Searching for GOD...

[Spud]

Nope - this reads like no more than anecdote and, as such, is easily dismissed as history. Even it it were true how could you ever know for sure, and why would it matter anyway since the details seem fairly trivial?

Anecdote, while being presented as true, can either be true or fictional.
I gave two reasons for it being true. Mark was from the area (Acts 12:12), so he out of Matthew, Luke and himself, would be most likely to have the man's name from local reports. And if he had not known the man's name it would be unlikely that he would have made one up, especially including Timaeus the father, and more likely that he would have left him anonymous, like his sources Matthew and Luke. Also the naming of the man would lead the church to reject his account of the story if he had not been known to them, while they might have included Matthew's and Luke's.

[ProfessorDavey]

I gave two reasons for it being true. Mark was from the area (Acts 12:12), ...

Do you not understand the circularity of your argument. We cannot verify the accuracy of either Mark, nor Acts. Yet you assume the veracity of Acts and then use it as claimed evidence to support the veracity of Mark. Complete logical non-sense.

For the record - we know that the gospel is 'attributed' to Mark - we actually have no idea who actually wrote them. And the attribution is actually a pretty late event - probably sometime after 200CE. So how on earth can we know where the author of the gospel 'attributed' to Mark in about 200 came from, when we have no idea who the author actually was.

[Spud]

Do you not understand the circularity of your argument. We cannot verify the accuracy of either Mark, nor Acts. Yet you assume the veracity of Acts and then use it as claimed evidence to support the veracity of Mark. Complete logical non-sense.

For the record - we know that the gospel is 'attributed' to Mark - we actually have no idea who actually wrote them. And the attribution is actually a pretty late event - probably sometime after 200CE. So how on earth can we know where the author of the gospel 'attributed' to Mark in about 200 came from, when we have no idea who the author actually was.

I was aware I was making those two assumptions, yes. In that respect it is not a circular argument.

[Alan Burns]

If there was any evidence you wouldn’t have to rely on “faith" instead, and what I actually do is to falsify the attempts you make at arguing it to be evidence at all. You on the other hand just ignore these falsifications and repeat the same logical errors over and over again. Only a few posts ago you tried an argumentum ad consequentiam for example, and when I explained to you that wanting something to be true has no relevance to whether it is true you just ignored the problem. It’s your routine dishonesty of this kind that engenders the reaction you get here.     

The stupidity of your “conscious ness isn’t fully explicable in naturalistic terms/ therefore a naturalistic explanation is impossible/therefore magic” effort has been falsified countless times here without even the attempt of a rebuttal by you. Why on earth have you just returned to it?

Dear Blue,

You accuse me of blind faith, but the sad reality it is you who are blind -
Blind to seeing the hand of God in all creation.
Blind to appreciating your own amazing gift to consciously interact with this world rather than just react in accordance with short sighted theories derived from our limited physical senses.
Blind to the miracles still being done in God's name.
Blind to the divine revelations of scripture which reveal ultimate purpose and reason behind our existence.

You constantly claim to have falsified all my arguments for God and my Christian faith, but nothing you say can ever take from me my intimate relationship with God and knowledge of His love for us.

[ProfessorDavey]

I was aware I was making those two assumptions, yes. In that respect it is not a circular argument.

It is a completely circular argument - there are two entities (call them X and Y, each of which has similar challenges in terms of their veracity). You are assuming the veracity of X to support a claim for the veracity of Y. You cannot do that as a priori you'd need to justify the veracity of X - which you'd probably then claim on the basis of assumed veracity of Y, noting that Acts is effectively an offshoot of Luke, consider to be later in original writing than Mark.

[bluehillside Retd.]

Spud,

Anecdote, while being presented as true, can either be true or fictional.

Yes, but how something is presented tells you nothing about whether it’s true. I could present my account of seeing a herd of unicorns this morning as truthful, but you’d rightly be sceptical about that claim without further and better evidence for it. Worse yet, if I only passed on my unicorn story verbally and it was repeated multiple time thereafter until decades later someone wrote it down (perhaps with the “horses today that looked a bit like” omitted from my account of “I saw of herd of horses today that looked a bit like unicorns”) the written account you’d have would be even more unreliable no matter how it was presented.       

