggeration aimed at enhancing his claim (but it actually undermining it).
Even if we accept that 500 people thought they saw a dead man alive again, but were mistaken (e.g. because they saw someone who looked like Jesus or he never actually died) it would still surely have become the talk of the town, unless dead people becoming alive again was commonplace - yet there is no evidence whatsoever that the purported resurrection became the 'talk of the town'. And don't try to play the - oh but it would have been only communicated via oral routes. Why because had the 500 told 5 people each and they also told 5 each, we'd have 12,500 people talking about it within hours of days and that would surely have come tot he attention of the authorities, whether Jewish or Roman, who given the political sensitivities would no doubt be interested and probably concerned. They were, of course, assiduous record keepers.
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Paul talks about lots of things, but no-one corroborates his story from the time. Decades later documents turn up alleging the events of the day - which is convenient - yet the local authorities of the day have no recollection of this, and unfortunately anyone who was alive at the time is already dead.
O.
Non corroboration is common in ancient history which acknowledges that material is no longer extant. The difficulty is who writes letters concerning aspects of a faith that nobody knew about? Is that feasible.
Jeremy p is a recent convert to the possibility of no longer extant record by suggesting it when I said we had zero record of a Jesus Myth sect.
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So! There are lots of Mormons in Salt Lake City so does that confirm the truth of Mormonism?
So! How do you know he is correct, and even then how do you know what these witnesses might have said, and even then how do you know that what they might have said was true?
If it were true it would have undoubtedly have been a big deal at the time (30-ishAD) and place (Jerusalem) yet there is no evidence whatsoever that it was.
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Non corroboration is common in ancient history which acknowledges that material is no longer extant.
It's not uncommon, but typically it's only used to justify commonplace events or events where there's non-documentary (archaeological, say) evidence.
The difficulty is who writes letters concerning aspects of a faith that nobody knew about? Is that feasible.
It's more feasible than them being true, certainly. As a comparison I offer you Joseph Smith - he wrote letters concerning aspects of a faith that nobody knew about, now there are millions of them. Is it feasible... yes, I'd say it most certainly is.
O.
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Chunderer,
Hang on though. If both assertions are testable.Then Fred and Mary may be just giving hypotheses rather than personal intuitions. Why are you leaping to the latter conclusion.
In which case you are using an example of two testable ideas and comparing it to untestable ideas.
Oh FFS! The incidence of Arsenal winning/nightmares are both testable after the event; whether not stepping on the cracks in the pavement has anything to do with it in either case is not. It's the same process though - just as personal intuition is the same process regardless of where it leads - which is why there's no category error in respect of the process in either case.
If though you want to claim an objective god by some method other than your personal intuition, then by all means finally junk that stupidity and knock yourself out with something different.
I think you need your towel.
No, you do. You really, really do...
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The 500 people claim really undermines him. Why - because if 500 people (a significant proportion of the population in those days) had actually seen a person they knew to have died be alive again, that would spread like wildfire. Each person telling perhaps 5 others of friends and family and in a couple of transmission steps much of the population would know. Yet this astonishing 'revelation' lies dormant for decades, and tends to resurface not locally but in distant parts.
So you'd either need to conclude that seeing a dead man alive again was no big deal and therefore not something to become the 'talk of the town'.
Or that it never happened - or that the claim of 500 witnesses at one point is a massive exaggeration aimed at enhancing his claim (but it actually undermining it).
Even if we accept that 500 people thought they saw a dead man alive again, but were mistaken (e.g. because they saw someone who looked like Jesus or he never actually died) it would still surely have become the talk of the town, unless dead people becoming alive again was commonplace - yet there is no evidence whatsoever that the purported resurrection became the 'talk of the town'. And don't try to play the - oh but it would have been only communicated via oral routes. Why because had the 500 told 5 people each and they also told 5 each, we'd have 12,500 people talking about it within hours of days and that would surely have come tot he attention of the authorities, whether Jewish or Roman, who given the political sensitivities would no doubt be interested and probably concerned. They were, of course, assiduous record keepers.
What was the population at the time though since your thesis is dependent on that.
Our comparison here of course is the resurrection of Elvis and how many had heard of it and how many believed it.............and of course those numbers now we are .......as they say in God delusion Belt.....several decades away from the events.
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Population of Jerusalem in Ad 70 was 600,000 according to Tacitus I think.
But that isn't corroborated so it.s probably nearer to the couple of thousand suggested in God delusion belt 2000 years later.
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Population of Jerusalem in Ad 70 was 600,000 according to Tacitus I think.
But that isn't corroborated so it.s probably nearer to the couple of thousand suggested in God delusion belt 2000 years later.
Josephus (who is less reliable) suggests well over 1,000,000.
Archaeological evidence - which is much less susceptible to the exaggerations of the historical references of the time - suggest something in the region of 20,000 in the period immediately prior to the destruction of the city in 70AD.
O.
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Population of Jerusalem in Ad 70 was 600,000 according to Tacitus I think.
But that isn't corroborated so it.s probably nearer to the couple of thousand suggested in God delusion belt 2000 years later.
Way off the mark (as usual).
Historical estimates put permanent population of Jerusalem at about 40,000, perhaps up to 80,000 - so the 12,500 people I mentioned might have been as much as one quarter of the population.
Your 600,000 was much later and at a time of war, so effectively swelled massively by the presence of soldiers.
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Josephus (who is less reliable) suggests well over 1,000,000.
Archaeological evidence - which is much less susceptible to the exaggerations of the historical references of the time - suggest something in the region of 20,000 in the period immediately prior to the destruction of the city in 70AD.
O.
Citation
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Citation
http://khazarzar.skeptik.net/books/jremias2.pdf
See P83 amongst others.
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Our comparison here of course is the resurrection of Elvis and how many had heard of it and how many believed it.............and of course those numbers now we are .......as they say in God delusion Belt.....several decades away from the events.
