Searching for GOD...

[Stranger]

His detailed expositions are available on youtube.

OK, so I found this: An Aristotelian Proof of the Existence of God.

Well, he took over 30 minutes to basically argue that stuff exists for some reason - dressed up in a lot of language designed to match his later assertions. After that he tried to argue that said reason was actually god. He argued that it must be 'perfect' because it couldn't have any imperfections, 'good' because it wasn't impaired, and 'omnipotent' because it 'caused' everything.

It was when he started to argue for its intelligence it got really silly. He argued that this existence reason thingy must have thoughts which totally contradicted his previous argument that it was unchanging and outside of time.

Even if we concede all that, he's now conjured a thinking mind up, and all the arguments he started out with now have to apply to it. As soon as he identifies this cause of stuff existing with a mind, it becomes every bit as in need of an explanation for its existence as anything in the physical universe.

His tactic seems to be to complain loudly at anybody who dismisses god arguments but when they try to find out what his 'good' arguments are, to try to waffle at them long enough to bore them into submission...

[Walt Zingmatilder]

Vlad,

How would you propose to go about "establishing historically" a supernatural claim like a resurrection?

We've been through this. Certification of death-physical resurrection. It can't get any clearer than that.
In any case one could be an extremely improbable natural event and then it's naturalness would be as hard to prove as it's supernaturality.

Cue an argument from disbelief. Ha Ha Ha.

[Walt Zingmatilder]

OK, so I found this: An Aristotelian Proof of the Existence of God.

Well, he took over 30 minutes to basically argue that stuff exists for some reason - dressed up in a lot of language designed to match his later assertions. After that he tried to argue that said reason was actually god. He argued that it must be 'perfect' because it couldn't have any imperfections, 'good' because it wasn't impaired, and 'omnipotent' because it 'caused' everything.

It was when he started to argue for its intelligence it got really silly. He argued that this existence reason thingy must have thoughts which totally contradicted his previous argument that it was unchanging and outside of time.

Even if we concede all that, he's now conjured a thinking mind up, and all the arguments he started out with now have to apply to it. As soon as he identifies this cause of stuff existing with a mind, it becomes every bit as in need of an explanation for its existence as anything in the physical universe.

His tactic seems to be to complain loudly at anybody who dismisses god arguments but when they try to find out what his 'good' arguments are, to try to waffle at them long enough to bore them into submission...

Hardly a counterargument Some.... I look forward to reading your eventual refutation.

[Alan Burns]

No it isn't.

Were you here in my head in the 300 milliseconds or so between the origin of my choice and my subsequent personal awareness of it ?  No you weren't.  But that is broadly what the relevant science suggests and it is fairly consistent with what we have learned about the speed of thoughts generally.  I take it on board and try to understand it honestly.  You on the other hand are forever stuck with having to be a science denier, a sordid business that.

I am not in the denial of human scientific discoveries.  I just point out that they are currently unable to fully define our reality.  When you say above : I take it on board and try to understand it honestly. can you define the nature of the "I" in that sentence?  What is the "I" that is trying to understand?  If everything involved in the process is just deterministic reactions to events, there is nothing actually doing the "trying" - it all just happens.  But if you substitute the human soul for "I", then it all makes perfect sense.

[Stranger]

Hardly a counterargument Some.... I look forward to reading your eventual refutation.

Don't be silly, it was an "logical argument" - it wasn't based on evidence (except that stuff exists). He totally contradicted himself. During the start he argued that a thinking mind alone would need a 'cause' and then argued that a thinking mind was the 'uncaused cause'.

[Note: I've used scare quotes around 'cause' because he wasn't talking about a preceding cause in time.]

[Stranger]

If everything involved in the process is just deterministic reactions to events, there is nothing actually doing the "trying" - it all just happens.  But if you substitute the human soul for "I", then it all makes perfect sense.

This is just an assertion - how do you know a deterministic being cannot experience trying?

[Walt Zingmatilder]

Don't be silly, it was an "logical argument" - it wasn't based on evidence (except that stuff exists). He totally contradicted himself. During the start he argued that a thinking mind alone would need a 'cause' and then argued that a thinking mind was the 'uncaused cause'.

