Eyewitness reliability examined in a real-life setting

[Stranger]

Not all gods can do anything they want to. They sometimes have to obey more superior gods of their pantheon.

That and the example of Zeus being Cronus son and Cronus being the son of Uranus(and therefore brother to your posts)supports the divinity of any extra universal creator you can come out with.

Or God could be his own universe subject to his own rules, occupying the whole of whatever ''space'' analogue you can come up with.

Have a nice day.

You really have no idea how absurd you're being, have you?

There's no point whatsoever in talking about the existence of a god or gods unless we're going to talk about a specific concept. Just changing the definition from post to post (or even using more than one in a single post) in some daft attempt to try to get atheists to agree with some aspects of some of the attributes of some of the thousands of god concepts, is just pathetic and desperate.

[Spud]

Spud - hate to break it to you but there is no evidence whatsoever that angels exist.

Maybe not now. Not at this time of year.

[bluehillside Retd.]

Vlad,

A creator of the universe is out of time and space. That comes from not being dependent for one's existence on the universe you create.

Leaving aside for now the dubiousness of the latter assertion, if you’re also asserting that a god would be out of the time and space it had created how would you propose it to be also therefore out of the time and space (or whatever other natural properties there might be) of a universe from which it may have come? You know, the "divine" as opposed to merely smart aliens bit. As so often before, you’re still lost in the Fletcher’s tunnel paradox here.

Vlad (Reply 420):

Well any God inhabits or may actually be the universe it inhabits. It would be subject to it's own laws…

Also Vlad (just four posts later):

Not all gods can do anything they want to….

It would help if you could not post directly contradictory claims like this. Which are you asserting now – gods subject to laws, or some at least that can do anything they want to?

They sometimes have to obey more superior gods of their pantheon.

So now you’re a pantheist? Given the endlessly shape-shifting versions of (the previously only one) god you’ve hitherto asserted here, I suppose nothing of yours should surprise me now. Still, even for you pantheism is quite a leap isn’t it?

Oh, and you’re making a category error here: laws of the human (and presumably godly) kind (thou shalt not… etc) can be broken; natural laws though (like those of physics) generally  cannot.   

That and the example of Zeus being Cronus son and Cronus being the son of Uranus(and therefore brother to your posts)supports the divinity of any extra universal creator you can come out with.

You do realise that these tales are myths right?

Perhaps you should give your head a wobble before you try posting again.

Or God could be his own universe subject to his own rules, occupying the whole of whatever ''space'' analogue you can come up with.

Or leprechauns could frolic with unicorns except for Wednesday half-day closing. When you’re off int magic land like this, or anything…
 

Have a nice day.

Have an honest one. Oh, wait, it’s you… sorry, my bad.

[Walt Zingmatilder]

Vlad,


Or leprechauns could frolic with unicorns except for Wednesday half-day closing. When you’re off int magic land like this, or anything…

He's lost it.
Hillside You have stated that the divine characteristics are reasonable propositions. Your beef then must be personally with God so now might be a good time to cut the middle man (me) and now take God himself on mano y Deo on the premise that it's just possible he may exist. You can do this in the privacy of your own life but it's not a god idea for me to be around so I think I'll only answer other peoples posts.
I don't think your replies are for my benefit but to keep your wee acolytes in order with new atheist wankfodder anyway.

 Goodnight and Good luck.

[bluehillside Retd.]

Vlad,

He's lost it.

No, he’s trying (and it seems failing) to explain to you the difference between possible and probable.

Hillside You have stated that the divine characteristics are reasonable propositions.

Stop lying. What I’ve actually “stated” is that you have no coherent grounds to call the one necessary characteristic of a possible universe creator (ie, the ability to create a universe) “divine” at all. 

Your beef then must be personally with God…

Hysterical. No, my “beef” (assuming I have one) is with your endless fucking lying.

…so now might be a good time to cut the middle man (me) and now take God himself on mano y Deo on the premise that it's just possible he may exist.