Elvis is actually is good comparison here, Vlad, since he died and stayed dead.
I'm not aware of anyone claiming he was resurrected, but if they did I doubt even you would take them seriously since you know that dead people do stay dead: no exceptions, so reports to the contrary can be easily dismissed - right?
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http://khazarzar.skeptik.net/books/jremias2.pdf
See P83 amongst others.
So we have a skeptical and a minimalist figure for the population of Jerusalem.
The problem of establishment of population is also the transitory population, soldiers,merchants,slaves and pilgrims etc.
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Our comparison here of course is the resurrection of Elvis and how many had heard of it and how many believed it.............and of course those numbers now we are .......as they say in God delusion Belt.....several decades away from the events.
Shot yourself in the foot there I think.
Elvis died and remained dead.
The 'fact' that apparently he works down a chip-shop now is neither here nor there - he is dead and it doesn't matter if people write 'Elvis lives' all over the place, he is still dead.
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It's not uncommon, but typically it's only used to justify commonplace events or events where there's non-documentary (archaeological, say) evidence.
It's more feasible than them being true, certainly. As a comparison I offer you Joseph Smith - he wrote letters concerning aspects of a faith that nobody knew about, now there are millions of them. Is it feasible... yes, I'd say it most certainly is.
O.
That would be Mormonism the Christian heterodoxy........
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I thought that 'sightings' of Elvis, and even photos of him after death, demonstrate popular credulity about life after death. I suppose you could say that some people don't want Elvis to be dead, or maybe they have some other reason, to wish him alive.
Doesn't this offer some insight into how such legends arise? We also know that many people, after bereavement, have very strong experiences of their loved one still being around, part of mourning I guess.
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I thought that 'sightings' of Elvis, and even photos of him after death, demonstrate popular credulity about life after death. I suppose you could say that some people don't want Elvis to be dead, or maybe they have some other reason, to wish him alive.
Doesn't this offer some insight into how such legends arise? We also know that many people, after bereavement, have very strong experiences of their loved one still being around, part of mourning I guess.
Yes but you are talking about close relatives and lifelong friends all people who you are intimate with.Did Jesus have anybody like that? Maybe a couple of Dozen. Unless of course................
Where does Elvis resurrectionism stand now I wonder.
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I just suppose that there is a spectrum of 'wishful resurrection', ranging from still seeing a dead relative around in the house, (a very common experience), to sightings of Elvis, and other famous figures. I think Michael Jackson sightings are now common.
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Yes but you are talking about close relatives and lifelong friends all people who you are intimate with.Did Jesus have anybody like that? Maybe a couple of Dozen. Unless of course................
But this is exactly the position with Jesus - the only evidence we have is that it was basically his followers (his closest friends, confidants etc) who believed in the resurrection initially. And of course believing this was an 'act of faith' that they wanted to believe and may have been taught would happen and to believe. So a charismatic leader tells his followers something will happen after his death, and guess what his followers want it to be true, so make out it is true. Problem is that the rest of the population at the time shrugged their shoulders muttering 'whatever' and got on with their lives not believing a word of it.
Where does Elvis resurrectionism stand now I wonder.
It doesn't - Elvis is dead.
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Where does Elvis resurrectionism stand now I wonder.
Shoulder to shoulder with Jesus, Bigfoot and the Loch Ness Monster.
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But this is exactly the position with Jesus - the only evidence we have is that it was basically his followers (his closest friends, confidants etc) who believed in the resurrection initially. And of course believing this was an 'act of faith' that they wanted to believe and may have been taught would happen and to believe. So a charismatic leader tells his followers something will happen after his death, and guess what his followers want it to be true, so make out it is true. Problem is that the rest of the population at the time shrugged their shoulders muttering 'whatever' and got on with their lives not believing a word of it.
It doesn't - Elvis is dead.
So Elvis resurrectionism has fallen because Elvis is dead and Jesus resurrectionism took off because er, Jesus is dead...............how does that work?
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So Elvis resurrectionism has fallen because Elvis is dead and Jesus resurrectionism took off because er, Jesus is dead...............how does that work?
Elvis is dead, Jesus is dead.
In both cases some believe believe that they are alive, others want to believe they are alive, others still think they are 'metaphorically' still alive (i.e. remain important even after death). But in both cases they are dead, there is no resurrection.
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Elvis is dead, Jesus is dead.
In both cases some believe believe that they are alive, others want to believe they are alive, others still think they are 'metaphorically' still alive (i.e. remain important even after death). But in both cases they are dead, there is no resurrection.
Yes but what I want to know is , is Elvis resurrectionism on the Up or on the down ?given we are now 40 years into it.
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Yes but what I want to know is , is Elvis resurrectionism on the Up or on the down ?given we are now 40 years into it.
Well, since you mentioned it surely you must know the answer, Vlad.
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Well, since you mentioned it surely you must know the answer, Vlad.
Well according to anti theism it should be on the way down while anti theism says it should be on the way up.
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Well according to anti theism it should be on the way down while anti theism says it should be on the way up.
Is this the 'Grand Old Duke of York' approach, Vlad: when it is up it is up, and when it is down it is down?
Personally I'd go for the third option: neither up nor down.
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Yes but what I want to know is , is Elvis resurrectionism on the Up or on the down ?given we are now 40 years into it.
I have no idea - but that is argumentum ad populum. It wouldn't make any difference if tomorrow the last person in the world who believed in Elvis' resurrection died, or if tomorrow the last person who did not believe it converted - Elvis would still be dead.
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I have no idea - but that is argumentum ad populum.
No it would mean there were other factors involved than just being dead and famous.After all isn't there meant to be a reason for all things?
A parody on the misuse of ad populism as the fit all accusation is available on another thread.
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No it would mean there were other factors involved than just being dead and famous.
Indeed, there would probably be the need for successful propagation of 'cult following' mentality - but again that has no bearing on whether Elvis or Jesus are dead.
After all isn't there meant to be a reason for all things?
