Of course, the counter argument here is “it’s not much of a miracle if it happens all the time” - but of course, that isn’t evidence or proof either.
I’m encouraged that you recognize that. I will try not to be condesending to you either. I hope then you’ll be able to understand what else I’m going to comment on that I think you’re getting wrong.
You got it so wrong as to claim I was saying exactly what I explicitly denied. And your entire post was based on that. Why should I comment on any of it?
But, you’re still misunderstanding evidence as well…
[QUOTE=Meatros]
Change ice ants to aliens, first.
[/QUOTE]
You’re confusing the event with the evidence for the event. You are using you’re pre-defined belief in the likely-hood of an event to decide whether evidence has any evidenciary value. The event in question doesn’t color the evidence unless you have made up your mind before you view the evidence.
[QUOTE=Meatos]
By the same token, I have the possibility of being connected to the event of Kim Jung Il controlling the weather. By your standards, I’d just have to talk to someone who said they witnessed it.
[/QUOTE]
And here, you’re changing the evidence as given to something else and thinking what? that you’re keeping it the same?
Let me give an example of what I’m speaking of…
The event itself doesn’t have a bearing on the evidence for it. Your call to change ice-ants to aliens doesn’t bear on the evidence in that you gave exactly the same evidence as for ice-ants. i.e. that you and Dio both just decided on those examples, without having any claims for them previous. (and since Dio is unable to participate, I’m not going to comment on his claims except as it concerns Meatros, and to explain at the end, why I wasn’t planning on commenting on Dio’s claims any more any way.)
The evidence was, in the first case: Just decided something had happened.
The evidence was, in the second case: Someone told me something had happened.
Whether the event in question is Kim Jung Il controlling weather… who resurrected Jesus… or a car accident 20 blocks away… does not matter. Whether you find the event in question more credible does not have a bearing on the evidence presented for it. You thought aliens was more credible, well a car accident is even more credible
Imagine we were walking on 4th street and you turn to me and say, I just realized there was a car accident on 24th street. Now…
Imagine we were walking on 4th street, and you get a phone call, and then tell me your brother is on 24th street and says there is a car accident there.
Which is the better evidence? Well guess what; it’s better evidence no matter what the event in question might be.
You turn to me and say you just realized Kim Jung Il is controlling the weather. Or.
You turn to me and say your brother called from Korea to say he’s watching Kim Jung Il controlling the weather.
Whether I believe the claim or not has no bearing on which is the better evidence.
And the claims that they are the same evidence, shows a complete lack of understanding of what constitutes evidence. (and it was obviously based on a pre-conceived notion of what events are more likely, since you asked for a change to equivalent evidence but with an event you seemed to think was more likely,)
So now, I am in the position of having to question every post you make based on your proven record of not reading or understanding an argument and not understanding what is evidence. I even find myself having to wonder if your entire belief system is based on those mistakes. I find myself wondering if I should encourage you to rethink your entire belief system with new understanding and making sure to read the actual claims. (It’s a good practice. I do it regularly myself.)
I am entirely convinced of it in Dio’s case, and that’s why I was going to be saying I can entirely dismiss anything he says at this point. A proven track record of not understanding logic or evidence.
You at least have shown an ability to recognize a mistake and try to correct it. I hope that continues.
No, since his evidence for an event happening is nothing… **anything **is **infinitely **better. Well, I guess his evidence isn’t quite nothing. “I imagined it happened in my mind 1900 years disconnected from the event with no other claim that it ever happened prior,” is… no, that’s still nothing. That’s not presenting evidence for magic, that’s magic masquerading as evidence.
We’ve covered a lot of ground and what I misread/interpreted was a portion of that.
I’m not sure how you got this - to be honest. What I was doing was exchanging explanations of the evidence. In this I’m presupposing that the Gospels should be taken somewhat historically. So I’m granting some of that, but even this is too much from a rational point of view, since if we are looking at it we have to determine whether or not it’s rational to view these documents as credible.
Skipping that step, which is what I’m doing in the scenario you quoted, I’m examining explanations. It seems to me that aliens are more plausible given a number of factors, one being what we’ve experienced.
You are attempting to introduce magic/supernatural into the equation on equal ground of the natural and you have no provided any reason to do so.
I’m thinking that the reasons behind accepting the one (the resurrection) can be attributed to the other Kim Jung Il, since as far as I can tell, the credibility of the resurrection hangs on the NT.
So, we’ve got ‘accounts’ of ‘events’. Why believe one and not the other?
That’s the question. You said the people back then were in a position to know that the NT was accurate (or at least that the resurrection happened). I fail to see why. Further, the people who claim that Kim Jung Il controls the weather seem to be in a comparable position - why aren’t they, according to you?
To be fair, my ‘Jesus was raised by aliens’ thing isn’t original to me. My changing of ‘ice ants’ to ‘aliens’ was because I wanted to avoid the semantic difficulties with ‘ice ants’.
In any event, what we are discussing is not ‘evidence’ - it is the explanation of a presupposed event - the resurrection of Jesus.
