Why?

[PassedOut]

i don't think phil and i disagree on the supernatural aspect of salvation

I'd be surprised if you did. But starting from there, people can always develop conflicting theologies, as happened.

[PassedOut]

And the reasoning behind the continued pressure for supernatural explanations can be found in some of the more sophistated writing of the brighter believers. From William Lane Craig's book, Reasonable Faith 2007. (emphasis mine)

Looks like some theists would still like to punish us if they could get away with it. Keep up the good fight!

[hrothgar]

let me make it clear that i believe that his view of jews was based on his understanding of the new testament... that same brand of anti-semitism is still held by some today (i think mel gibson is one)... other christians, and i am one, have a different interpretation of the new testament as it relates to the jews... i find it as easy to dispute his reasoning on this subject, through my own studies, as you might with a recognized authority on a subject with which you are familiar... i don't find it as easy to dispute his conclusions regarding james and paul...

 

My own gut feeling is that Luther's view towards the Jews was a function of the culture that he lived in.

Luther may very well have tried to use the New Testament to justify his pre-existing biases, however, I'd be very surprised to discover a real causal link.

 

As an analogy:

 

Many Muslim's claim that Islam and/or the Koran require that women (variously)

 

1. Keep their heads covered

2. Are circumsized

3. Wear the hijab

4. ...

 

In actuality, what seems to happen is that various cultures impose/project their own beliefs on the Koran. Accordingly, in areas in Africa where muslims and non-muslims both practice female genital mutilation thieir seems to be a widespread belief that this practice is required by Islam. In much the same manner, the practice of wearing head scarves predates Islam and was largely class based. Over time, the Koran's dicussions about "modesty" became confounded with existing cultural imperatives around head coverings. Eventually, you end up with hijabs...

 

Personally, I think Luther behaved in much the same manner...

[Winstonm]

Over time, the Koran's dicussions about "modesty" became confounded with existing cultural imperatives around head coverings. Eventually, you end up with hijabs

 

I think there is a basis here for the argument that cultural influences led to religious ideology, that god was an invention of man rather than man being god's creation.

[luke warm]

My own gut feeling is that Luther's view towards the Jews was a function of the culture that he lived in. Luther may very well have tried to use the New Testament to justify his pre-existing biases, however, I'd be very surprised to discover a real causal link.

you may be right...

[Winstonm]

Didn't it take the Council of Chalcedon (http://en.wikipedia....il_of_Chalcedon) 451 to get the existing Christian churches to reach some fundamental consent, about the nature of Jesus, building the base of the separation of the East European church at the same time?

 

A late clarification here, but I am pretty sure you are talking about the Council of Nicea in 325 C.E., which was called by Constantine. It was in this council that divinity of Jesus was adopted as the orthodox view.

[mike777]

A late clarification here, but I am pretty sure you are talking about the Council of Nicea in 325 C.E., which was called by Constantine. It was in this council that divinity of Jesus was adopted as the orthodox view.

 

I think this is a bit too strong of a statement........In fact...Jesus as divinity common/orthodox way before 325.......

 

I fully grant before 325 Roman Catholic orthodox.....in flux.....but 325 ad does mean something.

[phil_20686]

Has anyone read Bart Ehrman's NYT bestsellers "Misquoting Jesus" and "Jesus Interrupted"?

 

The conflict to which Phil alludes between Jewish Law adherence and no adherence only came about as far as can be determined by the opinions of Paul. According to Dr. Erhman, no actual teaching from Jesus himself contradicted Jewish Law, and that there is (my paraphrase here) a theological evolutionary pattern of change that was implemented by succeeding men who wrote their understanding of the oral traditions of their times and places, going from oldest gospel, Mark, to latest, John.

 

As Ehrman points out, the book of Mark is apocraphyl, teaching the Jewish understanding to Jews of a messiah who would return to earth within the lives of the then living generation to resolve forever the dichotomy of good/evil and establish an earthly kingdom.

 

65-years later, when it became obvious that the messiah wasn't coming as promised, a new idea of a divine (meaning having been with god all along) Jesus (as the word in John) who promised a future heavenly reward, not an earthly kingdom, was introduced.

 

Even the idea of when and how Jesus became the son of god changed with each version, with retellings. From an adopted son in Mark who became the son by baptism of John the Baptist, to son by means of virgin birth and direct interaction of god/man in Matthew and Luke, to John's Jesus divinity who was there at creation and who was both with god and also was god, in the beggining was the word, etc.