[Note: I've used scare quotes around 'cause' because he wasn't talking about a preceding cause in time.]

What do you mean by cause here? I ask that because I want to know what it is you think you have refuted.

[Walt Zingmatilder]

Don't be silly, it was an "logical argument" - it wasn't based on evidence (except that stuff exists). He totally contradicted himself. During the start he argued that a thinking mind alone would need a 'cause' and then argued that a thinking mind was the 'uncaused cause'.

[Note: I've used scare quotes around 'cause' because he wasn't talking about a preceding cause in time.]

Didn't get that. My perception that he was arguing a prime mover rather than a causer in a linear view of causation...and he states that he will later in the argument demonstrate how the prime mover would have some of the attributes ascribed to divinity by the philosophers.

[Gordon]

We've been through this. Certification of death-physical resurrection. It can't get any clearer than that.

The floor is yours: looking forward to clearly seeing Jesus' death certificate.

[bluehillside Retd.]

Vlad,

We've been through this. Certification of death-physical resurrection. It can't get any clearer than that.

First, for the people at the time there was neither certification of death nor evidence for a “physical resurrection”. What there are actually is is an account from a very small number of people long after the supposed event that a larger number of people living when superstitious explanations for all sorts of things were commonplace thought that a resurrection had happened.

Second, even if modern techniques of certification of death, identification with DNA of the same person through the story etc were available that still wouldn't mean “resurrection”. Still you have to eliminate even the possibility of mistake using the naturalistic tools of evidence – and regardless of the quantum of that risk, you’d have no means to compare that risk with the probability of a non-natural event.

In any case one could be an extremely improbable natural event and then it's naturalness would be as hard to prove…

Yes it would be. If you want to posit a naturalistic resurrection though, then presumably the divine baggage you attach to it falls away. All that leaves you is a (possibly uniquely) rare natural event. 

…as it's supernaturality.

And again any coherence you had collapsed just there.

Cue an argument from disbelief. Ha Ha Ha.

There is no such argument. Rather the arguments that undo you are arguments in logic – specifically the falsification of the various logic you attempt to validate your beliefs. All that leaves you with is a personal belief, which is no-one’s business but your own provided you don’t overreach into expecting that belief to be treated as epistemically anything more than a guess.

Incidentally, according to a BBC report recently about 25% of people who identify as Christians don’t believe in a literal resurrection either. This seems to me to be part of a trend: a couple of hundred years ago “goddidit”  answered countless things but gradually better explanations came along so those beliefs became less and less sustainable. Increasingly it seems Christians are now realising that the ludicrousness of the resurrection story is becoming harder to sustain too, so that too is following the same fate as the rest as it changes from literal truth to allegory.

You’re just on the wrong side of history is all.

[Walt Zingmatilder]

The floor is yours: looking forward to clearly seeing Jesus' death certificate.

Straw clutching Gordon.

Er, they put him in a tomb, speared him etc......or do you think that was just a bit of attention seeking. Or an inexperienced crucifixion team? There would probably have been Jewish and Roman officials given the gravity of the charges.

At last though...the glimmerings of an alternative history.

[Stranger]

Didn't get that. My perception that he was arguing a prime mover rather than a causer in a linear view of causation...and he states that he will later in the argument demonstrate how the prime mover would have some of the attributes ascribed to divinity by the philosophers.

He argues for a hierarchical 'causes' - I'm not going to repeat it all - it basically boils down to: there must be a reason why stuff exists. It gets laughable when he starts to argue for the "attributes ascribed to divinity" in the ways I described and then he ends up with the contradiction of having a mind, that has thoughts. Near the start he argued that even a mind by itself needs change and to "realize potentials" and hence is subject to his "argument".

[Gordon]

Straw clutching Gordon.

Er, they put him in a tomb, speared him etc......or do you think that was just a bit of attention seeking. Or an inexperienced crucifixion team? There would probably have been Jewish and Roman officials given the gravity of the charges.

At last though...the glimmerings of an alternative history.

On what basis have you established the above to be historical fact?

[Enki]

Citation for lifespan of conspiracies

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/updates/math-formula-charts-the-lifespan-of-hoaxes/

not sure why you make a reference to this, as, if anything, it seems to mitigate against you.

