Searching for GOD...

[Spud]

Most interesting points but let's focus on resurrection.
Are you saying it can never happen?
I think that's an assumption too far.

In what I take to be your own viewpoint, Life can be taken as A particular arrangement of matter. It is possible for matter to be manipulated. Therefore there is nothing to prevent a sufficiently developed technique to obtain life from dead material.

Only God can do this.

[Gordon]

Most interesting points but let's focus on resurrection.
Are you saying it can never happen?
I think that's an assumption too far.

I don't: your assumption that it did happen is based on the intervention of a supernatural agent, hence it is a miracle claim. I'd say your assumption needs justification since it is not a naturalistic claim, so it needs a method of investigation that is suited to supernatural claims. My observation that dead people tend to stay dead is based on naturalism - ask you local undertaker to confirm this if you don't believe me.

In what I take to be your own viewpoint, Life can be taken as A particular arrangement of matter. It is possible for matter to be manipulated. Therefore there is nothing to prevent a sufficiently developed technique to obtain life from dead material.

That life seems to be naturalistic is a reasonable assumption so if you are saying that there may be naturalistic methods to reanimate the dead then you'll need to explain on what basis current knowledge allows that extrapolation. Can't see it helps you though since you seem wedded to tales of supernatural agents performing miracles in the dim and distant past.

[Spud]

Firstly there is no evidence that the world must have been created.

But even if you believe so then that doesn't infer that the thing that 'created' the world (presumably you mean the universe) must be able to raise the dead. The creator may just have kick started a self sustaining process, with no further ability to intervene.

That's where the need for evidence comes in, and we have this in the resurrection accounts.
Three examples:
John 20:17 and Matthew 28:9 both mention women holding onto Jesus.
John 20:2 mentions more than one woman
Matthew says Jesus appeared to them in Galilee, Luke says in Jerusalem. John clarifies it was both, and we can conclude that the ending of Matthew is a later addition.

[ProfessorDavey]

The enormous preponderance and presence of contingent objects would I thought count as evidence.
What example of the uncreated can you offer as evidence?

By created I assume you mean something that arises due to some kind of deliberate or directed process, rather than simply due to the underlying physics. In which case there are all sorts of things that are 'uncreated' - rather they arise due to fundamental physical and chemical processes.

But of course your whole thesis is underpinned by a naive and simplistic notion that time is somehow constant and unilinear - hence you can work on the basis of before/after. But while time may look like that from our narrow anthropocentric prism, but it isn't like that at all - so if you cannot apply a simple directionality to time how can you determine what created what (which implies the creator must exist before the created). If time runs in the opposite direction then you'd completely reverse your thinking. 

[ProfessorDavey]

In what I take to be your own viewpoint, Life can be taken as A particular arrangement of matter. It is possible for matter to be manipulated. Therefore there is nothing to prevent a sufficiently developed technique to obtain life from dead material.

But the notion of life vs dead is a human attribution and a human definition for a particular set of chemical reactions. While these may seem very important to us from a narrow anthropocentric perspective there is no fundamental difference in fundamental chemistry and physics between self sustaining processes we define as 'live' and self sustaining processes we define as 'not life'.

[Gordon]

That's where the need for evidence comes in, and we have this in the resurrection accounts.
Three examples:
John 20:17 and Matthew 28:9 both mention women holding onto Jesus.
John 20:2 mentions more than one woman
Matthew says Jesus appeared to them in Galilee, Luke says in Jerusalem. John clarifies it was both, and we can conclude that the ending of Matthew is a later addition.

These are just anecdotes, Spud - your claim that they represent 'evidence' is, quite frankly, infantile.

[Dicky Underpants]

I think the best I can do to explain this is to refer you to my source. I'm attaching a photo showing a page from The Making of Mark (H Riley), with the relevant section highlighted.

Riley speaks of Mark's 'awkward' prose in the passage. Well, that's a feature of Mark's style throughout. If you're looking for a polished text, don't go to Mark, go to Luke who is by far the better stylist. In any case, such 'redundant' repetitions are always occurring in ancient manuscripts: it's a feature of the various scribes' attention straying, where they see a word or two similar in one line to text in another, and they mistakenly copy out the previous line. That's if there's any substance in Riley's comments at all.

But if you're going to continue this bizarre episode of straining at gnats and swallowing camels, you might compare the narratives in Mark 16 and Matthew 28, where Mark states that the women were "bewildered and afraid", whereas Matthew also has the words "but joyful". The fact that the women were filled with joy is quite obviously the central idea in the significance of the Resurrection for Christians, but Mark leaves it out. According to your ideas on the order of the gospels, Mark would have had to deliberately suppress it. Unlikely, I think. But the main point of such details is that we are presented with a scenario where very early on texts are being tinkered with and altered according the writer's own agenda, with very little likelihood of eyewitness accounts at all.