 

This is always the danger of people who read just a few books. Some of these points are easy to dispute, some of them rather harder. In particular, the idea that Jesus did not contradict Jewish law is (mostly) true, although he did repudiate the Mosaic Law's sanction of divorce and polygamy, though I believe that polygamy had died out as a cultural practice by then anyway. However, Jesus definitely expanded upon Jewish law, and made it appear in a wholly different light. Indeed, he espoused an entirely new way of looking at the covenant. From a Christian perspective, Jewish Law foreshadows Christian ethics, so the share almost all the same ideas, but often are different in implementation. Still, that is a long long long conversation.

 

More importantly, he has based it on a chronology of the Gospel writing that does not fall in line with modern historical finds. When he wrote this I presume people still had the earliest finds of gospel of John placing it authorship in the 3rd century. This was a massive dispute between historical exegetes and the Catholic Church in the seventies, when the church maintained that they had all been "substantially written within living memory of the crucifixion". New historical finds place the authorship of the Gospel of John as well inside the first century, and certainly no later than ad 90. This puts it fairly contemporary with the other gospels were written, probably no more than ten years later at the outside. It is unclear what its provenance is with respect to the Apostle John. A theory gaining credence seems to be that John may have founded some kind of school (in the old sense) of theology to thrash out some questions in the early church, and that the gospel of John may be an accurate recounting of his theology and thought, if not actually his writing.

 

It is certainly true that the Gospel of John seems to espouse a certain theology, rather than aiming to be a biographical account. It appears to have re-ordered some of the events in Jesus' life so that sometimes parables on the same theme appear together. However it is also possible that Jesus simply told the same parables multiple times, such that the "ordering" in the synoptic gospels simply refers to particularly memorable events, and that the apostles may often have known these stories prior to their public dissemination. Also, it is easy to forget that in the old days writing was a massively difficult and time consuming task. One estimate that I have seen in a catholic publication was that to write the Pauline epistles on papyrus with old style quills (if you include a couple of drafts for each letter) represented a decade of 7 days a week work. Just to produce a copy of the new testament by hand might take as long as 5 years. Thus there was a really strong impetus to be as brief as possible, and therefore every author had to judge what he thought matters. In this age we are spoiled not only by computers, but even by the humble pencil. :)

 

As regarding the apocryphal nature of the synoptic gospels, many many books have been written. I tend to believe that that the simplest explanation is that the apostles simply misunderstood the nature of the Kingdom of Heaven at first. And the growing awareness that this was to be a spiritual rather than temporal kingdom. Later in the Gospels Jesus certainly appears to rebuke the disciples for worrying about temporal kingdoms, eg, in acts 1:6-8. "It is not for you to know the dates the Father has decided by his own authority". Certainly, there is no evidence that Paul believed in an immanent eschatology. He rebukes the Thessalonians for worrying about it.

 

Finally, as regards questions about Christ's divinity. It is true that there was much confusion in the early church, and it is also definitely true that the gospel of John was designed to address that confusion, at least in part. Nevertheless, this doesn't pose any kind of a problem for Christians. All the gospels, and the witness of the Apostles, was that Christ claimed to be God. It has been a popular claim in some quarters that nowhere in the Gospels does Jesus come out and say it, but this is completely wrong. I can provide an epically long list of quotes if necessary. You also seem to imply that the idea of a future heavenly reward was "new" in some sense, and created after Jesus' death. But this is definitely untrue. You don't have to look any further than the crucifixion for that. Jesus Tells the prisinor that "Today you will be with me in heaven" which seems to imply heavenly reward for faith.

 

If you were looking for a book about Jesus that is easy to understand and represents an authentic Christian outlook, you can do no better than the Pope's, "Jesus of Nazareth".

[Winstonm]

This is always the danger of people who read just a few books. Some of these points are easy to dispute, some of them rather harder. In particular, the idea that Jesus did not contradict Jewish law is (mostly) true, although he did repudiate the Mosaic Law's sanction of divorce and polygamy, though I believe that polygamy had died out as a cultural practice by then anyway. However, Jesus definitely expanded upon Jewish law, and made it appear in a wholly different light. Indeed, he espoused an entirely new way of looking at the covenant. From a Christian perspective, Jewish Law foreshadows Christian ethics, so the share almost all the same ideas, but often are different in implementation. Still, that is a long long long conversation.

