The power of prayer

[Gordon]

They can't, for the same reason those that the Lord Jesus censured on occasions didn't: A lack of faith.

I could understand if applying faith was limited to religious belief only, but we use it all the time!

That depends on what you mean by 'faith'.

If I go to a bus stop to wait for a bus, what objective proof do I have that I will get to my destination? None! I can't see forward in time to see myself getting off the bus at the other end. So I am applying faith.

Or you are applying knowledge, in that in order to be waiting at the bus stop to get to your destination you will have knowledge of the bus routes and timetable, and based on inductive reasoning (the service is usually reliable) you will have a reasonable expectation of getting to your destination - something might go wrong of course, but that you are there waiting for the bus implies that you are justified in doing so by knowledge that is equally available to any other prospective bus traveler.

That faith may be based on certain criteria, but it is still not objective proof. When does the proof arrive? When I get off the bus at the end of the journey.

Aside from your use of 'objective proof', which is fraught with problems, it seems you are conflating knowledge such as those involving the details of bus travel with the details of the divine: as far as I can see you don't have knowledge of the latter but you have 'faith', which isn't the same thing at all.
 

The faith necessary for belief in God is no different...

Yes it is, since you don't have knowledge of 'God' that equates to the details your bus travel analogy.

..except that secular philosophy will call the equivalent of getting off the bus at the end of the journey a confirmation bias.

Nope - since you haven't demonstrated that a journey has actually occurred.

So again, it can be seen that what is happening is in reality arguments against religious belief.

Nope - it is the rebuttal of arguments for religious belief, since these are invariably fallacious in one way or another.

It's a defence of a materialist philosophy that has constructed arguments for anything that would attempt to contradict it because it cannot defend itself and is not falsifiable.

Nope again - it's simply a rejection of poor reasoning.

[bluehillside Retd.]

Sword,

You pack a lot of fallacies into very few words. Briefly:

Hmmm...I've responded to a post in a similar vein else where BashfulAnthony, so I'll give another angle...

You will no doubt be familiar with the Lord Jesus' many exchanges with the Pharisees, teachers of the Law, etc. Why wouldn't they accept Him as the Messiah? Because their worldview wouldn't allow for Him being the Messiah.

Either that, or he wasn't able to make a cogent argument for being the "Messiah, or he wasn't the Messiah at all. There are various options here.

They decided that He didn't fit the bill, so it didn't matter what the evidence said, what He did (miracles, healings, etc., their minds were already made up. In short, their worldview was not falsifiable.

No, that's just your presumption. You have no way of knowing either that he was the Messiah, and nor what evidence would have been persuasive even if he was.

Like you, I took a break from posting on these types of forums, but for much longer than a year. I decided to look at how the Lord Jesus tackled the problem. He exposed the flaws in their worldviews and premises.

If you say so. Why don't you try the same approach then, starting with an explanation of what you think your interlocutors' "worldview" to be.

What I learnt also was to apply properties of truth. Truth does not depend on what we think about it.

Actually it does. "Truth" is what we determine it to be - it's not some mysterious force just floating around "out there". Try some basic epistemology for further details.

Truth is supported by evidence. A statement can be shown to be true directly, or to be not true by showing that the converse is true.

Sort of. A propositions can be shown to be provisionally, probabilistically true but that says nothing a supposed absolute truth.

Where truth cannot be verified directly, it has to be accepted by faith,...

Pardon? Whose "faith"? Yours? Mine? The cat's?

What on earth do you think faith has to do with truth?

... but as it will be supported by evidence, it is not blind faith.

How would you differentiate "faith" from "blind faith" exactly?

A problem arises when we start deciding in advance what the nature of the evidence must be, so there's one point to address. A second problem arises when we start deciding how the evidence must be handled.

Actually the real problem is in deciding what you mean by "evidence". If you think "faith" has anything to do with it, you've given yourself quite a job to demonstrate that. Good luck with it though.

I have given the questioners here ample opportunity to show how their commitment to a naturalistic philosophy is falsifiable. None has been forthcoming. If they could demonstrate that all causes/effects have natural explanations, there would be no need for religious belief of any kind, but hey, I'm shifting the burden of proof again 

That's not true - I've given you a method to do that several times now but you've just ignored it. Here it is a again: try taking the lift to the ground floor, then try jumping out of the window and relying on an angel to carry you down. Now tell me whether the statement "the naturalistic lift options is probabilistically more likely to deliver you safely to the ground than the non-naturalistic angel option" is true or not.

Let me know how you get on.   

[bluehillside Retd.]