[jeremyp]

That's where the need for evidence comes in, and we have this in the resurrection accounts.
Three examples:
John 20:17 and Matthew 28:9 both mention women holding onto Jesus.
John 20:2 mentions more than one woman
Matthew says Jesus appeared to them in Galilee, Luke says in Jerusalem. John clarifies it was both, and we can conclude that the ending of Matthew is a later addition.

The resurrection accounts are all mutually inconsistent.

Matthew:

The women meet Jesus in the garden on the morning of the resurrection. He instructs them to tell the disciples to meet him in Galilee.

The disciples go to Galilee on a mountain where Jesus tells them to go out and spread the word.

The End - not even an ascension.

Mark
No account

Luke

The women don't meet Jesus, but two followers who are going to Emmaus do meet him. They don't recognise him until they are having dinner in Emmaus. He vanishes

They immediately return to Jerusalem to the others (all on the same day so far). Jesus appears while they are relating the story and they have dinner.

Then Jesus leads them to Bethany (which is just outside Jerusalem, not in Galilee) and ascends to heaven.

Note that, at no time has anybody gone to Galilee, as Matthew claimed. Note also, that the timeline takes place over a single day.

John

On the first day, Jesus appears to Mary, then in the evening, to all the disciples except Thomas.

A week later he appears again to the disciples including Thomas.

Some time later he appears to the disciples again at the Sea of Tiberias (Galilee) which is not a mountain.

The End

Acts

The author starts by retconning his previous book by claiming that Jesus hung around for 40 days.

Then Jesus ascends from "the mount called Olivet" which on the way to Bethany from Jerusalem, according to Wikipedia.

The four accounts of Jesus' resurrection appearances are all different. It's almost as if the three authors were following Mark, but then Mark ran out after the empty tomb was discovered and so they each made up their own narrative.

[Walt Zingmatilder]

I don't: your assumption that it did happen is based on the intervention of a supernatural agent, hence it is a miracle claim. I'd say your assumption needs justification since it is not a naturalistic claim, so it needs a method of investigation that is suited to supernatural claims. My observation that dead people tend to stay dead is based on naturalism - ask you local undertaker to confirm this if you don't believe me.

That life seems to be naturalistic is a reasonable assumption so if you are saying that there may be naturalistic methods to reanimate the dead then you'll need to explain on what basis current knowledge allows that extrapolation. Can't see it helps you though since you seem wedded to tales of supernatural agents performing miracles in the dim and distant past.

My assumptions are irrelevant to the criticism of the assumption that dead men never rise.
The criticism arises from a naturalistic contention, that what Gorden has termed death is a condition totally dependent on the arrangement of matter and by extension life is as well. Are you denying that? Are you introducing vitalism at this point.
Given scientism or promissory materialism, all that is needed to reverse death is a sufficiently sophisticated technology, not a complete change in the nature of science.
If you are challenging this then you challenge scientism, something that you have failed to do when statements have been made that science has yet to discover this or detect that etc. and thus this is yet another occasion where you suspend a previous argument to suit.

If you are now repudiatting the science will find a way argument you cannot use it in future without hypocrisy.

[Walt Zingmatilder]

By created I assume you mean something that arises due to some kind of deliberate or directed process, rather than simply due to the underlying physics. In which case there are all sorts of things that are 'uncreated' - rather they arise due to fundamental physical and chemical processes.

But of course your whole thesis is underpinned by a naive and simplistic notion that time is somehow constant and unilinear - hence you can work on the basis of before/after. But while time may look like that from our narrow anthropocentric prism, but it isn't like that at all - so if you cannot apply a simple directionality to time how can you determine what created what (which implies the creator must exist before the created). If time runs in the opposite direction then you'd completely reverse your thinking.

I think I talked about contingent things and contingency being used as evidence. You are the one demanding evidence and things which are derived are evidence of creation rather than non creation.
Evidence is YOUR criterion.

Non creation then needs to be evidenced by a non created or no contingent object.

Do you have one?

If not the evidence base favours creation.

It seems as per usual you are ducking having to provide evidence that physics and nature are created or uncreated.

