There’s a huge difference between “possible” and “likely.” Sure, it’s possible there’s a god, but is sure as hell ain’t likely.
Truth Seeker: Just for clarification, please note I said “separately,” so that you would not construe it as an analogy to the Polycarp conundrum. I stated this because I care about what you think on a slightly-tangential topic.
Ganesh brings up any number of hairs to split, but in the furtherance of the conversation, I’ll avoid the semantics.
I was raised to believe that Jesus has pale skin and great abs. According to my schooling, His countenance has a striking resemblance to one of the roadies from the Doobie Brothers, although I’m hard-pressed to find a physical description of Jesus in the Bible. How do I know he didn’t have blue skin or the head of an elephant?
Fallacy. Interpretation of aged texts is neither uniform nor universal. Therefore, Polycarp’s views need not necessarily be discounted simply because he believes a messianic avatar exists. If that brushes up against your theology, so be it, but please don’t be so speedy to discredit the man because of his honest interpretation.
That’s my biggest problem with conventional Bible dialog: students are corralled into a basic belief structure where even the noblest Houyhnhnms can be cast off into the Desert of Blasphemy.
What if I’m off somewhere in the middle? What if to me it’s a sacred text, a really neat allegory, replete with riddles and symbolism and historical problems?
I think what you’re saying is if the Bible isn’t my way of life, my opinion is less valid than yours, or even worthless. And that’s troubling. Almost paradoxically, from where I sit, Polycarp’s admission actually makes him more believable.
How Would Jesus Code? Hey, if see the Word of God in a tortilla, and that compels me to be a better man, why is that a problem?
Honestly, my take is this is an object lesson, and a compelling one at that.
A few years ago, hundreds (maybe thousands) of people flocked to an office building in (I think) Florida, because there appeared to be a manifestation of the Virgin Mary on the smoked-glass windows of the building.
Was it a miracle? I dunno. I seem to recall that either a storm somehow streaked the windows, or a windowcleaning firm somehow inadvertently caused the pattern. But regardless, people traveled to that building to see the phenomenon for themselves.
Does Polycarp know who Jesus is? I dunno. Based on what I’ve learned and studied in my pursuit of my Christian faith, he shouldn’t; Jesus’ return isn’t supposed to work that way. But God ain’t using me as the fact-checker on his master plan, so I can’t definitively say one way or the other.
I get the feeling, though, that many of the people in this thread who are defending Polycarp’s statements would have mocked those who traveled to see the image of the Virgin Mary in the windows of an office building.
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What test would prove he isn’t?!?
Look at it this way, is it more irrational to believe that the coin came up heads while it is still covered or after it is uncovered and you can see that it came up tails?
:dubious:
So I suppose you also believe that Tacitus is “evidence of nothing,” then.
As they say in courts in the U.S. your objection goes to the weight of the evidence, not its admissibility. You may think that this evidence is heavily outweighed by other, conflicting evidence but it does not follow that it is, therefore, “evidence of nothing.” It is evidence just as Tacitus is evidence. It’s just that you find it easier to believe uncorroborated bits of Roman political history.
Nor do I say that you are incorrect to do so. If one phrase has been beaten to death in this thread, it’s that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. You may not find the bible to be extraordinary evidence for the claims of christianity, but it is evidence, all the same.
God, … sure as hell ain’t likely.
Love it…
You and I are apparently going to have to disagree on what “unremarkable” means. Given that hundreds of millions of people share beliefs (1) and (2), but only a tiny handful claim to know or even suspect the secret identity of the messiah returned to earth, and only Poly goes so far as to proclaim a “hunch” that it’s a kid whose web site he once read, I would think that belief (3) is pretty darned remarkable.
Sorry, minty. Prevalence of belief has no effect on the remarkability of that belief. If five billion people believed we lived on the inside of a hollow earth, I would still consider it no more remarkable that one person thought a giant flying elephant carried the flaming ball we call the sun around the space inside.
The only reason Poly’s claim seems more remarkable is that beliefs (1) and (2) are common in this culture. Ubiquity is not legitimacy.
How can you “see” that George Bush isn’t an alien? What constitutes proof that he isn’t?
Tacitus can be compared to other historians to documents of the time and to archaeological evidence. Furthermore his writing is not undermined by assertions of impossible events. If Tacitus claimed to have witnessed miracles he would have no credibility. The mere fact that an assertion can be written down does not make it “evidence” unless you consider any spoken assertion to be evidence as well.
The Bible does not prove a damn thing. It can’t even seriously be considered as offering anything like evidence of supernatural evidence. Lots of other religions have written assertions of supernatural claims as well. Would you say that the Mahabarata is “evidence” that Hindu gods exist? Get real. There is not a shred of evidence for any supernatural event and Poly’s speculations are no more whacky than believing in “gods” or “angels” or that some Jewish wisdom teacher who died 2000 years ago is going to appear in the sky to whisk people off to a magic fairyland. It’s
I find it rather hypocritical that some people here are willing to swallow some awfully fat belief pills but then want to jump somebody else for not having the right fantastic belief.
When did we decide that believing in angels, invisible deities and resurrected carpenters was normal but believing that a real person might be that same resurrected deity was “loony.”