No - where on earth did you get that idea?
A parody on the misuse of ad populism as the fit all accusation is available on another thread.
Why is that relevant - your example was classic (and classically flawed) argumentum ad populum.
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Indeed, there would probably be the need for successful propagation of 'cult following' mentality - but again that has no bearing on whether Elvis or Jesus are dead.
No - where on earth did you get that idea?
Why is that relevant - your example was classic (and classically flawed) argumentum ad populum.
No it,s about you and others building a theory on the success of resurrectionism only to have to come up with an opposing one for when it fails.
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Chunderer,
So Elvis resurrectionism has fallen because Elvis is dead and Jesus resurrectionism took off because er, Jesus is dead...............how does that work?
Wallop! And our Vlad blunders straight back into the survivor fallacy. This is like opening a window for the fly to escape, only to watch it endlessly banging its head against the closed window next to it...
It "works" like any other example - start with similar suites of circumstances and eventually a small number will thrive and many will not, not because of some inherent "truth" in the winners but because of entirely extraneous influences. Had not for example Constantine plumped for Christianity rather for one of the other embryonic faiths, it's entirely possible that it would have fallen away and a different faith would have taken its place.
Essentially you're trying to imply that there must be something special about lottery winner Fred because he won the lottery, but not about about Mary because she did not.
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Chunderer,
Wallop! And our Vlad blunders straight back into the survivor fallacy. This is like opening a window for the fly to escape, only to watch it endlessly banging its head against the closed window next to it...
It "works" like any other example - start with similar suites of circumstances and eventually a small number will thrive and many will not, not because of some inherent "truth" in the winners but because of entirely extraneous influences. Had not for example Constantine plumped for Christianity rather for one of the other embryonic faiths, it's entirely possible that it would have fallen away and a different faith would have taken its place.
Essentially you're trying to imply that there must be something special about lottery winner Fred because he won the lottery, but not about about Mary because she did not.
Absolutely Bonkers reply Hillside.although for whatever reason Constantine was invoked,I still think you could have worked in the sheik of Araby ,the duke of Earl and even The lullaby of Broadway.
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Chunderer,
Absolutely Bonkers reply Hillside.although for whatever reason Constantine was invoked,I still think you could have worked in the sheik of Araby ,the duke of Earl and even The lullaby of Broadway.
Your dull incomprehension is noted. No doubt you'll be along any time now to explain why survivor bias is "bonkers" then won't you.
Constantine was "invoked" because he picked Christianity and, being the emperor and all, that was enough to give it the leg up it needed and to encourage the competitors to whither away. Had he picked something else, you'd be espousing now whatever alternative proto faith had caught the wind and taken off instead.
That's the point - any manner of chance factors along the way can determine the winners and the losers with no significant characteristics in any of them that make them more true, better etc.
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Chunderer,
Your dull incomprehension is noted. No doubt you'll be along any time now to explain why survivor bias is "bonkers" then won't you.
Constantine was "invoked" because he picked Christianity and, being the emperor and all, that was enough to give it the leg up it needed and to encourage the competitors to whither away. Had he picked something else, you'd be espousing now whatever alternative proto faith had caught the wind and taken off instead.
That's the point - any manner of chance factors along the way can determine the winners and the losers with no significant characteristics in any of them that make them more true, better etc.
But what has Constantine got to do with the decline in Elvis resurrectionism?
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Chunderer,
But what has Constantine got to do with the decline in Elvis resurrectionism?
Seriously?
Seriously seriously?
Constantine was given as an example of the sort of factor external to a faith that could nonetheless cause the faith to succeed whereas others do not - not because of anything inherently "right" about the faith itself, but essentially because of a chance event. Who's to say what chance events could have happened but didn't that could have given Elvis resurrectionism a survival leg up.
You know you can buy books on this stuff don't you - it's not hard.
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Constantine was "invoked" because he picked Christianity and, being the emperor and all, that was enough to give it the leg up it needed and to encourage the competitors to whither away. Had he picked something else, you'd be espousing now whatever alternative proto faith had caught the wind and taken off instead.
The only wind I,m catching is off you mate.
Constantine is no reason for me being a Christian......if it worked like that we'd all still be Romans...........Get a grip.
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Themes, yes, that thematic nature is one of the reasons, its suggested, that Hebrew as a language is relatively stable by comparison with other languages from the region. That's only a relative measure, mind.
That's all very well, but the early Christians didn't speak Hebrew. Jesus and his followers probably spoke Aramaic as a first language, and the lingua franca of the Roman Empire was Greek.
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Chunderer,
The only wind I,m catching is off you mate.
Constantine is no reason for me being a Christian......if it worked like that we'd all still be Romans...........Get a grip.
Oh dear. Constantine was just given as an example of the type of external, essentially random factor that can tip the survivorship balance one way rather than another. Of course we wouldn't "all be Romans", but Constantine's imprimatur could have been just enough to seed that faith such that it would take root and to discourage others.
That's the point - we're surrounded by things that exist not necessarily because of some inherent rightness about them, but rather because of long chains of chance and happenstance. That's why your "how come Christianity survived then?" schtick is hopeless - it's entirely likely that it survived for reasons that have nothing whatever to do with what it actually has to say.
Why is this so difficult for you to grasp?
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The only thing is that the communities are established.
Paul though talks about 500 witnesses available for consultation.
Names and addresses please.
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Names and addresses please.
I think the records are in the same condition as those you suggest for that hypothetical Jesus Myth sect we discussed yesterday.........except there is absolutely no evidence of a Jesus Myth sect.
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Chunderer,
it's entirely likely that it survived for reasons that have nothing whatever to do with what it actually has to say.
So nobody adopts it for what it has to say then.
Hillside, those are called nominal Christians.
On the other hand there are very few real atheists and lots of apatheists.
So Hillside are you the genuine article?
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Yes but what I want to know is , is Elvis resurrectionism on the Up or on the down ?given we are now 40 years into it.