Fine – for that to happen though you need first to tell us what you mean by “god” in a way that doesn’t change entirely each time you pronounce on it, and then to demonstrate its existence at all without collapsing immediately into fallacy, evasion or dishonesty. You know, the things you’ve never been able to do here no matter how many times you’ve been asked.

You can do this in the privacy of your own life but it's not a god idea for me to be around so I think I'll only answer other peoples posts.

As you’ve never actually answered anything in mine how will I tell the difference?

I don't think your replies are for my benefit but to keep your wee acolytes in order.

I don’t have acolytes.

Goodnight and Good luck.

Luck I don’t need. Absent reason or evidence to justify your claims and assertions though, you on the other hand…

[Walt Zingmatilder]

Vlad,

No, he’s trying (and it seems failing) to explain to you the difference between possible and probable.

Stop lying. What I’ve actually “stated” is that you have no coherent grounds to call the one necessary characteristic of a possible universe creator (ie, the ability to create a universe) “divine” at all. 

Hysterical. No, my “beef” (assuming I have one) is with your endless fucking lying.

Fine – for that to happen though you need first to tell us what you mean by “god” in a way that doesn’t change entirely each time you pronounce on it, and then to demonstrate its existence at all without collapsing immediately into fallacy, evasion or dishonesty. You know, the things you’ve never been able to do here no matter how many times you’ve been asked.

As you’ve never actually answered anything in mine how will I tell the difference?

I don’t have acolytes.

Luck I don’t need. Absent reason or evidence to justify your claims and assertions though, you on the other hand…

Smart aliens there may be.....in this universe.
But we are talking about another universe.
God is smart. He is also alien and any argument that yes The creator is independent for existence from this universe, can intervene up to and including being an avatar but it cant be divine is special pleading.

A more sensible approach was Dawkins public reaction to the possibility that the god of abrahamic theism was a candidate.

He stated he wouldn't worship it. He did not come out with the defensive hysterics you did. He commented on his reaction.

There is no way of excluding God from candidacy.
Just as there is no way of matching up the elements and properties of the divine and what the creators of this universe and then rejecting either from either category.

Stop gaslighting.

[bluehillside Retd.]

Vlad,

You’ve packed a lot of stupid into one post here. For what it’s worth though:

Smart aliens there may be.....in this universe.

Oh dear. There are two speculations here:

1. Smart aliens in another universe that created this one; or

2. Smart aliens in this universe with the ability to simulate the universe “we” seem to occupy. 

But we are talking about another universe.

That’s one speculation, yes – the one with smart aliens in it capable of creating our universe.

God is smart.

Fallacy of reification and baseless assertion.

He is also alien…

“God is an alien” eh? Well, that’s new. As “alien” in this context means a being from another world presumably you’ve now abandoned your previous claims of immateriality, omnipresence etc?   

…and any argument that yes The creator is independent for existence from this universe, can intervene up to and including being an avatar but it cant be divine is special pleading.

And another straw man. You really, really struggle don’t you with the basic concept of burden of proof. No-one says that conceptually at least a “creator” couldn’t do any of these things. What’s actually being said is that the act of universe creation would neither require nor imply any of them. The only “special pleading" here is you piling on all manner of additional features with no rationale for any of them.     

A more sensible approach was Dawkins public reaction to the possibility that the god of abrahamic theism was a candidate.

Anything else with the ability to create (or simulate) a universe would equally be a candidate too though.   

He stated he wouldn't worship it. He did not come out with the defensive hysterics you did. He commented on his reaction.

Posting arguments you can’t or won’t address isn’t “hysterics”, and RD’s reaction to a supposed god is entirely irrelevant in any case – I wouldn’t worship it either.   

There is no way of excluding God from candidacy.

No-one says otherwise. It’s been a while since you tried the negative proof fallacy though.

There’s no way to exclude an orbiting teapot either. So?

Just as there is no way of matching up the elements and properties of the divine and what the creators of this universe and then rejecting either from either category.

Now you’ve collapsed into incoherence again.

Look, I keep explaining this to you and you keep ignoring the explanation but just for once will you at least try to understand it? I know you struggle with the idea of an analogy (“but leprechauns are little green men” etc) but again, just this once try to think will you?

