Ah, the parsing of logic. We have a definite problem here, Dio. Remember “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence”? If you choose to define “miracle” as “something inherently impossible that it is claimed has happened,” then you will get unanimous consent, from Friar Ted to Der Trihs, that you’re right.
Unfortunately, that’s not what Christian theology means by “miracle,” and you damn well ought to know it. A miracle is a highly improbable event that it is claimed happened as a sign of some attribute of God, e.g., the feeding of the 5000 as his providence and as foretaste of the Eucharist and the supposed Heavenly Banquet. I’ve noted before that the writers are at pains never to actually say that Jesus miraculously multiplied the loaves and fishes, only that, as he took and blessed five loaves and two fish, enough food became present for 5000 to eat their fill. That he may have used the example of the boy’s generosity to shame people in the crowd who had in fact brought food to share, is not ruled out by the Bible text. As we both know, there is a lot of material in the Scriptures that constitutes “highly improbable,” and I don’t believe anyone is under obligation to take the vast majority of it with a straight face. In fact, probably more than a little of it is rabbinic haggadah or the early-Christian equivalent, never intended to be taken literally.
And “evidence” is not confined to Scripture. Joan of Arc, Lourdes, personal testimonies by a wide range of people, myself among them… they’re “evidence.” What degree of credulity or skepticism you bring to their evaluation is necessarily an individual judgment, about which, IMO, de gustibus non est disputandum. But the claim that “there is no evidence” is at best handwaving. You may consider the evidence shitful, on a par with flying-saucer accounts. That’s your privilege. You may feel that there is absolutely no such thing as predictive prophecy (and you may be right) – meaning that every instance of such reported in Scripture was back-written after the fact, attributing it to Jesus or an apostle or prophet some decades in the writer’s past. Again, your privilege. However, there’s a bit of self-serving fraudulent analysis in that – circular reasoning: “Every instance of predictive prophecy in Scripture was written after the fact and attributed back to a prophet. We know this because of the dates those books were written. But one of the main reasons for dating those books as we do is that they contain clear predictions of things that had not yet happened as of the time they were supposed to be describing, and had to be written after the fact. We’re certain of this last statement because predictive prophecy does not exist.”
That’s pretty disingenuous reasoning, Polycarp. A miracle is by definition an extraordinary claim, for which YOU, not your adversaries, need to supply extraordinary evidence. Specifically, YOU are required to date those books in way beyond dispute before you can reasonably claim them to pre-date the miracles they predict. Until you can do so, it is only reasonable that people remain skeptical about the events described.
Please don’t argue poorly and then place the blame for impoverished argumentation on your adversaries’ “self-serving fraudulent analysis” which is a fair description of your process here.
Fair enough. It is, again, a limitation of our language, though.
It’s still true that all “events” are subsets of it, the universe, which had no cause. And that we find it useful to look at chains of events and speak of causes and effects, but that it isn’t intrinsically defensible to treat causality as the reason something exists and/or happens and/or acts as it does.
Duffer wants badchad damned. You defend duffer and call me a jerk for decrying that, acting as if wanting someone not to be saved is just a minor, teensy little failing. That oh, he’s just a tiny bit short of his Christ-like goal.
He’s short of his Christ-like goal like I’m short of being Muhammed Ali.
No, Polycarp is right. If you take a term used by theistic people {“God”, “prayer”, “miracle”, etc} and define it as “something that cannot be explained in terms of real things that actually exist in this world”, you can then address every subsequent explanation or elaboration by theistic people in one of two ways:
• What you’re describing doesn’t exist because you can’t corroborate it with any evidence in the real world
• What you’re describing exists, which means it’s an ordinary mundane process and not an indicator of <theist term goes here>.
That’s called begging the question. “<Theistic term> is unreal. Unreal things aren’t real. Therefore <theistic term> doesn’t exist because it isn’t real.”
You know, if somebody had a place where they kept track of the goofy shit that goes on around here, that poly/wallmart heir fiasco would seem to be a good addition…
Different approaches are useful in different circumstances. I find causality useful more often than not, but that doesn’t mean it is not useful to suspend that illusion for the times and situations where it introduces too much distortion or misapprehension of reality.
Just as on a moment-to-moment basis I find it useful to think of “self” in terms of my individual self only, and to see the rest of my species, and the rest of universe, as “context” or “other”, even though that’s also an illusory oversimplificaton that occasionally distorts rather than simplifies.
I’m not averse to relocating, but do we pack up our posts and stick them in the United Van and take them with us, or will a couple links in the first few posts suffice?
I like that, too…it’s like two guys getting ready to brawl in a parking lot, and one of them putting his jacket back on and saying “why don’t we go inside, sit down with a beer, and settle this like men?”
You mistake me, PRR. Diogenes and I agree on much more than we differ on. The six-day Universe, Noah’s Flood, the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, the origins of the Gospels and the Pastoral Letters… these are all issues on which we’re in pretty close agreement.
What I called him on is waving away everything that purports to be evidence. Yes, they’re extraordinary claims. This means they need extraordinary proof. Matthew’s BS about zombies on the first Good Friday is haggadic if it’s anything but total garbage (and knowing Matthew’s propensity to tie everything to the Tanakh as prophecy even if he has to twist stuff out of all meaning, haggadic is the way to bet).
But “evidence” is by definition items of data. A flying saucer sighting, an encounter with a cryptozoid, an apparition of the Virgin Mary – they’re evidence. Of what, is quite a different question. Perhaps only of the credulity of the observer. But evidence, suitable for examination and if appropriate debunking.
That was my point. Circular reasoning is invalid no matter who does it and in pursuit of what. You don’t get to assume that every incident in Scripture, every supposed religious experience, is fictional, delusory, etc., and then dismiss them because they obviously are, simply because you assume so.
As for the Walmart heir – first, that was supposed to be metaphor rather than a claim of the “real” Second Coming – that I was convinced he would have the same sort of impact, based on who he apparently was in his early teens – and second, it’s obvious that I was way off base for thinking even that, based on the absence of any evidence of him doing anything but whatever billionaire-heir young men do with their copious free time.