What about Haile Selassie? He is revered in Rastafarianism as the Messiah or God incarnate in spite of the fact that he himself denied it.
How about that? People can believe in the deification of a person even when that person is still around and obviously human. On those grounds, it makes the 15 or so years between the death of Jesus and the first written records entirely credible.
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What about Haile Selassie? He is revered in Rastafarianism as the Messiah or God incarnate in spite of the fact that he himself denied it.
So what you are saying is that some religion is Highly Sellassie, Some is Fairly Selassie and some isnt Selassie at all.
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Chunderer,
So nobody adopts it for what it has to say then.
Hillside, those are called nominal Christians.
On the other hand there are very few real atheists and lots of apatheists.
So Hillside are you the genuine article?
Lots of people have started and joined lots of cults because they believed what those cults had to say - the early christians, the cargo cult folks, David Koresh's followers etc. The question though was why some of those cults caught the wind to become full-blown religions whereas others did not. And the reasons for that very often have to do with factors entirely unrelated to what the cults actually have to say. Had christianity withered away like so many others but for the random breaks it happened to have along the way there'd be nothing left for those who came later to decide whether or not they liked the message.
The big mistake - your big mistake in fact - is just to assume that the success you see now is down to some inherent rightness about your faith rather than to the various factors that happened to give it the leg ups it needed.
Incidentally, random success isn't confined to religions - it's a general phenomenon, from businesses to technologies to pretty much every other cultural construct.
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The big mistake - your big mistake in fact - is just to assume that the success you see now is down to some inherent rightness about your faith rather than to the various factors that happened to give it the leg ups it needed.
Hi blue
I differ slightly from your approach here, in that I believe there were some humanly valuable elements in Christianity which set it apart from other available options (such as Mithraism and Orphism etc). But I don't think these elements were especially instrumental in the survival of the early days of Christianity. The main stream of early Christianity was essential an 'End-Times' religion, rather like the Jehovah's Witnesses today, and if it had not been for the 'leg-ups' it was given which were able, by intellectual subterfuge, to give the faith the kiss of life when the relevant prophecies failed to be fulfilled, then Christianity would indeed have been dead in the water after a few hundred years.
Thereafter, its power-base and a good deal of 'intellectual' waffle to confuse the hoi-polloi (coupled with some of its inherent wholesome constituents) ensured its survival down the ages.
As regards the 'Resurrection' element being important in Christianity's survival - I don't think that would count for much above the other options available, since they all had resurrection stories of their own! If the resurrection of Osiris had been plugged by Constantine instead of that of Jesus, no doubt we'd all be singing "O Isis und Osiris schenket" in Coptic? (with apologies to Mozart)
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Chunderer,
Lots of people have started and joined lots of cults because they believed what those cults had to say - the early christians, the cargo cult folks, David Koresh's followers etc. The question though was why some of those cults caught the wind to become full-blown religions whereas others did not. And the reasons for that very often have to do with factors entirely unrelated to what the cults actually have to say. Had christianity withered away like so many others but for the random breaks it happened to have along the way there'd be nothing left for those who came later to decide whether or not they liked the message.
The big mistake - your big mistake in fact - is just to assume that the success you see now is down to some inherent rightness about your faith rather than to the various factors that happened to give it the leg ups it needed.
Incidentally, random success isn't confined to religions - it's a general phenomenon, from businesses to technologies to pretty much every other cultural construct.
Sounds like memetic bollocks to me.
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Hi Dicky,
I differ slightly from your approach here, in that I believe there were some humanly valuable elements in Christianity which set it apart from other available options (such as Mithraism and Orphism etc). But I don't think these elements were especially instrumental in the survival of the early days of Christianity. The main stream of early Christianity was essential an 'End-Times' religion, rather like the Jehovah's Witnesses today, and if it had not been for the 'leg-ups' it was given which were able by intellectual subterfuge to give the faith the kiss of life when the relevant prophecies failed to be fulfilled, then Christianity would indeed have been dead in the water after a few hundred years.
Thereafter, its power-base and a good deal of 'intellectual' waffle to confuse the hoi-polloi (coupled with some of its inherent wholesome constituents) ensured its survival down the ages.
Fair enough, though no doubt there were some humanly valuable elements in other cults too only they didn't make it to religions. I'm more interested for now though in explaining to Vlad the general phenomenon - that survivors survive very often for reason that are nothing to do with their inherent characteristics. It's a bit like the game of heads and tails you see sometimes at fundraisers: everyone stands up and they're told to put their hand on their heads or "tails". Someone tosses a coin, and if it's a head the people holding heir backsides sit down and vice versa.
The process is repeated until there's just one left standing - the winner. Our Vlad would ask what's so special about the winner, whereas it didn't matter a jot who won - someone was bound to, and it was just a series of chance events that meant that they did.
Once you start seeing it it's an astonishingly common phenomenon, but our narrative-seeking nature means that instead we look for causal explanations that are something to do with the winner rather than with chance.
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Chunderer,
Sounds like memetic bollocks to me.
You do realise that merely putting the word "bollocks" after a well-described and tested phenomenon doesn't actually make it bollocks don't you?
Don't you?
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Hi Dicky,
Fair enough, though no doubt there were some humanly valuable elements in other cults too only they didn't make it to religions. I'm more interested for now though in explaining to Vlad the general phenomenon - that survivors survive very often for reason that are nothing to do with their inherent characteristics. It's a bit like the game of heads and tails you see sometimes at fundraisers: everyone stands up and they're told to put their hand on their heads or "tails". Someone tosses a coin, and if it's a head the people holding heir backsides sit down and vice versa.
The process is repeated until there's just one left standing - the winner. Our Vlad would ask what's so special about the winner, whereas it didn't matter a jot who won - someone was bound to, and it was just a series of chance events that meant that they did.
Once you start seeing it it's an astonishingly common phenomenon, but our narrative-seeking nature means that instead we look for causal explanations that are something to do with the winner rather than with chance.