OK, imagine for now that we had no evidence for the existence of horses.

Still with me? OK.

Now imagine that someone speculated on the possibility of horses, and said “if we ever found hoof prints in the sand that would be evidence for horses”.

All good so far? Hanging in there still? Right…

What you’re doing in response is asserting unicorns to exist. Your mistakes here are:

1. To jump straight from a possibility to a probability (fallacy of reification); and

2. To adduce hoof prints as requiring not only creatures with the properties necessary to leave hoof prints (ie, horses), but also with properties not necessary to leave hoof prints – horn, wings, power to heal etc (ie, unicorns).

When this is explained to you your response is variously but “unicorns are horses”, “unicorns are the best candidate for leaving hoof prints”, “there’s no way of excluding unicorns from candidacy” etc.

Now can you see the problem with this?       

Stop gaslighting.

Start thinking.

[Walt Zingmatilder]

Vlad,

You’ve packed a lot of stupid into one post here. For what it’s worth though:

Oh dear. There are two speculations here:

1. Smart aliens in another universe that created this one; or

2. Smart aliens in this universe with the ability to simulate the universe “we” seem to occupy. 

That’s one speculation, yes – the one with smart aliens in it capable of creating our universe.

Fallacy of reification and baseless assertion.

“God is an alien” eh? Well, that’s new. As “alien” in this context means a being from another world presumably you’ve now abandoned your previous claims of immateriality, omnipresence etc?   

And another straw man. You really, really struggle don’t you with the basic concept of burden of proof. No-one says that conceptually at least a “creator” couldn’t do any of these things. What’s actually being said is that the act of universe creation would neither require nor imply any of them. The only “special pleading" here is you piling on all manner of additional features with no rationale for any of them.     

Anything else with the ability to create (or simulate) a universe would equally be a candidate too though.   

Posting arguments you can’t or won’t address isn’t “hysterics”, and RD’s reaction to a supposed god is entirely irrelevant in any case – I wouldn’t worship it either.   

No-one says otherwise. It’s been a while since you tried the negative proof fallacy though.

There’s no way to exclude an orbiting teapot either. So?

Now you’ve collapsed into incoherence again.

Look, I keep explaining this to you and you keep ignoring the explanation but just for once will you at least try to understand it? I know you struggle with the idea of an analogy (“but leprechauns are little green men” etc) but again, just this once try to think will you?

OK, imagine for now that we had no evidence for the existence of horses.

Still with me? OK.

Now imagine that someone speculated on the possibility of horses, and said “if we ever found hoof prints in the sand that would be evidence for horses”.

All good so far? Hanging in there still? Right…

What you’re doing in response is asserting unicorns to exist. Your mistakes here are:

1. To jump straight from a possibility to a probability (fallacy of reification); and

2. To adduce hoof prints as requiring not only creatures with the properties necessary to leave hoof prints (ie, horses), but also with properties not necessary to leave hoof prints – horn, wings, power to heal etc (ie, unicorns).

When this is explained to you your response is variously but “unicorns are horses”, “unicorns are the best candidate for leaving hoof prints”, “there’s no way of excluding unicorns from candidacy” etc.

Now can you see the problem with this?       

Start thinking.

It's obvious that the idea of Smart aliens has distracted you from the establishment that universe creation, intervention in that universe, ability to avatar are centuries old theological ideas and main markers of Divinity. These guys are already divine before you've even got your trousers on.

[Stranger]

But we are talking about another universe.
God is smart. He is also alien and any argument that yes The creator is independent for existence from this universe, can intervene up to and including being an avatar but it cant be divine is special pleading.

Drivel. You are confusing necessity and sufficiency (again). So long as you keep changing your definition of god like this, your posts about it are just meaningless and comical babble.

A more sensible approach was Dawkins public reaction to the possibility that the god of abrahamic theism was a candidate.

He stated he wouldn't worship it. He did not come out with the defensive hysterics you did. He commented on his reaction.