Perhaps you might take a look at the original article from where this has been taken from.

http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0147905


which clearly focuses on scientific and medical issues where conspiracy often runs contrary to all the available evidence. Interestingly Grimes suggests in the introduction, such conspiracy

becomes a defence mechanism to protect beliefs that are incompatible with the evidence, and unsurprisingly perhaps proponents of such views display not only conspiratorial traits but a litany of reasoning flaws, a reliance on anecdote over data and low cognitive complexity in thinking patterns

However, I do find what Grimes says in his final paragraph to be of particular interest, even though he is focussing on anti-science conspiracies.

While challenging anti-science is important, it is important to note the limitations of this approach. Explaining misconceptions and analysis such as this one might be useful to a reasonable core [9], but this might not be the case if a person is sufficiently convinced of a narrative. Recent work has illustrated that conspiracy theories can spread rapidly online in polarized echo-chambers, which may be deeply invested in a particular narrative and closed off to other sources of information [61]. In a recent Californian study on parents, it was found that countering anti-vaccination misconceptions related to autism was possible with clear explanation, but that for parents resolutely opposed to vaccination attempts to use rational approach further entrenched them in their ill-founded views [62]. The grim reality is that there appears to be a cohort so ideologically invested in a belief that for whom no reasoning will shift, their convictions impervious to the intrusions of reality. In these cases, it is highly unlikely that a simple mathematical demonstration of the untenability of their belief will change their view-point. However, for the less invested such an intervention might indeed prove useful.

[Walt Zingmatilder]

On what basis have you established the above to be historical fact?

It is the history which has survived Gordon. On what basis do you establish it as historical fiction?
At what point or reason do you think the history is no good?
Are you prepared to accept there was a Jesus and that he had a ministry.

I see no reason to think it is a novel written centuries ahead of it's time that is the most serious weakness of Jesus as myth. Thus if Jesus was sentenced by the romans under advice from Jewish authorities on a charge as serious as described one would expect care over administration of the sentence.

The events seem to have been corroborated by the early Christian community and other communities who were not orthodox. I cannot see a conspiracy of this type surviving and indeed we have now research that they do not.

What have you got?

[bluehillside Retd.]

Vlad,

Er, they put him in a tomb, speared him etc......or do you think that was just a bit of attention seeking. Or an inexperienced crucifixion team? There would probably have been Jewish and Roman officials given the gravity of the charges.

Or that’s not what happened at all. Or it was a conjuring trick involving, say, a switcheroo of personnel. Or he was in a coma. Or….etc etc.

Let’s say though just for laughs that even then there were technologies available that could establish clinical death, that could identify the same DNA of the protagonists throughout etc. And let’s say too that, based on what we know now, the risk of these things going wrong is, say, one in a million.

OK, so that gives us a probability of 999,999,999:1 that someone really was alive, then dead, then alive again.

Now then, how would you propose to go about calculating the probability of a supernatural resurrection for comparison purposes?

Do you see your problem now?

At last though...the glimmerings of an alternative history.

A deeply, deeply stupid misunderstanding of the nature of histoy. “History” happens, regardless of the events that change its course. Why are you persisting with this?

[Walt Zingmatilder]

not sure why you make a reference to this, as, if anything, it seems to mitigate against you.

And how would that be?

[bluehillside Retd.]

Vlad,

Well the Jesus mythers have attempted it and you have too with your National theatre of Brent reduced version of the epistles and Acts of the apostles.

Yeah yeah...so back to the broken logic you attempt to validate your notion that your subjective personal beliefs are also true for other people...

You're just a caricaturist in this matter IMHO.

As "this matter" is actually logic, that'd be you I'm afraid. Still you seem to be in thrall to the odd notion that bad logic somehow becomes good logic when it happens to spit out the superstition you happen to like the most.

Why?

[Walt Zingmatilder]

Vlad,

Or that’s not what happened at all. Or it was a conjuring trick involving, say, a switcheroo of personnel. Or he was in a coma. Or….etc etc.

Let’s say though just for laughs that even then there were technologies available that could establish clinical death, that could identify the same DNA of the protagonists throughout etc. And let’s say too that, based on what we know now, the risk of these things going wrong is, say, one in a million.

