Low Probability that god raised someone from the dead

[Shaker]

Was it really worth quoting that entire block of text just to stick seven words on the end?

By major I mean both well known to the general reading public (because they have written widely and/or well works likely to be known to any reasonably intelligent and educated reader) and those who have tried to explain why they are theists.

[Walt Zingmatilder]

Was it really worth quoting that entire block of text just to stick seven words on the end?

By major I mean both well known to the general reading public (because they have written widely and/or well works likely to be known to any reasonably intelligent and educated reader) and those who have tried to explain why they are theists.

1: Since you seem upset that I quoted the entire block of text the answer to that is probably in the affirmative.
2: I find with Gardner, given that he states there is no actual connection between people and the divine, it is a far greater mystery logically as to why he should be theist.........You have said nothing on that leading me to believe he has your support because he has ''been nice to atheists''.
3: I'm not sure I would let quite obvious modern rules of fame and celebrity in maths and scientists to dictate MY definition of ''Major theist''.

[floo]

The very wording of the thread title is meaningless.  If God is able to do something, human understanding of probability will have gone out of the window before the phrase is uttered.

If the deity is able to raise someone from the dead, why doesn't it get its finger out and do something useful like feeding the starving for instance?

Do you not think the human race can feed it's starving?
On the other hand we are unable to raise from the dead.

Having someone killed in a horrific way, just to have them resurrected three days later appears to be the work of the sickest psycho ever, if it actually happened, which is highly unlikely!

[Shaker]

1: Since you seem upset that I quoted the entire block of text the answer to that is probably in the affirmative.

How childish. Not only is it lazy, pointless and distracting, it also, as Hope pointed out only a day or two ago, creates headaches for posters who have sight problems and rely on screenreaders, of which we have at least two here to my certain knowledge.

2: I find with Gardner, given that he states there is no actual connection between people and the divine, it is a far greater mystery logically as to why he should be theist.........You have said nothing on that leading me to believe he has your support because he has ''been nice to atheists''.

I never mentioned anything to do with "being nice to atheists"; Gardner's intellectual honesty led him to state that as he saw it, it was and is true that on any rational, logical, intellectual basis theism is unjustified and unjustifiable, and that atheism/-ists have the better case and the stronger arguments. He has my support partly for being a dazzlingly intelligent man who wrote well on fascinating things and partly for being an honest theist, someone who openly, explicitly and baldly stated that for him theism could only be 'justified' on emotional grounds. (See also the more recent Unapologetic by Francis Spufford for precisely the same thing). Gardner unashamedly stated that the guiding principle of his theism was Credo consolans, which is to say, "I believe because it consoles/because it comforts." Gardner, like his hero Unamuno, thought that you can't get to a belief in a god, whether deistic or theistic, through rational thought, because rational thought gives it no support whatsoever. Like his other hero Kierkegaard, he thought that faith has to be irrational or a-rational, a blind leap into the dark because you can't get there (a god; life after death) from here (intellect and rational thought). Gardner's intellectual autobiography The Whys of a Philosophical Scrivener is a fantastic book and, to my mind at any rate, a modern classic; I wish I could find it online so that I could copy the relevant passages, which here I'm having to do the long way from my paperback copy. Nevertheless, I'll do as much as I can:

What does it mean to say that belief in God works? To fideists it can mean only this - that belief in God is so emotionally rewarding, and the contrary belief so desolate, that they cannot not believe. Beneath the credo quia absurdum, as Unamuno said, is the credo quia consolans. I believe because it consoles me ... Whenever I speak of religious faith it will mean a belief, unsupported by logic or science, in both God and an afterlife. Bertrand Russell once defined faith, in a broader way, as "a firm belief in something for which there is no evidence." If "evidence" means the kind of support provided by reason and science, there is no evidence for God and immortality, and Russell's definition seems to me concise and admirable ... The true fideist grants it all. He may - in my opinion, should - go even another step, the ultimate step, in conceding points to the atheist. Not only are there no compelling proofs of God or an afterlife, but our experience strongly tells us that Nature does not care a fig about the fate of the entire human race, that death plunges each of us back into the nothingness that preceded our birth. Is there need to elaborate the obvious? ... I agree with Pierre Bayle and with Unamuno that when cold reason contemplates the world it find not only an absence of God, but good reasons for supposing that there is no God at all. From this perspective, from what Unamuno called "the tragic sense of life," from this despair, faith comes to the rescue, not only as something nonrational but in a sense irrational. For Unamuno the great symbol of a person of faith was his Spanish hero Don Quixote. Faith is indeed quixotic. It is absurd. Let us admit it. Let us concede everything! To a rational mind the world looks like a world without God. It looks like a world with no hope for another life. To think otherwise, to believe in spite of appearances, is surely a kind of madness ... I am quite content to confess with Unamuno that I have no basis whatever for my belief in God other than a passionate longing that God exist and that I and others will not cease to exist.