We don’t have an empirical evidence that Jesus was resurrected. What we have are third hand accounts that Jesus rose from the dead.
So, what we have is, essentially, terrible evidence for a supposed event.
Now, what we are all talking about, as I said, is the explanation of a presupposed event, of which, we only have terrible evidence for it.
Do you agree?
Now then, ‘no’ I didn’t ‘just decide’ on the first case. I took the presupposition of a resurrection and then made an inference to the best explanation given that it actually occurred.
So I’ve put forth one explanation.
You’ve put forth another explanation.
It doesn’t matter how those explanations came about - I could have come up with it in a dream, the probability of that explanation being true does not depend on how it came about.
This seems like a non sequitur to me.
?
I’m not entirely sure how you are using credibility in this context. The probability of an explanation does bear on whether or not it is rational to accept it.
Let’s go through this:
In the car accident - you have no actual empirical evidence in either case. You have an anecdotal account from your brother that this happened.
Nothing is extraordinary about an accident - they occur all the time. Your brother, presumably, is not a liar. You can tentatively accept what he states because you can follow up and see the accident on the news or go to the site itself. If you race, you can probably still see the aftermath of the accident.
In either case, to be fully confident of the accident, you’d have to go and empirically witness it yourself.
You probably wouldn’t, because the event wouldn’t effect you that much. Now, if you add that someone you love was in that accident - that you have some skin in that game, so-to-speak, and now your brother’s word is simply not good enough, is it? You’d have to see it yourself.
Now, is this ‘intuition about an accident’ comparable to my explanation of the resurrection of Jesus?
Not at all - I’m not saying that I got a psychic twinkling that Jesus was resurrected by aliens. To suggest such is a strawman.
What I’m saying is that when I take the presupposition that Jesus rose from the dead and I try to explain it, I come up with a few scenarios. One of which is aliens. This is a difference that you are not seeing.
When scientists try to explain a phenomenon they do not reject it simply because it came to them instead of hearing about it from someone else.
The ENTIRE point of scientific theories is to come up with a theory that explains the evidence. Darwin didn’t reject the theory of evolution because it simply came to him. He recognized that the theory of evolution explained the diversity of species.
By the same token, I’m attempting to explain an event.
Um…Why is that? Both the Kim Jung Il claims and the claims of the NT are anecdotal evidence.
Shoot, how do we know that ‘Jesus was resurrected’ didn’t just ‘come to Peter’ who then spread it to the other disciples?
I’m starting to think that you have unintentionally misinterpreted my position as well.
You seem to think that explaining something is a bad thing or a worse thing than someone anecdotal telling you their explanation of that something!
Say someone sees a light in the sky and comes to you and says that they have just seen a UFO.
You think that it’s more likely that they saw a jet plane.
According to your reasoning outlined in this post, the person who came to you with their explanation has the superior position regardless of their explanation.
You are attempting to poison the well here - either you wish to defend your belief or you don’t. The above gives you an excuse to bow out without answering my question as to whether your entire case here is that it’s marginally better to believe in the resurrection by God than it is to believe the resurrection by aliens.
Again, if that’s your position, fine, I can grant that - but to go from that to saying it’s reasonable to believe in the resurrection? That’s absurd.
I’m wondering if you will admit to the strawman you’ve committed.
You do realize that I could claim the same thing for the NT “evidence”, right?
That Peter came up with Christ resurrecting and other people believed him…
There is no evidence that the resurrection happened. There is evidence that people believed a resurrection happened. Do you recognize that these two things are not the same?
If so, then, once again, your position - that God resurrected Jesus - is no better evidenced than Dio’s Ice Ant claim.
Neither has evidence in favor of them.
You do not have my brother telling you that Christ was resurrected. You have Paul saying that he had an experience which informed him that Christ was resurrected (maybe I had an experience that informed me that the car had an accident?).
You’ve confused evidence for Jesus’s resurrection with evidence for belief in Jesus’s resurrection.
I’ve been thinking about this, ch4rl3s, and you are essentially elevating third hand accounts above empirical evidence.
We have empirical evidence that when people die, they stay dead. We have empirical evidence that people experience hallucination. That memories of events change, that confabulations occur, that people’s accounts of things are not accurate.
Our law courts put more weight on empirical evidence (say DNA evidence) than it does on eye witness testimony.
Yet, according to you, this should not be the case. The eye witness testimony should take precedence over the empirical evidence.
Even this is being incredibly charitable, since we do not have any eye witness accounts of the resurrection.
Basically, were we to go on your model, we could not discount the urban legend because of what the urban legend purports to describe. So, the disappearing hitchhiker cannot be discounted because it contains the supernatural. It cannot be discounted because the source is anonymous.
On what grounds can you discount the disappearing hitchhiker tale?
Any?
Getting back to the accident:
Suppose my brother called me and said that he saw an alien space ship.
I tell you about it. Now, we have one explanation:
- My brother actually saw an alien space ship.