 

More importantly, he has based it on a chronology of the Gospel writing that does not fall in line with modern historical finds. When he wrote this I presume people still had the earliest finds of gospel of John placing it authorship in the 3rd century. This was a massive dispute between historical exegetes and the Catholic Church in the seventies, when the church maintained that they had all been "substantially written within living memory of the crucifixion". New historical finds place the authorship of the Gospel of John as well inside the first century, and certainly no later than ad 90. This puts it fairly contemporary with the other gospels were written, probably no more than ten years later at the outside. It is unclear what its provenance is with respect to the Apostle John. A theory gaining credence seems to be that John may have founded some kind of school (in the old sense) of theology to thrash out some questions in the early church, and that the gospel of John may be an accurate recounting of his theology and thought, if not actually his writing.

 

It is certainly true that the Gospel of John seems to espouse a certain theology, rather than aiming to be a biographical account. It appears to have re-ordered some of the events in Jesus' life so that sometimes parables on the same theme appear together. However it is also possible that Jesus simply told the same parables multiple times, such that the "ordering" in the synoptic gospels simply refers to particularly memorable events, and that the apostles may often have known these stories prior to their public dissemination. Also, it is easy to forget that in the old days writing was a massively difficult and time consuming task. One estimate that I have seen in a catholic publication was that to write the Pauline epistles on papyrus with old style quills (if you include a couple of drafts for each letter) represented a decade of 7 days a week work. Just to produce a copy of the new testament by hand might take as long as 5 years. Thus there was a really strong impetus to be as brief as possible, and therefore every author had to judge what he thought matters. In this age we are spoiled not only by computers, but even by the humble pencil. :)

 

As regarding the apocryphal nature of the synoptic gospels, many many books have been written. I tend to believe that that the simplest explanation is that the apostles simply misunderstood the nature of the Kingdom of Heaven at first. And the growing awareness that this was to be a spiritual rather than temporal kingdom. Later in the Gospels Jesus certainly appears to rebuke the disciples for worrying about temporal kingdoms, eg, in acts 1:6-8. "It is not for you to know the dates the Father has decided by his own authority". Certainly, there is no evidence that Paul believed in an immanent eschatology. He rebukes the Thessalonians for worrying about it.

 

Finally, as regards questions about Christ's divinity. It is true that there was much confusion in the early church, and it is also definitely true that the gospel of John was designed to address that confusion, at least in part. Nevertheless, this doesn't pose any kind of a problem for Christians. All the gospels, and the witness of the Apostles, was that Christ claimed to be God. It has been a popular claim in some quarters that nowhere in the Gospels does Jesus come out and say it, but this is completely wrong. I can provide an epically long list of quotes if necessary. You also seem to imply that the idea of a future heavenly reward was "new" in some sense, and created after Jesus' death. But this is definitely untrue. You don't have to look any further than the crucifixion for that. Jesus Tells the prisinor that "Today you will be with me in heaven" which seems to imply heavenly reward for faith.

 

If you were looking for a book about Jesus that is easy to understand and represents an authentic Christian outlook, you can do no better than the Pope's, "Jesus of Nazareth".

 

Ehrman's book was published in 2009. He cites 90-95 Common Era as the date for the book of John. What Ehrman does is write about the historical-critical method of viewing the bible.

 

The issue of divinity is explained as being the equal to god, the same as god, with god at creation. That is certainly not the same thing as Jesus saying, today you will be with me in paradise.

 

Beside, as the historical-critical method points out, the accounts of the crucifition are different between the gospels, even so far as on what day it occured.

[phil_20686]

Let's examine this a bit.

 

An atheist says that all reliable explanations are natural. A theist says that some reliable explanations are supernatural. Not much difference in content so far.

 

When offering actual explanations, though, the theist has a lot more latitude: he or she can always play the supernatural wild card. And if the set of all natural explanations is "content free" as Phil feels justified in saying, then all explanations with actual content spring from the theist's playing of the supernatural wild card.

 

But is that really content?

 

Suppose that a natural explanation and a supernatural explanation conflict. The historical position of theists was that such conflicts should be resolved by punishing those who offered the natural explanations. And often that punishment was severe.

 

Over time, though, so many people could see that the natural explanations were correct that most theists conceded. However, you still have sad situations like the one that started this thread in which less sophisticated (and less honest) theists continue to press the supernatural explanation over the natural explanation.