I gave two reasons for it being true. Mark was from the area (Acts 12:12), so he out of Matthew, Luke and himself, would be most likely to have the man's name from local reports. And if he had not known the man's name it would be unlikely that he would have made one up, especially including Timaeus the father, and more likely that he would have left him anonymous, like his sources Matthew and Luke. Also the naming of the man would lead the church to reject his account of the story if he had not been known to them, while they might have included Matthew's and Luke's.

To continue with my example, this is a bit like saying “I have two versions of blue’s unicorn account – one says that there was a herd of unicorns and the other says that there was just one unicorn, so the two accounts are discrepant. Therefore the unicorn part is true”. 

As Carl Sagan told us, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. If I’d said that I’d seen a herd of horses and years later there were discrepant accounts of that story no-one would have any particular reason to doubt that I’d seen a herd of horses notwithstanding the discrepancy. When I claim to have seen a herd of unicorns though, the discrepancies in the later accounts about the details of that story are irrelevant – there still needs to be extraordinary evidence to justify the claim “unicorns” at all. 

[bluehillside Retd.]

AB,

Dear Blue,

You accuse me of blind faith, but the sad reality it is you who are blind -
Blind to seeing the hand of God in all creation.
Blind to appreciating your own amazing gift to consciously interact with this world rather than just react in accordance with short sighted theories derived from our limited physical senses.
Blind to the miracles still being done in God's name.
Blind to the divine revelations of scripture which reveal ultimate purpose and reason behind our existence.

You cannot rebut the charge of having blind faith by making more blind faith claims. Try instead to think of some justifying reasons for them that aren’t hopelessly wrong. 

You constantly claim to have falsified all my arguments for God and my Christian faith,…

Yes – not only have I claimed to have done that though, I have actually done that with arguments that you just ignore.

…but nothing you say can ever take from me my intimate relationship with God and knowledge of His love for us.

And another blind faith claim to finish. Try to understand something as a basic principle – no statement of fact can be accepted as fact without sound arguments to justify it. No matter how often you repeat your belief that Jesus wants you for a sunbeam, when your reasons for believing that are false – as thus far they always have been – there’s no reason for anyone else to take your claim seriously. Perhaps write that down until it sinks in if it helps.

You posted recently a list of reasons for believing what you believe. All of them contain mistakes. I offered to explain to you again what those mistakes are if in exchange you agreed to try at least to engage with those explanations. Instead though you’ve ignored the offer and have resorted instead to a blind faith claim.   

Why do you behave like this? Why would you not want to understand why your justifying arguments are wrong so you could look for better ones instead? 

[Spud]

It is a completely circular argument - there are two entities (call them X and Y, each of which has similar challenges in terms of their veracity). You are assuming the veracity of X to support a claim for the veracity of Y. You cannot do that as a priori you'd need to justify the veracity of X - which you'd probably then claim on the basis of assumed veracity of Y, noting that Acts is effectively an offshoot of Luke, consider to be later in original writing than Mark.

Fair enough. Maybe you can refute the second reason I gave?
"the naming of the man and his father would lead the church to reject Mark's account of the story if the man had not been known to them, while they might still have included Matthew's and Luke's, in which the man is unnamed."

[Alan Burns]

So, on that basis, and given the even faster spread of Islam through the seventh and eighth centuries, I presume you believe that Prophet Muhammad rode a winged horse through the heavens from Mecca to Jerusalem meeting various prophets along the way before returning at dawn.

A short clip I just came across which highlights the differences in how Islam was spread in comparison to Christianity:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=339SPbRPnrM

[bluehillside Retd.]

Spud,

Fair enough. Maybe you can refute the second reason I gave?
"the naming of the man and his father would lead the church to reject Mark's account of the story if the man had not been known to them, while they might still have included Matthew's and Luke's, in which the man is unnamed."