[Gordon]

My assumptions are irrelevant to the criticism of the assumption that dead men never rise.
The criticism arises from a naturalistic contention, that what Gorden has termed death is a condition totally dependent on the arrangement of matter and by extension life is as well. Are you denying that? Are you introducing vitalism at this point.
Given scientism or promissory materialism, all that is needed to reverse death is a sufficiently sophisticated technology, not a complete change in the nature of science.
If you are challenging this then you challenge scientism, something that you have failed to do when statements have been made that science has yet to discover this or detect that etc. and thus this is yet another occasion where you suspend a previous argument to suit.

If you are now repudiatting the science will find a way argument you cannot use it in future without hypocrisy.

Presumably your keyboard is set to world salad mode this morning, Vlad: I haven't, outside your fevered imagination, mentioned or implied 'vitalism' or 'scientism'. You be careful with all that straw now!

In #50273 you said this:

In what I take to be your own viewpoint, Life can be taken as A particular arrangement of matter. It is possible for matter to be manipulated. Therefore there is nothing to prevent a sufficiently developed technique to obtain life from dead material.

I merely pointed out that you were extrapolating beyond current knowledge if we are talking about people who have been dead for a time: say for 3 days. Your "sufficiently developed technique to obtain life from dead material" sounds like unfounded and desperate speculation to me. Perhaps you're starting to feel a bit embarrassed by these laughable miracle claims - if so, I can't say I blame you.

[Walt Zingmatilder]

Presumably your keyboard is set to world salad mode this morning, Vlad: I haven't, outside your fevered imagination, mentioned or implied 'vitalism' or 'scientism'. You be careful with all that straw now!

In #50273 you said this:

I merely pointed out that you were extrapolating beyond current knowledge if we are talking about people who have been dead for a time: say for 3 days. Your "sufficiently developed technique to obtain life from dead material" sounds like unfounded and desperate speculation to me. Perhaps you're starting to feel a bit embarrassed by these laughable miracle claims - if so, I can't say I blame you.

I know it's de rigour for you people to reply to me with customary gracelessness, but I'm interested in you're response to Davey's assertion that those who talk of life and death (yare merely anthropomorphising. That would be you since you have been talking of dead men.

[ProfessorDavey]

I think I talked about contingent things and contingency being used as evidence. You are the one demanding evidence and things which are derived are evidence of creation rather than non creation.
Evidence is YOUR criterion.

Non creation then needs to be evidenced by a non created or no contingent object.

Do you have one?

If not the evidence base favours creation.

It seems as per usual you are ducking having to provide evidence that physics and nature are created or uncreated.

The notion of 'creation' cannot be uncoupled from the notion of time. Creation, in the manner you describe it, is something that didn't exist at one point in time and then did at a later point in time (note my emphasis). But this is entirely predicated on the notion that time is both constant, and critically unilinear - in other words it runs in one direction only. That may be how it seems to us as humans, but it is an incredibly simplistic notion and certainly not in any way supported by fundamental physics. Once you accept the possibility that time is much more flexible then the notion of before/after creation becomes rather fruitless.

[ProfessorDavey]

It seems as per usual you are ducking having to provide evidence that physics and nature are created or uncreated.

Why should physics be created (i.e. arose due to a some kind of deliberate or directed act) Vlad. You seem very confused and rapidly heading down the rabbit hole of infinite regress.

[Walt Zingmatilder]

The notion of 'creation' cannot be uncoupled from the notion of time. Creation, in the manner you describe it, is something that didn't exist at one point in time and then did at a later point in time (note my emphasis). But this is entirely predicated on the notion that time is both constant, and critically unilinear - in other words it runs in one direction only. That may be how it seems to us as humans, but it is an incredibly simplistic notion and certainly not in any way supported by fundamental physics. Once you accept the possibility that time is much more flexible then the notion of before/after creation becomes rather fruitless.

Firstly, what notion of time can creation not be uncoupled from, yours?what you imagine mine to be? or both. Are you using those two notions as and when it suits?

What you are doing is making a philosophical argument here, rather than providing evidence for non creation.
Now I have provided as per your request, evidence for things which are derived, dependent and brought into existence, I.e. the created as demanded. Where then is your evidence of things uncreated?

[Walt Zingmatilder]

Why should physics be created (i.e. arose due to a some kind of deliberate or directed act) Vlad. You seem very confused and rapidly heading down the rabbit hole of infinite regress.

You are dictating definitions here. My contention is the perfectly reasonable statement that all contingent things are derived or dependent and ultimately they are dependent on the one thing. That one thing is dependent on nothing but itself.

Your ultimate thing is physics, but there is a problem here isn’t there?Physics is dependent on there being physical things.... and you have yet to present an uncreated(I.e. non contingent) object.
Secondly, how often is it said that the laws of physics breaks down at the big bang?