 

But Phil is more thoughtful and more honest than that. As I understand it, sophisticated theists search for supernatural answers to questions not amenable to natural explanations. Questions, perhaps, like "What is the purpose of life?" and "Why do horrible things happen to some people and not others?" and "How do I obtain 'salvation?'"

 

Because that wild card can be played whenever a theist feels like it, all such supernatural explanations are inevitably, in my opinion, "content free."

 

I'm not sure this really accurate representation of what I said, but maybe I was not as clear as I would like to think. :). We all agree that the set of natural explanations represents at least "almost all" phenomena. Whether you think God exists or not, we all agree that the natural world exists! The point is more that there should be some explanation as to why our world is the way that it is. Indeed, it is hard to understand why it is that human reason and the natural laws seem to correlate so well, in the sense that conceptual insights can provide such powerful tools in understanding nature, if, as Winstonm contends, the concepts are not in any sense real.

 

I meant atheism is content free in the sense that it is impossible to make a link between the philosophy of atheism, and any explanation of why the natural world is the way it is. In fact, one should not even try, but only accept the natural world as something that is an accident, and not in need of any explanation. It is in this sense that atheism is content free. Now I chose to focus on reason as something that exists in our universe, but cannot be explained by material causes, but I could have focused on different things. Many have done the same with the concept of beauty. Others with truth, or justice. All these are concepts that we perceive as real, without them having any material basis. I perceive atheism and materialism to be incapable of providing an explanation for these crucial aspects of our world. Winstonm's counter argument is to merely contend that discussions about these things have no meaning, precisely because they are not firmly rooted in reality. This is the counterargument advanced by many philosophers of language. Probably Foucault produced it in its most sensible form. (Archaeology of knowledge). However, the standard counter argument to this is that we should start our epistemological investigations from the assumption that we can obtain reliable information from our experience of reality, because otherwise you are entering a maze from which there is no way out. A broken epistemology that cannot even justify itself. I half-jokingly referred to Chesterton, but I also really think that he nailed the essence of this kind of thinking, which is that one should not try to ignore things that you experience, just because they do not fit into your concepts of reality. I content that is precisely what the Wimstomn, and the post-modernist model of language, has done.

 

Also, the characterisation as a wild card, is somewhat unfair. I was not suggesting that one should not search for natural explanations. Only suggesting that natural science renders some things impossible, even as it renders others possible. When one claims that the impossible has happened, eg Miracle of the Sun, you should, of course, search for a reasonable explanation. As Dr House would say, "People lie". Nevertheless, one should not start with the assumption that it is impossible that it is genuine. In any case, an example such as the one given is as miraculous for its timing as it was for its events. No matter the theory that *may* be advanced to explain it, it still does not explain how small children were able to predict it. There remains something here that needs to be explained, that cannot be explained by science. In any case, it is more that there are two possible (from your point of view bad) explanations. One that "hundreds of people and otherwise reliable observers were duped by 3 small children in an illusion seen up to 18 miles, and it just happened that these 3 small children were devout and claimed that they had visions," or "God really exists, and in this case chose to perform a miracle so that people might improve their lives by believing in Him". Since it seems clear that probability for the first one must be vanishingly small, one only has to consult with your prior's to establish whether the second is slightly larger than vanishingly small, in which case you should regard it as most likely. Since I give the second statement a probability of 1, this is a no brainer for me. :)

 

In any case, positing Gods existence as the "best of possible explanations" is not positing a wild card in the sense of ignoring a perfectly good natural explanation.

[phil_20686]

Ehrman's book was published in 2009. He cites 90-95 Common Era as the date for the book of John. What Ehrman does is write about the historical-critical method of viewing the bible.

 

The issue of divinity is explained as being the equal to god, the same as god, with god at creation. That is certainly not the same thing as Jesus saying, today you will be with me in paradise.

 

Beside, as the historical-critical method points out, the accounts of the crucifition are different between the gospels, even so far as on what day it occured.

 

Ok, I don't know much about Ehrman, but I assumed he was one of the late seventies bunch who basically thought that Christians made up the gospel of John in ad 250 to lend credence to ecumenical councils that had already happened.

 

In your previous post you seemed to posit that the idea of a heavenly reward after death was only "created" some years after Jesus's death after the failure of the second coming to happen. I wasn't supplying that quote in reference to the argument about divinity. Sorry if we have had a misunderstanding.