Were I to throw out another explanation (say he mistakenly took the planet Mars for an alien space craft) that just came into my head, you would say that this had less evidence than the alien space craft, because you have some evidence of the alien space craft (my brother’s account).
Would you say the above is accurate?
If not, then why not?
I might have missed it ch4rl3s, but do you believe that Vespasian cured a blind man with his own spit?
If not, on what criteria are you objecting to it?
The miracle is attested to by witnesses and accepted by historians of the time.
I doubt it was by historians of that time. First of all, why did the Mother of Jesus and the other women go to the grave to anoint the body? They must not have believed that Jesus would ressurect. Then one account has Mary Magdeline( who knew him quite well) thinking it was the gardener,until he spoke. Others who must have known him, walked with him for a long way and didn’t recognize him until he broke bread,now this is strange because only the 12 were with him at the last Supper, so they wouldn’t have seen him breaking bread.
Peter was told by the women that Jesus had ressurected and then he ran to the grave and saw the burial cloths and the head cloth folded in another place. He seemed surprised, so must not have expected a ressurection, even though Jesus was said to have told them many times that he would ressurect in 3 days(which was really only about 36 hours).
It is very possible that Jesus never really died and was comatose for awhile, people in those days thought he was dead. There were people who were called dead in the early years and even in the(I believe) it was in the 18 hundreds where people were buried alive then learned they were not dead after all, and after that the mortition drained the blood to make sure they were really dead. Now death is stated when there is no brain activity or other functions because of our technology.
There were no newspapers etc. in those days so word spread by word of mouth and the story could well have been embellished by each person who was told it.
To me it would have meant more If Jesus lived for many centuries and was incapable of death,then I think more people would have been taught and could believe in him. Things even now days in a court of law are not taken as evidence of an eye witness so much, because the memory peole have,it all depends a lot on the person telling the story.
I think you misunderstand - I was referring to the Historians who wrote about Vespasian’s miracle, not Jesus. There were two Historians (that I’ve read) that wrote about Vespasian’s miracles. I post my sources here.
Jesus does not have similar witnesses. In fact, what we have are anonymous sources decades after the fact.
I don’t profess to know what actually happened with regard to Jesus. I think the various natural theories account for the stories better than the supernatural explanation.
I don’t think there is enough evidence to establish that Jesus was buried in a separate grave, for example. This story comes a few decades after the fact AND the story that contains it (mark) makes special mention to say that the only witnesses didn’t tell anyone. Which seems to be a cover story to explain to the people at the time (65AD) why they hadn’t heard the empty tomb story before.
Even supposing that Jesus was buried in a tomb, I find Jeffrey J Lowder’s explanation (in “The Empty Tomb”) more plausible. Joseph of Arimethea, being an observant Jew, buries Jesus at sunset, then moves his body elsewhere the next day. The women find the tomb empty and eventually tell the scattered disciples, who then come to believe that Jesus was raised.
The supposition that Jesus was buried is fraught with difficulties. Why Jesus and not Jesus and the two thieves? Shoot, why were the thieves crucified? Crucifixion was the punishment for treason.
Why would Joseph bury Jesus in his family plot - those things weren’t cheap. Why would he keep them there. Why would the disciples know where the plot was? These are just a few of the problems that spring to mind when I read the story.
Like you i think there are a lot of holes in the ressurection story. I apologize for my misunderstanding of Vespasian’s ressurection story. I must say I hadn’t ever heard of him before,and I have heard of other ressurection stories in various Mythology storys such as that of Osiris.
I can understand why thousands of years ago people could think some one ressurected if they were comatose, and truly believed the person was dead, then if they came to they thought he or she ressurected from the dead;not having the technology that we have today.
Sorry for the lateness of this reply.
Let’s get one thing perfectly straight here.
[QUOTE=Diogenes the Cynic]
[QUOTE=Megas P.]
Meatros and Diogenes, as we are discussing whether Christ and not any hypothetical person resurrected or not I think you will both agree that magic and giant ice ants from Pluto come as a second to God as far as how Christ was resurrected.
[/QUOTE]
Not at all. They are all equally plausible and have exactly the same amount of evidence.
[/QUOTE]
THAT is the claim you’ve been defending from the start. That is why I’ve been stressing what is and isn’t evidence. It’s a ludicrous claim.
Let’s get another thing clear. I wasn’t willing to really discuss explanations until you were clear on evidence, because there’s no point moving to explanations if you don’t know what to back them up with.
And apparently, you moved from defending his claim of evidence, to admitting it wasn’t the same, to thinking you were presenting an explanation without realizing you were doing it. Are you claiming you were presenting an explanation all along? (While defending his claim of evidence?)
So. You want to discuss an explanation? I went back over ever word you said to see if you had presented an explanation… to see if I might need to apologize. Here’s what I found.
[QUOTE=Meatros]
Until you show that the supernatural is probable (as opposed to simply logically possible - which is all that Craig disingenuously argues), even the most unlikely naturalistic theory is more likely that the supernatural.