It’s all nucking futs from where I’m standing. This whole thread is like reading one of those old attack threads against Mormons. Did this message board relocate overnight to the UK? Because it’s suddenly swarming with Scotsmen.
Ah, but do these Scotsmen like sugar?
Sorry, Minty, but you should know that ad populum arguments don’t mean dick about validity.
Ad populum aside, any conclusion which is derived in a logically consistent fashion from accepted axioms must be considered valid. And note, once again, that Poly’s conclusion is not that he’s identified the returned corporeal Christ, it’s that he’s identified a person he thinks would fit the bill.
I believe Christ is in my heart, rocky and uncomfortable though that place must be at times. If I believe this, can I shrink from the thought that he may, in the next moment, walk up to me and grasp my hand with real fingers? I hope I would not deny him.
Sorry, DtC, but you should know that validity is not the same as remarkability.
Whatever else one might say about point 3 of Poly’s post, I agree with minty that it (and not #1 &2) qualify as “remarkable”.
I think any claim to believe in impossible events is pretty remarkable. The fact that lots of people believe it doesn’t make it any less extraordinary of a belief.
No shit. But those are not my claims, so you can stop repeating that line as if it refutes something I’ve said.
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I keep seeing this distinction being drawn and, frankly, I just don’t get it. Is god holding auditions? Does this guy get promoted to Jesus of a position opens up? It seems to me that in the christian world view, someone is Jesus or not.
Maybe you should.
Even hardened sceptics will agree that this particular prophecy has come true in spades.
Anyway, though, as I’ve said, I’m hardly an expert on interpreting the new testament, my understanding is that christians won’t have any need to recognize the second coming. As long as they’ve recognized the first coming, they’re good to go.
The problem with your position, xeno , is that you either believe it’s going to go down like it says in the book or you don’t. If you believe that it’s going to go down like it says in the book, then Jesus is not going to come up behind you in Times Square and give you a wedgy.
Who says the book can’t be wrong about how it goes down. Like I said before, the book was wrong the first time (if you buy into Christaianity, that is) so why can’t it be wrong again?
DtC, evaluating evidence and teasing out truth values is more complex than that. Here are two cites you might be interested in. In the first, the first few paragraphs are a good introduction to the mathematical application of Bayesian statistics. Quit reading when it starts to get into quantum mechanics.
The second cite is a much tougher read unless you have the background, however, it explicitly discusses the concept of “rational degrees of belief.” In very brief and somewhat inaccurate summary, no proposition ever has a truth value of one, it only approaches one. There is always some probability that any proposition will turn out to be true or false. You (depending on the consequences of belief) “believe” a proposition that has a truth value greater than 0.5.
It follows that while it is, all else being equal, irrational to “believe” a proposition that has a truth value of 0.4, it is more irrational to “believe” a proposition with a truth value of 0.1.
At the risk of hijacking my own post, I should point out that it may be perfectly rational to “believe” (i.e. act as if it were true) propositions with very low truth values if the consequences of mistakenly not believing are sufficiently high. For example, even though you’re 90% sure that gun isn’t loaded, you still assume that it is and act accordingly.
Exactly, DtC. If I believed “the book” to be inerrant literal prophecy, I wouldn’t accept Poly’s propositions (1) and (2) in the first place. As it happens, I don’t believe the Bible is inerrant, as I’ve made clear, and I’m not convinced Christ was promising a literal, physical return, either. -But I won’t discount the wedgy possibility based on its unlikeliness or unorthodoxy.
In the case of supernatural events, though, we are talking about subjects with truth values of absolute zero. You can’t quantify probablilities of the impossible. This is like one person claiming that 2+2=5 and then calling someone else crazy for saying that 2+2=6. Neither belief has any probability at all of being true.
sigh
Ok, I’ll try one more time. We know that the “supernatural” is “impossible” because it never happens. But that does not mean that the “supernatural” will never happen. There always remains some probability, albeit assymptotically approaching zero, that the physical laws we’ve worked out are incorrect and that all the data we have is dues simply to an extended series of wildly improbable measurement errors.
Turning water into wine is “impossible” because we’ve observed lots and lots and lots of water for years and years and years and it never turns into wine. There is, however, one reported instance where this occurred. When balanced against all the counter evidence, however, this one instance is not compelling so we conclude that the proposition that water can turn into wine has a very low truth value. However, and this is the key point, we cannot conclude that that truth value is zero even if there were no reported instances of it occuring.
It’s even more complicated than that. Turning lead into gold was long thought to be impossible. Now, however, we have gathered new evidence that has convinced us to change that proposition’s truth value from near zero to near one.
The truly amazing thing about the biblical miracles isn’t how impossible they are, but how commonplace they are today. True, the modalities are different, but a decent opthamologist makes the blind to see four or five times a day.
Anyway, the bottom line here is that the “supernatural” is impossible only because there is lots of evidence suggesting that it doesn’t happen. But the impossible can become possible and, in the real world, those truth values are never either zero or one.
NB – None of this is to say that your – or anyone else’s – ultimate conclusions are necessarily incorrect. But if you want to do it correctly, you need to have a more nuanced view on how you reach them and what they really mean.