If you are saying that there is some kind of free standing, non derived, independent of contingent physicality, “law” of nature, then essentially we are on the same page.

Until you confirm or refute that, I think it’s you who seems confused.

[ProfessorDavey]

Firstly, what notion of time can creation not be uncoupled from, yours?

Regardless of whether you want to add deliberate or directed into the definition surely created refers to something that at one point in time did not exist and at a later point in time exists. It is inherently a before/after concept which requires the temporal components (before and after) to be fixed from a temporal point of view - in other words that time runs in a particular direction only.

This cannot be decoupled from the notion of time itself - indeed if time runs in reverse anything we might consider as creation would become destruction.

[ProfessorDavey]

You are dictating definitions here.

Only in the absence of you coming up with any definition. You are the one you has posited the notion of 'creation' - in which case either you need to define it in a reasonable manner, or someone else involve in the discussion will need to define it. Without a definition the whole discussion becomes pointless.

[Spud]

Riley speaks of Mark's 'awkward' prose in the passage. Well, that's a feature of Mark's style throughout. If you're looking for a polished text, don't go to Mark, go to Luke who is by far the better stylist. In any case, such 'redundant' repetitions are always occurring in ancient manuscripts: it's a feature of the various scribes' attention straying, where they see a word or two similar in one line to text in another, and they mistakenly copy out the previous line. That's if there's any substance in Riley's comments at all.

Agreed, Luke is more refined; Matthew is more plain. If Matthew is found to be primary, this raises the question, why, if these miracles had been made up, are they so plain in their original form (Matthew) and not more ornate and flamboyant?

You seem to agree that the phrases 'to the paralytic' and 'pick up your bed' in Mark 2:9 are redundant - that's a step further than JP has come.

Are you then suggesting that Mark wrote first and that these redundancies were introduced later by scribal error? Okay, but then you have to postulate some unknown source, either verbal or written, for the original Mark. Why not instead postulate Matthew as the source and Mark as the copier?

[jeremyp]

Firstly, what notion of time can creation not be uncoupled from, yours?what you imagine mine to be? or both. Are you using those two notions as and when it suits?

Can you provide a definition of creation that doesn't rely on time?

[Walt Zingmatilder]

Can you provide a definition of creation that doesn't rely on time?

Time is only created when the first potential is actualized. Therefore time is the first creation..

According to one definition of time.
Which definition are you using?

Can something be existentially dependent on something else irrespective of time...of course and any reductionist materialist should assent to that also.

[Gordon]

Time is only created when the first potential is actualized. Therefore time is the first creation..

Since I'm not sure what "the first potential is actualized" means, are you saying that this 'creator' is part and parcel of the first instance of 'time'?

[ProfessorDavey]

Time is only created when the first potential is actualized. Therefore time is the first creation..

Evidence please - given that creation involves something that doesn't exist at one point in time and then does exist at a later point in time, how can time be created as there cannot be a point in time before time exists.

As so often you are talking complete non-sense Vlad.

But actually until you actually provide a cogent definition for 'created' then the whole discussion is completely pointless.

[Walt Zingmatilder]

Regardless of whether you want to add deliberate or directed into the definition surely created refers to something that at one point in time did not exist and at a later point in time exists. It is inherently a before/after concept which requires the temporal components (before and after) to be fixed from a temporal point of view - in other words that time runs in a particular direction only.

This cannot be decoupled from the notion of time itself - indeed if time runs in reverse anything we might consider as creation would become destruction.

I am saying that there is one ultimate thing which cannot be brought into being by external agency, changed by external agency or extinguished by external agency. This entity is then the unactualised actualized. Event or entity one being actualized is also the actualisation of time.

I am still puzzled because you seem to argue that time is not linear or directional yet you are basing your argument against contingent existence on precisely that.

Sometime ago a laddy on here plucking proposed what I recall he called ""quantum borrowing" whereby particles appeared from the future. That however does not negate dependency or contingency since the particles are coming from somewhere rather than nowhere.

[Spud]

The stories about Jesus would initially have been passed on as oral history before being written down. The original stories would quite likely contain accurate mundane information. With retelling other elements could be woven into those earlier stories. As we don't have the original stories we don't know what has been woven in. Accuracy about mundane details do not mean the supernatural claims are accurate.

I'd contend that we can tell when something has been woven in. How about in Matthew 28, when the women are suddenly greeted by Jesus? This is odd, as it follows straight on from the angel's message to the women about going to Galilee, which Jesus essentially repeats. Also why would they be told by the angel that they would see him in Galilee, and then see him a few minutes later? These verses (Mt 28:9-10) must have been inserted into the original text.