 

I am pretty sure that we have had an argument about the crucifixion narratives before. I have contended that they are precisely consistent with having 3 different eyewitnesses who were either there for different parts or stood different distances away and did not necessarily hear all the details of the conversations. I am not really sure what you mean about different days. I am pretty sure that isn't true. Do you have a quotation? I think they all agree that the crucifixion was the day before the Passover Sabbath, hence the leg breaking. I realise there is some confusion in ancient languages about whether "the first day" means today or tomorrow. But we have the same confusion in English about the "first floor" - in Britain that means the floor above ground level, in American it means the ground floor. Thus "On the third day" might mean two or 3 days. This seems consistent with the crucifixion being "the first day" before the "sabbath" which was the second day, and the "third day" being Sunday. Im not sure how americans order sequence of days, but in britian we would intpret "the third day" as being 3 days away (i.e. monday in the gospel narrative) in common English. E.g: one might talk about a holiday as "I arrived on the Saturday, on the first day (monday) I relaxed by the pool...". These kind of details often escape people who are not familiar with the difficulties of assessing biblical texts.

[phil_20686]

A late clarification here, but I am pretty sure you are talking about the Council of Nicea in 325 C.E., which was called by Constantine. It was in this council that divinity of Jesus was adopted as the orthodox view.

 

Well, there were various aspects of Christ's divinity, but there is no evidence that the idea that Jesus was not God was ever seriously considered by early Christians. The confusion was more about whether Jesus was really a man. Whether he maintained his Godly faculties through the Passion, or surrendered them to become more Human. Whether he maintained his Godly omniscience when he was Human, and could, for example, knew everything about everything from birth, or whether his human limitations restrained him such that he still had to learn to speak like a normal child. Did Jesus exist before being conceived? "Aspects of Divinity" carries a wide range of problems. These were settled in bits an pieces, and some of them are still regarded as somewhat open questions. I read a somewhat humerous article on this called "Did Jesus know Tensor Calculus".

[phil_20686]

 

You're being awfully disingenious. I mean, if the only place anyone is allowed to teach anything is school, then sure, I'm right with you, but of course that's nonsense.

 

I would hazard a guess that every skeptic and atheist in the country would be happy to have every child in America learn creationism, except possibly their own children. The vocal and constant objection to teaching creationism in schools isn't so much that people are taught it, but that it is taught as being as accepted, as proven, and as likely as evolution.

 

It's not a matter of taking a head count of voters, and it's not a matter of how popular a belief is. Teaching evolution in some manner in schools is acceptable because of the body of evidence behind it. Teaching creationism, or pastafarianism, in schools is not.

 

That does not mean that these subjects can not be taught, just that it should be done somewhere OTHER than the taxpayer's bill.

 

I have always found this argument to be circular. You are basically invoking your authority as a tax payer to decide what children should be taught in schools. That is precisely what they are doing. You have also implicitly assumed that it is necessary that all children in state schools need to be taught the same thing. Whether that is desirable is questionable even in a technical sense, by which I mean that it may well be desirable for schools in certain areas to concentrate on particular areas that are useful to local industries, rather enforce uniformity across a wide and varied country.

 

I mean, this is an argument that is being fought in other areas. Most notably sex education programs. Who should decide what children should learn about sex, and when? This is even more prickly than evolution since its an inherently moral matter. Anyone who says you can have a "value free" lesson about techniques is lying, since the assumption is that anything that you learn in school is ok to know. You do not teach bomb making in chemistry. Or weapon design in arts and crafts. (Although, in Texas, who knows? :P)

 

I think to win this argument you should forget the courts and forget school education, and instead argue on the grounds that Y.E.C. and the fossil record are in conflict, and that the YE explanation is in conflict with God's fundamental attribute of truthfulness. It amazes us British that you havent won this argument ages ago. Biblical literalism and YE creationism are pretty much laughed out of bible study groups in this country! And its not like we have a great education system ourselves!

[hrothgar]

 

You do not teach bomb making in chemistry. Or weapon design in arts and crafts. (Although, in Texas, who knows? :P)

 

 

My 8th grade physical science / history project was a practical demonstration of the impact of "corning" on the combustion rate of gunpowder...

[kenberg]

And while I didn't make a knife for a project in metal shop, many did. Of course those were different times. Now we would expel the student and/or send him to a shrink, and probably fire the teacher.