[/QUOTE]
Well, then, ice ants being a naturalistic theory, there was no need to move to aliens or future humans. But, that comment was a response to Calculon, and I admit, I missed that conversation the first time through. But, wouldn’t your “naturalistic” theory have to be probable as well? I don’t buy this as any type of explanation of how aliens could have done it.
[QUOTE=Meatros]
The question remains, what makes it more likely that Jesus was resurrected by God as opposed to aliens? We can throw the ice ants out, if you wish.
[/QUOTE]
You could say this is asking about explanations. It only provides one if an explanation is simply saying, “hmmm. I think aliens could have done it.” I don’t accept that as an explanation. I will explain why shortly.
Ah. This is the first statement that can be said to contain explanation, (and you repeated it in another post in reply to someone else)… Followed by…
[QUOTE=Trinopus]
I agree that Diogenes the Cynic would be committing a lazy argument if it consisted of nothing other than “it’s impossible because it’s impossible.” But we know too much about human physiology to accept a human body dying, then coming back to life. God would have to do immense, detailed repair to denatured proteins, coagulated blood, etc. It just requires too many concessions to reality as we know it. The elephant on the roof is vastly easier to believe!
[/QUOTE]
You then quote me directly and replied…
Ok. You think you’ve supplied an explanation that aliens could have done it with superior technology… but then you support an opposing claim that human physiology suggests that even aliens wouldn’t be able to do it.
Do you really want to be the guy that supports two opposing claims at the same time?
There is no way I will accept your claim of superior technology when you then go on to support the claim that it’s not possible… So, no explanation yet.
(A digression I want to address)
[QUOTE=ch4rl3s]
What source do you have for Osiris of someone who was taught by a disciple of Osiris before his death, who could have seen his empty tomb? What? Nothing even possible?
[/QUOTE]
[QUOTE=Meatros]
I’m sorry, but why does the miracle have to include a resurrection/empty tomb/crucifixion in order for you to believe it??
[/QUOTE]
[QUOTE=Trinopus]
Meatros suggested you were doing the same thing, by demanding I show you the empty tomb whence Osiris arose.
[/QUOTE]
Since people were comparing the two stories, I assumed they knew the parallels. Osiris was buried and dug up, (leaving an empty tomb,) as well as thrown in the Nile, etc.)
[QUOTE=Meatros]
For clarity, is your position:
The Gospels are marginally more credible than Dio’s position on ice ants?
[/QUOTE]
So, this could be the point at which we switch to explanation. I haven’t given any explanations yet, because, before this I hadn’t got any concession on the ludicrous stance that ice ants and aliens had the same evidence as God for resurrecting Jesus. At the point at which you concede they don’t have the same evidence is the point at which I can think you’re wanting to speak of explanations. You haven’t supplied one though.
What constitutes an explanation in this case? Let’s start with four important factors. in no particular order.
It should explain the available facts.
It should give opportunity to commit the act.
It should provide a means to commit the act.
It should provide a possible motive for committing the act.
(The last three are the classic means, motive, opportunity of criminology and detective stories.)
Does your “explanation” explain the available facts? The fact that there are early stories that God did this, but none that says aliens did? The fact that their are early churches to God and Jesus as the Christ, but none to Aliens. You’ve said nothing to explain this.
Does it give an opportunity? Well, you did say “through technology that dwarfs are own…” That in no way explains how they got here. It in no way explains that space travel is probable or practicle. But, I’m willing to stretch and say you’ve attempted this one.
Does it give a means? How did they resurrect Jesus? I can’t give you this one as previously stated, you supported the opposing claim that aliens wouldn’t be able to do this. So, your “explanation” has to reject aliens as a theory.
Does it give a motive? You have said not one word on why aliens would come who knows how many light years to resurrect one man. Though you mentioned to someone else the importance of a motive for God.
[QUOTE=Meatros]
Well, one could suppose that magic exists and Jesus was magically resurrected. Conversely would could suppose God exists, yet would have no interest in resurrecting Jesus.
So it’s not simply a matter of whether God exists or not.
[/QUOTE]
So, it’s not simply a matter of whether aliens exist or not. What motive did you suggest? None.
I proclaim your explanation extremely lacking, and actually worse, supports the claim that aliens wouldn’t have been able to do it even if they could get here.
[QUOTE=Meatros]
When scientists try to explain a phenomenon they do not reject it simply because it came to them instead of hearing about it from someone else.
The ENTIRE point of scientific theories is to come up with a theory that explains the evidence.
[/QUOTE]
You haven’t explained the evidence. You haven’t even provided an explanation.
Let me explain something. The **one thing **a scientist trying to explain a phenomena would not do, is come up with an alternate theory to someone else… and then leave it at that. They would look for support for their alternate theory. Now, if someone was only trying to discredit another theory, and wasn’t looking to explain, they might do just that. The other thing that scientists know, is that an “explanation” isn’t one unless it deals with all the avaiable facts, (such as evidence for a competing claim,) and explains how it’s accomplished,.
I haven’t started with an explanation yet.