Or once you start seeing survivor bias it becomes a pathological obsession.
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Chunderer,
Or once you start seeing survivor bias it becomes a pathological obsession.
No, just a fact - as you'd realise if you had the wit to see it.
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Chunderer,
You do realise that merely putting the word "bollocks" after a well-described and tested phenomenon doesn't actually make it bollocks don't you?
Don't you?
I disagree with your thesis that people choose the most popular life stance and do not consider it's content or reject it. That is just intellectual snobbery and as we know in your case chronological snobbery.
Other wise no one would become a convinced rather than nominal member of any minority religion.
The immediate concern of any thinking person is why anti theists are simultaneously running theories for how resurrection stories survive.....when challenged with the Jesus success and a contradictory one for why they naturally fail as demonstrated with Elvis.........That is just plainly schizoid.
Mind you........if I'd been shown contradictory with the emphasis on Dick I'd obsessively hand wave obscure stuff like survivor bias and use it shamanic ally...................see Edward Feser on the use of the Courtiers reply.
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Chunderer,
I disagree with your thesis that people choose the most popular life stance and do not consider it's content or reject it. That is just intellectual snobbery and as we know in your case chronological snobbery.
That's not my "thesis" at all. The fact remains though that most children in this country are exposed to your faith in their schools rather than to, say, Mithraism and that reasons for that quite probably have everything to do with chance and very little to do with the content of both when they were at the cult stage.
Other wise no one would become a convinced rather than nominal member of any minority religion.
Don't be daft. People can be "convinced" by any manner of things.
The immediate concern of any thinking person...
...don't tempt me...
... is why anti theists are simultaneously running theories for how resurrection stories survive.....when challenged with the Jesus success and a contradictory one for why they naturally fail as demonstrated with Elvis.........That is just plainly schizoid.
Except it's been explained perfectly clearly to you - in any set of starting positions you'll end up with a few winners and many losers, generally for reasons of happenstance and chance rather than because of the inherent qualities of the opening bids.
Is the fact that one person wins at "heads and tails" but most lose "plainly shizoid" in your head too?
Mind you........if I'd been shown contradictory with the emphasis on Dick I'd obsessively hand wave obscure stuff like survivor bias and use it shamanic ally...................see Edward Feser on the use of the Courtiers reply.
The courtier's reply is a fallacy you've attempted more than once before and you've had your arse handed to you in a sling for doing it. And you haven't been shown "contradictory" anything.
Perhaps if you stopped the endless misrepresentation that would be a first step to making you educable?
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Chunderer,
That's not my "thesis" at all. The fact remains though that most children in this country are exposed to your faith in their schools rather than to, say, Mithraism and that reasons for that quite probably have everything to do with chance and very little to do with the content of both when they were at the cult stage.
Don't be daft. People can be "convinced" by any manner of things.
...don't tempt me...
Except it's been explained perfectly clearly to you - in any set of starting positions you'll end up with a few winners and many losers, generally for reasons of happenstance and chance rather than because of the inherent qualities of the opening bids.
Is the fact that one person wins at "heads and tails" but most lose "plainly shizoid" in your head too?
The courtier's reply is a fallacy you've attempted more than once before and you've had your arse handed to you in a sling for doing it. And you haven't been shown "contradictory" anything.
Perhaps if you stopped the endless misrepresentation that would be a first step to making you educable?
So it comes down to universal Darwinism and meme tics then.
We know that ideas survive even though they are not correct. Ideas are therefore not subject to survivor bias since they do not become extinct.. The revival of paganism should have taught you that.
Again explain why people on this board are simultaneously peddling two contradictory ideas that resurrectionism succeeds and resurrectionism also fails.
If anything you are the Constantine of survival bias theory. Some of us still think that because it is popular doesn't make it right. Finally the article on survival bias mentions some systems and contexts but strangely religion seems to be missing..........I suspect another category error on your part.
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Chunderer,
So it comes down to universal Darwinism and meme tics then.
No. All that’s being said is that ideas and beliefs often survive for reason entirely other than their content.
We know that ideas survive even though they are not correct.
Finally you’re getting it!
Ideas are therefore not subject to survivor bias since they do not become extinct.. The revival of paganism should have taught you that.
And bang, straight into yet another non sequitur. Of course ideas can become “extinct” – ie, forgotten about. Who can say what ideas were lost - perhaps forever – in the fire at the great library at Alexandria? No-one’s suggesting that all ideas will survive by chance and happenstance – many will not. It’s simply an observable fact though that many do survive for reasons unrelated to their content – because an emperor makes a faith the state religion for example.
Again explain why people on this board are simultaneously peddling two contradictory ideas that resurrectionism succeeds and resurrectionism also fails.
Again you’ve had it explained to you several times now but you just ignore the explanation. Why do some people win the heads and tails game and some do not? Some resurrection stories get lucky, some do not – that’s the point. The content of the story isn’t the thing that ensures its success – often other factors entirely will do it and the fact that the story entaiis a resurrection is incidental.
Good grief!
If anything you are the Constantine of survival bias theory.
Oh dear. Survivor bias already exists as an observable phenomenon. It needs no help from me to make it so.
Some of us still think that because it is popular doesn't make it right.
So you’ve removed the argumetum ad populum from the range of logical fallacies on which you rely then? Better late then never I guess.
Finally…
“Finally”? Any chance of a “firstly” first?
…the article on survival bias mentions some systems and contexts but strangely religion seems to be missing..........I suspect another category error on your part.
First, what article?
Second, survivor bias is an observable phenomenon – whether its object is businesses, technologies, religions or anything else is irrelevant.
Thirdly, as I painstakingly explained to you several times there is no category error when the claimed process – personal “intuition” for example – is the same, regardless of the object of that intuition. Either you think that intuition is a reliable guide to objective truths or you don’t. You’d be barmy to do so given the total absence of a verification method to support it (you know, the question you endlessly run away from), but there it is. If you cling to it nonetheless, you have no choice but to accept that anyone else’s intuition about anything else must also be a reliable guide to objective truths.