Martin Gardner, The Whys of a Philosophical Scrivener, pp. 208-222.

Now, it seems to me that anybody prepared to say that they believe any given propositions, such as theism and posthumous survival, solely because they are emotionally comforting is engaging in an act of willing self-deception and for all practical intents and purposes is 99% an atheist. And there is a whopping appeal to consequences hiding in plain sight here (atheism is desolate; I would be unhappy if atheism were true and I were desolate; therefore I'll make myself happy by believing in God). Nevertheless, this degree of honesty is rare and deserves at least some credit.

[Leonard James]

1: Since you seem upset that I quoted the entire block of text the answer to that is probably in the affirmative.

How childish. Not only is it lazy, pointless and distracting, it also, as Hope pointed out only a day or two ago, creates headaches for posters who have sight problems and rely on screenreaders, of which we have at least two here to my certain knowledge.

2: I find with Gardner, given that he states there is no actual connection between people and the divine, it is a far greater mystery logically as to why he should be theist.........You have said nothing on that leading me to believe he has your support because he has ''been nice to atheists''.

I never mentioned anything to do with "being nice to atheists"; Gardner's intellectual honesty led him to state that as he saw it, it was and is true that on any rational, logical, intellectual basis theism is unjustified and unjustifiable, and that atheism/-ists have the better case and the stronger arguments. He has my support partly for being a dazzlingly intelligent man who wrote well on fascinating things and partly for being an honest theist, someone who openly, explicitly and baldly stated that for him theism could only be 'justified' on emotional grounds. (See also the more recent Unapologetic by Francis Spufford for precisely the same thing). Gardner unashamedly stated that the guiding principle of his theism was Credo consolans, which is to say, "I believe because it consoles/because it comforts." Gardner, like his hero Unamuno, thought that you can't get to a belief in a god, whether deistic or theistic, through rational thought, because rational thought gives it no support whatsoever. Like his other hero Kierkegaard, he thought that faith has to be irrational or a-rational, a blind leap into the dark because you can't get there (a god; life after death) from here (intellect and rational thought). Gardner's intellectual autobiography The Whys of a Philosophical Scrivener is a fantastic book and, to my mind at any rate, a modern classic; I wish I could find it online so that I could copy the relevant passages, which here I'm having to do the long way from my paperback copy. Nevertheless, I'll do as much as I can:

What does it mean to say that belief in God works? To fideists it can mean only this - that belief in God is so emotionally rewarding, and the contrary belief so desolate, that they cannot not believe. Beneath the credo quia absurdum, as Unamuno said, is the credo quia consolans. I believe because it consoles me ... Whenever I speak of religious faith it will mean a belief, unsupported by logic or science, in both God and an afterlife. Bertrand Russell once defined faith, in a broader way, as "a firm belief in something for which there is no evidence." If "evidence" means the kind of support provided by reason and science, there is no evidence for God and immortality, and Russell's definition seems to me concise and admirable ... The true fideist grants it all. He may - in my opinion, should - go even another step, the ultimate step, in conceding points to the atheist. Not only are there no compelling proofs of God or an afterlife, but our experience strongly tells us that Nature does not care a fig about the fate of the entire human race, that death plunges each of us back into the nothingness that preceded our birth. Is there need to elaborate the obvious? ... I agree with Pierre Bayle and with Unamuno that when cold reason contemplates the world it find not only an absence of God, but good reasons for supposing that there is no God at all. From this perspective, from what Unamuno called "the tragic sense of life," from this despair, faith comes to the rescue, not only as something nonrational but in a sense irrational. For Unamuno the great symbol of a person of faith was his Spanish hero Don Quixote. Faith is indeed quixotic. It is absurd. Let us admit it. Let us concede everything! To a rational mind the world looks like a world without God. It looks like a world with no hope for another life. To think otherwise, to believe in spite of appearances, is surely a kind of madness ... I am quite content to confess with Unamuno that I have no basis whatever for my belief in God other than a passionate longing that God exist and that I and others will not cease to exist.

Martin Gardner, The Whys of a Philosophical Scrivener, pp. 208-222.