You said several times that believing one set of evidence should mean we believe other sets, like Vespasian’s miracles, or bigfoot. (Again, muddying the waters over whether we were talking evidence or explanation.) My answer is that you take the entire set of circumstances as well as the evidence. I may believe one person and not another if they bring me the same evidence.
You wanted to know if I believed the Vespasian miracle accounts? I saw the quotes you provided from Tacitus and Suetonius… and I’m inclined to believe those events might have happened… why?
Suetonius said Vespasian was reluctant… the infirm men not only invoked the god Serapis, but also dictated how the miracle was to be accomplished… Vespasian’s friends then prevailed on him to do it.
Looks to me like there is a good chance his friends set the whole thing up, to boost his reputation, with mention of Serapis and the method of cure to be the clues that these were the shills they had hired.
Do I believe the bigfoot accounts? Based on what I’ve seen, I think there are furred creatures in the woods, some of which get up to 7 feet tall… Some of them look like this. Some look like this. etc… The evidence points to it.
ok, so, what about future humans as an explanation? Well, I’ve heard one version, there was a whole book on it. How about if I present a synopsis of the explanation rather than what you did, which was simply suggest they could have done it.
Technology advances, we become able to control all the forces of nature, resurrect people, even merge all human minds into one conciousness. (possibly in a computer.) evolve to a utopian society. develop time travel, want to bring previous humans into that society… at least the ones not likely to mess it up. concoct a plan. which we call Christianity.
How about God as a natural explanation? like the future humans theory, developed in his own reality, control all forces of nature, merge all minds in one consciousness, etc. concoct a plan to bring other minds into fellowship… to which end he creates another lesser universe that he controls, etc.
A few more things I wanted to say…
To expand on this:
This is similar to the conversation I had with begbert2 in another thread. The one I linked to, but Meatros didn’t understand, but didn’t bother to read to try to understand…
my conjecture was that God exists in his own fully formed reality, with his own limitations based on physics in that reality; though, not many, having a very good grasp of those laws. Still awe inspiring power, though. And creates a subordinate universe.
Begbert2('s)* claim boiled down to saying that was equivalent to God appearing in a universe the size of a closet, and had to create our universe to get out of his closet and have friends to play with.
Saying God has his own fully formed reality with it’s own rules is not the same as saying a closet just appeared out of nothing with him in it.
Another thing.
“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” Arthur C. Clarke.
That applies to God knowing the rules of our universe, since he created it. And it applies to Aliens with advanced Technology. Your alien/future human theories are still magic unless you can show the tech is plausible.
[QUOTE=Meatros]
(From here):
[/QUOTE]
Why do all skeptics seem to assume that if you’re going from point A to point B, you must be trying to get there in the shortest trip possible without any stops in between? The assumption that they only wanted to get to point B isn’t supported from the bible. However, the claim is made often that they were traveling to towns round about for the purpose of preaching. In which case it makes sense to take a circular path where you eventually end up at point B. That claim is made in Mark 6.
Dude, this is from over 20 days ago. I’m not even sure I have the energy to keep on discussing this with you.
That said, I’m going to try to make clear a few things:
I changed the ice ants thing because I envisioned certain defeaters. I think I remember writing this, but it’s been so long I can’t recall.
“Ice” and “Ants” are both terms for things, one of which being solely found on Earth (ants, that we know about). To suggest that they also live on Pluto would go against the definition of the thing. One could argue that definitionally the term makes no sense. This is what I was trying to avoid.
That is why I changed it, or attempted to.
I don’t remember what you are talking about and your quotes don’t help. I don’t know why I would say that it would be impossible for aliens to bring someone back to life because of human physiology. The only thing I can think is that I must have made some qualifiers, since we can bring people back to life now.
Personally speaking, I think that both ‘aliens’ and ‘God resurrected Jesus’ are terrible explanations. I think that ‘God resurrected Jesus’ is worse, since it relies on magic. It is on par with ‘Merlin resurrected Jesus’.
The only difference is that no one wrote a Gospel about Merlin resurrecting Jesus.
That doesn’t seem very big to me.
People attribute lights in the sky as alien space craft and some even say that those space craft abduct people.
They write books about it.
Their accounts are first hand accounts, yet you probably don’t believe those and they are better attested than the accounts of Jesus’s resurrection!
That’s fine, I was asking why the specific miracle was relevant, it isn’t.
Perhaps if I was making the claim that Christians took the idea of resurrection from Osiris it would be relevant.
The only evidence you speak of is evidence of what people believed, not necessarily evidence of the actual evident. You have third hand accounts - what amounts to urban legends.
So if this is it, then your explanation is only marginally better than Dios. It is not reasonable to accept.
I think you’ve wasted my time if this is all you were arguing for, for the past months.
As to an explanation, I think I recall having provided one - a realistic one - but since this thread is so old, I’m not sure if it was here or elsewhere. I simply reject the historicity of the Gospels. They are little more than urban legends. I could swear that I even brought up “The Bunny Man” urban legend in this thread - but it could have been a different one.