Maybe you can refute the discrepancy between one account of blue’s unicorn story saying that there was one unicorn and the other account saying there was a herd of them?

Or do you think there’s a more significant issue with the central claim of story to address first?

[ProfessorDavey]

Fair enough. Maybe you can refute the second reason I gave?
"the naming of the man and his father would lead the church to reject Mark's account of the story if the man had not been known to them, while they might still have included Matthew's and Luke's, in which the man is unnamed."

You are the ones making the claims, so it isn't for me to refute, but for you to justify.

However, a couple of points.

First - the early church leaders making decisions on which texts to incorporate and with to reject in their canon would have no way of verifying any of the claims. Less so even than the authors of the texts themselves - who by the time they were being considered were actually a combination of the original author (we don't know who this is, and likely neither did the early church hence the later 'attributions'), but also all the copyists who through error or directed change altered the original.

So the early church could not verify any of the claims so, like you, were relying on their 'belief'. So it would, I imagine, have been entirely irrelevant to them whether the individual was named or not, the key was the miraculous claim, which aligned with their belief. So why would they reject Mark because he cited a name - this is unverified, but the broader miraculous claim aligned with their 'belief'. No had the author of Mark rejected a miraculous claim, for example by suggesting that the person in question was not actually blind, then likely the text may have been rejected as it failed to align with belief.

So to use BHS's analogy.

The early church would care whether the claim was for a single blue unicorn, or a herd. Nor whether one of the blue unicorns was called Pete. But they would care if text said it wasn't a unicorn but just a horse painted blue with a stick stuck on its nose.

[Walt Zingmatilder]

Vlad,

That's not his statement. Why are you still lying about this?

From wikipedia Miracles of Jesus

Scholars are divided on the matter of miracles with no consensus on their historicity; some ruling them out a priori, others defending the possibility, and others defending them.[8] New Testament scholar Bart Ehrman argues that though some historians believe that miracles have happened and others do not, due to the limitations of the sources, it is not possible for historians to affirm or deny them. He states "This is not a problem for only one kind of historian—for atheists or agnostics or Buddhists or Roman Catholics or Baptists or Jews or Muslims; it is a problem for all historians of every stripe."[9][69]

[Walt Zingmatilder]

Vlad,

What are you trying to say here? Academic historians "dismiss miracles a priori" in the sense that academic physicists "dismiss a priori" claims of gravity being caused by pixies holding stuff down with very thin strings - ie, they're indifferent to them because such claims aren't history/physics methods apt. The problem of them not being any other means of verification apt either is one for the people proposing them though, not for historians and physicists.     

Academic physicists, Hillside, would not be so stupid as to make horses laugh fallacy like you've made here.

[ProfessorDavey]

From wikipedia Miracles of Jesus

Scholars are divided on the matter of miracles with no consensus on their historicity; some ruling them out a priori, others defending the possibility, and others defending them.[8] New Testament scholar Bart Ehrman argues that though some historians believe that miracles have happened and others do not, due to the limitations of the sources, it is not possible for historians to affirm or deny them. He states "This is not a problem for only one kind of historian—for atheists or agnostics or Buddhists or Roman Catholics or Baptists or Jews or Muslims; it is a problem for all historians of every stripe."[9][69]

Which is exactly what we have been saying. Basically Ehrman's point is that historical analysis doesn't provide the tools to verify miraculous claims, so historians (when acting as historians) have no option but to simply ignore the miraculous claim in historical terms. When acting from the standpoint of a believer, they may 'belief' or 'not believe' a particular claim, but when acting as a historian they have no option than to ignore the veracity of the claim from a historical standpoint.

This is why historians will focus on the elements of religion that are subject to historical analysis - such as the nature of the claims themselves (rather than their veracity), the provenance of those claims, the transmission of the claims and the associated religion, the development of customs or rituals associated with the claims etc etc. All are perfectly amenable to historical analysis, but historical analysis cannot assess the veracity of the claims themselves, as that is a matter of faith.

[Enki]

Alan,

Is this the best that you can come up with? These would be my responses to your utterances.