Now, it seems to me that anybody prepared to say that they believe any given propositions, such as theism and posthumous survival, solely because they are emotionally comforting is engaging in an act of willing self-deception and for all practical intents and purposes is 99% an atheist. And there is a whopping appeal to consequences hiding in plain sight here (atheism is desolate; I would be unhappy if atheism were true and I were desolate; therefore I'll make myself happy by believing in God). Nevertheless, this degree of honesty is rare and deserves applause.

So nice to see my superiors (more erudite and more intelligent) saying something that seems obvious to me.

[Shaker]

erudite

I thought that was a brand of glue 

[Leonard James]

erudite

I thought that was a brand of glue 

I wish it were ... the older you get the less able you are to make new knowledge stick. 

ps Half the ornaments in this house are only here because of the efficacy of araldite.

[Walt Zingmatilder]

Shaker

Your presupposition that I myself do not hold Keirkegaard in high esteem is misrepresentative of me.

I do not see the concept of God as unreasonable but I think you have in your post tried to cleverly massaged two theists into the atheist camp.

I do not own up to just believing in God because it is comforting to. The encounter with God is not always comforting even though the idea of God might superficially be so.

[Shaker]

Shaker

Your presupposition that I myself do not hold Keirkegaard in high esteem is misrepresentative of me.

I don't recall saying that.

I do not see the concept of God as unreasonable but I think you have in your post tried to cleverly massaged two theists into the atheist camp.

I don't recall doing that either.

Hang on - are you sure it's a post of mine that you're replying to?

[Walt Zingmatilder]

Now, it seems to me that anybody prepared to say that they believe any given propositions, such as theism and posthumous survival, solely because they are emotionally comforting is engaging in an act of willing self-deception and for all practical intents and purposes is 99% an atheist. And there is a whopping appeal to consequences hiding in plain sight here (atheism is desolate; I would be unhappy if atheism were true and I were desolate; therefore I'll make myself happy by believing in God). Nevertheless, this degree of honesty is rare and deserves at least some credit.

[BashfulAnthony]

I see the terrible trio, and I mean terrible, are here supporting each other in their usual, pointless diatribes.

[Shaker]

I see you're here not even bothering to discuss or debate anything as usual, Ant

[BashfulAnthony]

I see you're here not even bothering to discuss or debate anything as usual, Ant

Why "debate" with someone whose "mind" is made up already?

[Shaker]

Why eat dinner tonight when you've eaten before? 

[BashfulAnthony]

Why eat dinner tonight when you've eaten before?

You have to eat to live  (if you can call your benighted state of mind as living):  you don't have to rail about theism all your life (you may describe it, wrongly, as "debating"), when you could actually do something constructive.  You clearly can't see that?

[ippy]

erudite

I thought that was a brand of glue 

I wish it were ... the older you get the less able you are to make new knowledge stick. 

ps Half the ornaments in this house are only here because of the efficacy of araldite.

Is that anywhere near Aarrold Iill?

ippy

[Leonard James]

erudite

I thought that was a brand of glue 

I wish it were ... the older you get the less able you are to make new knowledge stick. 

ps Half the ornaments in this house are only here because of the efficacy of araldite.

Is that anywhere near Aarrold Iill?

ippy

I'd never 'eard of 'im until now. Sounds a right nut case! 

[Hope]

So, reading BA's post, his use of 'hackneyed' would seem to be very appropriate.

As I said, hackneyed means "well-used," and is not a synonym for "wrong."

Precisely, Shaker, he was referring to arguments that get repeated endlessly.

You can't have been looking very hard then.

Sorry, I clearly didn't make myself clear.  The arguments you refer to here, the arguments that others speaking from the same angle as you have come up with over the years, the arguments that you like to dub rational and coherent are only so from a scientific perspective: as a result, I believe that they are therefore only partially rational and coherent as they miss out other aspects of human understanding and experience, and are therefore flawed.

... and, furthermore, given your highly selective way of responding only to those points which you reckon you can take on with the same limp lettuce responses whilst leaving the difficult questions/points well alone - several of them mine, recently - you're in no position to lecture people on who responds to what.

Oh sorry Mr Know-It-All; I don't respond to every single aspect of every single of your posts simply because pointng out the obvious, such as my response above several hundred times a day gets rather tiring.

I have a life outside this board which gets me debating the best way to rid somewhere of Japanese Knotweed; the most efficient way to dismantle irreparable tools so as to maximise the scrap value; how to best use limited funds to develop a heritage railway; where is the best place for a Christian to be positioned within society so as to provide the most benefit for that society; ... 

[Hope]

True! One side is taking the scientific, evidence based outlook, and the other is taking an outlook based on guesswork as to what might be.

Sorry, Len; one side is taking an outlook limited to scientifically provable and definable ideas; the other is taking an outlook that calls on other aspects of our lives that aren't governed by science. 