If I were to accept third hand accounts of an event to substantiate that event, then I would have to accept other miraculous events - events we have reason to believe are completely natural (such as abductions being the result of sleep paralysis). Further, other ancient miracles were witnessed by more credible sources than the Gospels, such as the miracles of Vespasian.
Shoot, the accounts of vampires are more credible than those of the Gospels, since we can trace the families that were thought to be vampires. In Alan Dundes’ collection of essays he mentions accounts as recent at the early 1900’s.
Should we accept the explanation that families perished because of a vampire, since people believe this? They even had a sort of empirical evidence to support such beliefs (they’d dig up corpses, find blood on the mouth, among other things).
Do you believe in vampires? Or do you require more evidence than simply someone’s word?
You are simply confusing the existence of early Christian beliefs with the historicity of those beliefs. Early Christians believed the resurrection happened because of what other people said. This is akin to my mother believing chain emails about Bill Gates giving away money.
This is not evidence to support the account itself. You are presupposing that the tomb was empty.
I’m not willing to wait another month between posts where you attempt to cobble together a narrative that explains the resurrection.
I’m not reading the rest - it’s just been too long and I don’t think we are speaking on the same wavelength. We can agree to disagree. I’ll look forward to reading your response around Thanksgiving.
There are a couple things here that are indicitive of the entire conversation we’ve been having.
Laying aside the problems you mention with this, (sleep paralysis,) and just simply assuming we could take these accounts at face value… Does it make for an actual explanation? What does evidence of alien abduction actually provide in the way of explanation for the resurrection of Jesus? i.e. have you yet provided an explanation? (in order to be able to suggest these are somewhat equivalent,)
Of the criteria that should exist for an explanation.
- fit the facts.
- opportunity. (can aliens get here?)
- motive.
- means.
Which does it suggest? #2 means. and one not mentioned: that aliens exist.
Aliens exist was already suggested by “aliens could have done it.”
Aliens could get here, I already admitted you had made a lame attempt to cover with “superior technology,” and I moved on. Neither of these were in question, and it doesn’t add anything to the supposed explanation.
It shows that you still have no idea what constitutes an explanation. In that you have not provided one. You claimed to be speaking of explanaions, and you didn’t provide one. That is clearly not understanding the concept.
You don’t know why you would have said this, think you must have made qualifiers, but you can’t be bothered to check. Well, you didn’t. In fact, you also said this.
[QUOTE=Meatros]
[QUOTE=CurtC]
To me, the ice ants explanation is quite a bit more believable that God, because it doesn’t depend on magic.
[/QUOTE]
I think the ice ants would require magic - I can’t remember the original formulation. I initially modified Dio’s position and suggested aliens with advanced technology - no magic required. So the aliens position would be more believable because of what you suggest.
Even time travelers from the future are more probable - I do not believe either aliens or time travelers are known to be physically impossible, whereas even the theists admit that a resurrection is.
[/QUOTE]
Which is one of the most ludicrous statements I’ve heard in a long time. Let’s look closely at the implications of your statement.
Aliens or time travellers could bring someone back to life, and this would be a natural explanation. But, if there is a God who created the universe, he would **have no way of knowing of the purely natural way to bring someone back to life **built into his universe and would have to do it another way.
Excuse me, but… If it’s possible naturally, then it’s possible naturally, and God would not be prevented from doing it naturally. If you are going to propose a “natural” explanation, then you are simply providing one more way a creator being could use, and not making a point against him.
Yes, I know. We are presupposing for the purposes of discussion. We presuppose it to propose aliens as an explanation.
[QUOTE=Meatros]
In any event, what we are discussing is not ‘evidence’ - it is the explanation of a presupposed event - the resurrection of Jesus.
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We have to presuppose it in order to discuss, (first,) what has more evidence, ice ants or God. Then when that became an untenable position, we had to presuppose it to discuss evidence for aliens or God. Then, when that became an untenable position, we had to presuppose it to discuss what was a better explanation, aliens or God. Then when that became an untenable position, you make what is the equivalent of a losing child taking his ball and going home. You attack the presupposition. Without it, there would be no discussion. There would have been no need to propose aliens as an explanation at all. Your entire previous argument, (as untenable as it was,) becomes so much noise in the wind. There was no reason for your arguments at all without this presupposition.
You were the one who needed the presupposition.
This also is a clear theme in your discussion. That you don’t understand something, but can’t be bothered to read what was provided, don’t remember what you yourself said, but can’t be bothered to check what you actually said. Where as, I, being sure I remembered what you said, reread your entire history in this thread to make sure I got it right.
You can’t be bothered to check why you supported opposing things, you simply convince yourself your statements must have made sense.
You can’t be bothered to supply evidence when you’re claiming it. You switch to claiming explanation, but still can’t be bothered to supply one.
It’s not even the main point, but you can’t be bothered to understand what I was actually saying.
I provided a comment for your question about Vespasian, but you couldn’t be bothered to read it before making your own comment.