BA,

All I can add is that I am staggered at the closed-mindedness on here.  They do not simply doubt; they are furiously determined not to give ground in their unbelief. Why, I don't know.  As Jesus said to Thomas, "...blessed are those who have not seen me, yet believe."

You're right that I'm "closed minded" inasmuch as I cannot see any reason to accept at face value arguments that are demonstrably false. Sorry about that, but hey - just think of the bewildering array of beliefs that would ensue if I changed my mind about that.

[bluehillside Retd.]

Sword,

They can't, for the same reason those that the Lord Jesus censured on occasions didn't: A lack of faith.

Indeed, just as presumably your "lack of faith" prevents you from believing in the Sumerian gods or for that matter in leprechauns. Luckily for those possessed of a functioning intellect it's apparent that personal faith says nothing whatever to the truthfulness or otherwise of a conjecture.

I could understand if applying faith was limited to religious belief only, but we use it all the time! If I go to a bus stop to wait for a bus, what objective proof do I have that I will get to my destination? None! I can't see forward in time to see myself getting off the bus at the other end. So I am applying faith. That faith may be based on certain criteria, but it is still not objective proof. When does the proof arrive? When I get off the bus at the end of the journey.

This is desperate stuff - you're just playing with the ambiguity in the term "faith". I have "faith" that my car will start tomorrow - it's a good make, it's aways stared n the past, it has petrol in the tank etc. "Faith" in this sense means, "a reasonable expectation based on practical experience". I do not however have "faith" that there's a pet dragon sleeping under the bonnet, "faith" in the sense of "a belief that I cannot anchor to the world I appear to observe, mediated through intersubjective experience".   

The faith necessary for belief in God is no different...

Of course it is - it's the dragon type, not the starting car type.

...except that secular philosophy will call the equivalent of getting off the bus at the end of the journey a confirmation bias.

That's not what "confirmation bias" means.

So again, it can be seen that what is happening is in reality arguments against religious belief. It's a defence of a materialist philosophy that has constructed arguments for anything that would attempt to contradict it because it cannot defend itself and is not falsifiable.

Flat wrong in all respects - see above. You're going to have to do an awful lot better than this train crash of an argument if you want to make a case for your beliefs I'm afraid.

[BashfulAnthony]

BA,

You're right that I'm "closed minded" inasmuch as I cannot see any reason to accept at face value arguments that are demonstrably false. Sorry about that, but hey - just think of the bewildering array of beliefs that would ensue if I changed my mind about that.

Who knows?  One day you may realise...

[bluehillside Retd.]

BA,

Who knows?  One day you may realise...

That fallacious arguments should be treated seriously? Seems unlikely, but you never know...

[bluehillside Retd.]

Sparky,

I like your reasoning there SwordOfTheSpirit...I wished I had thought of it.

It's just as well that you didn't - it's very bad reasoning.

[BashfulAnthony]

BA,

That fallacious arguments should be treated seriously? Seems unlikely, but you never know...

You know what I mean, and I seriously hope you will.

Have a good night, I'm off to watch the Paralympics.

[bluehillside Retd.]

BA,

You know what I mean, and I seriously hope you will.

Have a good night, I'm off to watch the Paralympics.

Have a good one to Bashers, and enjoy the paralympics.

[jjohnjil]

You may well laugh. I'm not, 'cos it wasn't funny.

Yes, I'm pleased you see that as a lot of nonsense, BA.  If only you would use that same logic in other ways.

[Khatru]

Jesus was crucified and was resurrected after the 3rd day

That's no big deal because we know that back in the day, resurrections were commonplace.  The Bible itself tells us how the following individuals all came back to life after they'd died:

1.  Widow of Zarephath's son
2.  Shunamite's son
3.  Man tossed into Elisha's tomb
4.  Widow of Nain's son
5.  Jairus' daughter
6.  Lazarus
7.  Tabitha
8.  Eutychus

Not forgetting the hundreds (maybe thousands) who zombie-walked their way into Jerusalem.

Of course it wasn't just the Middle East where people came back from the dead but all over the ancient world.  Some of these include:

Quetzalcoatl
Ishtar
Osiris
Adonis
Dionysus
Persephone
Tammuz
Baal
Attis
Lemminkainen
Odin
Ganesha
Krishna

So there you have it, returning from the grave used to be much more commonplace than people think.
 
Strange how all these resurrections, occurred in a time when humans were deeply superstitious and since the advent of science we haven't reliably recorded any instances of people being resurrected after death.  This is so much the case that it's only the deeply superstitious who still cling to the ancient myths.