OK, so that gives us a probability of 999,999,999:1 that someone really was alive, then dead, then alive again.

Now then, how would you propose to go about calculating the probability of a genuine resurrection for comparison purposes?

Do you see your problem now?

A deeply, deeply stupid misunderstanding of the nature of histoy. “History” happens, regardless of the events that change its course. Why are you persisting with this?

I think the question is rather would a physical resurrection be observable to science. The clue here is in the word physical.

Of course one would be stupid to suggest that a methodological physicalist assessment was not made because no one involved had a white coat.

Your closing sentence is a complete pisstake. ''History happens regardless of events......'' Ha Ha HaHo Ho Ho He He He.

[Walt Zingmatilder]

Vlad,

First, for the people at the time there was neither certification of death nor evidence for a “physical resurrection”. What there are actually is is an account from a very small number of people long after the supposed event that a larger number of people living when superstitious explanations for all sorts of things were commonplace thought that a resurrection had happened.

Second, even if modern techniques of certification of death, identification with DNA of the same person through the story etc were available that still wouldn't mean “resurrection”. Still you have to eliminate even the possibility of mistake using the naturalistic tools of evidence – and regardless of the quantum of that risk, you’d have no means to compare that risk with the probability of a non-natural event.

Yes it would be. If you want to posit a naturalistic resurrection though, then presumably the divine baggage you attach to it falls away. All that leaves you is a (possibly uniquely) rare natural event. 

And again any coherence you had collapsed just there.

There is no such argument. Rather the arguments that undo you are arguments in logic – specifically the falsification of the various logic you attempt to validate your beliefs. All that leaves you with is a personal belief, which is no-one’s business but your own provided you don’t overreach into expecting that belief to be treated as epistemically anything more than a guess.

Incidentally, according to a BBC report recently about 25% of people who identify as Christians don’t believe in a literal resurrection either. This seems to me to be part of a trend: a couple of hundred years ago “goddidit”  answered countless things but gradually better explanations came along so those beliefs became less and less sustainable. Increasingly it seems Christians are now realising that the ludicrousness of the resurrection story is becoming harder to sustain too, so that too is following the same fate as the rest as it changes from literal truth to allegory.

You’re just on the wrong side of history is all.

Goodness me Hillside an argument avoiding anything historically relevant to the argument which ends with a conclusion about history.

[Gordon]

It is the history which has survived Gordon.

Nope - it is a claim that has survived.

On what basis do you establish it as historical fiction?

I don't: not my claim you see, but if those who support the claim can't explain how they've addressed the risks I've mentioned then I've no good reason to take it seriously.

At what point or reason do you think the history is no good?

Straw man, and a very obvious one even for you.

Are you prepared to accept there was a Jesus and that he had a ministry.

I think it possible the Jesus character in the NT is based on a real person.

I see no reason to think it is a novel written centuries ahead of it's time that is the most serious weakness of Jesus as myth. Thus if Jesus was sentenced by the romans under advice from Jewish authorities on a charge as serious as described one would expect care over administration of the sentence.

The events seem to have been corroborated by the early Christian community and other communities who were not orthodox. I cannot see a conspiracy of this type surviving and indeed we have now research that they do not.

What have you got?

I don't have good reasons to take the Jesus being divine claims seriously given the risks of mistake, exaggeration or lies and the apparent inability of the likes of yourself to address these.

[Walt Zingmatilder]

............ the arguments that undo you are arguments in logic

Wonderful...........er........................ where are they?

[Walt Zingmatilder]

Nope - it is a claim that has survived.

Er, a lot of history is 'claimed' history. I suspect you are special pleading here.

Can we have something more than argument from disbelief Gordon?

[Gordon]

Goodness me Hillside an argument avoiding anything historically relevant to the argument which ends with a conclusion about history.

I think, Vlad, you are very struggling to tell the difference between facts and claims - or you're wumming.

[Gordon]

Er, a lot of history is 'claimed' history. I suspect you are special pleading here.

That would be you, Vlad, unless you can support your claims.

Can we have something more than argument from disbelief Gordon?

I'm not arguing from disbelief: I'm just rejecting your claims.