Which is a reasonable response to the idea that the Abrahamic god might exist, it's just your desperate and comical attempts to conflate that with the simulation conjecture that so absurd.

There is no way of excluding God from candidacy.

Yes there is: the argument for SU (such as it is) is explicitly naturalistic.

Just as there is no way of matching up the elements and properties of the divine and what the creators of this universe and then rejecting either from either category.

You just don't do logic, do you? The fact that one thing has some of the characteristic of another, does not mean that an argument for one is an argument for the other.

And you still haven't answered the question (#412) about how much of a universe needs to be simulated and in what detail for you to designate the simulators as gods or 'divine' in your world of nonsense.

Anyway, do carry on making a fool of yourself, it's quite funny watching you systematically dismantling what little credibility your claims about god ever had.

[Walt Zingmatilder]

Drivel. You are confusing necessity and sufficiency (again). So long as you keep changing your definition of god like this, your posts about it are just meaningless and comical babble.

Which is a reasonable response to the idea that the Abrahamic god might exist, it's just your desperate and comical attempts to conflate that with the simulation conjecture that so absurd.

Yes there is: the argument for SU (such as it is) is explicitly naturalistic.

You just don't do logic, do you? The fact that one thing has some of the characteristic of another, does not mean that an argument for one is an argument for the other.

And you still haven't answered the question (#412) about how much of a universe needs to be simulated and in what detail for you to designate the simulators as gods or 'divine' in your world of nonsense.

Anyway, do carry on making a fool of yourself, it's quite funny watching you systematically dismantling what little credibility your claims about god ever had.

Waffle.

[Stranger]

Waffle.

No answers, then. As I said, do carry on systematically dismantling your own claims - it's really rather funny.

[bluehillside Retd.]

Vlad,

It's obvious that the idea of Smart aliens has distracted you from the establishment that universe creation, intervention in that universe, ability to avatar are centuries old theological ideas and main markers of Divinity. These guys are already divine before you've even got your trousers on.

You just couldn't do it could you. I went to the trouble of explaining to you why this is wrongheaded thinking and you just ignored every argument in favour of repeating exactly the same mistake.

Why though? What do you get from your egregious mindlessness?

[Walt Zingmatilder]

Drivel. You are confusing necessity and sufficiency (again). So long as you keep changing your definition of god like this, your posts about it are just meaningless and comical babble.

Which is a reasonable response to the idea that the Abrahamic god might exist, it's just your desperate and comical attempts to conflate that with the simulation conjecture that so absurd.

Yes there is: the argument for SU (such as it is) is explicitly naturalistic.

No it isn't. It cannot be because that constitutes an act of special pleading. PZ Myers points out that this is explicitly not naturalistic but intelligent design.

And you still haven't answered the question (#412) about how much of a universe needs to be simulated and in what detail for you to designate the simulators as gods or 'divine' in your world of nonsense.

Anyway, do carry on making a fool of yourself, it's quite funny watching you systematically dismantling what little credibility your claims about god ever had.

Where your argument fails is the denial that the claims implicit in SU theory are the same that theology has been making for centuries.

Namely a Creator of the universe which is not dependent on the universe it creates for it's existence, A creator who can intervene in it's creation, a creator that can produce an avatar of itself in the universe it creates.

There is no logic that gets you round that. If you think there is an aspect of divinity that is critical to being divine which is missing here you are to declare it.

Now acknowledging these as reasonable means it is unreasonable and special pleading to not allow these abilities in something you do not like.

You accept that the idea of creation is reasonable thus repudiating agreement that the Universe necessarily just IS.

You accept the idea that this creator may be baseline reality.

An diminunition of the divine state of the creator/s is mere anthropomorphisation.

[bluehillside Retd.]

NTtS,

I do sometimes wonder how an actual Christian would respond if s/he read Vlad's efforts here - presumably with head in hands despair at the damage he does to whatever credibility their faith might have.

   

[Stranger]

No it isn't.

Look at the fucking argument. It's all about 'posthuman' civilisations and based on an extrapolation of what we can do now. You cannot use that to justify any kind of god remotely like the various versions of monotheistic god. This is so simple, even you should be able to grasp it.