[kenberg]

What I get out of the discussion of Luther and his nutty views is an old lesson that more than a few of my religious friends would agree with, namely that you don't want religious zealots in charge of policy. I voted for John Kennedy, the fact that he was Catholic was of no interest to me. Joe Lieberman is Jewish, I suppose I would have realized that if I thought about the name but I hadn't thought about it at all until it was mentioned and then it was of no interest. Back when Goldwater was a political force I understood that he was Jewish or partly Jewish. I never checked, I'm not good at figuring these things out, and I don't care. One of the things that I like about Obama is that I actually have no real idea at all about his religious views. Dumping the Reverend What's his name was a good move, long overdue really.

 

Religion is not irrelevant, it can play a major role in developing values. But the issue, for me, is what values the person has come to rather than how he arrived there. My mistakes in life, and I have made many, were not the result of insufficient religious training. Stupidity played a major role.

[PassedOut]

In any case, positing Gods existence as the "best of possible explanations" is not positing a wild card in the sense of ignoring a perfectly good natural explanation.

Certainly the ability to fall back on supernatural explanations comes in handy for things like the Miracle of the Sun, the Maitreya Buddha miracle, the Hindu Milk miracle, the Islamic Zamzam Water miracle, and so on, which buttress the religious faith of millions of believers. So I do understand your temptation to assert that God's existence is the "best of possible explanations" for each of these.

 

Is it your position that, so long as a religion can offer miraculous evidence, its explanations can be relied upon? If so, how do you then reconcile the conflicts between those religions? If not, what is the point of offering miraculous examples?

[blackshoe]

Friend of mine grew up in Delhi, a small farming community in central NY. He and his classmates used to bring their hunting rifles to school, and stack them up in the coat closet. No one thought it odd, or complained, or suggested these kids be arrested or whatever. Frankly I think that in a lot of ways, those were saner times.

[Winstonm]

Whether you think God exists or not, we all agree that the natural world exists! The point is more that there should be some explanation as to why our world is the way that it is.

 

I have read a description of a reason we find a god concept easy to believe, and that is because humans are conditioned to connect a cause with an agent, and then we extrapolate our own emotions in an anthropomorphic manner to create motive, and do this with unexplained phenomena. For example, when the creaking stairs in the middle of the night wakes us up, we think "burglar!" and not "temperature change affecting the wood". We are programmed to associate actions with agent-causations. There is no real penalty for this mistaken belief other than a sudden, quick fright, and the response is surely a lifesaver when the coiled rope on the dark garage floor really is a poisonous snake.

 

Tiny penalties for faulty beliefs, huge rewards if right. Sounds like the makings of a bet. Maybe I should talk to Pascal about that.

[Winstonm]

I am pretty sure that we have had an argument about the crucifixion narratives before. I have contended that they are precisely consistent with having 3 different eyewitnesses who were either there for different parts or stood different distances away and did not necessarily hear all the details of the conversations

 

Phil,

 

One thing is a certainty - believers believe. Because of that belief, believers are also quite adept at creating rationalizations for controversies and contradictions within their beliefs. Intelligence is no barrier to rationalization. In fact, the higher the intelligence the more likely the chances for quite complex rationalizations - smart people can believe quite irrational things basically because they are smart enough to convince themselves their beliefs - though improbable - are at least possible.

 

From inside the belief, the belief itself appears quite rational; however, even from within this bubble of irrationality, it is easy to see irrationality in other belief system.

 

For example, as a Catholic does it seem rational to believe that a lost tribe of Israel lived in the United States and was visited by Jesus, although there have been no records or archeological evidence ever found of an great Israeli civilization in the Americas, and that golden tablets were revealed to Joe Smith for translation via magical seer stones, but after completion of the task both stones and tablets were taken to heaven by the angel Moroni? Is that a rational explanation for the Book of Mormon or is it legend?

 

Does it seem rational to believe that a winged horse flew Mohammed to heaven and back, and that god himself dictated what Mohammed was to write? Is that a rational explanation for the Q'uran or is it legend?

 

Yet, from within the bubble, aided by rationalizations, it is perfectly rational to accept that a god can be one yet divided into three separate and distinct creatures at the same time, sent one part of himself as his own son so humans could kill him in order to save those same humans from a punishment that he, god, had established and had the power to change? And that is rational and not legend?

 

My contention is that beliefs should be put to as stearn of test as at least civil court, that a preponderance of the evience should be needed to accept claims of mysticism.