You really are terribly confused.
Really.
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Chunderer,
No. All that’s being said is that ideas and beliefs often survive for reason entirely other than their content.
Finally you’re getting it!
And bang, straight into yet another non sequitur. Of course ideas can become “extinct” – ie, forgotten about. Who can say what ideas were lost - perhaps forever – in the fire at the great library at Alexandria? No-one’s suggesting that all ideas will survive by chance and happenstance – many will not. It’s simply an observable fact though that many do survive for reasons unrelated to their content – because an emperor makes a faith the state religion for example.
Again you’ve had it explained to you several times now but you just ignore the explanation. Why do some people win the heads and tails game and some do not? Some resurrection stories get lucky, some do not – that’s the point. The content of the story isn’t the thing that ensures its success – often other factors entirely will do it and the fact that the story entaiis a resurrection is incidental.
Good grief!
Oh dear. Survivor bias already exists as an observable phenomenon. It needs no help from me to make it so.
So you’ve removed the argumetum ad populum from the range of logical fallacies on which you rely then? Better late then never I guess.
“Finally”? Any chance of a “firstly” first?
First, what article?
Second, survivor bias is an observable phenomenon – whether its object is businesses, technologies, religions or anything else is irrelevant.
Thirdly, as I painstakingly explained to you several times there is no category error when the claimed process – personal “intuition” for example – is the same, regardless of the object of that intuition. Either you think that intuition is a reliable guide to objective truths or you don’t. You’d be barmy to do so given the total absence of a verification method to support it (you know, the question you endlessly run away from), but there it is. If you cling to it nonetheless, you have no choice but to accept that anyone else’s intuition about anything else must also be a reliable guide to objective truths.
You really are terribly confused.
Really.
Do complex systems survive by chance or because of fitness in the Darwinian sense.
Survival bias is inappropriate because the sphere of philosophy does not change like the natural environment.
Things may not survive therefor because they are not fit.
If we take your thesis to it,s logical conclusion it could be said that a plane flies merely by chance not because it is aerodynamic.
Again you are confusing a might be wrong with a definitely wrong.
Let,s face it Blue....survivor ship bias is gussied up managerial bullshit.
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As I tried to explain to Gordon, the survival of Christianity has to do with the many people who were healed, or who heard Jesus in the synagogue or who experienced him in some way.
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As I tried to explain to Gordon, the survival of Christianity has to do with the many people who were healed, or who heard Jesus in the synagogue or who experienced him in some way.
Even if those factors were true in the first instance, which I don't believe, that would apply only for the lifetimes of those concerned. Thereafter it's still only accepting hearsay and second-hand accounts from other people prone to bias, misinterpretation, exaggeration, propagandising and outright dishonesty as anybody else - exactly the situation that already obtains in fact.
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I think the records are in the same condition as those you suggest for that hypothetical Jesus Myth sect we discussed yesterday.........except there is absolutely no evidence of a Jesus Myth sect.
So you are saying that these 500 people are an invention of Paul. Fair enough.
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So you are saying that these 500 people are an invention of Paul. Fair enough.
No Jeremy I am saying that there is at least a piece of evidence for the 500
That fragment will then be considered in context.
Although there was no documentary evidence of a Jesus myth sect it could be that it was destroyed in the intervening years as was most documentation. However given the antichristian circumstances at the time and that he claimed to be God there is no reason why it wouldn't not only have survived but been given a step up.
the overall picture though is one where the authorities had to reluctantly accept his existence or not even contemplated a malicious Jesus myth idea.
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Dear Blue,
Survivor bias, Christianity, the Constantine myth, given what we know about first century Rome, politics, money, power, sorry but there is a lot more to the survival of Christianity than just being in the right place at the right time.
Gonnagle.
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As I tried to explain to Gordon, the survival of Christianity has to do with the many people who were healed, or who heard Jesus in the synagogue or who experienced him in some way.
There is no evidence anyone was healed! Jesus didn't create Christianity it was created long after he had died using him as an icon, imo!
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Dear Floo,
Ah yes!! but he was trying to start something, although they were all a bit to old to start a boy band, probably why they got rid of Judas, he was always hogging the microphone.
Gonnagle.
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No Jeremy I am saying that there is at least a piece of evidence for the 500
Not really, you have Paul making up a number.
the overall picture though is one where the authorities had to reluctantly accept his existence or not even contemplated a malicious Jesus myth idea.
What authorities?
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Not really, you have Paul making up a number.
What authorities?
I suppose he could be giving a ''ball park'' or round figure.
The authorities are those which had him crucified or who were complicit in his crucifixion.
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So, Spud, are you saying here that the gap between the alleged events of the death of Jesus and the NT reports of these in the NT is being deliberately exaggerated so as to weaken the relevance of presumed eye-witnesses?
Possibly, yes.
Do tell, since as far as I can see even your Christian scholars (for want of a better term) acknowledge there is a gap of several years to decades - perhaps you have the advantage of them.
You'll need to clarify this since I can't see there is a risk at all, never mind one that is comparable with the risks of people making mistakes or telling lies (which is known human behaviour).
What I meant by risk was, possibility. How have you eliminated the possibility that there were many people who could say, "the gospels are true, I was there".
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What I meant by risk was, possibility. How have you eliminated the possibility that there were many people who could say, "the gospels are true, I was there".
I don't need to - it is your claim and not mine: nice try at shifting the burden of proof though.
So, the details are what exactly, and how do you know the truth of whatever these details are?
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I don't need to
If a newspaper was informing the public that you must now use the outside lane only to overtake, you would need to form a judgment as to the truth of the report. Likewise if the NT claims that Jesus can save us from our sin then we need to know if it's true. So it becomes necessary to prove that it is not true.
- it is your claim and not mine
It's the New Testament's claim.