Your post 49799:

You constantly try to dismiss the Christian message by claiming lack of verifiable proof

I would throw considerable doubt upon the supernatural part of it, yes indeed.

- but this cannot be used to imply that the Gospels were wrong.

There is some good advice(as well as some bad advice) in the Gospels. If you mean that the Gospels as a whole are not factually accurate, then I would suggest that owing to their lack of provenance, their inconsistency, their bias, their propensity to alteration, addition and possibly lying, then they are not particularly reliable as factual historical documents.

Have you fully assessed the risks of you being wrong?

I have indeed. If I found that such a Christian God did indeed exist, because I have always allowed for the possibility of such a scenario, I would be surprised and disappointed. If your God would condemn me to hell for having an honest opinion based upon evidence and reason, then such a God would not be worthy of my worship and to be true to myself I would have to endure the punishment that he would mete out.

Your post 49809:

The consequences of me being wrong are trivial compared to the consequences of you being wrong.

So, when asked the same question, you choose to dismiss it rather than face up to it. I might be wrong, but I would suggest that rather than being 'trivial', you would find it devastating because the whole basis of your faith would be destroyed.

However, I have more than enough evidence to know that God's love is real.

Evidence, it seems, which are either unable or unwilling to produce.

If the resurrection was shown to be a reality, how would it affect your own life?

I would be quite excited to discover how it was brought about so that we may learn how to benefit others who may have seemingly died in order to resuscitate them after 3 days.

Today's Gospel is appropriate - showing how the apostle Thomas refused to believe in the resurrection until he saw Jesus with His wounds - then he made the profound statement: "My Lord and my God".

You may find it appropriate. For me I would need much more evidence to verify that a resurrection had happened.

Your post 49812:

There is only one God, and that is the God who has made Himself known to me in the person of Jesus Christ.

So, when faced with a question from Blue, simply ignore it and make your usual bland assertion. Disappointingly evasive.

Your post 49815:

My faith is not blind.

It does seem so when you seem unable to present one ounce of truly objective proof that your God exists.

There is an avalanche of evidence which you choose to ignore, ridicule or dismiss -

Where is this 'avalanche' then? Surely you can't mean personal feelings, unsubstantiated or anecdotal information or prejudiced accounts? Objective information which can be substantiated is useful, but, unfortunately, there seems to be a great dearth of this in Christianity.

event to the extent of denying your freedom to control your own thoughts.

You are totally wrong. I don't deny it at all. My thoughts of course can be influenced by many things, but ultimately I (i.e. my brain) controls my own thoughts.

Your post 49830:

here is no sound evidence for how this universe came into existence from nothing.
There is no sound evidence to explain how the incredible fine tuned parameters needed to enable the formation of stars and planets came unintended.
There is no sound evidence for how life came into existence from random events.
There is no sound evidence for how a single entity of conscious awareness can be generated from material reactions alone.
There is no sound evidence to explain how rational thought can emerge from uncontrollable material reactions.
There is no sound evidence to explain away the miracles still being performed today in the name of Jesus.
There is no sound evidence to explain why many Muslims are currently experiencing vivid dreams about Jesus.
There is no sound evidence which offers any materialistic view of meaning and purpose in our lives.
I could go on .....

In essence, Gordon, your belief system involves a lot more blind faith than my Christian life.

What a mishmash! Even if some of these points could not be answered(and many could be strongly challenged) there is not the slightest attempt at producing evidence for your God whatever.

Finally, your post 49853:

Dear Blue,

You accuse me of blind faith, but the sad reality it is you who are blind -
Blind to seeing the hand of God in all creation.
Blind to appreciating your own amazing gift to consciously interact with this world rather than just react in accordance with short sighted theories derived from our limited physical senses.
Blind to the miracles still being done in God's name.
Blind to the divine revelations of scripture which reveal ultimate purpose and reason behind our existence.

All just your own personal assertions.

You constantly claim to have falsified all my arguments for God and my Christian faith, but nothing you say can ever take from me my intimate relationship with God and knowledge of His love for us.

A classic statement of blind faith.