[phil_20686]

Certainly the ability to fall back on supernatural explanations comes in handy for things like the Miracle of the Sun, the Maitreya Buddha miracle, the Hindu Milk miracle, the Islamic Zamzam Water miracle, and so on, which buttress the religious faith of millions of believers. So I do understand your temptation to assert that God's existence is the "best of possible explanations" for each of these.

 

Is it your position that, so long as a religion can offer miraculous evidence, its explanations can be relied upon? If so, how do you then reconcile the conflicts between those religions? If not, what is the point of offering miraculous examples?

 

This has always seemed a strange argument. It is clear that at most one religion can be "correct" in the sense of being right about everything, since as pointed out, they do disagree. However, even if, say Christianity is correct, it does not follow that Hinduism is intrinsically worthless. You can be wrong about many things and still be right about some things. From an omniscient perspective it might well be an acceptable outcome to support a "wrong" religion in the short term, as its better than the alternatives, or just to keep alive religions sentiment in general, even if He later planned to do away with it in favour of Christianity.

 

Christians have always believed that God will help believers: it does not follow that God cannot help unbelievers. He certainly does not require you to be right all the time about everything.

Besides that, God is not the only supernatural creature in a Christian world view, and the devil would certainly have a vested interest in obscuring the issue.

 

Besides that, it is more than passing strange to argue that because *more* people have claimed there are miracles, they must be less likely.

[phil_20686]

I have read a description of a reason we find a god concept easy to believe, and that is because humans are conditioned to connect a cause with an agent, and then we extrapolate our own emotions in an anthropomorphic manner to create motive, and do this with unexplained phenomena. For example, when the creaking stairs in the middle of the night wakes us up, we think "burglar!" and not "temperature change affecting the wood". We are programmed to associate actions with agent-causations. There is no real penalty for this mistaken belief other than a sudden, quick fright, and the response is surely a lifesaver when the coiled rope on the dark garage floor really is a poisonous snake.

 

Tiny penalties for faulty beliefs, huge rewards if right. Sounds like the makings of a bet. Maybe I should talk to Pascal about that.

 

This kind of post-hoc reasoning makes me more than a little ill. Honestly, evolutionary biologists try to concoct (bizarre) explanations for almost every aspect of human behaviour, for which an appropriate counter argument is nearly always: Are you sure its not a bit more complicated than that? (A recent favourite was explanation about there being slightly more girls born than boys was evidence that males had always had difficultly remaining monogamous, and therefore having more females than males was a winning strategy. Or, maybe, in a world where more than 20% of children didn't live past 5 years, a difference of 1% in birth rates means absolutely nothing, except maybe that widely different rates would be bad, but anywhere close to parity is equally ok.)

 

For humours sake, let me analyse this line of reasoning, and its inherent flaws. Firstly, you are assuming a fundamental inability of humans to educate themselves, or to behave rationally. Its true that when we hear a creak on the stairs we might associate it with a human. This is natural, as no doubt we have walked on stairs and they creaked, and the first thing you think of tends to be the closest to reality. However, then you have a second thought: wood creaks due to temperature changes. In fact you might even have a third thought like "it might be my son sneaking downstairs for a biscuit". All of these explanations are "plausible". Your contention seems to be we are powerless to evaluate their relative merits, just because we thought of a burglar first. People aren't like that. Were you faced with his hypothetical actions you might take any number of rational actions such as: (1) The last 99 times I got up to check it was nothing, so ill go back to sleep. (2) I remember those stairs are very creaky so if I listen a human will definitely make more creaks. (3) We have agreed its my wife's job to check on the children if they get up in the night so I can go back to sleep. (4) Since I have many enemies I wont take any chances and I will get my gun from under the pillow.

 

All of these seem rational responses. To contend that a human must assume that the first or "most obvious" (in some sense) explanation is correct, when in general most humans have been burned by making rash assumptions, and often consider their actions/beliefs carefully, seems bizarre. In order to make good your argument you need to require that humans behave differently in religious sentiment than they do in real life, which is a stretch.

[phil_20686]

One thing is a certainty - believers believe. Because of that belief, believers are also quite adept at creating rationalizations for controversies and contradictions within their beliefs. Intelligence is no barrier to rationalization. In fact, the higher the intelligence the more likely the chances for quite complex rationalizations - smart people can believe quite irrational things basically because they are smart enough to convince themselves their beliefs - though improbable - are at least possible.

 

From inside the belief, the belief itself appears quite rational; however, even from within this bubble of irrationality, it is easy to see irrationality in other belief system.