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If a newspaper was informing the public that you must now use the outside lane only to overtake, you would need to form a judgment as to the truth of the report. Likewise if the NT claims that Jesus can save us from our sin then we need to know if it's true. So it becomes necessary to prove that it is not true.
It's the New Testament's claim.
You are not comparing like with like! It is easy enough to verify, if need be, that you have to use the outside lane, but totally impossible to verify the claims made in the NT referring to Jesus!
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If a newspaper was informing the public that you must now use the outside lane only to overtake, you would need to form a judgment as to the truth of the report.
Now you are being silly - this isn't a witness report: it is legislation and if I want to I can check the details with the relevant authorities. I can also take into account that newspapers are unlikely to report legislation changes using bias, but even then I can check the details with the source - and, guess what, no supernatural elements are involved either.
Likewise if the NT claims that Jesus can save us from our sin then we need to know if it's true. So it becomes necessary to prove that it is not true
So now you are deploying the negative proof fallacy and are being even sillier than before: this is not 'likewise' at all, as in being comparable to traffic legislation, and without a method to first of all determine what 'sin' is (such as it characteristics and how it is measured) and then to demonstrate how the death of this Jewish preacher some two millennia ago has any detectable relevance to, say, any 'sins' of mine then as it stands these NT claims are just so much white noise.
It's the New Testament's claim.
Then those supporting it these days have their work ahead of them to turn it into something that requires serious consideration.
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Now you are being silly - this isn't a witness report: it is legislation and if I want to I can check the details with the relevant authorities. I can also take into account that newspapers are unlikely to report legislation changes using bias, but even then I can check the details with the source - and, guess what, no supernatural elements are involved either.
So now you are deploying the negative proof fallacy and are being even sillier than before: this is not 'likewise' at all, as in being comparable to traffic legislation, and without a method to first of all determine what 'sin' is (such as it characteristics and how it is measured) and then to demonstrate how the death of this Jewish preacher some two millennia ago has any detectable relevance to, say, any 'sins' of mine then as it stands these NT claims are just so much white noise.
Then those supporting it these days have their work ahead of them to turn it into something that requires serious consideration.
I am not deploying the negative proof fallacy if I say that:
The existence of the worldwide church today is evidence that there were witnesses who could verify the New Testament. If there had not been, then its constituent books would have been discredited when they were published
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I am not deploying the negative proof fallacy if I say that:
The existence of the worldwide church today is evidence that there were witnesses who could verify the New Testament. If there had not been, then its constituent books would have been discredited when they were published
Thinking in particular of statements such as in Acts 2:22 or in Mark 5 where many people are said to have witnessed Jesus' miracles.
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I am not deploying the negative proof fallacy if I say that:
The existence of the worldwide church today is evidence that there were witnesses who could verify the New Testament. If there had not been, then its constituent books would have been discredited when they were published
What do you mean by "published"? These are hand written documents. How long do you think it would have been before the "authorities" would have seen copies?
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I am not deploying the negative proof fallacy if I say that:
The existence of the worldwide church today is evidence that there were witnesses who could verify the New Testament. If there had not been, then its constituent books would have been discredited when they were published
Not if you say that, since in this post you're using a different fallacy: your use of the negative proof fallacy occurred earlier when you said this
If a newspaper was informing the public that you must now use the outside lane only to overtake, you would need to form a judgment as to the truth of the report. Likewise if the NT claims that Jesus can save us from our sin then we need to know if it's true. So it becomes necessary to prove that it is not true.
That the Christian church has survived into modern times isn't evidence that the claims of the NT have been verified, and in saying so you've now switched to a fallacious argument from authority, and without a method to established supernatural agency regarding the claims of divinity in the NT they don't have to be discredited because you've yet to establish that there are credible in the first place.
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That the Christian church has survived into modern times isn't evidence that the claims of the NT have been verified, and in saying so you've now switched to a fallacious argument from authority,
How is it a fallacious argument from authority?
and without a method to established supernatural agency regarding the claims of divinity in the NT they don't have to be discredited because you've yet to establish that there are credible in the first place.
So if I tell my friend that I saw a paralyzed man get up and walk, and ten other people confirm that they saw it too, then it is not established as credible? Given that something supernatural cannot be understood by natural creatures such as us your demand for a method to establish it is, I would say, a red herring.
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So if I tell my friend that I saw a paralyzed man get up and walk, and ten other people confirm that they saw it too, then it is not established as credible? Given that something supernatural cannot be understood by natural creatures such as us your demand for a method to establish it is, I would say, a red herring.
No, it isn't a red herring. He's asking you what has been asked of others many times and every time without an answer: what methodology is there for examining, evaluating and testing what you think of or consider to be supernatural claims? If in your opinion there is one, let's see it. If you can't, then you haven't a leg to stand on, epistemologically speaking. You're simply assuming "supernatural" (which in essence means "I don't know, so it must be magic") out of an aversion to saying "I don't know" but with the desire to leave your worldview intact, I guess.
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How is it a fallacious argument from authority?
Because you are citing the survival of institutions of organised Christianity as grounds to believe Christian claims.
So if I tell my friend that I saw a paralyzed man get up and walk, and ten other people confirm that they saw it too, then it is not established as credible?
Nope - there are more prosaic everyday explanations to be considered first: you could be wrong, as could the ten other people, and that you would advance a miracle explanation at all might raise the risk of bias and credulity, and there is then the possibility that you were being misled in some way. So there are various aspects involving people and these are always more likely that anything supernatural since we know that making mistakes, being misled and misleading others are known human traits.
Given that something supernatural cannot be understood by natural creatures such as us your demand for a method to establish it is, I would say, a red herring.
Nope - if you are claiming the supernatural then you need a method suited to it else, as we have seen you do, you risk falling head-first into any number of fallacies: such as arguments from authority and personal incredulity, confirmation bias, special pleading and the negative proof fallacy.