[Walt Zingmatilder]

Vlad,

What are you trying to say here? Academic historians "dismiss miracles a priori" in the sense that academic physicists "dismiss a priori" claims of gravity being caused by pixies holding stuff down with very thin strings - ie, they're indifferent to them because such claims aren't history/physics methods apt. The problem of them not being any other means of verification apt either is one for the people proposing them though, not for historians and physicists.     

I seem to recall reading that "Some" dismiss miracles a priori, not all, However historians are not noted being particularly keen on dismissing "events" a priori and because of issues with induction, a resurrection or local suspension of normal gravity stand as improbable yet not impossible "events" without invoking the supernatural.

Let's look at the claim that Historians do not do miracles.
Are you alleging that 1st century miracle workers are of no concern of historians or to history? Are their exploits not mentioned in historical discussion? That is an unfeasible set of propositions.

That Jesus was just one of many miracle workers is of academic historical interest. That their exploits, their exorcism and healing and clairvoyance are of academic historical interest and that this data is keenly lapped up by those who would want to allege that Jesus was just another miracle worker.

So it would seem that you and another have "Academic historians of the mind" the mind being New/ professed/ public/ celebrity atheist.

[ProfessorDavey]

Let's look at the claim that Historians do not do miracles.
Are you alleging that 1st century miracle workers are of no concern of historians or to history? Are their exploits not mentioned in historical discussion? That is an unfeasible set of propositions.

Historians (when acting as historians) are interested in purported miracle workers - they however would not accept these to actually be miracle workers as there is no way of assessing the miraculous claims.

Historians will be more interested in the impact of the purported miracle workers and the claimed miracles on society and the development of religions than on whether those miracles actually happened and, by inference, whether those people were actually miracle workers. Indeed in a societal and historical sense the veracity of such miraculous or mythical claims isn't really very important. What is important is whether people believed they happened and what that lead them to do. And of course people throughout history have believed things which are actually true (and have subsequently been verified beyond doubt) and things which are not true (and have been subsequently falsified beyond doubt).

Historians, will also be interested in understanding how claimed miracles and myths came to arise - for example to consider the level of understanding of the natural world at the time and how things we may now know to have a natural explanation might have once been explained in terms of the supernatural.

[Walt Zingmatilder]

Which is exactly what we have been saying. Basically Ehrman's point is that historical analysis doesn't provide the tools to verify miraculous claims, so historians (when acting as historians) have no option but to simply ignore the miraculous claim in historical terms. When acting from the standpoint of a believer, they may 'belief' or 'not believe' a particular claim, but when acting as a historian they have no option than to ignore the veracity of the claim from a historical standpoint.

This is why historians will focus on the elements of religion that are subject to historical analysis - such as the nature of the claims themselves (rather than their veracity), the provenance of those claims, the transmission of the claims and the associated religion, the development of customs or rituals associated with the claims etc etc. All are perfectly amenable to historical analysis, but historical analysis cannot assess the veracity of the claims themselves, as that is a matter of faith.

Ehrman also states that Historians are not bound to deny miracles. Something that seems easily edited out of atheist argumentation on this forum.

[Nearly Sane]

Ehrman also states that Historians are not bound to deny miracles. Something that seems easily edited out of atheist argumentation on this forum.

Who has said on here that historians are bound to deny miracles?

[ProfessorDavey]

Ehrman also states that Historians are not bound to deny miracles. Something that seems easily edited out of atheist argumentation on this forum.

Indeed because, when acting as historians they don't have the tools to assess a miraculous claim that occurred yesterday, let alone one that occurred thousands of years ago.

What he is saying is that they are not bound to deny them, but they are bound to ignore their veracity or otherwise in historical terms.

But not being bound to deny them does not mean that historians may not legitimately, using the tools of historical analysis, look to alternative explanations for claimed miraculous and mythical phenomena that are not miraculous.

[Walt Zingmatilder]

Historians (when acting as historians) are interested in purported miracle workers - they however would not accept these to actually be miracle workers as there is no way of assessing the miraculous claims.