On and on and on, you just can’t be bothered to get it right, My suggestion, if you can’t be bothered to understand what constitutes evidence, or an explanation, or why you presupposed something in the first place, or can’t be bothered to try to understand your opponent’s argument, or your own, or to know why you said something… but you’re thinking of posting anyway… just don’t bother.
If you can’t be bothered to do any of that, your conclusions can’t be trusted. And that was my main point. It was about the process of coming to conclusions and examining cases. I haven’t explained why I accept certain arguments and reject others because there is no point if you can’t understand how it’s done.
You claim evidence is the same when it isn’t. You claim you weren’t doing that but were making an equivalent explanation when you don’t provide an explanation. My case isn’t “only marginally” better when you **don’t have an explanation **yet. When you’re shown you don’t have an explanation, you want to take the ball and go home by questioning the presupposition… The one you needed in the first place.
It’s a constant.
A: what you said didn’t make sense.
B: I didn’t mean that, I meant this.
A: that doesn’t make sense either.
B: I didn’t mean this, I meant the other thing.
You convince yourself that you were always speaking about what you now think your argument is, when a simple check could show you you were supporting something else.
A five year old can make this connection:
Researcher: what do you think is in this box of crayons?
5 year old: crayons.
Researcher opens box showing ribbons.
Researcher: what did you think was in the box a minute ago?
5 year old: crayons, but I see now it’s ribbons.
A 3 year old has this conversation:
Researcher: what do you think is in this box of crayons?
3 year old: crayons.
Researcher opens box showing ribbons.
Researcher: what did you think was in the box a minute ago?
5 year old: ribbons.
I think there’s a fundamental point missing here: if it happened naturally, then that’s another way of saying that there was not a god involved, doing his supernatural magic to make it happen. If this supernatural god did something, then that thing is not natural.
The rest of your post, I didn’t really understand. We’ve been saying that explanations involving ice ants and/or aliens are just as good as your explanation involving a god. You seem to be disagreeing, but I haven’t really seen an argument that supports why you disagree.
Ch4rl3s, I’m skipping most of your content, because frankly, I don’t want to have a conversation that lasts for weeks between posts where I have scrounge several pages back to figure out what you are talking about or be insulted if I don’t. I applaud you for the stamina, but I just don’t have it. I’m sorry. I did want to respond to one thing because it was slightly irritating when I skimmed your post. You wrote:
I didn’t check into this because it seemed so out of place and now, after I’ve taken a look, I initially wrote it on Sept 14th. It was so long ago. Whatever though.
I think I figured out the problem.
I wrote this:
I started out saying you missed Trinopus point, the point wasn’t about what was possible. I was making a comment on which is easier to believe - an elephant on the roof or a body being resurrected. I said an elephant because of what we know. That in order to accept a resurrection we would need more evidence than in the case of the elephant on the roof. I was not saying that it was impossible.
In fact, if you interpret me as supporting Trinopus in saying that it was impossible, the rest of the sentence I wrote (and the one after that) doesn’t make sense. Shoot, I’m not even sure it’s fair to interpret Trinopus as thinking it’s impossible based on what has been presented.
So, I was saying that in order to believe in a resurrection, you’d need a great amount of evidence. In fact, in either case (Aliens or God) you would need a great amount of evidence.
In the bolded portion of the above, you responded saying this:
I did not say human physiology suggested aliens wouldn’t be able to do it. You say I supported that, but I specifically stated that the point wasn’t that it was impossible, meaning the point was something else, something I went on to state about which is easier to believe.
Maybe you were referring to something else though. Maybe when I said “Why is ‘magic’ a more likely explanation than what is suggested by human psychology?” I was unclear. Perhaps you thought I was trying to say something about the impossibility of it being physiological. The reality was I was referring to stuff like ‘the disciples lied’ or ‘they had hallucinations’ or something to that effect. I would grant you that it wasn’t clear what I was referring to - but I won’t grant you that I was saying that it was impossible. Maybe I’m missing something here, I feel that you must be referring to something else, that you didn’t quote. If so please, tell me where I said something that supports what you wrote in the bolded portion:
I’d like the post number so that I can review it, since it sounds so contrary to what I feel about it.
Look, I quite clearly admitted when misunderstood something while we were actively discussing the topic. It’s been weeks since we have done so and you come back and expect me to drudge through it again and because I won’t now you are saying that this is a theme in our discussion.
In any event, then you quote me responding to Curt and write this:
I have absolutely no idea what you mean by suggesting that God, an immaterial, non temporal, omnimax entity could act in a natural way to bring someone back.
You act like it’s just some matter of fact that needs not be explained. I’m sorry to tell you, I think you need to explain it. Or you would, if I had any desire in continuing this tangent with you. I don’t though. You’ve worn me completely out.
I have to agree. When threads get hyper-involuted, and start to consist of “I said X,” “No, you said Y,” “No, I said Chi, which is the same as X,” “No, you said Upsilon, which is sort of like Y,” ad nauseam… Um… I stop being able to follow them, let alone interested in participating!