It cannot be because that constitutes an act of special pleading.

We can clearly add 'special pleading' to the things you know nothing about.

Where your argument fails is the denial that the claims implicit in SU theory are the same that theology has been making for centuries.

Namely a Creator of the universe which is not dependent on the universe it creates for it's existence, A creator who can intervene in it's creation, a creator that can produce an avatar of itself in the universe it creates.

There is no logic that gets you round that. If you think there is an aspect of divinity that is critical to being divine which is missing here you are to declare it.

I don't need logic to get round it because there isn't any logic to get round. You're just confusing necessity with sufficiency. A table is not a lion just because they both have four legs.

[Stranger]

You accept that the idea of creation is reasonable thus repudiating agreement that the Universe necessarily just IS.

I don't, and even if I did, this is just another epic failure to understand logic. It's perfectly possible to find different speculative conjectures to be reasonable. I actually regard a fairly large number of different hypotheses to be basically reasonable - see my Before the Big Bang thread.

And you still haven't answered the question about partial simulations.

[Walt Zingmatilder]

I don't, and even if I did, this is just another epic failure to understand logic. It's perfectly possible to find different speculative conjectures to be reasonable. I actually regard a fairly large number of different hypotheses to be basically reasonable - see my Before the Big Bang thread.

And you still haven't answered the question about partial simulations.

The Neil De Grasse Tyson version of SU theory is that this universe we are in is the simulation.
So is this universe partial?

I'm tempted to think ''how would we know?''.

[Stranger]

So is this universe partial?

I'm tempted to think ''how would we know?''.

Do keep up Vlad. I asked to what extent does the simulation need to be a complete universe for its simulator(s) to be god(s) in your barking mad world of confusion?

[bluehillside Retd.]

Vlad,

I'm tempted to think...

Well, that'd be a start at least.

[jeremyp]

Today's brain bender:
Let's suppose Matthew and Luke are using Mark. They come to Mk's "there you will see him, as he said to you" and re-read the part of the last supper where Jesus says that after he has risen, he will go ahead of the disciples into Galilee. They notice that Jesus is not recorded as saying, "there you will see me". So Mt decides to change Mk's "there you will see him, as he said to you" to "There you will see him. Behold, I have told you". Lk omits the angel's instruction to tell the disciples.

It is questionable whether Mt and Lk would notice this minor inaccuracy in Mk. It is incredible that they realise that there happens to be a perfect context for "as he said" - after "he has risen". So they both rearrange Mk's two phrases, "he has risen. He is not here". Mt inserts "as he said" after, "he has risen", and Lk provides a quote: "...he has risen. Remember how he told you while he was still with you in Galilee: the Son of man must...be raised again"

Seems perfectly reasonable to me that they would try to provide extra context. Of course, Luke actually completely changes the context, saying that Jesus told them he would rise while in Galilee (in the past) whereas Matthew and Mark the man/angel says Jesus will meet them in Galilee.

The angel in Matthew is also lying. He says they will see Jesus in Galilee but they actually bump into him about five minutes later in Jerusalem.

Alternatively, Matthew and Luke writing before Mark, record the angel's actual words concerning the meeting in Galilee. Mark, using both Mt and Lk, has "as he said" in the back of his mind from reading Mt, and having omitted it from its original context in Mt, he inserts it to a less appropriate context, after "there you will see him" instead of Mt's "Behold, I have told you".

Here you are arguing that Mark takes two accounts and produces something slightly less coherent than either. It doesn't seem any more likely than Matthew and Luke trying to fix up Mark's account.

[Spud]

Seems perfectly reasonable to me that they would try to provide extra context.

I think this idea makes sense for a fictitious account, but if it was non-fictional the reader would want to know which of the two contexts for the statement was authentic, since they are contradictory, rather than one being "extra".

Of course, Luke actually completely changes the context, saying that Jesus told them he would rise while in Galilee (in the past) whereas in Matthew and Mark the man/angel says Jesus will meet them in Galilee.