[floo]

People are still being resurrected today apparently!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Walt Zingmatilder]

That's no big deal because we know that back in the day, resurrections were commonplace.  The Bible itself tells us how the following individuals all came back to life after they'd died:

1.  Widow of Zarephath's son
2.  Shunamite's son
3.  Man tossed into Elisha's tomb
4.  Widow of Nain's son
5.  Jairus' daughter
6.  Lazarus
7.  Tabitha
8.  Eutychus

Not forgetting the hundreds (maybe thousands) who zombie-walked their way into Jerusalem.

Of course it wasn't just the Middle East where people came back from the dead but all over the ancient world.  Some of these include:

Quetzalcoatl
Ishtar
Osiris
Adonis
Dionysus
Persephone
Tammuz
Baal
Attis
Lemminkainen
Odin
Ganesha
Krishna

They would be commonplace if the population of the world were around 200.
I'm afraid what you are actually saying is something you probably don't want to I.e. that resurrection is commonplace among people who have been er,ressurected.
 
 There are as well sometimes hundreds of years between cases and many are proposed within works which are mythological.

Only the NT accounts could be pointed at as reportage and of course are associated with Jesus who whether we like it or not had this 'thing' about him.

[bluehillside Retd.]

Vlad,

They would be commonplace if the population of the world were around 200.
I'm afraid what you are actually saying is something you probably don't want to I.e. that resurrection is complace among people who have been er,ressurected.
 
 There are as well sometimes hundreds of years between cases and many are proposed within works which are mythological.

Only the NT accounts could be pointed at as reportage and of course are associated with Jesus who whether we like it or not had this 'thing' about him.

Of course Vladdy boy, of course. So what you're saying here is that the many resurrection stories that many other religions have (but with which the Christian version has remarkable similarities, and that themselves derive from more ancient stories centred on the re-birth of the year as the season pass) are all myth, whereas the same thing in the religion in which you happen to believe is like, well, you know, "reportaaaage" man, only it's only reportage that no-one thought worth writing down until decades later.

Hmmm...

[Walt Zingmatilder]

Vlad,

Of course Vladdy boy, of course. So what you're saying here is that the many resurrection stories that many other religions have (but with which the Christian version has remarkable similarities, and that themselves derive from more ancient stories centred on the re-birth of the year as the season pass) are all myth, whereas the same thing in the religion in which you happen to believe is like, well, you know, "reportaaaage" man, only it's only reportage that no-one thought worth writing down until decades later.

Hmmm...

As is obvious in ancient history not all documents survive.......in fact very little survives.

[jeremyp]

But there wasn't only one person who made the claim.

Yes there was - the biographer.


Who else apart from Paul made the claim that there were five hundred witnesses to Jesus' resurrection?

[jeremyp]

The only thing that is sinking in is that you have a big problem.  Go and get a life, instead of devoting endless hours discussing something you don't even believe in.  It really is quite alarming.  I am concerned about you, and some others on here, in the grip of an obsession like this.

What's alarming is the amount of hypocrisy oozing out of every one of your orifices. If it's such a bad thing to spend endless hours discussing stuff, why are you here?

Do try and come up with a good response so Floo can congratulate you at my expense.

Do try to come up with a response that is not a stream of insults.

This whole thing is becoming absurd.  Now you can see why I left for a year or so.

Why please feel free to fuck off again. Don't let the door hit you on your way out.

[bluehillside Retd.]

Vlad,

As is obvious in ancient history not all documents survive.......in fact very little survives.

And I hear it'll get dark tonight.

Yes, very little survives - but enough has to tell us about many of the resurrection stories that many religions had and have. So? Are you trying to suggest that the resurrection of Jesus was in fact the splash in that week's Bethlehem Bugle (just above the ad for Hamed's Amphora Emporium's closing down sale) only all the copies were used to line the readers' cat litter trays or budgie cages so only the stuff written down decades later has made it?

I think we should be told about this groundbreaking research! 

[Walt Zingmatilder]

Vlad,

And I hear it'll get dark tonight.

Yes, very little survives - but enough has to tell us about many of the resurrection stories that many religions had and have. So? Are you trying to suggest that the resurrection of Jesus was in fact the splash in that week's Bethlehem Bugle (just above the ad for Hamed's Amphora Emporium's closing down sale) only all the copies were used to line the readers' cat litter trays or budgie cages so only the stuff written down decades later has made it?

I think we should be told about this groundbreaking research!

I don't think there is any law governing where resurrections happen Hillside. I merely point out that what looks like a long list or, if you are an anti theist a list as long as the M4 it still makes resurrection by no means commonplace.