 

For example, as a Catholic does it seem rational to believe that a lost tribe of Israel lived in the United States and was visited by Jesus, although there have been no records or archeological evidence ever found of an great Israeli civilization in the Americas, and that golden tablets were revealed to Joe Smith for translation via magical seer stones, but after completion of the task both stones and tablets were taken to heaven by the angel Moroni? Is that a rational explanation for the Book of Mormon or is it legend?

 

Does it seem rational to believe that a winged horse flew Mohammed to heaven and back, and that god himself dictated what Mohammed was to write? Is that a rational explanation for the Q'uran or is it legend?

 

Yet, from within the bubble, aided by rationalizations, it is perfectly rational to accept that a god can be one yet divided into three separate and distinct creatures at the same time, sent one part of himself as his own son so humans could kill him in order to save those same humans from a punishment that he, god, had established and had the power to change? And that is rational and not legend?

 

This is by far the most cogent thing you have produced on this thread. No matter where you stand on the idealogical perspective, it will appear that people believe crazy and impossible things. This is true not only in religion, but in any walk of life. Nevertheless, some things appear more plausible than others. It is a necessary, but not sufficient condition, that ones beliefs should be self-consistent. But there are plenty of irrational beliefs that are entirely self consistent.

 

Some, like conspiracy theorists, can only be argued against using the "homogeneity" argument, in the sense that all conspiracy theories hinge crucially on the fact that there are large numbers of people capable of knowing certain information without revealing it, despite its incredibly incendiary nature, when that is not what the patient would do.

 

It seems self-evident (to me) that any kind of belief system has to be based on a sound epistemological basis, and I use the criteria that (1) We exist (independently of any feeling/sense), (2) our senses give us real (but imperfect) information about our surroundings. (3) Other people exist and have similar (but not identical) experiences to ourselves. The conspiracy theorist ignores (3). You, and post modernists in general, seem to attack both (2) and (3). Your arguments above amount to thinking that everyone, no matter how intelligent, who claims to have witnessed a miracle, must be misled, is in violation of (3) as you believe that you yourself are less likely to be misled. More subtly, your claim that one should exclude from discussion certain abstracts to which you do not think language applies, is in violation of (2), as it is definitely the experience of humanity that ideas have a concrete existence separate from our conception of them. This argument has at least some merit, and I would be prepared to discuss it, I just think its wrong. :)

 

My argument against your position, and in favour of mine, then can be summarised into three principle strands:

 

(1) Atheism tends to go naturally with materialism. Materialism fails to adequately address the existence of concepts with no clear material nature, and also the fact that conceptual insights based on these abstract entity appear to govern the workings of materialism.

 

(2) Your position that no miracles happen means that you believe all people who claim to have witnessed miracles must be misled. My experience is that sometimes I am right, and sometimes I am wrong, and a fair assessment must require that I make the same assumption about those claiming miracles. Assuredly sometimes they are wrong, and doubtless some things have been claimed miracles that are not, but I also believe that at least some of these people were not misled. This is merely assuming that other people are roughly like me. Your argument requires that you believe that you are better educated/more intelligent/less liable to be misled, than those who claim to have seen miracles. Some might say that believing yourself to be better informed than everyone else is the first sign of fanaticism. :)

 

(3) You seem to be prepared to exclude from consideration facts that are part of the everyday experience of people. You do this in the classic post-modernist style of claiming that words that are not rooted in a concretely existing thing, have no value, and should not be used in other contexts. However, this makes tenuous assumptions about the purpose and nature of language. In particular, you are assuming by stealth that ideas to not have any existence separate from our conception of them, and hence, that ideas are inseparable from the language in which they are described. I hold the opposite view-point. I think ideas are real, and the purpose of communicating is to help the other person also grasp this abstract entity, and that the words you use are not so important, beyond the difficulties of making oneself understood. There are a host of difficult philosophical issues around your position, in particular the argument that "if no one remembers Pythagoras' theorem, is it still true?" To which the PM replies "what exactly does "true" mean anyway?".

[kenberg]

There are many philosophical issues around theism and atheism. Then there is the issue of what to teach in science class. I favor teaching science there.

[Gerben42]

There are many philosophical issues around theism and atheism. Then there is the issue of what to teach in science class. I favor teaching science there.

 

Well, if you teach something other than science in science class, you are not allowed to call it science class. If you call it religion class, then you can teach belief stuff.

 

Personally, I've never gotten religion. It seems that the more I learn about it, the less I understand it.