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Because you are citing the survival of institutions of organised Christianity as grounds to believe Christian claims.
Nope - there are more prosaic everyday explanations to be considered first: you could be wrong, as could the ten other people, and that you would advance a miracle explanation at all might raise the risk of bias and credulity, and there is then the possibility that you were being misled in some way. So there are various aspects involving people and these are always more likely that anything supernatural since we know that making mistakes, being misled and misleading others are known human traits.
Nope - if you are claiming the supernatural then you need a method suited to it else, as we have seen you do, you risk falling head-first into any number of fallacies: such as arguments from authority and personal incredulity, confirmation bias, special pleading and the negative proof fallacy.
One can always argue philosophically Gordon, if you are dodging that you are merely retreating into scientism and positivism which are , er. philosophical arguments.
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How is it a fallacious argument from authority?
So if I tell my friend that I saw a paralyzed man get up and walk, and ten other people confirm that they saw it too, then it is not established as credible?
How would they know they were talking about the same incident? There were no published photos of Jesus and people didn't keep diaries.
Anybody who'd ever seen any itinerant preacher / healer / magician would easily persuade themselves that it must have been Jesus. Even if they'd never heard of him at the time because he hadn't been invented yet.
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How is it a fallacious argument from authority?
So if I tell my friend that I saw a paralyzed man get up and walk, and ten other people confirm that they saw it too, then it is not established as credible? Given that something supernatural cannot be understood by natural creatures such as us your demand for a method to establish it is, I would say, a red herring.
If something isn't remotely credible like the 'miracles' attributed to Jesus, people who claimed to have 'witnessed' them are lying! 'Miracles' apparently including amputated limbs growing back have been claimed by that charlatan Benny Hinn! No evidence to substantiate those claims, or any other less than credible 'miracles' attributed to anyone else have been put forward!
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No, it isn't a red herring. He's asking you what has been asked of others many times and every time without an answer: what methodology is there for examining, evaluating and testing what you think of or consider to be supernatural claims? If in your opinion there is one, let's see it. If you can't, then you haven't a leg to stand on, epistemologically speaking. You're simply assuming "supernatural" (which in essence means "I don't know, so it must be magic") out of an aversion to saying "I don't know" but with the desire to leave your worldview intact, I guess.
The only methodology for examining, testing and evaluating what you consider to be supernatural claims is, word of mouth. If you assumed that witnessing a miracle would produce certain changes in a person, then you could observe those changes and be certain that the miracle occurred. For instance, people observed changes in Saul/Paul and were convinced by his claim that Christ had appeared to him. Luke documented the changes in his letter to Theophilus. Since the re ipients of the message could verify the changes in the giver, they would have proof that the original miracle had occurred.
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The only methodology for examining, testing and evaluating what you consider to be supernatural claims is, word of mouth. If you assumed that witnessing a miracle would produce certain changes in a person, then you could observe those changes and be certain that the miracle occurred. For instance, people observed changes in Saul/Paul and were convinced by his claim that Christ had appeared to him. Luke documented the changes in his letter to Theophilus. Since the re ipients of the message could verify the changes in the giver, they would have proof that the original miracle had occurred.
You're kidding, Spud, tell me you're kidding (since its too soon for 1st April).
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Because you are citing the survival of institutions of organised Christianity as grounds to believe Christian claims.
Nope - there are more prosaic everyday explanations to be considered first: you could be wrong, as could the ten other people, and that you would advance a miracle explanation at all might raise the risk of bias and credulity, and there is then the possibility that you were being misled in some way. So there are various aspects involving people and these are always more likely that anything supernatural since we know that making mistakes, being misled and misleading others are known human traits.
It's comparable to a report in the local paper that Joe bloggs the cashier at Lloyd's bank was no longer blind in one eye, for example. Most of those healed by Jesus were known to lots of other people, so any false or mistaken report would be refuted.
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The only methodology for examining, testing and evaluating what you consider to be supernatural claims is, word of mouth.
Given what we know about the unreliability of eyewitness testimony and the passage of a message from person to person to person, are you absolutely sure you really want to go down this route?
If you assumed that witnessing a miracle would produce certain changes in a person, then you could observe those changes and be certain that the miracle occurred.
No, you could not. You can have a high degree of confidence that the subject believed that a miracle had occurred, not that a miracle had actually occurred. Belief in X and the actuality of X are not, never have been, never will be the same thing. Psychological phenomena such as the placebo effect are evidence enough that the belief in a certain thing is sufficient unto itself to explain why mere belief is enough to effect measurable and demonstrable changes in a person and not that the thing believed is true.
For instance, people observed changes in Saul/Paul and were convinced by his claim that Christ had appeared to him. Luke documented the changes in his letter to Theophilus. Since the re ipients of the message could verify the changes in the giver, they would have proof that the original miracle had occurred.
Oh dear ::)
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You're kidding, Spud, tell me you're kidding (since its too soon for 1st April).
No, I am not kidding, G. And do you know that the Flood was global, too? :)
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It's comparable to a report in the local paper that Joe bloggs the cashier at Lloyd's bank was no longer blind in one eye, for example. Most of those healed by Jesus were known to lots of other people, so any false or mistaken report would be refuted.
Don't believe everything you read, Spud, especially when remarkable claims are made, and even more especially when the provenance is uncertain and where there are the risks of mistakes, lies and bias - since you'd run the risk of being thought of as bring highly credulous.
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Don't believe everything you read, Spud, especially when remarkable claims are made, and even more especially when the provenance is uncertain and where there are the risks of mistakes, lies and bias - since you'd run the risk of being thought of as bring highly credulous.
Being thought of as highly credulous does not seem to be an area of concern for theists generally and especially any on this forum :D
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No, I am not kidding, G. And do you know that the Flood was global, too? :)
You are kidding, else you are lost to reason.
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No, I am not kidding, G. And do you know that the Flood was global, too? :)
A flood capable of covering the whole of the globe is a scientific impossibility.