In terms of extant literature you seem to be suggesting that the first drafts of major ancient documents exist somewhere.....or even second, third or fourth drafts.

On the other hand there seems to be lots of heterodox literature pointing to Jesus being particularly notable but strangely neither the Roman or Jewish reports on the phenomena of Christianity being a completely made up story seem to exist.

Strangely the non existence of anything of that nature until centuries after Jesus has not bothered Jesus Mythers for whom a gap of twenty or so years after Jesus lived the vital proof that he is likely to be a work of fiction.

[bluehillside Retd.]

Vlad,

I don't think there is any law governing where resurrections happen Hillside.

Well as claims of resurrections also claim them to be supernatural, and as laws are a naturalistic concept I guess the two would be incompatible if ever the premise could be demonstrated.

I merely point out that what looks like a long list or, if you are an anti theist a list as long as the M4 it still makes resurrection by no means commonplace.

But it would also mean that the uniqueness of it (which as I understand it is central to Christian doctrine) would be lost.

In terms of extant literature you seem to be suggesting that the first drafts of major ancient documents exist somewhere.....or even second, third or fourth drafts.

Actually I thought you were - what was the point otherwise of telling us that not much has survived?

On the other hand there seems to be lots of heterodox literature pointing to Jesus being particularly notable but strangely neither the Roman or Jewish reports on the phenomena of Christianity being a completely made up story seem to exist.

I'm relaxed about Jesus the man having existed - perhaps as one of many itinerant mystics and street magicians or similar whose story caught the wind, and around whom myths have grown up over time. The notion that those miracle stories are actually true I find bizarre, but hey-ho I guess.

Strangely the non existence of anything of that nature until centuries after Jesus has not bothered Jesus Mythers for whom a gap of twenty or so years after Jesus lived the vital proof that he is likely to be a work of fiction.

What are you trying to say here?

[Walt Zingmatilder]

Vlad,

Well as claims of resurrections also claim them to be supernatural, and as laws are a naturalistic concept I guess the two would be incompatible if ever the premise could be demonstrated.

But it would also mean that the uniqueness of it (which as I understand it is central to Christian doctrine) would be lost.

The first question would be how?
Why would other examples of resurrection affect the functional results of Jesus resurrection? After all the NT has other examples of resurrection and they have not detracted from The Ressurection.

[Walt Zingmatilder]

Vlad,



I'm relaxed about Jesus the man having existed - perhaps as one of many itinerant mystics and street magicians or similar whose story caught the wind, and around whom myths have grown up over time. The notion that those miracle stories are actually true I find bizarre, but hey-ho I guess.

It seems to me that the only Jesus narratives that have grown up over a long period of time is Jesus myth and Jesus as street magician.
.
If you are suggesting that Jesus like stories of these other Mystics and street magicians did not survive then you are undoing your own argument about the lack of early orthodox Christian material

[bluehillside Retd.]

Vlad,

The first question would be how?

How what? That anyone would be able to distinguish a genuine resurrection from stories about a resurrection?

That's a problem for the people who claim such things I'd say.

Why would other examples of resurrection affect the functional results of Jesus resurrection? After all the NT has other examples of resurrection and they have not detracted from The Ressurection.

They wouldn't "affect" it, but as I understand it Christians put great store by the supposed uniqueness of the event for their man/god only. If they actually think there were a whole bunch of them of which the resurrection of Jesus was just one that's blow a pretty big hole in the dogma I'd have thought. Why would "God" have magicked back to life his son and a bunch of nobodies too?   

[bluehillside Retd.]

Vlad,

It seems to me that the only Jesus narratives that have grown up over a long period of time is Jesus myth and Jesus as street magician.

How about the Jesus as the son of God narrative?

If you are suggesting that Jesus like stories of these other Mystics and street magicians did not survive then you are undoing your own argument about the lack of early orthodox Christian material

Again, what are you trying to say here? Have a look at "survivor bias" to see why thinking that beliefs that survived must in some way have been more true or better than those that did not.

[Walt Zingmatilder]

Vlad,

How what? That anyone would be able to distinguish a genuine resurrection from stories about a resurrection?

That's a problem for the people who claim such things I'd say.

They wouldn't "affect" it, but as I understand it Christians put great store by the supposed uniqueness of the event for their man/god only. If they actually think there were a whole bunch of them of which the resurrection of Jesus was just one that's blow a pretty big hole in the dogma I'd have thought. Why would "God" have magicked back to life his son and a bunch of nobodies too?

No.
Jesus resurrection matters for who is being resurrected.........so no hole in the dogma.