Historians will be more interested in the impact of the purported miracle workers and the claimed miracles on society and the development of religions than on whether those miracles actually happened and, by inference, whether those people were actually miracle workers. Indeed in a societal and historical sense the veracity of such miraculous or mythical claims isn't really very important. What is important is whether people believed they happened and what that lead them to do. And of course people throughout history have believed things which are actually true (and have subsequently been verified beyond doubt) and things which are not true (and have been subsequently falsified beyond doubt).

Historians, will also be interested in understanding how claimed miracles and myths came to arise - for example to consider the level of understanding of the natural world at the time and how things we may now know to have a natural explanation might have once been explained in terms of the supernatural.

Historians will happily discuss miracle workers without a preceding "purported" and talk about "exorcisms" etc. Without burdening us with their beliefs about them.
That history is the equivalent of antitheistic argument is just a forum atheists fantasy.

[bluehillside Retd.]

Vlad,

From wikipedia Miracles of Jesus

Scholars are divided on the matter of miracles with no consensus on their historicity; some ruling them out a priori, others defending the possibility, and others defending them.[8] New Testament scholar Bart Ehrman argues that though some historians believe that miracles have happened and others do not, due to the limitations of the sources, it is not possible for historians to affirm or deny them. He states "This is not a problem for only one kind of historian—for atheists or agnostics or Buddhists or Roman Catholics or Baptists or Jews or Muslims; it is a problem for all historians of every stripe."[9][69]

But (as the Prof notes) this isn’t a problem for historians specifically any more than it’s a problem for plumbers or accountants. It’s just a problem for anyone who wants to justify his or her faith claim that miracles actually occurred. That’s the point.       

[bluehillside Retd.]

Vlad,

Academic physicists, Hillside, would not be so stupid as to make horses laugh fallacy like you've made here.

I’ve corrected you several times before now on your misunderstanding that a legitimate analogy is the horse’s laugh fallacy. As you’ve routinely ignored the correction and then repeated your same mistake here, would there be any point in doing it again?

[bluehillside Retd.]

Vlad,

I seem to recall reading that "Some" dismiss miracles a priori, not all, However historians are not noted being particularly keen on dismissing "events" a priori and because of issues with induction, a resurrection or local suspension of normal gravity stand as improbable yet not impossible "events" without invoking the supernatural.

What are you trying to say here? Historians “dismiss” (your word) miracles as historically verifiable events because these stories are not historical method apt.   

Let's look at the claim that Historians do not do miracles.
Are you alleging that 1st century miracle workers are of no concern of historians or to history? Are their exploits not mentioned in historical discussion? That is an unfeasible set of propositions.

No. I’m arguing that historians rely on various tests and methods that are axiomatically naturalistic in character to test the historicity of factual clams, and that the accounts of miracles aren’t apt for those tests because they are not naturalistic in character.   

That Jesus was just one of many miracle workers is of academic historical interest.

No it isn’t – see above.

That their exploits, their exorcism and healing and clairvoyance are of academic historical interest and that this data is keenly lapped up by those who would want to allege that Jesus was just another miracle worker.

What are you trying to say here? Some people may “lap up” miracle stories, but that has nothing to do with their supposed historicity.

So it would seem that you and another have "Academic historians of the mind" the mind being New/ professed/ public/ celebrity atheist.

You’ve collapsed into incoherence again here. Try again with a coherent sentence.

[Walt Zingmatilder]

Indeed because, when acting as historians they don't have the tools to assess a miraculous claim that occurred yesterday, let alone one that occurred thousands of years ago.

What he is saying is that they are not bound to deny them, but they are bound to ignore their veracity or otherwise in historical terms.

But not being bound to deny them does not mean that historians may not legitimately, using the tools of historical analysis, look to alternative explanations for claimed miraculous and mythical phenomena that are not miraculous.

If a miracle is an act of God then all history lacks is the ability to establish the "Of God" component of act of God. The event or act, having happened in the physical world stands or falls investigatively. That's what you guys aren't getting.

Of course mythological or alternative answers have to be investigated....but not automatically taken as some kind of default history.