All your post does (and Shaker's support of it) is to reinforce the limitations of your argument.

[Gordon]

Sorry, Len; one side is taking an outlook limited to scientifically provable and definable ideas; the other is taking an outlook that calls on other aspects of our lives that aren't governed by science. 

I agree - you guys do seem to wallow about amongst the unproven and the undefined. 

[Hope]

If the deity is able to raise someone from the dead, why doesn't it get its finger out and do something useful like feeding the starving for instance?

I do find your blinkered thinking sad, Floo.  As I've said before, humanity was made to be God's agents in this world.  They have God-given brains, skills, limbs, etc. which they use to act on God's behalf.  That is what my wife and I were doing whilst working in Nepal during the 1990s, what I do when I'm teaching, or debating over how best to get something done at TWAM, or the railway.

Having someone killed in a horrific way, just to have them resurrected three days later appears to be the work of the sickest psycho ever, if it actually happened, which is highly unlikely!

I find your understanding of history to be sadly lacking.  So, here is a quick reminder.  Traditionally, when one did something wrong, death or exclusion (which often resulted in death) were the standard punishments especially in nomadic societies.

Societies then moved to a half-way position whereby if you did something wrong that wasn't beyond a certain level of evil, you were allowed to live but had to sacrifice an animal - a scapegoat.  In some cases, you would ritualistically transfer your guilt onto that sheep or goat and it would be led out from the camp or settlement ( and its familial flock/herd) and left to fend for itself. In other cases, having transferred your guilt to it, the animal would be slaughtered and the blood used to indicate that you were forgiven.  In some parts of the world this continues to this day.  By allowing himself, in the form of Jesus, to be killed (sacrificed) in the way he was and then rising from the grave showed that God had made all that bloodshed irrelevent. I accept that you don't believe this, but it doesn't mean that it didn't happen, and that humans who have lived since that event have had the opportunity to benefit from it should they so wish (something you clearly don't)

[Hope]

I agree - you guys do seem to wallow about amongst the unproven and the undefined.

So, no different from everyone else here.   

[Shaker]

I do find your blinkered thinking sad, Floo.  As I've said before, humanity was made to be God's agents in this world.  They have God-given brains, skills, limbs, etc. which they use to act on God's behalf.

... which - needless to say - is (a) bald assertion, means (b) that this is exactly what somebody who believes in something that doesn't exist would be expected to say (the Mandy Rice-Davis gambit) and (c) it renders belief in a god indefeasible, since there is no methodology which allows one to tell the difference between (1) humans doing this god's work and (2) no god and humans doing what they merely think is god's work. It's indefeasible in exactly the same way that petitionary prayer, for instance, is indefeasible; there's no method to be able to tell the difference between the scenario where it really does exist and works and the opposite scenario where it really doesn't exist and doesn't work. In case anyone is misguided enough to think that this means there's parity between each scenario and therefore you might just as well believe all 57 varieties of woo that theism requires, Occam's Razor helps us shave off the extraneous material that adds nothing and does nothing but weigh us down.

Until and unless you have a means of distinguishing (1) from (2), (1) is useless and adds nothing but superfluous baggage. And, as I've said before (specifically on this thread, from #137 onwards), it's a monumental cop-out on the part of theists, designed to deflect absolutely rational, pertinent criticism of theism away to be diverted onto human beings.

[Shaker]

I agree - you guys do seem to wallow about amongst the unproven and the undefined.

So, no different from everyone else here.   

Yes, very different indeed from many.

It's a simple matter, to pick just one very familiar example from very many potential candidates, to define that form of fallacious reasoning, sloppy thinking and general laziness of mind known as the negative proof fallacy (or argument from/appeal to ignorance); it has a sharply defined meaning and a clearly delineated sense and when it crops up, as it it does a great deal here I've noticed, it's appropriate to point it out. You just don't like when it whenever somebody does so.

[BashfulAnthony]

I agree - you guys do seem to wallow about amongst the unproven and the undefined.

So, no different from everyone else here.   

Yes, very different indeed from many.

It's a simple matter, to pick just one very familiar example from very many potential candidates, to define that form of fallacious reasoning, sloppy thinking and general laziness of mind known as the negative proof fallacy (or argument from/appeal to ignorance); it has a sharply defined meaning and a clearly delineated sense and when it crops up, as it it does a great deal here I've noticed, it's appropriate to point it out. You just don't like when it whenever somebody does so.

Not really.  People here must be so used to your rantings over the years, ad nauseam, that it has no impact, if it ever did.  You ought to realise that by now, unless you're a bit dense.