That could also arise if Matthew was one of Luke's sources. Luke could have decided to mention Galilee (as it's in his source), but dismiss it before focusing his own account on Jesus' appearances in Jerusalem? Apparently "anticipated dismissals" (one last mention of something or someone, a sort of goodbye) are common in Luke.

"Remember how he told you, while he was still in Galilee, 7that the Son of Man must be delivered into the hands of sinful men and be crucified and on the third day rise" (Lk 24:6). Luke's account repeats a similar 'fulfillment' statement twice more in chapter 24. It is essentially the same as "as he said" (Mt 28:6).

The angel in Matthew is also lying. He says they will see Jesus in Galilee but they actually bump into him about five minutes later in Jerusalem

I don't think the angel's promise means Jesus couldn't appear earlier, if when the women told the disciples what they had seen, they didn't believe them.

Here you are arguing that Mark takes two accounts and produces something slightly less coherent than either. It doesn't seem any more likely than Matthew and Luke trying to fix up Mark's account.

But by changing Mark's account, Matthew and Luke are not going to get closer to the original conversation unless they had a closer witness to it. So assuming it really took place, did Matthew and Luke, writing later than Mark, have better eyewitnesses? On the other hand, if Mark had only Matthew and Luke as sources for a given part of his account, any changes in context would tend to lead to incoherence.

So how did Mark come to write "as he said", referring to seeing Jesus in Galilee? Mark hasn't recorded Jesus saying they would see him there, but he could have meant, "Jesus is going ahead of you into Galilee, as he said. There you will see him". Given that Matthew and Luke's context for the phrase is perfect, I think Mark's slight inaccuracy betrays him as being the copier/re-writer.

That Luke and Matthew both make "as he said" refer to something else, the same something, suggests that their accounts give the original conversation.

In a similar way, "you are looking for Jesus...he is not here" (Mt and Lk) is more authentic than "you are looking for Jesus...he has risen" (Mk).

[jeremyp]

I think this idea makes sense for a fictitious account, but if it was non-fictional the reader would want to know which of the two contexts for the statement was authentic, since they are contradictory, rather than one being "extra".

Except that Luke and Matthew were almost certainly not collaborating and most of the "readers" would probably have heard only one of those gospels. It's not like the Bible existed as a single object back then.

That could also arise if Matthew was one of Luke's sources. Luke could have decided to mention Galilee (as it's in his source), but dismiss it before focusing his own account on Jesus' appearances in Jerusalem? Apparently "anticipated dismissals" (one last mention of something or someone, a sort of goodbye) are common in Luke.

But you agree then that Matthew and Luke's post resurrection accounts are incompatible.

I don't think the angel's promise means Jesus couldn't appear earlier, if when the women told the disciples what they had seen, they didn't believe them.

So the Angel of the Lord was merely mistaken. Doesn't sound very infallibly godlike.
 

But by changing Mark's account, Matthew and Luke are not going to get closer to the original conversation unless they had a closer witness to it. So assuming it really took place, did Matthew and Luke, writing later than Mark, have better eyewitnesses? On the other hand, if Mark had only Matthew and Luke as sources for a given part of his account, any changes in context would tend to lead to incoherence.

If we take Mark's account literally, he must have made it up, as must Matthew and Luke, unless Mark was lying when he said the women never told anybody.

[Spud]

Except that Luke and Matthew were almost certainly not collaborating

I meant that Mt and Lk contradict Mark.
Luke's statement about Jesus predicting his death and rising again is the same as Matthew saying that Jesus had risen, as he said. Luke may have expanded Mt.

and most of the "readers" would probably have heard only one of those gospels.

Good point.

[Spud]

But you agree then that Matthew and Luke's post resurrection accounts are incompatible.

I agree that they are different, after the departure of the women, yes. All four gospels say that the women left the tomb. 

[Spud]

So the Angel of the Lord was merely mistaken. Doesn't sound very infallibly godlike.
 If we take Mark's account literally, he must have made it up, as must Matthew and Luke, unless Mark was lying when he said the women never told anybody.

The women might have said nothing to anyone while on route to the disciples.