Part of this is that the full body of the evidence would include lots of data on elephants. We’ve all seen pictures. (Heck, I’ve ridden one at the zoo!) We know vast amounts about their biology, social habits, domestication, etc. There simply isn’t any comparable body of knowledge regarding resurrections. The total sum of the available evidence is terribly sparse.
I, too, am reluctant to wade through the thread to refresh my memory on what I said… (I’m not proud of this, just a tad lazy…) I can’t recall if I said that a resurrection per se was impossible. I certainly believe that a naturalistic resurrection is impossible, due to loss of information from cellular decomposition. A basic rule of thermodynamics and information theory is that this kind of data, when lost, is not recoverable.
I don’t reject the supernatural as impossible a priori. Instead, I dismiss it for the reason that it can explain anything. If an infinitely powerful agency is stipulated, then we can have no confidence in our knowledge of anything, ever. The very concept of “knowledge” ceases to have meaning. The infinitely powerful entity (God, or whatever) may be commanding me to act. It may be deceiving my senses.
One might as well entertain the “we’re just in a holodeck sim” hypothesis: it cannot be disproven, and so is meaningless. We can’t go anywhere with it. It isn’t a productive hypothesis.
But…this is a philosophical objection, based on my understanding of the core principles of epistemology. Others may have different fundamental axioms of human knowledge. At the very core of things, the disagreement always seems to me to be one of individual belief. The Christian believes in the resurrection, but cannot effectively communicate to anyone else why; the non-Christian cannot find any difference between one set of miracle stories and any other set – the miracles of Vespasian are a convincing counter-argument to me, but not to the Christian, but in the end I cannot explain to the Christian why this should be so, especially when the non-believer also doesn’t believe in the miracles of Vespasian. The Christian is reduced to asking, “Why are you arguing in favor of something in which you do not believe?” Communication is not advanced…
Trinopus (believes in matter, energy, love, and ham sandwiches)
That’s fair enough, I’d be willing to say that I missed your point.
I think it’s clear that what I got from what you said was that you were not stating that it was impossible. Instead you were making a comment on the rationality of believing in a resurrection versus an elephant.
Heck, at this point, I’d take your word for it if you said that I was missing my point! This has been a long thread!
One interesting cause of confusion is the phrase “evidence for.” Can it be separated from “evidence against?” Is evidence vector or scalar? My thought is that evidence against a proposition does not cancel evidence for it: it simply is put in the other pan of the scales. It doesn’t take weight out of the pan.
In either case, we have to take the entirety of all available evidence into account when making a decision. But (to go back to the Book of Mormon example) the fact that Mormon history of North America is questionable does not negate the eyewitness testimony of those who say they saw the golden plates.
Thus, the evidence for the golden plates is stronger than the evidence for the resurrection of Jesus, even if the totality of the evidence may or may not be. Two different concepts are being kicked around.
Trinopus
I think one of the problems I’ve been having is that we’ve been juggling so many hypotheticals it’s hard to keep straight. I don’t blame ch4rl3s if he’s irritated, and he seems to be keeping a lot better track of the various arguments in this thread than I have. I feel like we are off on a tangent though (which is probably my fault), since I don’t really think that the Gospels can be trusted (I believe that ch4rl3s addresses this, we are presupposing it for discussion). I feel like bringing up ‘aliens’ and such was an effort to say what you said in your last post about epistemologies and being able to explain anything.
The other problem is, as you said, it’s been a long thread and it’s often days or weeks between responses. It seems we are arguing very nuanced things, which wouldn’t be a problem if we were going back and forth in a closer fashion - if that were the case, we’d all be engaged and actively discussing the topic so it’d be on our minds. Right now it’s like we are engaging in this discussion once a week (or once a month) and it’s an arduous task to get refocused and to remember just what we are talking about.
I think I see what you are saying here, although you are beginning to lose me with the ‘vector’ and ‘scalar’ stuff. 
I think I see what you are saying here. If we keep with the book of Mormon, and we put the evidence on a scale, you’d have ‘testimony’ in the ‘evidence for’ tray and you’d have the questionability of the history of North America in the evidence against tray.
So the evidence against doesn’t cancel out the evidence for, it’s just that it’s, uh, ‘heavier’.
Am I with you so far?
Exactimento! It doesn’t take evidence out of the “for” tray, it just works to tilt the scale away from the “for” verdict.
This is why juries are told to weigh the “preponderance of the evidence.” If even one guy says, “I saw an alien spacecraft from Mars!” well, that is evidence. It’s just solitary, not backed up by much, and doesn’t lead us to any productive avenue of further research. But it is evidence…
…and I hold that, intrinsically, it is better evidence than that for the resurrection of Jesus. It’s immediate, personal, proffered within the lifetime of the person testifying, received within days of the claimed event, all the things that the Gospels aren’t.
That said, I don’t believe the guy. I think his evidence isn’t good enough. It’s just better than what Saint Luke wrote down.
Trinopus
Vector.
Exactly.
I agree with all that you’re saying about evidence here.